When Failure Stops Working: Trump, Mike Lindell, and the Psychology of Persistence

David (00:00) You've probably watched somebody lose so decisively that the next move seemed obvious. Accept it and go home. And then they don't. They recount it, reframe it, threaten it again, run again, and somehow, years later, they're still standing. That's where persistence gets weird. Because refusing to quit can be exactly what turns failure into success. But do it long enough and failure can stop functioning as information entirely. And eventually the rest of us start wondering If this person were really losing, why the hell are they still here? This is strengthenation. Let's go. David (01:17) Alright, hey, welcome back to Shrink the Nation. I'm David. I got time. I served in the military. Rob (01:21) You've got time. David (01:22) I did stuff. I'm also a board certified psychiatrist. doing that. And now today what I'm doing I've got three bourbons. I'm gonna give a shot of each just to see how they compare. two of them I had last week because We didn't get through them all, Robbie, and so I had a couple left over. we're gonna start. this one's Jefferson's reserve, very old, very small batch, Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey weighing in at a mighty ninety point two proof. I can't really tell you much more than it has a nice looking bottle and I'm gonna say probably a rye mash bill. Rob (01:53) Seems like most are. David (01:54) That's what it tastes like. It's got a bit of kick to it. But the next two, I'll name them off when we hit them, but the favorite of last week was the Woodford Reserve Double Oaked. So I'm gonna have a little bit more Rob (02:04) Yeah. David (02:05) of that. For our tens of listeners, I pulled this one in today because I didn't think Robbie would be drinking. and I know how much he likes this one and I really just wanted to make him watch me drink it while he couldn't drink. But he is drinking, so damn. Rob (02:18) Yeah. Hey guys, this it's Rob. I'm gonna follow the precedence. I've got years and have done stuff too. I actually am partaking this evening. I have Woodford Reserve Double Oak and I feel really bad for David that I spoiled his assholery to rub it in my face that he had something that I didn't. David (02:40) You did. Well now we can just enjoy it together. I know. Rob (02:41) Fucking shenan shenanigans. Shenanigans, people. He's always trying to do shenanigans. David (02:46) I was gonna call this a poor fuck that guy, but Rob (02:48) Yep. Yep. David (02:49) and tell us about your experience at the Quincenita, Rob. You got a Sarape, right? Rob (02:53) it was excellent. I did, I did. I had a serape. I'll be lint rolling my suit from now until probably I have to buy another suit. I wore it. it was hot. I took it off at one point. your lovely mother in law forced it back over my head. so I just sat there and we have a really smashing selfie. of me sitting in a serape. it was a good time, people. That's all I'll say. It was a good time. David (03:19) Really was. So all right, On the business. what I want to start with this week, Robbie, was a news story about a guy that man, he's hard to miss. That is Mike Lindell, the my pillow guy. He was running for governor in Minnesota. Am I correct? Fact Rob (03:34) Yes. David (03:35) check me. So he was running in the Republican primary in Minnesota for governor, and he lost. collar me surprised. He lost by about forty five thousand votes, give or take, something like that. Eleven percent of the votes that were counted, he lost by. And might surprise you, Robbie. And maybe our tens of listeners, but Rob (03:51) huh. David (03:52) he doesn't believe that he lost. And so now he is calling for a recount that he will gladly pay upwards of a million dollars somewhere in there for. you know, I'm gonna be honest. Had he done anything else but challenge the Republican gubernatorial primary results that he did not win, then I think we would be in what the fuck's going on with Mike Lindell territory? Rob (04:14) interesting guy. we all know him as the my pillow guy. What I did not have any comprehension of was apparently how lucrative those piece of shit pillows actually were. I will admit there was one night I was up late and couldn't sleep a decade ago. And Mike came on the TV and talked about his wonderful pillow. And I remember thinking, maybe that's what my problem is. I need a new pillow. So I bought a couple of my pillows. They're terrible pillows. there's nothing good about them. So had no idea that it was so lucrative that this guy can pay out million dollars settlements. hand over fist, to Dominion. Smartmatic or something like that he had to pay damages to them he's foot the bill for this political run and now he's paying a million bucks for this recount. apparently guys Big money in pillows. I mean growth industry. I guess we all sleep. and we all need a pillow. David (05:11) all do need to sleep. so I got a my pillow. I did not buy it, actually. My stepdad, may he rest in peace. He was one of those people who would get up in the middle of the night and watch these infomercials. And so he purchased a my pillow. and gave it to me and I used it one night and I felt like it was the worst pillow that I had ever had and I never used it again and it took a while for my neck feel okay again so yeah. It was pretty bad. what I think is interesting about what you said is that Mike Lindell gets sued a lot. but as far as I can tell, he doesn't end up paying the lawsuit. so Eric Coomer was awarded two point three million dollars in June of twenty twenty five, but as of January twenty twenty six, he had not collected and Lindell is appealing that. The Dominion and Liberty voting machines sued him for one point three billion with a B. then it was settled out of court and dismissed in June, July of twenty twenty six, and that is a confidential amount, so we're not sure how much was actually paid. so the smartmatic case had been seeking very large damages but there's nothing rewarded as of yet there was a prove mic wrong challenge that occurred a cybersecurity thing and he he had said that he'd give anybody five million dollars to prove that the information that he had on these voting machines was not evidence that China had hacked the election, I believe. but somebody was able Rob (06:36) Yeah. David (06:37) to I think show that it it wasn't that and he is still not paid that judgment. It's still an arbitration. Yeah. Rob (06:43) Well, and let us not forget he also foot the bill for a documentary called absolute proof. if you've ever seen that piece of shit, that I believe it won the Razzie Award for worst documentary. And Lindell won the Razzie that year for the worst actor. So David (07:00) Yeah. Rob (07:00) he's spending money. Folks, he is definitely spending money. Apparently, like I said, the pillow industry is a hot industry. David (07:07) Yeah. okay, so jokes aside about the my pillow guy, what really struck me he's very persistent, very consistent. it's an interesting thing to look at if you understand his Biography. before my pillow had taken off, he had run other businesses, struggled pretty badly with cocaine and crack addiction, lost his marriage and his home, filed for bankruptcy, and spent years trying to get my pillow off the ground, especially after mid retailers initially showed little to no interest and he was millions of dollars in debt. Then of a sudden, this infomercial. in buying advertisements on Fox News and such, he started becoming incredibly successful. What's fascinating is that he's been steeped in failures. It's just failure after failure after failure. And most people would have probably said, okay, I gotta stop even my pillow company is millions of dollars in debt and it's just not gonna take off. Yet he was still persistent. He kept on going. it's interesting because most people would have probably taken the lesson of you're failing, you gotta stop doing this, Stop whatever it is that you keep doing. And that he kept pushing forward. And there's thousands of stories that probably go in that direction. You tried something, you failed, you said, okay, that's not gonna work, you moved on to the next thing. he didn't. Rob (08:21) It's admirable. David (08:22) Well, nobody's gonna publish the ten thousand stories of people who actually kept being persistent and kept failing because that does happen. Rob (08:28) Absolutely. Yeah. David (08:29) a lot of businesses fail because people fail to see that they're not viable. the sunk cost principle. They keep sticking to something that's not working until it just fails so spectacularly that they can't recover from it. And so that's the typical path. That probably would have happened to him. Being multi million dollars in debt would have usually stopped most small companies from taking off. And yet it didn't. So here we are. We have this guy. Rob (08:54) Well, it's interesting because this persistence, which if we were doing a deep dive into great business magnates, people who were very successful, that arc of failure, and persistence to success creates quite the storyline. and you're right, we're not gonna capture the people who just fail, over and over again. And I think all of us know those kinds of people. but that makes for movie worthy kind of arc, this sort of persistence against all odds. The problem is that if you take that approach and you apply it to something like, I don't know, election integrity. You end up seeing the same dynamic play out with Mike. but really what we're seeing here is sort of belief immunization. So, most of us, while we think X, and then we see evidence that contradicts X, our confidence in X decreases. In Mike's case, he knows X, he sees evidence that contradicts X. And his assumption is somebody is manipulating the evidence. And it pushes him forward with a kind of dogged persistence that's almost frightening. Like in this case, this isn't the Democrats stolen election. This was a Republican primary. David (10:06) Right. Rob (10:06) So he doesn't even have the same storyline. It's basically I don't trust elections period. And in that state, if you're like within point two five percent votes, it's an automatic recount. He was eleven percent off, which is not even close. It doesn't trigger anything. and he still is insistent that the forces of I don't know, anti pillow dumb are against him and he's gonna pay out of pocket to get an end result that I think we all can predict. David (10:37) it's fascinating because you had somebody who had just objectively terrible circumstances over and over again in failure after failure after failure, yet he remained persistent through it and then had the most wild success of his life. That could only be dreamed about by most people. So he then learns that. Anybody telling you you're wrong is wrong. That anybody pointing out your failure must be incorrect. It's interesting because you start to wonder then at what point does resilience stop being resilience and become the inability to update? Rob (11:14) It become Objectively maladaptive. This guy's gonna run himself into the poor house. David (11:21) but he can't see that, right? to him, each time he missteps with these lawsuits, with these claims, the defamation, all that, each time he does it. there's no real repercussion to it. Whatever he's paid out, he's willing to pay out. We don't even know how much he's paid out, but it's further evidence to him that success is just around the bend. If I just keep pressing. Rob (11:43) Well he's created the world's first epistemological pillow. no matter how hard reality hits him, pillow still conforms around his head. So he's pulled it off, man. he's done the thing that nobody else can do, apparently. But I don't know whether to laugh about him, be concerned about his mental health, or respect his endurance. David (12:03) that maybe plays a huge role in why he is still around is that people aren't sure what to do with it. You you look at him and his success without knowing his story, even with knowing his story, is going to be viewed as evidence that this guy must know something that I don't. falls into that odd category of did what just happen happen? I don't know what to do with this. I guess we'll just watch it play out. Like let's let this happen. Let's see what's going on. it's like watching a dog try to mate with a horse. Like you're pretty sure nothing good's gonna come out of this, but Rob (12:36) You're gonna watch. David (12:37) why stop it? Yeah. Let's see what happens. Rob (12:40) there's probably no bad outcome. However, there is a bad outcome. he did get a significant number of votes. There are people who supported him. every time the integrity of our elections are challenged, it is creating a narrative that makes the general populace question our elections. that's really the risk. I mean, honestly. this would be mostly a humor potential, and maybe some psychologically interesting things to talk about, where it becomes frightening and dangerous, it is dangerous to democracy, is once you call into questions the legitimacy of our elections, then we don't have a democracy. you can't have a democracy and not trust the elections. so he's contributing in a very negative way. So whether he's a foolish character or a sick character or you know, a Herculean example of endurance, he's dangerous to our democracy right now. David (13:33) Yeah. Well it seems like characters like this do tend to be, which is a great segue into what I think we could talk about next, because man, we have a guy who's had businesses collapse, bankruptcies, enormous scandals, multiple impeachments, loses a reelection, gets criminal indictments, felony convictions. and there's repeated declarations that his political career is over and yet since january twenty twenty five there he sits again our favorite guy Donald Jimothy Trump it has that same flavor to it. It's just everyone keeps saying this is it. This is the time he's gonna finally go too far and yet he keeps surviving. So What the fuck timeline are we living in, Robbie? Why is why? Why do we even need to talk about this? Rob (14:21) that is a question worth probably a show in and of itself. what were the psychological factors that we are living through that led to the rise of this scenario? and that might be bigger than what we're talking about right now. what I do find when you do think about the arc of his life, the extent of his successes, failures, and successes, and the fact that he can be incredibly successful as the underdog, as the guy who's building something, he seems to have recurrent success there. Where he fails is once he achieves. he fails and he's failed multiple times. he's destroyed business after business. now it's on the backs of the American taxpayer because, you know, the business legal system is as it is, and your business can fail miserably and you can walk away enriched, which he has done over and over again. the ability to fail upwards is striking. but what we have is a guy is driven by personal validation, not by a set of principles, not by some guiding set of morals or virtue, not even by a business model. he doesn't have a business model, he has an incredible need for personal validation. And what we end up seeing is is that in that seeking for personal validation, that leads him to be very successful in the build process. Unfortunately, once you've accomplished, once you've gotten the job, you're in the position, once you've achieved business success, it changes. You're no longer gonna get validation on a day-to-day basis. And we'll use the presidency as an example. So we've talked about this. it would be a psychologically challenging role because at any given time, at least 50% of the population is going to disagree with everything that you do, and you're never going to make everyone happy. So that opportunities for personal validation start to diminish. And we can look in history and we can see examples of this. Napoleon is a fantastic example of someone who was driven more by personality. validation than some overriding idea about the greatness of France and principle and some overarching I mean he didn't believe in democracy, he didn't believe in much of anything other than just self aggrandizement. and it got him to where he was and it led to where he ended up on the Isle of Elba, spending his final days. So it's similar to the arc of his story. another business magnate would be like Elizabeth Holmes. She was all about the self-aggrandizement. And if you, read into her story, she was a woman that had, really poor self esteem and really enjoyed the process of presenting this image of business success, even though she had nothing to back it up. So you get to that. Success level, and there's no ability to back it up because there's no model, there's no goal other than self-aggrandizement. Under normal circumstances, if we were observing Donald Trump in another business venture that momentarily was seen as being wildly successful, we could all sit back and watch him mess it up. and it wouldn't be a big deal. The problem is that. He's the president of the United States. And we are now watching him still be motivated purely by self-aggrandizement, which is why there is zero coherency to the decisions that are being made. Other than self-aggrandizement, getting my name on something, building something that I can put my name on, showing how powerful I am, making other people kowtow to me. walking into cabinet meetings and having the first 80% of the meeting be each secretary telling him about how his testicles smell of rich mahogany and leather-bound books. and it would be funny, except for the fact that this is our country. And if history shows anything with this guy, he destroys the things he touches and walks away richer. David (18:16) he's definitely has a version of the mightest touch, but when you look at the successes that he's had, and the failures that preceded them and then ultimately happened again, psychologically it's not difficult to see why some people are attracted to that. you say if this guy were really a stupid, reckless, corrupt, incompetent, unstable, whatever everyone keeps saying, how the hell is he still standing? And that's not a logical argument for why he's still standing, because survival doesn't establish competence, but it does make sense as to why somebody might look at that and go, Well, He's still there. But I think there's an advantage that he has beyond what you said. the lack of conviction allows you to be incredibly agile in your opinion, which he is. Right? Rob (19:05) I I love how you frame that. the next time I tell a lie, I'm not going to call it a lie. I'm just gonna tell people I'm incredibly agile in my David (19:14) Yeah. Rob (19:15) opinion. David (19:15) Yeah. that's what it is, right? but what he has beyond that is that it's not that the right people like him. It's that the right people hate him. And because of the coalitions that currently exist within our American political system at this point. If journalists and academics and democrats and bureaucrats and career prosecutors, intelligence agencies and public health institutions and different other elites dislike you, good. I'm with that guy because he's anti establishment. All the right people dislike him. I don't trust them. They don't like him. the enemy of my enemy. is my friend, right? that's how people are voting. it's really fascinating to see that It's who's calling out his lack of competence that then turns into evidence to some people that this must be a good guy. I just find that incredibly fascinating because there's almost no way to beat that. What do you do? You start walking around saying, like, I actually like Trump. no. Rob (20:11) Y yes. I I I haven't really thought of it in those terms. so you've expanded my consciousness. David (20:17) Going to the double oaked. I've expanded some consciousness Rob (20:19) so David (20:20) and going to the double oaked. That's where we're at now. Rob (20:22) it is A nexus of a sociocultural, economic whirlwind that came to be starting in the mid teens, a time of incredible economic uncertainty, cultural uncertainty, that led to a distrust of the elites of the establishment, which allowed for an individual who is all about self aggrandizement, has an agile opinion, so which allowed him to not really have a vision. He has no vision. the vision changes. if you follow his career, whatever is popular is what his vision is. So he has no enduring vision. he really doesn't have a set of policies that he follows. So it gives him an agility to stay ahead and ride the wave of public hatred. And here we find ourselves with a guy sitting in the White House who historically can't run a business. and why we ever thought he could run a government, the complexity of a government. and we are absolutely seeing this is the end state, this is what happens, these are the kinds of messes we get ourselves into. And unfortunately, gonna be digging out of this mess for a decade or more. David (21:39) What got me really going down this path it's not just that what we're seeing now was predictable. It was that it was predicted. that you could clearly see how things were going to go if traveled down this path that we're on, and yet it still occurred. The question we're all going to be asking years from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, is why? Why are we in this position that we're in anyway by just having this guy charge? And it's just so hard to beyond just knowing that he pissed off the right people just in the right ways. Because the people who predicted that this is what we would see, which is exactly what we're seeing, were the people that nobody wanted to trust because they just didn't fucking like them. Rob (22:23) there's an element too also that the establishment has been very effective through most of our history, in fact, of keeping us on the rails and keeping us moving forward. We have had a ridiculously successful country. we really started in a very tenuous position back in, seventeen hundred and seventy six. And because of a reliance upon a vision, had the constitution. Here's our vision. This is what we're about. because we did rely on expertise, because we did have experts that set policy and we followed said policy, we have done well. We have done really well. What we can't do and what we can never do is expertise can never prevent these massive. social changes and economic changes that come up in cycles. And these cycles, and I have talked about this book so many times, I'm not even going to say the name of it again. But there's 50-year economic cycles and 80-year social cycles. And it just so happens the 20s, both of those cycles came together at once. Expertise in the establishment can't protect us from that because the march of time Generational change changes in technology causes that. But people blamed the establishment for this. And you're right. It was the right time to be an anti-establishment guy. Here we are, and you're absolutely right. There is probably going to be many books written by people who said, called this. And here's how I called it. and none of us are really terribly surprised that this man is incompetent and incapable of running a country. It's not surprising. it's not surprising that we find ourselves in the position we do with, say, Iran, because this is the anti-strategy president. it's not surprising that there's a woman named Natalie that tucks him in at bed at night and gives him love letters to make him feel better. That's not surprising. no one's surprised by this. In fact, it's a meh kind of story. I can't believe it's getting as much airtime as it is. Of course he has somebody who's giving him love letters and only presenting to him the things that make him feel good, which is collaring his perception of everything. Of course that's happening. We're not surprised. That's not surprising. of course that's happening. No one's gonna be surprised, but we are gonna spend the next decade, decade and a half, two decades digging ourselves out. And it is also quite interesting that we crossed the forty trillion dollar or trillion? Trillion? I said the word and then I couldn't believe it. barrier and the national debt because we've got ballrooms to build and we've got an Arc de Trump to build and we've gotta use granite for the driveway to the White House and we've gotta go fight a country that we should not be at war with. Of course we're over forty trillion David (25:12) Yeah. and speaking economically it brings into the room something I want to talk about anyway. But how do we take guy who's relentlessly throughout his life with just failure after failure after failure and pushing it and turning into success and then failing and then success. and then failing. He's so persistent but also have taco. Taco is shorthand for Trump always chickens out. it was apparently conjured up by Wall Street bros, I think, who noticed that he would announce these extremely aggressive tariffs or other actions Which would trigger disruption and then he would later postpone it or soften or renegotiate them. And the investors figured out that that was gonna keep happening. And they were right. They just call it taco every time he would do something. Well, here it is again. were these fifty percent tariffs planned on Canada, about twenty billion dollars worth of goods, and got postponed again. but there's a contradiction there, isn't there? So we have the guy who is famous for relentlessly pursuing something, even when proven wrong, like the 2020 election. Rob (26:21) Windmills. David (26:22) whatever, water on electromagnets, making magnets not work, type of thing. Rob (26:27) Injecting Clorox straight into our veins to kill the COVID. Yeah. David (26:31) but also Taco. So what is that? Rob (26:34) I think it actually tracks beautifully in my mind because again, the reason he has been successful is because he is driven by self aggrandizement. he is driven for personal validation. And one of the ways he achieves personal validation is to feel like a tough guy. Now, he's not a tough guy. He's not. he's not a constitutionally tough man. He's not a constitutionally brave man. he's proven that, in fact. Bone spurs, people, bone spurs. so he has avoided personal risk at all cost throughout his life. But he does like to feel tough. He does like to threaten people, and usually the way he does it. is through the legal system most of his life. It is a I'll sue you. which is, in the grand scheme, I've never seen a really hardcore action movie in which the hero relies on the talk to my lawyer technique. But he's done it through much of his life and he had enough money to do it because most of us are afraid of the costs of Legal action. But the threats are just self-aggrandizement. The threats are just, I'm a tough guy, look at me. The downstream to that though is exactly what everyone in our audience who is a parent or a leader in any level is that when you make threats, the moment that you don't follow through with your threats, you are now invalidating future threats. So, we'll use Iran for a good example. We're gonna bomb you. We're gonna bomb you strongly, we're gonna bomb your infrastructure. We're gonna destroy your culture. you've got nowhere to go. when you start making threats, particularly when you're not following through with them, you have no place to go. You cannot go beyond we are going to destroy your civilization. There is no rhetorical tool that takes you beyond that. Iran's responding exactly as we would predict, they shrug their shoulders. David (28:29) I see where you're coming from and I think it's a good angle. What I kinda wonder, 'cause as you were jabbering on, not drinking your bourbon. Rob (28:37) as I'm prone to do. David (28:38) what it got me thinking was what we said earlier, maybe that's the piece of it, is that his complete and utter lack of conviction to anything invalidates even for himself anything that he said before. so when we look at Taco as Trump always chickens out, in his mind, he doesn't look at it as I said I was gonna do X. X didn't happen, therefore I failed, which is how we view it. the way he looks at it was I said I was gonna do something, you changed your behavior, I win. Because he never intended to do it in the first place. Rob (29:12) The behaviors aren't changing. David (29:13) but to him it does. It no it does. Rob (29:13) They did it first. They did it first. David (29:16) No, it does it does because what happens is he threatens something. People freak out. then what do they do? They they acquiesce. They de Rob (29:22) They don't they don't freak out anymore. David (29:24) but they negotiate. I'm talking like with the tariffs, He says, I'm gonna put X amount of tariffs on a country that is only penguins. And People come forward and say that'd be that'd be terrible. What do we need to do? We'll do whatever. And and they Rob (29:37) Can't do this to the penguins. What the fu David (29:39) give yeah, they give him the platitudes because that's all he's looking for. This isn't a guy who's got some grand strategy. He just says something, watches people react, and then enjoys the reaction. He had no intention of doing any of the things. He doesn't care either way. If you you put on tariffs, you don't put on tariffs, whatever. What I want is for people to acknowledge me in the room. I just want to be noticed. This is like a guy who goes into your house, sits down on your couch, shits his pants, stands up and goes, Well, I guess I should clean that up. And the host goes, Thank you for cleaning up your shit. And that's all he needs. He just needs somebody say thank you for fucking something up. That's all he wants. He just wants the acknowledgement that he was even there. He's not gonna actually clean it up, but he just wants somebody to acknowledge him. Rob (30:21) So yes, he wants the self-aggrandizement, he wants the validation. you David (30:23) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Rob (30:25) know, and we're gonna leave his personality structure out of it for this discussion. Where it becomes a problem is that he is setting precedents for the United States of America. He is our representative. he's our avatar. And moving forward, not only have we set precedents that we will not follow through with historically we had values. And people could disagree with our values, they could disagree with our priorities, they could disagree with our international policy. They could disagree with that, but we had it. And our actions were tied to that policy and those values. And people certainly can argue that we've not always been 100% and that we've fallen short, and we have. The world is a messy, messy place. But with this administration, we have proven to the world a couple of things. One, they can't trust us because every four years we could get a madman in the White House. The whole world has had to reorganize around that fact. Now two, the threats that we make. and honestly, glad he has tacoed, because they were terrible ideas. They were just awful. I am glad he did not make some weird attempt at destroying the civilization of Iran, because that has waves that resound into the future. so I'm glad he's done this, but he has really destroyed our credibility. And ironically, the only way we could get it back is to actually follow through with some of these crazy threats, which would be terrible, but at least would get our credibility back. David (31:57) I don't know. I think I want to go back to the discussion of is Israel the same as Benjamin Netanyahu? Is Palestine the same as Hamas? Or is Italy the same as the Catholic Church? I agree fully that the world is changing how they are viewing us. But I do wonder if it won't kind of go back when we have somebody who is more trustworthy. I do think that for the longest time the United States had an uneven level of power in the world because of the eighty years that we had been building to that. some good, some bad. everyone has the shadow. But it does strike me as he's a very unique person. hopeful and I'm probably wrong, and maybe that's just what it is, my my strategy of hope, is that once he's gone. So too will be the way that people view us because of him. I don't want to be known, and maybe that's just me not wanting to be known as somebody who follows or agrees with Donald Jeremiah Trump. Rob (32:57) Jim Bob. David (32:58) I mean I hope I'm right. Rob (32:59) I like to hope that. My experience tells me though that a sufficiently averse stimuli tends to teach lasting lessons that resound, particularly when it's temporally connected in the short term. In the short term it teaches lessons. and those lessons are more profound. Than the historic lessons. and that's just the nature of conditioning. So for many, many, many, many, many years, we were rock solid, predictable. We supported our allies. We were consistent with our foreign policy. you knew what the United States was going to do, regardless of who was the president. Domestically, presidents varied a great deal internationally. They were very, very similar. they felt compelled to follow the precedent set before them because they wanted to establish the United States is a rational actor. we can be counted on. we are predictable. And that led a lot of countries to rely upon us. and it benefited us. And I realize Trump has flipped this around. And he has said the world's taken advantage of us, which is very weird, because ultimately we're the wealthiest country in the world. This has worked for us. we've had more power, military power cultural power and political power than any other country in the world. It worked for us. The money we spent was well spent and we became a very wealthy country because of it. However, their reliance on us has now been tested to the extent that they've had to reorganize, and Europe has completely reorganized at this point. I don't think that's reversible. I don't think we're going to go backwards a time frame that's going to make us comfortable, or that maybe even that you and I will see our lifetime because those changes. are long lasting. And what we're looking at is probably a decade of policy then all the pain that would be required to reverse that policy. So I don't think this is an easily reversible thing unless normal order is reestablished in our country. And so far it's still not looking like normal orders on the horizon. David (35:01) agree, but one thing does give me hope that the world might be able to overlook this. Rob (35:06) All right, Mike. David (35:07) J six. Hear me out. Rob (35:08) Okay. You're starting off terrible, but keep going. David (35:12) that's not a great start. Rob (35:13) Yeah. David (35:13) so january sixth was a horrendous, horrendous day for America. Possibly one of the darkest days as far as politics goes. active attempt. To subvert a free and fair election and to prevent the certification of said election through physical aggression that included chance to hang the vice president that was largely attributed to the actions of the losing president and his desire to not leave the office. And when faced with the knowledge that the supporters were potentially armed and were making threats towards his vice president had said, Well, he probably deserves it, rather than trying to get them to stop for hours. but a little over a month later, he was acquitted by the Senate. for reasons. I don't know. The the same people huh? Rob (36:06) It wasn't a monk. David (36:07) It was. It was it was February thirteenth. Rob (36:09) okay. David (36:09) few days before that, there had been a vote taken as to whether they could even proceed with an impeachment on a non sitting president. And they actually had voted that they had the authority and ability to proceed. So that was one of the reasons that Mitch McConnell gave that he chose to acquit Donald Jehosaphat Trump during that impeachment was that he didn't feel they had the authority to impeach him after he was no longer president, even though several days earlier They had already voted that that was indeed something that they can do when the trial proceeded. and now when you go back and people talk about J six, Donald Jumpin Jehos Jumpin whatever the fuck. Donald Jayword Trump has been trying to reframe that day as if it was something that it wasn't. Yet here we sit in January 2025, he was confirmed as the president of the United States again. I'd like to think that if seventy million people could show up and vote for this guy a third time, that the rest of the world could forget how bad this was. If they could forget how bad J six was, I'm hoping that they'll just call it USA forty five forty seven. we're gonna give you a mulligan on this guy. That's my hope. Rob (37:16) Well, what you are portraying is the unpredictability of the human condition. And you're right. what I am proposing is as if the world was a rational actor. if they were gonna learn a lesson, the rational lesson is every four years the United States can shift on a dime. We can't count on them. But you have given a very good example how people can be irrational. And maybe I can come up with scenarios if there is an existential conflict, a a legit war in which the nations that are involved are fearful of losing. I could see us all falling in line and singing kumbaya in order to win that war. I don't necessarily like that idea, and I'm not entirely certain if the situation were to arise, the United States at this particular time would rise to the occasion. And be the leader of the free world that we have been for the last eighty years. David (38:17) we would just inject more testosterone and go for it. We'd just go fucking nuts deep into whatever it was. You just you grab it by the hunches and you hump it into submission, Robbie. That's what you do. Yeah. Rob (38:27) And the submission. Yeah. Yeah. David (38:29) that's how America do. Rob (38:30) That's what you do. That's what you do. David (38:31) You know? you crawl into your catering cart and you get moved to another plane and You continue to dominate. That's what you do. Merca. Rob (38:38) Fuck yeah. David (38:39) All right. I don't know. I do think that yes, the world probably is gonna take pause on looking at us and thinking that we're gonna be consistent. But at the same time, you know, we're moving in a direction as a country that we are desperately, desperately desiring a true leader, somebody who can speak to the people, not the oligarchs. not the elite, but the people, and actually lead our country towards further prosperity, an acknowledgement that we've been incredibly prosperous as a nation of humans. it's not the Apples and the Microsofts and the Palantirs that make this country great. It's the people who live in it and who are a diverse population. I don't have the numbers on it, but maybe the most diverse population on the planet. and that's what makes us great. And a person who is able to build the coalition around what the people need, not what the businesses want. it's going to take some work, because we've injected so much illicit money into our political system Rob (39:39) God. David (39:41) that yeah, if a corporation is a human, there's just difficult to outspend that. But fortunately for us, Rob, and I'll bring this up to our tens of listeners, the one thing that we the people still have going for us is that we get to vote. the corporations don't. we have the ability to Choose our leaders and what we need is a true leader. we're we're just waiting on it. Rob (39:59) I agree. Now I I'm gonna David (40:01) I think it should be you, Rob. Rob (40:02) well I think not. However, I I'm David (40:05) Could you be any less qualified than what we got there right now? Rob (40:07) no, no, no. I David (40:09) I honestly I've got three French Bulldogs that I think would would be just as qualified would be Rob (40:13) Concur. David (40:14) slightly less likely to mess up the carpet in the Oval Office. Rob (40:17) The one bulldog that you have that has one eye hunting and one eye fishing, I think that one would be perfect. so okay. Well, the David (40:23) I got I actually got two of those, so you need to be more specific, but yeah. Rob (40:28) one that also gets sick if you feed them anything at all. David (40:32) well that one I think would maybe be as likely to mess up the carpet in the Oval Office. So I'm thinking maybe one of the other ones. Rob (40:39) That's true. That's true. you know he's probably made a mess on the carpet in the Oval Office. So I am impressed by the agility of your opinion to take J six and make it a positive. I'm deeply impressed. I'm gonna take a little slightly different stance on J six and I'd say J six is one of the more consequential moments in our country's history because it was so unique. But I think the more consequential moment was February thirteenth. and that's the moment in which the body that it was designed that in the Federalist Papers Hamilton wrote this: the Senate is supposed to keep the president in check. and And interestingly, the belief structure was not that humans are inherently good. I think there was some sense in the parlance of the time, the gentlemans will be honorable. but gentlemen, no, gentlemen will be honorable. However, the belief was that ambition would trump ambition, that people would not want to give up their inherent power. And the Senate was designed to put the kibosh on this negative behavior from the president. And it was designed that way to put the kibosh on their selection of secretaries and then be there to ultimately punish any president that steps across the line. The fact that they didn't Not only was a precedence set, the bigger precedence, which is there is no consequences to this. And that's the one thing Donald Trump seems to have a magic ability to do is push the bounds beyond shame, shame stops the rest of us. the idea of appearing dishonorable stops the rest of us, or many of the rest of us. who are not in prisons or CEOs. shame stops us, but he has that ability to push beyond what shame would stop most of us from doing. And then there's just no consequences. he just doesn't ever feel the consequences. And when the Senate failed to convict The consequence was not established. So I fear this could happen again because there are no consequences. David (42:48) I'd say that february thirteenth actually was a precursor to all of the confirmation hearings that we've seen since. it's just more of the same. Rob (42:56) you're incompetent and you have no credentials necessary for this job, you're in. David (43:01) Sign me up. you could definitely argue that there's been no consequence, therefore he pushes forward. But really what you see is that he creates consequence for lack of fealty to him. And it's that he has the unique ability to single somebody out for going against him when if they decide to vote in his favor, then they can share the blame. You can share that blame around in such a way that it doesn't impact me as bad. if we confirm Pete Hegseth to this role why can't he be successful? Well, it's not because of me saying that he should be appointed to a job he just can't do. It's because of the Democrats giving him too much shit. It's because of the military not falling in line. It's because of the deep state. It's because of Pete himself. Rob (43:52) Lack of testosterone. David (43:53) Yeah, but it's not because me. it's fine. We all voted for him. He failed of his own accord. It wasn't even Trump's bad choice. But if I vote against Trump, then what happens? I get primaried and I lose my power. I do wonder. I don't know that it's as much of a lack of consequence to Donald Trump that keeps pushing him forward. I think it's that he knows exactly what pressure points to put on the people. That would otherwise do their jobs because they're just not functioning, but they know that they can sit back in the corner and say that it's not them. I thought about this just now for our tens of listeners. This episode, if you log into our website after it posts, we will have a list of the senators who voted not to impeach Donald J. Trump, the 44 senators who were in. the Capitol when it was attacked by the mob that was trying to overthrow the election on January sixth. I will put that list onto this episode so that you can see the names of all of the people who were simultaneously threatened with death and then voted to acquit Donald Trump. and just for funsies, let's also highlight the ones who are still sitting in office to this day. And I think we're gonna learn some interesting lessons about our Senate and the chicken shit that they are. thank you, Woodford Reserve, Double Oaked. Rob (45:11) yes. So David, do you have a prescription or shall I go first? David (45:16) You always go first. That way you can steal mine. Rob (45:18) Okay. All right, folks. I do have a prescription for this week and I also have an observation. I fear the coherence of this episode. we were a little bit far ranging. and I'm gonna blame Donald Trump for his incoherence leading us to be equally incoherent. because you know, you gotta blame someone apparently. But my prescription is We must stop confusing threats with strength. If you keep saying or else and nothing ever comes after the or else, eventually even your children, your enemies, and apparently Oman figure out that dad is just yelling from the kitchen table. David (45:52) By the way, thirty six of the forty three senators who voted not guilty are still sitting senators. Rob (45:57) Good for them. Lessons have been learned. David (45:58) So for my prescription, you should at least once in your life allow a loss to remain a loss. If you lose an election by 45,000 votes, resist the urge to finance a recount, launch an investigation, blame machines, or assume God has hidden the real totals somewhere inside of my pillow. Sometimes persistence is admirable, but sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is look at the scoreboard, say, Well shit and go home. Rob (46:23) I agree. The mercy rule is a thing for purpose. David (46:26) I think we've pretty much come to the end of this episode, which is great, thank you for joining us. are tens of listeners. Hit like, subscribe, do all that stuff. Go to our website. You're gonna have to check out this episode because I think I'm gonna go a little crazy on this list it's gonna be something. It'll be really interesting and entertaining. this list of senators. Rob (46:44) honestly folks, what you should do is definitely go to the website and the extent of how much he goes crazy is really going to be down to how quickly he gets it done before that Woodford reserve wears out of his system. David (46:58) gonna have fun with this one. Rob (46:58) Right now it's a super great idea, but I have a feeling when the GABA receptors start being desaturated, he's all of a sudden gonna go, Well, this is this was dumb. Well, what was I thinking? David (47:08) No, this one's gonna be in there for sure. I'm gonna have it. It will. Rob (47:11) It's gonna happen. David (47:12) It will happen. put that into our predictions. this will occur. Rob (47:15) All right. David (47:15) Alright. Well that's it. I'm gonna cue up that music and we are out.