#2465 - Michael Shellenberger

**Joe Rogan** (0:03)
The Joe Rogan Experience.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:06)
Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

**Joe Rogan** (0:12)
Good to see you, sir.

**Michael Shellenberger** (0:13)
Thanks for having me back.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:14)
My pleasure, always. So much crazy shit going on in the world, and even before we scheduled this, like more crazy stuff has happened. The war broke out, all kinds of things.

**Michael Shellenberger** (0:26)
Yeah. How are you feeling about the President Trump?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:31)
That's an open-ended question.

**Michael Shellenberger** (0:34)
Do you text with him and talk to him?

**SPEAKER_4** (0:35)
Occasionally. Yeah, occasionally he'll send me a text. I get these, like, true social posts of, you know, things that he's saying, but this whole fucking Iran thing, man, like, did you see this coming?

**Michael Shellenberger** (0:50)
No, definitely. I don't know, I mean, who did? I mean, when did he even decide?
You know, their national security strategy they put out in November basically just said, we've degraded their capacity, it's a win. There was no sense in which there would be additional action. I think it ushers in a new paradigm, completely, like, the older post-war era is just over. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, articulated that at the World Economic Forum, probably better than the Trump administration did, saying very clearly that older rules-based order is gone. You saw AOC try to sort of articulate it, but she sort of fell apart at the Munich Security Conference in February. So this is an administration that is, I mean, and I don't even think they're thinking. I wrote a piece, and I decided not to publish it, because I was sort of like, decapitation doesn't really work for regime change. But it's not clear that they're really out for regime change, or they're just asserting power, shaking up things. I mean, some of it's art of the deal, changing the person that we're negotiating with. That's Venezuela and Iran. Is it really going to change those regimes? I don't think most people don't think so. But I'm not sure that that's what they're going for. They're just going for an assertion of American power in service of American interests. And then what happens in Iran, what happens in Venezuela, I don't think they care that much about. At least they're not behaving as though they do.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:08)
Well, neither thing made any sense to me. The Venezuela thing, I mean, look, they wanted him out forever. And he definitely stole the election to get in there in the first place. And he was a dictator. But at least that one was at least clean. They go in, kidnap him, get him out. This one's nuts. Like, and what's happening in Tel Aviv? It's hard to know what's real and what's not, because there's a lot of fake video going around and a lot of weird posts on X. So it's, you know, when I do peek in, it's hard to know. And you have to listen to Grok. And then Grok's dismantling a lot of the fake videos.

**Michael Shellenberger** (2:51)
What are the fake videos that you're thinking of in Tel Aviv?

**SPEAKER_4** (2:53)
Fake videos of, you know, like an insane amount of bombs dropping down on the city. But it seems like there's a massive amount of destruction in Tel Aviv.

**Michael Shellenberger** (3:03)
Yeah, I haven't checked in lately, but I'm assuming. Was that just today or?

**SPEAKER_4** (3:06)
Yesterday?

**Michael Shellenberger** (3:07)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:07)
Yeah.

**Michael Shellenberger** (3:10)
I mean, I think the president is, there's been some, you know, Rubio said something about how, oh, we had to act because we knew that Israel was going to act anyway. And I think people interpreted, and then Netanyahu was in the White House a lot. I think this president has shown whether you like him or not, you know, and there's certainly things that I'm unhappy about and have criticized. But I think Trump is in charge, like he's making these decisions. There's nobody behind him. There's nobody pulling for all of that. You know, the Russians or whoever, some of these, now the Israelis, you know, it's just he's clearly, I mean, Elon gave him, you know, 250 million dollars, and he still didn't give him even the electric car credit, you know, like, like Trump is in charge, you know, like I think that's one of the big lessons from this. And I don't think that I think that means that there's not a lot of like second order thinking here, like, oh, what's the move after that? He doesn't know. He's just acting. That's what's so wild about it, is that this older foreign policy establishment, which, you know, was like, let the experts decide what the right foreign policy, you know, all these think tanks, and that's just gone now. It's just irrelevant in this presidency. And I don't think it will come back. Like, if you get a Gavin Newsom or a President AOC, I don't...