Lex Fridman is an enormously popular interviewer whose recent sit-down with former President Donald Trump produced numerous soundbites that echoed through the social media ecosystem.
Fridman portrays himself as an open-minded interlocutor who is mainly interested in a “good-faith chat about life, philosophy, and ideas that hopefully helps reveal our common humanity.”
Here’s my conversation with @realDonaldTrump
It’s here on X in full, and is up everywhere else too. Links in comment.
Timestamps:
0:00 – Introduction
1:09 – Psychology of winning and losing
3:51 – Politics is a dirty game
5:28 – Business vs politics
8:04 – War in Ukraine
9:53 -… pic.twitter.com/64pCfH8JPs
— Lex Fridman (@lexfridman) September 3, 2024
Fridman’s “good-faith” self-description is one that Trump-supporting centibillionaire X owner Elon Musk agrees with, as he seconded Fridman’s invitation to top Democrats to join Fridman for interviews.
Forwarding Fridman’s post about wanting to interview big name progressives like Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, her running mate Tim Walz, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, Musk wrote: “They should take you up on the offer. You are super fair.”
They should take you up on the offer. You are super fair. https://t.co/gQDuScRfWB
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 5, 2024
But where Musk sees “super fair,” other far-right voices see capitulation in Fridman’s professed neutrality.
In a post from August when Fridman claimed a middle ground by saying he believed Trump was not a fascist and Harris was not a communist, he was vilified in the comments by those who think Harris keeps old copies of The Daily Worker under her pillow.
[NOTE: Fridman said to Trump directly during their talk that he was among the many who do not believe Harris is a communist, to which Trump indicated that the name-calling — “Commie Kamala” he calls the Vice President — was a case of fighting “fire with fire” in the “dirty” business of politics.]
I think that neither Trump nor Harris will destroy America if elected president.
Call me crazy, but I think that Trump is not a fascist and Harris is not a communist.
I think this is a reasonable rational position, but according to the internet it’s insane
Either way,…
— Lex Fridman (@lexfridman) August 9, 2024
Yet for many MAGA adherents, calling Harris a communist is not a rhetorical political weapon (as Trump implies) — instead, they mean it literally. And they believe those who don’t see view her as such are naive.
That makes Fridman’s stance untenable in the MAGAverse, and he is attacked for it. A representative X post is below:
This is the only reason your show is “allowed” to trend: Because you are willfully blind to reality and bend over backwards to ignore the evils of Marxism while straddling centrist views. Ignoring the deliberate destruction of our constitutional republic is not a “rational”…
— HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) August 14, 2024
[NOTE: Fridman, a computer scientist born in the Soviet Union who spent his early childhood in Moscow, might know more about communism than some of his critics.]
Still, Fridman admits in the post above that he has become exhausted by the abuse he faces merely for entertaining the notion that the extreme labels hung on both candidates are political hyperbole — and not very useful for that reason.
“Getting attacked by both sides has been mentally exhausting for me,” Fridman writes in a lament. “Perhaps that’s the design of the current political climate: anyone with moderate open-mindedness needs to be pushed out in favor of a ‘battle’ between dogmatic extremes. This doesn’t seem like the right path toward truth.”