93: Encore Presentation: Our Own Worst Enemy with Tom Nichols
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.6 • 9.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 December 2021
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
This episode was originally released on August 19, 2021. In this encore presentation, host Reed Galen is joined by Author and Contributing Writer at The Atlantic Tom Nichols to discuss the lead-up and aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the mass disbelief in the medical community, and the state of our nation’s democracy through the lens of Tom’s new book, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gaelin. Today I'm joined by Tom Nichols. |
| 0:14.1 | He's a specialist in international security affairs including US Russia relations, nuclear |
| 0:18.8 | strategy, and NATO. Tom is also a contributing writer at the Atlantic and today has a book coming |
| 0:24.0 | out called Our Own Worst Enemy, the Assault from within on modern democracy. However, that all |
| 0:29.9 | pales in comparison to the fact that Tom is a five-time undefeated Jeopardy champion. |
| 0:34.7 | Tom, let me just say this, I once went to Burbank to try out for Jeopardy. I did not make it. |
| 0:40.3 | Still one of my most shaming moments in my life. But welcome to the show. |
| 0:44.5 | Thank you, Reed. And there is no shame in flunking the Jeopardy test. It wipes out about 95% of the |
| 0:49.8 | applicants. So, you know, it just means that you're a normal intelligent person. Well, I like to |
| 0:55.6 | think so. So Tom, I want to talk about a few things today. Later on, I want to talk about your |
| 1:00.8 | new book, Our Own Worst Enemy. And I want to talk about this idea of this sort of mass denial and |
| 1:05.6 | diversion from reality that we see in so many Americans now, whether or not it's COVID vaccines |
| 1:10.4 | or elections or whatever. But first, I want to talk about Afghanistan and what we've seen in the |
| 1:15.4 | past week or so as American troops pulled out. We see these scenes of chaos at the airport, |
| 1:21.6 | just the horrific scenes of people falling from the landing gear of aircraft taking off. |
| 1:26.1 | And you wrote an article for the Atlantic this week called Afghanistan is your fault. |
| 1:30.8 | The American public now has what it wanted. So, let's get into that. We saw that the Taliban took |
| 1:36.6 | Kabul, the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country with apparently like $160 million |
| 1:42.6 | in cash. He just popped up in the UAE. On our last podcast, Rick Wilson and Trigby Olsen gave |
| 1:48.2 | our thoughts on the situation over there as well as a reaction to Biden's address. So, Tom, |
| 1:53.1 | you have an interesting take on what's going on. And I read your article. So, how do you see what's |
| 1:58.0 | unfolded here in the past few days? I think it's really important. First of all, to draw a distinction |
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