Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Voters Hate The Trump Economy… And It’s Only Getting Worse + America Hasn’t Been This Vulnerable In Decades

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - Voters Hate The Trump Economy… And It’s Only Getting Worse + America Hasn’t Been This Vulnerable In Decades · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: as some sort of broker. So if your default is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are
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  Speaker 1: not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying
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  Speaker 1: to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but
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  Speaker 1: it's across the board is what they're trying to do.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're advocating for you.
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  Speaker 1: They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person
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  Speaker 1: who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs,
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  Speaker 1: and then compares them to every single plan available to
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  Speaker 1: find the best one that will work for you and
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  Speaker 1: hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the
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  Speaker 1: part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've
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  Speaker 1: been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
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  Speaker 1: of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there.
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  Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan,
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  Speaker 1: you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever
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  Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. All right. Welcome
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: to the Monday edition of the Chuck Todd cast, the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: official last week of summer. I know some of you
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: are going. Man, is summer ever going to end? We're
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: going to have Labor Day and the latest possible day.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: This Monday being August 31st means Labor Day is not
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: for another week. So for the I'm guessing most of
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you have turned the page from summer to, shall we say,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the new school year. Not quite fall, but, you know,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the minute summer's over, you know, we're supposed to say
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: fall has begun. But there is some of you who
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: get this one idea. last week, including all my friends
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: who work on Congress and Capitol Hill. So it is
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: the one more week until we get to Labor Day
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and the official end of summer. Look, for today's edition,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I got a bit of a notebook style open for
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: you today. I'm going to get into the economy because
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I think now we could say with an enormous amount
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of confidence, we know what the biggest issue of this
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: election is, pure and simple. And it's the same exact
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: issue that decided the last election, prices. The price of everything,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: but it is prices. There is no beating around the bush.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: We're 65 days from election day. We know what the
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: issue is. There's no changing it. This is an election
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: about prices. And depending on the size, the explanation for
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Democratic success is going to be this issue. And, you know,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: it's interesting after looking at some of the economic news
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: over the weekend. I also fear this economy may may
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: about to get maybe about to be getting worse before
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: it gets better. I'm going to explain some of that
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: as well. And I've got some pretty alarming reporting about
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the state of the American military six months into the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Iran war. And I also want to spend a few
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: minutes on why we need to take the possibility of
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin testing NATO more seriously than perhaps we have.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: And then later, I want to get into this deal
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: with the Trump administration and what they have, this deal
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: they've apparently struck over Venezuelan oil, which reads less like
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: a 21st century American foreign policy and a little more
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: like something out of the imperialist days of the British empire.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: It is disgusting what we're doing here. I'm gonna get
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: into it. And then I'm gonna end with something a
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: bit personal before we get to the interview with Mike DeWine.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: My old high school is disappearing. I went to a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: public high school. Now look, it's not literally disappearing, at
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: least not yet, but Miami Killian Senior High School, I'm
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: class of 1990, which once had more than 3000 students,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: now barely has 400 students. And the reason why, gets
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: at something bigger about public education, school choice, and the
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: loss of community in this country. But first, I'm going
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to kick things off with a topic I'm the most
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: excited about over the next, frankly, four months and over
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the last weekend, and that is, of course, college football.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: College football is back, and no, I'm not giving you
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: my take on what happened on the field. There's another
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: reason why I enjoy when college football comes back during
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: a campaign season, because for somebody who is both a
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: political junkie and a college football junkie, This is becoming
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: an even more fun time of the year for someone
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: like me, because with college football comes a lot more
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: political advertising than we ever used to get. And there's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a reason for that, frankly, due to the fragmentation of everything.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Pretty much big live sporting events is sometimes the only
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: way to talk to a larger swath of voters, particularly
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: those that are not stage left or stage right. Because
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: if you're running a statewide campaign in a competitive state
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: and you're not advertising on Saturdays on college football games
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: involving the major universities in your state, you're probably committing
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: political malpractice at this point. Because, look, think about how
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: many places are left where you can reliably find a
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: large number of swing voters, independents and low attention voters
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: all watching the same thing at the same time. It's sports.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: That's it. College football in the NFL. have the biggest
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: chunk of these types of voters. So I have found
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: it very interesting these days, not simply to which ads
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I see during these games, but which campaigns are advertising
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and which ones aren't. Because that was also notable. And
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: this weekend I noticed three things. I was watching a
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: little NC State in Virginia and I kept seeing advertising.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: We also saw a little North Carolina TCU. So you
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: had a North Carolina races in two different games. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I saw a lot of advertising. from the pro-Roy Cooper
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: side attacking Michael Watley and trying to define Watley. It's interesting.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: They're hitting Watley on crime issues because it is actually
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: one of Roy Cooper's potential weaknesses. He's been hit over
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the years about the issue of rape kits and what's
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: happened while he was attorney general. So it strikes me
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: as one of those ad campaigns. It's neutral. What was interesting, though,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: is I saw a lot of that ad. I didn't
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: see much of Whatley fighting back. Doesn't mean I'm not
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: giving you 100% here. But then when you're watching TCU
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, you weren't just getting North Carolina ads because
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: TCU was involved. I was getting some Texas political advertising.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And there was one anti-James Tallarico ad I saw quite
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a bit, obviously a pro-Ken Paxton ads of sorts. But
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: what struck me was the issue they chose. It was China,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: specifically Chinese interest buying land in Texas. And there's this
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: menacing map and it's got red, Chinese red spreading across,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: starting in West Texas and making its way towards the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: big major cities in Dallas and Houston, et cetera. And
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the ad blames Tallarico for a vote he cast in
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the legislature. And his, look, his voting record in the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: legislature puts him, you can really paint him further out
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: of the mainstream. And I expect a lot of picking
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: at his voting record to be chum for the negative
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: ads that go after him. But this ad was striking
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: because it was like, wait a minute. So Tallarico's to blame?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: for the Chinese buying land in Texas. You're like, wait
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a minute, Republicans have controlled Texas for what, about a
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  Speaker 1: quarter century? There's been a Republican governor going back every
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: year since 1995, a Republican attorney general that goes all
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the way back till then. They've complete control of the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: legislature for that entire time as well. So you're telling
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: me that James Tallarico a Democrat serving in the minority
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: in the Texas legislature was somehow so powerful that he
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: single-handedly allowed the Chinese to start buying up land in Texas, right?
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, right? And obviously
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: if this is such a crisis, you know, the first
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: thing I would hope some people are doing when they're
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: watching this as is, well, what is Greg Abbott doing
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: about this? He's the governor. He's the commander in chief
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: of the Texas National Guard. What did Ken Paxton do,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the Republican attorney general? What did the Republican legislature do?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I know I'm being a little snarky here, right? And
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I get it. Look, I understand why they're doing this
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: type of act. And this is about trying to neutralize,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I think specifically the data center issue, the panic among
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Republicans in Texas over the politics of data center is
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: something else right now. I mean, it seems like they have,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, Abbott has done the 180 as fast as
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: any Republican in the country on this. Paxton doing the
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: same thing. Look, they see the polls. They clearly see
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: that this is not popular. Left and right alike. They
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: know there's anger about electricity. And in Texas with that grid,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: they have their own grid. There's always concern that it
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: can't hold up. And now you're letting data centers suck
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: even more power out of it. There's anger about water.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: They're always fighting over water in West Texas. And there's
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: anger about the land. There's anger about these enormous technology
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: companies coming into communities, consuming huge amounts of power and resources,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: and people wondering whether they're going to get anything out
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: of the deal other than a higher utility bill. So
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I think the China message is an attempt to muck
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: that up. Take this anxiety about land and development and
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: who's benefiting from it and turn it into, well, the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: real problem is China. Foreigners are buying Texas. And by
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the way, James Tallarico helped them out. So it's classic
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: fear mongering. But foreign ownership of land has some political potency.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I've seen it. I've seen versions of this message over
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the last couple of cycles, mostly from the right and
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: occasionally from Democrats hitting Republicans on this as well. So
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I don't dismiss it. I think it's a easy thing
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to get voters upset about. But here's a mistake that
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: campaigns make, particularly Democratic campaigns, though both parties can do this.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: They'll see an ad like this and they'll react the
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: way I did, just like, well, that seems kind of ridiculous.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Do we really think voters are going to buy that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: this Democratic state rep in the minority somehow was so
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: powerful as a state rep in the minority in the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Texas Democratic legislature that he could solely on his own
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: clear the way for the Chinese to buy Texas land, right?
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: And I could see Plenty of people in his orbit saying, well, oh,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: don't worry about this ad. Nobody's going to believe it.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: It's not a believable ad. And if you run an
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: ad that's not believable, it won't penetrate. Everybody knows it's
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Republicans who run Texas. So if the Chinese are buying land,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it was Republicans that let them do it. And this
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: is where we all know now that's not true, folks.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: People are willing to believe a lot of things if
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: that's the only thing they're hearing over and over again.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: So if I'm the Tallarico campaign, I'd be answering this
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: ad directly, not indirectly. I'd lean into it. I'd say,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: they're right. This is a problem. And here's who's letting
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: it happen. So we'll see. But it was one other thing.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I saw a lot of these pro Paxton ads hitting Tallarico.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Supposedly a Tallarico ad aired as well. I missed it.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Now look, I'm all over that. I didn't see a
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: lot of, I saw a lot of Cooper. I didn't
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: see a lot of Whatley. Now, look, it's August and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: we're just getting into the period when the less politically
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: engaged voters begin paying attention. Football season is when they
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: start paying attention. So this is when you have an
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: opportunity to try to define the race with these voters.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: So it's interesting to me is who's trying to define
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the race early and who's allowing themselves to be defined.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Just file this away. By the way, there's one other
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: political-ish ad that caught my attention. It was essentially an
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: ad for the current version of the Protect College Sports Legislation.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And the pitch was basically, if Congress doesn't act, you're
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: going to lose everything except basketball and football in the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: college sports. There'll be no more Olympic sports, no more
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: non-revenue sports. You know, women's sports will be attacked, the
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: whole thing. So welcome back, college football. The games are back.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: The marching bands are back. And for me, us political
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: junkies trying to read the tea leaves, the political ads
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: are back. So, by the way, speaking of elections, tomorrow night,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: We've got the marquee race for tomorrow night's Massachusetts primary
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: is Markey Moulton. Ed Markey running for reelection. Seth Moulton
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: challenging him in a primary. This is one of those
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: generational challenges, but it doesn't match the ideological and the
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: generational that we've seen. Moulton running a little more as
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a center left candidate. Markey over 80, but running as
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the super progressive candidate. Finally got his AOC endorsement, which
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: he had been begging for for weeks. I still suspect,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: you know, this has not been a good, you know,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: incumbent mindset. So I think this race is going to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: be pretty close. I guess you got to make Markey
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: the favorite here. He pulled this off before in this
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: sort of similar when he had the primary with Joe
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Kennedy III. But Steve Lynch, who's running for reelection, he
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: could be in trouble. By the way, good news for
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts independents. In the November ballot, there is a proposal
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to essentially go to a top two, regardless of party
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: primary system, because Massachusetts, I think, ranks last in competition.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And look, it's a it's a state where a majority
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: of registered voters are not Republican or Democrat. They're independent.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I know people always are shocked when they hear that statistic.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I think there is no more disenfranchised voter, bigger disenfranchised
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: voter in America than the independents and Democrats. in Massachusetts.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: I really hope voters pass this. We need some good
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: competition in Massachusetts. Here's one of our original small D
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: democracy states. They should be leaning into democracy, not trying
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: to manipulate it as successfully as it gets manipulated in
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: a one party system. So as always, Chris Eliza, DDHQ,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have a live stream. Be sure to join
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: us for that. So let me get back to the beginning.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: of where I'm going to focus today's conversation. We're close
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: enough to November that every one of these elections gives
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: us another little piece of information about the electorate that
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: we're dealing with. And I think we already know that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the electorate is going to be voting on one giant issue.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: In fact, I don't think I have to say the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: word think anymore. We know it is prices, prices, prices, prices.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: We spent the last election talking about inflation and affordability.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And guess what? We're doing it again. Data centers are
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: going to be in the ether. Don't get me wrong.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: The backlash against the tech giants is also going to
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: be in the atmosphere. The growing anger of corporate America
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: is also underneath a lot of this. Immigration will matter.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Iran matters. Ukraine. Tariffs, trade. It all matters. But here's
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the thing. A lot of these actually aren't separate issues anymore.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: All these policy choices that Trump has made, they're all
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: showing up in the same place. Prices. The Iran war?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Energy prices. Fertilizer prices. Transportation prices. Grocery prices. How about Ukraine?
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Same thing, energy, wheat, food. How about the tariffs and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the trade war? Again, what does it impact? Prices, even
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the data center. Electricity prices, right? All of these issues
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: go to, immigration, same thing. Labor costs, housing, food production.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Once again, all contributors to Trump's inflation on your weekly
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: grocery bill. So we may be having all these different
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: policy debates in Washington, but to the voter, All of
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: them seem to be impacting the same thing. How much
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: does it cost for me to survive? So if this
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: blue wave materializes this November, we're not going to need
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a six-month archaeological dig or some sort of autopsy to
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: try to figure out what happened. We know the answer. Prices.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: And here's the political problem for Republicans. This economy is
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: about to get worse, not better. There is no green
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: shoots down the road. because some of the price pressures
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: building right now haven't even made it through the system yet.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Axios had a piece on Sunday that they called the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: coming grocery apocalypse. That was their phrase. It's obviously a
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: dramatic headline to get you to click, but it's an
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: important headline. Look what's underneath it. Americans have already been
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: getting hammered on certain foods, beef, coffee, chocolate, tomatoes, apples.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Now you've got price pressures building across a much wider
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: portion of the food supply. Corn and wheat prices have
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: hit their highest levels in three years. The weather isn't
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: helping here. We've got extreme weather. Droughts have been impacting
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: things in some places. The Russian-Ukraine war continues to disrupt
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the wheat issue and fertilizer. Iran war is driving up
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: fuel costs, also a fertilizer issue, right? Because the Iran
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: war is screwing up with fertilizer supplies because much of it,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: much of the world's fertilizer moves through the Strait of Hormuz.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Good job, Donnie. And this is where inflation gets sneaky.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: It doesn't hit you all at once, right? Fuel gets
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: more expensive. Now it costs the farmer more to run
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the equipment. Costs more to harvest. Costs more to move
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the food. Fertilizer gets more expensive. Now the crops cost
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: more to grow. Corn gets more expensive. Well, guess what
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: corn does? Feeds animals. Eventually it all works its way
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: into meat, dairy, eggs. Then all of it has to
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: get transported again. higher price. This is why the grocery
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: problem worries me more today than it did even six
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: months ago. Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast
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• 20:18
  Speaker 1: was as of August of 2026. The administration can point
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: to a month where an inflation number looks better. Okay, maybe, fine.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: But some of the costs being created today aren't going
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: to show up at a Safeway tomorrow. They're going to
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: show up six months from now. So this is going
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: to be sustaining this inflationary environment that we're living in.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Nine months from now, they're still going to be there
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: a year from now. JP Morgan is now warning that
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: global food inflation could reach 5% during the first half
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of 2027. We freaked out at jumping over 2%. 5%?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Now here's another problem. If this starts showing up broadly
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: in inflation again, what's the Federal Reserve supposed to do?
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: We know what they're supposed to do. They're gonna have
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: to raise rates and Donald Trump's gonna lose his shit.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And here we go again, right? Kevin Warsh is going
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: to be a responsible economist here. He's gotta let the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: data do the talking and Trump's gonna threaten to fire
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: him when he does it. We know Trump wants lower
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: rates because he's got business that is tied to the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Federal Reserve rate. He's got debt. issues that he, remember,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Trump never advocates for something that is benefiting somebody else.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: He only advocates for economic policy that personally impacts him.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And he's got massive amounts of debt tied to the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Trump organization that is tied to this Federal Reserve number.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: That's why this guy bitches and moans about the lower
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: rates all the time. It's never about you with him.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Just always remember, it's always about his personal self-interest. which
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: is why it's such a shame that so many free
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: market conservatives shut up about this. Jesus, cry many guys,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: speak up before this man destroys the economy as we
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: know it. Now look, if inflation starts taking off again,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and it looks really likely it's going to, they can't
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: pretend it's not happening. So now think about the trap
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: we're in. Food prices are gonna go up, energy prices
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: are going up, tariffs are pushing more prices up, Then
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the Fed has to make borrowing more expensive to keep
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: all that from turning into another inflationary spiral or cycle.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Spiral would indicate it would go down. We're going to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: go somehow in the other way. So then even worse economy,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: higher mortgage rates, higher credit card rates, higher buying costs
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: for business. This is how we become the 1970s America.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Good job, Donnie. He wanted to make America the 1970s again.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: That's not a good thing to want to become. But
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: here we are. So look, prices, prices, prices. That's what
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: this election is about. Speaking of which, on Friday, I
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: decided I wanted to understand one piece of this a
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: bit better, the beef situation. So for Newsphere, I went
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: down to the Black Locust Livestock Cattle Ranch. It's a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: cattle ranch near Middleburg, Virginia. So not that far away
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: from where I live in Arlington, Virginia, about an hour
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: or so drive. Beautiful part of our state. You know,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: we love that part of it. So I spent some
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: time with Brandon Reeves. He is the executive director of
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the Virginia Cattlemen's Association. By the way, go over to Newsphere.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: It's already up now. Watch the whole thing because this
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: is one of those interviews where I went in knowing
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: just enough about the subject to ask questions and came
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: out realizing how much more complicated the cattle industry is
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: to our grocery store prices. And it's more complicated than
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the way we are talking about it here in Washington.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And yes, I brought some beef home from that cattle ranch.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: And I grilled those steaks on Saturday night. And maybe
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: this is in my head. Maybe somebody who understands meat
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: better than I do will tell me I'm making this up.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: But I swear to God, when you get beef that
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: hasn't gone through, shall we say, the grocery store process,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: it seems to taste different. It just tastes less preserved.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know how else to put it. It just
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: tastes fresher if it could. Anyway, beautiful farm, great experience.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: So please, I would love for you to go watch it.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: If you haven't gotten your Newsphere trial, go sign up.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Sign up for Newsphere. But here's the big thing I learned.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: You can't fix beef prices quickly, despite what Trump's trying
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: to do. Washington talks about this stuff like there's a
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: dial somewhere. Ground beef is seven bucks. OK, let's turn
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: the tile. We'll import more beef. Problem solved. Nope. except
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the cow doesn't care that there's an election in 65 days.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And it takes about a year just to raise a
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: calf to the point where it moves into the next
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: stage of the beef supply. So if you're a rancher
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: deciding whether to keep a young female cow because you
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: want her producing calves and expanding your herd, you're making
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: an investment that's going to take years to pay off,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: not months, years. And that's the key to understanding this problem.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Because guess what? America doesn't have enough cattle at the moment.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Our herd, collective herd for the country is historically small,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: smallest in 75 years. And guess what? 75 years ago,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: our population was basically, I think, a third of what
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: it is today. And some of what we're experiencing today
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: is the result of decisions that were made years ago.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: COVID screwed up the processing system. Ranchers got hammered then.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: We had a drought, higher feed costs. We've had all
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: these higher fuel costs, borrowing costs. So for the last
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: few years, ranchers haven't been able to expand. Some even
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: got out completely. And now years later, we consumers are
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: paying for it. So Trump sees ground beef around $ 7
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: a pound and he panics. Oh no, we got to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: lower that price before the election. So I get the impulse.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: In fact, politically, he should be obsessed about this because
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: it's killing him. It's killing his administration. So what did
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: they decide to do? Let's bring in more foreign beef,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: get more supply in, maybe the price comes down. But
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: here's what Brandon Reeves said to me about this decision.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: He said, okay, And maybe you might get some short-term relief,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: literally like maybe a month or two. But what does
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: the rancher who's American rancher here? Well, this is what
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Brandon told me. And you got to know about Brandon.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: This is a third generation, I think fifth generation rancher
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: who also has a law degree. He spent years waiting
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: for cattle prices finally to reach a level where maybe
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: this business makes sense again. And he said, other ranchers,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: this is what they're hearing. He says, so then they
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: have to decide, do I expand? Do I borrow money?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Is this a good time to borrow money? Is a
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: good time to buy equipment? Do I keep more cows?
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Can my son or daughter actually make a living doing this?
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Am I gonna pass this down? And so right when
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: this rancher is considering making that investment, Washington says, we're
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: bringing in a bunch of foreign beef because we need
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the price down before the election. So if you're this
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: sort of family ranch, why would you expand at this moment?
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: That's the problem. So Trump inadvertently has made it even
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: harder for the American beef industry to keep up with
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: American demand. So you may lower the price today by
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: doing the very thing that keeps the American herd smaller tomorrow.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: And there's another piece of this that I learned that
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I hadn't appreciated. We don't have enough places to process
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: the cattle we already have. This industry has become incredibly concentrated, right?
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've got a problem of monopolies and duopolies
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: in this country, right? In our politics, the duopoly of
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: these two parties, right? Doing all the damage they've done. Well,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: guess what? Concentration of power anywhere sucks for you and me,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the consumer. We have four enormous companies right now process
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: the overwhelmingly majority of American beef. And we're losing processing
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: capacity in parts of the country. Brandon Reeves was telling
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: me that basically the East Coast and the West Coast
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: ranches are getting squeezed because these conglomerates are shutting down
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the East Coast and West Coast processing plants and just
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: trying to concentrate them all closer to the Midwest. So
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: believe it or not, smaller ranchers can wait almost a
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: year or more in order to get time and space
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: at a local processor. So there's an actual policy agenda
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: sitting here. We need to create more incentives for more
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: regional processing. We need to create more competition. We need
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to help ranchers finance expansion. We need to lower their
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: energy and transportation costs, give them some certainty about trade
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: because we keep Trump's trade mess. Give them enough confidence
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: about where the market will be two or three years
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: from now that they'll actually take the risk of producing
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: more cattle. That's how you eventually lower the price of
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: ground beef. But Donald Trump, who just knows so little
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: about the economy in general, gosh, I mean, there's nothing
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: more insulting about the Trump presidency than the ignorance he
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: brings to it. You know, it's one thing to lie.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: It's another thing to be dumb about it. It's just
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: very frustrating. So look. What I just described will eventually
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: lower the cost of beef, but it ain't going to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: happen tomorrow and it ain't going to happen by 27.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: And that's the problem with so much of the economic
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: policy we're seeing right now. Trump just is trying to
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: solve for a headline, solve for a poll, solve for November.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: The cow doesn't give a damn about your poll. The
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: cow operates on her own schedule. So maybe you knock
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: something off the price for about two weeks. But if
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: you've just convinced another group of ranchers not to expand
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: their herds, congratulations, you may have made the next beef
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: shortage even worse. By the way, the farmer's also getting
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: squeezed by that same fertilizer and diesel price increase that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about. The grocery store story, the cattle story,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: it's all part of the same story, folks. The cost
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of producing food is rising and it's gotten worse because
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: of decisions Donald Trump has made. The cost of transporting
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: food is rising because of decisions Donald Trump has made.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: The cost of borrowing money to produce food is going
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: to rise again because of decisions Donald Trump has made. Remember,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: this is his decisions. He can't blame Biden. Biden didn't
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: create this tariff war. Biden didn't create the trade war.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Biden didn't start the Iran war. Trump keeps looking for
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: a 30-day answer to a three-year problem. Now, I'm going
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to put one more number in context. Next to all
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: of this. Corporate America, they're doing great. This is another
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: story that feeds right into this anger that is growing
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: in this American electorate. The Financial Times looked at the
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: latest government data. Ready for this? Corporate pre-tax profits reached
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: an annualized number in the second quarter of $ 4. 8 trillion. 18%
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of the overall national income. It's the highest share that
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: corporate America has taken of national income since the aftermath
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: of World War II. And guess what? At the same time,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: the share of income going to workers through wages and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: benefits is around 60%. It is the lowest take-home pay
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: for workers since the 1950s, this piece of the pie.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Not the pay itself, but the piece of the pie. So,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: You want to understand why everybody's so pissed off, why
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the pitchforks are being sharpened? This tells you everything. Why
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: is there anti-corporate anger out there left and right? This.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Why is there anti-tech anger? This. Why is it, you know,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: there's your Bernie Sanders voter and there's your MAGA voter, folks.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: And there's your independent voter who's doing the double shooters
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: to the whole goddamn system at the moment. Corporate America
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: is producing record profits while workers receive an historically smaller
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: share of the pie, the smallest we've seen in nearly
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: 80 years. That's why everybody's so fricking pissed off, folks.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: And if your wealth comes from assets, stocks, investments in
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the AI boom, you've had an incredible few years. Things
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: are going really well. But if your economic life is
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: like what a majority of Americans' economic life is, you
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: get up, You go to work, you get a paycheck,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: you go buy groceries on the way home, pay your bills.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: You're looking around and saying, where the hell is my boom?
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I'm getting shit from this. That's the disconnect in American
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: politics right now. And Donald Trump's busy cutting deals with
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: these wealthier and wealthier corporations. These corporations are just spending
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: money to capture politicians, and they don't seem to give
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: a shit that the American public hates them. Hates them
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: right now. Because all you're doing is buying off politicians.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: You're not even trying to buy off Americans. That's been
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: my argument about the data center. Shit, instead of lavishing
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: money on a politician, why don't you lavish money on
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: a community? At least it's money better spent. So I
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: think this is why Washington continues to just misunderstand the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: anger in this country. Just because you look at the
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: GDP chart and say, oh, America's economy is growing, everything
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: should be great. This is not an all boats rising moment, folks.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: One more interesting piece of data here to share with
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: you on the economic front. Notice what probably will become
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: some form of what we hope is the Washington Star.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: But anyway, it's the new Robert Albritton competitor to the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Washington Post. Well, notice, as it's still called now, look
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: at who is actually getting hit the hardest by the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: high gasoline prices. And this won't shock you. It's Trump voters.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I've told you this before. Eighty percent of seven percent
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: of workers. In the reddest states in the country, in
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the 20% of reddest states in the country, all drive farther.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: They have fewer transit options. So households in the reddest
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: parts of America are spending roughly twice as much of
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: their income on gas as households in the bluest parts.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: So you may see the California gas price and think, oh,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the Californians must be pissed. But they've got alternative ways
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: all over the place. They're not the ones paying. They
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: also have higher incomes in California. of their income that
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: fuel is taking is actually smaller than what's happening in
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: red America. So the people absorbing some of the greatest
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: pain from the Iran war impact on energy prices are
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: disproportionately Trump's own voters. And now they keep giving him
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit of latitude, but we'll see how many
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: of these folks are gonna show up and vote. And
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: by the way, Trump's made voting, he wants to make
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: voting harder in the mail. The irony is that he's
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: gonna hurt his voters more than he's gonna hurt democratic voters.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Democrats are fighting really hard to make sure mega voters
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: aren't confused about the election, by the way. That's the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: irony to all this back and forth. So we shall see.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: We're 65 days from the election and the people paying
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: the highest price for Trump's terrible policies for our economy
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: are all his voters. What are they going to do?
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I don't expect them to vote for Democrat. Will they
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: vote third party? Will they skip a race or two?
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Will they show up? The longer this war goes on,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: the more the war itself is going to become an
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: economic issue. And that brings us to another problem with Iran.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: The war isn't simply making things more expensive. It's also
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: making us more vulnerable. This should scare this also just more.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I'm here. I'm bringing the good news to you folks today. Hey,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: guess what? This economy is going to get worse, not better.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: And guess what? We've never been less safe. Washington Post
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: over the weekend is reporting that senior American military leaders
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: have warned the defense secretary, Pete Higgs, that continuing a
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: large scale war operation against Iran at this current level
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: is unsustainable. That's their word, unsustainable. And that continuing this
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: war is weakening America's ability to deal with threats somewhere else.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: This is the Pentagon telling the civilian leader of the Pentagon,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: we are stretched too thin. Jesus H, you know what?
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: How bad is our military leadership? Is the civilian leadership
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: of the Pentagon? Is our defense leadership? Did we really
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: do this? I mean, this is the type of, this
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: is impeachable stuff. This is putting the nation at risk.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: This is just, this should be at a level of
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: outrage that we're not going to get. But we are
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: literally in danger now. More in danger today. than America
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: has been arguably since the Cold War. And the people
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: responsible for Europe, the Pacific, our military leaders, and Latin
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: America have had ships, aircraft, other equipment pulled away to
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: support the Iran war. Several of these commanders have formally
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: disagreed with continuing to give up those assets. But they
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: have to follow orders. They're military officers. But they're putting
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: on the record internally their disagreement. We think this is
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: creating too much risk. The Navy's warning is particularly disturbing.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: According to the Post, barely one-fourth of the Navy's destroyer
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: fleet is currently ready to deploy. Think about that. One-fourth.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: There is no chance. China tomorrow could take Taiwan. We
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: could do shit about it. Good job, Pete. We've burned
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: through enormous quantities of the missiles we use to shoot
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: down other missiles. We've burned through the Tomahawks. We've lost
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: roughly a quarter of our Reaper drone fleet. We've extended
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: deployments where so bad soldiers have tried to leap into
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the ocean to leave the ship. We've got sailors and
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: ships that need maintenance. We got more than 50,000 troops
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: still sitting in the Middle East in case the president
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: decides to escalate again. And the only aircraft carrier permanently
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: assigned to the Pacific, the carrier that's supposed to be
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: part of our deterrence against China, had to be sent
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to the Middle East to relieve another carrier that had
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: been deployed for more than 300 days. So let me
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: put this in American. We are running low on stuff.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: We are wearing out equipment and we are wearing out people.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: We are borrowing military capability from Europe and Asia to
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: keep this thing going. And this is not an abstraction.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Every ship we move from the Pacific to the Middle
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: East is a ship that's not in the Pacific. Every
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: air defense system we move in is an air defense
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: system somebody else doesn't have. Every munition we're firing is
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: one we have to replace. And remember one of the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: things we're already learning before this war was just how
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: slowly we're able to replenish those weapons. These are the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: weapons we've been selling to Ukraine, right? So there is
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: opportunity cost to all of this. Eventually, you're going to
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: have to ask, at what point does fighting this war
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: make us less capable of deterring the next one? We
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: may already be there. Russia hasn't gone away. China is
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: eyeing us with, I mean, you know, there's been no
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: bigger winner from this second Trump term than China. China
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: has better relations around the world with every ally we
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: had when Trump started his presidency. You could call that
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: a hot take, but it's a fact, folks. I mean,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: there is no bigger winner from Trump's second term than China.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: The rest of the world doesn't stop creating problems simply
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: because the United States has decided to concentrate an enormous
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: amount of our military capacity. in the Middle East again.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: And then this is where this Iran war gets even
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: more troubling. Six months into this war, we've got a
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: clearer picture of what it's actually cost us. The Post
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: is reporting this morning that some of the most senior
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: military leaders in the country have said, we cannot sustain this. period.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: And here's a part that I think deserves much more attention.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: We keep talking about this as if the question is,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: are we winning the Iran war? Well, it's no longer
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the only question. What are we no longer prepared to
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: do because we're fighting the Iran war? That's what's scary here.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: That's a problem. Everything we've got now, we've got to
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: replenish our munitions and everything. It's just like with this
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: beef issue. You can't just turn a dial and suddenly
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: get a factory just churning this stuff out. We have
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: put ourselves in a place where we even, we're even
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: limited in what we could do, right? If he really
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: wanted to win the Saran War and he wanted to
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: really make, try to get the Strait of Hormuz, you know,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: back under sort of maritime law, it would take ground troops,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: but we don't have the ability to do that. Like
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: he has put himself in a situation where he can't
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: follow the best military advice he may be giving because
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: we are so constrained on supplies. And look, this is where,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and I said this a couple of weeks ago, what
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the frick have we been spending all this money on?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And we are this unprepared, one small excursion of a war. Remember,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that's what the president called it. One little excursion of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: a war And suddenly we can't defend Taiwan anymore. We
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: got Putin thinking about attacking a NATO country because he
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: wants to see what we would do or couldn't do. Look,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: you may think Putin's crazy. He's losing the war with Ukraine.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Why would he expand it? Sometimes that's what you do.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: You're losing. So you're trying to scramble everything. I think
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: we should be incredibly concerned, incredibly concerned that this is
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: going to happen. And, you know, I think that's why, look,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: we have all sorts of stories about what the CIA director,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: why they were meeting with Putin. Was it to try
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: to get a peace meeting, a trilateral meeting between Putin, Zelensky,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: and Trump? Was it about getting Russia to back off
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: helping Iran? Was it about warning Russia, don't try to
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: see if NATO's vulnerable right now? All of those outcomes
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: are not good. What it really struck me, and I'm
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: sure what Putin heard, was a desperate American president desperate
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: for russia to hand him a win why is russia
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: going to do that you know at this point putin's
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: just fighting for his survival putin feels like if he
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: if he capitulates now there's going to be revolution in
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: his own country and he's you know he's tchaikovsky you
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: know i mean that's that's just uh i think it's
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: inevitable that that's what's likely to happen there but it
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: is it is We are very vulnerable now, and I
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: hope one of our adversaries doesn't try to take advantage
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: of the moment. But that's the fear that they may
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: try to take advantage of this moment. And speaking of
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: America's reputation around the world, I want to move to
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Venezuela here for a minute. Because I don't know how
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: else to describe what the Trump administration announced Friday night
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: other than to say, this sounds like something out of
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the imperialist days of the British Empire. Seriously, what are
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: we doing here? The president announced that the United States
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: has reached an agreement with Venezuela, a country that we've
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: essentially taken its leadership over by gunpoint. And it supposedly
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: gives us control over oil fields containing some 65 billion
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: barrels of proven reserves. So I'm going to walk through
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: what we know because the details here matter. The United
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: States and an unnamed private operator apparently are going to
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: form a new company with Venezuela. And who's the socialist
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: regime these days? But I digress. That company gets the
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: rights to develop 17 Venezuelan oil fields for 100 years.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: You heard that right, 100 years. Imperialist much? And according
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: to the reporting, the United States gets 55% of the
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: effective output of this company, including an ownership stake and
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the right to buy some of the oil at cost.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Some of that oil would go to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Some could be used by the military. The administration says
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: this is going to dramatically increase American energy security. And
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Trump is selling it as, quote, the biggest oil deal
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: in the world. All right. But let's hang on a
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: minute here. Whose oil is this? It's Venezuela's oil. And
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: how exactly did we get here? We sent the American
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: military into Venezuela. We kidnapped, captured, whatever you want to
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: call it, Nicolas Maduro. Look, he was a bad dude.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: No doubt. And we've brought him to the United States
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: to face federal charges on drug trafficking. Good. But now,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: before the Venezuelan people have been able to hold an
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: actual small-D democratic election and establish a new small-D democratic
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: legitimate government, the United States has negotiated a century-long arrangement
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: giving itself privileged access to Venezuela's most valuable natural resource
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: that could help their own people. I'm sorry. What else
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: do you call that? If Russia did this, what would
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: we call it? If Vladimir Putin invaded a country, removed
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: its leader, installed or blessed an interim government, and then
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: announced that Russia had negotiated a 100-year deal, giving itself
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: majority control over the development of that country's principal natural resource,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: what would we call it? I could tell you what
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: a political scientist would call it, imperialism. We wouldn't spend
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of time trying to come up with a
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: more polite word for it, actually. And I'm having a
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: hard time understanding why the standards should be different just
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: because we're doing it. There's so much about this deal
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: that we don't know. We don't know who this private
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: contractor is. We don't know exactly what the ownership structure
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: is going to look like. We don't know who's putting
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: up the money. Venezuela's oil infrastructure is a mess because
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: of Maduro's horrible leadership. Experts say it could take years
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and tens of billions of dollars to get production anywhere
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: close to what Venezuela once produced. So when Trump says
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: this is going to lower gas prices, well, it might
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: someday add supply, but it ain't lowering the price of
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: gas next week or next month. And it probably isn't
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: going to lower gas prices before the next election, let
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: alone this one. So if the justification is, well, Americans
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: are paying four bucks a gallon and we need cheaper oil,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: this is not the short-term answer to that problem. which
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: makes the other questions even more important. Why did we
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: negotiate this now? Why didn't we wait for Venezuela to
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: actually have a democratically elected government? And who exactly is
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Delcy Rodriguez negotiating on behalf of? The Venezuelan people or
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Delcy Rodriguez? Remember, she's in there at the blessing of Trump.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: And I use this for a point because let's remember,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: she wasn't some dissident waiting in the wings to restore
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: democracy in Venezuela. She was Maduro's vice president. She was
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: part of the regime. And now Donald Trump refers to
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: her as the, quote, highly respected interim president of Venezuela.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: She's got the title of president, but she was not
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: elected by the people. And she's not highly respected. Perhaps
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: she genuinely believes this arrangement is the fastest way to
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: get investment flowing back into Venezuela. Maybe. She says the
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: money will rebuild infrastructure, provide jobs, improve wages, pay for hospital. Fine.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I hope some of that happens. I hope every bit
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: of it happens. But shouldn't all the money go to that?
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: The Venezuelan people have suffered enough, but there's another possibility
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: here that we have to at least confront. Maybe she's
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: making this deal because it's the deal that allows her
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to remain in power. We removed her boss. We demonstrated
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: quite clearly that we can remove the government of Venezuela
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: whenever we decide to remove the government. So what exactly
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: does a negotiation between the United States government and the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: interim Venezuelan government look like under those circumstances? How voluntary
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: was this? It's a mighty nice set of oil reserves
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: you got there, Delcy. Be a shame if you had
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: to share a jail cell with Maduro. This is not
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: some normal commercial negotiation, folks. The gun is sitting on
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the table. And everybody in the room knows it's sitting
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: right there. This is the United States? And I have
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: to tell you, I think the coverage of this has
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: been for shit. I've been surprised at how matter-of-factly so
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: much of this has been covered in the media. This
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: is just highway robbery, folks. We're covering it as if
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: it's Exxon that was buying some drilling rights. The United
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: States used military force to remove the leader of another country.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: And months later, we've negotiated a deal with the successor
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: puppet regime that we put in power that gives the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: United States a privileged economic claim on that country's soil
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: for the next century. Trust me. You know why two-thirds
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: of South America hates America historically? It's because of bullshit
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: deals like this we did in the 50s. We're supposed
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: to be out of the imperialism game. Donald Trump wants
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: to make imperialism great again. And we're supposed to tell
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Russia to back out of Ukraine or Belarus or Georgia? Man,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: what happened to the American argument about that we were
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: going to be different? We weren't an empire. We were
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: a superpower, but we weren't going to be an empire. Well,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: this jackass wants to be an empire, which is great.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Make the world hate America. Heck of a job, Donnie.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: We weren't supposed to conquer countries for their resources. We
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: weren't supposed to say, we won, what do we get?
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: But we know that's what Donald Trump thinks about war.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: If America uses military power somewhere, America ought to get
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: something tangible in return. We get the minerals, the oils,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the land. Remember, that's how he used to complain about Iraq.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: How come we didn't get the oil? But countries aren't properties.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: And their natural resources aren't supposed to belong to whoever
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: has the biggest military. At least that's what we spent
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: the last 80 years arguing. that we weren't gonna do.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: So how exactly is our argument? What's our argument to
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Putin these days? You don't get to use military force
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: to determine Ukraine's future. You don't get to decide that
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: because Ukraine sits at your sphere of influence, you have
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: special rights over its territory and its resources. You don't
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: get to impose an arrangement on a smaller country simply
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: because you're more powerful, right? That's what we've been telling
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Putin about Ukraine. So what are we doing in Venezuela?
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: You can't build a rules-based international order where the rule
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: is Russia can't have, can't behave like it's an empire,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: but America can. That's not a rule. It's just, you know,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: that's power politics. Other countries are noticing. Our allies have
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: already noticed. So have our adversaries. This is our credibility
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: problem only compounds itself. This isn't about whether America honors
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: a NATO commitment. It's about whether the principles that we
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Invoke when we want other countries to follow the rules
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: or principles that we will follow ourselves. There's another irony here, right?
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has spent the summer railing against socialism and communism.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: What are we creating in Venezuela? The United States government
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: is apparently going to have an ownership interest in an
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: oil company. Mexico took over their oil company. Operating in
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: partnership with a foreign government and a private industry. With
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: the government entitled to a majority of its effective output?
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: What do we call in this economic ideology? It's a
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: long way away from Milton Friedman, folks. This is just
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: it's a terrible look for the United States, and it's
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: only going to make it harder for all of us
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Americans to travel. The world's going to hate us even more.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: South Americans are going to continue to... We've had generations
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: of South Americans skeptical of American imperialism. And what are
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: we doing? Behaving like American imperialists that they swear we
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: are at our core. And Donald Trump is behaving this way.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Should the United States have negotiated this before the people
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: got to choose their government? Come on. Let's restore the democracy.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Let's let Venezuelans make this decision. If they choose to
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: negotiate with us and we do it this way and
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: it's without a gun at their head, that's one thing.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: But to do it this way, it's just pure coercion.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: And I know some people are going to say, oh,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: come on, Chuck. Welcome to the real world. Great powers
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: have always behaved this way. China does it. Russia does it.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: European empires used to do it. Come on. But the
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: whole point was we were going to be different. We
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: spent most of the 20th century trying to build a
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: world where great powers weren't supposed to behave this way anymore. Yeah,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: it was imperfect. And yeah, we were hypocritical at times.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: But at least we had the aspiration. And now, if
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: the United States decides the aspiration doesn't even matter anymore,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: then don't be surprised when everybody else decides the rules
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: don't matter either. That's the world we're creating. That's why
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Iran just blocked the straight. All right, screw it. We
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: own it now. I don't think we're going to like
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: living in this world that Donald Trump has created for us.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to end with something. A few
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, a reporter at the Miami Herald named Austin
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Horn called me. He was working on a story about
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: my old high school, Miami Killian Senior High. And the
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: question he was trying to answer was actually a pretty
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: remarkable one. What happened at Killian? Because when I went there,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Killian was a huge high school. When I was there,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: we only had three grades, 10, 11, and 12. And
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: we still had something like 2,800, 2,900 students. At its peak,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Killian had roughly 3,700 students, I think, when they went
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: back to a freshman through senior. Today, they have just
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: over 400, about 430. And so when you first hear that,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you who don't know the area
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: might naturally assume, well, the neighborhood must have changed. Maybe
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: people got older. Families moved away. Maybe there aren't as
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: many kids. Except that's not what happened here. The Herald
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: found that there are actually more than 3,000 public and
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: charter high school students that live inside of Killian's boundaries.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Only a little more than 300 of them though, actually
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: attend Killian. So the kids didn't disappear. Ambition to go
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: to the school did. So what is gone is the
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: idea of the neighborhood school. And that's what got me
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: thinking because this isn't really a story about my high school.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm sharing it. It's a story about something
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: we've done to public education over the last 25, 30 years.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: And I'm not sure we've spent enough time thinking about
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: what we traded away when we empowered parents. Look, when
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: I was growing up in Miami, Killian was never necessarily
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: the single best high school at any one thing. But
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: it was a really good high school at almost everything.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: We were really good academically. We were really competitive athletically. Football, baseball, soccer, tennis.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: We sent a lot of athletes to Division I colleges.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: And there were other really good public high schools all
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: around us. Palmetto was probably considered a little better academically.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: They produced a Supreme Court justice. They produced Jeff Bezos.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Killian produced me. You know, NHF Bezos, right? So we know,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: advantage Palmetto. But the point is, these were big, successful
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: public high schools that were actually connected to the communities
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: around them. You lived in the Killian area, you went
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: to Killian. Your neighbors went to Killian. The kids you
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: played with growing up went to Killian. Their parents knew
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: your parents. And the school itself became one of the
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: institutions that helped define the neighborhood. And this isn't really
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: how South Florida works anymore. Florida has spent the last
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: couple of decades becoming one of the great laboratories of
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: school choice in America. Charter schools, magnet schools, private schools,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: religious schools. You got voucher and scholarship programs that allow
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: public money to follow students to private schools. And in
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Miami in particular, it's like the Frankenstein brain, you know,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: of this system. You've got an enormous menu of choices.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Some of that existed when I was growing up there.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I actually attended one of the early magnet junior highs.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: That's what we called middle schools then because it was seventh,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: eighth and ninth in our elementary schools went K through six.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: There were always quite a few private schools, Catholic schools,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: you know, special and sometimes schools that were sort of
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: connected with the different immigrant groups that settled in Miami, Colombians, Cubans, Venezuelans,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: et cetera. There were schools that specialized in certain academic programs,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: but now it's been supercharged, right? And the result is
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: that the connection between where you live and where your
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: kids go to school has been almost completely broken. Now,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: there are plenty of arguments for why that's been a
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: good thing at times, and I understand them. If the
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: school you're assigned to isn't working for your kid, Why
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: should your zip code trap you there? If another school
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: has a program that fits your child better, why shouldn't
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: you be able to send them there? So if you're
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: a parent, your first obligation is to your kid. I
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: get it. In fact, I don't simply get it theoretically.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: My wife and I made choices ourselves. Our kids went
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to the local schools that were public when they were younger.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: And then when they started high school, we sent them
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: to private school. So I'm not going to sit here
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: and lecture parents for making explicitly the kind of choice
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: that I made. But here's what I can tell you
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: happened when we made this choice. Almost immediately, our kids'
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: community changed, right? Their friends were suddenly coming from all
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: over the DMV, not just a certain geographic area. The
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: parents we were meeting were coming from all over. The
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: school created its own community. And by the way, it's
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: a good community. These parents are still good friends of
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: mine right now. Some of you are listening. Hi. But
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: it wasn't necessarily our neighborhood's community anymore. Our kids were
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: a little less connected to the place where they actually lived.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Now multiply that decision by thousands and thousands of families.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Everybody makes the decision that makes sense for their kid.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: Everybody's behaving rationally here. Don't get me wrong. Everybody is
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: exercising choice. But then one day you look around and
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood high school has 430 students. That's the part
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: of the school choice debate that I don't think we
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: ever talk enough about. We've spent enormous amounts of time
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: asking the following question. How do we give parents more
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: control of their child's education? It's a fair question. But
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: we haven't spent nearly enough time asking, what do we
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: want a public school to do for a community? Because
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: those are not necessarily the same question. And if you're
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: going to come at me and just simply say teachers unions,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: and then that's all you're going to say, I'd say,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: just go get yourself better informed on this. You can't
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: just blame teachers unions for this. but I digress. But
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: we've been treating the questions about public schooling and how
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: much power parents should have as if they're kind of
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: the same question. A school isn't simply a place where
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: you purchase an education, or at least it didn't used
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: to be. It's one of the places where a community
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: becomes a community. It's where people who don't necessarily choose
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: one another have to deal with one another. It's actually
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: really important. It's what makes pluralism or has made pluralism
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: work in this country. Pluralism alert, David. You don't get
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: to curate everybody. The kid whose parents vote differently from
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: your parents is right there in the classroom with your kid.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: The kid from the family with more money is there.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: The kid from the family with less money is there.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: different religions, different ethnicities, different backgrounds, different neighborhoods within the neighborhood.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: You end up sitting next to each other in chemistry.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: You end up playing on the same football team or
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: in the same marching band. Your parents end up sitting
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: next to each other in the bleachers. Maybe they become friends.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: Maybe they don't, but they know each other. They share something.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: And when everybody gets to construct their own educational ecosystem,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: we gain something, choice, specialization, maybe a better individual fit.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: but we lose something. We lose the institution that forced
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: the community to interact with itself. And so when I
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: read about this story about Killian, that's what bothered me
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: about this. Because this isn't happening because this area of
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Kendall suddenly emptied out. It's not some Rust Belt town
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: where the factory closed and everybody left. The neighborhood around
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Killian is still considered a good place to live, to
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: raise a family. Families still live there. Kids still live there. Again,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: As the story, as Austin found out, more than 3,000
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: public and charter high school students live inside the Killian boundary.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: They're just going everywhere else. And Killian isn't alone. This
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: is happening throughout Miami-Dade. Shoot, this is happening throughout a
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: lot of communities, even outside of Miami-Dade. But there is
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: another piece of this that's particularly interesting in South Florida, right?
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Some of this is very cultural. As I sort of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: hinted at earlier, Miami is filled with immigrant families, particularly
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: from Latin America and the Caribbean. who may not arrive
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: with the same attachment to the American neighborhood public school tradition.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Private education, religious education, schools organized around particular communities, none
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: of that necessarily feels unusual to first generation Americans from
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Latin America who move. And remember, a lot of these
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: folks were middle and upper middle class, and they sent
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: their kids to private school. So you combine that with
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: school choice, then you add public money, then you add
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: magnet schools, then you add charter schools, and pretty soon
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: everybody has an incentive to shop. And the public school
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: has to become a competitor in a marketplace. And that's
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: what Killian's trying to do now. They're trying to reinvent itself.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: One of the ideas is something called Sportsplex. Essentially, they're
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: going to turn my high school into a destination for
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: sports in the sports industry. It's not simply just go
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: there to play football like the IMG Academy that you
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: may have heard about. That's a high school up in
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: central Florida. But this would teach, start giving you classes
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: in sports medicine, sports management, media, technology, training. All of
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: the this new industry that is sort of sprouted up
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: around sports. So, look, I hope it works. Nobody wants
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: to watch their high school literally disappear. And maybe this
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: is how Killian will save itself. But there's an irony
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: here that is impossible to miss. Choice helped hollow out
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Killian and how Killian is trying to use choice to
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: save itself. Right. It has come up with a specialty.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: It has become a product and has to give parents
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: who live somewhere else a reason to choose Killian over
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: all the other choices available to them. And maybe that's
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: simply what public education has become. But then I think
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: we should at least be honest about what we're doing
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: because there's a larger philosophical question underneath all of this.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: What exactly is public education for? Is its only purpose
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: to educate the individual child? If that's the answer, then
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: maximizing choice makes a lot of sense. find the best
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: school for every kid, hard stop. Let the money follow them.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: Schools can compete. Parents decide. But if you want public
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: education to serve another purpose, if part of its purpose
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: is to create better citizens, part of its purpose is
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: to create community, if part of its purpose is to
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: put people who are different from one another into the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: same institution and make them figure out how to live together,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: then I'm not sure the system we've created is accomplishing that.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Our public school system used to be the source of
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: our power. And we basically gutted it. Look, I don't
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: have a neat answer here. And I'm not here to
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: tell parents, sorry, you got to sacrifice what you think
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: is best for your kid because Chuck Todd thinks neighborhood
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: schools are good civic cohesion. Obviously, it's ridiculous. Parents aren't
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: going to do that. And frankly, they shouldn't be expected
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: to solve a collective problem through individual sacrifice. That's what
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: public policy is supposed to do. But I do think
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: we've spent the last couple of decades trying to solve
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: the failures of public education by creating ways to escape
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: public education. We didn't try to fix public education. And
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: that to me is the core mistake. So we never
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: asked the question, how do we make the neighborhood school
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: good enough that families desperately want to get in? We've
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: increasingly asked, how do we make it easier for families
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: to get out? And guess what? When enough people take
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: the exit, The institution itself becomes weaker, fewer students, less money.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Everything declines. It's bad. More families look at what's left
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: and decide, well, now they've got to leave too, right?
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: It just spirals. And then a full cycle has been
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: created that becomes incredibly difficult to reverse now. That's where
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Killian is. So this isn't just about education, and this
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: isn't just a Miami thing. This is in the context
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: of everything else we've been talking about in the country.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Why are we so polarized? Why don't people trust each other?
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Why does everything feel nationalized instead of local? Why does
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: everybody retreat into their own information community, their own political community,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: their own cultural community, whatever happened to the actual physical
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: local community? Well, maybe part of the answer is that
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: we spent decades dismantling some of the institutions that used
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: to make us know people we didn't choose. The local newspaper,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: the local department store, the union hall, the church, the synagogue,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: the mosque. the neighborhood school, the places where community wasn't
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: curated for the snowflakes. And no, bringing back the giant
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: neighborhood high school isn't going to fix American polarization, okay?
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not making that argument. But I am saying that
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: when we talk about the loss of community in America,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: sometimes we make it sound like this mysterious thing that
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: just happened to us. Well, look, it's been death by
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: a thousand cuts, and this has been a big cut.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: And it has produced something less healthy collectively. That's what
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: this story about Killian made me think about. Like I said,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: I look at this Frankenstein education system that's been built
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: in my home state of Florida, public schools and charter schools, vouchers, magnets,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: private schools, specialized academies, all competing for the same students
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: and increasingly the same public dollars. And I find myself
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: asking a very basic question. Did we actually make education better?
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: This is not about whether did we create more choices? Yeah,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: we created more choices. Some individual kids found better schools.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: Is the system better? Is the community stronger? Are the
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: public schools better? Are the citizens we've created better? I
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: don't know. But when a perfectly healthy neighborhood has more
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: than 3,000 high school kids living in it and only 10%
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: of them attend the neighborhood high school, I think it's
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: worth asking whether something went wrong. Obviously, this hit me personally.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: I have a ton of memories in that place. Almost
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: all the ones I have are great. It was high school.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: The good, the bad, the ugly, but it was high school.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Still have some good friends that I keep track of there.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: It's a part of me. Killian made me. And the
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: diversity of Killian helped me today understand America better. Miami
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: in the 80s is America today. We became a better
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: place because of all this diversity. And I do believe
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: America is going to experience what Miami experienced in the positive.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm pulling for Killian. I hope the sportsplex
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: thing works. Come on, guys. Let's go, Cougars. I hope
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: they figure out how to get enrollment back up. I
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: hope kids start filling those hallways again. And maybe, you know,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Thursday night and Friday night football games. We had to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: play a lot of Thursday night games because so many
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: goddamn high schools in Miami. I mean. But let's not
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: miss the larger lesson here. The most remarkable thing about
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: the story isn't that my old high school lost thousands
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: of students. It's where those students went. They're all still there.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: They still live in the community. And they still go
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: to school. They just don't want to go to school
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: together anymore. And it's hard to measure what we've lost.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: And we all know we've lost something here. Somewhere along
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: the line, we lost one of the places where we
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: had no choice but to know each other. I don't
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: have a good answer. But I do know We need
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: to make public schools great again if we want to
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: make our communities great again and we want to make
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: better citizens understand what makes America an idea and not
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: some wannabe imperialist superpower. It's a dark end. All righty,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: it's time machine time. Boy, this is a I had
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of interesting choices, but boy, did one stand
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: out over all the others. The assassination that gave us
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt this week, 125 years ago, the president of
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: the United States was shot. And of the four presidents
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: who have been assassinated in American history, I suspect this
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: is the one most Americans know the least about. Lincoln,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Garfield got the Netflix treatment, so that's helped people. Obviously,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Lincoln and Kennedy. Those names these days immediately conjure up assassination.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: William McKinley? We keep taking away his mountain, right? Nobody
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: knows what to make of him anymore. We don't know
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: much about him. And his assassins. His assassin is even
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: less remembered and, frankly, probably one that should be more remembered.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Leon Zolgosz. OK, it's CZ, but it's a sort of
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: silent C there. If you said it in a Polish dialect,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: it would be Zolgosz. But for this, it's going to
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: be Zolgosz. He was a 28-year-old former factory worker, the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: son of Polish immigrants. He was increasingly feeling alienated from
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: American society. He had been attracted to anarchism, convinced that
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: enormous concentrations of wealth and political power had made the
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: system fundamentally unjust. So on September 6, 1901, he walks
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: into the Temple of Music at the Pan American Exposition
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: in Buffalo, New York, stood in a receiving line to
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: meet President McKinley. He concealed a revolver beneath a handkerchief
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: wrapped around his hand. And he shot McKinley twice. McKinley
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: would die eight days later. Teddy Roosevelt became president. And
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: that's where this story gets much more interesting than simply
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: another presidential assassination. Because Zolgash wanted to strike a blow
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: against concentrated power. But instead, he accidentally put Theodore Roosevelt
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: in the White House. And Theodore Roosevelt would spend much
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: of his presidency using the federal government to push back
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: against concentrated private economic power. I mean, it bears the question,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: did the assassin accidentally help produce some version of the
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: political change he wanted? It's an uncomfortable question, but I
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: think it's worth asking, especially now, because the America of
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: 1901 feels surprisingly recognizable. In America, 1901, technology is transforming
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the economy. There are enormous fortunes that are being created.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: The men of the family names are Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: Corporate consolidation is producing businesses on a scale that Americans
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: have never experienced. Workers are watching extraordinarily wealth accumulate at
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the top, while many of them work long hours in
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: dangerous conditions for relatively little money. Immigration is transforming American cities. Again,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: I'm describing America in 1901, not America in 2026. Organized
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: labor is growing. Socialism is growing. Populism is growing. Again, America, 1901.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: And on the farthest edge of all of this is
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: this anarchist movement. And it's not simply taking place just
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: in America. It's been happening around the world. And that's
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: important because McKinley's assassination wasn't an isolated American event. It
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: was part of an international wave of political violence in
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: about a 10-year period. In 1894, an anarchist assassinated the
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: president of France. In 1897, the Spanish prime minister was assassinated. 1898,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: Empress Elizabeth of Austria is stabbed to death by an anarchist.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: And in 1900, King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: And then in 1901, the president of the United States.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Zolgash had followed these events. The assassination of King Humberto
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: appears to have particularly fascinated him. And there's one more
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: person we need to introduce you here when we tell
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: this story about McKinley. Emma Goldman. Goldman isn't some incidental
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: character who happened to give a speech that Zolgash attended.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: She is probably at the time the most famous anarchist
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: in America. An anarchist influencer, if you will. Russian-born immigrant,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: brilliant speaker, a labor radical. an advocate for women's independence,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: free speech, birth control, and free love. And she believes
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: the existing political and economic order is fundamentally unjust. She's
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: also not squeamish about revolutionary violence. Nine years earlier, during
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: the Homestead Labor conflict, Goldman's lover and political partner, Alexander Berkman,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: tried to assassinate the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. In fact,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: Berkman shoots Frick, stabs him, but Frick survives. Berkman goes
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: to prison. And Goldman had helped plan the attempt. So
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: this isn't like Emma Goldman's not Jodie Foster to John
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Hinckley here. This is an actual intellectual and political connection
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: between Goldman and the world that Zolgosz has entered. In
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: May of 1901, Zolgosz hears Goldman speak. She talks about anarchism,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: political violence, and martyrdom. Zolgosz later says her words set
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: me on fire. But this distinction matters. Goldman did not
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: tell Zolgosz to go kill William McKinley. In fact, Zolgosz
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: himself said she didn't. Investigators never were able to establish
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: that she knew about the plan itself. In fact, other
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: anarchists found Zolgosz so strange that some of them suspected
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: he was a plant. That he was almost too committed
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: to the movement. After McKinley is shot, Goldman is arrested.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: She's interrogated. Authorities really want to establish a connection, and
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: they just can't. She isn't charged. But Goldman then does
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: something that horrifies much of America. She refuses to treat
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: Zolgash simply as some inexplicable monster. She argues that if
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: society wants to understand why assassins exist, society ought to
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: examine the conditions that produce people willing to become assassins.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Kind of reminds you of that quote that Abdul El-Sayed
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: has since had to apologize for, that hurt people hurt people. Now,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: that doesn't excuse the assassin, but it does try to
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: explain him. And that's an argument we're still having today,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: aren't we? When does explaining radicalization become excusing radicalization? They're
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: not necessarily the same thing. And there's a reason I
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: think this period is worth revisiting, though, right now. Like
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: I said, 1901 is not 2026, but boy, is the
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: rhyme hard to miss, right? It's another period of extraordinary
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: technological change, another period of enormous fortunes being created very quickly,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: another argument over whether the economic system is distributing the
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: benefits of this prosperity fairly. We have distrust of institutions,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: populist movements on the left and right, socialism gaining attention
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: among young Americans, nationalism growing, and increasing political violence. More
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: people concluding that the system itself just simply rigged. This
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: is the dangerous part that we're living in at the moment.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: When enough people conclude that the normal politics is incapable
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: of solving their problems, alternatives that once looked ridiculous begin
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: looking less ridiculous. And for a very small number of people,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: violence begins looking like politics by another means. And that's
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: the world Leon Zolgash was living in. And the setting
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: for the assassination almost couldn't have been more perfect. The
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. This gigantic celebration of America's revival
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: and arrival. We are just beginning to be the world's
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: economic superpower. There are electric lights everywhere. There's new technology.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: Industry is showing off its new stuff. Architecture. This is
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: like a World's Fair and the Consumer Electronics Show all
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: wrapped up into one thing, where America is showing off
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: the future. McKinley himself embodies the confidence of this moment.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: He had just won re-election. And remember, we hadn't had
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: a real, we hadn't, a president had won re-election since Grant,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: when McKinley wins re-election, by the way. The economy has
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: recovered from the depression of the 1890s. Back-to-back elections, by
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: the way. I know Grover Cleveland won, you know. So
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: I'm just quickly responding to those of you muttering about that.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: But let me go back to where we are in
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: that moment. America had just won the Spanish-American War. Puerto
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: Rico was under American control. Hawaii's been annexed. The Philippines
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: are under American rule after a brutal war that is
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: still underway at the time. But the United States is
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: clearly emerging as a world power, and McKinley is the
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: president of this World power, the 20th century is going
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: to be the American century. And we had two Americas
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: though at the time, because one America looks around Buffalo
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: and sees progress. Another looks at essentially the same country
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: and sees exploitation. So on September 6th, those two Americas
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: meet in a receiving line inside the Temple of Music.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: McKinley likes actually meeting people. Presidential security is nothing like
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: it is today. The Secret Service exists, but protecting the
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: president isn't yet the central mission. McKinley stands there shaking hands,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: and as Zolgosh gets closer, he has a. 32 caliber
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: revolver hidden beneath a handkerchief wrapped around his right hand.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: The president reaches toward him. Zolgosh fires twice. The first
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: bullet grazes McKinley and ends up caught in his clothing,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: but the second enters his abdomen. And then here's where
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: the setting of the assassination becomes almost painfully ironic. This
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: is a World's Fair celebrating technological progress. Thomas Edison's company
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: is there. They've got their own booth, essentially. Edison's cameras
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: are filming the exposition. X-rays themselves had been discovered only
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: six years earlier. And after McKinley is shot, there's an
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: X-ray machine that is offered to McKinley's doctors to help
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: locate the bullets. And the doctors choose not to use it.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: They're uncertain about what this new technology might do to
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: the president. So think about that scene. The president of
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: the United States is lying wounded inside one of the
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: great celebrations of a technological future. There's an actual technology
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: that exists that might allow doctors to see inside his body.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: And medicine isn't yet comfortable enough with the future to
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: use it. Now, initially, McKinley looks like he's going to survive.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: But then infection and gangrene set in. And on September 14th,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: McKinley dies. Theodore Roosevelt is president. And before we get
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: to Roosevelt, I can't resist one of the strangest pieces
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: of presidential assassination trivia in American history. Robert Todd Lincoln,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln's son. He somehow becomes connected to three presidential assassinations. Remember,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: he is summoned to his father's deathbed after Lincoln is
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: shot in 1865. In 1881, Robert is walking with James Garfield.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: He's James Garfield, Secretary of War, and he's with Garfield
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: at the Washington train station when Garfield is shot. And
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: then in 1901, Robert Todd Lincoln is in Buffalo attending
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: that fair when McKinley is shot. Three assassinated presidents, and
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: Robert Todd Lincoln is somehow nearby all three times. At
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: some point, you'd think Robert Todd Lincoln simply stopped accepting
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: invitations involving presidents, and he did, actually. And he did
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: finally show up. He was afraid when they unveiled his
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: dad's memorial on the mall, he almost didn't come because
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: he was afraid of standing next to a living president.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about the political consequence. The Republican establishment
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: had not put Teddy Roosevelt into the vice presidency because
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: they wanted him to eventually run the country. It was
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: actually the opposite. It was kind of like what Garfield
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: had with Chester Arthur. Roosevelt had been governor of New York.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: He was energetic, independent, reform-minded, and he was a gigantic
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: pain in the ass to the Republican machine in New York.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: So political bosses saw the vice presidency as a convenient
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: place to stash Roosevelt, to keep him from doing anything,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: kick him upstairs, essentially, neutralize him, right? The vice presidency
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: at the time was seen as a total dead end.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Hanna, McKinley's closest political advisor, Karl Rove's political hero,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: and one of the most powerful Republicans in the country,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: he actually saw the danger. And in fact, at the
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: Republican convention in 1900, Hanna warns, don't any of you
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: realize there's only one life between the madman and the presidency?
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: That's what he called. Roosevelt thought he was a madman.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: One life? Well, then Leon Zolgosz fires his gun, McKinley dies,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: and Hanna reportedly reacts, now look, the damn cowboy is
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: president of the United States. Now, Teddy Roosevelt is 42
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: when he takes the oath, still the youngest person ever
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: to become president, and American politics changes dramatically. Now, Roosevelt
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: despises anarchism and he wants it crushed, but he also
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: understands something about the conditions producing this political radicalism. You
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: can't simply tell millions of people the system is working
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: when they don't believe it's working for them. So Roosevelt
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: pushes a different idea of government, the square deal. Federal
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: government should act as a referee between enormous corporations, workers,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: and the public. He goes after those trusts, not all
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: of them. He doesn't try to destroy big business, but
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: he argues that concentrated economic power has to answer to
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: the public interest. So he brings in, the first one
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: is the Northern Securities case. He pushes railroad regulation. Consumer
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: protections eventually follow. He expands conservation dramatically. And perhaps most importantly,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: he changes the expectation of what a president is supposed
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: to do. Really, before Teddy, the president is simply the
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: chief administrator of the federal government. The president can use
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: the office as a national platform to shape the economic
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: and political system. A bully pulpit, right? That's the big
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: change that's happened. It's one Leon Zolgosz certainly didn't intend.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to an uncomfortable question. Can an assassination work?
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: I don't mean morally. There's no moral defense to political assassination.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: But historically, does killing a political leader actually change the
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: trajectory of the country in a direction the assassin wants?
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: We don't like asking the question because we don't want
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: to know the answer, but history is going to force
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: us to. Think about John Wilkes Booth. Booth wants to
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: avenge the Confederacy. He kills Lincoln. Confederacy doesn't return. Slavery
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: isn't restored. But Andrew Johnson becomes president. And Reconstruction basically ends.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: And Johnson fights congressional Republicans. And the federal commitment to
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: protecting the political rights of newly freed Black Americans becomes
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: contested immediately. White supremacist governments regain power across the South.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: Jim Crow follows. Country spends another century fighting over the
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: meaning of citizenship and racial equality. Would all of that
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: have happened if Lincoln lived? We don't know. Anybody who
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: tells you they do know is guessing. But it's equally
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: silly to pretend Booth's bullet didn't change what came next.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: Kennedy's assassination obviously changes the political timeline as well. Lyndon
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: Johnson inherits the presidency. All these things happen after, you know,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: Great Society of Vietnam, voting rights, civil rights. We don't
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: know what the timeline looks like if Kennedy lives. But
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: succession matters. Then there's Charles Gatteau. He assassinates Garfield in 81.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: Gatteau is a disgruntled office seeker consumed by the patronage system.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Garfield dies. Chester Arthur becomes president. The political shock helps
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: produce the biggest civil service reform we ever had until
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: Trump came in to destroy it with Doge. That assassination
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: generates momentum to dismantle the very patronage system that helped
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: produce Coteau's grievance. So history has a very dark sense
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: of irony. Now look at McKinley. Zolgosz wants to attack
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: a system he sees as dominated by powerful men and
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: concentrated wealth. He kills McKinley. Teddy Roosevelt becomes president. The
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: federal government becomes more willing to regulate corporate power. Progressivism accelerates.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: The presidency becomes a more powerful instrument for reform. So
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: did Zolgosz win? No. He didn't win. Anarchism does not
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: take over America. Quite the opposite. In fact, Zolgosz is
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: put on trial nine days after McKinley dies. Jury takes
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: about a half an hour to convict him. On October 29th,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: less than seven weeks after McKinley's death, New York executes
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: him in an electric chair. And then the political system
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: turns on the anarchist movement. In 1903, Congress passes the
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Anarchist Exclusion Act, allowing the federal government to bar immigrants
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: based on political beliefs. Emma Goldman remains a target of
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: the government for years. By the way, any of this
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: sounding familiar to you folks? If it doesn't, then you're
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: not paying enough attention. Anyway, in 1919, she's deported from
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: the United States. So America's response to the assassination isn't
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: simply reform. It's reform and repression. Roosevelt responds to some
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: of the economic conditions feeding radicalism. And then the government
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: also tries to crush the radical movement itself. Both things
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: can be true. There's another reason McKinley's assassination matters so much.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: Look at what Teddy Roosevelt says afterwards. He doesn't simply
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: blame Leon Zolgash. Roosevelt talks about the environment that produces
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: the violence. Demagogue, sensationalist rhetoric, people encouraging envy, hatred, and resentment.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: You listen to that argument in 1901, and it sounds
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: remarkably contemporary. Political violence usually doesn't emerge from nowhere. It
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: grows in an environment. There can be economic anger, political alienation.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: a belief that institutions are corrupt, and somebody decides normal
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: politics isn't enough, and a broken person, one broken person
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: can then suddenly act. And this is where the international
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: part of this matters. The forces producing Zolgosz weren't confined
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: to Buffalo. Industrial capitalism was transforming societies everywhere. Workers were organizing,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: socialist parties were growing, anarchists were organizing, nationalist movements were growing,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: old monarchies were under pressure, 16 years after McKinley is shot,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: Russia has a revolution. The czar is gone. The Bolsheviks
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: eventually take power. Now, America avoids that revolution. Instead, America
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: gets Teddy Roosevelt and Wilsonian progressivism. Eventually, FDR and the
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: New Deal. Not quite a straight line. And I'm not
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: fully suggesting that Teddy Roosevelt prevented an American style, a
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Russian revolution-like moment here in America. But those policies helped
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: prevent it. There is a recurring American pattern here. When
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: enough people begin questioning the legitimacy of an economic system,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: American politics has periodically responded by reforming the system rather
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: than replacing it. So TR regulates capitalism. FDR does it
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: in a much larger scale 30 years later, but he
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: defends capitalism and regulates it. Both in different ways make
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: the argument that capitalism has to be restrained enough, regulated enough,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: and broadly prosperous enough for Americans to continue to believe
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: in it. So we usually adapt. So that's, to me,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: what makes September 6, 1901 such an incredibly important hinge moment.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: The Pan-American Exposition is celebrating America's future, electricity, technology, industry,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: and global power. And standing inside that celebration is a
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: young man who believes the future belongs to everybody except
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: people like him. So he shoots the president and he
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: creates the Teddy Roosevelt president. The assassin who wants to
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: strike a blow against concentrated power helps put into office
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: the president who makes challenging concentrated corporate power part of
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: our national political agenda. I'm not trying to defend this assassination. Jesus, no. Please, people,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: don't take this out of context. But it's a warning
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: about how unpredictable political violence is. Once you introduce violence
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: into politics, you don't control what happens next. Zolgosz didn't,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: Booth didn't, Gatteau didn't, neither did Oswald. It changes history,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: but they don't get to choose exactly how it gets changed.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: And as we live through another period of extraordinary wealth creation,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: technological disruption, distrust of institutions, political anger, let's remember this.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: America in 1901, not quite America in 2026, but boy,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: does it rhyme. So perhaps the question isn't whether history
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: is repeating itself. The better question is whether our political
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: system is still capable of doing what it has done before.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: Recognize the moment and respond to these legitimate grievances. Reform
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: these institutions before enough people decide to truly just light
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: them on fire. 125 years ago this week, one deeply
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: alienated young man in Buffalo decided to take matters into
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: his own hands. The America he thought he was attacking
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: changed dramatically because of what he did. It's an uncomfortable truth,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: which is why it's a history lesson that we sometimes
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: fast forward through too quickly when we teach about America
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: at the turn of the century. So there you go.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: There's your history lesson for the week. This episode of
• 1:30:21
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• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: First question comes from Johnny says greetings from Texas's fourth
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: congressional district. He says, hey, I've been following since your
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: MTP days. Hoping to get closer to the five-timer status.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: What do you make of James Tallarico's chances in Texas,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: especially given the encouraging recent polls, but your warnings about
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: putting too much stock in August numbers? Even if it
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't win, could a competitive race force republicans spend money
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: in Texas they'd rather use elsewhere? Love the show, John. Well, look,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: I've actually been having an interesting debate with an old
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: colleague of mine. And I'm going to leave his name
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: out of it because I think he's got clients that
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: he doesn't need to know that they're talking with me sometimes. Um,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: but we were debating this, um, because I was asked
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: an interesting question at this, uh, at an event on
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: Friday night, um, where, you know, what are the, you know,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: for each party, what's their nightmare state? Like what's the
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: state keeping them up. Right. And the two states I
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: picked for the Republicans, Iowa and for the Democrats, Michigan.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: And my argument was in some ways, like the entire,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: you know, The state of Iowa contains, you know, every
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: issue that Republicans are dealing with. And they have, you know,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: there's three competitive House seats, competitive Senate race, governor's race
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: that the party is more likely to lose than win.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: And so that it's just all self-contained. And then for
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: the Republicans, Michigan, because if the Democrats can't win the
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: Michigan Senate race, then their cleanest path to the Senate
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: majority becomes a lot harder. The cleanest path, if they
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: hold Michigan, is Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Alaska. It's
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: light red states they have to win. They're not having
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: to win dark red states. But if Michigan flips, then
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: they need a fifth Republican flip. And then that's when
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: you start looking at Texas, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: You're in this South Carolina. You're in this another level
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: where Boy, it's been decades. And that's why I think
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: of all those, when you're thinking about what's the fifth,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: I lean more towards Iowa. My old colleague leans more
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: towards Texas. And that's the question. There's been one common
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: denominator in it. Like I said, I think August polling.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: Be careful. Second, I think Tallarico needs to make 48
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: or 49 a winning number. I don't know if 50
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: is possible. Right. And if you've noticed in a lot
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: of the polling, you know, his number is fairly consistent.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: The number that moves more is Paxton's number, which should
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: which actually makes sense. I think there are people are
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: trying to decide. And, you know, I think a large
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: chunk of that, my guess is, well, you're going to
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: hear a number a lot that to something like two
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: thirds of undecideds in the Texas Senate race are voting
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: Republican on House races. That's my guess. Right. I'm not
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: saying I need to see some of those crosstabs, but
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't surprise me If you throw a generic ballot
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: in there, that you would see that. And the question is,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: how many of those folks decide to vote third party?
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: You know, just a third candidate on the ticket, just
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: so they're not going to vote for a Democrat, but
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: they're not going to get Paxton their vote. How many
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: of them skip the race altogether? I know this, and
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: I think one of the strategies, if I were Tallarico,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: would be to try to raise awareness of other candidates
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: on the ballot. So I might, if I were the
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: Tallarico campaign, be trying to raise the name recognition and
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: the name ID of Ted Brown. You know, when you
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: look at how Jon Tester won two of his three races,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: he won it with less than 50 percent in Montana,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: thanks to a libertarian overperforming. I think that that's because, look, Paxton,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: you know, if this becomes a turnout contest, he can bring,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: you know, and Trump and this gets it to why
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: I think that like Michigan is such a headache for
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: the for the Democrats. for the Democrats now, because look,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: Michael Watley can't bring Trump to North Carolina. That will
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: do more damage. I think increasingly that might be the
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: case for Husted in Ohio. I don't know if I'd
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: bring Trump into Ohio right now. It might do more damage. Definitely,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: and Trump's too lazy to fly all the way out
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: to Alaska, and certainly Susan Collins isn't bringing him in, right?
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: But when you get to that next tranche of Senate races, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: South Dakota. And I'm probably being generous by including some
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: of these Mississippi, South Carolina. These are all places where
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: the Republican candidate can bring Trump in, in certain parts
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: of the state. And it's a net plus, right? And
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: that's where I think there's some vulnerability. So look, I
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: think I go back to the conversation I was having
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: with my old colleague, He thinks Tallarico has a better
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: chance than Josh Turek. And I still slightly lean towards Iowa.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: And I think part of it is the trickle-down effect.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: You've got Greg Abbott, who's got an enormous amount of money.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: That's only going to help. And he's running scared. And
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: then you have the– it's the Democratic candidate in Iowa
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: that's stronger. And that could have a trickle-down effect that
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: helps Turek there. So– That's why I slightly lean Iowa
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: over Texas as the next most viable if the Democrats
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: are looking for a fifth Republican seat to flip. But
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: they're both– at this point, they're both in– they're in
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: a similar category, and Texas is just so expensive. And
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: like I said, Talerica's still got more work to do.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: But I think he needs– I think a sort of
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: secondary strategy would be to raise the name– rename ID
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: of one of the third-party candidates, namely the Libertarian. All right,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: next question. Comes from Christine. She's writing from Colorado's 4th
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: Congressional District. I believe that's Greeley, Colorado, if I got
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: that right. First time question asker and Wisconsin native. So go, Pat, go.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Right on. What are your thoughts on Project 2025? Is
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: it truly a threat? And how closely is the current
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: administration following its blueprint? And if it is having a
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: real impact, why aren't Democratic leaders talking about it more?
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: Or are they and we aren't seeing it? Well, I
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: think people have just stopped talking about what they're doing
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: as Project 2025. I mean, the fact is, if you
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: go back and read it, they're implementing what they said. But,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I think the question is, is it still
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: worth attacking as one project or do you need to
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: go and deal with the individual issues, right? Like everything
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: they're doing with the FCC was outlined in their chapters
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: in that, right? Everything they're doing on immigration was outlined
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: in that. So, I think you're asking why we don't
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: hear about it enough. I just think it's more effective
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: to talk about a policy they're messing with in the
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: moment than it is to talk about a blueprint that
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: was written. And so I just think it's just because
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: it's now just too far in the past. And we're
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: in 2026, right? I think in politics, you don't want
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: to be If you're talking about the past, you're not
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: talking about what voters care about. Now, I think the
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: real question is, what do you know about Project 2029?
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: That's what the folks at the Center for American Progress,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: which is a progressive sort of more of a– they're
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: pro-capitalists over there at the Center for American Progress, I think.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: But it sort of– maybe you would say they advocate
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: for progressive capitalism. But they're trying to come up with
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: a Project 2029. And I think the question is, I
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: think there's going to be a lot of voters that
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: would like to see something like that. I go back.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: I think Project 2025, while it outraged the left, I
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: think it sent a message to independents of competency of
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: a plan. And so I think at this point, Democrats
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: would be smarter to emulate it than sort of relitigate it.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: Eric from Seattle-ish. I love this Seattle-ish Washington first district.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: I know what you mean. You're sort of Seattle adjacent. Anyway,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: long time listener, first time question asker. I appreciate how
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: you blend my two favorite subjects, politics and history. Context
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: is everything in your show is one of the few
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: places I consistently find it. That is the type of
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: compliment I would like to put like on a movie poster.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: So thank you. Six months ago, action against Cuba seemed imminent.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: Do you think the Trump administration still plans to act
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: or is the conflict with Iran sideline those plans? And
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: is Cuba ultimately more of a Rubio priority than a
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: Trump one? Thanks. Um, the answer is yes, it's more
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: of a Rubio priority. Uh, yes, obviously we've, we've, we've been, um, uh, the,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: the inability to, uh, execute this Iran war is a
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: giant problem. And, uh, That has certainly weakened our resources.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, go back to the beginning of what I
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: talked about. We don't have resources in other hemispheres right
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: now because of this. So look, what they've done is
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: they're doing full, it's all economic embargo with Cuba. I
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: think they're hoping to do more of a Venezuela type
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: situation there. But it's funny you bring up Rubio. Yes,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: this is more of a Rubio project, but I still,
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: and I brought it up the other day. I think
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: one of the most remarkable things is how detached Rubio
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: has made himself from the Iran war. It's remarkable that
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: the sitting secretary of state basically has like done this
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: with Iran. Like, hey, man, that's your problem, Trump. That's
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: your problem, Vance. That's your problem, Pete. Like, look, he's
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: certainly not uninvolved, but he goes I feel like he
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: he goes out of his way to disappear into the bushes.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: And yes, I think at this point, though, the Cuba
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: we'll see, you know, I I Trump's having so much,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: it's so bad for him right now. And if the,
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: you know, Cuba is one of those stories that if
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: the midterms go super badly, I could see Trump seeing
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: it as a way to change the subject. You know,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: instead of the increasingly lame duck Trump, he gets to
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: triumphantly get Cuba and he's able to say, I'm no
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: lame duck. I just, you know, I don't think this
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: story is done, but I certainly think it's delayed because of, obviously,
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: because of how poorly the Iran war is going. Uh,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: next question. Hey, Chuck, uh, Tyler H from Michigan's fifth
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: congressional district here. Since the attorney general of the United
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: States is supposed to be the people's attorney, why not
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: make that an elected position? What would be the pros
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: and cons? Thanks so much. Love the show. Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Well, I,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: I might like an elected attorney general better than what
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: we have. Um, Gosh, do we want a billion dollar
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: race for the rule of law? Right. Does it get
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: consumed by social policy too much? Right. Does it just
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: you know, what is your what are you going to
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: do about youth sports and trans kids and youth sports? Right.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: That that's the entire debate. I guess, you know. I
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: want to be against this idea and I'm not. I
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: really think the I do think this post has just
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: been completely delegitimized by Trump and it is going to
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: take and maybe it would take the American voter. You know,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: the most you know, we got rid of direct we
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: got we got rid of legislatures electing senators because we
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: thought it corrupted the process. Maybe this is a better answer.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: I want to be the conservative constitutionalist here and say, oh,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: come on, that's crazy, Tyler. And yet, maybe it's exactly,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: it's about the, maybe it's the, you know, I've wanted
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: to come up with, well, do we change how the
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: appointment process works? Do you let Congress appoint? And you
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: know what? Maybe just let the people decide who should,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: be in charge of the rule of law here. I
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: will say this, if you're going to do it, I
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: would put the election in the midterm year. So I
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: don't think you ever want the presidency and attorney general
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: in the same election. I guess the question is, if
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: you're going to put that up for election, then what
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: else in the cabinet do you put up for election?
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: I probably would argue for nothing else. Rule of law,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: I could, you know, look, we elect all these other states'
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: attorneys general. So I don't think there's anything abnormal about it.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: But I wouldn't want to put the Treasury Secretary, Pentagon, state,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: that to me, I'd like to keep in the hands
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: of the presidency. But I could, I could, he has
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: abused and he has destroyed the credibility of the Justice
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: Department to the point that I actually think it's, this
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: is probably the best, this might be the best answer
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: we could come up with. Let's add it to our
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: reform agenda. So we're expanding the House. We're doing four
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: parties and we're going to elect our attorney general. At
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: some point, we're going to have the Chuck Todd cast
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: series of constitutional reforms and we will we will unveil them.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: And who knows, maybe we can get a create a
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: movement out of it or something. All right. Last question
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: for the night for the episode. Hey, Chuck, Chris from
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: Jersey City here. He says, first time, long time. I've
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: been a registered independent since I was 17, not because
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: I don't have political leanings, but because I've never wanted to, quote,
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: pick a team. and or make up my mind based
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: on a party label. As someone who also doesn't fit
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: neatly into the boxes of American politics gives us, do
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: you see your own political independence as a form of
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: protest against a two-party system? Or is it more about
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: a broader philosophy of keeping your mind open and your
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: own counsel? Keep up the great work. I'll keep listening. Best, Chris. Look,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: there's a part of me that views it. It's been,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: I think, I think it only enhances journalistic independence. You know,
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: I don't, I think plenty of people who register by
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: party can still be journalistically independent, but I certainly think
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: it helps. Right. It certainly doesn't hurt it. Um, but
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: for me, it's goes to that. Like I've just, I
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: really am a hybrid, um, on a lot of things.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: And some of this is, is, you know, it's, I
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: think some of mine comes from, um, I always say
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: I was raised an empathetic Republican, probably, if you were
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: to say, what was my dad and mom raising? I
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: remember a 12-year-old me having a debate, leading a debate
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: on my school bus. We were going, it was seventh grade. No,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: it was 84. So it may have been seventh grade.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: And it was like Reagan Mondale. And it was like 90%
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: of us on the bus were Reagan and like 10%
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: were Mondale. And I was the only one who could
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: coherently have the argument back and forth. But the 10%
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: were the Mondale were pretty well informed. I think I
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: was the only guy arguing. And I was arguing for
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: Reagan because my dad was for Reagan, right? I just
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: looked up to my dad. I'm not going to tell
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: you I had any other rationale other than that. But
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: I was really into Gary Hart because, you know, He
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: seemed he was he was younger. He was all those things.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: So I did sort of dig heart in 84 more
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: than I, you know, this is even I didn't like
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: the heart that even before he got rooted out on that.
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: But so I say that and that maybe that has
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: is always contributed to it. You know, I've just sort
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: of been, you know, the two biggest influences on me.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: One was a liberal Democrat and one was a was
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: what I would call an Eisenhower Republican, Rockefeller Republican in
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: my father. So, you know. Where else do you go
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: other than registering as an independent, right? On that front.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: But I've also, one of the things that's so obvious
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: to me now, and it only is as you get older, is,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to say something that's going to sound
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: like an old guy in the room here, but I,
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: you know, My view of politics and of behavioral and
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: of electorates has changed quite a bit from my mid
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: to late 30s to my mid 50s. And I'm not
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: sure I do think and I'm watching it now. One
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: question I have about both AOC and Vance, I think
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: their politics certainly are going to continue to evolve as
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: they get older, because that's what happens as you get older. Yeah.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: Do you want that happening during the presidency or do
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: you want that to happen and then have them pursue
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: the presidency? I think with Bill Clinton, we saw him
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: do it during the presidency, right? I don't know. But
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: the bottom line is I've never been comfortable in either party. Obviously,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: but what Trump has done to the Republican Party, it's
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: unrecognizable to me. You know, so even if you, you know,
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: are looking for a party that wants a looser grip
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: on government, a little more, you know, a little more
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: trust in the market. I don't know. You have no home. Right.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what that that's I know is
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: at least one chunk of independence there. But, you know,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: this gets it to, you know, that's why we need
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: more parties. Because one size does not fit all. All right,
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: that's it for questions. Very quickly, what did I learn
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: from college football? Well, let me just tell you what's
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: going on in my household. The Florida State wing of
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: my household is very upset, was very unimpressed with Florida
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: State's very weak win against New Mexico State. And the
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: knives are already out for Mike Norvell, I can tell
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: you that. And the FSU-SMU game, boy, I am, let's
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: see what happens on that one. But if that game's
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: not close, Things could unravel pretty quickly in Tallahassee, which
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: oddly enough might make the Florida State wing of my
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: family happier, not sadder for what it's worth. The worst
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: would be purgatory. Purgatory is not doing anything. I think
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: the good news for my Florida State friends is you're
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: not going to be in purgatory that much longer. You're
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: going to get out of this. The USC part of
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: my brain, right? I teach there. I liked what I
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: saw from the quarterback, but I can't wait to see
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: them against Fresno State. I think this is going to
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: be a little bit of a test. I will say this.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: USC's backup's not so hot. They certainly let San Jose
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: State score a little bit there at the end. Does
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: that mean they have depth issues? You've got to have
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: depth to make it to the college football playoff. That
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: is one lesson that I took away from Miami's nearly
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: successful run in the playoff on that front. But those
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: were it. I think the next hottest coach, the coach
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: that's going to be everybody's first choice to poach is
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: going to be UVA's Tony Elliott. I think if Florida
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: State's looking, Tony Elliott's going to be there first. If
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: Clemson's looking, Tony Elliott's going to be there first. So
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: if Wisconsin's looking, I was, let's just say, I may
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: have put my money where my mouth was on that one.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: I was looking to fade UVA. I didn't buy it
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: last year. I know North Carolina State doesn't have the
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: best defense, but UVA impressed me. Tony Elliott, right now,
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: I think, at the top of the heap to take
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: the next leap into the elite of college football coaching.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: So that's my sort of, oh, and I hope you,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: if you stayed up late, you saw that Memphis beat
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: UNLV at UNLV, which means Memphis is already now Probably
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: the leader in the clubhouse for the group of six
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: slot in the college football playoff. That's why you had
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: to care about that game on Saturday night. All right.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: With that, I have a college football fantasy team I
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: have to start worrying about. I will share some of
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: that with you as I learn and everything. Week zero,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: there wasn't enough playing for there to be. The schedule
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: starts next week. So I can't wait. Big shout out
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: to my Twitter friend, Thor Nystrom. who let me into
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: his amazing 60-team league. So me and my son are
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: first-time owners here. We expect to get our butts handed
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: to us. All right, with that, I've got Super Tuesday coming.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: We got an election live stream. Marky, Moulton, we could
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: see a U.S. senator lose a primary. Big, big, big
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: primary night for Massachusetts voters on Tuesday. Check out what's
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: going on in Newsphere, Dynastic. We're in the middle of
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: our Alabama episodes. They are just tremendous. You know, don't
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: you want to know how Bear Bryant ended up getting
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: plastic surgery, among other gee whiz facts you'll learn? Anyway,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: lots to check out in my growing universe of content.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: And with that, even my dog says it's time to go.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: I'll see you in 72 hours or less.