Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is expected to arrive within 3 to 5 years and will be the greatest and most disruptive scientific discovery of mankind, yet neither Trump nor Harris mentioned it during the 2024 election campaign or in any debate.

Inflation was the most important factor in Trump's election victory; when inflation rises it affects everybody, and historically Presidents have been toppled by inflation—Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson are examples.

People felt a loss of control due to accelerated change in America over the past 10 years: changes in retail (cashiers without baseball hats), bathroom/gender norms, workplace automation (robots being introduced into offices), and social norms all disrupted people's sense of home, work, and normalcy simultaneously.

Trump's campaign used the metaphor of 'a wall' to appeal to voters seeking to stop rapid change and return to a simpler past; the most important word in 'Make America Great Again' is 'again,' which evokes a desire to return to an earlier era.

Friedman's book 'What You Say When You Listen' explains that listening is a sign of respect, and when people perceive respect they allow difficult truths to be communicated to them; conversely, without perceived respect, even trivial statements ('it's dark outside') are rejected.

Friedman changed his New York Times business card around 2015 from 'Foreign Affairs Columnist' to 'Humiliation and Dignity Columnist' because he discovered his career was primarily about covering people acting out their humiliation and seeking dignity—from Putin to China to Palestinians to religious minorities.

Friedman experienced a Promethean moment—a historical moment where new technology or ideas force comprehensive change across all domains: work, governance, learning, commerce, warfare, and crime prevention—and has observed four such moments: the printing press, the Scientific Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.

The current Promethean moment is unique in being driven not by a single technology but by two supercycles: a technology supercycle (ability to sense, digitize, connect, process, learn, share, and act, amplified by AI and embedded in everything from watches to toasters to F-35s to computers) and a climate supercycle (emissions, warming, ice melt, ocean current and wind pattern changes, and extreme weather).

Trump's early appointments (Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, others) are outrageous and not reflective of actual governing competence; they raise serious concerns about Trump's judgment and his ability to attract and retain the best people during a complicated global moment.

The job of US Secretary of State has become the worst job in the world due to geopolitical complexity; modern Secretaries of State (like Tony Blinken) face 'poly-actors' in every region—Hamas (military and political wings), Hezbollah (Lebanese political and militant wings), Syrian government, Iranians, Russians, and Turks—making diplomacy vastly more complicated than in the Cold War or post-Cold War eras.

Friedman's environmental tutor Johan Rockström (director of the Potsdam Institute in Germany) published a book titled 'Poly Crisis' describing the current state as no longer simply a climate crisis but rather a 'poly crisis' where climate change drives agricultural decline, which drives internal migration, external migration, and state collapse—multiple interconnected crises.

Gaza War was a factor in Harris's loss; though it's counterintuitive, dissatisfaction with Harris's handling of Gaza caused some voters not to vote, which worked against her while potentially benefiting Trump.

Friedman endorsed Kamala Harris and voted for her publicly, though he has never spoken to her (only once bumped into her).

Henry Kissinger brokered the 1974 Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreements in three months using three phone calls to clear state actors (Israeli PM Golda Meir, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad), producing what Friedman calls 'tic-tac-toe three across' (three disengagement agreements: Egypt-Israel-Syria).

The New York Times employs five of the best conservative columnists in the business (David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Brett Stephens, David French, and John McArthur), and readers of their work would not have been subject to the claimed liberal bias in coverage.

Friedman has shifted his focus from politics to physics, believing that 'the sheer weight of things changing' (Mother Nature's laws of chemistry, biology, and physics) is more consequential than anything humans can control or persuade, and Mother Nature 'always bats last and always bats a thousand.'

Putin has described Trump as 'the American Gorbachev'—the leader who might bring the system down from within—and Putin likely sees this with glee.

Biden should have resigned after his poor debate performance; he should never have run again, and instead there should have been a proper primary with a competitive field where all issues could have been laid out.

Donald Trump is a unique figure in political history—entertaining, outrageous, crude, dishonest, and criminal—yet Friedman has maintained a journalistic relationship with him and once was quoted favorably by Trump regarding the Abraham Accords, after which Trump called to compliment him.

Trump's promise to 'end the Ukraine war in a day' is a specific claim that sounds attractive to some voters, but Trump has not articulated a coherent plan for what that would entail.