Sam Harris

Are the rules the same for Democrats and Republicans such that there's no difference here?

Just as a fact now or just actually systemically in any decade?

What do you think about the prospect of a Democratic presidential candidate running on the platform that the first thing he or she would do in office is reset and diminish the powers of the executive?

I mean, seemingly work against his or her own interest.

not to fall into this tit-for-tat pattern of now using all the full scope of the Trumpian powers of the presidency to do the antithetical thing, but to actually recognize how the shape of the executive branch has been distorted and to figure out how to pull it back and minimize this overreach.

I mean, one of this could be, as these words come out of my mouth, it sounds fairly quixotic, but one, do you think that would be something that could be run on?

And do you think it could be accomplished if somebody actually had the intention to

I think his first executive order had to do with the trans issue, if I'm not mistaken.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

So what are your expectations around the midterms, both with respect to, I guess, a result, if a clear result is achieved, but the chicanery that many people are worried about coming from the Trump administration?

If they got all of Congress, what would that spell for the rest of Trump's term?

I mean, is that just synonymous with impeachment proceedings and endless investigations and just proper gridlock?

I mean, I know most of what he's done in any case hasn't even involved Congress, so perhaps he could just keep forging ahead.

But you would imagine Congress would no longer be sitting on its hands watching him do that.

And is the full explanation of that cowardice simply that the Republican Party has turned into a proper cult of personality such that the Republicans in Congress can't afford to take their responsibilities to provide any kind of checks and balances seriously?

They don't care about the independence of their institution anymore because each of them perceives their political future to be totally dependent on whether Trump endorses them or not?

Yeah.

So what do you make of all the infighting we've seen of late on the right?

I think the epicenter of it was the Turning Point America Fest conference where you had, I mean, the schism, which I've spoken about on the podcast before, seems to be between Republicans who think Nazis are probably still bad, all things considered, and those who think that, no, we actually kind of need the Nazis.