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Pundit Portrait: Bret Stephens

Peter and Michael discuss Bret Stephens, the snitching, climate change-denying, racist creep who is gainfully employed by The New York Times.

You can play this episode directly through Patreon or use our RSS feed to add it to your podcast app. Here are the instructions from Patreon.

As always, leave your suggestions for bonus episodes in the comments!

Comments

Wait ... who is the transphobe on TikTok who dresses up in beautiful clothes and perfect make-up to make fun of trans people?

Bea

There's probably not enough to do a "Pundit Portrait" but I would be fascinated to hear Michael and Peter's opinions and thoughts about Will Stancil lol

Dalton Runberg

Book request: Magic Words, what to say to get your way by Jonah Berger. its very 'will you' vs 'can you' psychology that one of you might enjoy talking about... 👀

Mike Waite

whenever you guys mention books you’re reading separately in the podcast, can you put them in the description for later easy access? tysm

Erin Nyren

Politely requesting a Pundit Portrait on Ezra Klein.

Daniela

Please talk about 'Thinking Fast and Slow.' I work for a fiscal department in a public school district that has a new boss with a Masters from Yale who's decided we'll have a dept. book club and that's our first book. I'm imaging him highjacking meetings and making us give recaps or read aloud paragraphs. I want to give the brutal truth on this peon to feedback loops.

Julie B.

Thanks for finally doing the Bret Stephens episode. I never paid attention to pundits until listening to IBCK and when I saw the Bret Stephen's article about Gaza, I wanted so badly to hear you guys talk about it. Wish granted ✨️ I have a lot of Israeli friends and I hear a lot of these same arguments, but don't have the intelligence to rebut them, so this episode is gold to me.

Kevin Bice

God damn I love you guys so much. I've listened to every episode of every podcast either of you have made. I've listened to every episode and bonus of IBCK multiple times.

Kevin Bice

I love the Pundit Portrait genre of IBCK more than I can say.

Meredith Mullins

This is a weird way to find out that Bret Stephen’s has a complex bedbug humiliation fetish.

ES

Lamb-baste.

ES

32:10 it’s never wrong to do a lamb baste

James Crew

I'm not smart enough for these pundit portrait episodes 🥲

Heiða Kristín

“empathy her up” and “build a bridge” lolol

Addie Bednar

Hating Muslims is one component, but there are others that all push them toward the same direction: - Islamophobia/anti-Arab racism (especially after 9/11) - overt antisemitism being broadly unpopular/reviled (though this has waned post Cold War) - cynical appreciation of Israel's usefulness as an American proxy in the Middle East I appreciate the question was about Jews, not Israelis, but here's the thing, right wingers do not. Hell, Richard Spencer - out and out nazi - has approvingly cited Israel *because* it engages in segregation and oppression of Muslims.

Cree Merr

Okay I feel like this is a safe space to ask a question I would sincerely like an answer to. How did the right wing go from Jews are lizard people controlling the world and the media to such “””staunch””” defenders of Jews? Why? Is it just that they hate Muslims more/they’re an easier target? It has really confused me but I’m scared of the things I’ll find if I try to google it.

Seancé Knowles

Okay so I know that nobody here really needs to be told this but can we just stop for a minute on Bret's "the entire Muslim world is intellectually bankrupt" argument? Like yeah it's racist as hell, but it's also only true if you ignore *more than a THOUSAND years of human history.* Damascus and Baghdad were, for a time, the absolute premier centers of learning and innovation in the entire world. Islamic scholars were highly valued members of society and produced vast amounts of new knowledge that is still used today. (To be extremely clear though: even if this weren't true, Bret's argument would still be racist and shitty and bad.) Between this bullshit and the climate change stuff and the campus SA stuff, I really feel like Bret's calling card is "take the things that are the MOST true and the MOST easy to prove and that have the MOST evidence, and just pretend they don't exist like a toddler without object permanence." And not in like a clever way or anything - just straight-up saying "nuh-uh, no it isn't" over and over again. Basically, his work is bad and he should feel bad. (Sorry - I just spent an hour yelling at my phone, so I decided to yell about it here instead to get it off my chest. Feel free to ignore me as needed.)

Astraea

I love how the answer to Bret Stephens’ question about “Why are there so many great Jews?” is that people like Bret Stephens exist to balance the scales and bring the average back down

Brett


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