Peter Savodnik
Appearances
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
It sounds to me like the critical point here is that DEI has always presented itself as being in keeping with this liberal tradition in America. And what you're saying is that actually it's the exact opposite of that, right? It works to erode that tradition by emphasizing difference as opposed to commonality. And the military relies on a sense of shared purpose and shared mission, correct?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
So I do want to turn, Brianna, just for a moment to an executive order signed this week by the president calling for the removal of transgender troops from the military. The Secretary of Defense now has 30 days to present a plan on how to implement this executive order. What are the ramifications of this?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
is currently having his highly anticipated and controversial confirmation hearing today, that's Wednesday, January 29th, and tomorrow to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Meanwhile, his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of JFK, came out Tuesday with a bombshell public denunciation of RFK, calling him unqualified, a predator, and a hypocrite.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
But Brianna, how many troops are we talking about here? I mean, how many people are right now in the military who are going to be kicked out of it as a result of this? Is that what this is going to do?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
I'd like to pivot to the other big story of this week, which is DeepSeek, a Chinese startup that rivals the most advanced American AI products, allegedly for a fraction of the cost. Before we get into some of the defense implications, Brianna, I would love for you just to explain why Silicon Valley and Wall Street and maybe the Pentagon are losing their minds over this.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Along those lines, there seems to be this debate right now just about what you're talking about, about whether this is, I think as Marc Andreessen put it, our Sputnik moment for AI, or then there was the Palmer Lucky tweet saying, look, there's a lot of hysteria around this and everyone needs to calm down.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Maddy, do you see DeepSeek and AI as part of a broader kind of Cold War 2.0 struggle with the Chinese? And if so, how can we expect that to unfold over the next six, 12 months?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Xi also said that he used to, quote, put baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed to his hawks, close quote. Cannot say I had that on my 2025 bingo card. Finally, if that's not enough craziness for you, the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek sent U.S. tech stocks plummeting to the tune of more than $1 trillion after it rolled out a new app on the U.S.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
So I think one of my takeaways from Deep Seek this week is that we are now moving rapidly toward, I don't know exactly how to think about it, whether this is going to be some kind of hot conflict or cold conflict, but there is a looming conflict of some sort with the Chinese, and it's kind of metastasizing across the globe.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
And we've been feeling this building now for many, many years, but it seems to be kind of ripening rapidly in real time. And that brings me back for a moment to the new secretary of defense. So much of what it means to be an effective secretary of defense means judgment.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
And I guess what gives me like the most concern about the new secretary of defense is that he's all about this warrior ethos, the tattoos, the kind of there's the crassness, the bull in the China shop thing. It's sort of like a wannabe Trump. That is not a Jim Mattis or a Bob Gates.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
It's not the kind of person with gravitas and sobriety who can make, I guess, rapid fire decisions that will affect who lives, who dies, who can do diplomacy. Should we be worried about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth dealing with the Chinese and defending American interests in light of sort of this kind of new Cold War-ish moment that we find ourselves in?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
market that is a fraction of the cost of American AI competitors, all of which brought up questions about our AI war with China. To talk about it all, I'm joined by Brianna Wu, plus special guest and Free Press reporter Maddy Raleigh. Stay with us.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
the many, many instances in which the Secretary of Defense is called upon to exercise supremely good judgment. And these are things that we probably never, ever hear about. I know after 9-11, for example, there was the new rule about shooting down commercial airliners.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
or whether to send troops into across borders with whom we don't have, into countries with whom we don't have a status of forces agreement. And there are all these questions about, we have to make decisions right now, it's 2 a.m., and you, the Secretary of Defense, are one of the few people in government who is in a position to make a decision
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
about whether we are going to kill somebody, whether we're going to take some action that may or may not do a good bit of good or bad. It could have all kind of castrating effects. But all that revolves around judgment. And I guess, not I guess, my big, big concern about Hegseth is that he doesn't in any way emanate solid, good judgment. I mean, there's brashness. There's all kinds of trolling.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Frankly, the stuff about the transgender ban worries me. It seems very political, and it's a kind of signal, but it's not sober judgment. It's not the kind of mind that I imagine sort of making clear-headed, smart decisions under enormous pressure. What evidence do we have that when those decisions have to be made, he's going to make the right decisions?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
¿Hablas español? ¿Hablas español?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
We'll be right back with Brianna Wu and Maddy Raleigh. Stay with us. I'd like to pivot to what is happening right now on Capitol Hill, the RFK hearings, which will be fun.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
RFK, as you know, ran an insurgent presidential campaign and started out as a Democrat, became an independent, and then wound up, of course, in the end endorsing Donald Trump. He has become, I think, a sort of vehicle or emblem of kind of disaffected, floating Americans who don't have clear of political allegiance anymore and have lost faith entirely in our institutions.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
I'd like just to start by turning to the letter his cousin, the sole remaining child of former President John F. Kennedy, sent to the Senate, calling on them not to support her cousin's nomination. She noted that, quote, his views on vaccines are dangerous and misinformed, close quote. And she also called him a predator.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
And then also, quote, he is addicted to attention and power and preys on the desperation of parents of sick children. And she said, and this is the best detail, he, quote, puts baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed to his hawks. Brianna, is this going to affect anyone or anything? Does this have any effect on the outcome of this nomination hearing?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Right.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Yeah, you're talking about Nicole Shanahan who has threatened to fund anyone who will primary any of the senators who fail to vote the way she wants them to vote on RFK's nominations. I wonder what you make of that, both of you. To my mind, you know, the billionaire is kind of weighing in. There's something irrespective of where you stand on RFK Jr. or Maha or the institutions, whatever.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
There's something just like distasteful about somebody with a lot of money saying, if you U.S. senators don't vote the way I want you to, I'm going to crush you. Agree or disagree? Yeah.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
I want to distinguish here between RFK Jr., who's now been nominated to run HHS, and Donald Trump's new head of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya. So Bhattacharya is, I think, a fantastic nomination. He's very smart. He's very thoughtful. Again, he's very sober, ponderous, but I think also brave and clear-eyed. There's something different about him and RFK Jr.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
And there's a reason, I think, that it's easy to get behind Bhattacharya, who may have a lot of the same opinions about vaccines or the institutions that RFK does. But there's something profoundly different between the way he thinks and the way RFK Jr. thinks. And I wonder if we can talk about that, because that seems to me to be the critical issue here.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
We can bring in people who are eager to reform or rethink certain conventional wisdoms or orthodoxies, but at the same time who are wise and knowledgeable and credentialed and who don't seem as if they're fueled by some kind of grand conspiracy theory.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Brianna, Maddie, welcome to Honestly.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Let's start with Pete Hegseth and the ending of DEI in the military. So last Friday in this dramatic tie-breaking vote, Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense. Every Democratic senator and three Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitch McConnell voted against his confirmation. Brianna, last week you predicted that Hegseth would not get confirmed.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
But I mean, to me, like this is like emblematic of a larger tension or issue in Trump land or the kind of Trump apprehension of the universe. There are the smart, thoughtful, ponderous, serious people who often come to the same conclusions as the kind of trolly people who seem like their political chum. The point of which is just to kind of get everyone talking.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
I mean, that's the game show host apprentice, you know, aspect of this administration, which I think is really unsettling. So- The president could have tapped Tom Cotton to be the secretary of defense. And I think that would have been a much, much more sort of sober and kind of reassuring decision than Pete Hegseth. He could have chosen someone who is sympathetic to RFK Jr.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
's distrust of certain, you know, kind of conventional ideas around vaccines, polio, measles, the way that medical research takes place in this country. But he chose somebody who it seems to me it's a trollish kind of decision. It's meant to get people talking about that person as opposed to the issues that that person is supposed to be talking about.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
And I wonder, like, why is there this tension, right? It would be so smart to my mind, again, to pick the smart, thoughtful people who care about these issues in the way that the president does and wants to rethink things in a fundamental way but isn't a troll, isn't sort of an insult in a way to the institutions.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Okay, well, before we close out, we have a few fun predictions to end on. TikTok returning to the App Store before 2026 is trading at a 93% chance of happening on the predictions market app Kaoshi, our sponsor for this episode. Do you think it is that likely that Trump and the tech titans will let TikTok back onto the App Store?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
How surprised were you that he got through?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Excellent. Egg prices going up in Trump's first month in office is trading at 83%. Yes. Do you think Trump can bring grocery prices down, Maddie?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
RFK becoming Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services, his cousin's letter notwithstanding, is trading at 77%. Yes. Too high? Accurate? Inaccurate? Maddie?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Brianna, what do you think?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
You think that RFK Jr. does get through?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Yeah, so would I. So would I. I mean, if Hegseth gets through, RFK Jr. does too. Brianna, Maddie, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fun. Thank you so much.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
That's T-H-E-F-P dot com and become a subscriber today. See you next time.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
So Hague says number one issue seems to be ending DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion in the military. He gave his first interview since his confirmation to my colleague, Free Press reporter Maddy Rowley. Maddy, let's start from the beginning of the story. I want you to give us a bit of background on DEI initiatives in the military. When did they begin and sort of what is their effect in totality?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
From the Free Press, this is Honestly. I'm Peter Savodnik, in for Barry Weiss, who unfortunately is bedridden with pneumonia this week. It is Trump's second week in office, and he has wasted no time being the wrecking ball he promised he would be.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
So what bad things, what mistakes have been made since 2011 as a result of that are directly attributable to this change in attitude or thinking inside the Pentagon?
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
I get all that, but what I want to know is, have mistakes been made as a result of changes in policy? The reason I'm asking is that this is such a useful political issue for Republicans to talk about as much as they can. At the same time, all the things you're talking about could be attributed to, all those problems could be attributed to any number of things. Maybe one of them is DEI, maybe not.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
I want to dive a little bit deeper into what DEI does to an organization, a culture. And it may be that it's not immediately apparent. It may be that the implications, the long-term consequences of a policy, a decision that's implemented in 2011, 2015, 2020, aren't felt for many years or even decades. I don't know.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Brianna, I know that you have some background sort of in thinking about DEI and sort of the ways in which it can affect cultures. I wonder if you have any thoughts about this and sort of what that might be.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Yesterday, he issued a memo freezing trillions of dollars in federal funding in his attempt to purge the government of woke ideology.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Earlier in the week, Trump convinced Colombia's President Gustavo Petro to accept deported Colombian migrants, who Petro had turned away from his borders only a day earlier.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
So for a lot of kind of older, more liberal minded listeners, viewers, they may be listening to this and thinking, look, this is all just part of, you know, America becoming more American, of sort of democratization of American society. And There was resistance to Harry Truman integrating the military in 1948. And there was resistance to gay people serving in the military.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
And DEI is just part of that larger, broader effort. Tell me, explain why it's not.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
After Trump threatened a 25% tariff on Colombian imports to the U.S., Back in Congress, the Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth to be the U.S. Secretary of Defense in a dramatic, tie-breaking vote cast by the Vice President, J.D. Vance. He started on the job on Monday. And RFK Jr.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
Yeah, I don't know about what it says about the Trump administration's position on crypto. I mean, he was pretty blunt in his message where he says, you know, the Libertarian Party supported me during my campaign, so I'm going to reward them as I promised to do by releasing or pardoning Russell Brick. There's not much like an ideological commitment there.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
One can easily imagine, you know, an alternate universe in which the libertarians upset the president and he chose not to pardon Russell Brick. So I don't know if it tells us much about,
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
I think that the DEI executive order, like the executive order undoing affirmative action first implemented in 1965 by Lyndon Johnson, tells you how fundamental sort of this effort is or what's really going on here. I think that when we talk about Trump, it's really important to think about this on two levels.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
There are the particulars, the particular executive orders, the things he says, the particular actions in the day to day. But I think it's also really important to think about the kind of underlying sea change that's happening. And I think that we should be discussing this on both those levels.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
So on the sort of like fundamental level, what's happening is this is an effort to undo more than a half century of social engineering and what I think a lot of people on the MAGA right would refer to as cultural Marxism. And that's also in keeping with, you know, pulling out of the Paris Accords on the climate front.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And it's in keeping with all the moves along the border and the Remain in Mexico executive order. And it's this kind of restoration of an America or this return to an America that from the vantage point of the MAGA right, was derailed in the late 1960s, early 1970s. And so it's a very sweeping, very, very big campaign or effort.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And so I think, you know, we should talk about, again, the particulars of that executive order, but we should also be cognizant of what is happening on a kind of like ideological, philosophical, fundamental level, which is profound and much, much bigger than anything I think any American president has attempted. easily since Ronald Reagan, if not FDR.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
Sorry, this is like analogous to like trying to like a blind eye to Trump pardoning people who beat up police officers on January 6th. It's going too far and it undermines himself. It's frankly, it's stupid. And I get why it appeals to the base, but he's no longer on the campaign trail, right? This is the thing that like the criticism that is frequently lodged against Trump.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
He insists on doing something which... which is necessarily going to alienate lots of people who would normally, I think, be much more amenable to the ideas that he's talking about. Most Americans, I think, generally support a kind of America first thinking about our southern border.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
But when you start talking about undoing the 14th Amendment, or I should say, undoing birthright citizenship, you lose them. Again, it's the same thing as with, like, you know, pardoning people on January 6th who committed violent crimes. It's going too far. I don't know if he can't help himself or if it's a ploy or a tactic, but it runs counter to the same agenda he claims to care so much about.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
What this does, I'm sorry, to me is like it just underscores the fact that we are still in the kind of first iteration or wave of kind of the America First movement.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And whether we actually are able to graduate to a more developed and consensus driven America First politics or a kind of a center right populism that really is able to forge a nationwide coalition is going to require kind of moving beyond Trump. And whether Trump allows the party in the country to do so remains to be seen.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
Well, it's not just the elites who are against like opposing sort of the undoing of birthright citizenship. So that, no, that's not true. And it's not just the elites who are against pardoning people who beat up police officers on January 6th. So no, that's not true either.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
I mean, I just I think that the ignoring the law part is the problem for me that the national security threat question is a little bit, I think, hard to to kind of draw any conclusions about. But the flouting of the law is is obviously a problem and sets yet another terrible precedent. And I think that Trump is dead wrong about it.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
Caitlin Flanagan had a really, I thought, very smart tweet about watching some of the world's richest men surrounding the president at the inauguration left her feeling, I think, I forget the word she used, but kind of queasy and reminded her of just how much or how deeply sort of money is embedded in national politics. And I think she's absolutely right to feel that way.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
At the same time, I think what's going on is that The Trump administration is clearly, you know, along with the likes of Elon Musk, you know, supports the idea of growing, growth, of building, of innovating. And so much of the sort of deeper conversation about what's going on with the administration is pushing back against decades of sort of.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
kind of war on growth, war on innovation and war on, in a bigger sense of like kind of imagination. And I think that's very commendable. So there's this kind of conflict of sorts, right? There's, we don't like seeing, you know, people like Zuckerberg or Musk wedded to the president. It makes us feel very uneasy. It doesn't feel like that's what a republic is supposed to be.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And at the same time, the way we solve our problems is we grow out of them. And people like Musk and Zuckerberg are superb at that.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
I mean, I think it just demonstrates or illustrates, I should say, the paucity of progressive criticism of Trump. Everyone's focusing on this super billionaire with Asperger's or, you know, with sort of a very, you know, sort of strange, I should say, eccentric personality doing something that isn't going to be received well by lots of people.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And they're not talking about Tulsi Gabbard sitting next to the CEO of ByteDance. In other words, their priorities, their focus is off. And I think it tells us much, much more about the people who are making a lot of noise about it.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
Yeah, it's not going to happen. It's one of those like Trump things. It's a troll. It's just meant to, you know, get people all worked up. But they're not going to do it.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
Yeah, and that's right.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
Yes, I have no particular opinions about the looks. I do know that what I like about the incoming or the new administration is this embrace of a certain kind of conventional aesthetic. This idea that beautiful is beautiful and ugly is ugly.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And so in that sense, in a general sense, without actually knowing anything about any of the labels or styles or fashions, I wholeheartedly supported what I saw on screen.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
I disagree. I think it was a bad move. And I think it's in keeping with sort of the sloppiness and the kind of brashness of Trump. And it's true that there may be this deeper issue or drive to kind of unweaponize justice by pardoning people who should not have been pardoned. According to people in his own administration, he just undermines himself.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
I mean, this gets kind of silly, like to say, well, we should try to somehow exculpate Trump because Biden did something worse. Donald Trump consistently misses the opportunity to lead, to try to bring people together and to achieve a kind of common ground. I get it that he's the emcee of, I think, as I put it in my piece, the great circus that is the GOP.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And people like that don't look for common ground. They don't look to lead people. But it's troubling because I think that there is a consensus. There is room for consensus around pardoning people who got swept up in the January 6th crackdown, who were probably treated badly. And at the same time, holding to account those who should be in prison.
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
And so I guess like trying to compare, like bring in Biden into this equation seems to me to kind of obscure the bigger point, which is that Trump is now president and we expect him to lead the And on his first day, his first opportunity to do so, he flubbed it
Honestly with Bari Weiss
26 Executive Orders, TikTok's Future, and Elon’s Arm
But it's time to get off the campaign trail and to lead, right? So we're done with like scoring points. And now we say, you know what? We're going to rise above the freight. We're better than that. And that's where Trump fails, I should say, time and time again. He can never kind of like rise above himself.