 Why does the moral character of the president matter? I'm sorry I'm laughing at this question because I mean I'm not laughing at you but the question is ridiculous. The moral character of everybody matters because what is moral character? Moral character is what determines the choices people make. It's the value system and it's the method of thinking that a person has. It's what determines what they will do or won't do in times of crisis or emergency or in everyday life. It determines whether they will be a fearmonger, an emotionalist, whether they will be competent, whether they will not be. Character is about how you think, how you act, how you conduct yourself. And that's important for everybody. I don't want to work for a boss who has a bad character. I don't have friends who have bad characters. I certainly wouldn't have a romantic relationship with somebody that has a bad character who can't use their mind well and who acts in dishonest, disrespectful, bad ways. It's bad for everybody but for the president of the United States who carries with him a suitcase that could launch a nuclear war, who makes decisions that affect all of our lives that can prevent a pandemic from causing mass death or not depending on the decisions he makes. That can command respect of the people who work for him and therefore they execute and they do the right things or command disdain from the people who work around him and therefore they hedge, they don't commit, they don't act, they don't execute and bad stuff happens. Character is everything, far more important than your actual beliefs, particularly in the world today. When nobody believes anything, really, they're all a bunch of pragmatists playing to their political bases. So I'm much more interested right now given the choices we have in character than I am in positions because the damage you could do is much greater, for example, this pandemic. I've said many times and I've backed it up with lots of evidence that this has been mishandled by the federal government, by Trump, by the CDC, by the FDA but much of that goes back to Trump. Marginalizing the CDC, his narcissists are not allowing them to have a voice, not listening to them, not paying attention to them, being focused constantly on his, how he looks, how he appears, how he is presented to the public and not on the facts, on reality, on evidence, on what needs to be done. Somebody with a narcissistic, totally pragmatic view of the world cannot function, cannot function effectively, particularly not in times where you need to be cool, where you need cool headed, where you need to be rational, where you need to be focused and when you need to rally, rally people around you to solve a problem. So it's not like Trump should have had all the answers to how to deal with a pandemic. What a good president would have done is got the best minds in the country into a room, whether they were Democrats, Republicans, whether they were green, blue, red or purple, asked them what needed to be done and then he should have got the best people into the room, whether they were generals or CEOs or heads of government agencies. The best people who could execute in the world and told them, okay, here's the plan, execute. And it would be nice, but above what I typically would expect of a president to actually have a political theorist, a political philosophy with him to say, well, given all this, what is the role of government and what should I do, what shouldn't I do? But that's okay, that's too much to expect in the world we live in today. But within the bounds of what presidents do today, there's so much that could have been done if the person had good character. And Trump has the opposite. The biggest problem with Trump is he has no character. That is, he doesn't care about the truth. It's not just that he lies, all politicians lie. He doesn't care about the truth. He doesn't care about reality. He doesn't care about America. He doesn't care about doing a good job vis-a-vis America. He cares about his base. He cares about appearing to do a good job. He cares about what they think about him. He cares about his ratings on television. And as a consequence, he makes bad decisions over and over and over again. And once in a while, he'll make a good decision. But it's an accident. It has nothing to do with reality. It has nothing to do with seeking truth. It has everything to do with the fact that once in a while, he's going to make a good decision, maybe because an advisor whispered the right thing in his ear at the right point in time. And yes, I can make a list of all the, quote, good things Trump has done. But they're not being done for any right reason. And the damage is far, far greater. And there is another aspect of this. And I think Rand talks about this in a controversial essay she wrote about why a woman, why she believed a woman wouldn't want to be president and she wouldn't vote for a woman to be president. Although I'd be curious what she would think today, given some of the choices we have. And that is that the president of the United States obviously has this massive responsibility. Obviously have this massive power, more power than any other human being on the planet. Because he has at his disposal the mightiest military, the mightiest economy, the greatest resources that any political leader in the world has. The people, the way the people respond to crises is going to depend on whether they look up to this person, whether they respect him, put aside admire and agree with him, just respect him or not. One of the problems in electing people with bad character, and it's not just Trump, although Trump is the worst of them, but you know Obama and Clinton, is that the country had no respect for the president. And in times of crisis again, the president had no ability to rally the country. And if something difficult needs to be passed, let's say for example, if you wanted as a Republican, you wanted to appeal Obamacare, Trump had no ability to rally the country around his agenda of appealing Obamacare. No ability, because half the country, more than half the country doesn't trust him. They don't just disagree, I'd say even a bigger portion of that, because I know more people who agree with him than trust him. So there's a huge percentage of the American population don't trust Trump. I mean, Mark mentions Ronald Reagan had respect. Yes, I think Ronald Reagan had respect, even his opponents respected him, because he had this respectability about him. He was a real, he was a human being. Agree with him or disagree, and I think he made some horrific mistakes, and remember, I ran and didn't vote for him. But he was a real human being that had an agenda, you know, was authentic and was trying to do his best for the country and loved the country, truly loved the country. None of that, none of that exists with Trump. So if Trump tomorrow said, I really do think we should open up everything. And I think what you should do though, is I think you should voluntarily socially distance. I think businesses should take on responsibility of doing that, and I think everybody needs to take this on seriously, and this is a real, we need to make a real effort as a country to beat this thing, and we need to do it by voluntary actions. I think there's a big portion of the population would say, Trump, that, we don't, who cares what he said? We don't believe half of what he said, and he doesn't know what he says half the time. Why should we do what he says? No respect, no respect. You could have disagreed with FDR about almost everything he did. But I think when World War II happened, the country rallied around him, not in some false sense of patriotism. But you got a sense that this was a war that he was going to really fight, that he was going to do the right thing, and he was seeking victory. And yes, all the stuff in the New Deal was horrible, and the country would suffer for it for generations. But right now, as the country faced this massive threat, he was the kind of person you, as much as you disagreed with him philosophically, he had a decent character. I mean, I don't think he had a great character, but he had a decent character, and people could respect him. I think Ronald Reagan had that kind of respect. I think other presidents, even Eisenhower, had it. And I hate Eisenhower. I can't find, you know, as a human being, as a general, and as a president, I despise him. But he had a sudden, he was a human being. So what Trump has done, and it's a point I was trying to get to earlier, but it didn't, is he's diminished the role of the president. So not only is it now that we don't trust him, I think we're going to be cynical about presidents for a long, long time. I think we're going to expect the worst of presidents for a long, long time. I think that more and more people are coming to the conclusion, character doesn't matter, and that is going to lead to a disaster across the board. Because Trump is not the last president we'll have with bad character. I think we're going to get more like Trump, not less. Worse than Trump, if that's possible, imaginable. So things are going to get worse because he has diminished the importance of character, diminished the role of president as this respected leader to such an extent that nobody cares about character anymore. I mean, it amazes me, Republicans who during the Clinton years said, character matters, it's all about character. The same conservatives right now are saying character doesn't matter, what matters are policies, that's all that matters. Oh, that's stuff we said in the 90s? Who cares about that? No, they were right back then. And the biggest problem with Clinton, much more problematic in my view than his policies, which overall were not that disastrous given other presidents, was the fact that Clinton was one of those presidents who really diminished the presidency, who really was untrusted, unrespected, disrespected. You know, he had sex in a closet in the White House with Monica Lewinsky. He was just sleazy, and the whole country knew it. And we've been going downhill since then. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broods. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time, so I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not showing the next...