YouSaid · the spoken record

Moises Naim

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27
first
2025-03-30
most recent
2025-03-30
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1
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podcast

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  1. “It was a pleasure, I am very honored that you have read my books. I have a new book coming out in October. His title is Charlatans. And that tells you everything you need to know about the new book.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And one of these features, of course, is post-truth. You don't any longer know who to believe, what to believe, who said what? Is this true? And now with the deep fakes, artificial intelligence, you really get to this very confusing world. You have no idea who to believe and what to believe.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Populism Polarization and post-truth. Populism has always existed and is essentially promising what you know that cannot be delivered, but essentially dividing the nation into the two castes of dishonest oligarchs that takes advantage of the brave noble people. They embody the Avengers of these things. So they are the protectors of the people. And those are the populists. And then they use polarization that has always existed. And in fact, it's a feature of democracy. We want that. We want polarized. We want debate. We want to see debates that stay within limits and then generate the best possible option and compromise. We want that. But then now it has acquired a potency that didn't have before. Now with all of the digital ways of doing politics of attack, we have a new reality in which”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “One of the surprises after Putin invaded Ukraine, he created something that people could not believe was happening. And that is a bunch of European countries got together and acted in ways that were not characteristic of European decision making. They were superpowers and they didn't know it. And the central power of that was acting together. If they get their act together and coordinate and speed and efficiency and less talks and less speeches and more action and more precise coordination and synchronization and an alliance, you know, that's multilateralism. That's not 190 countries. That was a very good example of multilateralism and it didn't hold for long, but it may be back. One of the things that Trump has done is perhaps unify and enable politics in Europe to go this way.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Start by recognizing the feature of global politics today is that there is a lot of consensus about what needs to be done and a lot of failure on how to do it or acting. Everybody agrees that the war on drugs, for example, needs to be revised. Everybody closer to home, Latin America, believes that the embargo on Cuba doesn't work. So there is a long list of things that don't work. and for which there is consensus on what is the problem and how it can be solved. Then you are ready to go, let's go do this. Happily go ahead. And then you discover that nothing happens. So there is a list of difficult problems, but existential problems like climate change. That everybody agrees that things need to be done and then nothing happens. That was the start of your question.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “And it's meaning lateralism, he's the two of them. The notion of multilateralism is in contrast to multilateralism in which multilateralism says let's get the 192 countries, put them in a meeting room and try to get a unanimous common policy. That hasn't worked. 190 countries debating with all the differences make it impossible. But then if you look at the problems you want to solve, migration, terrorism, drug trafficking, people trafficking, financial inequities and so on, you will see that the solution, climate change, of course, should be at the top of that list. The solution to that rests in about five countries. Get five countries together. Get them to do the right thing on climate change and the rest will follow. Don't try to create this minilateralist forum.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, so he has a base that he has to feed. He needs to be the revolutionary that is protecting you and your family from the attacks of the oligarchs, the Democrats and so on. He has a machine that gobbles a lot of these ideas. He needs to be the purveyor of populist news every day.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “One of the main features of populism is the connection to the third P, which is essentially you can lie. You can lie all the time and nothing, even if you get caught, nothing happens. So lying is a common denominator for all of these things. They essentially normalize it, made it acceptable. You just laugh at it, but lying is an important pillar of the politics of populism. And post-truth is what I call in the book, the third pistories.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “All of those things that you mentioned contribute to a concentration of power. Every single one that you mentioned is part of that. And yes, he may love tariffs, but he will soon, soon begin to hate them without being able to say that. And as you know, we just recently started a trade war between the United States, China, Mexico, Canada, and others will follow. Europe will follow. And so he's going to hate tariffs because they are important contributors to inflation. But he will not be able to say it. So what measures will he use to save power? What power retaining tactics?”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Is creating both very good and fantastic generation of new treatments, new medical procedures, the media, education, health, and so on, these fantastic things, and there's horrible things that are happening. And they coexist, and I got quite a very, very fast speed.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I'm always very careful not to say that this is the first time that anything has happened. You know, a lot of what's happening we have already seen, experience lived through, et cetera. But I do believe that there is a lot of new going on here that we don't understand. We know it's going to hit us, companies, countries, our governments, our families, our jobs, our culture. We know it's going to hit us and it's going to change profoundly so important things. But we don't know when. And we don't know how. I'm thinking, for example, of the impact of artificial intelligence. We all know this is huge. We see civilizational. This is not one more software. This is something that is going to deeply, profoundly alter society as we have known. And responding to that, others say, I don't know. Every week there is a new example of kinds of things that artificial intelligence.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Ask any of the followers of Donald Trump about some of the legal cases, they know nothing. And there is plenty there to look at for a second and decide if you feel well being part of that cottery.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Because we have a problem with followers. We have a problem with leaders. We have big global problems that are being tackled by leaders that are not up to the game. So we have a leadership problem. We need better leaders capable of reconciling the multiple demands that are going on, which is so difficult. And you all know having been in politics how difficult to reconcile conflicting forces. But we also have a problem with followership. The world has a problem of followership. The followers, the voters, the people don't do the job. I am not expecting them to be at the top of the pyramid that I described in which they are devoted full-time to this. But I do expect them to go to the internet and click twice. If they like somebody, you know, okay, check it out. They will not kill you to just go to the internet and find out who is this person you're voting or you're enthusiastic.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yes, well, I welcome the fact that you now have the semblance of political leaders that get to work in politics and policy lesson theater and populist rhetoric. So I welcome that. And I think that's good. But I'm still recovering from Brexit. So Latin America, right? Banana Republics, right? You know, just pay attention, just replay the sort of things that were happening during the Brexit and stay or go. It was horrible, horrible. No-nothing, do nothing, hate everything. You know, they are anti-politics. Everything is bad. Nothing works. They are all crooks. So that has worked. And it has left, of course, a bad kind of political culture where these things are included, their proponents are celebrated, and they don't go away.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And that's right. Think of this as a pyramid at the top of the mirror, a pyramid as the deeply committed full-time devotees, activists, people. Then there is a second layer that is interested, pays attention but is less active. And then the silent majority. The base of that pyramid is people that know that there's a lot of strange things happening but are not ready to take to the streets.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “And that reflects the lack of enthusiasm anybody the young have about political parties. Young people are willing to join any initiative, any NGO. Let's go fight the possible extinction of butterfly in Thailand. You will get a lot of voluntaries to go do that among. But then ask them, but let's join a political party or let's found a political party. They will be immediately running for the hills and ignoring you. So the political parties is so damaged and require such attention modernization of updates, revision. And again, that brings us to the issue of the resistance. Who is resisting and who is going to be making accountable this administration? So it is that we need to pay attention to.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Well, that brings us to the thorny subject of political parties and who they are. And when you say the American people remember in that American people about half of them voted for Trump. So they're not worried about the kinds of things we're worrying about.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “To my surprise yes, I never believed that the United States could reach the situation in which we are now and towards which we are evolving. Let's pay a lot of attention to what happens to the midterm elections. This may be the finding elections. Some people that I don't agree, but some people say that this may be the last elections for a variety of reasons. So let's see what happens because one thing that will be happening in the next two years is the backlash, the reverse, the adjustment, the vision of what Trump is doing now. A lot of what he's doing now is unsustainable and he will live with the consequences. He's ignoring the judges. We have had several experiences in which there is a ruling, a decision, a judicial decision. And Chavez and his people simply ignore it. They're ignoring the legal system. So pay attention to what's happened.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Don't pay attention only to the day of election, but understand that democracy happens every day in between elections. So elections are important and you need to win them in a legitimate way without tricks. But then after you win or after you lose, pay attention to what's happening to the checks and balances during the four years or five years that the governments have been elected. Paying attention to the checks and balances is less glamorous, is boring, is technocratic, is legalese, all of that. And he's typically hidden in some form of government bureaucratic.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “But yes, there was a country that does not exist anymore. The level of destruction that Chavez and Maduro and the Cotteri have wrought is incredible. It's not even wars have created and caused so much damage and destruction and irreversible. So 8 million people out of 20-something Venezuelans are just walked. Imagine that. You decide one day I'm not taking it anymore because I cannot feed my children. Let me walk towards the jungle. And that's what millions of Venezuelans have done. In Venezuela historically was a recipient of refugees. And now we are living with this tragic situation.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Phrase goal making runs of the Venezuelan diaspora is we were happy, we didn't know it. Venezuela had a very defective democracy, a very all kinds of injustices, marginalization and so on. He also had a lot of things that worked. It did have a defective democracy, but”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And he was the first of making this very clear that he was to keep the notion that he was a Democrat. But in fact, he was an autocrat, disguised masquerading as a Democrat. The innovator in this. And I watch what Donald Trump is doing in the United States. And it's so similar. He's attacking all of the sources of constraints, of checks, on balances, limits, weekends, reporting, accountability. All of that is being undermined. And Chavez did exactly the same, you know, if it first immediately took over the Supreme Court and the courts and this legal system, then the military, then the oil industry, which in Venezuela, of course, is finding an important. So he took control all these things, but always, always hiding by the face of Democrat.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Chavez was a pioneer in a variety of ways. We can list them. But the most important area which he reigned was in hiding his autocratic principles. The elections that he won were not well attended. Venezuela had high levels, relatively high levels of participation in electoral politics. But in that election, a lot of people stayed home. So only 30% of the voters went to vote and Cavez won legitimately. And he became president. And as soon as he became president, he started to undermine, constrain, weaken, limit, ignore the checks and balances that define democracy.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Family had lived in Libya for generations and they had to escape. They were Jewish and there was a very strong backlash against the Jews. They first went to Italy, but there was no work. So my father had a schoolmate that had gone to Venezuela with an Italian company. And he said that Venezuela was great. I don't remember any of these. I was two or three or four years. And then so we went to Venezuela. We all became Venezuelans. I am deeply, deeply Venezuelan in a variety of ways. I deal with this every day. So I am a profound Venezuela that is forced to live elsewhere.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “View or course of action is still highly fragmented among different countries that have a very different politics and economics and society and culture.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Success essentially short lived, inflationary and in some places causes irreversible damage. But what happened was in Latin America, for example, think about Argentina. Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world for many years and now has become one of the poorest and most screwed up countries. They tried all kinds of reforms and nothing worked. Now there is a new initiative that seems to be working and I really wish them well. I have to be careful because we're talking not about a country but about a region. And the region that includes Brazil and Mexico and Argentina and other giants also includes Haiti and Guatemala. So the diversity of Latin American experience is quite profound. And what is happening now is far from being a unified”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “They were interviewing him once. They asked him what was more or less the same question you ask. And he said, well, I became a Latin American in France where he had moved. He said, everybody in Latin America knows everything about the country and knows nothing about the adjacent countries and neighbors. And so by moving to France or living in France, he could have a perspective of what was life like in all the Latin American countries. And the same has happened to me. I moved with my family to Washington in the early 90s. And I knew a lot about my country, a lot, but I didn't know that much about all the countries. And so I became a Latin American in Washington.”

    2025-03-30 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 127. Donald Trump vs American Freedom: Who Wins? (Moises Naim) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source