Latest / Gunther Fehlinger Podcast / American conservative/libertarian Richard Hanania on Trump, Vance, and Europe’s Wake-Up Call

Transcript

American conservative/libertarian Richard Hanania on Trump, Vance, and Europe’s Wake-Up Call · Gunther Fehlinger Podcast

• 0:03
  This is too good to failing a podcast.
• 0:05
  The podcast is developing very well.
• 0:07
  We have now 15,000 subscribers and 127 thousand on X and also
• 0:13
  be on Patreon. And our podcast is very much the
• 0:16
  voice of the free world here from Vienna in the European
• 0:20
  Union. And we discuss a lot of
• 0:23
  transatlantic issues. And I'm very honoured to have a
• 0:26
  very prominent American 4th leader and think tank leader
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  leader here to this evening. Richard, I'm very happy that
• 0:34
  you're here this evening. It's, I think Pacific, it's in
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  the morning with us to discuss transatlantic relations.
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  Also your intellectual output, your work, your achievements.
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  And we in Europe are very interested.
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  What do you think about Europeans?
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  Absolutely, at this critical juncture of the world, and
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  obviously I'm very happy that you are here.
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  Please, Richard, can you introduce yourself first of all
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  to the European audience? Sure, Gunther.
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  It's nice to be here. I'm Richard Hemania.
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  I'm an American writer. I write about American politics.
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  I write about geopolitics. My background is political
• 1:13
  science. I've published a few books.
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  One is called Public Choice Theory and Illusion of Grand
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  Strategy. I wrote a book called The
• 1:21
  Origins of Woke, and I have a forthcoming book called
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  Kakistocracy. I sub stack.
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  My sub stack is under my own name.
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  I'm on Twitter and yeah, that's basically all there is to be.
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  You're one of the leading conservatives of your
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  generation. Some people say that, although,
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  you know, I'm kind of not happy with conservatives these days.
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  So you know, it depends on how you how you classify people.
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  How would you classify your brand of ideology?
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  What's your term you prefer to use?
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  I would say I'm closer. I'm closer to a libertarian or a
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  classical liberal than a conservative is.
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  You know, those things used to be closer together in the United
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  States. Recently, the conservatives
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  under Trump and Vance, they've got it a populist direction,
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  which makes them, you know, further apart from kind of
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  classical liberals and libertarians of where where I'm
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  at. So yeah, if I have to the extent
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  that I have to pick a home, you know, anything is any kind of
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  ideology is confining. But, you know, classical
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  liberal, libertarian, that's, you know, that's probably going
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  to help you predict most of my views.
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  And so you liberal in the terms of economic liberal like Adam
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  Smith and this kind of classical liberal direction.
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  Yes, yes, I like free markets. I like Hayek.
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  I like the free demand. I I like the contemporaries, the
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  people at George Mason University like Tyler Cowen and
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  and Brian Kaplan and and pretty socially, socially liberal too,
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  in some ways, but not in all ways, yeah.
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  I'm also a lifelong, I call it in Europe, we call it
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  conservative liberals center right.
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  This is what I have always used in my political Christian
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  Democrat. That was the idea and I was a
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  student leader of the European Democratic students.
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  That's the center right wing students and I have my lifelong
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  believed in conservative libertarian ideology.
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  At the moment, there's a bit of a inflection point for me, a bit
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  of a crisis, because the cradle of the free world, the the city
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  on the hill, the greatest empire and torch of freedom, if you
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  want to call it the United States of America, is a little
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  bit shaking the tree in the terms some bad guys are falling
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  like Maduro. I was very happy, but
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  unfortunately, Mr. Trump seems to want to take some land off us
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  and he's not helping us on Ukraine.
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  Can you explain us a little bit as desperate conservatives or
• 3:51
  libertarians from Europe, what exactly is going on with you in
• 3:56
  America? Yeah.
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  I mean, there's always been kind of this populism on the right,
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  you know, for example, on immigration and free trade.
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  Always the elites within the Republican Party were in this
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  kind of classical liberal direction, while a lot of the
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  voters for the Republicans were not.
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  And then Donald Trump came along in 20/15/2016.
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  And with the rise of Internet and, you know, with the rise of
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  kind of social media and these alternative sources of news, he
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  really just came. And because of his celebrity and
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  because of his, you know, his views to a certain extent, but
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  mostly the celebrity, he just took over the Republican Party.
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  And since then, you know, in his first administration, he was
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  still surrounded by many people from the conservative
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  establishment. This time it's changed, you
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  know, after January 6, after he he left office and he didn't
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  acknowledge he lost the election, a lot of people left
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  him. Over time, he became the people
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  who are around him are more and more populist.
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  They're more nativist. They like Trump, and they stick
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  with Trump because they think immigration to the United States
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  is the biggest threat to the country.
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  I think European immigration and American immigration are very,
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  very different. But these people don't see it
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  that way. They just really, really dislike
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  American immigration. And these people are
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  nationalists. They're in the nativist sense.
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  So they don't believe in international institutions.
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  They don't care about Europe. They don't care about Ukraine.
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  And so these are the people who stuck by Trump.
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  And these are the people, I think Vance came up younger
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  generation of conservatives in the Trump era where they all
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  bought into this stuff. And that's the ruling coalition
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  right now. You know, in addition to Trump's
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  incompetence and goofiness, there is a nativist ideology
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  that's underlying it. And that's the that's the place
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  of the Republican Party right now.
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  That's very unfortunate because we in Europe are in a life and
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  death struggle with Russia, who is raging four years of
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  genocidal war now again in Ukraine and is doing everything
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  to harm us in Europe from the energy, from the politics, from
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  any sector. And we need you, and we rely on
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  you in America. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's
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  weird because Trump still is not completely cut off everything to
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  Ukraine, but at the same time you could tell his hearts not in
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  it. He really does not does not care
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  about Europe. And that's unfortunate.
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  Even he sees the even like the closest allies, they see it as
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  an antagonistic relationship. I mean, Trump doesn't believe in
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  positive some trade. He thinks if there's trade
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  between countries, it means one country is stealing or ripping
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  off another. I mean, this is something
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  clearly that's something he believes in.
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  And so, yeah, that's that's kind of what Trump is now.
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  You know, the some of the things like taking out Maduro, I think
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  he's kind of he's strong on some of these issues on, on a lot of
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  the leftists in Latin America or just horrible people, I think
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  have been treated too nicely by previous American
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  administrations. So, you know, this, this kind of
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  fits with Trump, his his great power kind of sphere of
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  influence kind of thinking actually works in Latin America
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  because, you know, it is that the US is near abroad.
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  And a lot of these leftists are really bad and harmful for their
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  country and harmful for the everything that's going on in
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  the Western Hemisphere. So, you know, it's a, it's a
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  mixed bag in that in, in that sense.
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  But when it comes to Venezuela, for example, I was applauding, I
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  was cheering, I saw another tyrant fall.
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  Maduro taken out, Fantastic. I was reminded, you know, on the
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  fall of Saddam and I was happy. But then there was no real
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  regime change. And he has led the same
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  socialist Chavistas, communists in place who are like the same
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  cartels and, you know, the the same drug related Putinist
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  Caracas is now continuing and why?
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  Well, I think the lesson of Iraq maybe tells us, tells us
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  something about why, because Iraq, you know, they got rid of
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  Saddam. And the lesson that the
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  Americans, everyone across the political spectrum drew from
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  that is that revolutionary change in a foreign country is
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  dangerous. And so the US was not going to
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  occupy Caracas. They were not going to occupy
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  Venezuela, which might be necessary in order to get
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  Machado or one of these opposition forces in there who
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  are better people than the Chavistas.
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  And so, yeah, I mean, I think that people, I think those of us
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  who dislike Maduro and dislike the Chavistas, we should be
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  happy. And I mean, countries sometimes
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  reform after a bad leader goes away.
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  Look at the Soviet Union after Stalin.
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  Look at the Chinese after Mao. So we'll see how it goes in
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  Venezuela. But yeah, I think they were just
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  not seeing a realistic option to change the entire regime.
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  Now, Trump, he says, you know, he says the right things.
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  He says if they don't do what we want, you know, something worse
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  than what happened to Maduro could happen to this new woman,
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  Delci Rodriguez. And so we'll see if he's, you
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  know, if he backs that up. And hopefully, you know, he
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  wants a, you know, movement to, you know, Trump doesn't care
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  about democracy, but I think some people in his
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  administration do. And so, you know, I think
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  hopefully those people had flipped Trump in the right
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  direction. At least they could thread and
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  coerce the regime to move in a positive direction, maybe get to
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  elections eventually. You know, even if it's not
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  tomorrow. And tell me about this Greenland
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  thing, this obsession with Greenland.
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  It's a totally empty place with 60,000 people, like a small
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  village in America, and it's full of ice.
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  And he's somehow obsessed with it, while America has already a
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  military base since I think 70 years.
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  You basically are the only military force in Greenland, and
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  you can have as many soldiers as you want in Greenland.
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  But why does he want to humiliate us by annexing it or
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  attacking it? It's something, you know, the
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  people in Denmark and in Greenland they are dying for.
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  They cannot understand what's going on.
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  Yeah, Well, maybe you could tell me something about how Europeans
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  think because I, I think that Trump looks at it.
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  I think he just, you know, who knows what he's thinking, but he
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  just looks at it. He sees it's very big.
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  If you look at Greenland on the map, it's huge.
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  And sometimes this is a illusion because if you look at the globe
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  or if you look at the map flat and, you know, it looks, it
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  looks like it's bigger than anything.
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  So Trump probably thinks it's next to us.
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  It's very big. You know, I, I expand the size
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  of the country by a lot. You're right.
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  And as far as like military threat, I mean, I think the US,
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  you know, has a basically can add whatever military forces at
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  once there. It's part of the NATO alliance,
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  of course. And Denmark is not going to
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  resist that. I do think that, you know, of
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  course they shouldn't threaten allies.
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  They shouldn't talk about military force.
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  This is, it should be off the table, but you know, the idea
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  that America could have a frontier, that this could be a
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  new land where people can go and they can open it up to, you
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  know, settlement and resources, the development of the
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  resources. If we could buy it, if we could
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  convince the people of Greenland, I wouldn't be against
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  that. I think that would be a kind of
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  a cool thing to do. I, you know, I think Denmark is,
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  you know, a great country in many ways, but it's a small
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  country. It's, it's not really a place
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  where they're going to have a frontier or they're going to do
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  it. I'm sure there's all kinds of
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  things that are standing in the way of developing Greenland that
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  are rooted in domestic law of Denmark.
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  So I kind of like the idea of America getting bigger and
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  taking and eventually growing. But yeah, it has to be done
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  consensually. It has to be done within the
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  confines of the Alliance. I'm sure the Danish government
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  and the Greenland people give all Americans residents rights
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  if you want if you want to move in a territory.
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  I would love that. Degrees minus you can go and.
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  Every. Day and don't have a lot of
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  people. Are you sure?
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  I think that they probably get, if you want to develop, if you
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  want a company wants to go there and I don't know what resources
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  they have, but there might be some environmental reason where
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  they don't want people, people there.
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  You know, there's only 57,000 Greenlanders there.
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  There could be something about indigenous land.
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  Oh, we can't have too many demographics.
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  We can't have too many Americans, too many Westerners.
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  If you know, I don't know what the Danish position on that
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  would be. I can guarantee you here in this
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  podcast, you are very welcome and you can send hundreds.
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  Of. American there, but it's very
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  inhabitable land, it's very cold.
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  And the resources, it's a fantasy because they are very
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  difficult and expensive to exploit.
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  And there's a reason why the Greenland government has tried
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  the whole world to to offer exploration concessions and
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  nobody was coming. So yeah, in reality.
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  Yeah, in that case, I mean, I like, I like the idea of, yeah,
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  trying to get residency rights and trying to further
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  integration. That's clearly not though.
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  It's something Trump thinks about, right, Because Trump just
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  they announced they're going to pull out of 6 something like 60
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  international agreements the other day.
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  So they just it's not doesn't seem like something they would
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  consider. And but everything of this
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  agreement made some sense. We built them for a reason.
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  And now he, with one stroke of a ban, he declared 60 of the
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  memberships invalid. Yeah, completely chaotic form of
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  management of a state of a superpower.
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  Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think a lot of these
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  international institutions, you know, have been built for a
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  reason. They have been successful in
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  their goals. Yeah.
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  But Trump unfortunately just thinks in 0 sum terms.
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  This is kind of, you know, there's there's a, there's a,
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  you know, there's a, there's a populism to it.
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  There's a lot of people who think like this too.
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  And unfortunately, it just, you know, kind of any kind of
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  international cooperation is is got to be put to the side until
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  there's a new American president.
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  As a kind of conservative, what I am, you know, I could
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  understand if he withdrew from the United Nations because there
• 13:37
  we have really Russia and China with immense power.
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  With a veto, he could really break the establishment and
• 13:44
  withdraw from the UN. But withdrawing from the
• 13:47
  international solar Energy Institution is something like
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  how it doesn't really change the world.
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  It is just a petty small move of of vindicativeness.
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  And what is the meaning? Yeah, if you look at the
• 14:04
  Republican, if you look at conservative kind of media, the
• 14:06
  right wing echo chamber, yeah. I mean, they just like to make
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  these announcements. You know, there's no, there's no
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  like Trump when he says you're going to take Greenland.
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  There's no think tank. There's no intellectual in
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  America. Nobody ever talked about America
• 14:20
  taking Greenland, right? Nobody, right.
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  And so a lot of this stuff is just Trump's brain.
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  And then people come along and they try to make up an ideology.
• 14:30
  They try to make up a reason for what Trump is doing and for it
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  to make sense. And it becomes the American
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  policy. So a lot of it is kind of this
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  one bad, this one bad. And his kind of instincts at his
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  that the ideas that are floating around his head, that is that is
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  driving this. It is a kind of, you know, great
• 14:47
  math theory of history. Richard, you are one of the
• 14:50
  leading conservative thinkers in the United States.
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  I read in the Wikipedia report about you that you also were one
• 14:57
  of the contributors of the Project 2025.
• 15:01
  Yes. And you know, the situation is,
• 15:04
  why are not intellectuals like you contributing to day-to-day
• 15:08
  policy of the Trump administration in this unique
• 15:12
  opportunity to shape conservative worldview?
• 15:16
  With Congress dominated by the GOP, there's tremendous
• 15:20
  opportunities to change the tax law, to change the environment
• 15:24
  law, to shape the world in a decent, sound manner and not in
• 15:30
  chaotic, coincidental kind of I wake up in the morning, I make a
• 15:35
  tweet, and I create chaos. Why not changing the world do
• 15:41
  the right in a good sense? I mean, so, you know, they
• 15:44
  listened to me on Project 2025. They listened to me when it
• 15:47
  comes to things they want to do anyway, they I wrote a lot of
• 15:50
  things about diversity, DEI wokeness, affirmative action.
• 15:54
  They wanted to listen to somebody who's going to tell
• 15:57
  them what to do about that. Unfortunately, you know, the
• 16:01
  right wing intellectual space has been like, you know, there's
• 16:04
  no, Trump doesn't read books, he doesn't read intellectuals.
• 16:07
  Some people around him do, but all the people who are around
• 16:10
  Trump had to get through this filter where they are people
• 16:14
  who, you know, Trump cares about loyalty before everything else.
• 16:17
  You know, he appoints people to the top levels based on who's
• 16:19
  never going to disagree with him.
• 16:21
  So they're people. So the basically the people who
• 16:23
  are influential are those who more and more just tell, you
• 16:27
  know, it's not, it's not from the bottom up.
• 16:30
  It's topped out. It's Trump, you know, believes
• 16:33
  in certain things. He appoints people who are never
• 16:35
  going to contradict him. And then the intellectuals who
• 16:38
  they listen to in this era are the ones who have have ideas who
• 16:42
  can reverse engineer Trump, try to make it, try to make it all
• 16:45
  make sense. And so, yeah, conservative
• 16:48
  intellectuals who are classic, you know, are classic liberals.
• 16:51
  They are they are not very powerful in the in this
• 16:56
  administration. They're not the kind of people
• 16:58
  that they listen to. Now.
• 16:59
  These ideas are still like, if you go look at like Congress, if
• 17:03
  you look at the state level, you know, a lot of people still like
• 17:06
  Ronald Reagan and they still like these old ideas.
• 17:09
  And you will still get like very conservative, you know,
• 17:12
  classically conservative, not the state of his stuff policies
• 17:15
  at at a lot of the state level. And you'll even get resistance
• 17:18
  to Trump. But that's true in Congress too.
• 17:22
  It's just at the end the level of the administration, the
• 17:25
  administration is what everyone follows.
• 17:27
  Those are just not the people with the influence.
• 17:29
  And it's a completely new ideology at this point.
• 17:32
  Let's talk a little bit about tariffs because he has put 15%
• 17:37
  of the European Union. American investment in Europe is
• 17:41
  about four trillion U.S. dollars.
• 17:43
  You basically own half of the European industry.
• 17:46
  And you know, this is simply our history because you rebuilt us,
• 17:50
  you invested in US and in all of our countries you are the
• 17:53
  biggest investor and it's basically owned by you.
• 17:57
  And then you say these terrible things.
• 18:01
  So he says these terrible things and then he puts his tariffs and
• 18:04
  he says we have exploited him. You know, the emotions in Europe
• 18:08
  is that we are like economically a colony of America.
• 18:11
  And then he says that we have exploited him.
• 18:15
  Yeah, yeah, it's weird. I mean you.
• 18:18
  Have to change a little bit the video, the the term, the angle
• 18:22
  of the laptop maybe to can you watch it?
• 18:27
  Yeah, a little bit like this. Like this?
• 18:29
  Yeah, that's what I thought, but he told me it was OK here.
• 18:33
  It's better. It's better like this.
• 18:35
  OK. Yeah.
• 18:37
  It was one of the great accomplishments that we had.
• 18:39
  Economic integration. You look at the effect of tariff
• 18:42
  rate before Trump's first term, it was like, you know, a bottom
• 18:45
  like 1 or 2%. I mean, it was very, very low.
• 18:49
  You know, free trade had just won at an international level.
• 18:53
  Trump comes along, you know, and he's, you know, it's kind of
• 18:56
  crazy because, you know, it's just so not fact based, right?
• 18:59
  He, he talks about America lost manufacturing jobs.
• 19:02
  Everyone loses manufacturing jobs when countries get wealthy
• 19:05
  and the middle income, you know, they go up.
• 19:06
  The manufacturing jobs are like this, then they go down, right?
• 19:10
  This is just a natural part of becoming a wealthier country
• 19:14
  where people do more, engage more in services.
• 19:18
  That's most jobs rather than working in a factory, rather
• 19:21
  than making stuff. We're not China, you know, we're
• 19:23
  not poor because we're not poor like that.
• 19:25
  We don't sit there, you know, assemble shoes or phones or
• 19:28
  whatever. These these are lower.
• 19:29
  These are lower paying jobs. And so, yeah, I mean, it comes
• 19:33
  along and, you know, it's free trade has never been popular.
• 19:38
  So there's an opportunity here. It's like you could always say
• 19:40
  we should protect American jobs that people don't understand
• 19:43
  economics. You know, if you if you go with
• 19:45
  that to the public, a lot of people will like those ideas.
• 19:48
  And so, yeah, it's just kind of Trump's always believed in this
• 19:51
  stuff, you know, like these post liberal thinkers and these like,
• 19:55
  you know, nativists who come who are around the administration
• 19:57
  now, who particularly like vans, you know, they've built an
• 20:00
  ideology around Trump's instincts around this, you know,
• 20:03
  kind of anti foreigner bias. And, you know, it's really
• 20:06
  unfortunate. I mean, he does, you know, he
• 20:08
  doesn't go all the way because with the market, he responds to
• 20:11
  the market. So if the market, if the market
• 20:13
  goes down like it did. After the tariffs that were
• 20:17
  announced originally in April, Trump will respond a little bit.
• 20:20
  So they're not as bad as they could have been, but still
• 20:23
  pretty bad and still taking us away from a place where we wanna
• 20:27
  be, which is tariffs as low as possible to facilitate
• 20:30
  international trade. With the whole Richard, with the
• 20:33
  whole political capital he spent on all this nonsense, he could
• 20:37
  have, for example, changed income tax to flat tax, 50%.
• 20:42
  It would have been the same majority in the Congress to do
• 20:45
  that, and it would have been a historic achievement and.
• 20:48
  Now, yeah. And the, And then, you know, the
• 20:51
  Republicans in Congress would have liked that more and then
• 20:54
  they would have liked the tariffs.
• 20:55
  The Republicans in Congress do not like the tariffs.
• 20:57
  Most of them are against it. So it is really because of the
• 21:00
  administration. It really is because of Trump
• 21:03
  himself. You're right.
• 21:03
  There are so many opportunity, The opportunity costs are very,
• 21:07
  very high to this stuff. Let's talk about migration
• 21:10
  because that's a huge topic in the United States and Europe and
• 21:14
  especially in conservative libertarian.
• 21:16
  I had this topic about remigration yesterday.
• 21:19
  There was the ICE incidents with this American lady short and all
• 21:24
  this thing that there are too many people and we have to send
• 21:27
  them back. What's your opinion on all these
• 21:29
  issues? Let let me understand that.
• 21:33
  Yeah, we one thing I, I, I saw you, Gunther talking about Vivek
• 21:38
  and talking about Indians in America.
• 21:40
  Did I? Did I understand right what you
• 21:41
  were saying on Twitter? On on Indians in America.
• 21:44
  Yeah, you were saying something about your oppose Indian
• 21:46
  supremacy and you said Vivek Modi or something like that.
• 21:50
  You know, I'm very deeply involved in Indian policy since
• 21:54
  a year because I don't like India being axis of evil member
• 21:59
  of Russia. And so I started to become very
• 22:03
  popular with the Kalistan movement.
• 22:06
  That's the movement of the Sikhs and I'm very much against this
• 22:09
  kind of bromance with Mr. Modi. So I attacked him and I also
• 22:15
  attacked this other Modi fans which you have in America.
• 22:19
  This Vivek he is. Vivek.
• 22:22
  Vivek. I never heard him talk about
• 22:23
  Modi. Vivek Ramaswamy you're talking
• 22:25
  about? Yeah, I never heard him say
• 22:27
  anything about Modi. OK, so then maybe I have to
• 22:30
  apologize because. I.
• 22:33
  And generally, I have nothing against other people.
• 22:36
  I'm not a racist or something. I'm also happy about Indians.
• 22:40
  I'm only very much. My main motivation of my
• 22:43
  ideological work is I'm very much against Putin's war in
• 22:47
  Ukraine. Everybody who is with Putin is
• 22:50
  my enemy. Doesn't matter where, if it's
• 22:52
  Lula or if it's Modi or if it's XI.
• 22:55
  And I argue that when these countries are supporting the
• 22:59
  dismantlement of Ukraine by Putin, I support the
• 23:02
  dismantlement of India. And that made me relatively
• 23:05
  famous in India. Now they hate me.
• 23:07
  They blocked my ex account in India.
• 23:09
  But I want to make a statement. I have nothing against Indians
• 23:11
  and Indian Americans, Americans. OK, good.
• 23:14
  I thought. I thought you were weighing in
• 23:15
  on the immigration debate, America.
• 23:17
  Good. OK.
• 23:17
  Immigration, I'm actually for openness.
• 23:20
  I'm very much for openness and of course regulated openness
• 23:24
  like everything, but I'm not, you know, in Europe we have, we
• 23:29
  have 2,000,000 more Austrians in 30 years and we are much richer,
• 23:33
  much better. Yeah.
• 23:35
  So in the immigration to America, it is such
• 23:37
  overwhelmingly a benefit. You look at the you look at the
• 23:41
  number of people, you know, the the people who are founders of
• 23:44
  companies that are, you know, $1 billion companies, it's amazing.
• 23:48
  It's like 3050% of them have an immigrant background.
• 23:52
  If you look at, you know, even the, even at the lower level,
• 23:56
  not just the big tech companies or whatever, the people, people
• 23:59
  who start regular businesses, Indians are not Indians, well,
• 24:01
  Indians too, but immigrants in general are much more likely to
• 24:05
  start businesses. Even the low skilled
• 24:07
  immigration, a lot of them coming from from Mexico, Latin
• 24:11
  America. I did a big article on looking
• 24:14
  at the crime rates of people from immigrant backgrounds.
• 24:16
  Even the poor immigrants have lower crime rates or very
• 24:19
  comparable or lower than Americans.
• 24:22
  And so, you know, America, also the American, you know, the,
• 24:26
  the, you know, we've outgrown Europe over the last, you know,
• 24:29
  20 years or so. And that's while, while having
• 24:32
  large immigration. So, you know, everything I see
• 24:35
  is immigration being a benefit to the country.
• 24:37
  People talk about, well, assimilation.
• 24:39
  Like there's assimilation, like people are assimilated even
• 24:41
  outside of America. People are speaking English and
• 24:45
  watching American shows. And the people here, I live in
• 24:47
  California, California, I think, you know, maybe 60% Hispanic or
• 24:51
  Asian, right? Maybe whites is 2030% of
• 24:54
  California. And you know, they go to in high
• 24:57
  school, they play sports. They're just, it's just there's
• 24:59
  no racial issue here on the ground in California.
• 25:03
  There's other problems with California.
• 25:05
  There's problems with having a left wing state.
• 25:07
  Washington and Oregon neighbors, they also have many of the same
• 25:11
  left wing problems. They don't have many immigrants.
• 25:12
  They're still very white places, but they have the same left
• 25:15
  wing, you know, policies. So, yeah, I, I think immigration
• 25:19
  has been a major boon to the United States.
• 25:21
  Unfortunately, this is kind of, you know, not how conservatives
• 25:25
  see it. It's hard to, it's hard to like
• 25:28
  have good reasons other than, you know, if you want to be
• 25:30
  sympathetic, you say people want others to be like them.
• 25:33
  If you're unsympathetic, you could say it's just racist,
• 25:35
  racism and prejudice. But I will say it is not based
• 25:38
  on, you know, they argue about jobs, they argue about crime.
• 25:43
  It's just not based in fact. And, you know, that's something
• 25:46
  we have to get across. In European, the situation is
• 25:48
  different because there's a lot of countries in Europe where
• 25:51
  immigrants have, you know, 6-7 times the crime rate, a lot of
• 25:54
  these immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, and a lot of
• 25:58
  them are on welfare. There's, you know, there used to
• 26:01
  be a terrorism issue. Maybe it's too much lower extent
• 26:03
  now. So there's more to talk about in
• 26:05
  the European case. But I think in America, I think
• 26:08
  it's just a tragedy that the right has turned against
• 26:10
  immigration. Yes, and it's very hard against
• 26:14
  immigration. You have this ICE system where
• 26:17
  you chase the people who often have American passports.
• 26:21
  In reality, at least, that's about the exception we have here
• 26:25
  over social media. And now this incident with this
• 26:27
  white woman being killed by ICE policeman.
• 26:31
  It's outrageous. Yeah, yeah, I agree completely.
• 26:34
  I mean, that way. And, you know, there, there was
• 26:36
  a story in the Daily Mail a couple months ago about how
• 26:39
  they're, they, they want to hire so many people to do immigration
• 26:42
  enforcement and the people they hire, they just lowered the
• 26:45
  standards. You know, they, they, they can't
• 26:47
  pass background checks. They're people, they're out of
• 26:49
  shape. Just telling anyone come, you
• 26:52
  know, you can pick up immigrants and and then arrest them.
• 26:55
  They're getting not the best kind of people to do this.
• 26:58
  So it's it's it's a shame, you know, this is something that the
• 27:01
  right has really built its entire identity around.
• 27:06
  I mean, JD Vance was doing an interview the other day and he
• 27:08
  says, you know, people can't afford kids in America because
• 27:11
  the Somalis are taking the money from the daycare, which is like,
• 27:14
  you know, it's just crazy. Like you, you ask JD Vance
• 27:17
  anything, you ask him why is housing, you know, housing, he
• 27:19
  would say immigrants. It's just anything he will, he
• 27:22
  will go straight to immigrants. And there was Somali fraud.
• 27:24
  But like the idea that This is why nobody can have kids.
• 27:27
  I mean, it's just, it's just a ridiculous, it's not a serious
• 27:29
  argument. And so, yeah, I mean, this is
• 27:32
  unfortunate that I think nativism is the defining feature
• 27:36
  of the American right at this point.
• 27:38
  And you know, that's why I can't be on the right, because I'm not
• 27:40
  a nativist. That's their main.
• 27:41
  That's their main policy program.
• 27:44
  What you see them politically ahead in the 2026 November
• 27:48
  midterm elections, It's. You know, it's hard to forecast
• 27:52
  these things are, you know, American politics have surprised
• 27:54
  people. A lot of people didn't think
• 27:56
  Trump was gonna win in 2016. You know, the, you know, he, he
• 28:02
  almost won in 2020 when people thought he was going to be, he
• 28:05
  had a much lower chance. And it's weird, you know, people
• 28:08
  keep thinking, you know, the demographic groups like
• 28:10
  Hispanics and Asians are going to go against Republicans.
• 28:13
  But then they went, you know, towards Trump last time.
• 28:16
  There's evidence that they're going against them.
• 28:17
  It's really hard to forecast. I mean, most likely Democrats
• 28:20
  pick up the seats. And then again, they also did
• 28:22
  the, you know, they also did the redistricting.
• 28:26
  It we'll see the the history in since Trump came onto the
• 28:31
  political scene since 2015 is Republicans have always done bad
• 28:35
  in elections where Trump is not on the ballot because the Trump
• 28:38
  voter is like less educated voter who doesn't vote that
• 28:41
  often. And he comes out for Trump and
• 28:44
  maybe he comes out for the presidential election, but not
• 28:47
  so much in the midterm elections.
• 28:49
  So that indicates that Democrats are probably going to do well,
• 28:53
  you know. And so, yeah, I mean, Trump I
• 28:55
  think himself thinks he probably only has another year.
• 28:59
  Yeah. 2026 now. Yeah.
• 29:01
  So it's just another year with a Republican majority.
• 29:04
  And then, you know, then we'll move on to 2028.
• 29:07
  And that'll be interesting. Yeah, let's talk about that one,
• 29:10
  because it seems that JD Vance wants to be president and he
• 29:13
  really hates our guts. He really hates us in Munich.
• 29:17
  He told us that we are like a tyranny.
• 29:19
  And he told us he gave us a gospel about free speech at the
• 29:23
  Munich Security Conference. And in this chats, he told us he
• 29:27
  hates to bail out Europe when it came to the Houthis.
• 29:31
  And he seems like he really he mixes something up because the
• 29:34
  enemy is Russia or maybe China or Iran, but he somehow sees us
• 29:40
  close to hostiles. And if he will be president of
• 29:43
  America. Good night.
• 29:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah.
• 29:48
  Well, Vance is, you know, he is AI think true believer in the
• 29:52
  trumpet ideology, you know, going back to 20, you know, back
• 29:57
  even, you know, 2020, you know, 20/19 he was very anti Trump.
• 30:01
  He was one of the strongest anti Trump people, but he saw that
• 30:03
  being pro Trump was a better way to get political power.
• 30:08
  And so, yes, I mean, you know, if Vance becomes president in
• 30:12
  2028, I, I think we're going to see, you know, he's smart.
• 30:16
  He's smarter than Trump and more ideological and more focused.
• 30:20
  You know, if you don't like the way Trump is going, you better
• 30:22
  hope that Vance doesn't win in 20/20/10.
• 30:25
  I think he'll likely be the nominee.
• 30:27
  And, you know, you know, there's, I think most people
• 30:29
  think there's probably a good chance that Democrats win
• 30:32
  because Vance is not that appealing.
• 30:34
  You know, he doesn't have Trump's magic.
• 30:36
  At the same time, you know, people will be just sick of
• 30:39
  Trump after 10 years and want to try something else.
• 30:42
  So, you know, there's reasons to be hopeful there.
• 30:44
  But you're right. I think if Vance gets in power,
• 30:46
  you know, just, you know, Trump still has three more years.
• 30:49
  So on top of what Trump is doing for three years, Vance, you
• 30:52
  know, has four. Another four years.
• 30:54
  Yeah. I think you're going to see
• 30:55
  America completely curtain inward, which would be a
• 30:57
  tragedy. Richard, tell me the story.
• 31:01
  About this free speech obsession, which Elon Musk and
• 31:05
  JD Waynes and others do have. I mean, I'm activist since 30
• 31:10
  years. I'm in the public in Austria and
• 31:12
  in Europe, and I never had a limitation of free speech.
• 31:16
  In that sense. I can say what I want, OK?
• 31:19
  You cannot condone terrorism in foreign countries.
• 31:22
  You know, there are some limitations, but in generally I
• 31:25
  think it's not very different to the United States of America.
• 31:29
  So yeah, you could. Tell me you could tell me if I'm
• 31:31
  wrong here, because the, there's a lot of stories on the UK, for
• 31:35
  example, in Germany too, where people will say things that are
• 31:39
  completely legal in the US, They will say something about
• 31:41
  immigrants or they will say something they don't like about
• 31:43
  homosexuals or something racist in the, in, in the UK, you know,
• 31:48
  there was, I remember reading a story where somebody online
• 31:51
  posted something racist against a soccer player or something.
• 31:54
  And there was like a big government investigation.
• 31:56
  And then from Americans perspective, like that's very
• 32:00
  unusual because we have free speech even for like explicit
• 32:03
  racism, even for very bad things.
• 32:06
  And so I think that that's what they're looking at the, the kind
• 32:08
  of hate speech laws which are the norm in Germany and the UK
• 32:12
  and France. These are kind of offensive to
• 32:15
  American conservatives. And a lot of American
• 32:16
  conservatives have been called racist and called sexist and
• 32:19
  homophobe and so on, sometimes with good reason, sometimes with
• 32:21
  not good reason, but they take very much offense that the idea
• 32:25
  that somebody would lock someone up for saying these things.
• 32:28
  So I, I think that there is an issue with free speech in
• 32:31
  Europe. They probably, you know, they
• 32:32
  exaggerated wouldn't be my number one priority in the
• 32:35
  world. I wouldn't say I'm not going to
• 32:37
  support Europe or I don't believe in Europe because, you
• 32:38
  know, they don't let racist speech.
• 32:40
  But, you know, that's that's kind of the conservative
• 32:42
  perspective in America. But we have a war from.
• 32:46
  Russia in Ukraine since four years, and this is really
• 32:49
  serious war with tanks, with rockets, with missiles, Yeah,
• 32:53
  with a million casualties of the Russian side alone and probably
• 32:58
  hundreds and thousands of casualties on the Ukrainian
• 33:00
  side. This is a very serious global
• 33:03
  crisis. This is the crisis which is
• 33:05
  defining our generation and the free speech of, you know,
• 33:10
  there's some limitations in Austria and Germany when it
• 33:13
  comes to Nazi staff and others. Yeah, for historical reason.
• 33:18
  And I was remind my American listeners that 400,000 Americans
• 33:21
  were dying in order to win the Second World War and get rid of
• 33:25
  the Nazis. And now Elon Musk is promoting
• 33:28
  every kind of neo Nazi we have in the UK and in Germany, and
• 33:35
  he's celebrating all these people like they would be
• 33:38
  wonderful people, while all of them are hating Americans.
• 33:42
  Yeah, yeah. That's.
• 33:43
  True. Yeah.
• 33:44
  I mean, like I said, it's not it.
• 33:46
  It's kind of they go beyond defending free speech in that
• 33:50
  Elon Musk promotes these people. Like, you know, he thinks Nigel
• 33:54
  Farage in the UK is not extreme enough.
• 33:56
  He supports Tommy Robinson's party just like these, you know,
• 33:58
  stupid people who don't have anything to contribute.
• 34:02
  You're right. Yeah, it is.
• 34:03
  It is kind of like I I think that being able to post racist
• 34:06
  things online, although, you know, free speech is important,
• 34:10
  you know, there are bigger things in the world like, you
• 34:13
  know, economic growth and world and war and peace and, you know,
• 34:17
  especially especially the free speech thing.
• 34:19
  I mean, with Trump, you know, trying to bully comedians and
• 34:22
  cable news networks, they've lost the high ground on that
• 34:25
  too, because Trump is trying to shut down anyone.
• 34:27
  You know, he's suing newspapers and media outlets if they if
• 34:30
  they print things he doesn't like.
• 34:33
  And so, yeah, I, I think you're right.
• 34:35
  I think they, you know, there is a real issue with Europeans,
• 34:38
  with the European speech issue. They exaggerate it and they go
• 34:41
  beyond, you know, the Republic, the conservatives in America
• 34:44
  have lost the moral high ground on that.
• 34:47
  Richard, tell me about. Woke because some years ago I
• 34:50
  didn't didn't know that word. And you're one of the spiritual
• 34:56
  fathers of the fight against woke, if I understand it
• 34:59
  correctly. Can you explain me a little bit
• 35:01
  what that means and why this is so important that we have
• 35:06
  instead of fighting Putin, we have to fight well so.
• 35:10
  In the United States, there's always, you know, there's always
• 35:13
  been racial disparities. The white people in America do
• 35:16
  much better than blacks. You know, they're much less
• 35:18
  likely to be jailed. They're much less likely to, you
• 35:22
  know, must less likely to be poor Hispanics to to a more
• 35:25
  limited extent. You know, there's always
• 35:26
  feminism issues between men and women and basically woke, you
• 35:29
  know, especially twenty 10's and especially around 20/19/2018,
• 35:34
  2020, all these institutions became obsessed with this.
• 35:37
  So for many decades in America, if you would give a test for
• 35:41
  employment and one and whites did better than blacks or men
• 35:44
  did better than women, the government would come after you.
• 35:46
  They would say you are discriminating and the
• 35:48
  discrimination wasn't discrimination.
• 35:50
  It was just a an impact. There was one group doing better
• 35:53
  than another. And so this was all this has
• 35:56
  been part of American law since like the early 1970s.
• 35:59
  And, you know, this was affirmative action.
• 36:01
  You know, institutions were forced to, you know, lower,
• 36:05
  lower the standards for certain groups of people.
• 36:07
  And, you know, this was how universities work and how jobs
• 36:09
  work. And then, but then in 20, around
• 36:12
  2010, 2012, something like that, it became wild where, you know,
• 36:16
  people would say, oh, if you are a white male, you can't have an
• 36:19
  opinion on this issue or we have to believe all women, any woman
• 36:23
  accuses any man of sexual assault or misconduct.
• 36:26
  We have to believe the woman. We can't read these books
• 36:29
  because these books are written by white men.
• 36:31
  We have to read some black scholar or some Native American
• 36:34
  scholar. And it was really, you know, it
• 36:37
  was really like oppressive in America. 19, 2019-2020.
• 36:41
  It felt crazy. I mean, there were riots in the
• 36:44
  streets during COVID after George Floyd, every university
• 36:48
  and every business was like speaking like robots.
• 36:51
  They were all saying, we're so sorry for institutional racism.
• 36:53
  We're going to fix this. And so, you know, I, I wrote a
• 36:56
  book on this and I thought it was important and, and right to
• 36:59
  push back on this stuff. Now it, it, it worked.
• 37:03
  I mean, there was always, this stuff was never popular with the
• 37:05
  broad public. Even within liberal
• 37:07
  institutions, there were people who were classical liberals and
• 37:11
  who opposed this stuff. And, you know, the with the
• 37:15
  conservative movement pushing back on it, plus, you know, its
• 37:17
  allies among the center and among the people on the left,
• 37:20
  it's really, really become much, much less of an issue.
• 37:23
  It's still there. It's still, there's still, you
• 37:24
  know, kind of like stupid things universities are doing.
• 37:27
  But you know, it's I think it's 80% solved, right, Something
• 37:30
  like that, which is which is good.
• 37:33
  And so, yeah, there there is like the backlash was real.
• 37:36
  It was to something that was really going on in this country,
• 37:40
  you know, but people have trouble moving on.
• 37:42
  They moved on from we're not being treated fairly.
• 37:45
  You know, there's affirmative action in DI to we have to be a
• 37:48
  white country and we have to kick out everyone who's just
• 37:52
  like, OK, you know, you it's not that a lot of people they didn't
• 37:55
  want, you know, fairness. They wanted to have actually
• 37:58
  racism. They wanted to actually have
• 38:00
  advantages over other groups. And that's what we're seeing
• 38:02
  now. We've kind of have corrected in
• 38:04
  the other direction. Tell me about this.
• 38:07
  Famous influencers or media stars who are so dominant in the
• 38:12
  global media game, and we can really not make any sense out of
• 38:16
  them. Yeah, like Tucker Carlson.
• 38:20
  What is going on with him? Why?
• 38:22
  Let me ask you something so. Tucker Carlson, is he?
• 38:25
  He's a lot. He would be censored in Europe
• 38:28
  or no. He would be able to say it.
• 38:30
  He's all over. On YouTube and Dicks and
• 38:32
  everybody can watch him and we don't censor.
• 38:35
  We have we are not in nuts. We don't censor.
• 38:38
  But well, I mean, if you did censor.
• 38:40
  Tucker, that would be a case for, you know, the European
• 38:42
  approach to speech. Yeah.
• 38:43
  I mean, it's really, it is really bad.
• 38:47
  I mean, before the Internet, it was, you know, you had to, if
• 38:51
  you wanted to have ideas, you would be in a newspaper.
• 38:54
  A newspaper would publish you or ATV show, academic journal.
• 38:57
  This is how you became influential.
• 38:59
  This is how you became a person of ideas.
• 39:01
  That's why we had intellectuals like Milton Friedman, you know,
• 39:04
  30-40 years ago. Today we don't have that.
• 39:06
  Today, you know, it's about we do have intellectuals.
• 39:09
  But anyone can, you know, go to the social media, go to YouTube,
• 39:12
  Go to Twitter, and as long as enough people listen to you,
• 39:15
  there's no gatekeepers and you can take over.
• 39:18
  And a lot of people want racism and conspiracy theories and, you
• 39:22
  know, simplistic, you know, answers to problems and they're
• 39:25
  not interested in, you know, ideas or complicated discourse
• 39:29
  on keeps the keeps you informed and gives you a cost benefit
• 39:32
  analysis regarding different policies.
• 39:34
  You know, there's just a big, you know, a big audience for
• 39:37
  this stuff. And, you know, it's concentrated
• 39:41
  on the right in America. And, you know, in America kind
• 39:44
  of because under Trump, especially, more educated
• 39:47
  people, people who read who, who know more about the news are
• 39:50
  overwhelmingly leaving the Republican Party or they have
• 39:52
  left the Republican Party. And so like all the people, you
• 39:55
  know, there's kind of nothing left.
• 39:57
  There's no guardrails on the right.
• 39:59
  So anyone can go to YouTube or go to Twitter, get a lot of
• 40:03
  attention. And then, you know, the vice
• 40:05
  president and the the president will retweet you.
• 40:06
  The vice president will praise you.
• 40:09
  And I think we've seen kind of it's been a disaster.
• 40:11
  I mean, it's just they don't deal with facts.
• 40:14
  I mean, you look, during the campaign that's talking about
• 40:16
  Haitians eating dogs and cats. You know, it just, you know,
• 40:20
  every week there is like this new controversy, which is like
• 40:23
  almost always either completely made-up or or greatly
• 40:26
  exaggerated. And so this is.
• 40:29
  Yeah, my next book is going to be about this.
• 40:30
  We are in a place where, yeah, we're kind of, you know, we're
• 40:34
  kind of people were had a backlash to liberal
• 40:37
  institutions, but they didn't build conservative institutions.
• 40:40
  They just adopted nihilism and that's something we have to
• 40:43
  guard against. Yes, Richard, I'm so.
• 40:46
  Happy you write this book and I hope you promote good ideas.
• 40:49
  Because I looked now because I tried to be a online personality
• 40:53
  as well and I looked at these people, what they have to offer.
• 40:56
  Andrew Tate, for example, I mean he's in British but he sits half
• 41:00
  naked with a turban and sunglasses and uses foul
• 41:06
  language and he has intellectual nothing to offer.
• 41:09
  But he talks about the geopolitics that we would be
• 41:13
  like have great. Insights.
• 41:15
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 41:16
  Well, Andrew? Take, you know, he started out
• 41:18
  teaching men how to meet women, how to become.
• 41:20
  You know, how better his level maybe.
• 41:22
  Yeah. His level, it's, yeah, it's.
• 41:24
  Funny stuff. It's very entertaining videos.
• 41:26
  And then now sometimes he talks about politics.
• 41:28
  You know, hopefully those people after Trump, maybe they go back
• 41:31
  to talking about, you know, meeting women.
• 41:33
  I think that we'll be better off if that happens.
• 41:35
  I'm not sure he even has. Advice for that one which is
• 41:38
  meaningful. But no, I think he's, I think
• 41:40
  he's not about China, Russia, America.
• 41:46
  I mean, you're the country of Kissinger.
• 41:51
  Anyone. What's your advice on?
• 41:55
  European for Europeans, you know, because in the I'm a
• 41:58
  lifelong pro American and I always wanted to fight anti
• 42:02
  Americanism in Europe. And we need this American
• 42:05
  European unity because we have real enemies in Russia,
• 42:09
  potential in China and for sure in Iran.
• 42:11
  And you know, we have we are much closer to the hotspots we
• 42:15
  are on the EUR Asian continent. Yeah.
• 42:17
  We don't have the luxury to with treat somewhere in between
• 42:20
  oceans. Yeah.
• 42:21
  We need this supreme firepower, your fiscal muscle, your
• 42:25
  technology power, your manpower. We need you to survive
• 42:29
  ultimately in this world, and we need to understand what's going
• 42:33
  on in America. And we are ready to be a bit
• 42:35
  nicer to you if we would know what to do.
• 42:39
  Yeah. You know, I think Europeans
• 42:41
  really need to, you know, I think the, the, the growth issue
• 42:45
  is, is a problem for, for Europe, You know, Europe has
• 42:48
  really fallen behind. It's given, it's given Americans
• 42:51
  reason not to pay so much attention to them because
• 42:53
  economy is not doing well. It seems like they haven't
• 42:55
  figured things out. You know, I think they need some
• 42:57
  of these pro market reforms that even the EU has been talking
• 43:01
  about. They need to breakdown the you
• 43:04
  know they have free trade of goods, but they really need to
• 43:07
  have one market and services too.
• 43:10
  And you know, they need to take we have 20 trillion.
• 43:12
  Dollars, GDP as EU, we are not totally neglectable.
• 43:16
  Yeah, yeah, you're not. You're not.
• 43:17
  You're still. But still the people look at the
• 43:19
  trajectory, right? And there's the trajectory is
• 43:23
  not great. I think there's opportunities
• 43:25
  with America being less friendly to high skilled immigration.
• 43:28
  You know, the smart, if you get the smartest people in the world
• 43:30
  in your country, it's it's a big deal.
• 43:31
  And so that's something America has traditionally from I see
• 43:34
  Germany has looked at, you know, inviting some of the people from
• 43:38
  India who have been rejected by the United States.
• 43:40
  That's great. They should really do stuff like
• 43:42
  that. You know, they need to figure
• 43:46
  out some solution to the immigration issue.
• 43:48
  It's really distorting all other politics because people will
• 43:51
  vote for Putinus, they will vote for fascists because they don't
• 43:54
  want immigration as the main issue.
• 43:57
  And so, you know, they've got to, they've got to figure this
• 44:00
  out. They've got to figure out
• 44:00
  exactly what to what to do about this.
• 44:03
  But yeah, you know, I would say take advantage of American
• 44:05
  mistakes. Yeah, try, you know, get the,
• 44:09
  you know, get the economic, you know, get the economic situation
• 44:13
  better and you know, they've got us, they've got to step up.
• 44:16
  There's no reason Europeans and one good thing I think Trump
• 44:18
  did, I think is inspiring them to spend some more on their
• 44:20
  military. There's no reason that they
• 44:22
  shouldn't do that. I think that's that's important.
• 44:24
  And we have from 200. 50 billion, we have raised it to
• 44:27
  450. So we are now spending 200
• 44:30
  billion more on defence every year.
• 44:33
  Yeah, yeah, maybe. Trump has maybe a Trump has
• 44:35
  inspired, you know, European identity.
• 44:37
  Do you? Do you, do you feel that?
• 44:40
  I think so. He absolutely.
• 44:41
  He definitely inspired something like more proud and being
• 44:44
  European that we have to be more united.
• 44:47
  And still, you know, I'm very critical to many aspects of the
• 44:50
  European Union because by far we have not reformed our economy in
• 44:54
  the last 25 years enough. And we really need to have more
• 44:57
  unity. There's no doubt we need to be
• 45:00
  like the United States of Europe and like America with the
• 45:03
  central government and the central army and all these
• 45:06
  institutions. But this is not too easy to
• 45:08
  achieve on a continent as diverse as we have.
• 45:11
  And first of all, we have to win the war against Russia and to
• 45:14
  liberate Ukraine. This is our most important task.
• 45:18
  Well, best of. Luck to you, I will be.
• 45:20
  I will be rooting for Europe. Thanks a lot help us as.
• 45:23
  Much as you can, Richard, I enjoyed this conversation very
• 45:26
  much. It was great that you took time
• 45:28
  this morning in California. Enjoy California.
• 45:31
  Stay friendly to Europe. We need I'll do my best friends.
• 45:36
  And please. Be as successful in the American
• 45:39
  conservative movement as you can, because we need
• 45:41
  intellectuals like you and the top also with political power in
• 45:45
  the future, because rationality must win the debate.
• 45:51
  And thanks a lot for keeping the torch of reason in American
• 45:55
  right. Thank you, Gunter.
• 45:57
  I'll do my. Best thanks a lot.
• 45:59
  It was a great. Discussion, Richard, all the
• 46:01
  best. Thanks a lot and I will stop
• 46:04
  this conversation now.