Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Trump’s Destruction Of America’s Military Culture + Why Chuck Isn’t Worried About Trump’s Election Denialism

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - Trump’s Destruction Of America’s Military Culture + Why Chuck Isn’t Worried About Trump’s Election Denialism · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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  Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
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  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
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  Speaker 1: When I like about these Chapter folks, I've spent time
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  Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Hello there, Happy Monday,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Welcome to I don't want to call it a super
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: sized episode. I don't want to fear that somehow it's
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: super long, but I'm going to get into a lot
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of topics. Obviously, man, did a lot happen over seventy
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: two hours, let alone ninety six hours. When you start
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: to put things together, I'm going to try to deal
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: with what I think are the stories worth focusing on,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: including one the issue of how alarmed should we be
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: by the president and what happened last Thursday night. Let's
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: just say I'm in a calibrated place that probably many
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of you aren't, and i'll explain on that. What to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: expect with a run is on the agenda, the latest
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: on ICE, which frankly only reinforces, and the reason I
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: want to get to this Ice story what I presented
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: to you on Thursday, which is the initial problem with
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: ICE was how they recruited their agents, and sure enough,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: a massive this is clearly a massive recruiting problem in
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: the incident in Maine. So we'll have more on that,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and let me tell you, we're going to go to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the toodcast campaign notebook and focus on all things Wisconsin.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: To just put it real simply before I get to
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the details, take the California gov panic right after x
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Swallwell had to drop out. Combine it with the Grand
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Platner panic that took place in Maine, and put it
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: together and you get the mess that is Wisconsin, Governor.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It is not a Wisconsin story. This is a story
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party of the last ten years all
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: coming to a head in Wisconsin. Today's Monday, which means
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: we go back in the toodcast time machine. We're going
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to go back to the late fifties and the most
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: amazing televised debate between two world leaders that we'd ever seen.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to make the case for how that
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: debate is actually still taking place right here in the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: United States. And we'll do some questions. But look, I'm
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: going to start with many of you know I sort
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: of look. I'll be honest. I dance around my second
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: headquarters here. I if for those of you who don't know,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time in Pensacola, specifically Pensacola Beach.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Why do I bring this up? Because the pride of
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Pensacola Beach is the Blue Angels and This past weekend
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: was Blues weekend Blues Week as it's known here. Why
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: is it known as Blues Week because it is an
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: entire week's worth of events for the locals to celebrate
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the Blue Angels. Pensacola is the home of the Blue Angels.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: This is their home base, Pensacola Naval Air Station, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: this is always the last stop on the tour, right
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: before they take a break and then restart their tour
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of the country and frankly, of the world. Right the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Navy has the Blue Angels, the Air Force has the Thunderbirds.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I have had the privilege of seeing both over the years.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I obviously am partial to my home, my my adopted
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: home of Pensacola Beach and the Blue Angels. But considering
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: that what happened during Blues Week became a bit of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a meme, I thought I would do a little bit
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of a of a of a fact check here for you,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: because you've, if you've paid it all attention to the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Blue Angels this weekend, you paid attention to one issue,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: this low flyover that one of the h that one
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: of the Blue Angels took over Pensacola Beach, and of
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: course sort of got immediately tied to the flyovers, the
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: illegal flyovers that have been taking place by various pilots
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: in the Pentagon, where Pete egg Seth is not only
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: not disciplined, he is you know, remember Kid Rock got
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: a flyover which again probably should have led to either
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: firings or you know, some sort of actual punishment, and instead,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: so there's been this assumption that this is all part
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: of Pete eggs as destruction of the American military. And yes,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: let's be honest, what he's doing, I'm going to get
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: into the low tee and a little bit as well.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: His leadership of the Pentagon is just awful. What he's doing,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the way he is trying to essentially reimagine what the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: American soldier looks like for the American people and for
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the world, it's pretty un American decide. I mean, we've
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: had some bad defense secretaries. Pete egg Seth is basically says,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: hold my beer, I'm going to be the worst of
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: all time. And just little things that he does. These
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  Speaker 1: guys are the gang that can't shoot straight. Thank goodness,
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  Speaker 1: we have enough generals that know what they're doing so
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  Speaker 1: that at least we're not having war crimes being committed
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  Speaker 1: on our behalf. But I want to point that out
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  Speaker 1: because Pete Hegseth didn't bother to find out what actually happened.
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  Speaker 1: He just immediately assumed that he was just going to
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  Speaker 1: quote own the Libs and if you're complaining about low flyovers,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: you know, get a grip, right, we're going to keep
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: agreeing to this to But he actually didn't find out
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: what happened. Thankfully a member of Congress did and spoke
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: to the actual pilot. And I want to set this up.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: The reason we call it Blues weeekaren Pensacola Beach is
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: because on Wednesdays you get breakfast with the Blues. What
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: does that mean, Well, there is a whole bunch of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: locals come here because it's a practice session, and so
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: this low pass took place during a practice session. That's
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: number one. What we come to find out is the
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: pilot said, yeah, he messed up, he missed, he he
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: sort of didn't have the right caliber, and he ended
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: up going making the turn much lower than he intended
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: to do. The point is is that the fly that
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: close flyover to the beach where it did feel like
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: you could touch it right and that's what's so amazing.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Even when they're flying, you know, carefully low, it's still
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: it's amazing how close they get. And it's so much fun. Look,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: just as an aside, I was on the you just
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: go on the water and enjoy the show from the bay,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: from the sound is what I do. And I get
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: to do this every year. It's been doing this now
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  Speaker 1: for almost a decade and it is fantastic. It is
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a very pensacle of thing. But the point was this
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  Speaker 1: was number one. Happened during practice where these guys are
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: trying to get a sense of the airspace. That's why
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: they do practices on Wednesday, they do a full dress
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: rehearsal on Friday, and then Saturday you get the main event.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: So if you're a local like I get to be
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: during the during the summer months, aventually get three Blue
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Angels show for free right in my essentially backyard. And
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: it is fantastic and everybody here in Pensacola there's Look,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the Blue Angels are the symbol of Pensacola sort of
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the thing, you know, the cultural thing that really unites
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the community. Everybody. Nobody's ever going to say a bad
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: thing about the Blue Angels. It really is something that
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  Speaker 1: unifies the community. But the point was what you saw
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  Speaker 1: here is it a super extraordinarily online story where the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: online left immediately assumed this was some pete hegseth ordered
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  Speaker 1: irresponsible behavior of the military, and he immediately essentially confirms
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: that fear by not finding out the facts, by not
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: finding out what happened. To see was, Hey, guess what
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: this happened during a practice session. Why do you practice
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: to make sure you don't do this, and why do
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: they do it on Wednesday morning? Fewer people on the
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: beach there actually are concerned that they may make some mistakes,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: trying to have as few of the crowds as there
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: as possible. So the point is this happened during practice.
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  Speaker 1: That's why you practice number one. And yet the world
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: of online, whether it's the online left or the outline right,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: everybody is so consumed with proving their point that the
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: other side is full of shit. Congratulations, you both proved
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: your point. You're both full of shit on this one.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: You know, come talk to people that are actually here,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Come talk to people who are actually on the ground,
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  Speaker 1: Go find out the facts. But it's one thing that
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: we have a bunch of irresponsible influencers or just trying
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: to make money abusing you know, the anger on the
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: left or the anger on the white and trying to
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: weaponize it. But when our own defense secretary can't bother
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: to find out the facts that instead he essentially excuses
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: irresponsible behavior. It turns out this wasn't irresponsible. This was
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a mistake. This was essentially an accident. And by the way,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the Blue an Angels. If I trust anybody to do
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: a low flyover, it's the Blue Angels because they train
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: for these things. What I don't want is other pilots
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: doing it because you don't train for these flyovers like that.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: The Blue Angels are you know, simple. Now, to me,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: it's not surprising that the Blue Angels pilot himself felt
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: terrible about the thing, because these are high character people.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Despite what Pete Eggsett is trying to do to the military,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and due to the military what's been done to ICE,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: which is recruit low character people, our military is great
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: because it forces high character. Right. Boot camp is about
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: as much a physical test as it is a character test,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And sadly, what Pete haig Set is thinking about doing
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: is creating a low character military force. And if you
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: want to know what happens when you recruit low character people,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: you get the force that we're dealing with internally right
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: now in America called ICE. So anyway, it's like I said,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I normally don't like to share as much of my
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: personal Maybe I should more. I know that's literally the
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: thing we're all we're all doing. And I think many
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: of you, I think over time, uh do know me
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: on this, But yeah, I'm giving a little bit more.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I was here, I'm here in Petsicola Beach. I love
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: this community. It is an adopted home. Uh for me,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I care about it a lot. I care about the
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Blue Angels. It is. It is something very important in
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: this community. And the more it is it is such
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: you know, pet what Pensacola without the military would feel
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: like its identity was missing when it comes to the Navy.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: And I'm sorry that those of you online were so
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: essentially easily abused, essentially by the weaponization that takes place
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: from the only LIBS crowd on the right that Pete
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Hagseth tries to cater to, or the alarmist crowd on
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the left that just assumes everything is part of some
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: you know that everybody has been magnified, if you will,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: already inside these institutions. All right, I want to move
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to the Thursday speech a little bit. Obviously, I spend
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of time on in my last podcast, and
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I think it's it's worth spending a little bit of
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: time here, and I want to deal with it this way.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I want to explain why I'm not alarmed. I'm certainly
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: vigilant about our current threats to the democracy, but there's
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: a difference between vigilance and alarmism. And I'll look, I
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: got a ton of questions. I get questions from listeners, readers, friends,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: even members of my own family that basically asked this
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: same question quite a bit throughout the various ways as
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Trump has tried to deny reality when it comes to
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: his electoral successes and failures. You know, how come you're
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: not as alarmed as everybody else? Why are you so
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: sure this isn't a huge threat? And look, it's a
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: fair question. And you see Thursday night speech and then
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of course January sixth, and We've had essentially a decade
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in which Donald Trump has tested political and constitutional boundaries
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: in ways no modern president has. But I want to
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: answer why I am not alarmed. I know there's a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: lot of people out there, some of them are truly alarmed,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and some of them want to keep you alarmed in
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: order to get you to continue to subscribing to their
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: newsletters and etc. Right, as you know, since I'm not
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: trying to make you be my financial my financial lifeline here,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I think I can sit here and tell you what
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: is right. I am not. The easy way to make
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: money off of you is to exploit exploit fears, and
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I refuse to be somebody that exploits fears. As I
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: keep telling you, my goal here at the check cast
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: is to essentially explain politics to the rest of us. Right,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: it's politics for the rest of us, and explaining politics
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: to the rest of us because the extremes are dominating
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: this conversation in ways that's manipulative and warping reality. So
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: let me get to this issue. I'm not going to
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: sit here and say I am comfortable with where the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: state of the democracy is, So don't get me wrong there,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and I don't. And the answer isn't that I don't
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: think there are risks to the democracy. The answer is
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: that I think there's an important difference between vigilance and alarmism.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: And I do think we've gotten a little too comfortable
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: confusing the two. Before Thursday night's speech, I said something
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: that thankfully turned out to be right. There was all
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: this anticipation, we were told to expect newly declassified intelligence,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: foreign interference, election vulnerabilities, bombshells. Right, And I said, if
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: you wanted to know what the speech was going to be,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you didn't need to wait until Thursday night. Just look
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: at what Donald Trump had done the day before. Right,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: he endorsed Mike Lindell for governor of Minnesota. Right, the
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: pillow guy. Right, the man whose election claims have collapsed
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: in courtroom after courtroom, a jury verdict against them, a
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: judge ruling need to fame, a voting technology company, sanctions
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: for privileged can't claims, years of legal battles that never
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: produced the evidence he always promised. So to me, the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: endorsement told you everything you needed to know. Donald Trump
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't moving towards stronger evidence. He didn't have it. He
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: was returning to the same cast of characters that have
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: been making the same allegation for six years. On his behalf,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the crazy Sydney pals of the world. Shoot, we would
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: have seen Rudy Giuliani had hit health not been so bad.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: And Thursday night speech turned out to be exactly that,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: which brings me to something else. I said before the speech,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I thought the network should carry it. Now it was
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a fifty one to forty nine position that I came
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: down on you if you caught my video on that,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: because I don't think you carry it uncritically. You don't
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: give him a free campaign commercial, but you carry it
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: as what had become known as a truth sandwich. Right,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you tell viewers what the evidence actually says before the speech,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: you let the president make his case, then you come
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: back afterward and explain what was true, what wasn't, and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: what remains unproven. I'll be honest, I've never understood the
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: instinct to hide Donald Trump from the public, to deny
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: those that sify the election in January sixth, why you
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: shouldn't interview them. You know, it's not the media that platforms,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: it's voters that platform. Voters elected these people. Our job
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: is to find out why and what they're going to do,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and pretending they don't exist doesn't get you anywhere. And
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: in fact, ignoring him, I think gives him more power.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It creates the mythology that what he's about to say
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: is simply too dangerous for ordinary Americans to hear. I
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: don't buy that. I think sunlight is always the single
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: best disinfect that you can find on Earth. And the
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: irony is that had more people actually watch Thursday night
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: speech with the proper factual context, they probably would have
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: reached the same conclusion I've released. This was a big, fat,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: calorie free nothing burger, a long speech built around allegations
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: we've heard before, presented as though they were new discoveries.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the best antidote to hype is simply letting people
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: watch the hype fail to deliver. Now here's where I
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: part company with someators. One of the biggest lessons I
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: took away from January sixth wasn't just about our institutions.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: It was about Donald Trump himself. January sixth taught us
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: a lot about how he individually operates. And I want
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: to be careful here because I want to make a
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: very narrow point, not a broad one. Donald Trump shows
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: he's perfectly willing to take political risks. He'll fire people,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: he'll pardon people, and he will use aggressive executive authority,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: pretty aggressive. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: talking about where the It's about the moment where the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: legal responsibility falls squarely on his shoulders, and his shoulders alone.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Go back to twenty twenty. He wanted Mike Pence to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: reject the electoral votes. He wanted Jeffrey Clark to use
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department to interfere with certification. His allies drafted
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: an executive order directing the military to sasee voting machines
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: in order. He never had the guts design. This episode
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• 20:47
  Speaker 1: He wanted state officials to find votes on his behalf.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: He wanted the crowd to stop Congress. You notice the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: pattern here. At every critical moment, Donald Trump was looking
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: for or someone else to take the decisive step while
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: he enjoyed the political benefits. You didn't want to get
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: his hands dirty. The man's a coward. He's a coward
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: on a number of levels. But he's also a coward
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: on this, which weirdly gives me comfort. And it's important distinction,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: because if you convince yourself Donald Trump is capable of
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: literally anything at any moment, you stop analyzing what he's
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: actually likely to do. You become reactive instead of analytical,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: and that's where alarmism can actually make us worse analysts.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Now let me make another point that struck me from
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Thursday night. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump genuinely believed everything he was saying. Let's
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: assume he sincerely believes China or another foreign power did
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: what he alleged. Then I have a simple question, where's
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the policy response, where are the sanctions, where's the diplomatic crisis?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Where's the economic retaliation for getting involved in our elections?
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly what we did after sixteen? Even Donald Trump signed
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: off on some of these sanctions against the Russians because
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: we did prove that they interfered in our election. There
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: were senators like Marco Rubio who are truly alarmed by
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: what the Russians have done. But everything that he claims
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: to have found, no economic retaliation against China, no executive
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: action directed at Beijing. Instead, So far the consequences have
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: been aimed somewhere else. Congress is being pressed to change
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: election laws. American intelligence officials are being accused of hiding
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: information with no proof. Domestic investigations are being demanded. Notice
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: who isn't the immediate target was who he claimed was
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the one interfering China. If the central allegation is that
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: China attacked American democracy, why are the only people facing
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: immediate consequences fellow Americans? There's one more irony here. The
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: document's his own administration. He classified before the speech largely
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: reaffirmed intelligence community's long standing conclusion that, yes, it did
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: not attempt to alter the mechanics or outcome of the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty election. Now, did they scoop up all public
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: data available, just like the United States does in China? Yes?
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Did that include voting roles which are publicly available. Of
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: course they did so to the Russians, Iranians, you name
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: it now. To be fair, and I think this is important,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: there was a minority into the intelligence assessment. One senior
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: intelligence official concluded with moderate confidence at China preferred Trump
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to lose and try to influence the political environment through
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: messaging and official statements. Now that's a legitimate analytical disagreement,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: but that's a very different claim from saying China hacked
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: voting machines or changed election results. They're not the same thing.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: By the way, these same intelligence reports noted the Russians
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: preferred Trump to and yet the documents presented to support
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the speech wound up reinforcing the broader consensus far more
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: than they actually challenged it. So to me, that's what
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: happens when an investigation works batards. Good investigations begin with
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: evidence and follow it wherever it leads. Bad investigations begin
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: with a verdict and then ask everyone to go find
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: supporting exhibits, which is exactly how they tried to manufacture
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: this with complete with a lackey like Bill Poulti temporarily
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in charge of the Office of Director of National Intelligence,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: where he had access to cherrypick intelligence and to create
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: a mythology out of cherry picked facts. And so maybe
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't actually believe all of these allocations. Maybe
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: he does believe them, but isn't willing to jeopardize trade
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: negotiations or a broader relationship with the very government he
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: says attacked the American democracy. Right, either explanation is possible,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: but either way there's a disconnect between the gravity of
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: the accusation he made and the actual policy response. So
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: if you tell me a foreign government attack the foundation
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: of American democracy, I expect your first target to be
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the foreign government who attacked the democracy, not a action workers,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: intelligence officials or members of Congress. Now, before anybody hears
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: what they want to hear, let me be equally clear
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: about something else. None of this means I think there
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: aren't dangers. I think quite the opposite. Donald Trump has
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: been an MRI He's exposed weaknesses in our constitutional system
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: that absolutely need fixing. He didn't invent all those weaknesses,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: he just found them. He showed us how much executive
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: power has already been accumulated, and how easily he could
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: accumulate more. He showed us how dependent our system is
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: on these unwritten norms that clearly need to be codified
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: into actual laws. He showed us how much Congress is
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: weakened itself and has become an institution no longer capable
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of what the founders intended. He showed us how vulnerable
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: we are to a political culture that rewards performative outrage
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: over institutional responsibility. These are real problems. These deserve serious
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: reform efforts. One of the most fascinating experiences I've had
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: over the last few years was participating in a constantution
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: tutional crisis simulation. And one thing those exercises have taught me,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and they will teach you very quickly if you ever
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: get to do one, is how difficult it actually is
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: to overturn an American election. Hollywood makes it seem like
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: one villain flips one switch, or you just start a
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: fire in Milwaukee, like succession. It's not our system. States
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: administer elections, counties count ballots, local officials certify results, governor's
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: cur statewide results, courtier challenges, Congress council electoral votes. You
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: don't need one institution to fail. You need a cascade
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: of failures across a dozen independent actors essentially to hijack
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: this democracy. Now here's the fair rebuttal. Those are the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: institutions of twenty twenty. Some of the people who said
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: no have been replaced, right, like Mike Pennce, like Mark Esper,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: like Jeffrey Rosen. Some guard rails are weaker than they
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: were in twenty twenty. That's worth worrying about. But it's
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: also it's so true that the constitutional architecture hasn't changed.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: The election system is still decentralized, power is still dispersed.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Multiple institutions still have to fail all at the same time.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: So that's why you have to remain vigilant, which you
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: don't have to be alarmed, don't be complacent, vigilant. Now
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: here's what actually worries me. Now, Donald Trump suddenly becoming
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: someone he's never been, I'm not worried about that. What
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: worries me is Donald Trump with more compliant people around him,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: or some future leader who is more disciplined that worries me.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Imagine a more patient version of Donald Trump. Imagine a
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: more knowledgeable Donald Trump about constitutional pressure points. Imagine him
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: being more willing to accept the personal legal risk instead
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: of constantly searching for someone else to assume that right.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: He didn't have the guts to fire the acting Attorney
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: general on January sixth. He didn't have the guts to
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: go down to the Capitol. Remember he's a Capital C Cowork. Now,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump didn't right the Owner's Manual for authoritarianism, but
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: he did identify some of our stress fractures in our
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: constitutional system. So I don't think the lesson of the
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Trump years is to panic, but we better have we
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: better learn from what is. Look, nobody followed Trump. There
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: was no The Republican Party literally wants to ignore it
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: because everybody knows he's just full of He's just sort
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: of a tired old man desperate to prove he didn't
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: lose an election he clearly lost. And of course he
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: fails to realize that he actually accumulated more power in
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: a second term by losing that election, rather than if
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: he had actually won it. So what is the lesson
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: we have to learn. We've got to strength in Congress.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: We got to modernized representation, we got to clarify congressional
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: constitutional ambiguities. We got to repair these structural weaknesses that
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: we've now all seen with our own eyes. Because vigilance
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: isn't about assuming the worst every single day. Vigilance is
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: understanding how the system actually works, recognize where it's vulnerable,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: fixing those weaknesses before someone smarter successfully exploits them. And
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: that's the distinction that I've tried to make, certainly over
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: the last few years. It is it is that. Look,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: he is singularly, you know, thankfully he's impatient. As I said,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: he's too lazy to be Hitler or mau or Putin
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: or somebody like that. He is la z y, right,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and he's also a coward. Those two things, his laziness
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and the fact that he doesn't have the guts to
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: own these things. Now, I'm mindful that the more you
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: taunt him, the more he's likely to yolo this all right,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm you know, there's a part of me that says, yeah,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I don't want to taunt Trump here. You coward, you
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: you you're lazy or coward, but ultimately he is. And
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the fact that you don't have a party wanting to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: go after they're not really following them. He's got his
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: handful of sick of fans, right, But they all fear
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: jail too, they all fear losing too. And I think
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: that's why I'm not. I mean, what would have worried
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: me is if you'd had John Thune and Mike Johnson
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: like the next day putting together suddenly, you know, trying
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: to create a crisis. If you had like actual sanctions
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: being leveled based unsupposedly this right, if you had if
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the apparatus of the federal government that Donald Trump controls
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: were actually put to work to reinforce his allegations and
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to try to get then that would be something that
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: would be like, all right, we've got to be alarmed.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Now we've got a real constitutional crisis here. But he
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: has tried. He doesn't have the guts to actually start
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: what right he is. He wants somebody else to do
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the work, so he benefit this is how please, right,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: here's a guy does it. He calls himself a builder.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: He's built I think one actual building to Trump Tower, right,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: everything else He's just licensed his name so somebody else
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: does the work. In some ways, that's the Donald Trump.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: That's all you need to know. He licensed his name
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: out so that people will do do all the work,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: do all the risk, and he gets all the benefits. Right.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: If the building is a success, his name's on it
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and he looks like a success. And if he gets
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: to remain in power because others were willing to violate
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the constitution, all the best. But this is why you
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: need to pay attention to how he actually has behaved. Right,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I understand the mythology that gets created the fears. I'm
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: not telling you to be complacent. I'm not telling you
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: to be in denial about these things. Yes, be vigilant
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the panic cloud's judgment. Vigilance will sharpen it. And if
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: we're going to preserve this constitutional republic, okay, we need
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: to be a bit more vigilant and reality based in
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: our concerns. And think about again, I say it, I've
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: said before, We're someday going to be thankful that the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Trump presidency happened because it gave us time to essentially
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: plug the holes that make us vulnerable to somebody who
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: might be a lot savvier than Donald Trump, a lot
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: less lazy than Donald Trump, and a lot less impatient
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: than Donald Trump. All right, now, let's move on to
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the biggest broken promise of the Trump presidency that will
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: likely haunt him in the history votes. We are welcome
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: to America's next forever war. That's what it looks like.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know what else to call it. I may
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: be exaggerating that forever wre mindset a bit here, but
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: let's be real. We're on the road to one and
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: looking at the headlines over the last forty eight hours,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: there's clearly no strategy from Washington beyond just hoping that
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: sheer devastation and Iran will create some kind of vacuum
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and magically sparkle the uprising inside Iran. That's it, that's
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the whole plan. We're just throwing kinetic weight at them
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and hoping the regime collapses under pressure. At this point.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: They don't have a plan outside of this. But what
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: we've continued to do over and over again, it's completely
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: underestimate Iron's ability to wait asymmetric warfare. And right now
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: they have our partners in the Golf States directly in
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: their sites. Look at what happened over the weekend. Two
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: US service members were killed in hostile fire, another still missing.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: It officially shatters the truce that everyone was celebrating just
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: last month at his remember when he signed the deal.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: He signed it at the UFC fight on the White
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: House lawn. Boy, it was a long time ago now,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: and yet it was just a few weeks ago. Now,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the US is immediately going to the default playbook, launch
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: massive air strikes against Iranian surveillance and air defense targets.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: But watch how Iran response. They don't just trade shots
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: at the US military. They go completely asymmetric. They launch
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: missiles and drones directly at Kuwait. He hit a massive
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: power and water desalination plan. Quite the warning. That wasn't
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: an accident. It was a warning to the rest of
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the Gulf States. The more the US does this, you
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: better let them know who's going to get punished. And
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: this is the part a lot of people are missing.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: We're measuring that We're used to measuring conflict in the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Middle East by the flow of oil. But as political
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: scientists Robert pay put out in a brutal reality check
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: on this strike, Iran is moving the goalpost to civilian
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: survival infrastructure, and that's which we should fear here. Kuwait
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: relies on just eight major desalination plans for ninety percent
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: of its drinking water. They're not the only country in
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the Gulf that relies on desalination plants. They all sit
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: right on the coast, by the way, the ones in Kuwait,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: they're barely one hundred miles from Ron. And the data
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: shows that if Iran knocks out just two or three
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: of the biggest ones, they instantly freeze up to eighty
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: percent of Kuwait's water supply. And if they hit the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: core steam turbines or distillation towers, well those are customs built.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: You can't just buy them off a shelf and just
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: turn the water back on. That's going to take years
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: to get them back online, not months. Years. By the way,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: only five days of emergency water storage. So think about
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the leverage that gives Iran and Kuwait. It's a very
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: important part. In the United States, they house a lot
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: of US military assets. They are effectively telling this is
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: what Iran's trying to do is send a message to
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, the ue in Oman and Qatar, if you
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: let the US use your basis or your airspace to
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: bomb us. We aren't just going to fight their jets.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: We are going to turn off the drinking water to
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: your cities. And what is our response to this kind
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: of terrifying asymmetric leverage. More the same, our friends at
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Axios is reporting that Trump's situation room is looking to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: just expand the offensive massively, sending dozens of refueling planes
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: to Israel, eyeing a deep strike at Pickaxe Mountain to
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: try to Essentially, they know they're not going to get
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: a deal with this Iranian regime, so they figure, we're
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: not going to put in ground troops and try to
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: deal with the regime, change ourselves. That's a mistake. Look
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: what happened in Iraq. We're not going to repeat that.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: So the best outcome we can have in this terrible
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: outcome is to just bury every piece of nuclear material
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: as deep into the ground and under rubble as we
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: possibly can. Right, So, Pickaxe Mountain is basically this massive
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: underground nuclear facility. It's buried deep in the Zagros Mountains.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: The talking heads and Washington love to talk about taking
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: it out, but if you look at the actual geology
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: of this, it's buried under about one hundred and forty
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: five meters of solid granite. It is literally deeper than
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: our heaviest conventional bunker buster bombs can reach. So what
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: is striking it actually mean? Well, it means collapsing tunnel entrances,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: destroying international oversight, driving them entirely into the dark, and
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: guaranteeing a massive, unrestricted ballistic missile retaliation across the entire region. Look,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many different ways I can tell
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: you that he has mismanaged this seven ways from Sunday,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and it goes all the way back to getting rid
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: of the nuclear deal in the first place. Right this,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: you reap what you sew, and he created this mess,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: put himself in this box. This is the very definition
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of strategic clicks. And we aren't dropping bombs to force
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: them to the negotiating table. We are now dropping bombs
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: because we don't have a plan. Bait. When you threaten
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the regime's ultimate nuclear deterrent and you hold their neighbor's
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: water supply hostage at the same time, you're not going
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: to get a peace deal. You're going to get a permanent,
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  Speaker 1: this loop again, just like we were at the Taliman
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  Speaker 1: and right now no one in Washington seems to know
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  Speaker 1: how to break it. This episode of the Check Podcast
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  Speaker 1: also call one eight seven seven seven seven zero seven
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: eight sixty seven if you're in Louisiana. Speaking of the military,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I want to focus a little bit on Pentagon. I
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: told you I want to talk a little bit about
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: the low T thing, but it's actually a shiny metal object,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the low T issue a little bit though. It's concerning.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: But there were two pronouncements out of the Pentagon this
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: past week, and I want to spend time on both
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: of them because together I think they do tell you
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: more about where this administration's national security thinking is headed
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: than any speech or strategy document will tell you. Now
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: one of them. Everybody's heard about it because it's already
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: a meme. Pete Haig says war on low t And
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: this guy's got some serious self esteem issues, doesn't he. Anyway,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: The Secretary of Defense is now and I know he
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: has a little little title he gives himself Secretary of
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: War right because it makes him feel tougher. I mean,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: just the whole premise of it, right, like they've they've
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: they've ejected testosterone into the name of the Defense Department
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: to make themselves feel they're fighters. And this guy is
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: really just a clown. Gosh anyway, Sorry, I really don't
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: like to be that kind of it, but Haig Seth
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: is one that makes me nuts because this is it's
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: a full on embarrassment of what is one of our
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: best assets in the United States military. So it is
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: I am absolutely sickened by how this horrible fake soldier
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: because he thinks he's some you know, just a just such.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: This guy's got serious self esteem issues and he's in
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: charge of our military. It's just gross. So yeah, the
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: testosterone levels of American troops this is something we should
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: be more concerned about for a variety of reasons, and
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get there, and I promise you it's
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: both dumber and more serious than the joke version you've seen.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: But the other proclamation that came out of the Pentagon
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: last week is one you probably missed because it didn't
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: come from the Secretary because he's really just he's not
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: a figurehead per se, but he's basically like the chief
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: cheerleader of this you know, faux warrior culture, but he's
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: not really a policy brain. There are some deputies that
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: are the brains behind the Pentagon, and in fact, it's
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: one of those deputies I want to focus on because
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: he did a seven part tweet thread this undersecretary, and
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I know undersecretary tweets thread is not exactly a stop
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the presses moment, except this particular undersecretary might be the
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: most consequential form policy intellectual in this entire administration. And
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: what he posted last week is the closest thing we
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: have to a doctrine statement in writing from an official
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: government account about how this government views America's allies. So
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to start with the one you missed first.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: The author of this tweet threat is Elbridge Colby. Friends
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: call him Bridge, you'll hear both. Same guy. He's the
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Under Secretary of Defense for policy. That's the Pentagon's number
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: three job. He's the person in charge of briefing the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Secretary in all defense policy. And before you dismissed the
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: tweets of a number three, let me give you the
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: resume because it matters. Elbridge Colby is the grandson of
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: William Colby, who was Director of the CIA in the seventies.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: This is a hereditary national security family, so he's kind
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: of a nepobaby in this Harvard Yale law. Then a
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: career in defense strategy that produced one genuinely important thing
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: in the first Trump term. Colby was the lead author
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: of the twenty eighteen National Defense Strategy. Now, if you
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: don't follow defense documents, and you know, God bless you
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: if you don't. That was the document that officially ended
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: the War on Terror era at the Pentagon and reoriented
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the entire American military around great power competition with China. Arguably,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: it's the most influential defense document of the last two decades.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: And here's to tell that it wasn't just partisan positioning.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: The Biden administration largely kept its core logic, this is
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: a bipartisan consensus, essentially, this pivot to Asia, if you will.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: And Colby then wrote a book, The Strategy of Denial.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: He co founded a think tank called the Marathon Initiative,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: and he became the intellectual author of what people called
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: the prioritizer or restrainer school on the right, the argument
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that America is overstretched, that Europe in the Middle East
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: are distractions, and that everything should be subordinated to deterring
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: China in the Pacific. Frankly, it's very similar to how
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Obama ended his presidency with his own pivot to China.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: But of course the greatest mistake we made in our
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: attempts to check China was to get rid of the TPP,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was really an economic trade
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: is defense trade pack that was under the umbrelevant economic
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: trade packs. Just Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump what they
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: have done to weaken America collectively on that one, it
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: says something, But I digress. Now the politics, this is
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the part I really want you to file away. Colby's
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: confirmation fight in early twenty twenty five was really a
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: proxy war for the soul of the Republican Formed Policy movement.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Who showed up to personally introduce him at his Senate hearing,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: the Vice President of the United States, JD. Vance. He
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: called Colby a friend, said Bridge saw around corners that
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: very few other people were seeing. Around His backers were
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: the whole New Right constellation. So it was Vance, Don Junior, Tucker, Carlson,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Charlie the Lake, Charlie Kirk, and who was the lone
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Republican no vote on Colby, Mitch McConnell, who put on
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: a statement calling Colby's worldview quote geo's strategic self harm
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: and Vance's response to the longest serving Republican Senate leader history.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: He called McConnell's vote quote one of the greatest acts
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: of political pettiness I've ever seen the sitting Vice president
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: torch Mitch McConnell in public over this guy. So here's
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the shorthand eight off of you. If you want to
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: know what a Vance form policy looks like in twenty
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: twenty nine, don't read Vance's speeches, read Colby's tweets to
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: understand what Colby was swinging at. You need the backstory,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and it all starts in Davos back in January, Mark Carney.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: You remember that speech, Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, right,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: you remember him. He's the guy who's basically rescued the
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: left in Canada. He's become the pragmatist. If you're wondering
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: if the Democrats want to copy a successful transition, they
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: might want to look north. But I think those in
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the progressive movement don't want to look north because the
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: answer was a center left government. But I digress. The
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: point is Mark Carney. He gave a very famous speech
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: about the Middle Powers starting to you realize you couldn't
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: count in the United States anymore. Now. The man is
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: not a radical, right, This is basically a former banker. Okay,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: he was a banker. Bankers are not, you know, sort
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: of radical radicals. He's not a You don't expect a
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: central banker to give a revolutionary speech. But if you
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: call it Davos, this past January, Carney delivered what is
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: now being referred to by some it's the Carney doctrine, right,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: this middle powers argument right, and was stripped down to this,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: all three great powers in the United States, China, and
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Russia are failing the world. The rules based order that
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: middle sized countries like Canada thought protected them never fully
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: existed and certainly doesn't now. So countries like Canada had
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: to stop pretending that the US is going to be there.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: They need to build strength at home, form flexible coalitions
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: of other small, d democratic middle powers to resist coercion
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: and he meant explicitly coercion from the United States. His line,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: if we're not at the table, we're on the menu.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: And remember his closer, which I want to read it
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: because it's genuinely striking coming from a central banker turned
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: world leader. Carne said, the powerful have their power, but
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: we have something to the capacity to stop pretending, to
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: name reality and to build our strength at home and
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: act together. That is Canada's path. We choose it openly
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: and confidently, and it is a path that is wide
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: open to any country willing to take with take it
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: with us. The idea was that middle powers put together, right,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: your India's, your Canada's, your Japans. You just can't trust
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the United States anymore, and you certainly can't trust Jada.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: So remember that context. You gave that speech while the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: President was musing about making Canada the fifty first state
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: trying to acquire Greenland, essentially take Greenland from Denmark. And
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: this wasn't a one off applause line. Canada's foreign minister
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: calls it the anchor of their foreign policy. Now. Carneia
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: has spent months since signing agreements around the world specifically
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: designed to reduce Canadian dependence on the United States. So
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: when a mild Mannard ex bank banker is the one
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: saying the quiet part are allowed, something has shifted. Radical
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: saying radical things is noise. Institution was saying radical things
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: is a signal. So you needed to know that backdrop
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: to understand what Colby is arguing. Six months after Davos
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: last Tuesday, the Pentagon's chief strategist essentially responded to Mark Carney.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And he didn't do it in a speech, probably because
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: he didn't think he'd be allowed to. He didn't do
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: it in a white paper. He did it in a
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: tweet thread on X seven parts. I'm going to read
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: you some key lines because the wording is the story.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Colby writes that there's quote a great deal of hubbub
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: about a collective middle power strategy these days, and that
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: the Department of War is not concerned that this is
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: a serious possibility. Rather, they're concerned that quote a few
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: allies and partners will think it is and waste valuable time, money,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: and political capital on a distraction. Middle powers, Colby says,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: don't have a coherent basis for alignment. No country can
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: compete with the American defense industrial base in quantity or quality.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: And then the line that's going to end up perhaps
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: in books down the road about this administration one way
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: or the other, access right to the American defense industrial
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: base is a privilege, not a right. Colby argues, Now,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: let's be fair to Colby, because he's not wrong on
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the merits, and pretending otherwise is how you lose an argument.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Nobody replicates the American defense industrial base. That's true. Nobody
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: has this decade, not Europe, not anybody, and middle power
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: coalitions have a genuinely lousy historical track record. Ask the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Unaligned movement how that went during the Cold War. So
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: if the question is can Canada and Germany and Australia
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: build an alternative arsenal by twenty thirty, Colby side wins
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: that argument. But that's not the question. And here's the turn.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Weapons procurement is a thirty year bet, not on the
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: seller's factories, but on the seller's politics. When a country
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: buys American fighter jets, it's buying three decades of spare parts, software,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: update munitions from whoever happens to be sitting in the
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: White House. The product America has always sold isn't the
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: F thirty five. It's American reliability. Where the United States
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: you can trust us, and reliability is precisely the thing
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: that's now in question thanks to Donald Trump, and thanks
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: most definitely this bizarre defense department that's been put together
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: a privilege extended by an administration that changes his mind
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: by tweet, is from a procurement officers standpoint, a pretty
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: high risk right. And that's Mark Carney, the banker realizing this.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: That's not anti Americanism, it's just reality. And notice the
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: structural tell confidence sellers don't argue with their customers. You
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: do not publish a seven part thread from an official
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: government account about something you are generally not worried about.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: As Colby claims, this threat exists because the thing it
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: dismisses is actually materializing. These middle powers are looking for
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: an alternative and are trying to avoid the United States.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Colby's own brand new defense National Defense Strategy describes China
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: as the most powerful rival America has faced since the
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, which rather concedes the point the unipolar world.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: His threat depends on the world where allies have no choice?
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: Is this the world his own strategy document already says,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: is gone. So there's your pairing. Carney says middle powers
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: have a choice. Colby says, no, you don't, and one
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: of them is describing the world that actually is. I'll
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: let you decide which one it is. But it ain't
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: the guys on our side, all right. So that same week,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: the very same week, the Pentagon's chief strategist was reassuring
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: the world that America is the indispensable, irreplaceable, essentially defense
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: contractor for the free world. The actual Secretary of Defense
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: again who calls and gives himself his little funny name
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Secretary of War, was worried about hormone levels. So here's
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: here's the policy. I'm not exaggerating here, straightforward policy. Pet
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: EXSITS announced that every service member aged thirty and older
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: will now be screened annually for testosterone deficiency as part
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: of their regular health assessment. Under thirty you can volunteer
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: for if a doctor recommends it. Testosterone replacement therapy TRT
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: is then on the table at the option of the
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: service member. Hesith framing troops need the quote biological foundation
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: to fight, and this keeps them on the quote leading
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: edge of lethality. This guy really does want to create
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: some sort of super trooper using human beings as experiments.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: This is really sick stuff and we ought to be
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: looking at it this way. Ask what research supports screening
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: an entire fighting force for a home Loann condition that
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Benagon pointed back to a video. Ask whether women in
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: uniform get any equivalent screening. We've yet to get an
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: answer from the PENTAGONA now one, So how's this landing
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: in the President's favorite media ecosystem? I want to describe
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: a segment from The Five on Fox last Thursday, And
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I normally don't take specific shots at idiot
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: members of the press. I just think that that's wasted time.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: The issue are our political leaders, You'll let you know.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Usually I've always thought anybody attacking a member of the
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: press who is a who thinks they too are a
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: member of the press. It's a business decision. Right. I
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: mean Fox attacked mainstream media just to build a business.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: You know, none of the people actually believe half the
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: shit that they were character assassinating folks like me with,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: but they just did it. It was a business decision, right.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: It was a way to keep an audience, and it
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: was a way to try to to try to create
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: a brand to build an audience. But what was said
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: by Jesse Waters is what made this even more alarming.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: And look, I watched this segment. I still can't quite
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: believe I have to say this out loud. But here's
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: what the Chiron onscreen was, and I'm quoting the Chiron directly.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: It reads no low t in military he except the
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: test testosterone levels of troops. Then Jesse Waters, grinning to
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: the camera, says, this is direct quote women on base,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: you better be careful. Port calls women in Asia, you
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: better be careful because these guys are going to be
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: wild animals and you better watch out now. I know. Oh,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: come on, Chuck, can't you take a joke. Yeah, let's
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: joke about sexual assault and rape. That's hilarious. The most
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: watched network in cable news at five o'clock in the afternoon,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: laughing about what women service, women on American bases, women
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: in Allied countries where our sailors take port calls should
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: fear from American troops on hormones. Now, let me tell
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: you why that isn't funny and why no, I can't
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: take this joke. And I mean that clinically, not as
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: a school. The United States military spent two decades trying
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: to dig out of sexual assault crisis so severe that
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Congress only stripped prosecution decisions for those cases away from
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: military commanders over the Pentagon's objections. That reform happened because
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the institution could not police itself. And now you think
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: this secretary's going to police this stuff. And now the
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: secretary's friendliest network, the former place of employment where he
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: built up his qualification, so apparently be the head of
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: our military, is marketing his new policy on air approvingly
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: as a warning to women. And as far as I
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: can tell, nobody at the Pentagon said a word or
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: were upset about what jesse Water said. I'm sure they'd
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: laughed along with it. When your allies joke that your
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: policy is a threat and then you don't correct them,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: that's not a gaff, becomes a sales pitch. And there's
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: one more layer to this, and this is the public
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: service portion of the program, because millions of young men
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: are being marketed testosterone right now by an entire influencer economy,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and now apparently their own government is doing it. So
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: let's do a reality check and what actually happens when
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: a healthy thirty three year old decides to go and
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: agree to testosterone replacement therapy. First, testosterone does decline about
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: one percent a year after thirty that's not a disease,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: it's called aging. Genuine clinical deficiency hypogonadism is real, but
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: it is not common at thirty three, and the symptoms
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: it gets blamed for fatigue, low mood, weight gain, low
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: drive are far more often caused by bad sleep, stress, alcohol,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: and just simply being out of shape, which I note
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: describes military life pretty well. The honest prescription for most
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: of these guys is sleep, not syringes. Second, and this
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: is what the infomercial never tells you. When you begin
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: to take testosterone from outside sources instead of using your
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: own body, then your own body shuts down its own
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: production completely. Your testees, yes, those stop making testosterone, and
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: they stop making sperm. TRT functions for many men as
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: a contraceptive. So for a thirty three year old soldier
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: who wants kids someday, that is not a footnote. That
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: is the headline. Testicular atrophy isn't a rare side effect.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: It is the standard mechanism. It is the side effect
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: that you have to live with. You aret become permanently
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: in need of replacement testosterone. Third, if you try to
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: come off and you crash because your natural production takes months,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: sometimes a year to recover. If ever, then you're signing
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: up for a lifetime prescription of this stuff. And then
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: you have to add other monitorings because this stuff thickens
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: your blood. It's a big you know. And the big
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: NIH funded safety trial while reassuring on heart attacks, found
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: elevated rates of essentially a FIB and blood clots which
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: can lead to strugs. So this is a serious medication
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: for a diagnosed condition. It is not a lifestyle upgrade
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: or a tool to build super soldiers. And you know
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: who knows this. The military themselves know this because the
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Navy started drug testing seals for exactly these substances after
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: years of performance enhancement scandals in that special ops community.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: So the Pentagon currently tests elite operators to keep them
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: off of testosterone are best soldiers, while this secretary of
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: a made up title, the Secretary of Defense, builds a
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: program to help everyone else get on it because clearly
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: he wants it and he wants the government to pay
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: for his That contradiction hasn't been resolved, It's just been institutionalized. Huh,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: do you trust your penning on these days? I know
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: I'm struggling with it. And this is the real damage
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: that Trump is doing. He's doing other damage to our
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: institutions and making us fearful of some things that we
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: don't believe. But boy, the stuff he's done to what
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: it was essentially our greatest gift of the world, all
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: voluntary military force, and we're going to ruin the reputation
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: of that globally heck of a job. All right, Last Thursday,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: I'm going to move on to ice here. Last Thursday
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I laid out a thesis on this show. You get
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: who you recruit, you get what you trained for, and
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: you get what you demand. And I told you the
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: violence we saw this month wasn't an anomaly. It was
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: predictable due to the machine that had been built to
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: recruit ice officers. But I actually did something else on
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Thursday that now I hedged because I didn't know all
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: the facts. I told you the officer in the main shooting.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: We didn't know yet much about him, but we didn't
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: think he was a mean, pilled gamer with a badge.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: He actually had been a career law enforcement officer with
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: nearly a decade of federal look experience. Well, once again
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: I turned out, you can't give DHS any You can't
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: assume they tell you anything is factually correct. Right. You
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: could technically come up with that description based on his resume,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: But it was DHS's own framing of this officer, and
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry I gave it the benefit of the doubt,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: and I shouldn't have it, because what we've learned over
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the weekend is truly astonished, and we've learned it from
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the Polton Press, Harold Washington Post. Have been a couple
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: of reports on the DHS still hasn't publicly named the officer,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: but two of his ex wives say that the officer
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: is David Brulette because he apparently told his two ex
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: wives on the phone that he's the one who shot
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: and killed Johann Sebastian Duran Guero in Biddeford, pain And
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: about that nearly decade of federal law enforcement experience at
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: DHS put up well, he's he served nine months at
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: the main Department of Corrections, less than a year as
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: a child support enforcement agent. He had a resign from that.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: He had stints of the a police officer. He was
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: a small town cop, a truck driver, a DoorDash driver.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: By last year he was a struggling real estate agent
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: whose driver's license had been revoked over unpaid child support.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: That's not a career in law enforcement. That is a
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: resume that should have set off every single alarm in
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: the functioning background investigation to decide whether to end this guy.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Badge and a gun on behalf of the federal government.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: And the alarms weren' hidden. They were all in court records.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Two ex wives, protective orders, allegations of boiling water thrown
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: at a woman holding an inofant, a gun pointed at
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: his first wife in the shower, a child dragged out
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: of bed by her feet, and this one will stop
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: you cold. The same day he told his ex wife
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: he join eyes. She says he left her a voicemail
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: saying her throat should be slipped. She gave the tape
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to the post. Now, these are all allegations. He hasn't
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: been charged with anything, but they were sitting in mail,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: main court files, on paper for years. Any frankly in
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: turn to a background investigator who wanted to find them
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: could have found them. The question was whether anyone was looking.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: And here's what I think. I don't think anyone was.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: He was hired in November. It's the exact window when
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: ICE basic training had been slashed forty percent from seventy
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: two days to forty two And because he had quote
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: prior law enforcement experience, he likely qualified for the accelerated track,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: which is which a former ICE instructor described to Congress
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: as self certified, self paced online course. Can you believe
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: this shit? That same instructor testified that cadets were finishing
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: the academy unable to demonstrate a solid grasp of tactics
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: for the law. Now look to be fair. The new
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: Secretary of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen, did reverse the
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: shortened training earlier this year, but more than nine hundred
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: officers went through the short version before the change was made,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: the training got fixed, the officers it produced were already
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: on the street, and when reporters asked Mullen on Friday,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: I brought Brulette's documented history, he said, of course, he
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: hadn't heard about it. You know, he's used to the
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: senator answer of I haven't seen it yet. He claimed
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: he learned about his own officer from the newspapers after
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: the man was dead, after another man was dead. So
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: last week I asked, what happens to the experience hires
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: this machine choose through. Turns out I asked the wrong question.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Machine never even checked whether the experience was real. I
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: said on Thursday that tragedy and this system wasn't a risk.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: It was a statistical guarantee. The way they recruited ice agents,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: they were looking for goons. They weren't looking for fellow
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: American citizens, to care about fellow Americans. So it turns out,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: though I was wrong about one thing, I was too generous.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: This system didn't fail to catch David Brulette. It was
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: never built actually look to see if they could catch him.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: If you all want to spend a few minutes on
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: a governor's race, then on the surface, this is going
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: to sound like pure inside baseball. Wisconsin Democrats their primary
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: candidates dropping out, candidate's jumping back in campaign finance problems.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: If you're not a political junkie, you might have already changed,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: you know, scrolled up or fast forward it. But please
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: stick with me here, because what this race is telling
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: us is something important about where this Democratic Party is headed. Right.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: This is another one of these larger fights. As I joked,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: if the California governor's race on the Democratic side and
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: the main Senate race out of baby, it would be
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: this Wisconsin governor's mess. So you've got the California dynamic,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: an establishment desperately trying to figure out who its candidate is,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: and you've got the Main dynamic, a growing fear that
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: the party's activist wing could nominate someone who makes the
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: general election much harder than it has to be. Now,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: before I explain today's specific mess in the Badger State,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: you have to understand how Democrats got here. Tony Evers
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: is leaving office after two terms as Wisconsin's governor. He
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: chose not to run for a third. He wasn't termament
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: and in fact, Evers was exactly the kind of candidate
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Democrats needed in twenty eighteen, and they got it. Frankly,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: both twenty eighteen and twenty twenty, you had very similar
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: vibes inside the Democratic Party. Find people like Joe Biden
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: and Tony Evers, people that don't scare the middle right.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Because remember when the party was back then, Donald Trump
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: had just been elected in Wisconsin, Scott Walker had become
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: one of the defining Republican governors in America. Democrats weren't
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: looking for a superstar. They were simply looking for somebody
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: who could simply win in this environment. And Tony Evers
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: fit the bill, former state superintendent, soft spoken, competent, not
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: very political, not flashy, not polarizing. He was the school's guy,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: right and he beat Walker, and he got reelected four
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: years later, and by any reasonable measure, it's had a
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: fairly successful governorship. But there's an important difference between being
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: a successful governor and building a political organization. Look around
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: the country that same year, in twenty eighteen, Gretchen Wetmer
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: immediately became the face of Michigan Democrats. Josh Shapiro quickly
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: became synonymous with Pennsylvania Democrats. They didn't just went office,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: They built an infrastructure around themselves, They developed some benches,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: they cultivated successors. Well, we don't know yet with Shapiro,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: we do know with Whitmer. Tony Evers never really did that.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: And it's not I'm not This is not a criticism.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Some governors like governing more than politicing. But eventually everyone
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: leaves office. And when Evers announced he was stepping aside,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Democrats discovered something. They didn't have an obvious heir. Instead,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: they had some chaos. The sitty lieutenant governor looked like
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: the establishment choice. Remember it now, just to give you
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Tony evers first lieutenant governor in his first term was
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Mandela Barnes, who was the Democratic nomineeer Senate lost around Johnson.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: He is thought of as big the perception as he
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: lost because he was perceived as too far to the left. Ironically,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: Mandela Barnes now is not the candidate furthest to the
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: left in this primary, but he is one of the
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: candidates running for governor. The second lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: was considered a little closer to Evers than Barnes was politically,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: and so that's why she looked like the established choice.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Then her campaign ran into some serious financial reporting problems.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: It looks like someone stole money. Right. What they reported
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: is having and when they actually had were two different stories.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: So campaign staff that were fired, questions piled up, and
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: she had to drop out. Meanwhile, the Milwaukee County Executive
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: David Crawley, he had entered the race, then he left
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: the race, endorsed the lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez. Then she exits.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: He jumps back into the race, which he did this weekend.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: And then even Tony Evers, who had largely played neutral
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: he'd stayed out of the primary, he decided to weigh
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: in behind Crawley. So what's this all about. Well, there's
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: fear of one candidate whenever you see an outgoing governor
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: abandoned neutrality to rescue a succession fight, kind of like
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: what we saw with Grady Davis Fredi and slip on
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: that one Gavin Newsom in California, right when he finally
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: came in and endorsed Bisera. That's usually a sound that
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: party leaders are nervous. So here's the interesting part. While
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: all this was happening, candidates simply kept campaigning. France essca Hang,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: she's running unapologetically from the left. She's not interested in
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: reassuring moderates, she's not interested in softening our image. She's
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: essentially saying the Democratic Party should stop apologizing for progressive politics.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: That's her basic message. And because everybody else has been
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: busy fighting each other, she's suddenly become one of the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: strongest candidates in the field. Now, I want to be careful,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: this isn't yet a story about sessca Han. It's a
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: story about the Democratic establishment. Because this keeps happening, the
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: party establishment increasingly finds itself asking who who can we
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: rally around instead of who have we spent the last
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: eight years developing? What have we done to the party
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: to respond to all parts of the base, all parts,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: all little bassets, all the different factions inside the party.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: And it's all a very different question. And of course,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: you know why Wisconsin matters so much, right, And I'll
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: say this about Wisconsin. It's probably the most misunderstood swing
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: state in America. People hear swing state and they imagine
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: neighborhoods full of swing voters who vacillate back and forth.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: That's not what Wisconsin looks like. Wisconsin is one of
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: the most evenly divided states in the country, but it's
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: made up of increasingly unequal pieces. There's really no swing
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: county in the state anymore. Republicans dominate much of rural Wisconsin,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Democrats dominate Milwaukee, and of course really dominate Madison. And
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: you know, when I first started, Brown County, home of
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Green Bay, used to be a swing county. Yeah, the
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: labor members would vote Democratic. Now those guys are voting Trump,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: and now Green Bay is no longer a swing area anymore.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Really is just sort of a battle of turnout. And
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: so what you have is very red places and very
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: blue places whose votes almost perfectly cancel each other out statewide.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: And it's what makes Wisconsin the most fascinating polarized state
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: in America. That's why I've done If you go on YouTube,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: you can find some specials I did with Meet the
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: Press reports just about Wisconsin. Here's a purple state with
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: no community that's actually purple, right, It's a bunch of
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: red and blue communities that are almost exactly the same
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: size come election day. So it creates a different kind
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: of challenge for Democrats. Madison is unquestionably the soul of
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: today's Wisconsin Democratic Party. It's where all the energy is.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: It's where all the activists are, and that's where all
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: the progressives are. But Madison has always been more complicated,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: a bit more of a complicated brand to sell statewide. Historically,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Democrats have won statewide when they convinced suburban and independent
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: voters they were pragmatis first and not Madison Democrats. Tony
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Evers looked like a school administrator. Jim Doyle projected competence.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: Even Tammy Baldwin, unquestionably progressive, has always wrapped herself in
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: a very Wisconsin first identity. The successful statewide candidates don't
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: necessarily govern from the center, but the campaign in a
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: way that makes the center comfortable. They don't come across
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: as radical. And that's the debate Democrats are having right there.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: The activist doing argues voters want more authenticity. The establishment
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: argues Wisconsin still rewards reassurance and competency. Who's right. We're
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: going to find out. Don't overlook the Republican side. This
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: isn't a race where Democrats can assume they win no
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: matter what. Wisconsin is a swing stay. Every state wide
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: race is super competitive, and the Republican nominee, no matter
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: the year starts with a legudimate chance to win. That's
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: why Democrats are so nervous. They don't dismiss this as
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: another So don't dismiss this as another messy primary. What
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: you're watching is a party trying to answer a much
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: bigger question, what comes after the Biden generation? Because Tony
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: Evers is really sort of a microcosm of Biden, except
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: he actually won real mention right. Biden never did, but
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: it was a placeholder. The party is still unformed around him,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: and that's what we're seeing now with Biden. So can
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the establishment still shape nominations or is that power slip
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: the way completely. California's wrestling with this question. Maine is,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: by the way, it looks like Troy Jackson's going to
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: be that nominee. He's seemed to dominate the weekend caucuses.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Now Wisconsin's wrestling with it too, because Wisconsin remains perhaps
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: the premier battleground state in America. Whatever answered Democrats arrive
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: at here probably won't stay here. Right If Francisco Hong
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: gets the nomination and wins, it's another reminder, it's just
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: like with Platner, just like with abdual Site. If those
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: candidates can win statewide in these swing states, it will
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: define twenty eight one way. If these candidates get nominated
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: and lose in a good Democratic year, it will get
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: to fined another way. Speaking of campaign politics, Arizona primary
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: is on Tuesday. We'll have a live election stream from
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: ten to midnight Eastern time, myself Chris Jeffrey Skelly. If
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: this is SHQ one big race there by the way,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: it's a reminder Arizona is a reminder. What everything I
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: just described about Wisconsin, that's the Arizona Republican Party. It's
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: a total mess. Their most electable candidate for governor is
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: going to get trounced in the primary thanks to an
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: election denier more trumpy candidate than Andy Biggs. So be
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: sure to tune in for special coverage Tuesday night. And
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: with that, I'll sneak at a break and when we
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: come back, my friend Danny Solton, it's a all right,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: it is time machine. Let's go back on our time machine.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: And where are we going. Well, we're going to go
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: back to this week in nineteen fifty nine. We're going
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: to the summer of fifty nine, and it's one of
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: the most famous moments of the Cold War. It was
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: dubbed the Kitchen Debate. If you've ever seen the photograph,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: you know it immediately. Richard Nixon, then the Vice President,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: standing in a model American kitchen in Moscow, pointing his
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: finger at the Soviet premiere Nikita Kruz Jeff, and Kruse
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: Jeff pointing back. Two world leaders smiling, interrupting one another,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: arguing as if they were neighbors leaning over a backyard
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: fence instead of leaders of rifle superpowers armed with enough
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons to destroy the entire planet. History remembers the
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: Kitchen Debate. But here's the part almost almost nobody remembers.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: It didn't really begin in Moscow. It began in New
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: York City. Because the Kitchen Debate wasn't simply an argument
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: between Nixon and Khrushchev. It was the culmination of one
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: of the more fascinating diplomatic experiments of the Cold War.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: In the middle of this arms race in the fifties,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: the United States at that time, of course, led by
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: President Dwight Eisenhower, and the Soviet Union agreed to compete
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: somewhere entirely different. They would compete by showing off their countries,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: not their armies or missiles, but their way of life.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: An actual debate communism versus capitalism. It sounds almost quaint today, right.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: The Eisenhower administration and Khrushches's government negotiated what became known
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: as the Cultural Exchange Agreement. Each country would host a
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: massive exhibition for the other. The theory was remarkably optimistic.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Perhaps ordinary Americans and ordinary Soviets could better understand one
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: another if they could actually see how the other society lived.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union came first and the summer of fifty nine.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: It was in June of that year the Soviet Exhibition
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: opened at the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Today,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: almost nobody remembers that that happened. Hundreds of thousands of Americans,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: the walk through display celebrating Soviet science, Soviet engineering, industrial machinery, education, culture, housing,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: and of course Sputnek. That was the big draw for
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: the Soviets, right. That message that they were trying to
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: send to Americans was unmistakable. Judge us, by what our
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: society can accomplish together. Look at what planning can produce.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Look at the speed with which a determined society can
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: industrialize that's why we beat you to space. Right, that
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: was the point of sput mean, look at our scientists,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: look at our engineers. And again you have to remember
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: where the Cold War stood in nineteen fifty nine. Sputnik
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: had shocked the world less than two years earlier. Many
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Americans generally feared the Soviets were actually pulling ahead in
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: this arms race. Khrushcheff wasn't acting like the leader of
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: a failed system. To the opposite. He believed, truly that
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: history belonged to the Communists. He regularly predicted the Soviet
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: Union would eventually surpass the United States economically. Right. He
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: wasn't just talking about war machinery. He really thought that
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: their system would defeat capitalism. He wasn't reluctantly participating in
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: this cultural exchange. He welcomed the competition. And then a
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: month later America answered the answer to the Soviet exhibition
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: at Columbus Circle wasn't another rocket. We didn't send a bomber,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: not a missile. We sent a kitchen. Well, actually it
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: was an entire suburban branch house, the perfectly ordinary one
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: story American home, or at least it appeared ordinary Reporters
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: quickly nicknamed it splitnick because the builders had literally sliced
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: the house down the middle, creating a court or so
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: thousands of Soviet visitors could walk straight through it. You
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: could see both sides of it. It was like dissected.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: The most famous house of the Cold War was famous
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: because it had been cut in half. And what did
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: they find inside modern appliances, comfortable furniture, a television, fully
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: equipped kitchen, and what did the house costs in nineteen
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: fifty nine dollars fourteen thousand dollars? And Nixon's argument to
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: Krushchev wasn't that every American lived in the exact same home.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: It was actually more politically effective than that. He argued
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: that an American steel worker could afford one of these homes.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: That was the entire American case for capitalism condensed into
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: a single sentience. Not that everyone was rich, and not
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: that everyone was equal, but that ordinary working people could
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: aspire to a better life. Equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: America had completely changed the terms of the competition. The
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: Soviet Exhibition had asked Americans to admire what the state
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: could build. America simply asked a different question, what could
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: an ordinary family own? Nixon traveled a Moscow to dedicate
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: the exhibition. Khrushchef personally gave him a tour. Neither man
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: had prepared for an actual debate. There was no moderator,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: there was no podium, There were no opening statements. These
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: were just two extraordinarily confident leaders walking through the exhibits
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: with reporters, photographers, and television cameras trying to keep up.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: And the argument actually began. Early in the tour, Nixon
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: and Kruscheff entered another American exhibit. It was an RCA
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: color television studio. Think about that for a moment. One
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: of America's exhibits wasn't simply television programming. It was the
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: television itself, because inside the studio was one of the
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: newest Ampex color videotape systems of the world. The two
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: men began arguing about communism, capitalism, freedom of prosperity. Khrushchef
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: immediately understood the significance of the moment. He insisted his
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: remarks be shown in the United States without editing or
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: selective translation. Men knew the real audience wasn't in Moscow.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: It was millions of people who would eventually see their debate,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: and then something interesting happened. The argument didn't end when
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: they left the TV studio. It followed them throughout the exhibition,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: and it reignited in front of that model house, in
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: that kitchen. Two world leaders who would begun debating inside
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: a television exhibit produced one of the most enduring images
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: of the Cold War. In a kitchen. Krushchev looked around
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: the model homed and scoffed. He didn't believe Americans really
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: lived this way. This wasn't this simply propaganda? Why are
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: we obsessing over dishwashers and refrigerators. Civilians, he argued, should
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: be judged by larger accomplishments, security, science, industrial achievement, equality,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: And then Nixon answered with something much simpler. Freedom meant choice,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: competition meant innovation, and intervention eventually raised the standard a
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: living for ordinary people. Now, looking back, it's tempting to laugh. Right,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: we know how the story ends. The Union collapsed, the
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: Berlin Wall fell. Market capitalism proved itself to be the
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: more dynamic economic system, but in the summer of fifty nine,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: none of that was obvious. Khruz Jeff wasn't bluffing. He
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: genuinely believed that communism was going to win the argument,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: and that socialism would win the argument. Now there's another
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: reason this moment mattered Richard Nixon. It pretty much resuscitated.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: History usually remembers Nixon backwards. Watergate overshadows almost everything, but
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: in fifty nine, Nixon was one of America's most experienced
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: Cold warriors. By that he had spent years traveling abroad,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: he had debated Soviet officials before, and by the time
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: of that Moscow moment, he looked comfortable, confident, prepared, never
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: lost his temper, never appeared intimidated, And millions of Americans
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: watched the Vice president who wasn't well, it wasn't unlike,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: but wasn't super like. Right, Ike was sort of a
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: larger than life figure saved the world. But here was
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: the vice president say toe to toe with America's greatest
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: adverssary and he held his own and it really helped
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: them going into the sixth the campaign. Look, he's cribbly
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: giving me the nominee either way, but he became a
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: strong nominee, not a weak one. Of course. Ironically, over
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: a year later, while television and this has always been
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: the incredible like ironies with all things Nixon right. Television
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: created Nixon the checker. Speech right reinforced Nixon's image positively,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: and then television took them down right. The debate would
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: become one of Nixon's greatest political liabilities against John Kennedy,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and of course, televised Watergate hearings. You know, we could
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: go on, But in Moscow in fifty nine, television elevated Nixon.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: In America, television elevated Kennedy. There's your sense of irony.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: But here's why I want to revisit the story, because
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: guess what, The kitchen debate hasn't really ended now. The
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Cold War did, and the Soviet Union collapsed, Central planning
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: lost market capitalism proved to be the more dynamic economic
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: system History answered that question, but it did leave behind
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: a harder one. Go back and listen to our politics today.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: We argue about housing affordability, childcare, healthcare, manufacturing, supply change,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, energy production, economic mobility, and increasingly something that
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: some on the left are pushing as the abundance agenda.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: Strip away the modern language and you'll hear echoes of
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: that summer afternoon in Moscow. How should we judge an
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: economic system, by GDP, by the stock market, by national output,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: or by whether ordinary families believe they can build better
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: lives than the generation before them. Here's what's fascinating. Khrushchev
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: believed history would judge societies by what they could accomplish collectively.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: Nixon believed history would judge societies by what ordinary citizens
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: could accomplish individually. Those are still two profoundly different ways
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: of measuring success. The Cold War proved one system was
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: more innovative. It proved one system generated greater prosperity, But
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: then prosperity creates its own set of expectations. Once people
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: believe that every generation should have a better life than
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: the one before, it maintain that promise becomes part of
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: the legitimacy of the system itself. And that's why the
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: kitchen debate actually feels so modern to me, and why
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: I chose this moment in history to highlight for this segment.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Today history remembers it as an argument over washing machines
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: and refrigerators. What it really was was an argument over
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: what success looks like. The Cold Wars settled which economic
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: system was more dynamic, but it never settled what the
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: winning system owes the people living in it, and that's
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: why we're still talking about abundance. That's why we're still
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: arguing about opportunity. The Soviet Union disappeared with the kitchen debate.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: Continue ask Chuck, all right, let's do a little last
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: Chuck all right. Next first question for today comes from
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: Jake from California District one point? Are you giving me
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: a full eight? You give me a state Assembly district? Jake,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear back from you on that one.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: I goesay, as always, I love the show. Your independent
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: perspective is refreshing and much needed. I have two fun
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: non political questions. One, do you think an MLB lockout
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: after the season is avoidable? And as a fellow sports
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: card enthusiast or your word, the hobby is heading toward
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: another junk wax era or has the industry learned from
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: its mistakes? Thanks again for all you do. Cheers, Jake.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the MLB. Look, it does feel unavoidable
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: because the owners want to do this. The baseball owners
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: are jealous of how high the franchise values of the
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: NBA and the NFL have gotten, But it's really the
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: NBA that gets under the skin of baseball owner. It's
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: not the NFL, right, because the NBA and MLB have
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: the same arguably same sized fan base, essentially same sort
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: of like everything is kind of the same, very long
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: regular seasons. It's the regular season where owners make their money.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: You get where I'm going here now. Obviously, right, the NBA,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: if you throw in the G League, you know, each
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: franchise might be responsible for thirty to forty players. Major
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: League Baseball, each franchise is responsible for, you know, maybe
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty players if we go through the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: all minor league system. So they're a little bit bigger.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: But what does the NBA have The baseball doesn't a
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: salary cap. Now it looks like the NBA salary cap
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: is a total mess, and it's actually gotten too rigid
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: and they're going to actually have to loosen it up
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: if they want fans to care about their teams again, right,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: you're going to have more teams do what the Celtics did,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: which is decided they can only afford to pay one
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: superstar superstar money and they'll trade the other. So I'll
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: just tell you, you know, I first cut my teeth covering
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: sports business. I helped found those Sports Business Daily, which
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: is now the Sports Business Journal in nineteen ninety four,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: which was, of course the year of the most famous
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: baseball strike lockout, however you want to describe it, that
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: one I believe was technically a lockout, not a strike.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: Are they it to start? A lockout? Became a struck anyway,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into once we didn't have
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: baseball and they can. And then of course the owners
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: got rid of the World Series, and I just look
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: back at that. You lost a World Series and you
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: still couldn't get the salary cap, and now you're going
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: to come back and try to get the salary cap
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: again twenty six You know what is it now? Thirty
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: four years thirty four years later? And yet that's the
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: question I have, which is how badly do they want
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: the salary cap? Are they want it bad enough that
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: they will set the first cap at a level that
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: only the Dodgers will reach in the next five years,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: Dodgers and Mets and maybe Yankees. You saw private equities
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: coming into the Yankees soon, which means they're going to
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: start spending money again. Now that that young, you know
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: that the next generation to Stein Brenners, who have been
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: much more physically savvy, if you will, to the chagrin
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: of some of their fans who missed George's overspending, although
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: arguably the Yankees never really got great until he was
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: technically not allowed to get involved in the management of
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: the team back in ninety and they you know, he
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't trade away their farm system for the first time,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: and lo and behold, they're able to put together something.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: But the point is how badly they want it. I
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: think you if you want this salary cap, you've got
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: to accept one that is so large and have a
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: real floor that this general that essentially no player over
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: the age of twenty seven is going to be impacted
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: by it, right, if you're trying to do the long
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: term health right and we've all seen this right these
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the valuations of contracts and all this stuff
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: grows much faster than it's ever anticipated, and the amount
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: of money that gets brought in, and you know there's
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: going to be some limits, but you know baseball has
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: to it'll figure out its meteorites. So I am I
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: am cautiously optimistic that they're going to not miss games.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: It's just too you can't afford to get rid of revenue,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: and baseball has been on a on a on a
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: net positive run. Right. It's playoffs are terrific local, the
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: local revenue is really good. Local TV rights are going,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: Local TV ratings have been going up, not down. You
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: know it is. Baseball is pretty healthy. They just don't
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: have They just don't have as equitable of a system.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: The only thing that equalizes baseball is its playoff format. Right.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: The fact is, even the Dodgers can lose a five
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: game series. Very are to beat the Dodgers in the
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: seven game, but you can beat them in a five
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: game and as long as that five game exists, or
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: even that whi you know, it allows for you know,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: a bit of a Cinderella run, right. That is that
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: is the upside of it. Right. Basketball doesn't allow for
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: a hot team to like because of their best of
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: seven formats, right. I kind of wish basketball would go
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: back to at least the best of five for the
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: first round. Let's do some randomizing a little bit. Yes,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: seven guarantees it's only the best of the best make
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: it through. But that why are you holding sporting events
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: for the predictable or for people to be entertained on
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: the unpredictable. I always try to go back to that
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: when you're trying to decide your playoff formats. Are you
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: trying to entertain and have people enjoy and then and
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: have multiple paths to a championship or do you only
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: want to reward one way of winning a championship anyway?
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: So I'm I'm very curious, and I also think you're
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: going to have a fight. If the players are smart,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: they should be able to divide the because the only
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: way this works is if the owners agree to pool
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: off their revenue. Well, the problem with that is the Yankees,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: the Dodgers, the Cubs get massive individual revenue. Are they
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: really willing to share it completely with the Twins? The Royals? Right?
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: They've you know, over time, they've contributed a bit more
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: into the larger pool, but not not to the degree
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: that happens in the NBA or the NFL. And that
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: has to change. And I don't know if this owners
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: if they I don't know if Manfred has the owners
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: that are smart enough to see more than two years
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: down the road, and whether the owners see valuations as
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: being more important than how much cash you can generate
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: on an annual basis. So that's I think the Dodgers
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: have savvy owners. Private equity will probably make the Yankees
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: a little savvier. Maybe the Cubs think this way. We
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: had Todd rickettson. I asked him this question. He seemed
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: to be he said, he said all the right things
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: that Manfred would want to hear. Yes, the Cubs will
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: put it all in there and we'll pull revenue sharing. Okay,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: but that's a question I have. I'm not as convinced
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: that they'll all be they'll all agree to that. You know,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: that's been the biggest difference to football, basketball, and baseball
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: baseball's owners have. You know, it came a lot of
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: them still came up through where much of their revenue
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: was self generated. The the the NFL, and the NBA
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: have thrived due to their collectivism. The reason baseball franchises
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: haven't done that is because they don't have this unified system,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: and individual owners may be reluctant to give that up.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: We'll see, But I think the only way to sell
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: the salary cap is to just just set it super
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: high so that it doesn't get hit by today's players,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: and then by establishing the structure, then within a decade,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: it becomes something that that might make a lot more sense,
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: a lot more sense there. As for the sports card era,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous about the quote unquote junk slab era.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: I will tell you this. I'm sticking to one. I
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: don't I am. I I'm a little nervous about it.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: I think it is interesting. What we're seeing is there's
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: a real not everybody's values are going up, which I
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: think shows you that there's more of a sophistication this
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: time than there was to the junk wax era. The
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: junk wax era in some ways was sort of supercharged
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: by Michael Jordan I think at the time and Ken Griffy,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: and then it quickly and then you know, you had
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: and you threw an upper deck and it was sort
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: of a too many people had licenses and so you
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: just had overprinting of everything and they were all, you know,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: there's there's a little more structure around it. So I
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna go to the full junk wax era.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: And in some ways, the again, these are just for
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: those of you deep deep cuts in this. The fact
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: that p s A has stopped has sort of suspended
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: their cheaper service for grading is actually good for the market, right.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: It's sort of a it's a it almost you know,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: if they just kept churning it out and sped up
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: the process and we might have had a junk slab era.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: It makes me confident we won't. And by the way
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: it's made now, I do think this. I do think
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: because I mean talk about a dramatic shift in car
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: in the card market, Grating was as much a pain
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: in the ass as anything else back in the eighties,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: nineties and early odds. Now it feels like if you
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: don't have your card greater, then there must be something
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: wrong with it, right, So I do think, and frankly
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: that also is another way of making I think it
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: means that at least there's a higher bottom this time
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: when there'll be inevitable ups and downs, just like any market.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: But I do think this bot I don't think the
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: bottom is going to fall out the way the junk
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: wax era essentially had the bottom fall up, all right.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Bills. He is one of the
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: I think officers of the Five Timers Club. Here. Hey,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: I recently realized one of your episodes is about the
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: perfect length for a half marathon. Thanks for helping me
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: keep pace. All right, I'm trying to think the half
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: marathon writes twelve miles. If you're averaging what I probably whatever,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: it's somewhere closer to fifteen miles an hour. I will
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: be honest, I probably did half marathon if I kept
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: it in the fifteenth minute range. But I'm a mid
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: fifties kind of guy, So okay, I see where you're
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: going there. Yeah, if you listen to it, soup the nuts.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: So anyway, glad to help out, he goes, Hey, You've
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: often described yourself as an incrementalist. But if Trump was
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: reshaped politics through the gradual erosion of norms and rules, changes,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: in that a form of incrementalism too? Yeah? Or is
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: there an important distinction I'm missing? Thanks Bill, as member
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: of the long time what I mean by incrementalism? Look,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: you're right, he is. His is erosion. It's almost like
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: erosion by incrementalism, and he is sort of eroding norm
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: so there's no doubt. I guess where I make my
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: incrementalism distinctive. Is I'm incremental when you want to start
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: policy right and incrementalism right if you want same marriage?
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: It took civil units. If you want a full fledged
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: disability program for America, you had to start with Social
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: Security as a widow's you know, is just to make
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: sure we dealt with widows. So you know, I would
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: say two of the most successful achievements in the United States,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: in different ways, has made over the last in my lifetime. Right,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: the legalization of same sex marriage and the cultural acceptance
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: of it, the speed with which it was accepted, And
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: the growth and popularity of Social Security. Yes, we're concerned
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: about continuing. Nobody's arguing we should get rid of Social
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: Security other than real fringies, right, everybody's trying to figure
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: out how to make it functional and keep up working.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: Nobody's arguing. But the point is, these are two important
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: things that have taken place in our democracy that are
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: huge radical ideas. When you if you'd proposed the finished
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: product at the start, but incrementalism allowed them to become
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: rooted into our system. Right, If you want policy to
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: grow roots in our democracy, you have to do it
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: one step at a time. So incrementalism does not mean
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: you somehow don't push for innovation, you don't push for
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: big ideas. It's about you pursue big ideas, one step
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: at a time. You don't try to force everybody to
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: do everything all at once. So that would be my
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: deb you know, it is really about execution, you know,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: where yes, we need to get to a system where
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Our country
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: and our politics are complicated. Or do you want to
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: accomplish the goal or do you want to stand on ceremony?
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: And if you want accomplish the goal, then you come
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: at it in five or six different ways. It isn't
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: the most efficient. You know, authoritarianism takes hold because its
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: biggest upside is the efficiency. But as we all know,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: if you want efficiency, you have to sacrifice individual freedom.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: And I think what we've discovered is that most human
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: beings are umbiling to do that. So's that's how I
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: would sort of describe my version of incrementalism and defend,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: appreciate the question. And I've got another half marathon for
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: you today. So this has been episodes, and if you're
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: hearing at this point right, you're at the very end.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: So come on, Bill, keep it up, keep up the pace.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: You can do it. You can finish it up. Just
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: prepare for like some quick quick British Open commentary. Now
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: I'm having a kidding because I don't want to put
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: you asleep. Next question comes from Kevin Spokane, Washington, the
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: fifth Congressional District. Thanks for answering my question on DC
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: statehood and for the and for the history lesson. It
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: really helped put the issue in context. My follow up
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: is beyond congressional representation, what rights or powers are DC
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: and Puerto Rico residents still missing? And is there any
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: realistic path forward, whether through Congress or the core. Also,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: are there any lessons from Harriet meyers failed Supreme Court
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: nomination that applied to Todd Blanch's nomination, particularly when it
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: comes to conflicts of interest mission MTP. But I'm glad
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: to hear your perspective on your own platform. Kevin spoken, well,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: that's obviously the biggest issue is just simply representation, right
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: like laws get passed without any say so right federal
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: These federal like d C and Puerto Rico have no say.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: DC has a small amount of saying committee at times,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: but they can't even you know, DC can't even have
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: its own city budget without approval of Congress. And there's
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of things Puerto Rico can't do without the
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: approval of Congress. So it really is they don't you know,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: Puerto Ricans and DC residents don't have the rights of
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: every other American citizen in the other in the fifty
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: states right there are whether it's representation in Congress, they're getting. Essentially,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: the government is behaving to Puerto Ricans and d C
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: the way the British government behave to the colonists back
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: in the seventeen sixties and seventies. They're passing laws and
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: decrees without any input from the citizenry itself and they
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: have no say in it whatsoever. They do have access
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: to courts, so that is equal access, but it's the
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: self governance is the biggest part of this. And just
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: the lack of representation, right that's the biggest part of this.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: So they have no say so on that. But no,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: they still have a And it's interesting on the courts.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: I wonder if the courts could be used to essentially
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: say that this American citizens in DC and Puerto Rico.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: Here's the lawsuit that I would try to concoct, because
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: the outcome you would want is for the court to
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: conclude that basically these structures are. Maybe the structures aren't unconstitutional,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: but the structures have treated its citizens. The citizens within
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: those structures or territories are are don't have the full
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: constitutional rights. And if the courts came back and said, hey,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: essentially these these territories are governing in an unconstitutional way,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: then it throws it back at Congress to have to
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: make it constitutional. And there are different ways they could
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: do that. You know, do you give full statehood or
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: do you give just more representation in the US Congress.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: You know, there's are there some half measures right with
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: d C. One of the half measures was allowing there
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: at large member of Congress to at least serve on committees,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: which there was a time they weren't even allowed to
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: be in a committee. So I think that's the best
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: way to try to get the courts to essentially agree
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: that the citizens in DC and Puerto Rico don't have
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: constitutional rights and that that in itself is it is
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: a violation, you know, and that they have to you know,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: they need to they need to have access to full
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: constitutional rights. Now, maybe that simply means they move and
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: get and the governments to pay for their move, to
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: provide to move into a state with constitutional rights. I
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: don't have a good you know, I'm I'm spitballing here
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: on this one, but I would want the courts to
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: rule the you know, I think the best path, the
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: best way to use the courts is to come up
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: with an argument where the courts have no choice but
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: to say, hey, these structures aren't constitutional because the people
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: within the system don't have full constitutional rights. Your Harriet
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: Myers question, that to me, is the best argument against
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Todd blinks right. If you thought the fear of Ferry
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: Myers was too close to President Bush was among the reasons.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: Now it was the right that took her down because
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: they feared she wasn't a real conservative, and that's why
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: there was this left right partnership into into tanking her nomination.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: Of course, careful what you wish for you end up
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: with Samuel Alito, right, talk about talk about a fork
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: in the road moment right had had had had Bush
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: just pursued, you know, somebody in between Harriet Myers and
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: Samuel Alito, we might have a We might have a
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court that was a little still it's a conservative
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: court and it so far hasn't been turned into a
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: trumpet court. And the irony is that Alito's the most
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: trumpy of them all, and he was not appointed by Alito.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: But we digress. I you know, I still I cannot
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: fathom Blanche getting confirmed. And again I take court if
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: I if you take Corner at his word, he ain't
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: getting confirmed tillis the Epstein thing was a weird he'll
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: to die on is he really now? All's good? Right?
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: Blanche does one perfunctory meeting with Epstein survivors, doesn't really
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: promise anything, doesn't really do much, and that's good enough.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: You know. Look, the fact that he was the personal
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: lawyer means he's unqualified, but he was unqualified the first
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: time and he got confirmed. But I think he's a
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: political liability for Republicans in general. And that's the I
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: don't know if we're there yet, right, we haven't seen
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: it pop and polling. But I if I were on
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: the ballot in twenty twenty six, I don't know if
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: I would want my name on his confirmation because nothing
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: good has come out of this Justice Department, whether you're
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: a left, right or center. Let's see here, Let's try
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: to sneak in two more questions. Next one is Michael
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: New York's seventh district. He said he's moving to New
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: Jersey's seventh pretty soon. And he said, hey, I was
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: curious what goes into persuading someone to run for office?
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: And on the flip side, kind of pressure is applied
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: to convinced candidates to drop out of a race. Can
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: you take us behind the scenes and how someone like
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: Schumer might recruit candidates such as Janet Mills and Maine
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: or Shared Brown in Ohio. So number one, it's promises
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: of resources. Number two is we're going to do everything
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: we can to clear primary field. Right. Normally, candidates who
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: are on the fence about running don't want to have
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: to go through a primary, Right. That's the ugliness of
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: this social media stuff is so ugly now primaries get
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: so personal. So the number one thing is that, and
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: the number two thing is raising money. Right, So that's
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: what these guys left or right. You know, they're promising
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: clear primary fields, key endorsements, and key access to donors. Right,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: that's the biggest you know. And then if you're recruiting
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: somebody that used to be a senator like Sharon Brown,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: you might say, hey, I'm going to I'm going to
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: make sure you're seniority from the past counts, and you'll
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: automatically be if we win the Senate, you're going to
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: be a committee chair. Automatically you get all your seniority.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: And you might even promise that to a Janet Mills,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: who would come in with some seniority just simply as
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: a statewide elected official. There's a whole math. By the way,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: if you really want to dork out one day, I'll
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: go through the friend of mine. Quinn McCord, a former
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: colleague of Mind, does a terrific research on his own
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: these days when on a variety of things in the
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: world of politics. He might know. He might understand how
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: the seniority said, how seniority is is awarded to incoming
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: Senate winners better than any other individual person. What what
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: counts in your seniority score. There's a whole thing on it.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: And again, maybe I'll dork out on it one day
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: because it's it is. It is sort of convoluted, but
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: a little dorky, but it will you would you would promise,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: you know, certain things like that, and then when you're
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: trying to convince somebody to get out, boy, you know
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: you don't understand the negative ads that are coming. You
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: don't want to humiliate yourself. This is going to be ugly.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: You don't want I'll end up endorsing your opponent, right you.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: You sort of pain a picture. Sometimes you convinced somebody
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: to drop out by saying look, and I'm like, I
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: don't know that this happened in Iowa, but this is
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: this situation that I think happened in Iowa. So in
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: Iowa you had a pretty crewdit primary for a small
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: period of time. You had Zach Walls, you had Josh Turik.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: He also had another guy, JD. Schult And if you
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: remember him, he's the guy that almost beats Steve King
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: in that fourth district. He's been, he's run, he's run
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: for office before. He's the former minor league baseball player.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: He ends up dropping out, you know, in favor of Turk.
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: And if you told me that, one of the ways
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: that Schumer could and National Democrats convince him to drop out.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: But by saying, hey, when the grassy seat comes open,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: you're our guy, and so we will. You know you,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: you know, look, this is not the seat for you.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: We think this guy is that you are better in this,
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: you know, we think that that would be the better.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: We think Turk is the better candidate under this scenario,
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: and we'll be full fledged behind you the next time. Now,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: if you're a candidate, don't ever believe a national party
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: when they tell you that, because number one, they can't
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: guarantee anything. Number two, politics changes, everything changes, right, all
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: sorts of things. So I would take them at their word,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: but you're asking me. These are some of the persuasive
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: ways that they try to you know. So, and sometimes
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: it's using third party groups to endorse other candidates to
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: just sort of make it look like it's really difficult
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: for you to win, right, And that is one way.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: It's what we learned about the brewer in Maine who
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: was in and then drops out, Dan Kleebeck I think
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: it's his name. He's probably not going to be the nominee.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: It looks like Troy Jackson's going to be. I think
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: that's what it is, all right, last question for the
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: for the Monday episode, I have got another question for you,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: as anyone else. This one comes from Phil W. Rogers, City, Michigan,
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: Go Blue. I've got another question for you, as anyone else.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: Pointed out that Donald Trump's make America Great against slogan
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: is essentially reworking of Ronald Waganson, Let's make America great again?
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: And why doesn't that come up more often? Also as
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: a fun fallow, how could you make a list of
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: greatest political movie presidents without including rufus T firefly from
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: Duck Soup. Thanks for interesting podcast, Phil w I got
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: to familiarize myself more with rufus T Firefly from Duck Soup,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: and I'll see where that goes. Right when he did it,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: and for the first going back to Trump a million
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: we all pointed out that this was not like typical
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. He doesn't ever come up with anything on
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: his own. This was something Roger Stone whispered in his ear,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: reminded him Reagan did it, and Donald Trump just conveniently
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: forgets that Reagan did it right, And you're right, it
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: is stopped being you know, because in some ways Trump's
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: made it more his than it ever was Reagan's. It
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: was a slogan Reagan used, but Trump's turned it into
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: a political movement right and suddenly make America Great Again
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: became an acronym to describe the far right fringe of
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party apparatus. Right, So I it's funny you
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: get at something that I often worry about on this
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: on this podcast, which is well, I've reported on this,
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: like you know, missus Todd will say you should discuss
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: this and like some idea, and I'll be like, well,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: I did, I did this six months ago. She goes,
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: that was six months ago. You got to say it again.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: And I think this is one of those stories where
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: we all think we've reported this so often. People must
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: know this. And if you if you go and do
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: any AI in large Language model or any search right,
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: it immediately comes up. It's easily fact checkable. But it's
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: no longer in it. I don't defense will sound like
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: a strong word. It doesn't feel like a borrowed slogan anymore. Right,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: it feels like it's actually it's it's like this phrase
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: groundhog day. It's been completely redefined into something totally different. Yes,
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: it was this. It was a logo that Reagan came
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: up with, and and Reagan was trying to write car
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: you know, and it made sense when you're challenging a
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: sitting president to do something, you know, to make that case.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: He was trying to h He basically say, hey, this
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: was a blip. Let's go back and you didn't like this,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: let's go let's go back to what you liked. And
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: so I guess that that's you know it, it's I
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: guess that's why it's not been noted as often anymore,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: because in some ways he really had. It has become
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: its own thing, and it isn't doesn't it. It's a
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: borrowed phrase, but it's meaning now versus what it's meaning then.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: Was actually are pretty different on that score. They're pretty
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: they're they're they're pretty different. All right, that's quite a
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: bit of time I've spent with you as my as uh,
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: my friend Bills says, perfect for a half marathon. So
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: there's your half marathon for today. Don't have a ton
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: on what we've seen. What we've seen here, but let
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: me just complain about one thing. Minor league baseball parks
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be used unless you have an emergency. And it
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: is ridiculous the Nats are playing in this ridiculous Sacramento
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: baseball park. I love it for people in Sacramento that
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: they get a couple of years of major League baseball
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: players visiting, but make no mistake. The game that's played
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: in that park is not major League Baseball. When you
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: have the games that we've had, right, it's just it's
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: notts what we do and that's been done. It was
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: one thing in Tampa because you actually had to stadium
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: and get harmed. This is a choice, and this is
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: where the commissioners should have just told the Athletics are no,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: you're finding a major league park to play in now,
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: whatever it takes. But they didn't, and so here we
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: are with that. I will, of course my schedule this week.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: By the way, check out newsphere interviewed Byron Donalds, Who's
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: gonna Who's a front runner to be the next governor
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: of Florida. I think you got to keep track. If
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: he's the next governor Florida, it means he's the next
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: front runner for president in twenty thirty two or twenty
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: thirty six. And if you're wondering about Donalds, is he
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: a true believer or a politician in the MAGA movement?
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: Check out the interview. Strikes me he's a politician more
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: than a true believer of the Mega movement, maybe more
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: Brian Kemp in him. I don't know, but a little
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: less sort of doctrinaire, I think than Ronde Santis. But again,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: I'll let you decide on that, and we won't know
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: for sure until Trump's not in the picture anymore. And
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: that's going to be fascinating to watch politicians who have
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: benefited from Trump and Donald certainly has what they become
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: after Trump is no longer essentially a threat in their lives,
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: if that makes sense anyway. We got the live stream
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night, arizon A Primary Night Super Tuesday with Chrystaliza,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: and of course I will see you Thursday and with
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: that until we upload the GAT