Bret Weinstein Argues for an Andrew Yang/William H. McRaven Presidential Ticket

Right. How did we get here? It's 2020. We are facing a global pandemic, which incidentally I do want to talk to you about. Okay. We are facing a global pandemic. We are facing rioting in the streets, a movement that's showing signs of a Maoist challenge to the most fundamental aspects of the West. Right. And we are going to have to choose between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. What? Like neither one of these people is capable of or inclined towards the kind of leadership that you have just described we would need. Agreed. So that means at a very, at the very least, if we do not divert our course, right, if November comes and we are choosing between those two, then that means we're putting off any solution at least four years because the president, the president would be essential to changing our course. Right. And this is just built into these parties now. Right. Obama. I can't figure out why it's the case. I really like Obama personally. He seems like the right guy to me, but his administration at a policy level was indistinguishable from Bush. In some ways it was worse. So what we've got is parties that decide what we get to choose from. And the game is to prevent us from having any choice that could possibly solve the problem. So we have to fix that. We have to address that problem and we have to break their stranglehold. And, you know, in fairness, Trump was a challenge to that two-party duopoly. He's not really a Republican, right? But he's also not really an alternative. It's like a third crime family, right? Yeah. You've got the Republicans, the Democrats, and now the Democrats. He sort of co-opted their ideology to fit his needs. Yeah. But it's not a solution. Right. So we have to get that solution, which means we have to get by the parties. Trump proved that was possible. Right. I think if there was ever a time where an independent party has a chance, now is the time. If someone steps in and has a real solution, and also in terms of the distribution of that information, now is the time. Because you could just post something on YouTube where you're demonstrating, like, through a step-by-step process, you could take hours to do it. Like, this is what I want to do and this is how I'm going to do it. You could break those down to clips, almost like a podcast. And if someone was a person of substance that we really believed in, we said, that person can really do this. This actually could happen. Let's vote independent. It could happen. They don't have a monopoly on the distribution of information anymore. And that's terrifying to them because they used to be able to count on the shills on the left and the right to get the word out for them. But they don't have that anymore. You have so many people that really don't have an ideological foundation in either one of them that are talking and they're reaching millions of people. That's a rare moment in time. And this is, in my opinion, the very best time for someone to step in that's not, they're not compliant. They don't have to give it, they don't need that policy machine behind them or the political machine behind them. Well, I've got a plan. But we would have to find a really big podcast, I think, to get enough momentum. There's none of those out there. You haven't encountered a big podcast? No, they don't exist. Okay. All right. You want to hear the plan? Sure. Okay. The Rock and Jocko Willink. Get them together. Well, let's put that to the side. It's not part of the plan, but it actually could fit. Okay. So here's the plan. This plan needs a better name, but the working title is the Dark Horse Duo Plan. And the plan looks like this. We draft two individuals. We find two people. One of them is center left and one of them is center right. And these people have to have certain characteristics, a minimum set. They have to be patriotic. They have to be courageous, and they have to be highly capable. But that's it. Okay. Center left and a center right. And we pair them together. And we draft them with the following plan, that they will govern as a team. That is to say, every important decision will be discussed and they will decide what to do as a team. And only in cases where they cannot reach agreement or whether something has to be, whenever something has to be decided on a very short time scale, like a military decision, does the person who inhabits the role of the president govern alone. Okay. We draft these folks and then four years down the road, they switch. And the one who had run for president, now runs for the vice presidential spot. And the one who was vice president now runs for president. And they continue this way until one of two things happens. Either we vote someone else in, or one of them has inhabited the office of president twice and is no longer eligible. And that person has to be replaced. So we have a patriotic team governing together from center left and center right. When you say drafted, that's the problem. Like someone has to be motivated to ruin their fucking lives to try to run this country. Because that's what happens to everybody that does it. I agree. But then that's an obstacle. You're spelling out an obstacle that I would argue is solvable, that we know these people. Okay. So let's just say that's the plan so far. And we can talk about what problems it solves as much as you want. I feel like I should have a drink. You're welcome to have a drink. It's probably a good idea. I'm kidding, but go ahead. Okay. So here's my proposal. So the plan could be right. And my proposal for who we draft could be wrong. And I'm happy to see other people swapped in. Okay. But my proposal would be Admiral William McRaven on the right. You know who that is? No, I don't. Okay. He is a Navy SEAL, former Navy SEAL. He was until 2018, the chancellor of the University of Texas. He is a very cogent center right Republican. He was the lead on the bin Laden raid. And he is, I think universally respected by people who know him. I've never heard anybody say negative things about him. On the center left. Let me see this gentleman. I want you to look at his face. Yeah, you're gonna know. Oh, yeah, I have seen that guy before. I like it. It was like a president to me. Yeah, it looks like a president to me too. You know who else looks like a president to me? Andrew Yang. I'm down with that. Okay. So like what you're saying now. Good. So here's my point. Those two guys together. Is that camera on? Yes. Admiral, your country needs you. It really does. Never more than now. And I know that the job of president is a sucky one. I'm sure the job of vice president's even worse. But please consider this plan because the Republic is in jeopardy. Now we already know that Andrew Yang is up for the job because he ran for office. Yes. And faced appallingly stupid obstacles that in my opinion may be the reason that he's not the nominee. So here we got two people. One of them I think will do so out of duty. The other is crazy enough to want the job in the first place. And what are they? Well, they're both patriots. They're both courageous and they're both highly capable. This is the road out. I don't know the Navy SEAL gentlemen, but... McRaven. But Andrew Yang has some really good ideas. Yeah. I mean, and reasonable ideas across the board. And in terms of many things, not just universal basic income, which was the thing that he was most popular for, but even law enforcement. He's got some great ideas about a lot of things. He thinks outside the box, a brilliant guy. Open to anything? Yes. Very reasonable. So I would suggest one last part of the plan, right? Which is that we Americans have to get over the idea that when somebody runs for office, especially the office of the president, that the right reaction is to ask them a million questions about what they will do in office, what policies they advocate. This is absurd. Presidents don't make policy. They certainly influence what policy is made. But the important thing about a president is that they listen to the right sorts of people and that they have a mind capable of processing what they hear so that they can integrate the information necessary. And in the case of this plan, we're talking about two people who would do that as a team. So what I would really be interested in as they are running against Trump and Biden is hearing who it is that they would bring into an administration. How would they make decisions about the things that matter to us? And figuring out who they would bring in, I think is bound to be far more informative than dogging them about what they're going to do about healthcare and how they're going to pay for it. The thing about asking someone what they're going to do though is it does influence people whether or not they're willing to vote for that person. They want to see a plan. I know what you're saying as a reasonable person who understands the system, but for the average American, they do want to see a plan to how to get out of a lot of the messes that we see. Well, you know, the funny thing is we think a lot of things are true about what people want. For one thing, we've been told that people are stupid and that, you know, they're hopeless. And if, you know, I mean, you're really one of the earliest innovators here. You have found that people that we've been told have an attention span so short that they can only deal with a sitcom are interested in a three-hour conversation about complex topics with people from all over the map, right? People are ready to listen. And what I'm trying to say is we have a wrong idea, right, in our sense of what elections are. And really that wrong idea isn't even about the fact that we think we want to hear the plan. It's about the fact that we know that our power in the system is so limited that the only way we could possibly exert any influence on the policy that gets made is if we can get somebody to promise us something into a camera enough that they're embarrassed not to do it when they get an office. And we also know that doesn't work. Right. As soon as they get in the office, they just do whatever they're going to do in the next place. So my point would be, look, I will literally vote for any competent, courageous patriot. I actually don't care in what direction they're ruling. Yes, I would prefer that they were progressive because I believe we need to make progress or we will perish. But any courageous, capable patriot is good enough because a courageous, capable patriot will do way better than we are doing with the current method.