#1485 - Krystal & Saagar

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Here we go, we're rolling. What's up? Good to see you guys.

It's always weird to meet somebody when you watch a lot of the YouTube content or TV content, and then you're like, you're real.

Krystal Ball (0:13)

I could touch your hands.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

Let's, you know, we all feel about each other that way. It's very odd. It is a strange dynamic. I love you guys.

Krystal Ball (0:24)

Thank you, well same, we feel the same.

Joe Rogan (0:26)

You guys are honest. I mean, we were talking about that early. Like, it's so rare that someone is just calling it like it is, like what you see.

And obviously, you guys don't agree on everything, and you know, no one does, but right? We all have varying opinions, but you say what you feel.

And that is so valuable today. It's so unusual. It's just such a weird, partisan time.

Krystal Ball (0:48)

It is a weird, partisan time. Like, it's never been harder to actually just do that thing. And I can't say, I mean, we don't get it right all the time.

But the whole idea was to try to have this conversation between kind of the new left and the new right that wasn't happening anywhere in a way that was valuing people's humanity, that was trying to deal in the land of the honest, not cheerleading a team or the other, but actually trying to be straightforward about what we think and evaluating the facts as we find them. And I mean, I have to say, you have somewhat created that space where that can happen. So I think we're in part indebted to you.

Saagar Enjeti (1:24)

And you know, it's crazy, I think the reason it works is because we both kind of came up in quasi-traditional background, right? Like Krystal came from the MSNBC world.

Like I was a White House correspondent. Like I worked with a lot of these traditional reporters and like, you know, I would do Fox News and all these other things. And it's always so frustrating when you're on TV. You get three and a half minutes to talk, right? Like I once did a segment on, you know, nationalism, which was two and a half minutes with three people on a panel. Like how are you supposed to get your point across?

And so when you're doing that and you see, like you can make an entire career in DC just sticking to the party line, no matter what these people believe, and you just spit out the talkers that they literally send you. They will send you talking points. They just say over and over again.

Joe Rogan (2:07)

Pull that sucker up. What is that like? What is the talking, like you get a sheet? We would like you to discuss.

Like what?

Saagar Enjeti (2:14)

Message of the day. Here's the message of the day. Here are your talking points. Top line, then you go and you turn on Fox News. You can hear it come out of their voice.

Krystal Ball (2:21)

Literally word for word.

Saagar Enjeti (2:22)

Turn on MSNBC. You can hear it word for word, from the Biden campaign to their surrogates. It's all planned, man. Like it's all from, nobody actually thinks for themself. And that, when we came together, like when we were hosting the show, that's what set us apart. I mean, I think that's why it's caught on.

Joe Rogan (2:37)

What's the incentive? Like is it the incentive access?

Saagar Enjeti (2:40)

Money.

Joe Rogan (2:41)

But I mean, for you to stay with the party line, with whatever.

Krystal Ball (2:43)

Oh, it's a lot safer. I mean, you know, it's not easy to sort of be out there on your own, you know, and I don't want to paint just sort of trying to be honest as a more noble act than it actually is. But it's very safe if you're within the party structure, if you're saying the things that they want you to say, there's a whole system set up for that, there's a career system set up for that. There's a system of protection. So you're allowed to be dramatically wrong on things like the Iraq War or things like the financial crisis. If you're wrong in the approved ways, right? If you're wrong in the non-approved ways, then you can get destroyed, canceled, all of those things. So it's a lot safer to stay within the bounds. And look, we're living that in real time right now.

Saagar Enjeti (3:27)

Oh my God.

Krystal Ball (3:28)

It's never been just with how fraught, you have pandemic where people are dying, you have Great Depression. So it's like the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression, and then you layer on top of that, like all the chaos of the 60s.