Inauguration Episode Two: Josh & the Anti-Trumper, David Frum

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Comedy Interviews, Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education, Comedy

4.6 • 863 Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Well, it's Trump's Inauguration. Again. On our previous episode, "Inauguration Episode One", Josh interviewed a pro-Trumper. Today, expand your thinking about the best- and worst-case scenarios of Trump's second term with a searingly cogent counter-opinion.

David Frum is one of the most influential conservative "Never Trumpers". He worked in the White House as President George W Bush's speechwriter, and is now a staff writer at The Atlantic. He wrote the books Trumpocracy (2018) and Trumpocalypse (2020).

Enjoy this bracing analysis from one of the most rigorous defenders of conservatism against the tide of right-wing populism. It's a conversation you don't want to miss.

We've kept this episode free, outside the paywall, as a public service. If you appreciate it, please consider whether you really need to free-ride or if you could subscribe at the Uncomfy Convos Substack page.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Gahy humans. Well I'm about as far away as you can get from the hullabaloo of the inauguration,
0:11.9	both metaphorically and literally. For those of you watching the YouTube, you will see that I am standing
0:19.3	in front of a South Pacific volcano and the lapping shores of the South Pacific on an overwater bungalow.
0:28.3	On an island that you can only get to, by taking a boat from another island that you can only get to by taking a dash 8,
0:35.0	from another island that you can only get to by taking a dash 8 from another island that you can only get to by taking a dash 8
0:37.8	from one of the smallest and most dysfunctional but beautiful developing world capital cities
0:46.1	in the south pacific i'm in the solomon islands which is a fly speck archipelago of tropical
0:54.0	paradise wedged somewhere between Australia and Hawaii
0:57.7	is probably as best one needs to place it around Palau, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu.
1:05.2	And I cannot explain, talk about like first world insights here, I cannot explain how good it is to not be consuming 24-hour news at the moment.
1:17.8	That being said, this is a terrific cracker of an episode. The last episode, I basically wanted to tee up inauguration with a conversation with two Republicans.
1:29.2	One, a pro-Trump Republican.
1:31.2	That was the last episode that you heard with Baccia Angasagan.
1:34.7	And one with a never-trop Republican.
1:37.6	Today's guest, David Frum.
1:39.7	David's one of my favorite conservative thinkers in America.
1:45.7	He probably needs no introduction,
1:51.6	but I'll just give you a potted reminder. He was a speechwriter in the White House for George W. Bush. He was considered instrumental in the sort of lead up to the Iraq war. He coined
1:57.7	the most famous phrase of George W. Bush's presidency, the axis of evil, which was
2:02.4	given at his State of the Union after the September 11 terrorist attacks and before the invasion
2:07.7	of Iraq. And over the course of the subsequent couple of decades has become a more and more
2:13.1	principled voice against the derangement of the Republican Party and was one of the earliest and most prominent anti-Trump
	...

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