Ben Smith

It was Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney the day before who talked about, I don't know, in large terms, the middle powers, everybody except for China and the US.

We had to adapt permanently to a world without American leadership.

I guess I wonder, I mean, that's in some sense a pretty anti-American point of view.

That's a view that America is gone from the world stage, that whether the next president is J.D.

Vance, Gavin Newsom, somebody else, this isn't a deviation, as you said.

This is permanent.

Do you buy Carney's point of view?

You're talking about people who, among other things, aren't American, maybe be concerned for America, but are making decisions about their own politics, their own countries.

And Carney's core point was this is a rupture, this isn't an anomaly, and there's no going back.

I mean, I suppose, do you think post-Trump there's a path back?

Because you see this everywhere, the kind of insult politics that you're doing here, which you, you said you don't really enjoy it.

You kind of seem to.

Oh, they would have been here.

This is like a Mark Carney crowd.

You know, I think one of the main reasons that he has been successful is because the Democratic Party is so discredited in the eyes of so many voters.

I have a couple of questions about that.

One is big picture about California.

People, you know, you're in the midst of a, you know, enormous economic boom right now, and yet the state is on one hand running deficits and on the other not always delivering services that it's, you know, from education to healthcare that your citizens are delighted with.

And I guess I wonder how can, you know, how are voters looking at California, looking at New York, looking at Chicago,

you know, supposed to say, yeah, this is the model we want.