Ross Douthat

speaker

4,896 appearances 23 recordings 5 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 27 Aug

Ross Douthat’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 23 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 6.

Appearances

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Interesting Times · Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein on the Art of Persuasion · 27 Aug 2026 podcast

So there were a bunch of people who were associated with what got called national greatness conservatism, which was basically a kind of, you know, pretty hawkish um form of Republican politics. voice-verified

Um voice-verified

Who then like Bill Kristol, right? voice-verified

Um, who then end up as like the great critics of Trumpism. voice-verified

Our former colleague. voice-verified

Our former colleague David Brooks, he's a less he's a less extreme example. voice-verified

It's just really striking if you go back, like nobody hates Bill Kristol more than Trumpists, and Bill Kristol hates Trumpists. voice-verified

But if you go back and read like the way Kristal wrote about politics and war and all that. voice-verified

All these things in the late nineties and early two thousands, he has a lot in common with the way sort of the young nationalists spoiling for a fight write about politics today. voice-verified

It's just the focus the focus is is different. voice-verified

I think it was p well, it was partially a cut because even though Trump has ended up starting a new war in the Middle East, he really did pretty strongly repudiate elements of neoconservative and hawkish foreign policy. voice-verified

And to the extent that like if you were committed to the idea that the Iraq war had been a good idea. voice-verified

Then Trump in 2016 was not your guy. voice-verified

Right? voice-verified

So th there was that as a kind of specific breaking point. voice-verified

Then there was all there also was, you know, to make the case for the never Trump side, a kind of clear characterological argument where you could say, you know, in in the early 2000s that voice-verified

a nash a politics of national greatness only made sense if it was founded on voice-verified

character and virtue in your leaders. voice-verified

And I don't think George Bush was like a paragon of every single virtue, but it's fair to say that he was a more personally virtuous guy in various ways than Trump, right? voice-verified

So there were people who had committed to that idea for good reasons, for whom it was just like, okay, I don't care how muscular Trump is or how international greatness he is. voice-verified

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