I am a huge fan of Josh and enjoyed this pod. But it is beyond me why smart people listen to Batya Ungar-Sargon. The idea that Trump is the patron saint of the working class is beyond idiotic. I am glad Josh pushed back against her stupidity. I now wish the Free Press would drop her like a hot potato.
The fact that she was the "best, most articulate pro-Trump voice" to be found says pretty much all you need to know about the Trump movement. I wasn't familiar with Batya Ungar-Sargon before this conversation, but yikes! Is she more thoughtful, better informed, and more nuanced in her writing? Was she just being a troll by claiming Democrats are bad at losing while Republicans do so gracefully? By claiming that Trump is "much more focused now....you can see it in his cabinet picks?" By talking about how low-wage workers have been held hostage to Democratic policies while ignoring minimum wage laws and anti-union efforts in Republican-led states?
I appreciate Josh having on a pro-Trump voice, and I appreciate that he balanced calling out her BS occasionally while still giving her the time and space to try to make her points. She's clearly media savvy in terms of throwing out lots of claims and statistics in a format where she knows she can't be effectively fact-checked or rebutted (a classic "flood the zone with shit" Bannon-ite). That being said, I was disappointed with Josh's praise of her in the introduction to the episode. It felt way too close to both-sides-ism and being deferential for the sake of civility. Framed another way, she was treated like the "diversity hires" that both the MAGA and heterodox movements claim to find unacceptable. To pretend that she was articulate, thoughtful, or constructive in espousing her viewpoints is to succumb to the bigotry of low expectations.
Josh should continue to have pro-Trump voices on, along with other voices he disagrees with – as he said at the beginning, that's the whole conceit of Uncomfortable Conversations. But it does a disservice to listeners to pretend in the introduction that she was anything other than nonsensical. Next time, I'd encourage Josh to just let someone like her stand on the strengths, or lack thereof, that they demonstrate in conversation. No need to falsely praise her.
I truly don’t mean this to sound as dickish as it probably sounds, but I really, truly, earnestly do not understand why anyone feels that Batya Ungar-Sargon is someone worth printing or broadcasting to the public. (Not a criticism of Josh btw; she’s all over podcasts and writes for the Free Press and so on—I just don’t get why.) She combines a tendency to be either hyperbolic or just flat wrong on the facts with a weirdly idealized, noble-savage-like view of the American working class. This isn’t a recipe for deep insight into actual real-world American politics, in my view. It’s just disorienting.
I’ve heard she’s quite a nice person, and I’m sure that’s true, but that’s not really a reason to care about her opinion on H1-B visas or whatever else. Maybe I’m the one missing something, but when I listen to her it always leaves me feeling baffled and vaguely depressed.
did she ever answer a single questions directly? let me know what i missed so i can check my bias here but it to me things started ok but halfway through a flip switched and she suddenly seemed determined to be a propaganda mouth piece rather than getting down to the nitty gritty of policy or even just a nuanced general political philosophy discussion
Okay, time for an #UnpopularOpinion: I thought it was a great listen, and I'm really glad that Josh invited Batya to share her perspective.
She addressed issues that resonate with many people in the US. The promise of free trade was supposed to create pathways to higher-paying jobs, particularly in fields like STEM. However, the US has managed to promote free trade while giving many of those new jobs to H1B visa holders. It's no surprise that this situation has generated significant frustration. It's perfectly valid for people to wish they could have retained their decent-paying jobs. I found her arguments about the dignity of work to be genuine.
While I can't definitively assess the validity of everything she said, she was accurate in noting that income inequality in the US modestly declined between 2016 and 2019.
I found her point about Trump recognizing this unmet need in the electorate intriguing. Isn't this the same flawed system that Bernie was trying to challenge, only to face opposition from the Democrats? I wonder if people's reactions to her arguments would differ if she were linking them to Bernie instead of someone about whom many, including myself, have serious reservations.
Thank you, Josh, for introducing me to a perspective I might not have considered otherwise.
Batts is a smart woman, but speaks with apparent authority in areas she is not an expert. Knowing enough to form an opinion and not enough to know your opinion is wrong, is the critical failure of both the more extreme voices on both the Right and the Left.
She said that republicans “are used to losing”in response to Josh bringing up the topic of “wokeness” and focusing more on cultural issues. To be fair, “the right” has lost just about every battle on the culture front since at least the 1960s… so she’s not crazy to say this.
My dream podcast would take a conversation like this one and allow someone who has read her books to systematically debunk her argument. Every podcast shoots across the bow of every other opposing podcast without thoroughly clapping back each point. She presents the steel industry and her single precious example; Josh presents washer/dryers as his counter but each has only one example. There's a landslide of evidence that the wealth gap has widened, and even if it didn't build it's greatest momentum until the orangutan left office, he still helped further the Bush era's off shoring of billions in capital and millions of jobs that Americans will never see again. This makes me want to scream, when we credit one politician for the good or evil generated by his predecessor. And she is a dolt if she thinks the pre-COVID prosperity was something Trump facilitated. He was riding the Obama wave! And he'll ride the good generated by the Biden Administration claiming it for himself.
This is accurate. She made used a couple of cherry-picked metrics like the increase in wages of the bottom 20% of Americans in 2019. But attributing it to Trump is crazy.
The wage inflation in this group comes primarily from the fact that unemployment had been at record lows for years. This meant that companies had to pay more for unskilled labor. This was coupled with several states raising the minimum wage.
How can anyone assume what Trump says is what he means, and more so what he will do when he has CLEARLY illustrated his ACTIONS, are regularly in contradiction of the same. Even the American judiciary has confirmed the same through multiple decisions.
And to make this assumption in the light of this evidence, when his actions have further turned against the people who believed him the first time, is mind-boggling.
Is Elon right calling them “retarded?”
How does a self-respecting woman support a rapist, or an immigrant, a person color, or a member out of the LGBTQ, support a person who through his actions has his historically attacked them and their families.
The problem with this conversation is the debate here shouldn’t be about what he says he’s going to do but what he has done and his failing to operate with integrity in the interest of the American people. That’s the conversation that should be debated, if at all, in is much as any US citizen feels their moral centre and ethical guidelines should be available for debate.
This was embarrassing, what policies did trump actually pass to help the working class? The working class did much better under Biden despite massive inflation, their wages increased well above it as well as government subsidies. By the end of trump's first term interest rates were being decreased due to a softening economy, not helped by his tariffs. No to mention his incompetent management of Covid.
At least we now know that there is no case for Trump or his policies. Most of us would agree that the resentment of the working class is justified, but they really have been dujped by this horrible human being and grifter. Why do they not see it? Because the Dems and their PhD's in Cultural studies supporters are even more obviousl grifters.
There is no shortage of people explaining the tail risks of a second Trump presidency. Coherent explanations for putative gains are hard to find. Common theories seem to fall into two buckets 1) vanquishing "wokeness and the excesses of the left" and 2) tariffs / deportations / etc will solve all of our problems through unspecified mechanisms. I really want to hear a rational pro-Trump argument to understand why so many smart people are willing to look past the dishonesty, lawlessness, corruption, self-dealing, incompetence, nepotism and coup attempt of Trump 1.0 and see Trump 2.0 as a panacea.
This was not a person mounting a reasoned argument capable of convincing anyone who wasn't already convinced. It worked backwards from "Trump is great" to cherry-pick some data to support that case. Repeating "these are facts, Josh! I'm citing data Josh! You might feel that your facts are right, but that doesn't make it so!" does not, in fact, change facts or data.
On tariffs, the argument was put forth that they will bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and raise wages. Josh points out that tariffs raise prices. The counter argument was to point out that Trump raised tariffs on steel and aluminum China just cut the price, which of course completely defeats the purpose of tariffs reducing imports and creating jobs, undermining the main argument for them.
It is indeed true that wages for the bottom quintile faster than other quintiles in 2019, which was brought up over and over and over as proof that Trump is an economic genius who cares about the working class. But notice that that was literally only true in 2019, fell off a cliff in 2020 and then recovered again in 2022, i.e., wages for the bottom quintile rose faster for longer under Biden than Trump 1.0.
Actual wealth and income inequality has basically just gone up steadily since the 60's.
"Democrats hate losing, unlike Republicans" was a prefect encapsulation of how Trump brainworms (and cults) work. You so thoroughly internalize the upside-down reality that the other side is always worse that "Trump tried to overturn an election and encouraged a mob to storm the capital" is just further proof of the deranged things Democrats do.
Not sure if Josh’s glowing introduction was more olive branch than honest belief but I personally found Batya rude, inflammatory and often incoherent. I was so disappointed by her continual evasions of Josh’s questions and thought she actually did a really poor job of representing a clear viewpoint. I have heard compassionate and convincing arguments for Trump support from people such as Darryl Cooper from Martytmade or other thoughtful political commentators who have steel manned the argument.
But I personally found this conversation very frustrating and not undertaken by Batya with any intention to be inform or engage in thoughtful debate. I admire Josh’s poise and his thoughts as always. His intent to bring on people of different perspectives is admirable and the content that he brings is absolutely incredible but without good will on two sides I do believe that there are some conversations not worth having, to me this felt like one of them. #toouncomfortable?
Batya makes Trump sound like a deep and nuanced thinker and problem solver (who happens to be a billionaire, but so what?) when one only has to listen to one of his unintelligible, vulgar speeches to understand that the opposite is true. The mind keeps on boggling…
We could’ve had Bernie Sanders in 2016… Instead we get this douche bag. Could have been fighting for actual human rights and dignity, instead fighting for regressive economic goals of “maybe we manufacture some more stuff in the US again”. Truly pathetic that this is the vision of the right, and equally pathetic of the left to keep anointing centrist politicians who don’t even come close to meeting the moment we’re in.
The guest was very interesting and articulate in her conversation. Fascinating that she started out as a leftie but due to modern left ideology has swung to pro trump .. the fantastic way she described working class as despising “govt benefits “ and want the dignity of real work was so simple yet powerful . The only downside was Josh clearly disagreed on many points and spoke over her often and didn’t let her facts and research tell the story . I was hoping of hearing more from the expert than opinion’s from the host. I do love Josh’s podcasts for the high calibre of guests but would have loved to hear more from her and a little less of the host.
I am a huge fan of Josh and enjoyed this pod. But it is beyond me why smart people listen to Batya Ungar-Sargon. The idea that Trump is the patron saint of the working class is beyond idiotic. I am glad Josh pushed back against her stupidity. I now wish the Free Press would drop her like a hot potato.
The fact that she was the "best, most articulate pro-Trump voice" to be found says pretty much all you need to know about the Trump movement. I wasn't familiar with Batya Ungar-Sargon before this conversation, but yikes! Is she more thoughtful, better informed, and more nuanced in her writing? Was she just being a troll by claiming Democrats are bad at losing while Republicans do so gracefully? By claiming that Trump is "much more focused now....you can see it in his cabinet picks?" By talking about how low-wage workers have been held hostage to Democratic policies while ignoring minimum wage laws and anti-union efforts in Republican-led states?
I appreciate Josh having on a pro-Trump voice, and I appreciate that he balanced calling out her BS occasionally while still giving her the time and space to try to make her points. She's clearly media savvy in terms of throwing out lots of claims and statistics in a format where she knows she can't be effectively fact-checked or rebutted (a classic "flood the zone with shit" Bannon-ite). That being said, I was disappointed with Josh's praise of her in the introduction to the episode. It felt way too close to both-sides-ism and being deferential for the sake of civility. Framed another way, she was treated like the "diversity hires" that both the MAGA and heterodox movements claim to find unacceptable. To pretend that she was articulate, thoughtful, or constructive in espousing her viewpoints is to succumb to the bigotry of low expectations.
Josh should continue to have pro-Trump voices on, along with other voices he disagrees with – as he said at the beginning, that's the whole conceit of Uncomfortable Conversations. But it does a disservice to listeners to pretend in the introduction that she was anything other than nonsensical. Next time, I'd encourage Josh to just let someone like her stand on the strengths, or lack thereof, that they demonstrate in conversation. No need to falsely praise her.
yes to all of this
I truly don’t mean this to sound as dickish as it probably sounds, but I really, truly, earnestly do not understand why anyone feels that Batya Ungar-Sargon is someone worth printing or broadcasting to the public. (Not a criticism of Josh btw; she’s all over podcasts and writes for the Free Press and so on—I just don’t get why.) She combines a tendency to be either hyperbolic or just flat wrong on the facts with a weirdly idealized, noble-savage-like view of the American working class. This isn’t a recipe for deep insight into actual real-world American politics, in my view. It’s just disorienting.
I’ve heard she’s quite a nice person, and I’m sure that’s true, but that’s not really a reason to care about her opinion on H1-B visas or whatever else. Maybe I’m the one missing something, but when I listen to her it always leaves me feeling baffled and vaguely depressed.
Thank you for voicing this, I wholeheartedly agree
Sounds like she's on the verge of joining Loomer in a revolt. I'm not sure I want her to switch sides, however.
did she ever answer a single questions directly? let me know what i missed so i can check my bias here but it to me things started ok but halfway through a flip switched and she suddenly seemed determined to be a propaganda mouth piece rather than getting down to the nitty gritty of policy or even just a nuanced general political philosophy discussion
Propaganda for what? I mean, she has some overlap with Trump but it's not like she doesn't spend half her time opposing various things about him.
Okay, time for an #UnpopularOpinion: I thought it was a great listen, and I'm really glad that Josh invited Batya to share her perspective.
She addressed issues that resonate with many people in the US. The promise of free trade was supposed to create pathways to higher-paying jobs, particularly in fields like STEM. However, the US has managed to promote free trade while giving many of those new jobs to H1B visa holders. It's no surprise that this situation has generated significant frustration. It's perfectly valid for people to wish they could have retained their decent-paying jobs. I found her arguments about the dignity of work to be genuine.
While I can't definitively assess the validity of everything she said, she was accurate in noting that income inequality in the US modestly declined between 2016 and 2019.
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/us-income-inequality-narrowed-slightly-over-last-three-years-fed-idUSKBN26J2LT/
I found her point about Trump recognizing this unmet need in the electorate intriguing. Isn't this the same flawed system that Bernie was trying to challenge, only to face opposition from the Democrats? I wonder if people's reactions to her arguments would differ if she were linking them to Bernie instead of someone about whom many, including myself, have serious reservations.
Thank you, Josh, for introducing me to a perspective I might not have considered otherwise.
Batts is a smart woman, but speaks with apparent authority in areas she is not an expert. Knowing enough to form an opinion and not enough to know your opinion is wrong, is the critical failure of both the more extreme voices on both the Right and the Left.
i've yet to see any evidence that she's a smart woman.
“Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.”
Brilliant!
She said so many things that made me gasp. 'Republicans are good loosers' almost made me scream.
Cudos to you, josh, for being so calm and collected.
She said that republicans “are used to losing”in response to Josh bringing up the topic of “wokeness” and focusing more on cultural issues. To be fair, “the right” has lost just about every battle on the culture front since at least the 1960s… so she’s not crazy to say this.
My dream podcast would take a conversation like this one and allow someone who has read her books to systematically debunk her argument. Every podcast shoots across the bow of every other opposing podcast without thoroughly clapping back each point. She presents the steel industry and her single precious example; Josh presents washer/dryers as his counter but each has only one example. There's a landslide of evidence that the wealth gap has widened, and even if it didn't build it's greatest momentum until the orangutan left office, he still helped further the Bush era's off shoring of billions in capital and millions of jobs that Americans will never see again. This makes me want to scream, when we credit one politician for the good or evil generated by his predecessor. And she is a dolt if she thinks the pre-COVID prosperity was something Trump facilitated. He was riding the Obama wave! And he'll ride the good generated by the Biden Administration claiming it for himself.
This is accurate. She made used a couple of cherry-picked metrics like the increase in wages of the bottom 20% of Americans in 2019. But attributing it to Trump is crazy.
The wage inflation in this group comes primarily from the fact that unemployment had been at record lows for years. This meant that companies had to pay more for unskilled labor. This was coupled with several states raising the minimum wage.
How can anyone assume what Trump says is what he means, and more so what he will do when he has CLEARLY illustrated his ACTIONS, are regularly in contradiction of the same. Even the American judiciary has confirmed the same through multiple decisions.
And to make this assumption in the light of this evidence, when his actions have further turned against the people who believed him the first time, is mind-boggling.
Is Elon right calling them “retarded?”
How does a self-respecting woman support a rapist, or an immigrant, a person color, or a member out of the LGBTQ, support a person who through his actions has his historically attacked them and their families.
The problem with this conversation is the debate here shouldn’t be about what he says he’s going to do but what he has done and his failing to operate with integrity in the interest of the American people. That’s the conversation that should be debated, if at all, in is much as any US citizen feels their moral centre and ethical guidelines should be available for debate.
This was embarrassing, what policies did trump actually pass to help the working class? The working class did much better under Biden despite massive inflation, their wages increased well above it as well as government subsidies. By the end of trump's first term interest rates were being decreased due to a softening economy, not helped by his tariffs. No to mention his incompetent management of Covid.
At least we now know that there is no case for Trump or his policies. Most of us would agree that the resentment of the working class is justified, but they really have been dujped by this horrible human being and grifter. Why do they not see it? Because the Dems and their PhD's in Cultural studies supporters are even more obviousl grifters.
There is no shortage of people explaining the tail risks of a second Trump presidency. Coherent explanations for putative gains are hard to find. Common theories seem to fall into two buckets 1) vanquishing "wokeness and the excesses of the left" and 2) tariffs / deportations / etc will solve all of our problems through unspecified mechanisms. I really want to hear a rational pro-Trump argument to understand why so many smart people are willing to look past the dishonesty, lawlessness, corruption, self-dealing, incompetence, nepotism and coup attempt of Trump 1.0 and see Trump 2.0 as a panacea.
This was not a person mounting a reasoned argument capable of convincing anyone who wasn't already convinced. It worked backwards from "Trump is great" to cherry-pick some data to support that case. Repeating "these are facts, Josh! I'm citing data Josh! You might feel that your facts are right, but that doesn't make it so!" does not, in fact, change facts or data.
On tariffs, the argument was put forth that they will bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and raise wages. Josh points out that tariffs raise prices. The counter argument was to point out that Trump raised tariffs on steel and aluminum China just cut the price, which of course completely defeats the purpose of tariffs reducing imports and creating jobs, undermining the main argument for them.
A big part of the argument is that the bottom quintile had better wage growth than the top in 2019. Here are the actual data on wage growth: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1D2cU
It is indeed true that wages for the bottom quintile faster than other quintiles in 2019, which was brought up over and over and over as proof that Trump is an economic genius who cares about the working class. But notice that that was literally only true in 2019, fell off a cliff in 2020 and then recovered again in 2022, i.e., wages for the bottom quintile rose faster for longer under Biden than Trump 1.0.
Actual wealth and income inequality has basically just gone up steadily since the 60's.
"Democrats hate losing, unlike Republicans" was a prefect encapsulation of how Trump brainworms (and cults) work. You so thoroughly internalize the upside-down reality that the other side is always worse that "Trump tried to overturn an election and encouraged a mob to storm the capital" is just further proof of the deranged things Democrats do.
Not sure if Josh’s glowing introduction was more olive branch than honest belief but I personally found Batya rude, inflammatory and often incoherent. I was so disappointed by her continual evasions of Josh’s questions and thought she actually did a really poor job of representing a clear viewpoint. I have heard compassionate and convincing arguments for Trump support from people such as Darryl Cooper from Martytmade or other thoughtful political commentators who have steel manned the argument.
But I personally found this conversation very frustrating and not undertaken by Batya with any intention to be inform or engage in thoughtful debate. I admire Josh’s poise and his thoughts as always. His intent to bring on people of different perspectives is admirable and the content that he brings is absolutely incredible but without good will on two sides I do believe that there are some conversations not worth having, to me this felt like one of them. #toouncomfortable?
Batya makes Trump sound like a deep and nuanced thinker and problem solver (who happens to be a billionaire, but so what?) when one only has to listen to one of his unintelligible, vulgar speeches to understand that the opposite is true. The mind keeps on boggling…
We could’ve had Bernie Sanders in 2016… Instead we get this douche bag. Could have been fighting for actual human rights and dignity, instead fighting for regressive economic goals of “maybe we manufacture some more stuff in the US again”. Truly pathetic that this is the vision of the right, and equally pathetic of the left to keep anointing centrist politicians who don’t even come close to meeting the moment we’re in.
The guest was very interesting and articulate in her conversation. Fascinating that she started out as a leftie but due to modern left ideology has swung to pro trump .. the fantastic way she described working class as despising “govt benefits “ and want the dignity of real work was so simple yet powerful . The only downside was Josh clearly disagreed on many points and spoke over her often and didn’t let her facts and research tell the story . I was hoping of hearing more from the expert than opinion’s from the host. I do love Josh’s podcasts for the high calibre of guests but would have loved to hear more from her and a little less of the host.