Saagar Enjeti on What Trump is Like in Real Life | Joe Rogan

So what would you have done, say if you had a magic wand and you were the president, like how do you mitigate this? This is my biggest frustration with the White House, which is that you have this populist president who actually understands very much why he got elected. But you have so many of the people- Crystal's rolling her eyes. Crystal doesn't like it. She's rolling her eyes, she's bobbing her head. She's got a lot of movement. She's got a lot of movement. But he has all these people who work for him from kind of the old regime. Basically was allowed to staff up. And those are the people who were like, let's cap the paycheck protection program. Who were like, hey, we just passed this $2.3 trillion plan or this, but let's look, wait and see how it goes as the unemployment numbers begin to take up mass small business failure, all these other things. And that's the fundamental tension of the Trump administration is that there was no professional populists, so to speak. There was no professional apparatus of people on the right who actually held and understood why Donald Trump is president of the United States. And this is what gets back to what I talked about earlier, about the incentive structure, about that system, the think tank, the revolving door. That is an effort to maintain power over the policy sphere. Because if you control that, it doesn't matter what the people think. It only matters what happens. Here's why I was making the faces. Because I mean, look, he's the president and he makes his own choices. And if he understood that there was this need to go more economically left and do it, then he could do it. But the reality is he spent his whole most of his political capital, his first term, giving away tax cuts to corporations, same thing any other Republican would have done. So that's why I sort of roll my eyes. I don't think he cares about anything outside of winning the day's news cycle. I really don't think he gives a shit about anything other than that. See, this is the thing, though. I mean, I've met Trump, I've interviewed him a couple of times, four times, I think. What is it like? Exactly what you see. Exactly what you see on TV. Same guy. Do you feel like you got through the layers to talk to a human? No, because he's always on. I don't think there's anything else. You don't think there's anything there? You know, my favorite thing I ever asked Trump, I was like, what are people going to remember you for in 100 years? And he was like, veteran's choice. And I was like, I'm going to go out on a land of veterans choice. That's probably not it, right? Jesus Christ. I mean, I've heard with me with Trump, like I'm in the Oval and you're like, man, that's where Kissinger was sitting. Like, man, this is the JFK picture. Eisenhower, like, I don't think he thinks about any of that. What did he mean by veteran's choice? That he was the veteran's choice? No, that he was taking care of veterans through like a veteran's health care program. He just started rattling off like why he would, you know, like all his, basically like the talking points and like why his great parents. But I realize I'm like, Trump lives completely in the moment and he doesn't really have that, like he doesn't really think about things in that historical context. Well, they say that during the briefings, he pays attention if his name's brought up. They throw his name in there every now and again. Just say it. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.