Honestly with Bari Weiss

By: The Free Press
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  • Summary

  • The most interesting conversations in American life happen in private. This show brings them out of the closet. Stories no one else is telling and conversations with the most fascinating people in the country, every week from The Free Press, hosted by former New York Times and Wall Street Journal journalist Bari Weiss.
    © 2021 Honestly with Bari Weiss
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Politics & Government Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • How Republics Unravel: From Rome to . . . America?

    How Republics Unravel: From Rome to . . . America?
    Sep 26 2024
    Last week, a man armed with an assault rifle was apprehended on a southern Florida golf course. He was planning to murder Donald Trump on the links. It was the second near miss in two months. It seems likely that the shooter, Ryan Routh, was acting alone. But he is not alone in the hatred he has for Trump. He shares that with millions of Americans. In many people’s eyes, the 45th president of the United States is an existential threat to our republic. And ever since Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, his opponents have treated him as such. They were shocked because Trump broke many of the rules of modern politics. From the minor to the unprecedentedly major. This dynamic between Trump and his haters has changed the chemistry of American politics. In 2016, Trump shocked the country when he led rallies where his adoring fans chanted, “Lock her up.” Eight years later, crowds chant “Lock him up” at Kamala Harris’s rallies. In this respect, Routh is part of a larger problem that is tearing our country apart. When the other side vying for power is considered so beyond the pale, the norms of political decorum and fairness are worth breaking to stop an opponent that threatens our very system. You hear it from both parties. Trump is an “extinction-level event.” If Kamala wins, our country will become “Venezuela on steroids.” One escalation begets the next, until the old customs and rules of our politics have changed forever. We take it for granted today that we settle our elections with voting and not shooting. But republics don’t last forever. And when they fall, violence almost always follows. What leads a republic to choose the gun over the ballot? Because it doesn’t happen all at once, at least if history is any guide. In ancient Rome, the rule-breaking of one man—and the response of his enemies—created a crisis from which the Roman republic never really recovered. His name was Tiberius Gracchus. And while they were different in many ways, he was the Donald Trump of his day. Tiberius, like Trump, was an elite who turned on the elites, a class traitor who channeled the resentments and anger of the common man against a system rigged against him. Both men disregarded the unwritten political rules of their era. And, in turn, those norm violations prompted their enemies to disregard the rules themselves. In Rome, this cycle led to bloodshed and eventually the death of the republic itself. In America, we remain a republic, for now, but the cycle of escalations between Trump and his opponents strains our foundations like no political crisis since the civil war. Today, Eli Lake explains what the beginning of the end of the Roman republic tells us about the fate of our own republic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 mins
  • Why Senator Rand Paul Hasn’t Endorsed Trump

    Why Senator Rand Paul Hasn’t Endorsed Trump
    Sep 24 2024
    If you’re a listener of this show, then you’ve probably heard of the horseshoe theory. It’s basically this idea that when you go far enough to the left and far enough to the right, the voices start to sound pretty similar. This is certainly the case when you listen to sound bites of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump talk about trade and tariffs. But during this time—what my colleague Peter Savodnik has called our great political scramble—some voices don’t seem to fit in anywhere, voices like that of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Senator Paul is a bit of an anomaly on the American right. He’s traditionally libertarian, pro free trade, pro market, and anti subsidy. He’s a deficit hawk and criticizes both Trump and Biden on spending, and he is one of just seven senators who still refuses to endorse Trump. He says it’s over the $1.9 trillion deficit. Senator Paul says to lower the deficit we’d need to cut military spending, cut Medicaid, cut Medicare, and cut Social Security. But neither Republicans nor Democrats will go near those sacred cows these days. All of these attributes make him an endangered species in a party that is less fiscally conservative, more protectionist, and increasingly anti immigration—all positions that are antithetical to Rand Paul’s libertarian worldview. At the same time, Senator Paul is having somewhat of a renaissance when it comes to his foreign policy outlook. The new right and the MAGA movement are the opposite of the Reagan-era neocons skeptical of our ambitions abroad, and firmly against the “forever wars.” All stances Senator Paul agrees with. Today, we talk to Senator Paul to find out how he fits into the new right, when Republicans stopped caring about balancing the budget, why he wants to cut military spending, and cut aid to Israel. We ask if the U.S. can remain the world’s hegemon, while spending less, and if that’s even still a worthy goal, and finally, how Donald Trump and J.D. Vance totally lost the plot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    45 mins
  • Hezbollah's Pagers and Walkie-Talkies Explode. Now What?

    Hezbollah's Pagers and Walkie-Talkies Explode. Now What?
    Sep 19 2024
    On Tuesday, hundreds of encrypted pagers in Lebanon and Syria began exploding at the same time. Lebanon’s health minister said Tuesday that at least nine people were killed and 2,800 were injured. The tiny country’s hospitals were overwhelmed with patients suffering from burn wounds, blown-up hands, and groin injuries. The pagers belonged to members of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Then, just 24 hours later, a second wave of thousands more explosions again went off simultaneously in Lebanon: This time not only pagers, but also walkie-talkies all belonging to Hezbollah terrorists. It was the stuff of spy movies—an incredibly sophisticated and precise operation unlike anything we’ve seen before. And while Israel has not officially taken responsibility, this kind of imaginative sabotage has Mossad written all over it. Hezbollah has vowed retaliation against Israel. This comes after almost a year of Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel. Since October 7, the constant barrage of attacks has forced some 100,000 Israelis to flee their homes on Israel’s northern border. Nearly a year later, they still cannot return. All of this, of course, is part of a much larger, more dangerous game being played across the region—Israel’s shadow war with Iran, its most formidable adversary. For years, Israel and Iran have avoided direct conflict, preferring to fight through Iran’s regional surrogates—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen. All of them fueled by Iranian money, weapons, and ideology. Will Israel’s alleged tactical brilliance this week—jokingly dubbed as Operation Below the Belt on social media—deter Hezbollah from continuing to launch the missiles and rockets into Israel that make it impossible for Israeli citizens to return home? Or is military intervention—a ground invasion—inevitable? As Eli Lake wrote in The Free Press today, “Israel cannot defeat its enemies by waging war only in the shadows.” Today, I sat down with journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dexter Filkins to talk about all of it. Dexter has been covering wars in the Middle East for decades for The New York Times and The New Yorker, and has been called “the premier combat journalist of his generation.” In our conversation, we discussed the state of the war, political divisions within Lebanon, Iran’s nuclear program, the viability of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, and the difficulties for the United States of disengaging from Middle East conflicts. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 mins

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