Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump’s Closing Message Couldn’t Be Worse + Can An Independent Win Montana’s Senate Seat?

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Full Episode - Trump’s Closing Message Couldn’t Be Worse + Can An Independent Win Montana’s Senate Seat? · The Chuck ToddCast

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2:18
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wednesday episode of the Chuck Todd cast.
2:21
Speaker 1: We are now under a week. And wow, we've got
2:25
Speaker 1: a lot of elections already to unpack. None of them, though,
2:28
Speaker 1: are in the United States at the moment, but I'm
2:30
Speaker 1: going to get to that in a few minutes. My
2:32
Speaker 1: featured guest today is a candidate interview. It's Seth Bodnar,
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Speaker 1: the independent candidate in Montana who is running the In
2:39
Speaker 1: a three-way race, it's an open seat race. Steve Daines
2:42
Speaker 1: is not seeking re-election, the Republican senator. He waited to
2:47
Speaker 1: the very, very last minute on filing deadline in order
2:53
Speaker 1: to allow his preferred replacement, Kurt Almey, the former U.S. attorney,
2:59
Speaker 1: to essentially get into the race unopposed. And Democrats, of course,
3:04
Speaker 1: didn't like that at all. But From what I've always gathered,
3:08
Speaker 1: that was an attempt by Danes to prevent MAGA from
3:11
Speaker 1: getting a chance at that nomination. John Tester recruited Seth Bodnar,
3:17
Speaker 1: former president of University of Montana, to run. And it
3:20
Speaker 1: was you know, he was among the folks advocating that
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Speaker 1: he should run as an I. Tester believes that it's
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Speaker 1: the D next to his name that cost him reelection
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Speaker 1: more than anything else. And ironically, given the way the
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Speaker 1: cycle has turned, and it's actually part of the conversation
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Speaker 1: I have with Seth Bodnar, if he were the Democratic
3:39
Speaker 1: nominee and it were just a one on one race,
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Speaker 1: this is probably the type of environment, political environment nationally
3:45
Speaker 1: where he could win with a D next to his name.
3:49
Speaker 1: But spoiler alert, he doesn't have any regrets on this
3:52
Speaker 1: and and sees an opportunity if if things break his way.
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Speaker 1: If he wins as an independent with an actual Democratic
4:00
Speaker 1: nominee on the ballot and Republican nominee, that would give
4:04
Speaker 1: him the type of clout potentially that could be unique. Anyway,
4:10
Speaker 1: fascinating conversation. I think you'll enjoy it, and I think
4:13
Speaker 1: you should look forward to it. But with that, before
4:18
Speaker 1: we get to that, I'm also going to do an
4:19
Speaker 1: extended mailbag. We've kind of been truncating that a little bit,
4:24
Speaker 1: but We're getting close to Election Day, and I don't
4:28
Speaker 1: want to suddenly have a bunch of questions that were
4:31
Speaker 1: about the campaign that I don't get to until the
4:33
Speaker 1: Wednesday after the election. I think that would stink. And
4:37
Speaker 1: it's the last thing I want to do to you,
4:38
Speaker 1: my incredibly loyal listeners. I'll tell you, traffic's been amazing.
4:43
Speaker 1: Our growth's been amazing. I want to thank you for that.
4:45
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. I know in these polarizing times and,
4:50
Speaker 1: you know, everybody has an opinion about everything. You know,
4:53
Speaker 1: I'm here just trying to make help you, I hope.
4:56
Speaker 1: make sense of our crazy politics. As I like to say,
5:00
Speaker 1: I view this feed as politics for the rest of us,
5:04
Speaker 1: trying to explain what is, and yes, occasionally tell you
5:07
Speaker 1: what should be.
5:09
Speaker 2: So with that, let's dive right in.
5:12
Speaker 1: As I said, I think the big news over the
5:15
Speaker 1: last 24 hours, frankly, over the last 72 hours has been,
5:19
Speaker 1: we already know that association with Donald Trump is a
5:21
Speaker 1: net negative in American politics.
5:23
Speaker 2: Well, Is it.
5:25
Speaker 1: Possible that association with all things Donald Trump is also
5:28
Speaker 1: a net negative in Brazil, is also a net negative
5:30
Speaker 1: in Israel, is also a net negative in Syria?
5:33
Speaker 2: So here we are.
5:34
Speaker 1: We're less than a week away from the midterms. And
5:37
Speaker 1: I think it's a fair question. I mean, I think
5:39
Speaker 1: one of the things we learned about Brexit and Trump
5:41
Speaker 1: in 16 is that don't ignore global trends and don't
5:45
Speaker 1: assume we're immune from trends that are happening internationally. If
5:50
Speaker 1: you're seeing higher turnout, if you're seeing more participation among
5:55
Speaker 1: among young voters in places like Brazil and Israel don't assume,
5:59
Speaker 1: given that we are.
6:03
Speaker 2: Much more so in a global conversation on politics.
6:08
Speaker 1: But the fact is, it's an interesting, consistent mini trend
6:14
Speaker 1: that we've observed over the last few days in a
6:18
Speaker 1: variety of countries. So let's start with turnout. So Brazil
6:22
Speaker 1: just had its highest presidential runoff turnout in 20 years.
6:25
Speaker 1: Serbia had its highest parliamentary turnout in more than three decades. Hungary,
6:30
Speaker 1: which of course was election a few months ago, another
6:33
Speaker 1: person who went down, another world leader that your closeness
6:38
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump might've been a net negative. Hungary had
6:41
Speaker 1: its highest turnout since the restoration of democracy. And now
6:44
Speaker 1: Israel has experienced extraordinary high participation in an election that
6:48
Speaker 1: appears to, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition. It's parliamentary majority.
6:54
Speaker 1: There's still a long way to go. Still actual vote counts.
6:57
Speaker 1: The data I'm seeing is still more exit data, exit
7:02
Speaker 1: poll data than anything else. But the turnout is real
7:05
Speaker 1: and those raw numbers are real. So here you have
7:08
Speaker 1: four very different countries. for very different political systems and
7:11
Speaker 1: for electorates that were unusually motivated to participate, if there
7:15
Speaker 1: was a common denominator, it was that Donald Trump cared
7:18
Speaker 1: and was on one side. And in this case, potentially,
7:22
Speaker 1: he was associated with the losing side or the trailing
7:27
Speaker 1: side in all of these cases. Can't declare Bibi gone yet.
7:31
Speaker 2: Bibi has.
7:33
Speaker 1: He burned through his nine lives, I think, in the
7:37
Speaker 1: early part of the 21st century. He's on his second
7:39
Speaker 1: round of nine lives, I think, politically at this point.
7:45
Speaker 1: But I don't think we should underplay this factoid, right,
7:51
Speaker 1: that the Bolsonaro movement in Brazil, Vucic in Serbia, Orban
7:56
Speaker 1: in Hungary and Bibi in Israel, all of them. All
7:59
Speaker 1: of those leaders tried to forge very close ties with Trump.
8:01
Speaker 1: What was interesting, though, tail end of the Brazil campaign,
8:04
Speaker 1: Bolsonaro was like, hey, don't say too many things about me. Meanwhile,
8:08
Speaker 1: Bibi was desperate for more help from Trump. But we'll
8:11
Speaker 1: get to that. But look, I think the easy question
8:18
Speaker 1: and I don't not going to sit here and be
8:21
Speaker 1: and give you a declarative answer on this is what
8:23
Speaker 1: does this mean for mentors?
8:25
Speaker 3: Right.
8:26
Speaker 1: I don't think this stuff's unrelated. But I am going
8:29
Speaker 1: to be a little bit cautious about saying it's totally related.
8:33
Speaker 1: But it's still, I think, more than just symbolic that
8:37
Speaker 1: you have four international politicians who happen to share some
8:40
Speaker 1: of the same conservative political beliefs as Donald Trump, beliefs
8:45
Speaker 1: that Trump has embraced, cultivated or celebrated in different ways.
8:48
Speaker 1: They've even been part of an international political network that
8:51
Speaker 1: has looked to Trump's success in the United States as
8:54
Speaker 1: both inspiration and validation. And now several of those movements
8:59
Speaker 1: are now struggling at the ballot box. So I do
9:01
Speaker 1: think we should take that seriously, because for much of
9:04
Speaker 1: the last decade, Trump was something of a model for nationalist,
9:08
Speaker 1: populist politicians around the world. The United States, you know,
9:11
Speaker 1: what happens here doesn't stay here. What happens in our
9:15
Speaker 1: politics always exports itself around the globe. So his early
9:19
Speaker 1: success suggested that the conventional political rules had changed. That
9:23
Speaker 1: attacking established institutions, challenging traditional media, presenting yourself as an
9:28
Speaker 1: enemy of an entrenched political class could be a really
9:32
Speaker 1: effective way to build a political majority. The problem is
9:36
Speaker 1: it's not an effective way to build a durable political majority.
9:40
Speaker 1: So it did work for a time in some places,
9:43
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if we're beginning to see the political
9:45
Speaker 1: limits of this approach. And perhaps more importantly, the fact
9:50
Speaker 1: that Trump's association was less of an asset to his
9:54
Speaker 1: political allies internationally, what do you think it means here
9:57
Speaker 1: in the United States? And that of course is the
9:59
Speaker 1: question I keep asking myself. Brazil was particularly interesting because
10:03
Speaker 1: it complicates the idea, by the way, that this was
10:05
Speaker 1: simply an anti-incumbent backlash, right? What three of them had
10:09
Speaker 1: in common is they were in power. So this is
10:11
Speaker 1: not about just incumbency. This is about a certain set
10:16
Speaker 1: of ideological political beliefs. Yes, Lula was an incumbent. He
10:21
Speaker 1: had his own political baggage, his own economic problems. Plenty
10:24
Speaker 1: of voters were ready for change. But when the choice
10:27
Speaker 1: came down to Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro, almost three million
10:32
Speaker 1: more Brazilians participated in the runoff than in that first round.
10:36
Speaker 1: The fear of Bolsonaro getting back in there was enough
10:39
Speaker 1: to drive Lula skeptics to the polls to support Lula.
10:44
Speaker 1: It's a remarkable comeback for him. And it says more,
10:48
Speaker 1: this was not a pro-Lula vote. This was anti-Bolsonaro and
10:53
Speaker 1: essentially this anti-nationalist movement. Some of you want to say
10:57
Speaker 1: it's fascism. I'll let political scientists debate that. Now, what's
11:04
Speaker 1: worth remembering here is that the Bolsonaro family has been
11:08
Speaker 1: very closely associated with Trump in mega politics for years.
11:10
Speaker 1: By the way, I think it's absurd that the United
11:13
Speaker 1: States as a democracy is trying to take sides in
11:16
Speaker 1: any of these things. It is really bad form, bad leadership,
11:20
Speaker 1: bad politics, bad international leadership, bad for democracy when the
11:25
Speaker 1: supposed leading democracy around the world, the United States, decides
11:29
Speaker 1: that we like this person, we don't like this person,
11:32
Speaker 1: and we sort of hint that we might not respect
11:35
Speaker 1: the outcome, right? Making it seem we're giving Bolsonaro asylum rights.
11:43
Speaker 1: I think is just the wrong type of message for
11:46
Speaker 1: the supposed leading democracy in the world to send. But still,
11:51
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, for those of you that haven't
11:53
Speaker 1: followed closely in Serbia, the story was less about a
11:55
Speaker 1: conventional left versus right politics, and it was more about corruption.
12:00
Speaker 1: The student-led movement that defeated Vucic wasn't organized around a
12:03
Speaker 1: traditional progressive ideology. It was organized around accountability and dissatisfaction
12:08
Speaker 1: with an entrenched political machine, very similar to what we
12:10
Speaker 1: saw a few months ago in Hungary. The big thing
12:14
Speaker 1: was turnout increased roughly 10 percentage points from the previous
12:17
Speaker 1: parliamentary election in Serbia, right? And we saw the same
12:21
Speaker 1: dynamic in Hungary a few months ago. And again, the
12:23
Speaker 1: relationship with Trump was part of Orban's international political identity.
12:28
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, for some odd reason, the United States, Donald Trump.
12:34
Speaker 2: Thinks the U.S.
12:34
Speaker 1: Should be in some sort of axis of power with
12:37
Speaker 1: the Russian and the Chinese to elevate Orban to head
12:40
Speaker 1: of the U.N., Thankfully, the UN is not the most
12:44
Speaker 1: useful body in the world. So Orban can't do much damage,
12:48
Speaker 1: but talk about a way to help, I don't want
12:54
Speaker 1: to say destroy.
12:55
Speaker 2: The credibility of the UN.
12:55
Speaker 1: The UN's credibility is off and on depending on the topic,
12:59
Speaker 1: but it certainly will make it less credible to many
13:02
Speaker 1: around the world. So look, I don't want to suggest
13:04
Speaker 1: directly that Trump was the cause of these defeats, okay?
13:10
Speaker 2: That's not what I'm saying.
13:11
Speaker 1: These countries have their own cultures, their own controversies, and
13:14
Speaker 1: there was plenty of their own reasons for these people
13:16
Speaker 1: to be voted out. But the association with Trump wasn't
13:19
Speaker 1: a help.
13:22
Speaker 2: Okay. It wasn't irrelevant.
13:23
Speaker 1: These leaders certainly didn't treat it as irrelevant, and they
13:25
Speaker 1: had believed the association was helping them. Because normally, the
13:30
Speaker 1: perception that the American president is with you is a
13:33
Speaker 1: good thing in a democracy. The problem is not this
13:36
Speaker 1: American president who hasn't been very pro-democracy. And I would
13:42
Speaker 1: be careful assuming this is some sort of leftist comeback, okay?
13:47
Speaker 2: That I'm not seeing.
13:49
Speaker 1: If you look at Spain where Pedro Sanchez faces a
13:52
Speaker 1: very difficult election of his own, if you look at
13:54
Speaker 1: France where the political right remains a significant force. So
13:57
Speaker 1: I don't think you can sit here and say that
13:59
Speaker 1: this is a leftist movement. What I really think this
14:01
Speaker 1: is is this sort of an anti-illiberal democracy movement, right? Bolsonaro,
14:06
Speaker 1: the Bolsonaro family wasn't very pro-democracy. Bibi is advocating a
14:12
Speaker 1: style of politics that would lock certain Israelis out of
14:16
Speaker 1: the political system. Hungary, same thing. And Donald Trump, he
14:21
Speaker 1: wants to pick and choose who gets to participate in
14:23
Speaker 1: this democracy and who doesn't. So I do think this
14:27
Speaker 1: is not about an ideological movement. This really is about
14:31
Speaker 1: a pro-Israeli liberal, small L democracy movement against this authoritarian,
14:37
Speaker 1: illiberal democracy movement that Trump has clearly aligned himself with.
14:44
Speaker 1: And people like Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance in their
14:46
Speaker 1: own ways kind of advocate. But that's this big global trend.
14:52
Speaker 1: I do want to get into Israel here for a bit, right?
14:56
Speaker 1: We still got a long way to go to find
14:58
Speaker 1: out what which of these two sides are going to
15:02
Speaker 1: be able to get to the 60 necessary votes to
15:06
Speaker 1: get the parliamentary majority. But I do think this Israeli
15:10
Speaker 1: election deserves a bit of attention because, look, if there's
15:15
Speaker 1: no Bibi there, I do think it's an incredible chance
15:18
Speaker 1: for the American Jewish community and Israel in general to
15:23
Speaker 1: have a bit of a reset, if you will. But this,
15:28
Speaker 1: you know, This was a pretty, it's not, like I said,
15:32
Speaker 1: not a defeat yet. I'm going to get into that.
15:34
Speaker 1: But his governing coalition entered this election with 68 seats
15:37
Speaker 1: in the Knesset. And the exit polls suggest that he
15:41
Speaker 1: lost 18 of those seats.
15:43
Speaker 2: That he's down to just 50.
15:45
Speaker 1: Now, the opposition bloc, which was led by former military
15:48
Speaker 1: chief Gadi Eisenkot, is projected to win about 52 seats.
15:52
Speaker 1: So they're both going to be short the 60 votes
15:55
Speaker 1: they need now. Eisenkot can get his majority if he
15:59
Speaker 1: agrees to have the Israeli Arab parties as part of
16:04
Speaker 1: his coalition, because right now the Arab parties hold another
16:08
Speaker 1: 18 seats, or a total of 120 seats in the Knesset.
16:13
Speaker 1: You need 61 for a majority. So while a majority
16:15
Speaker 1: of the projected seats belong to parties outside of Netanyahu's
16:18
Speaker 1: governing coalition, doesn't automatically mean there's a governing majority prepared
16:23
Speaker 1: to replace it. And there are two things I'm going
16:25
Speaker 1: to be watching very closely as the negotiations begin in Israel.
16:29
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to pretend I am not an
16:32
Speaker 1: expert on Israeli politics. All I can tell you is
16:34
Speaker 1: that you think our system is polarized and anachronistic and
16:38
Speaker 1: all of those things. You ain't seen nothing like the Knesset. OK,
16:42
Speaker 1: you know, polarization in Israel is a feature of politics
16:47
Speaker 1: these days, even more so than the United States. I
16:49
Speaker 1: often joke, I don't know whether the U.S. has exported
16:52
Speaker 1: its polarization to Israel or we've imported Israel's polarization.
16:56
Speaker 2: To the United States. But here's what I'm watching.
17:01
Speaker 1: The first is whether the parties opposed to Netanyahu are
17:04
Speaker 1: willing to include Arab political parties in a governing coalition.
17:08
Speaker 1: I think this is a much bigger question than simply
17:11
Speaker 1: parliamentary arithmetic. Israel has spent years defending its reputation as
17:16
Speaker 1: a democracy while facing growing international criticism from over the
17:20
Speaker 1: treatment of Palestinians, the war in Gaza, and the expansion
17:22
Speaker 1: of settlements in the West Bank. One of the most
17:25
Speaker 1: meaningful things Israel could do to strengthen its small-V democratic
17:29
Speaker 1: credentials would be to demonstrate that Jewish and Arab citizens
17:33
Speaker 1: can share meaningful political power in the same government. Think
17:38
Speaker 1: about that symbolism, particularly after everything that's happened since October 7th.
17:43
Speaker 1: A governing coalition that includes both Jewish and Arab political
17:46
Speaker 1: representatives It's not going to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict overnight.
17:50
Speaker 1: And it doesn't suddenly produce a two-state solution. But it
17:54
Speaker 1: demonstrates that political cooperation across one of the deepest divisions
17:58
Speaker 1: in Israeli society is possible. It only strengthens the image
18:03
Speaker 1: of democracy in Israel. It would matter both domestically and internationally.
18:09
Speaker 1: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an interesting point
18:12
Speaker 1: in an interview with Politico before the election. He argued
18:15
Speaker 1: that neither Bibi nor Eisenkot would have much political room
18:19
Speaker 1: to pursue serious peace negotiations with Palestinians. In fact, Olmert
18:23
Speaker 1: suggested that a breakthrough might require outside intervention from one
18:27
Speaker 1: of two people. It was interesting who he thought it
18:29
Speaker 1: could be. One was Donald Trump, and the other was
18:32
Speaker 1: the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS. And he
18:36
Speaker 1: even invoked Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977,
18:40
Speaker 1: which helped create the conditions for peace between Egypt and Israel. Now, look,
18:44
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting we're on the verge of anything close
18:46
Speaker 1: to that. We're a long way away from that. But
18:49
Speaker 1: it does raise the question of whether a different governing
18:52
Speaker 1: coalition could begin to change the political atmosphere in Israel,
18:57
Speaker 1: even if it couldn't immediately change the underlying policy. This
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20:41
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20:43
Speaker 1: this podcast. So when it comes to gifting, Quince is
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21:18
Speaker 1: available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince
21:22
Speaker 1: asks where you heard about them, please let them know
21:25
Speaker 1: it was the Chuck Todd cast. It's the best way
21:28
Speaker 1: to support the show and the best way to make
21:30
Speaker 1: sure you're getting every discount. Now, the second thing I'm
21:36
Speaker 1: watching is the Likud party itself, because there may be
21:39
Speaker 1: another route to a government that doesn't depend on the
21:43
Speaker 1: entire anti-Netanyahu opposition coming together. What if Likud decides Netanyahu
21:48
Speaker 1: has become the obstacle to it remaining in power? Likud
21:52
Speaker 1: is still projected to be the largest individual political party
21:55
Speaker 1: in the Knesset with the most seats. And there are
21:58
Speaker 1: some moderate and center-right parties currently aligned against Bibi that
22:02
Speaker 1: might be unwilling to serve in another government led by him,
22:06
Speaker 1: but could be open to governing with Likud under different leadership. Now,
22:11
Speaker 1: that's a very different scenario. You know, it's not the
22:16
Speaker 1: opium that I was just smoking about Israelis and Arabs
22:21
Speaker 1: governing together, peace and love, right?
22:23
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not.
22:25
Speaker 1: That naive, okay? But this wouldn't be the worst outcome either,
22:31
Speaker 1: I think, for Israel's reputation. It would require a substantial
22:34
Speaker 1: break inside of Likud, and there's no indication yet that
22:37
Speaker 1: its leadership is prepared to make one. Netanyahu has survived
22:41
Speaker 1: plenty of political crises before, and so the idea that
22:45
Speaker 1: he will wriggle out of this is … You know,
22:47
Speaker 1: it's like why so many people are assuming, oh, maybe
22:50
Speaker 1: there's going to be polling error in the midterms, right?
22:53
Speaker 1: If it's happened too many times in the past, you
22:55
Speaker 1: assume it's only going to happen again. But that scenario
22:59
Speaker 1: is still worth watching, and it raises a question that
23:01
Speaker 1: extends beyond Israel. What happens to a political movement when
23:06
Speaker 1: the leader who built it becomes an obstacle.
23:09
Speaker 2: To maintaining power, right? Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
23:14
Speaker 1: And there's one more part of the Israeli election I
23:16
Speaker 1: don't want to overlook. Bibi reportedly spent weeks pressing for
23:19
Speaker 1: another round of strikes against Iran before the election. According
23:23
Speaker 1: to New York Times, there were concerns that renewed fighting
23:26
Speaker 1: could disrupt or even delay the vote. That was not
23:30
Speaker 1: considered a negative as far as Bibi concerned. He saw
23:33
Speaker 1: that as a feature, right? That would have been an
23:37
Speaker 1: extraordinary backdrop for the election. And what it really was
23:41
Speaker 1: is it looks like one more gambit that Bibi was
23:43
Speaker 1: trying to do to essentially avoid the accountability that was
23:48
Speaker 1: coming at the ballot box on Tuesday. But it reminds
23:51
Speaker 1: us of how much of this campaign was fought over
23:53
Speaker 1: national security, the consequences of October 7th and Bibi's stewardship
23:57
Speaker 1: of Israel during multiple military conflicts. So the election wasn't
24:01
Speaker 1: simply a referendum on Trump or on Bibi's relationship with Washington. Remember,
24:06
Speaker 1: Trump's very popular in Israel, but there was a lot,
24:10
Speaker 1: Bibi's the divisive one, Beebe's and his essentially neglect on
24:15
Speaker 1: October 7th. I think a lot more people believe he
24:18
Speaker 1: was asleep at the switch on October 7th. And there
24:22
Speaker 1: was enough of that that likely sent the message that
24:27
Speaker 1: voters did send him on Tuesday. Which brings me back
24:31
Speaker 1: to a larger question. If political movements associated with Trump
24:34
Speaker 1: are struggling to motivate enough voters to maintain power in
24:37
Speaker 1: several countries, What does that tell us about what the
24:41
Speaker 1: GOP's challenge is here at home? We're already seeing plenty
24:46
Speaker 1: of evidence. Republican turnout is down in the early vote.
24:49
Speaker 1: Republican participation is down so far in the mail vote. Yes,
24:53
Speaker 1: we know Trump has been telling his people to wait
24:57
Speaker 1: until Election Day to vote. So we shall see. But
25:01
Speaker 1: so far, all the evidence points to an elevated turnout
25:06
Speaker 1: among key constituency groups that Democrats are counting on. and
25:12
Speaker 1: a lower than expected turnout among the constituency groups that
25:16
Speaker 1: Republicans are counting on.
25:20
Speaker 2: Let's move to domestic.
25:21
Speaker 1: I got a little update on the Senate map, and
25:23
Speaker 1: I want to sort of walk through a scenario for
25:26
Speaker 1: you that I think illustrates sort of how fluid the
25:31
Speaker 1: Senate political map is at the moment. What if I
25:34
Speaker 1: told you that Democrats could lose both Maine and Michigan
25:37
Speaker 1: and still win control of the Senate?
25:39
Speaker 2: You'd be like, really?
25:40
Speaker 1: It's actually not that far fetched. And I say this because,
25:44
Speaker 1: you know, the two weakest Democratic candidates in competitive states
25:50
Speaker 1: right now are Abdul El-Sayed and Troy Jackson for different reasons.
25:55
Speaker 1: But they're both, you know, we can make the larger
25:58
Speaker 1: ideological issue that if they were ideologically a little less
26:03
Speaker 1: connected to the base and a little bit more sort
26:06
Speaker 1: of non-traditional, kind of like, how Tallarico and Turek and
26:11
Speaker 1: some of these other Senate candidates are portraying themselves, I
26:13
Speaker 1: think both Michigan and Maine would be done deals by then.
26:16
Speaker 2: But they are what they are. It is what it is.
26:20
Speaker 2: So what's the math if Democrats lose both of Maine
26:23
Speaker 2: and Michigan? Well, here it is.
26:26
Speaker 1: Democrats flip North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and Alaska, and
26:31
Speaker 1: Republicans hold Maine and flip Michigan. It's still a net
26:37
Speaker 1: four gain of seats for Democrats. It would be five
26:40
Speaker 1: Republican-held seats changing hands, offset by one Democratic-held seat going Republican.
26:46
Speaker 1: It would give Democrats their 51-49 majority. And we're not
26:49
Speaker 1: even getting to South Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi, any of these
26:53
Speaker 1: longer shot race, Nebraska, Montana, Florida, you name it, right? Now,
26:58
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is how the election is going
27:00
Speaker 1: to turn out. But I wanted to paint, because that's
27:02
Speaker 1: one of the scenarios that, you know, it isn't a given.
27:05
Speaker 1: If Collins holds Maine, it doesn't mean the Republicans have
27:08
Speaker 1: held the Senate. And if Abdul El-Sayed loses Michigan, it
27:11
Speaker 1: doesn't mean Republicans have held the Senate. And I think
27:15
Speaker 1: that's the important thing about this map. This is how remarkable,
27:21
Speaker 1: remarkably competitive this very red-leaning map. This was a map that,
27:25
Speaker 1: you know, if I had said that 18 months ago.
27:30
Speaker 1: You know, Democrats can lose Maine and Michigan and still
27:33
Speaker 1: find a way to gain four seats. You'd be like,
27:35
Speaker 1: how the hell are they going to do that? But
27:37
Speaker 1: that is how much the political environment has soured on
27:41
Speaker 1: Trump and on the Republicans. So look, this is why
27:50
Speaker 1: I'm in some ways a bit more bullish that Democrats
27:54
Speaker 1: are likely to win both the House and the Senate.
27:57
Speaker 1: Because the second you have a variety of ways to
27:59
Speaker 1: get to your Senate majority is always when you're in. Now,
28:03
Speaker 1: is it possible they end up with one more seat
28:05
Speaker 1: than they need, two more seats than they need? It's
28:08
Speaker 1: more possible than not.
28:09
Speaker 3: Right.
28:10
Speaker 1: Democrats have done a good job putting more seats on
28:13
Speaker 1: the board. Donald Trump's done a good job putting more
28:15
Speaker 1: seats on the board for Democrats.
28:17
Speaker 3: Right.
28:17
Speaker 1: With the Darlene Graham situation down in South Carolina. But
28:22
Speaker 1: it does show you that the center of gravity of
28:24
Speaker 1: this campaign really has moved. and the broader Senate map.
28:30
Speaker 1: It's amazing that essentially the geographic center of this country,
28:34
Speaker 1: which has been leaning Republican for a couple of decades now,
28:38
Speaker 1: Donald Trump uniquely made those states more competitive with his
28:42
Speaker 1: unnecessary trade war with Canada, which impacted all of those
28:46
Speaker 1: states and.
28:47
Speaker 2: Of course, the war in Iran. The other.
28:52
Speaker 1: A quick Senate map update I wanted to do is
28:56
Speaker 1: South Carolina is becoming a lot more interesting. Annie Andrews,
28:58
Speaker 1: of course, is the Democratic nominee challenging Darlene Graham. And
29:02
Speaker 1: we've seen an interesting development. Former Republican Governor David Beasley,
29:05
Speaker 1: former Democratic Governor Jim Hodges, Hodges beat Beasley, by the way,
29:09
Speaker 1: in 1998, did a joint ad both endorsing Andrews. It's
29:13
Speaker 1: not something you see every day. And it's a bit
29:16
Speaker 1: of a Republican permission slip, if you will, to support
29:20
Speaker 1: Annie Andrews. But as Democrats feel more bullish about their
29:25
Speaker 1: chances in South Carolina, they feel a little more bearish
29:29
Speaker 1: about their chances in Kansas a little bit. And I
29:33
Speaker 1: think there's a difference of why Kansas might have you know,
29:36
Speaker 1: this was always a question about Kansas was. you know,
29:40
Speaker 1: is there is there a sort of a hard ceiling
29:43
Speaker 1: of 46, 47 percent?
29:46
Speaker 2: Right. And I think there is.
29:50
Speaker 1: And I think that that's there are a lot of
29:52
Speaker 1: Republicans in western Kansas that Hamilton has to figure out
29:56
Speaker 1: how to win over. or a lot of those Republicans
29:59
Speaker 1: have to stay home, or a handful of those, or
30:02
Speaker 1: he's got to make a winning number 47 or 48.
30:04
Speaker 1: And it does feel as if he stalled a little bit.
30:07
Speaker 1: It's not that Marshall's become a better candidate, but you
30:10
Speaker 1: could just feel there just might not be enough swing
30:13
Speaker 1: independent voters, moderate Republicans, coupled with a lower turnout among
30:21
Speaker 1: Republicans to do this. Still going to be very competitive,
30:24
Speaker 1: and anything can happen. But I think what's interesting about
30:28
Speaker 1: South Carolina is what you're seeing. It's the, you know,
30:33
Speaker 1: why do Democrats feel a little bit better about South Carolina? Well, look,
30:35
Speaker 1: their African-American turnout in the early vote, when you've looked
30:38
Speaker 1: at Florida, Georgia, Virginia, been through the roof, blowing the
30:43
Speaker 1: doors off. We saw this during the primary season. And
30:47
Speaker 1: trust me, whenever you see an elevated turnout among specific
30:50
Speaker 1: demographic groups in primaries, it always translates to generals. People
30:55
Speaker 1: who choose to vote in primaries always make time to
30:58
Speaker 1: vote in the general, right? The hardest thing to do
31:00
Speaker 1: is to get people who didn't vote in a primary
31:02
Speaker 1: to remember to vote in the general. But once you've
31:05
Speaker 1: got them in the primary, you know they're coming in
31:07
Speaker 1: the general. And if suddenly you have a higher than
31:10
Speaker 1: expected black turnout, right? Here's the South Carolina math. It
31:15
Speaker 1: starts this way. Lindsey Graham in 2020, which was a lean, look, nationally,
31:20
Speaker 1: you could say it was slightly a Democratic lean, but
31:24
Speaker 1: it was sort of like in the 52-48 range, right?
31:29
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham gets just under 55%, right? So that to
31:33
Speaker 1: me was Darlene Graham's ceiling. Well, she's an appointed senator.
31:36
Speaker 1: Appointed senators always perform a couple of points below whatever
31:41
Speaker 1: the normal ceiling is. So let's take her from 54
31:43
Speaker 1: down to 52. Now you throw in, there was a
31:47
Speaker 1: competitive primary. There was a cranky runoff. You had a
31:51
Speaker 1: runoff loser who was pretty cranky. You have two third-party
31:55
Speaker 1: candidates that are from traditionally right-leaning third parties. I think
32:00
Speaker 1: it's a constitutional party candidate and a libertarian party candidate.
32:03
Speaker 1: So if she's down to 52 and then you peel away, say,
32:08
Speaker 1: a collective two or three more points for her, suddenly
32:11
Speaker 1: she's sitting at 49. You get an elevated African-American vote.
32:16
Speaker 1: That helps Annie Andrews. Couple of, you know, just enough
32:19
Speaker 1: crossover votes. We've seen independent numbers are up. That's suddenly
32:25
Speaker 1: how you see, say, 48.8, 48.2, everything else going to
32:32
Speaker 1: third parties.
32:32
Speaker 2: I mean, if Annie Andrews wins this, that's probably what
32:37
Speaker 2: it's going to look like.
32:39
Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is there's a path
32:41
Speaker 1: to there. And the elevated surge and turnout among African-American
32:45
Speaker 1: voters also means Annie Andrews has a high floor. In fact,
32:48
Speaker 1: in some ways, her floor is higher than Adam Hamilton's
32:50
Speaker 1: is in Kansas.
32:51
Speaker 3: Right.
32:51
Speaker 1: There's not a distinctive demographic group.
32:55
Speaker 2: That you can 100 percent count on.
32:57
Speaker 1: There's certainly suburban voters in Kansas three, but it's not
33:00
Speaker 1: quite the same as as the anger that's in the
33:04
Speaker 1: black community that we're seeing evidence of in the South,
33:06
Speaker 1: particularly over the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
33:11
Speaker 2: One more little Senate nugget.
33:12
Speaker 1: It brings me to a fascinating piece by Chris Smith
33:15
Speaker 1: in Vanity Fair, and it was about Susan Collins in
33:17
Speaker 1: the main Senate race. And what was interesting in it
33:20
Speaker 1: was this Bannon There was a Steve Bannon quote that
33:23
Speaker 1: I thought was worth sharing with you guys, because he
33:26
Speaker 1: makes an argument in the piece that probably gets at
33:30
Speaker 1: the fundamental divide between Senate Republicans, as we know it,
33:35
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in general. So
33:38
Speaker 1: Bannon in this piece is arguing that Republican leaders have
33:41
Speaker 1: spent so much time protecting senators like Collins and that
33:47
Speaker 1: they have failed to advance legislation that might have motivated
33:50
Speaker 1: lower propensity MAGA voters to participate in the midterms. That
33:54
Speaker 1: because Collins had some objections to some of the things
33:57
Speaker 1: that Republicans wanted to do, that somehow Senate Republican leadership
34:02
Speaker 1: has moderated those things and that served to somehow demotivate
34:08
Speaker 1: MAGA voters. In fact, Bannon specifically points to Iowa, Kansas,
34:12
Speaker 1: and Nebraska, states where that decision could be hurting Republicans. Now, obviously,
34:16
Speaker 1: has his own agenda. He's been trying to rid the
34:19
Speaker 1: Republican Party of Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Todd Young, you know,
34:24
Speaker 1: any sort of anybody from the sort of center right,
34:30
Speaker 1: you know, semi-pro business sort of Chamber of Commerce Republicans.
34:34
Speaker 1: Bannon has been trying to kick out of the party.
34:39
Speaker 1: But he's also reminding people of this tension. You know,
34:44
Speaker 1: Republicans need Susan Collins. in order to keep a Senate majority.
34:48
Speaker 1: And at the same time, Bannon hates the fact that
34:50
Speaker 1: they need Susan Collins and wishes that they.
34:52
Speaker 2: Didn't need Susan Collins, right?
34:55
Speaker 1: And in there, in this piece, it goes further how
34:56
Speaker 1: much Trump doesn't like her and the type of personality
34:59
Speaker 1: that Trump hates and all of this stuff. It's exactly
35:03
Speaker 1: the type of things that Susan Collins would want everybody
35:06
Speaker 1: in Maine to see.
35:06
Speaker 2: Hey, Donald Trump doesn't like me, see? But I think it's.
35:12
Speaker 1: A reminder of, while she has some influence, She really
35:17
Speaker 1: is not. I, you know, this is what the Republican
35:21
Speaker 1: Party is. I'm surprised she isn't pulled a Murkowski. And
35:25
Speaker 1: that was the one thing I thought she might do was,
35:28
Speaker 1: you know, say, look, I'm going to run as an independent.
35:31
Speaker 1: But caucus with the Republicans anyway. It's an interesting political
35:37
Speaker 1: challenge that he pointed out, but. Obviously, it's it's in.
35:44
Speaker 1: It's important to note. Democrats do have a path without Maine.
35:50
Speaker 1: And look, when you've seen, I can tell that the
35:54
Speaker 1: Senate Democrats are not pleased with Troy Jackson because pretty
35:57
Speaker 1: much the last month of this election has just been
36:00
Speaker 1: about Susan Collins. There has been very little attempt at
36:03
Speaker 1: promoting Jackson, and it's been all about trying to make
36:06
Speaker 1: this a referendum on Susan Collins. And honestly, if she wins,
36:10
Speaker 1: it's because somehow enough independents have decided.
36:13
Speaker 2: You know what, she's not a Trump Republican, and that's
36:16
Speaker 2: enough for me. So we shall see.
36:17
Speaker 1: By the way, one other cautionary note, a little interesting
36:20
Speaker 1: stat I caught from, I think it was our friends
36:23
Speaker 1: at Punchbowl that noted this. According to their analysis since 2018,
36:29
Speaker 1: Democrats have not flipped a Republican-held House seat that was
36:33
Speaker 1: added to the DCCC's Red to Blue program in September
36:37
Speaker 1: or October of an election year, right? Whenever Democrats or
36:42
Speaker 1: Republicans add people to their competitive lists, after Labor Day,
36:47
Speaker 1: it usually means they're going after a reach state. Maybe
36:49
Speaker 1: they have a really good candidate on their side. Maybe
36:51
Speaker 1: there's a really weak candidate on the other side. But
36:54
Speaker 1: I thought since 2018, this was an amazing analysis. So
36:57
Speaker 1: you may have seen, you'll see some reports over the
36:59
Speaker 1: last couple of days, Democrats are expanding the map. Well,
37:03
Speaker 1: according to Punchbowl, of all 28 candidates since 2018 that
37:08
Speaker 1: have been added in the final two months of the
37:10
Speaker 1: previous four cycles, only three won, and all three were
37:13
Speaker 1: running in Democratic-held open seats. So it's a reminder this
37:16
Speaker 1: late map expansion doesn't automatically translate into victories. Campaign committees
37:21
Speaker 1: have plenty of incentives to create a sense of momentum.
37:24
Speaker 1: They want donors to believe new opportunities are emerging. And
37:27
Speaker 1: sometimes those opportunities are real. But I thought that history
37:32
Speaker 1: suggests we should distinguish between races that have become genuinely
37:35
Speaker 1: competitive and races that are being promoted as competitive in
37:38
Speaker 1: the final days. And of course, the same principle applies
37:41
Speaker 1: to Senate races. Larger map doesn't mean every race has
37:45
Speaker 1: become equally winnable, but it does mean the arithmetic can
37:48
Speaker 1: change in ways that aren't obvious if we're looking at
37:51
Speaker 1: the map we had.
37:52
Speaker 2: Six months ago.
37:53
Speaker 1: All right.
37:54
Speaker 2: Now I want to talk a little bit about Trump's
37:55
Speaker 2: closing argument.
37:57
Speaker 1: You know, I had a little fun with it in
38:00
Speaker 1: what candidate Trump would say about President Trump. But man,
38:04
Speaker 1: on Tuesday in Corpus Christi, the guy couldn't be more
38:07
Speaker 1: off message. And I think ultimately, if Republicans do as
38:10
Speaker 1: poorly as the polls are indicating, There is nobody that
38:15
Speaker 1: has been a worse messenger for the party than Donald Trump.
38:19
Speaker 1: So here you have Republicans trying to navigate an increasingly
38:21
Speaker 1: complicated Senate map, protect their House majority. And what's Donald
38:25
Speaker 1: Trump doing in his closing days? Well, because the contrast
38:29
Speaker 1: between Trump's political instincts when he's running for himself and
38:33
Speaker 1: what he's doing now is becoming more pronounced, right? As
38:35
Speaker 1: I said, in 2016 and 2024, Trump knew how to
38:39
Speaker 1: make himself the center of the campaign in ways that
38:41
Speaker 1: helped him politically. He knew how to dominate that attention,
38:44
Speaker 1: the McDonald's appearance, all of that. Now look at what
38:47
Speaker 1: he's talking about, right? In Corpus Christi on Tuesday, he
38:52
Speaker 1: suggested that Venezuela, spent a long time on this, might
38:55
Speaker 1: become the 51st state. I know he's mused about this before,
38:58
Speaker 1: but this is part of the closing argument, right?
39:01
Speaker 2: He mused about 51st State.
39:02
Speaker 1: He was standing near a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil, celebrating
39:06
Speaker 1: the administration's military intervention, calling it, we won our war
39:10
Speaker 1: with Venezuela. I bet you, you didn't know we had
39:12
Speaker 1: a war with Venezuela. I thought this was a law
39:14
Speaker 1: enforcement action because if it was a war, then they
39:17
Speaker 1: did it illegally and didn't go to Congress and get permission.
39:21
Speaker 1: So the president called it a war in Corpus Christi.
39:23
Speaker 1: I thought it was a law enforcement because if it's
39:25
Speaker 1: not a law enforcement action, then what he did was illegal.
39:38
Speaker 2: But anyway, he was celebrating all this oil, right? He
39:41
Speaker 2: even said to the victor, come to spoils.
39:42
Speaker 1: And he floated the idea that Venezuela could become an
39:44
Speaker 1: American state with a governor rather than a president. Now,
39:48
Speaker 1: I know we'll say it's Trump being Trump, right? But
39:52
Speaker 1: think about the broader context here, right? Because he also
39:56
Speaker 1: was discussing the economic consequences of the war in Iran.
39:59
Speaker 1: And he sort of talked about it as if he
40:01
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. You know, and what's
40:04
Speaker 1: great is what's happening in the Middle East is helping
40:06
Speaker 1: Texas and helping people make more money over here. So
40:10
Speaker 1: he's acknowledging that the war, that he knew that oil
40:13
Speaker 1: prices would rise. But he decided to proceed anyway because,
40:16
Speaker 1: you know, he said they didn't rise as much as
40:18
Speaker 1: I thought they would. And then he's out there celebrating
40:21
Speaker 1: the benefits of the conflict for the American oil industry. OK,
40:26
Speaker 1: so maybe the oil industry is making money. Maybe Exxon
40:29
Speaker 1: is making money.
40:30
Speaker 2: But they're making money off of you and me and
40:34
Speaker 2: higher gas prices. It's the craziest thing.
40:38
Speaker 1: Hey, look, all of that inflation, all of that extra
40:41
Speaker 1: money you're paying, it's helping our American oil companies make money.
40:45
Speaker 2: Woo!
40:46
Speaker 1: Cheer away, everybody in Corpus Christi. It's quite a closing
40:51
Speaker 1: argument in this midterm election about cost of living. I mean, sure,
40:55
Speaker 1: we want to improve American energy production, but that is
41:00
Speaker 1: not what the president was advocating, right? He was He
41:04
Speaker 1: was trying to create victories the way he defines them.
41:07
Speaker 1: And of course, he was saying all this in Texas,
41:09
Speaker 1: where Republicans are trying to hold that Senate seat. And
41:14
Speaker 1: there was another thing about this Corpus Christi rally that
41:16
Speaker 1: caught my attention. Marco Rubio was there, the sitting secretary
41:19
Speaker 1: of state. Now, we've had a tradition in this country
41:23
Speaker 1: where our chief diplomat does not participate in partisan campaign events.
41:28
Speaker 1: It's one of those norms that, you know, just one
41:30
Speaker 1: of many norms that Donald Trump has destroyed. used to
41:33
Speaker 1: be taken very seriously. Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State,
41:35
Speaker 1: did not do any domestic politics. It was Mike Pompeo
41:40
Speaker 1: who broke the tradition first. He was sitting Secretary of State,
41:42
Speaker 1: and during Trump's first term, he addressed the Republican convention
41:45
Speaker 1: in 2020. I remember when that happened, and it was like, oh,
41:50
Speaker 1: this is unusual. We've never had a sitting Secretary of
41:51
Speaker 1: State do this. Now, according to Politico, Republicans have been
41:56
Speaker 1: trying to get Rubio on the campaign trail for months
41:59
Speaker 1: because they see him as pretty much one of their
42:02
Speaker 1: one of the only effective surrogates that's connected to Trump
42:05
Speaker 1: that doesn't turn off non-mega Republicans. He is one of
42:11
Speaker 1: their more effective political messengers, particularly with Latino voters where
42:14
Speaker 1: they're struggling mightily and some of the more moderate voters
42:18
Speaker 1: in the party as well. But Rubio, to his credit,
42:21
Speaker 1: was resisting. He skipped the Republican midterm convention. You know,
42:26
Speaker 1: this is this part of Rubio you could tell he
42:28
Speaker 1: really is sort of I think he walks around constantly
42:30
Speaker 1: with the devil and the angel.
42:32
Speaker 2: And the devil usually wins, right?
42:36
Speaker 1: But the angel is always telling him what he should
42:38
Speaker 1: be doing. And he kind of knows it. And he
42:40
Speaker 1: listens to the angel for a while, right? So he
42:42
Speaker 1: skipped the midterm convention. So what did he do in
42:46
Speaker 1: Corpus Christi? So he was backstage. He was accompanying Trump
42:51
Speaker 1: in his capacity as national security advisor. Remember, he's got
42:54
Speaker 1: He's got multiple. I think he's also the chief archivist
42:57
Speaker 1: as well. But basically, he's got two jobs, secretary of state,
43:00
Speaker 1: like Kissinger did with Nixon, secretary of state, national security advisor.
43:03
Speaker 1: So in this case, I guess you could say it
43:05
Speaker 1: was national security advisor Marco Rubio participating in this political
43:10
Speaker 1: event and not the secretary of state. I'm sure that's
43:13
Speaker 1: what the ethics lawyers are trying to say. Now, what
43:16
Speaker 1: was interesting is how uncomfortable Rubio really was being at
43:20
Speaker 1: this event. Rubio spoke for all of a few seconds.
43:24
Speaker 1: He praised the president, told the crown it was an
43:25
Speaker 1: honor to serve the country. We love you, Texas.
43:28
Speaker 2: And that was it. And he walked away.
43:30
Speaker 1: Now, I can't crawl in his head and know for
43:34
Speaker 1: sure that he did it was that short because he
43:36
Speaker 1: was uncomfortable. But the brevity was striking, especially when you
43:41
Speaker 1: consider how badly Republicans wanted Rubio.
43:44
Speaker 2: On the trail. But he knows how just, you know,
43:47
Speaker 2: nothing diminishes the office of Secretary of State more than
43:50
Speaker 2: than if he continues to politicize it like this.
43:53
Speaker 1: And it's always, it's fascinating to me to watch Rubio
43:56
Speaker 1: try so hard in this, you know, administration with a
44:01
Speaker 1: president that just doesn't give two rats asses about any
44:04
Speaker 1: of this stuff. He's trying to hold up a fig
44:07
Speaker 1: leaf of tradition.
44:10
Speaker 2: I know he gets it. I'm sorry that the spine
44:12
Speaker 2: isn't strong enough to stand there.
44:14
Speaker 1: But then again, if he didn't cave, he wouldn't be there.
44:19
Speaker 1: And maybe he's decided he'd rather preserve his ability to
44:24
Speaker 1: be a member in good standing of Donald Trump's Republican
44:27
Speaker 1: Party than to be on the outside looking in.
44:30
Speaker 2: That's the decision he made. OK. That's what we are.
44:36
Speaker 2: One other irony here.
44:37
Speaker 1: Rubio spent much of his tenure trying to maintain the
44:40
Speaker 1: separation politically, and he ends up on stage in a rally.
44:44
Speaker 2: It's just, you know.
44:46
Speaker 1: It's another example of how the presidency and the president's
44:48
Speaker 1: political operation increasingly overlaps, sometimes without much apparent consideration of
44:53
Speaker 1: where one should end and the other begins. But again,
44:56
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't care about these images. He views it all
45:00
Speaker 1: as one thing. He views it all that way. And
45:04
Speaker 1: he doesn't care if he delegitimizes the Justice Department, the
45:08
Speaker 1: State Department, the Treasury Department. He wants them all acting
45:12
Speaker 1: politically when he needs them to act politically. There's one
45:16
Speaker 1: more thing on Donald Trump that I'd be loathe not
45:19
Speaker 1: to bring up, and that was his weird obsession over
45:22
Speaker 1: Bill Maher. He posted what is apparently the longest social
45:28
Speaker 1: media post of his career, more than 1,300 words, essentially
45:33
Speaker 1: relitigating two dinners he had with Bill Maher at the
45:36
Speaker 1: White House.
45:37
Speaker 2: Okay. It was the strangest thing, right?
45:41
Speaker 1: He spent time, and of course, Trump spent time talking
45:43
Speaker 1: about all of his incredible ratings with The Apprentice and
45:47
Speaker 1: all of those things. And he even compared his own
45:49
Speaker 1: popularity among Republicans with Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln. And
45:53
Speaker 1: he and he was just angry that Maher happened to
45:56
Speaker 1: do a few just light love tap jokes on Trump. Right.
46:00
Speaker 2: It wasn't even that.
46:01
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Maher just sort of, you know,
46:03
Speaker 1: did a shit interview with Catherine Leavitt.
46:06
Speaker 3: Right.
46:06
Speaker 1: You know, he loves to be like he claims he's
46:08
Speaker 1: a tough guy interview. But look, Maher just wanted to
46:10
Speaker 1: be in the good graces of Trump. He did it
46:12
Speaker 1: in his Caroline Leavitt interview. And it still wasn't enough
46:14
Speaker 1: for Trump. Trump got all angry because Maher made jokes
46:18
Speaker 1: about his approval ratings and Republican candidates not wanting. To
46:22
Speaker 1: feature him prominently in their campaign advertising. I mean, you
46:26
Speaker 1: want to we knew his skin was thin, but apparently
46:28
Speaker 1: there's no skin left with Donald Trump. Right. Literally, Bill
46:32
Speaker 1: Maher turned his program over to promoting and making Catherine
46:36
Speaker 1: Levitt seem like a semi-serious individual. Not many people take
46:40
Speaker 1: her that seriously in the public forum. And it still
46:44
Speaker 1: wasn't enough for Trump. And he's so focused on the
46:49
Speaker 1: midterm elections that he spent 1,300 words ranting and raving
46:53
Speaker 1: about a show he claims he doesn't really watch anymore.
46:55
Speaker 1: But clearly, he watched every second of it on what
46:58
Speaker 1: he still calls TiVo. And then there's Barack Obama. This
47:03
Speaker 1: has been a revealing response by Trump with Obama. Look,
47:09
Speaker 1: I've long believed you can't fully understand Trump's political identity
47:12
Speaker 1: without understanding his relationship with Obama.
47:15
Speaker 2: Right.
47:16
Speaker 1: Over the weekend, Obama made a joke comparing Trump's White
47:18
Speaker 1: House renovations to Saddam Hussein and the Cheesecake Factory. Now,
47:23
Speaker 1: the online right immediately tried to turn it into some
47:25
Speaker 1: sort of deplorables moment, as though Obama had insulted ordinary
47:29
Speaker 1: Americans who enjoy eating at the Cheesecake Factory. That is
47:32
Speaker 1: not what the punchline was. And perhaps he could have
47:35
Speaker 1: landed the joke better. But, hey, you know, he could
47:38
Speaker 1: get up.
47:38
Speaker 2: Come on, John Lovett.
47:39
Speaker 1: I know you can write him a better line than that,
47:41
Speaker 1: but that's OK.
47:42
Speaker 3: Right.
47:46
Speaker 1: But what was fascinating to me was Trump's reaction. He
47:50
Speaker 1: devoted time at the Mississippi rally to responding to Obama
47:52
Speaker 1: and say, for you to say it's a cheesecake factory
47:55
Speaker 1: just shows you why you are a lousy president. So,
48:00
Speaker 1: you know, you have one part of the MAGA right
48:02
Speaker 1: was trying to turn it into a deplorables moment as
48:04
Speaker 1: if Obama was was insulting the cheesecake factory. Trump correctly realized, no,
48:10
Speaker 1: he's not insulting the cheesecake factory. He's insulting Donald Trump.
48:15
Speaker 1: But there's another part of this that's all gotten lost,
48:18
Speaker 1: and it made me laugh more. Bill Clinton, on the
48:22
Speaker 1: same day that Obama insulted the renovations of the White
48:25
Speaker 1: House and compared it to like a Saddam Hussein palace
48:28
Speaker 1: meets the Cheesecake Factory, Bill Clinton described Trump's Rose Garden
48:34
Speaker 1: renovation as looking like something out of Liberace's bathroom. I
48:38
Speaker 1: thought that was a pretty good line. That's a little old.
48:40
Speaker 1: You have to remember who Liberace was. And so Probably
48:44
Speaker 1: people under 45 didn't laugh, but I guaranteed you people
48:47
Speaker 1: over 50. What's interesting is that Trump didn't seem offended
48:51
Speaker 1: by that one. He was only offended that Obama criticized
48:54
Speaker 1: this renovation. Not that Bill Clinton mocked him on Liberace,
48:58
Speaker 1: but actually knowing Trump, comparing it to Liberace is not
49:03
Speaker 1: a critique. He may have taken that as a compliment.
49:08
Speaker 2: Who knows?
49:09
Speaker 1: But I do think it tells you something, how differently
49:12
Speaker 1: Trump responds to Obama. He didn't bother to respond to
49:15
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton and his dig at Trump's renovations.
49:18
Speaker 2: But he but he but he sort of he loses
49:20
Speaker 2: his shit when it comes to Obama.
49:22
Speaker 3: Right.
49:22
Speaker 1: You know, Clinton can apparently make fun of the renovations.
49:26
Speaker 2: Nothing. Obama does it.
49:28
Speaker 1: And suddenly we're having a national debate about whether the
49:30
Speaker 1: former president has insulted middle America. So look, Trump's political,
49:35
Speaker 1: this little history lesson here, Trump's political relationship with Obama
49:38
Speaker 1: goes back to the birther conspiracy. Trump promoted it. Then
49:43
Speaker 1: came the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner where Obama famously
49:47
Speaker 1: mocked Trump and humiliated him in person in front of
49:51
Speaker 1: 2000 people. Trump doesn't handle criticism, right? Bill Maher does
49:57
Speaker 1: a light joke and he does a 1300 word post, right?
50:00
Speaker 1: So we know He doesn't handle criticism well. But that
50:05
Speaker 1: moment in 2011, it's become part of the mythology surrounding
50:09
Speaker 1: Trump's eventual decision to run for president. Then Trump wins
50:12
Speaker 1: in 2016 and almost immediately becomes preoccupied with comparing everything
50:17
Speaker 1: he did to Obama, right? And it started with the
50:19
Speaker 1: size of the inaugural crowd. He didn't like it that
50:22
Speaker 1: Obama had a big crowd and Trump had a less
50:25
Speaker 1: big crowd. I think it's fair to say that There's
50:31
Speaker 1: a compelling case that some of Trump's obsession with his
50:34
Speaker 1: historical significance, with his attempt to put his name on buildings,
50:38
Speaker 1: build arches, it's all tied to his obsession over Obama.
50:43
Speaker 1: He doesn't simply want to be remembered as a consequential
50:46
Speaker 1: president who nearly destroyed the democracy. He repeatedly compares his popularity,
50:51
Speaker 1: his accomplishments, even the physical appearance of the White House
50:54
Speaker 1: with those of his predecessor. He's obsessed with making it
50:57
Speaker 1: seem different than Obama. I don't know how much of
51:01
Speaker 1: that is personal resentment. I don't know if some of
51:03
Speaker 1: it's racism. I know some people think it's racism.
51:06
Speaker 2: Might be.
51:06
Speaker 1: I think he's just angry that Obama is liked and
51:10
Speaker 1: he's not. But the pattern's remarkably persistent, right? In the
51:14
Speaker 1: same way, you could argue the left gets a little
51:17
Speaker 1: too preoccupied with all things Trump. Donald Trump just loses
51:21
Speaker 1: his shit whenever Obama enters the chat. It is amazing
51:27
Speaker 1: how easily Obama can still draw a response from him.
51:30
Speaker 1: The joke about the Cheesecake Factory becomes a presidential campaign
51:32
Speaker 1: rally talking point.
51:34
Speaker 2: And Democrats say, thank you.
51:37
Speaker 1: Then there's the other part of this, right? The deplorables,
51:39
Speaker 1: the online, right? Trying to manufacture a cultural grievance out
51:42
Speaker 1: of it. Look, I understood the grievance about deplorables. Obama
51:51
Speaker 1: wasn't making fun of people at Cheesecake Factory. Obama was
51:53
Speaker 1: making fun of Donald Trump and his terrible taste. Those
51:57
Speaker 1: are fundamentally different things. But still, once again, instead of
52:05
Speaker 1: keeping the focus on trying to fix your messaging or
52:09
Speaker 1: put the focus on Republican candidates and the closing arguments,
52:12
Speaker 1: he's spending time debating Barack Obama about decorating and criticizing
52:18
Speaker 1: Bill Maher, whatever any of you thinks of those disputes.
52:23
Speaker 2: It's an unusual way to.
52:24
Speaker 1: Close for the president to come up with a closing argument.
52:29
Speaker 1: And again, it's why it is hard. I don't like
52:34
Speaker 1: the group think that's all headed to here, what we
52:37
Speaker 1: think is going to happen on Tuesday.
52:40
Speaker 2: But there is.
52:41
Speaker 1: Hard to find any counter evidence here. And the more
52:45
Speaker 1: Trump puts himself front and center, the more this is
52:48
Speaker 1: about him, the worse this is going to get.
52:50
Speaker 2: For the GOP. A few other notes.
52:57
Speaker 1: The president's retribution campaign got dealt a serious blow over
53:01
Speaker 1: the last 24 hours. There were two Justice Department developments
53:05
Speaker 1: this week. The department attempted to bring another criminal case
53:09
Speaker 1: against former FBI Director James Comey. This time, it accuses
53:13
Speaker 1: him of leaking classified information to The New York Times
53:15
Speaker 1: back in 2016. Comey denies wrongdoing. And then, of course,
53:18
Speaker 1: Cassidy Hutchinson. She's the former Trump White House aide whose
53:21
Speaker 1: testimony about January 6th became one of the most memorable
53:24
Speaker 1: moments of the congressional investigation ended January 6th. Now, according
53:28
Speaker 1: to the Post, federal prosecutors tried to persuade a grand
53:30
Speaker 1: jury to indict Hutchinson over her testimony, and the grand
53:33
Speaker 1: jury refused. I mean, is there a dumber Justice Department
53:39
Speaker 1: than this one? I mean, they keep trying, and it's, look,
53:43
Speaker 1: I don't, I could sit here and say, oh, the
53:46
Speaker 1: Justice Department are a bunch of morons, and, you know,
53:49
Speaker 1: this is just an idiotic thing being run by Todd Blanche,
53:52
Speaker 1: but It's Trump driving this, right? It's driving Trump crazy
53:56
Speaker 1: that he can't get Comey. It's driving Trump crazy that
53:59
Speaker 1: they can't get Hutchinson, right? And he's desperate to do
54:03
Speaker 1: these things. And Blanche, you know, who doesn't really care
54:07
Speaker 1: about destroying the reputation of the Justice Department, is trying
54:11
Speaker 1: so hard to appease Trump on all of these. You know,
54:15
Speaker 1: he filed the ridiculous Alaska lawsuit, which is getting tossed
54:19
Speaker 1: filed the redict. They tried to challenge what's going on
54:22
Speaker 1: in California. Courts everywhere are basically saying it's a bunch
54:26
Speaker 1: of BS. And they can't, you know, remember, supposedly you
54:31
Speaker 1: can indict a hand that a grand jury can indict
54:33
Speaker 1: a ham sandwich. Well, the ham sandwich probably had a
54:36
Speaker 1: better chance of being indicted than Cassidy Hutchinson did. It's
54:41
Speaker 1: just remarkable when you can't get an indictment from your
54:45
Speaker 1: own grand jury. And that's exactly what's happened here. But
54:49
Speaker 1: It just shows you this. I mean, Trump has spent
54:53
Speaker 1: these two years focused on everything, but what voters asked
54:57
Speaker 1: him to focus on. And ultimately, right, he's obsessed with
55:01
Speaker 1: getting his enemies from the first turn. He's obsessed with,
55:04
Speaker 1: you know, he's still obsessed with the wrong part of
55:08
Speaker 1: Ukraine because it has to do with his first impeachment.
55:11
Speaker 1: Everything is in service of something that is not about.
55:15
Speaker 2: What voters are concerned about.
55:17
Speaker 1: And ultimately, If the reckoning is coming on Tuesday, it's
55:22
Speaker 1: pretty obvious how we got here. Donald Trump made promises,
55:27
Speaker 1: and he's yet to fulfill most of them. And ultimately,
55:34
Speaker 1: that's politics, pure and simple. Now, before I finish today,
55:45
Speaker 1: I want to turn to something a little different. One
55:47
Speaker 1: of the things I said I was going to do
55:48
Speaker 1: with these Wednesday episodes is spend a little bit of
55:51
Speaker 1: time on a single policy question that isn't necessarily getting
55:56
Speaker 1: the attention it deserves. And this week, I want to
55:58
Speaker 1: do a little something on prediction markets because there was
56:01
Speaker 1: an interesting new report from the Council on Foreign Relations
56:05
Speaker 1: that actually offers a pretty good intellectual view of how
56:09
Speaker 1: to understand both the promise of prediction markets and the
56:12
Speaker 1: potential problems with it. And I want to start with
56:15
Speaker 1: Brazil because the election there provides a pretty good illustration
56:19
Speaker 1: of one of the most misunderstood aspects about prediction markets.
56:23
Speaker 1: Going into Sunday's presidential runoff, the prediction markets were giving
56:26
Speaker 1: Lula roughly a 20% chance of winning. He ended up
56:29
Speaker 1: winning by 4 million votes. And predictably, this produced a
56:32
Speaker 1: lot of criticism of the prediction markets. How could these
56:35
Speaker 1: supposedly sophisticated markets have been so wrong? Weren't we told
56:38
Speaker 1: that people putting actual money on election outcomes would produce
56:42
Speaker 1: more accurate forecasts than conventional polling?
56:44
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing.
56:46
Speaker 1: A candidate with a 20% chance of winning is supposed
56:48
Speaker 1: to win about one out of.
56:49
Speaker 2: Every five times. That's what 20% means.
56:53
Speaker 1: If every candidate assigned a 20% chance lost, the market
56:57
Speaker 1: wouldn't be accurately measuring probabilities. It would actually be systematically
57:03
Speaker 1: underestimating those candidates. And it's an incredibly important distinction. And
57:07
Speaker 1: it's just part of the math lesson that I think
57:09
Speaker 1: prediction markets are forcing upon a lot of people. Because
57:13
Speaker 1: we've become accustomed to treating election forecasts as though they're
57:16
Speaker 1: supposed to be predictions of a single individual outcome. So
57:20
Speaker 1: it drives me crazy about people claiming that in a
57:23
Speaker 1: poll that shows one person leading by two points, if
57:26
Speaker 1: the final outcome is the other person winning by a point,
57:28
Speaker 1: that somehow the poll was wrong.
57:30
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't.
57:30
Speaker 1: The poll wasn't wrong. It was within the margin of error.
57:33
Speaker 1: It told you exactly it was going to be a
57:34
Speaker 1: close race. One, you know, one estimate had it two
57:38
Speaker 1: points one way. The actual result had one point.
57:40
Speaker 2: The other way. It does not mean the poll was wrong.
57:42
Speaker 2: It means the poll was accurate.
57:46
Speaker 1: Which brings me to a new report from the Council
57:48
Speaker 1: on Foreign Relations called Betting on Democracy, The Promise and
57:52
Speaker 1: Peril of Election Markets. It was written by Samuel Lazarus.
57:56
Speaker 1: And I think it's an important contribution to the debate
57:59
Speaker 1: because it doesn't simply embrace prediction markets as the future
58:02
Speaker 1: of political forecasting. And it doesn't dismiss them as nothing
58:06
Speaker 1: more than gambling. This was a very well-balanced analysis of
58:11
Speaker 1: the current situation. It examines the evidence about how well
58:15
Speaker 1: these markets work, the economic value they could provide, and
58:18
Speaker 1: the regulatory problems they create. And one of the central
58:23
Speaker 1: findings is that over time, prediction markets have actually been
58:25
Speaker 1: remarkably well calibrated. The report cites research that examines millions
58:30
Speaker 1: of contracts, including thousands of election markets, showing that outcomes
58:34
Speaker 1: assigned a particular probability tend to occur at approximately that frequency,
58:39
Speaker 1: meaning the markets are accurate. In other words, candidates given
58:42
Speaker 1: a 60% chance of winning generally win about.
58:45
Speaker 2: 60% of the time. That's actually pretty useful information.
58:50
Speaker 1: And there's a fun little historical dimension that this piece
58:52
Speaker 1: had that I particularly enjoyed, and I think it's one
58:55
Speaker 1: I wanted to share with you, which is why I'm
58:56
Speaker 1: spending a little time on it. Betting on elections is
58:59
Speaker 1: not a new American phenomenon. In fact, organized election betting
59:04
Speaker 1: was once a major part of the American political culture.
59:07
Speaker 1: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Wall Street
59:10
Speaker 1: betting markets were followed closely by newspapers and political professionals.
59:14
Speaker 1: During the 1916 presidential election, there was roughly $ 10 million
59:19
Speaker 1: wagered on the outcome, the equivalent of $ 300 million today.
59:24
Speaker 1: For a long time, those markets had a pretty impressive
59:26
Speaker 1: forecasting record. In fact, in the 15 presidential elections between
59:30
Speaker 1: 1884 and 1940, the mid-October betting favorite lost only once.
59:38
Speaker 1: So eventually, scientific polling largely displaced election betting as the
59:42
Speaker 1: preferred way to measure what people were wondering, which way
59:47
Speaker 1: the political winds were blowing. George Gallup's success in forecasting
59:52
Speaker 1: FDR's 1936 landslide helped establish polling as the dominant tool
59:57
Speaker 1: rather than betting markets. But the underlying idea of using
1:00:01
Speaker 1: markets to aggregate political information never entirely disappeared. The University
1:00:06
Speaker 1: of Iowa revived it in 1988 with the Iowa Electronics Markets,
1:00:11
Speaker 1: which allowed people to trade small amounts of money on
1:00:13
Speaker 1: election outcomes. Now, of course, the industry has exploded, according
1:00:17
Speaker 1: to the Council on Foreign Relations report. Trading volume on
1:00:20
Speaker 1: markets tied to the 2026 midterms had already escalated reached
1:00:24
Speaker 1: approximately $ 1. 4 billion by early October.
1:00:30
Speaker 2: So that's a lot of money.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: I know, one billion here, one billion there, but that's
1:00:34
Speaker 1: still a lot of money. And it raises a basic question,
1:00:37
Speaker 1: what exactly are these markets providing that we don't get
1:00:40
Speaker 1: from polling? Well, I think the answer is they provide
1:00:44
Speaker 1: a different kind of information. So polls measure public opinion
1:00:47
Speaker 1: at a particular moment. Prediction markets attempt to price the
1:00:50
Speaker 1: probability of an outcome, incorporating polling, campaign developments, economic conditions,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: political expectations, historical results, and whatever other information traders believe
1:01:02
Speaker 1: is relevant at that time. And because they're continuously trading,
1:01:06
Speaker 1: they can immediately react to new information. The candidate withdraws,
1:01:11
Speaker 1: scandal breaks, a major economic report is released, a court
1:01:14
Speaker 1: issues a consequential ruling, you name it. The market can
1:01:17
Speaker 1: adjust before the next poll is conducted. That's potentially valuable,
1:01:22
Speaker 1: particularly for people trying to understand rapidly changing political circumstances, right?
1:01:26
Speaker 1: Like take the death of Lindsey Graham and how quickly
1:01:29
Speaker 1: that just shook all things up in South Carolina. In
1:01:32
Speaker 1: some ways, things were moving faster than polling could keep up.
1:01:37
Speaker 1: And there's also a legitimate economic argument for these markets.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: Businesses face real financial risks from elections. A change in
1:01:44
Speaker 1: government can mean changes in taxes, regulation, trade policy, or
1:01:48
Speaker 1: government spending. Prediction markets can allow companies to hedge against
1:01:53
Speaker 1: some of those risks. You have a big defense contract
1:01:55
Speaker 1: that Democrats like, and you think the Republicans are going
1:01:58
Speaker 1: to win, you might hedge against that, right, and vice versa.
1:02:01
Speaker 1: In fact, the report gave an interesting example involving California
1:02:05
Speaker 1: goat herding, a business of California goat herding that faced
1:02:10
Speaker 1: a potentially enormous increase in labor costs because of a
1:02:14
Speaker 1: change in the way the state ruled on how wages
1:02:19
Speaker 1: for goat herders were. The owner used a prediction market
1:02:22
Speaker 1: contract to hedge against the possibility that the state would
1:02:26
Speaker 1: not restore an exemption. That's not simply gambling on politics
1:02:32
Speaker 1: for entertainment. That's a business trying to manage financial risk
1:02:36
Speaker 1: created by a government policy that may result due to
1:02:41
Speaker 1: an election. So that's the legitimate case that these markets
1:02:45
Speaker 1: can serve as a useful purpose. But here's where the
1:02:48
Speaker 1: report gets complicated. Pretty interesting. The regulatory framework has not
1:02:52
Speaker 1: yet kept pace with the industry. This was something that
1:02:55
Speaker 1: I talked about at this prediction markets conference last week.
1:02:58
Speaker 1: This is the issue that we've got to worry about.
1:03:01
Speaker 1: And the most obvious problem right now is insider trading, right?
1:03:04
Speaker 1: How many people in American politics have access to information
1:03:07
Speaker 1: right now that could materially impact an election market, right?
1:03:10
Speaker 1: Candidates have them, campaign managers, pollsters, consultants, election officials, people
1:03:15
Speaker 1: with access to unreleased polling, opposition research, internal campaign decisions, right?
1:03:22
Speaker 1: Unlike securities markets where trading on material, non-public information can
1:03:26
Speaker 1: violate well-established rules, commodities law has a much narrower approach
1:03:33
Speaker 1: to insider trading. And remember, this is being regulated by
1:03:36
Speaker 1: the commodities CFTC, not by the SEC. So it can
1:03:41
Speaker 1: create some strange regulatory situations, right? According to this report,
1:03:46
Speaker 1: A campaign aide who trades on confidential internal polling may
1:03:49
Speaker 1: be violating the law because the aide has misappropriated information
1:03:53
Speaker 1: belonging to the campaign. But a candidate trading on that
1:03:56
Speaker 1: same information may not necessarily violate the same rule because
1:04:00
Speaker 1: the information belongs to the candidate's campaign. That's a pretty
1:04:06
Speaker 1: significant loophole. So the campaign aide can't do it, but
1:04:09
Speaker 1: the candidate can? Do we want candidates trading on themselves
1:04:11
Speaker 1: like this? Obviously, it's a loophole that needs to be closed.
1:04:17
Speaker 1: In fact, I was talking to a lot. I mean,
1:04:19
Speaker 1: it's not clear insider trading is illegal on the prediction
1:04:22
Speaker 1: markets yet. There needs to have to be codified law
1:04:25
Speaker 1: for this. So the report recommends prohibiting election market trading
1:04:30
Speaker 1: by candidates, campaign staff, pollsters, election officials, and others with
1:04:34
Speaker 1: privileged access to information that could affect election outcomes. Look,
1:04:39
Speaker 1: figuring out how to draw that line and define it
1:04:41
Speaker 1: is not.
1:04:42
Speaker 2: Going to be easy.
1:04:43
Speaker 1: But it seems that this is a basic change that
1:04:47
Speaker 1: needs to be made. This report also recommends greater disclosure
1:04:50
Speaker 1: of large trading positions, improving oversight of offshore exchanges, and
1:04:55
Speaker 1: giving the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission more resources to
1:04:59
Speaker 1: enforce the rules. And there's another aspect that deserves attention, right?
1:05:03
Speaker 1: Donald Trump Jr. has financial interests in the prediction market industry.
1:05:07
Speaker 1: He's an investor in PolyMarket through 1789 Capital, and he's
1:05:10
Speaker 1: an advisor to CalSheet. By the way, Cal, she is
1:05:14
Speaker 1: a sponsor of a couple of my podcasting.
1:05:21
Speaker 2: Programs.
1:05:22
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the Trump administration has taken a considerably more accommodating
1:05:26
Speaker 1: regulatory approach to the industry than the previous administration. Now,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: you can't automatically assume that's because of juniors' investments and relationships,
1:05:37
Speaker 1: but it certainly looks like a problem. And if it
1:05:40
Speaker 1: looks like a problem, perception can become reality. And then,
1:05:44
Speaker 1: of course, you've got the institutional problem. Donald Trump has
1:05:47
Speaker 1: sort of eviscerated all these semi-independent agencies that belong in
1:05:51
Speaker 1: the executive branch. For instance, the CFTC was designed to
1:05:54
Speaker 1: have five commissioners. According to this report right now, it's
1:05:56
Speaker 1: been operating with just one since December of 2025. At
1:06:00
Speaker 1: the same time, the agency has lost a substantial portion
1:06:03
Speaker 1: of its staff, while the industry it's supposed to regulate
1:06:07
Speaker 1: has expanded dramatically. So Prediction markets have exploded this year,
1:06:11
Speaker 1: and the CFTC has one commissioner and a short staff.
1:06:15
Speaker 1: Not the ideal combination. So if Congress believes these markets
1:06:18
Speaker 1: should be allowed to operate, then Congress also has a
1:06:20
Speaker 1: responsibility to make sure the regulator has the capacity to
1:06:23
Speaker 1: oversee them. And ultimately, that was what was the most
1:06:27
Speaker 1: persuasive argument about this report. As I've said, I am
1:06:32
Speaker 1: pro-wisdom of crowds. I think long-term, these things are going
1:06:35
Speaker 1: to be very helpful and very useful. But it needs oversight.
1:06:39
Speaker 1: And Congress needs to get its act together and figure
1:06:41
Speaker 1: out how to do this. Congress has been extraordinarily slow
1:06:44
Speaker 1: on all these technological changes that have taken place over
1:06:47
Speaker 1: the last 20 years. And this is just the latest.
1:06:50
Speaker 1: We don't have to decide whether prediction markets are either
1:06:52
Speaker 1: the salvation of election forecasting or a dangerous form of
1:06:56
Speaker 1: gambling that should be prohibited. But we can make sure
1:07:01
Speaker 1: that the system is fair and isn't gamed by insiders,
1:07:06
Speaker 1: which brings me back one last time to Brazil. The
1:07:09
Speaker 1: prediction markets gave Lula about a one in five chance
1:07:11
Speaker 1: of winning any one. It does not prove that markets
1:07:15
Speaker 1: are useless, but it does remind us that a probability
1:07:18
Speaker 1: is not a certainty and that elections remain fundamentally uncertain events.
1:07:24
Speaker 1: And it's probably a pretty good place to end before
1:07:26
Speaker 1: we get to speaking of uncertainty. Can an independent candidate
1:07:29
Speaker 1: win in a place like Montana where there's a Democratic
1:07:32
Speaker 1: nominee and a Republican nominee? Well, The probability is apparently,
1:07:36
Speaker 1: I think, at 15, maybe 10, 5, 10 percent.
1:07:42
Speaker 2: But it ain't zero.
1:07:44
Speaker 1: And one thing that I hope everybody has learned when
1:07:47
Speaker 1: it comes to probability is the biggest leap you make
1:07:50
Speaker 1: is from zero to one. And after that, everything becomes
1:07:56
Speaker 1: more possible than you could possibly imagine.
1:07:59
Speaker 2: So with that, we'll sneak in a break. When we
1:08:01
Speaker 2: come back, my conversation with Seth Bodnar.
1:08:13
Speaker 1: Well, as many of you know, I have been very
1:08:15
Speaker 1: focused on wanting to see our duopoly shaken up. I've
1:08:20
Speaker 1: had quite a few independent candidates on this podcast, Todd
1:08:24
Speaker 1: Achilles in Idaho, Brian Banks, South Dakota. We've had gubernatorial candidates,
1:08:30
Speaker 1: independent candidates from Tennessee, and now probably the– One of
1:08:35
Speaker 1: the two or three independent candidates with the best shot here,
1:08:38
Speaker 1: Dan Osborne, Seth Bodnar, probably with the two best shots
1:08:42
Speaker 1: on the Senate level, Kevin Kiley on the House level.
1:08:45
Speaker 1: And Seth Bodnar joins me now, the independent candidate in
1:08:49
Speaker 1: Montana who has quite a few Democrats supporting his candidacy,
1:08:53
Speaker 1: including former Senator Tester, Pete Buttigieg, I know recently endorsed you.
1:08:57
Speaker 1: So former president of the University of Montana. Seth Bodnar,
1:09:01
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast.
1:09:02
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Chuck. I've been
1:09:04
Speaker 2: a big fan. I'm excited to be here. Well, I
1:09:06
Speaker 2: appreciate you saying that.
1:09:07
Speaker 1: So let's start with, look, I was talking with my
1:09:09
Speaker 1: producer before you came on and I said, you know,
1:09:12
Speaker 1: I understood, you know, I understand the reason And I
1:09:18
Speaker 1: know my desire, myself, is where my comfort zone is
1:09:22
Speaker 1: somewhere neither party really speaks to me. But from a
1:09:25
Speaker 1: pure tactical sense, if you were the Democratic nominee at
1:09:28
Speaker 1: this moment, it'd be a 50-50 race. And you'd probably
1:09:32
Speaker 1: be the slight favorite right now in this odd two
1:09:35
Speaker 1: and a half way race. And I call it two
1:09:37
Speaker 1: and a half because the Democratic nominee isn't really putting
1:09:39
Speaker 1: out the campaign.
1:09:42
Speaker 2: You're in a tough spot. So any regrets about running
1:09:45
Speaker 2: as an independent? No, it's authentic to who I am.
1:09:49
Speaker 3: And it's honestly the change that this country needs.
1:09:53
Speaker 2: You know, you could speculate, oh, if I run under
1:09:57
Speaker 2: a party label, yeah, it's easier. Absolutely, it's easier.
1:10:01
Speaker 3: But what we are seeing is a complete failure of
1:10:05
Speaker 3: our legislative branch right now. Complete, everything's along partisan lines.
1:10:11
Speaker 3: nothing's getting done. And so, you know, it's not just
1:10:15
Speaker 3: about winning. It's actually about making an impact for the country.
1:10:18
Speaker 3: And I feel like as an independent and we got
1:10:20
Speaker 3: a real good, we got a real shot, you know,
1:10:22
Speaker 3: every day, more and more people, you mentioned, not just
1:10:25
Speaker 3: Democrats coming to our side, but Republicans, you know, we
1:10:28
Speaker 3: had a former Bush cabinet official in terms of Christine
1:10:33
Speaker 3: Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor, Republican endorsed us last week,
1:10:36
Speaker 3: the Republican county chair. And I'm more convinced today that,
1:10:41
Speaker 3: than I was in March when I launched this campaign,
1:10:43
Speaker 3: that what we need is a campaign, a political movement, frankly,
1:10:50
Speaker 3: built around our shared values, not around the partisan labels
1:10:53
Speaker 3: right now. And so, yeah, you could speculate on what
1:10:56
Speaker 3: could have been, but I'm comfortable. I'm happy with what
1:10:58
Speaker 3: we've done. And I feel good about our shot, too.
1:11:01
Speaker 1: It's not lost on me that three of the four
1:11:02
Speaker 1: most prominent independent candidates, yourself, Brian Banks, Todd Achilles, military background.
1:11:09
Speaker 1: I don't think Dan Osborne has that. His background's a
1:11:11
Speaker 1: little bit different. And look, I've spent my share of
1:11:17
Speaker 1: time with retired generals and admirals. We were talking about
1:11:21
Speaker 1: Admiral McRaven. I was openly, publicly trying to recruit him
1:11:25
Speaker 1: to run for president in 2024. And I've talked with
1:11:30
Speaker 1: a few other generals off the record recently who have
1:11:34
Speaker 1: just recently left.
1:11:35
Speaker 2: And I've asked them about this. I said, look, The.
1:11:39
Speaker 1: Last institution that has majority trust in this country is
1:11:43
Speaker 1: the military. And so you at least start with an
1:11:48
Speaker 1: open mind with a voter. It doesn't mean they'll have
1:11:51
Speaker 1: the conversation. But I understand independence an easier place to be.
1:11:57
Speaker 1: And at the same time, quite a few retired military
1:12:01
Speaker 1: are still hesitant to get involved politically.
1:12:04
Speaker 2: Explain that mindset.
1:12:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:12:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:12:05
Speaker 2: I mean, it's, it's hard.
1:12:06
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, and just, you know, Dan Osborne
1:12:09
Speaker 3: did use Dan served in the Navy.
1:12:11
Speaker 2: So there is that mistake. So all four of you.
1:12:13
Speaker 3: So I want to make sure that folks are aware
1:12:15
Speaker 3: of that, but, but yeah, I mean, I think what
1:12:18
Speaker 3: we see is independence and, and, You know the history, right?
1:12:22
Speaker 3: George Marshall very famously said he didn't even feel comfortable
1:12:25
Speaker 3: voting when he was in the military. One of the
1:12:27
Speaker 3: things you have drilled into you is this sense of
1:12:31
Speaker 3: a nonpartisan military, a military that has as its boss
1:12:37
Speaker 3: the Constitution. Yes, the commander-in-chief, but the apolitical military is—
1:12:42
Speaker 3: essential to this Republic. That's one of the reasons that
1:12:44
Speaker 3: what we see Pete Hegseth doing right now has such
1:12:48
Speaker 3: grave and dire implications for the long-term health of this Republic.
1:12:51
Speaker 2: And I think you have a lot of retired military folks.
1:12:55
Speaker 3: If you've served in the military for 30 years, at
1:12:58
Speaker 3: least up until the last 18 months when Pete Hegseth
1:13:01
Speaker 3: has been on a mission to do everything he can
1:13:04
Speaker 3: to politicize our military leadership, Prior to that, at least,
1:13:09
Speaker 3: you've had the military where your sole focus is, I
1:13:13
Speaker 3: cannot be political. And so when you retire, I think
1:13:16
Speaker 3: there's a hesitance, especially among senior leaders, and a little
1:13:20
Speaker 3: bit of a reluctance among senior leaders to jump into
1:13:23
Speaker 3: the political fray for fear of creating a partisan identity
1:13:28
Speaker 3: of the U.S.
1:13:29
Speaker 2: Military.
1:13:29
Speaker 1: So I think that causes some of the hesitancy. What
1:13:32
Speaker 1: would you do if you were active duty right now
1:13:34
Speaker 1: with what Pete Haig said that's doing? Would you Would
1:13:37
Speaker 1: you feel if you're uncomfortable, if he's doing things that
1:13:39
Speaker 1: you just think are destructive, is the is the right
1:13:45
Speaker 1: thing to do?
1:13:46
Speaker 2: What is it to speak out? Is it to resign?
1:13:49
Speaker 2: I know.
1:13:51
Speaker 1: Look, there's a the head of Southcom has never spoken
1:13:54
Speaker 1: as to why he resigned. But the timing seems pretty
1:13:57
Speaker 1: obvious to a lot of us. His resignation comes after
1:14:00
Speaker 1: him not wanting to go through with an.
1:14:02
Speaker 2: Order about those those drug boats.
1:14:05
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:14:06
Speaker 1: I talked with Admiral Stavridis about this and he said, look,
1:14:09
Speaker 1: I would resign and not say a word. And I'm thinking, well,
1:14:12
Speaker 1: I get the resignation, but not saying a word seems problematic.
1:14:15
Speaker 2: Where do you stand on this? You know, I think it's,
1:14:18
Speaker 2: and this is a dilemma, right? General H.R.
1:14:21
Speaker 3: McMaster, who was the national security advisor in the first
1:14:24
Speaker 3: Trump administration. I mean, he wrote a book, Dereliction of Duty,
1:14:27
Speaker 3: about the struggles that generals had with this very question
1:14:32
Speaker 3: during the Vietnam era.
1:14:34
Speaker 2: And I think what you're taught in professional.
1:14:37
Speaker 3: Military education as officers is that you carry out lawful orders, right?
1:14:42
Speaker 3: Even in our oath, I will obey the lawful orders
1:14:45
Speaker 3: of those appointed over me. And when there's unlawful orders,
1:14:48
Speaker 3: you have two options, right? I guess one option is
1:14:52
Speaker 3: you obey them. The other is you resign. And I
1:14:54
Speaker 3: think you're seeing senior military leaders, yeah, resigning. And I
1:14:58
Speaker 3: think that's why you saw Mark Kelly, Alyssa Slotkin, and
1:15:01
Speaker 3: others just remind that, look, you are not obligated.
1:15:04
Speaker 2: In fact, you're obliged to not obey unlawful orders.
1:15:09
Speaker 3: And so I think what you see some of the
1:15:12
Speaker 3: senior leaders doing is, yeah, they're choosing between a really
1:15:17
Speaker 3: hard choice. And it's, I think, the dilemma, right? Moral
1:15:21
Speaker 3: dilemmas are never right versus wrong. Moral dilemmas are right
1:15:24
Speaker 3: versus right. And why it's tough for a to minimize
1:15:34
Speaker 3: the harm that's done. And I know that many military
1:15:36
Speaker 3: leaders are struggling with that right now, saying, I see
1:15:39
Speaker 3: what this disaster is happening.
1:15:41
Speaker 2: I have integrity.
1:15:42
Speaker 3: If all the people with integrity leave, then we're really
1:15:46
Speaker 3: in trouble. So can I stick around and try to
1:15:48
Speaker 3: minimize the damage, try to hold this country together? Or
1:15:52
Speaker 3: do I resign and protest, right? That is a moral dilemma,
1:15:56
Speaker 3: because there is a right case to be made for
1:16:00
Speaker 3: both of those options. And that's why military officers have
1:16:04
Speaker 3: to study ethics.
1:16:05
Speaker 2: That's why military officers should study philosophy.
1:16:08
Speaker 3: That's why Pete Hegseth is so completely off base when
1:16:11
Speaker 3: he talks about eliminating the subjects at military academies and
1:16:16
Speaker 3: at other places, or preventing military officers from going to
1:16:19
Speaker 3: Harvard for fear that they could actually be thinking people.
1:16:24
Speaker 3: We need thoughtful people leading our military.
1:16:29
Speaker 1: A retired, a recently retired general is not going to
1:16:31
Speaker 1: ignore a congressional subpoena. I have been waiting and waiting
1:16:36
Speaker 1: and waiting for some of these folks to be subpoenaed.
1:16:40
Speaker 2: Tell your story. Where is it now?
1:16:43
Speaker 1: You know, I have a lot of respect for Roger Wicker.
1:16:46
Speaker 1: I think he does. And he and Jack Reed, I think. I.
1:16:51
Speaker 1: I feel like we're close, that they will do it
1:16:54
Speaker 1: together at some point here. But it hasn't happened soon enough.
1:16:59
Speaker 1: I mean, that seems to me that this is how
1:17:02
Speaker 1: our system is supposed to deal with this.
1:17:05
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:17:05
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. And those things should happen, right? We should.
1:17:09
Speaker 3: This is the oversight responsibility of Congress. I mean, this is,
1:17:13
Speaker 3: you know, the other the other. reason i'm running as
1:17:15
Speaker 3: independent is because this republic is supposed to have three
1:17:18
Speaker 3: co-equal branches right article one talks about the legislature legislature
1:17:23
Speaker 3: first i don't know if i even agree if it's
1:17:24
Speaker 3: co-equal yeah it's article one yeah the latest it is
1:17:28
Speaker 3: this was never meant to be this was meant to
1:17:31
Speaker 3: be the supreme supreme branch i think one of the
1:17:34
Speaker 3: greatest BSs that we've put on people is this co-equal branch.
1:17:40
Speaker 2: Yes, they are all designed to check each other.
1:17:43
Speaker 1: When you write a list of one, when you put
1:17:48
Speaker 1: a list of one, two, three, do you put the
1:17:50
Speaker 1: most important third?
1:17:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look, I agree with you. I agree with you.
1:17:54
Speaker 3: I would settle for co-equal at this point, though. Like
1:17:57
Speaker 3: if we could get back to co-equal, we'd be in
1:18:00
Speaker 3: a better spot than we are.
1:18:01
Speaker 2: And I think this is what Congress should be doing.
1:18:04
Speaker 3: And, you know, if I have the honor of representing
1:18:07
Speaker 3: Montana in the United States Senate, you're going to be
1:18:09
Speaker 3: damn sure I'm going to I'm going to work for accountability.
1:18:11
Speaker 3: We're going to get to the bottom of this because
1:18:13
Speaker 3: this the politicization of our military and the purging. of
1:18:18
Speaker 3: the senior ranks of our military right now is one
1:18:21
Speaker 3: of the gravest threats to this Republic that we're not
1:18:24
Speaker 3: talking enough about.
1:18:25
Speaker 2: We're all horrified, rightfully so.
1:18:27
Speaker 3: You see Pete Hegseth calling for the public execution of
1:18:30
Speaker 3: someone and live streaming somebody. I don't know how to
1:18:34
Speaker 3: explain that to my kids. Dad, how could somebody think
1:18:37
Speaker 3: this is okay, right? We're rightfully horrified by that. But
1:18:41
Speaker 3: the steady erosion, right? The Secretary of Defense taking one-star
1:18:44
Speaker 3: promotion lists that are supposed to be approved by four
1:18:48
Speaker 3: stars and then just checked.
1:18:51
Speaker 2: Off by the service secretaries.
1:18:53
Speaker 3: Him going line by line, person by person, purging primarily
1:18:56
Speaker 3: women and people of color.
1:18:57
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, it seems to be
1:19:00
Speaker 1: a demographic purge.
1:19:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is that.
1:19:03
Speaker 3: But you know what? That sends a chill throughout the
1:19:06
Speaker 3: entire military. And and you you better believe that not
1:19:10
Speaker 3: only influences the advice that senior leaders are giving because
1:19:15
Speaker 3: they don't want to be shot as the messenger. And
1:19:18
Speaker 3: it also influences how people behave and what they'll tolerate,
1:19:22
Speaker 3: what they accept. And and that is a incredible, incredible
1:19:28
Speaker 3: long term risk to our republic. And that that damage
1:19:30
Speaker 3: needs to be stemmed immediately. What you know, let's be honest, though.
1:19:36
Speaker 3: How many voters are you running into that say that
1:19:38
Speaker 3: that's the number one priority?
1:19:40
Speaker 2: Not very many.
1:19:40
Speaker 3: That's why people aren't talking about it, right? And understandably, right,
1:19:44
Speaker 3: Maslow hierarchy of needs, right? You've got families in Montana,
1:19:47
Speaker 3: and they're paying $ 6 a gallon for diesel. They're paying
1:19:50
Speaker 3: through the roof for groceries. I mean, housing, we live
1:19:54
Speaker 3: in the least affordable state in the country. I talked
1:19:57
Speaker 3: to a farmer the other day from Belgrade, Montana. He said,
1:20:00
Speaker 3: I just did the math between skyrocketing fertilizer prices, diesel prices.
1:20:05
Speaker 3: It cost me $ 8. 60 to produce a bushel of wheat
1:20:08
Speaker 3: this year. I sold it for $ 6. 30. So it's that
1:20:12
Speaker 3: near-term problem right in front of your face that people
1:20:15
Speaker 3: are focused on.
1:20:16
Speaker 2: That's why I say people aren't talking about it.
1:20:19
Speaker 3: It's not a primary message in my stump speech, so
1:20:22
Speaker 3: to speak, but it is a vitally important topic.
1:20:26
Speaker 1: What do you think can actually be done on affordability
1:20:28
Speaker 1: if you get elected to the Senate?
1:20:31
Speaker 3: What is it that– could be reversed quickly in your mind?
1:20:36
Speaker 3: I think there's four things I'd focus on immediately. First
1:20:39
Speaker 3: and foremost is you stop the wars, stop the war
1:20:43
Speaker 3: in Iran, and you stop the trade war with Canada.
1:20:46
Speaker 3: For a place like Montana, I mean, Iran war is
1:20:48
Speaker 3: affecting everybody and everything. The price of everything is higher, right?
1:20:52
Speaker 3: We talk about cost of diesel and gasoline. Everything we
1:20:56
Speaker 3: buy is moved on a truck or a train at
1:20:58
Speaker 3: some point. So that's first and foremost. And then you
1:21:00
Speaker 3: look at Canada. I mean, the thing about... Place like Montana,
1:21:03
Speaker 3: I was talking to a farmer outside Conrad and he said,
1:21:05
Speaker 3: the thing that people in DC don't realize about a
1:21:07
Speaker 3: guy like me is the.
1:21:09
Speaker 2: Closest Costco for me is in Canada.
1:21:12
Speaker 3: Right. When I need a spare part, I buy it
1:21:15
Speaker 3: from Canada. You look at small businesses here. I talked
1:21:19
Speaker 3: to a woman who owns a bed and breakfast in Helena.
1:21:21
Speaker 3: I said, how's business going?
1:21:22
Speaker 2: She said, it's OK.
1:21:23
Speaker 3: But but boy, my my Canadian business is down to zero.
1:21:26
Speaker 3: We're getting no tourists. So so those are everywhere.
1:21:29
Speaker 1: It's a shame. Ask the chambers in Vegas and Orlando.
1:21:33
Speaker 1: How much they miss Canadians. And so that's number one.
1:21:36
Speaker 3: Two and three are you tackle head-on housing and healthcare.
1:21:41
Speaker 3: I mean, housing, and we could talk for 10 minutes,
1:21:44
Speaker 3: but expanding supply of housing, looking at funding mechanisms.
1:21:48
Speaker 2: Is that a federal issue or is that a state issue? Oh,
1:21:50
Speaker 2: it's both, right?
1:21:51
Speaker 3: The federal government can incentivize zoning and code reform in
1:21:55
Speaker 3: communities to.
1:21:57
Speaker 2: Unlock more supply. You look at– and you could see
1:21:59
Speaker 2: the stats.
1:22:00
Speaker 3: I mean, the Montana Builders Association would tell you 30%
1:22:02
Speaker 3: of the cost of a house is red tape. We
1:22:07
Speaker 3: could debate what that actually is, but simplifying those processes
1:22:11
Speaker 3: to unlock more supply– targeted investment as well in infrastructure.
1:22:16
Speaker 3: When you go, I was with the Cascade County Commissioner
1:22:19
Speaker 3: up in Great Falls, Montana, and there's development ready to
1:22:22
Speaker 3: go in, mile and a half of water, sewage.
1:22:24
Speaker 2: And road, right?
1:22:25
Speaker 3: That the county doesn't have the money for. Developer can't
1:22:28
Speaker 3: put it on its books. The federal government, rather than
1:22:31
Speaker 3: spending tens of billions of dollars in Iran, or frankly,
1:22:34
Speaker 3: for a gilded ballroom or a grand arch, what if
1:22:37
Speaker 3: we were focused on smart, targeted infrastructure investment to unlock
1:22:40
Speaker 3: housing supply?
1:22:42
Speaker 2: That's the second.
1:22:43
Speaker 3: And third is healthcare. And four is antitrust. That's something
1:22:46
Speaker 3: that people aren't talking enough about in this country. When
1:22:49
Speaker 3: we think about the affordability crisis, we need to enforce
1:22:52
Speaker 3: the antitrust laws on the books in this country. You
1:22:54
Speaker 3: look at the big meat packers, four firms control 85%
1:22:57
Speaker 3: of the capacity. Four firms control 100% of the production
1:23:02
Speaker 3: capacity for the three main fertilizer nutrients. Big healthcare, big tech.
1:23:07
Speaker 3: Google was found guilty of antitrust violations last year. The
1:23:09
Speaker 3: penalty was so small that the day after, their stock
1:23:13
Speaker 3: price went up. Their market cap increased by $ 230 billion.
1:23:17
Speaker 3: Those are the nuanced things that, again, people aren't talking about,
1:23:20
Speaker 3: but that is absolutely a component of the affordability.
1:23:24
Speaker 2: Crisis that working families are seeing.
1:23:26
Speaker 1: I want to pick at the housing issue for a
1:23:28
Speaker 1: second because it feels like Montana is sending cross current messages.
1:23:34
Speaker 2: You know, a.
1:23:36
Speaker 1: Good friend of mine lives there and says basically the
1:23:38
Speaker 1: state's divided between those who've been there multiple generations and
1:23:42
Speaker 1: all these outsiders that want to move here. And so
1:23:45
Speaker 1: there's this allergy to new development. And how much does
1:23:50
Speaker 1: that impact the ability to get affordable housing? You talked about,
1:23:53
Speaker 1: you know, there are probably, you know, it's the same
1:23:57
Speaker 1: In some ways, there's a Venn diagram with the data
1:24:00
Speaker 1: center outrage, right? Because I know this, Montana is a
1:24:04
Speaker 1: very desirable place to build data centers because of access
1:24:08
Speaker 1: to water. I have no doubt that's an unpopular thing
1:24:11
Speaker 1: in so many parts of the state. But affordable housing,
1:24:15
Speaker 1: I mean, look, this is an issue, whether you're in
1:24:18
Speaker 1: suburban D.C. here or I am, where every mini community
1:24:21
Speaker 1: is fighting loosening zoning rules because they don't want more development.
1:24:29
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a bigger problem in this housing
1:24:31
Speaker 1: debate than this back and forth between the feds and
1:24:34
Speaker 1: the states.
1:24:35
Speaker 3: You know, look, I think what I'd tell you is
1:24:36
Speaker 3: there's a big difference between a billionaire buying up a
1:24:42
Speaker 3: ranch along Yellowstone River. And what we're trying to think
1:24:45
Speaker 3: about in terms of lower income or middle income housing
1:24:49
Speaker 3: in Helena, Montana.
1:24:51
Speaker 2: I would tell you about it.
1:24:54
Speaker 1: And it's OK if it's a billionaire that does the
1:24:55
Speaker 1: development for that lower income housing?
1:24:58
Speaker 2: You know what?
1:24:59
Speaker 3: What we need to think about are funding sources and
1:25:02
Speaker 3: some of the mechanisms.
1:25:04
Speaker 2: These are the boring things that people don't want to
1:25:05
Speaker 2: talk about.
1:25:06
Speaker 3: But the 502 loans that the USDA subsidizes for rural America.
1:25:12
Speaker 2: For lower or middle-income housing.
1:25:14
Speaker 3: You look at a project out, actually Habitat for Humanity,
1:25:16
Speaker 3: I believe it's the largest project that Habitat's ever.
1:25:19
Speaker 2: Done in the US.
1:25:20
Speaker 3: It's out in East Atlanta, Montana, the Rose Hill Project.
1:25:23
Speaker 3: It's bringing together a series of different types of financing
1:25:27
Speaker 3: and it's building a neighborhood with lower income entry homes,
1:25:31
Speaker 3: more middle-class homes, together using financing, they're working with the
1:25:36
Speaker 3: city and the county to look at zoning reform. Those
1:25:38
Speaker 3: are the types of projects that I wanna go down
1:25:41
Speaker 3: and I wanna study. I wanna say, all right, what
1:25:43
Speaker 3: are the levers? What are the federal sources of funds
1:25:46
Speaker 3: that can unlock development like this? I mean, the fact
1:25:48
Speaker 3: is we've got a decade at least of housing stock
1:25:52
Speaker 3: that we're behind in this country. And so we need
1:25:55
Speaker 3: to build more homes. And part of that is loosening
1:25:59
Speaker 3: some zoning and having code reform and unlocking those supplies.
1:26:04
Speaker 3: And it's also making sure that what we're doing is
1:26:06
Speaker 3: supporting the type of home building that allows young families
1:26:11
Speaker 3: to have a start here. And I was in Gardner,
1:26:12
Speaker 3: Montana a couple months ago. And our recent graduate from
1:26:16
Speaker 3: the University of Montana, 2022 grad, he's a music teacher
1:26:18
Speaker 3: down there.
1:26:19
Speaker 2: His wife is with him.
1:26:20
Speaker 3: And they had this beautiful baby daughter and they came
1:26:24
Speaker 3: to a little event we just had in the middle
1:26:25
Speaker 3: of the town square. They're sitting at picnic tables and
1:26:28
Speaker 3: they said, we love our jobs. We feel so lucky
1:26:30
Speaker 3: and we're grateful. There's a nonprofit that supports and subsidizes
1:26:34
Speaker 3: our housing. And they said, but we're scared because if
1:26:37
Speaker 3: that ever goes away, we're out in the cold and
1:26:39
Speaker 3: we have zero hope of ever owning a home.
1:26:42
Speaker 2: So this is not a.
1:26:44
Speaker 3: Question of, do we welcome more billionaires into Montana to
1:26:46
Speaker 3: gobble up big ranches? This is a question of, How
1:26:49
Speaker 3: do we unlock more housing supply and density for people
1:26:53
Speaker 3: like that, for school teachers to be able to live
1:26:55
Speaker 3: in communities? That's the main challenge that I think the
1:26:59
Speaker 3: federal government can play a role in tackling.
1:27:10
Speaker 1: Look, I've done a bunch of research about, you know,
1:27:12
Speaker 1: there's always been this talk that if you get elected
1:27:15
Speaker 1: as an independent, you don't pick a party, which is
1:27:17
Speaker 1: what you've pledged to do. that it could hurt you
1:27:20
Speaker 1: when it comes to committee assignments. This is a bigger
1:27:22
Speaker 1: problem on the House side than it is on the
1:27:23
Speaker 1: Senate side. Everybody, you know, ultimately your committee assignment depends
1:27:28
Speaker 1: on what kind of relationship you have with the committee
1:27:30
Speaker 1: chair and the ranking member. And, you know, a lot
1:27:33
Speaker 1: of this is literally personal, sort of personal politics more
1:27:37
Speaker 1: than it is partisan politics. But it's not an unreasonable
1:27:42
Speaker 1: scenario that I could paint right now, which is 49-49
1:27:44
Speaker 1: and you and Dan Osborne are are the deciders. And
1:27:51
Speaker 1: you both have pledged that you are not going to
1:27:54
Speaker 1: caucus with either party. But if 49-49 would mean that J.D.
1:27:59
Speaker 1: Vance would be the tiebreaker if you chose not to
1:28:01
Speaker 1: do that. How in ink is that pledge to not
1:28:11
Speaker 1: be with either party? Could either party talk you into.
1:28:15
Speaker 1: A year or something like that. Well, where are you?
1:28:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to caucus, but this is an
1:28:20
Speaker 2: important nuance, right? You don't have to go to the
1:28:22
Speaker 2: lunch meeting.
1:28:23
Speaker 3: Everybody votes on the organizing resolution that determines how the
1:28:28
Speaker 3: Senate forms.
1:28:29
Speaker 1: So you plan to vote on the organizing resolution.
1:28:32
Speaker 3: Every senator votes on the organizing resolution, whether they caucus
1:28:36
Speaker 3: or not.
1:28:37
Speaker 2: And and that's an important distinction caucusing i'm not going
1:28:39
Speaker 2: to caucus.
1:28:40
Speaker 3: I'm not going to i'm not going to go put
1:28:42
Speaker 3: on a jersey or red jersey or a blue jersey
1:28:44
Speaker 3: but i'm gonna i'm gonna vote I'm going to vote
1:28:46
Speaker 3: on every bill, including the organizing resolution that decides how
1:28:50
Speaker 3: the Senate's organized. And that's an important distinction. And when
1:28:54
Speaker 3: people say, oh, you can't get committee assignments if you
1:28:57
Speaker 3: don't caucus. Sure you can. You get them the same
1:28:59
Speaker 3: way every other senator does, through negotiation. And the other
1:29:03
Speaker 3: thing that people don't realize about the Senate, I've talked
1:29:06
Speaker 3: to folks, I've had some indirect, I haven't called the
1:29:09
Speaker 3: parliamentarian directly, but have talked to some folks that almost
1:29:13
Speaker 3: half the votes you take in the Senate are procedural vote, right?
1:29:18
Speaker 3: Move to discuss, move. And as an independent, you can
1:29:22
Speaker 3: make sure bills are debated on the floor. So much
1:29:25
Speaker 3: just happens through the leadership offices right now. Even these
1:29:28
Speaker 3: committee chairs that used to have so much power, And
1:29:32
Speaker 3: I'm not in there, but the folks I've talked to
1:29:34
Speaker 3: that said, you know, used to be these committee.
1:29:36
Speaker 2: Chairs were super big, powerful people. Max Baucus, man.
1:29:41
Speaker 1: Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley. They didn't listen to their
1:29:44
Speaker 1: party leadership.
1:29:45
Speaker 3: And now the committee staffs, they worry more about the
1:29:47
Speaker 3: leader and whether that's a minority or majority leader than
1:29:51
Speaker 3: they do the committee chairs. And so those are places
1:29:54
Speaker 3: that any independent can go into any committee.
1:29:58
Speaker 1: Is it safe to say, since we know Kurt Almey
1:30:00
Speaker 1: is going to vote, you know, is running as a
1:30:03
Speaker 1: Republican and will vote to organize with the Republicans, is
1:30:06
Speaker 1: it pretty clear that you will organize with the Democrats
1:30:09
Speaker 1: if you win?
1:30:10
Speaker 2: I'm not going to organize with anybody. Again, I'm going.
1:30:13
Speaker 1: To vote on which party you think should organize. And
1:30:16
Speaker 1: if your vote is a vote that the Democrats need.
1:30:21
Speaker 1: it sounds like that's what you're going to do.
1:30:23
Speaker 3: I'm going to do what I believe is best for
1:30:25
Speaker 3: Montana and what's best for the United States of America.
1:30:28
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to make any hypothetical guesses. Are
1:30:31
Speaker 2: you negotiable?
1:30:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to do what I think is right
1:30:35
Speaker 3: for America. And I'll tell you, I'm running against Kurt Alme.
1:30:38
Speaker 3: And I jumped into this to challenge Steve Daines because
1:30:41
Speaker 3: Steve Daines was nothing more than a rubber stamp for
1:30:43
Speaker 3: whatever the Republican Party told him to do. And he's
1:30:48
Speaker 3: working for them. And effectively, you saw Kurt Almey and
1:30:52
Speaker 3: Steve Daines rig their own primary to put Kurt Almey
1:30:55
Speaker 3: in place, perpetuating the exact problem that I was running against, saying,
1:31:00
Speaker 3: all right, here you got a guy who is, it
1:31:02
Speaker 3: was nothing more than a puppet for whatever the party
1:31:06
Speaker 3: insiders tell him to do.
1:31:07
Speaker 2: And I won't be that, right? And I can shape.
1:31:10
Speaker 3: Either party, frankly, to be more focused on places like Montana.
1:31:15
Speaker 2: And that's what I intend to do.
1:31:17
Speaker 1: Have you talked with Lisa Murkowski or Angus King?
1:31:21
Speaker 2: I haven't talked with either of them.
1:31:24
Speaker 1: They're both– just for viewers. They're both independents who organize,
1:31:29
Speaker 1: voted to– one is with the– Well, Angus King is
1:31:32
Speaker 1: an independent.
1:31:33
Speaker 3: I think Lisa Murkowski is officially an independent, right? She's still–
1:31:36
Speaker 3: They're both independents. Well, I didn't think Murkowski was.
1:31:39
Speaker 1: I thought she was– I don't think she's a registered
1:31:42
Speaker 1: Republican per se, or maybe she's an independent Republican. I don't,
1:31:46
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like mansion. I don't know
1:31:47
Speaker 1: what it was, you know, or cinema. It was sort
1:31:49
Speaker 1: of their party ID versus which side they organize with.
1:31:53
Speaker 1: I mean, she's obviously, I think a committee chair.
1:31:55
Speaker 2: So yeah. Yeah. On that front.
1:31:59
Speaker 1: But you haven't had any conversations about, you know, five
1:32:03
Speaker 1: or six of you and you can.
1:32:04
Speaker 2: Have a lot of leverage.
1:32:05
Speaker 3: And that's the interesting thing, right, that a small block
1:32:10
Speaker 3: of independent minded senators, even if they don't officially leave
1:32:13
Speaker 3: their caucus.
1:32:14
Speaker 2: Right.
1:32:14
Speaker 3: If I have the honor of serving Montana in the Senate,
1:32:18
Speaker 3: I'm going to absolutely work with people like Angus King,
1:32:21
Speaker 3: with people like Lisa Murkowski. With other senators from the West,
1:32:24
Speaker 3: people like Martin Heinrich, where there's common interest. I mean,
1:32:28
Speaker 3: you think about Martin Heinrich or Lisa Murkowski, large tribal
1:32:33
Speaker 3: communities in our states, public lands in our states, like
1:32:36
Speaker 3: a lot of issues that, frankly, I don't think are
1:32:39
Speaker 3: getting enough attention. I mean, from either party, to be
1:32:41
Speaker 3: honest with you, I don't think the National Democratic Party.
1:32:44
Speaker 3: has paid enough attention to rural America. And, and I
1:32:48
Speaker 3: don't think the national, I think the national Republican party
1:32:50
Speaker 3: has taken rural America completely for granted. And so what
1:32:54
Speaker 3: I plan to do is, is work with other independent
1:32:57
Speaker 3: minded senators around issues for which there's alignment and you
1:33:01
Speaker 3: get a, you get a group of four or five
1:33:03
Speaker 3: and you can dictate a lot of the direction of
1:33:06
Speaker 3: the United States Senate in a really positive way for
1:33:08
Speaker 3: Montana and frankly for the country.
1:33:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:33:11
Speaker 1: Did you directly make an appeal to Eleni Bankhead to
1:33:15
Speaker 1: drop out? No, I never did. And she has plenty
1:33:19
Speaker 1: of people from your right. Plenty of people from your
1:33:22
Speaker 1: team have asked.
1:33:22
Speaker 2: Her, right?
1:33:23
Speaker 3: Nobody from my team. My campaign never did that. My
1:33:26
Speaker 3: campaign never asked. It's just supporters. I think the other
1:33:30
Speaker 3: people did. I mean, that's the mess of this, right?
1:33:32
Speaker 3: As you've got all these independent entities and all the
1:33:36
Speaker 3: independent spending. And it's a mess. This is why our
1:33:39
Speaker 3: politics is so broken. There's so much outside money. Of
1:33:42
Speaker 3: which you have zero control, right? So we have a
1:33:45
Speaker 3: scenario in Montana right now where, again, I'm running as
1:33:48
Speaker 3: an independent. You have the leadership of the National Republican
1:33:52
Speaker 3: Party who rigged their own party primary to put in
1:33:55
Speaker 3: place their puppet. And then you have that same... person,
1:34:00
Speaker 3: Steve Daines, his super PAC is the largest supporter of
1:34:03
Speaker 3: the Democratic, the person on the Democratic ticket. And because
1:34:07
Speaker 3: his PAC, more jobs, less government supporting the person on
1:34:10
Speaker 3: the Democratic ticket attacking me.
1:34:12
Speaker 2: I mean, it's nonsense. Now, what we've done is. We've said, look,
1:34:16
Speaker 2: we started this.
1:34:17
Speaker 3: We get on as an independent and we collected nearly
1:34:19
Speaker 3: 30,000 signatures from 52 different counties. We've gone out the
1:34:25
Speaker 3: vast majority. I can't remember the exact percent, but close
1:34:27
Speaker 3: to 90 percent of our donations are from individuals.
1:34:30
Speaker 2: We're not taking any corporate PAC money. We're going around
1:34:32
Speaker 2: the state.
1:34:33
Speaker 3: We are talking to people and we have more individual
1:34:36
Speaker 3: donations than all the other campaigns combined.
1:34:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. outraised all the other campaigns combined.
1:34:42
Speaker 3: But then you have this flood of outside money that
1:34:44
Speaker 3: comes in attacking me, boosting the Republican, boosting the person
1:34:49
Speaker 3: on the Democratic ticket.
1:34:50
Speaker 2: And it's it's it's a mess. Do you you think
1:34:55
Speaker 2: she should drop out? Would it be easier if she
1:34:58
Speaker 2: dropped out? Of course. Be easier if the Republican dropped out, too.
1:35:02
Speaker 2: I'd like to see them both drop out.
1:35:04
Speaker 3: But but that's not the race that we plan to run.
1:35:07
Speaker 3: You know, we always we planned always to run a
1:35:10
Speaker 3: four way race. There's a libertarian on the ticket. And
1:35:13
Speaker 3: I think what we're what we're finding, especially in the
1:35:15
Speaker 3: last month, we've seen our poll numbers increasing. You know,
1:35:19
Speaker 3: two months ago, we were about 15 points back. Um,
1:35:23
Speaker 3: we saw a poll about a month ago that had
1:35:24
Speaker 3: us eight points back. And then we saw a poll
1:35:26
Speaker 3: that was about a month and a half ago. We
1:35:28
Speaker 3: saw a poll about three or four weeks ago that
1:35:30
Speaker 3: said among people.
1:35:31
Speaker 2: That have heard our messaging, we were actually up five points.
1:35:35
Speaker 3: Uh, and then we saw a poll last week that
1:35:36
Speaker 3: showed us up two points and there's polls that show
1:35:39
Speaker 3: us down, but there's polls that show us up and,
1:35:41
Speaker 3: but the trend is clear. Uh, and we're building a coalition,
1:35:44
Speaker 3: you know, of, of unions, of conservation groups, of reproductive
1:35:48
Speaker 3: freedom groups, of veterans groups, of anti-corruption groups, of Republicans
1:35:53
Speaker 3: and Democrats who are looking for a better way.
1:35:56
Speaker 2: I mean, the largest voting bloc here is independent. It's
1:35:59
Speaker 2: not Republican. It's not Democrat.
1:36:01
Speaker 1: Do you think you'd have more credibility, actually, if you
1:36:02
Speaker 1: ran if you won with an active Democratic nominee and
1:36:07
Speaker 1: an active Republican nominee?
1:36:09
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
1:36:09
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's why this race is interesting, right?
1:36:12
Speaker 3: Because this race is interesting, not in spite of the
1:36:18
Speaker 3: Democrats staying in, but I think it's interesting because the,
1:36:22
Speaker 3: you know, there's a person on the Democratic ticket and
1:36:24
Speaker 3: a person on the Republican ticket, because we hear again
1:36:27
Speaker 3: and again that, I mean, the last Gallup survey, I
1:36:29
Speaker 3: think said 47% of Americans, uh, when asked their political
1:36:34
Speaker 3: affiliation say independent. And yet we don't have any true independence, um,
1:36:40
Speaker 3: that don't cause me, we have, again, we have some
1:36:42
Speaker 3: that the vote independently, which I appreciate, but, uh, but
1:36:45
Speaker 3: I think that's what this race provides an opportunity to say, look,
1:36:49
Speaker 3: An independent can win.
1:36:51
Speaker 2: The common sense majority. I mean, it's football season. You're
1:36:53
Speaker 2: a sports fan.
1:36:54
Speaker 3: I mean, what I've heard again and again going around
1:36:56
Speaker 3: this state is that politically, most Montanans live between the
1:37:00
Speaker 3: 25-yard lines. You know, you've got somebody that's the 40-yard
1:37:04
Speaker 3: line on the left or the 40-yard line on the right.
1:37:07
Speaker 3: but they're stuck with the loudest voices and their parties
1:37:10
Speaker 3: being at the one yard line. I mean, the number
1:37:12
Speaker 3: of Republicans that have said to me this cycle, something
1:37:15
Speaker 3: to the effect, one guy said it, one guy from
1:37:17
Speaker 3: Great Falls said this exact sentence. He said, I've been
1:37:20
Speaker 3: a lifelong Republican. I hate my party right now. My
1:37:24
Speaker 3: challenge is I hate the other party a little bit more.
1:37:26
Speaker 3: So I'm glad you're giving me an alternative. And what
1:37:29
Speaker 3: a sad state of politics.
1:37:31
Speaker 2: Oh, we're definitely negative.
1:37:32
Speaker 1: Polarization is sort of the trap that I think this
1:37:35
Speaker 1: is the paralysis. I mean, The voters, I always say
1:37:38
Speaker 1: the voters only have two ways they can communicate frustration.
1:37:41
Speaker 1: One is voting and one is which party they choose
1:37:43
Speaker 1: to register. And they've done two things consistently. They vote
1:37:46
Speaker 1: out of the incumbents, whoever they are, every two years.
1:37:49
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to have 100 new members of
1:37:50
Speaker 1: Congress again. We keep, you know, 12, 11 of the
1:37:54
Speaker 1: last 13 national elections we've thrown out.
1:37:57
Speaker 2: Either, you know, the party controlling the House, the Senate
1:37:59
Speaker 2: or the White House.
1:38:01
Speaker 1: Or they decide they don't, you know, want to register
1:38:04
Speaker 1: with either major party. We're up to, we're getting closer
1:38:06
Speaker 1: and closer to... half the country refusing to register with
1:38:09
Speaker 1: either major party.
1:38:11
Speaker 2: So let me ask this. The founders foresaw this, though, right?
1:38:13
Speaker 2: That's the only thing. They did. I mean, George Washington. Well,
1:38:17
Speaker 2: Washington foresaw it. Others. So did Adams. Sure. Adams said
1:38:21
Speaker 2: the thing. So did Madison.
1:38:22
Speaker 1: Madison was fine with factions. He just didn't want two.
1:38:26
Speaker 1: I think he wanted 200.
1:38:28
Speaker 2: Exactly. Maybe not 200, but.
1:38:30
Speaker 3: That's the issue, is that when you get to this duopoly,
1:38:35
Speaker 3: that this is the natural state, right? This is what
1:38:38
Speaker 3: Washington warned us about when he talked about the baneful
1:38:40
Speaker 3: effects of the spirit of party. Look, you've, in our conversation,
1:38:45
Speaker 3: I think, made it easy for me to see someone
1:38:48
Speaker 3: in the center left feeling comfortable with you. Why should
1:38:51
Speaker 3: someone in the center right feel comfortable with you representing them?
1:38:55
Speaker 3: That gentleman you talked about saying he doesn't like his party,
1:38:58
Speaker 3: doesn't like the other party more.
1:39:00
Speaker 2: He appreciates that you're giving him a choice here.
1:39:02
Speaker 1: Well, what do you think is an issue where you
1:39:07
Speaker 1: probably will side with a majority of center Republicans on
1:39:10
Speaker 1: a handful of things?
1:39:10
Speaker 2: Give me a couple of those issues.
1:39:12
Speaker 3: Well, look, I believe that we should have strong borders
1:39:14
Speaker 3: and that we should enforce our immigration laws.
1:39:16
Speaker 2: And I believe that we can do that.
1:39:19
Speaker 3: I believe we must do that without infringing on the
1:39:21
Speaker 3: individual liberties of American citizens or trampling due process rights
1:39:25
Speaker 3: and that we need comprehensive immigration reform. And you talk
1:39:28
Speaker 3: to farmers in Montana, the H-2A visa program is vitally important.
1:39:32
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how they run their operation. And they're
1:39:35
Speaker 3: just as sick as you and I are of immigration
1:39:39
Speaker 3: reform being used as a political, you know, bludgeon as
1:39:44
Speaker 3: rather than as a problem they need to solve. Another
1:39:46
Speaker 3: one's the national debt. I mean, our national debt just
1:39:49
Speaker 3: soared above 40 trillion dollars. And nobody's doing anything about it.
1:39:55
Speaker 3: I mean, it's gone up $ 4 trillion just since Donald
1:39:58
Speaker 3: Trump took office. Who's talking about that? Who's actually leaning
1:40:03
Speaker 3: into a very real crisis? I mean, Admiral Mullen called
1:40:05
Speaker 3: that 15 years ago, the largest national security challenge that
1:40:08
Speaker 3: we face. The other one is national security. You know,
1:40:12
Speaker 3: I recorded a video the other day. I said, look,
1:40:14
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower, two Republican presidents that are
1:40:17
Speaker 3: rolling over in their grave right now as they watch
1:40:20
Speaker 3: our current president. aid and abet a dictator in Russia.
1:40:24
Speaker 3: You know, Republicans that I know, I thought they were
1:40:27
Speaker 3: for standing up to the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin wants
1:40:30
Speaker 3: nothing more than to restore the glory of the Soviet Union.
1:40:33
Speaker 3: And he's attacking his neighbors. And our current president, who
1:40:37
Speaker 3: calls himself a Republican, is aiding and abetting.
1:40:39
Speaker 2: That all the way. Anything Trump getting right in your mind?
1:40:44
Speaker 3: Look, I think some of the focus that he talked about, right?
1:40:48
Speaker 3: He said, hey, let's talk about affordability, getting out of
1:40:52
Speaker 3: forever wars. These are things that he talked about that
1:40:56
Speaker 3: was right. He hadn't delivered, right? The Republican Congress hasn't delivered.
1:41:01
Speaker 3: I think you have seen some movement around, I mean, look,
1:41:04
Speaker 3: I think having strong borders Makes sense, right?
1:41:08
Speaker 2: We need that. We needed to recalibrate there.
1:41:11
Speaker 3: But the way that they've let ICE run rampant is inexcusable.
1:41:15
Speaker 3: I mean, we see ICE treating– I mean, I would
1:41:18
Speaker 3: never have let a soldier in my platoon in Iraq
1:41:21
Speaker 3: treat an Iraqi civilian the way I see ICE agents
1:41:23
Speaker 3: treating people in this country.
1:41:25
Speaker 2: That's not– excusable.
1:41:28
Speaker 3: You know, I think we've seen some movement on prescription
1:41:31
Speaker 3: drug prices, which I appreciate the focus on letting the
1:41:34
Speaker 3: federal government negotiate more aggressively on prescription drug prices. Those
1:41:40
Speaker 3: are some of the types of things that that I
1:41:43
Speaker 3: think have made sense. I think this administration's lost focus.
1:41:47
Speaker 3: And I think this administration has been enabled by a
1:41:50
Speaker 3: completely pliant Republican Party that's not doing their constitutional duty.
1:41:55
Speaker 3: I mean, Checks and balances are good for everybody, but
1:41:58
Speaker 3: unchecked power and one party rule doesn't work.
1:42:10
Speaker 2: I want to drill down a second on health care.
1:42:12
Speaker 1: One of the ways I've described the public's frustration with
1:42:15
Speaker 1: health care this time and compared it with 2008, you know,
1:42:19
Speaker 1: Obamacare solved the access issue. Now, he promised it was
1:42:23
Speaker 1: also going to solve affordability. It did not solve affordability.
1:42:26
Speaker 1: But the good news is we've got access. Pre-existing conditions
1:42:30
Speaker 1: are not an issue anymore. So the access issue is
1:42:33
Speaker 1: no longer– in theory, healthcare is there for anybody that
1:42:38
Speaker 1: can afford to get it, right? The real issue is affordability,
1:42:43
Speaker 1: which is why I think I've seen a growing number
1:42:46
Speaker 1: of Americans– kind of default to Medicare for all. And
1:42:51
Speaker 1: I think it's simply, you know, my interpretation, when you
1:42:54
Speaker 1: look at it, I've done, I've drilled into this issue
1:42:56
Speaker 1: quite a bit. It's not necessarily, they're saying they want
1:42:59
Speaker 1: socialized medicine. What they're basically saying is they want more
1:43:02
Speaker 1: affordable healthcare and this Medicare business feels like it's more affordable.
1:43:06
Speaker 1: You know, that, and at least it's an, it's somebody
1:43:08
Speaker 1: attempting the answer. Where are you in for Medicare for all?
1:43:12
Speaker 1: And if you're not for that, what is your answer
1:43:14
Speaker 1: to the affordability issue?
1:43:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I believe that we need a universal coverage
1:43:19
Speaker 3: option for every American.
1:43:20
Speaker 2: We have to.
1:43:21
Speaker 3: And, you know, you're right about the Affordable Care Act
1:43:24
Speaker 3: that did expand coverage that that bill has been chipped
1:43:27
Speaker 3: away at. You know, we saw the subsidies eliminated this
1:43:31
Speaker 3: last year, and that's caused, I think, a 26 percent
1:43:34
Speaker 3: spike in insurance premiums.
1:43:35
Speaker 2: You're seeing Medicaid under constant.
1:43:38
Speaker 3: Attack, you know, this big, beautiful bill that gave a
1:43:39
Speaker 3: trillion dollars of tax cuts to the wealthy in this country,
1:43:43
Speaker 3: created these paperwork traps in terms of Medicaid eligibility verification
1:43:47
Speaker 3: processes that are estimated.
1:43:48
Speaker 2: Medicaid.
1:43:49
Speaker 1: I have said Medicaid is basically universal catastrophic health care
1:43:53
Speaker 1: for Americans.
1:43:55
Speaker 2: Is that how we should frame it now? I don't
1:43:58
Speaker 2: know that it's catastrophic.
1:43:59
Speaker 3: I mean, Medicaid funds 40% of the births in the
1:44:04
Speaker 3: state of Montana.
1:44:05
Speaker 1: Medicaid is in rural communities.
1:44:10
Speaker 3: And when we see these changes, it's effective cuts to Medicaid.
1:44:14
Speaker 3: About 30,000 Montanans are estimated to lose their health care
1:44:16
Speaker 3: over the next 12 months.
1:44:19
Speaker 2: You know who's going to suffer most from that? Our
1:44:20
Speaker 2: rural communities.
1:44:22
Speaker 3: Rural hospitals are in absolute crisis. And so what we
1:44:26
Speaker 3: need to do is immediately restore the ACA tax subsidies.
1:44:30
Speaker 3: We need to protect Medicaid expansion, and we need to
1:44:33
Speaker 3: reverse these paperwork traps and prevent 30,000 Montanans from losing
1:44:38
Speaker 3: access to their healthcare.
1:44:39
Speaker 2: Those are the immediate fixes.
1:44:40
Speaker 3: Longer term, I would want to work toward a comprehensive
1:44:45
Speaker 3: healthcare reform, which we desperately need.
1:44:47
Speaker 2: We desperately need.
1:44:49
Speaker 3: I believe strongly that in the richest country in the world,
1:44:52
Speaker 3: No one should go bankrupt just because they get sick.
1:44:55
Speaker 2: That's inexcusable.
1:44:56
Speaker 3: And we can get to a scenario where that doesn't happen.
1:44:59
Speaker 3: I think getting to universal access, but you made the
1:45:02
Speaker 3: right point. We got to address the costs and that's
1:45:05
Speaker 3: going to take a couple of things. One, changing the
1:45:07
Speaker 3: incentives right now, our health insurance system, and I'm married
1:45:10
Speaker 3: to a pediatrician.
1:45:12
Speaker 2: So I see this all the time.
1:45:14
Speaker 3: Our healthcare system doesn't value prevention and people staying healthy.
1:45:18
Speaker 3: People only get paid when they make treatments for people
1:45:21
Speaker 3: that are sick. So you need to change the incentives.
1:45:23
Speaker 3: And then you need much, much, much tighter regulation of
1:45:28
Speaker 3: the big insurance and big pharma. The profiteering and the
1:45:32
Speaker 3: waste and the middlemen in this system, we need to
1:45:35
Speaker 3: tackle that hard.
1:45:36
Speaker 2: And I'm not naive to think that that's a simple challenge.
1:45:39
Speaker 3: But I was with the CFO and CEO of Bozeman
1:45:42
Speaker 3: Healthcare a couple of months ago. And we were just
1:45:45
Speaker 3: talking about the hospital and the challenges they face. And,
1:45:47
Speaker 3: you know, the CFO walked me through a dispute they'd
1:45:50
Speaker 3: been in with an insurance company where a guy who
1:45:52
Speaker 3: came in on his deathbed, they saved his life. He
1:45:55
Speaker 3: had a two day hospital stay. He had insurance. They
1:45:58
Speaker 3: build the insurance company. They got back denied, not medically necessary.
1:46:03
Speaker 3: So what did that hospital do? They had to spend
1:46:05
Speaker 3: money to fight that 180 days later, they finally get paid.
1:46:08
Speaker 3: But think about even the cost of money, let alone
1:46:11
Speaker 3: the additional staffing. The insurance company didn't pay a penalty. Right.
1:46:14
Speaker 2: They should they they shouldn't be able to do that
1:46:16
Speaker 2: scot free.
1:46:17
Speaker 3: So so those are the types of things that I
1:46:19
Speaker 3: think we could do to get to.
1:46:21
Speaker 1: A universal care option for every American. And that's that's
1:46:23
Speaker 1: what I would work toward. I want to talk a
1:46:27
Speaker 1: little bit about your time as a university president. You
1:46:29
Speaker 1: were sort of you had to deal with covid deal
1:46:33
Speaker 1: with sort of the politicizing of all things academia.
1:46:40
Speaker 2: There is this.
1:46:42
Speaker 1: Movement on the right that is anti-college education at the moment.
1:46:48
Speaker 2: How do we reverse that?
1:46:51
Speaker 3: You know, an educated citizenry is the bulwark of the Republic.
1:46:57
Speaker 2: And our founders said that.
1:46:58
Speaker 3: You know, who was the biggest and loudest and one
1:47:01
Speaker 3: of the early proponents for free.
1:47:03
Speaker 2: Public education, he was talking about K-12, was Ulysses S. Grant.
1:47:08
Speaker 3: You look at a speech that Grant gave as president
1:47:11
Speaker 3: in 1875 in Iowa.
1:47:14
Speaker 2: He was talking about 200 Civil War veterans.
1:47:17
Speaker 3: And he talked about education as the thing that was
1:47:20
Speaker 3: needed to protect the prize that they had battled so
1:47:25
Speaker 3: hard for.
1:47:26
Speaker 2: And the idea of free public education.
1:47:31
Speaker 3: Is foundational to the American dream itself. And I think
1:47:35
Speaker 3: what we've seen, sadly, is many people, often Ivy League
1:47:40
Speaker 3: educated politicians, mind you, saying don't get educated. And that is,
1:47:45
Speaker 3: you know... It's antithetical to the American dream. And it's
1:47:52
Speaker 3: about as strategically stupid as you possibly could be. Because
1:47:55
Speaker 3: I'll tell you one thing that the Chinese are absolutely
1:47:58
Speaker 3: not telling their kids, don't get educated, right? And when
1:48:02
Speaker 3: I look back to past generations, when we faced a challenge,
1:48:06
Speaker 3: I talk often at campaign events about October of 1957.
1:48:09
Speaker 3: And I do a little quiz of, you know, what
1:48:12
Speaker 3: was the big global event that happened in October of 1957?
1:48:15
Speaker 3: Usually there's one person that can tell me. And it
1:48:18
Speaker 3: was Sputnik, Sputnik.
1:48:20
Speaker 2: Launched.
1:48:21
Speaker 3: The Soviets were ahead. In the technology of our day,
1:48:24
Speaker 3: America was behind. And what did our leaders do at
1:48:26
Speaker 3: that moment? Did they use that fear that Americans had
1:48:30
Speaker 3: for political gain?
1:48:31
Speaker 1: No.
1:48:32
Speaker 3: You had a democratically controlled Congress. Actually, the majority whip
1:48:36
Speaker 3: in that Democratic Senate. A guy by the name of
1:48:39
Speaker 3: Mike Mansfield from the great state of Montana. The Democrats
1:48:43
Speaker 3: pulled together to pass a bill for Republican President Dwight
1:48:46
Speaker 3: Eisenhower to sign and get a victory as a good
1:48:49
Speaker 3: West Point grad. That bill was the National Defense Education Act.
1:48:54
Speaker 3: That was a generation that said, look, we're behind. We
1:48:56
Speaker 3: face challenges. And what we need to do is invest
1:49:00
Speaker 3: in education and bet on our youth.
1:49:03
Speaker 2: And we've seen the opposite of that.
1:49:05
Speaker 3: And it's to the great detriment of not just opportunity
1:49:08
Speaker 3: in this country, but the long-term health and security of
1:49:11
Speaker 3: this country.
1:49:12
Speaker 1: If you were currently president at the University of Montana,
1:49:15
Speaker 1: how would you be dealing with AI and how would
1:49:18
Speaker 1: you be changing?
1:49:19
Speaker 2: I don't want to assume you do. Would you be
1:49:23
Speaker 2: changing a focus system? curriculum.
1:49:26
Speaker 1: I say this as my kids, I have one out
1:49:29
Speaker 1: of college, one still in college, but when they were
1:49:31
Speaker 1: in grade school, you know, all of the peer pressure was, boy,
1:49:34
Speaker 1: your kids better.
1:49:34
Speaker 2: Learn to code.
1:49:35
Speaker 1: Right.
1:49:36
Speaker 2: And then AI happened.
1:49:37
Speaker 1: And, you know, we got sort of every university went
1:49:40
Speaker 1: down this STEM road and now every university went, Oh no.
1:49:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. We're, Where were you on this? Where would you be?
1:49:52
Speaker 1: Because you may provide a unique insight if you are
1:49:56
Speaker 1: elected to the Senate about sort of how AI.
1:50:02
Speaker 2: Is used in our education system. Yeah. I mean, look,
1:50:06
Speaker 2: and this is this is a long arc.
1:50:09
Speaker 3: Of how education in this country has had to adapt. And,
1:50:13
Speaker 3: you know, it's really interesting. I went to West Point
1:50:15
Speaker 3: and the president of Harvard made a speech at West
1:50:19
Speaker 3: Point 12 years ago, Drew Faust. She called West Point
1:50:22
Speaker 3: the last true example of a liberal arts college. That
1:50:25
Speaker 3: combines study in the sciences. Everybody has to have, at
1:50:29
Speaker 3: least when I was there, a track close to a
1:50:32
Speaker 3: minor in engineering.
1:50:33
Speaker 2: You have professional training.
1:50:35
Speaker 3: In the summers where you go learn how to jump
1:50:37
Speaker 3: out of airplanes and shoot rifles.
1:50:41
Speaker 2: But yet you're learning philosophy and history.
1:50:44
Speaker 1: And you're reading poetry.
1:50:47
Speaker 3: And that was actually, when I was at the University
1:50:50
Speaker 3: of Montana, that was some of the change that we
1:50:52
Speaker 3: were trying to make. Because Joseph Aoun, the president of
1:50:55
Speaker 3: Northeastern University, wrote a good book, about at least 10
1:50:58
Speaker 3: years old now, called Robot Proof. And his argument, which
1:51:01
Speaker 3: I think is a sound one, that says in a
1:51:02
Speaker 3: world in which anything can be automated, will be automated, right?
1:51:06
Speaker 3: That's the world we live in. The task of education
1:51:10
Speaker 3: is to develop in students those uniquely human capacities of
1:51:15
Speaker 3: problem solving, of critical thinking, of working in teams, of
1:51:19
Speaker 3: communicating effectively.
1:51:21
Speaker 2: And so I think what higher education needs to do.
1:51:25
Speaker 3: Is to focus on building those uniquely human capacities. Yes,
1:51:28
Speaker 3: giving the data fluency, technical fluency, that's important. But what
1:51:33
Speaker 3: we were doing at the University of Montana is you said, look,
1:51:36
Speaker 3: students spend 15% of their time in the classroom, 85%
1:51:39
Speaker 3: of their time outside. So what are we doing in
1:51:41
Speaker 3: terms of residence life? What are we doing in terms
1:51:44
Speaker 3: of our student activities even to develop those social emotional
1:51:49
Speaker 3: capacities that for a generation that has been so locked
1:51:52
Speaker 3: in on their phones and for especially those who had
1:51:56
Speaker 3: COVID as part of their their young experience, developing those
1:52:00
Speaker 3: those social emotional skills is an important part of the
1:52:03
Speaker 3: maturation process that comes from an in-person college experience.
1:52:07
Speaker 1: So it's interesting you brought up the West Point aspect
1:52:10
Speaker 1: because we were talking earlier about I'm friendly with the
1:52:14
Speaker 1: president of SMU who came from a public university and
1:52:18
Speaker 1: he was asked this AI question at the Texas Trip
1:52:20
Speaker 1: Festival last year. And he basically said he wanted to
1:52:24
Speaker 1: slowly shift. He thought that universities that offered a more
1:52:31
Speaker 1: classical sense, right, your literature, your English, your that that
1:52:35
Speaker 1: would probably be what higher education was in the 1950s,
1:52:40
Speaker 1: maybe what it is in the 2050s.
1:52:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:52:43
Speaker 3: And I think that's right. Now, what I also say
1:52:45
Speaker 3: is that you have to be AI literate. You have
1:52:48
Speaker 3: to understand the basics of data analysis. You have to
1:52:51
Speaker 3: understand at least how to use AI. I liken it
1:52:55
Speaker 3: to being able to ride a bike. You have to
1:52:59
Speaker 3: have literacy there. But if you don't have the ability
1:53:03
Speaker 3: to think, if you don't have the ability to ask
1:53:06
Speaker 3: the right questions... um, you're, uh, you're not going to
1:53:10
Speaker 3: succeed in an AI focused world.
1:53:12
Speaker 2: I need any more than you could in a, in a,
1:53:14
Speaker 2: in a pre AI world.
1:53:15
Speaker 3: So I would tend to agree that getting back to
1:53:18
Speaker 3: that foundational education.
1:53:19
Speaker 2: And I have two kids that are, uh, juniors in
1:53:21
Speaker 2: high school now.
1:53:23
Speaker 3: And, uh, and, and I'm thinking about that with them,
1:53:25
Speaker 3: you know, what, what do you think about, what do
1:53:27
Speaker 3: you optimize for? And it's not, it's, it's not the
1:53:30
Speaker 3: same optimization equation.
1:53:33
Speaker 1: That it was a decade ago. And I president Hartzell.
1:53:37
Speaker 1: I'm going to get you out of here on football.
1:53:39
Speaker 1: And I'm going to do it through the prism of
1:53:41
Speaker 1: the University of Montana. It's a proud football tradition. There's
1:53:44
Speaker 1: nothing like the Montana-Montana State rivalry. That's a great rivalry,
1:53:49
Speaker 1: one that if you're a college football fan, you learn
1:53:52
Speaker 1: about over time. But look, there's been lots of speculation
1:53:58
Speaker 1: that the University of Montana might move up from FCS
1:54:00
Speaker 1: to FBS. Get into the Mountain West was a rumor
1:54:03
Speaker 1: a couple years ago. It comes with a huge cost issue.
1:54:07
Speaker 1: And the cost of participating in Division I college sports
1:54:13
Speaker 1: is only growing. There's probably a party view that is the, quote,
1:54:18
Speaker 1: fan or sort of the cheerleader for Montana football thinking
1:54:21
Speaker 1: one way. Is it financially feasible for the University of
1:54:25
Speaker 1: Montana to do this?
1:54:26
Speaker 3: I mean, look, what we, I think, are going to
1:54:29
Speaker 3: see over the next few years is a realignment. You know,
1:54:33
Speaker 3: I think you've got When you look at athletic programs
1:54:37
Speaker 3: around this country, I mean, it's probably not much more
1:54:41
Speaker 3: than 10. And I haven't looked at the financial filings
1:54:43
Speaker 3: that actually net money each year, right? Most athletics departments,
1:54:49
Speaker 3: this old adage, oh, they're making money for these colleges.
1:54:52
Speaker 2: No, they're not. These are what when the army used
1:54:54
Speaker 2: to call self-licking ice cream cones.
1:54:56
Speaker 3: Every dollar they bring in, you know, goes goes to further.
1:55:00
Speaker 1: There's an interesting parallel. I've noticed the most. And I
1:55:04
Speaker 1: say this, my beloved University of Miami is benefiting from this.
1:55:07
Speaker 1: UT Austin is benefiting from this. If you have a
1:55:10
Speaker 1: university health system.
1:55:11
Speaker 2: Yep.
1:55:12
Speaker 1: Which is a nonprofit, which gets it to the whole...
1:55:15
Speaker 1: It is the craziest thing. Nonprofit hospital and health systems
1:55:19
Speaker 1: are more cash-rich than for-profit health systems.
1:55:22
Speaker 2: Discuss.
1:55:23
Speaker 1: If you want to know why people think there's a
1:55:25
Speaker 1: problem with capitalism, I hand you that riddle.
1:55:28
Speaker 2: But....
1:55:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it wasn't for health care, I don't know
1:55:34
Speaker 1: if Ohio State, Miami, or Texas would have the payrolls
1:55:39
Speaker 1: that they have.
1:55:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think what we need to eventually see,
1:55:42
Speaker 3: you know, Kent Syverudin, Kent was the chancellor at Syracuse.
1:55:46
Speaker 3: And he was part of the, I think what they
1:55:49
Speaker 3: call the college football, college student football league.
1:55:53
Speaker 2: You know, they were talking about this.
1:55:54
Speaker 3: And his point was, look, there's only one professional sports
1:55:57
Speaker 3: league here. that doesn't have antitrust exemption and collective bargaining.
1:56:02
Speaker 3: The only professional sports league that doesn't have that is
1:56:05
Speaker 3: college sports. And you look at, you know, there's probably
1:56:09
Speaker 3: 30 to 40 schools that each year are going to
1:56:13
Speaker 3: have a chance at the CFP, right? And that have
1:56:16
Speaker 3: the resources to compete at that level. And I think
1:56:18
Speaker 3: we'd be better served as a country If, if we
1:56:21
Speaker 3: just leaned into the reality of that and you saw this, you.
1:56:24
Speaker 1: Would almost split that off and let them be like
1:56:27
Speaker 1: that off professionally, professional college league, bargaining, all.
1:56:32
Speaker 2: Of that toward that.
1:56:34
Speaker 3: And then you have the university of Montana is the,
1:56:36
Speaker 3: The frankly, the University of Wyoming's, the New Mexico, Utah State's,
1:56:42
Speaker 3: you know.
1:56:42
Speaker 2: North Dakota State. You have those those schools that. Yeah.
1:56:46
Speaker 2: I mean, I think players should should benefit.
1:56:48
Speaker 3: Right. I don't think coaches should reap all of it. Like,
1:56:51
Speaker 3: but you could have a more reasonable. But right now
1:56:55
Speaker 3: we have an NC.
1:56:55
Speaker 1: I think you can create a two tier system.
1:56:58
Speaker 3: I think that's where it's headed.
1:57:00
Speaker 2: And I'm speaking out of school because I haven't watched
1:57:02
Speaker 2: this recently.
1:57:02
Speaker 1: No, but have you paid attention to this Protect College
1:57:05
Speaker 1: Sports Act?
1:57:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:57:07
Speaker 3: I don't think that gets us ultimately where we need
1:57:10
Speaker 3: to be. I mean, I think what you're.
1:57:13
Speaker 1: In my opinion, it's the Protect Big Ten and SEC Act.
1:57:17
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
1:57:18
Speaker 3: What you need to do is protect the great tradition
1:57:22
Speaker 3: of the University of Montana and Montana State.
1:57:24
Speaker 2: And to say that like.
1:57:25
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know how much the quarterback for
1:57:27
Speaker 3: Michigan makes this year, but it's got to be three million,
1:57:30
Speaker 3: four million dollars. I mean, it's it's it's and to
1:57:34
Speaker 3: have the same governance structure for the University of Montana
1:57:38
Speaker 3: and the University of Michigan, it doesn't make sense. And
1:57:42
Speaker 3: I mean, and then we have the same governance structure
1:57:44
Speaker 3: for a soccer player at the University of Montana, as
1:57:46
Speaker 3: we do for the quarterback of the University of Michigan.
1:57:48
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we just have to be honest
1:57:50
Speaker 3: about where we are. And and actually create roles. So
1:57:53
Speaker 3: you have I mean, you can have a really interesting,
1:57:57
Speaker 3: exciting national championship with big flagship schools and places like
1:58:03
Speaker 3: Montana and and Wyoming and.
1:58:07
Speaker 2: New Mexico and Utah and some of these smaller flagship schools. football.
1:58:11
Speaker 3: And then we could still enjoy the college football playoff
1:58:15
Speaker 3: and those schools.
1:58:15
Speaker 2: But I think we just have to be honest about
1:58:19
Speaker 2: a realignment.
1:58:21
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be great if North Dakota
1:58:23
Speaker 1: State's the 12th team in the college football playoff, though,
1:58:25
Speaker 1: don't you think?
1:58:25
Speaker 2: Oh, I think it'd be great, too.
1:58:27
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea, you know, I don't want to
1:58:30
Speaker 1: see it at 40, right? I like the idea, you know,
1:58:33
Speaker 1: maybe it's 80, you know, maybe we can get that big. But,
1:58:38
Speaker 1: you know, I always say the beauty of sports, you know,
1:58:44
Speaker 1: people don't watch sports for the probability for the most
1:58:49
Speaker 1: probable thing to happen. You watch it because of, and
1:58:51
Speaker 1: your greatest memories are always the improbable. Yeah, no.
1:58:55
Speaker 2: And that's the great thing. I mean, but that's where
1:58:58
Speaker 2: you see, I mean, North Dakota state, that's what's interesting.
1:59:00
Speaker 3: You've seen this both compression and extension.
1:59:04
Speaker 2: And I'm going to, cause this is really interesting.
1:59:06
Speaker 3: You take a mountain West team used to be the
1:59:09
Speaker 3: mountain West would play a big 10 team and it'd
1:59:11
Speaker 3: be competitive, right?
1:59:12
Speaker 2: Now they're just getting crushed.
1:59:14
Speaker 1: Right.
1:59:14
Speaker 3: But you take a team in the big sky, um,
1:59:17
Speaker 3: And mostly teams in the big sky are beating the
1:59:19
Speaker 3: Mountain West this year. If you put Montana and Montana
1:59:22
Speaker 3: State in the Mountain West, they'd be right there with NDSU.
1:59:24
Speaker 3: I mean, last time we played NDSU, we beat them, right?
1:59:28
Speaker 3: We beat South Dakota State. Like the NDSU didn't make
1:59:30
Speaker 3: it to the national championship last year. And here they
1:59:33
Speaker 3: are really competing. They could be in the national champion.
1:59:36
Speaker 3: So you have this opportunity, I think, for really exciting
1:59:40
Speaker 3: and competitive middle tier teams. And so you don't have
1:59:43
Speaker 3: to have NDSU just hoping on a wish and a
1:59:45
Speaker 3: prayer to maybe make it into the CFP.
1:59:48
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you, you know, I've been to a
1:59:50
Speaker 2: lot of sporting events.
1:59:51
Speaker 3: When University of Montana played North Dakota State here in
1:59:54
Speaker 3: Washington Grizzly Stadium in, I guess that was 2023, national
1:59:59
Speaker 3: semifinal to go to the– I've never been in a
2:00:02
Speaker 3: more electric environment in any.
2:00:03
Speaker 2: I've been to Big Ten and SEC games. And so there's.
2:00:07
Speaker 3: Great college football, great college competition that still exists. And
2:00:12
Speaker 3: I think we need to honor that and celebrate that
2:00:14
Speaker 3: and protect that.
2:00:15
Speaker 2: No, I mean, it's– look.
2:00:18
Speaker 1: We can, you know, Whizzer White warned us that this
2:00:20
Speaker 1: was going to happen when they made that terrible Supreme
2:00:23
Speaker 1: Court decision back in the 80s, which led us to
2:00:27
Speaker 1: this point.
2:00:27
Speaker 2: It's a bummer.
2:00:28
Speaker 1: What I think makes college football different from pro football
2:00:31
Speaker 1: is that you can sell out. You can sell out,
2:00:35
Speaker 1: you know, you can, you know, it's not just 32
2:00:38
Speaker 1: big cities that get football. It's another hundred great college
2:00:43
Speaker 1: towns that get it. And, oh, by the way, it's
2:00:46
Speaker 1: a pretty good business, too, if you let them play.
2:00:49
Speaker 1: if you let them be a real business as well,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: if you're going to go down that road.
2:00:52
Speaker 2: And protect again. I think you're spot on.
2:00:54
Speaker 3: We can't just say we need to serve the Big
2:00:56
Speaker 3: Ten and SEC. We need to protect exciting and competitive
2:01:01
Speaker 3: football in places like Montana. And we can't let the
2:01:05
Speaker 3: smaller states, the smaller schools, the smaller markets get left behind.
2:01:10
Speaker 1: Do you have any regrets about not going into the
2:01:11
Speaker 1: Mountain West?
2:01:13
Speaker 2: Or do you think it's the right call?
2:01:14
Speaker 3: I mean, I think what we're seeing, we've got a
2:01:17
Speaker 3: great playoff system. I think we're going to see realignment.
2:01:20
Speaker 3: And when that realignment happens, I think University of Montana,
2:01:23
Speaker 3: Montana State, I think getting back in South Dakota State,
2:01:27
Speaker 3: North Dakota State, the Dakota schools.
2:01:29
Speaker 1: But you'd love to see Montana and Wyoming and some
2:01:32
Speaker 1: of these schools kind of being the same. Yeah.
2:01:35
Speaker 2: Great brands.
2:01:36
Speaker 3: I mean, that's, and again, I'm way out of my
2:01:38
Speaker 3: lane here, but, but look at the mountain West. I mean,
2:01:41
Speaker 3: the mountain West is bringing in schools from Illinois. Like
2:01:43
Speaker 3: what are we doing? Like, You know, you should get
2:01:46
Speaker 3: back to those geographical realignments and those rivalries. I mean,
2:01:50
Speaker 3: think about a conference like that where you had Wyoming, Montana,
2:01:54
Speaker 3: Montana State, New Mexico, New Mexico State.
2:01:59
Speaker 2: Those are North Dakota State, South Dakota.
2:02:00
Speaker 3: Those are great football teams, great state brands, great state identities,
2:02:05
Speaker 3: like really good games. And that's what I'd love to
2:02:09
Speaker 3: see happen.
2:02:11
Speaker 1: Seth Bodnar, if you come up short, What are you
2:02:16
Speaker 1: going to take away from this experience that will make
2:02:18
Speaker 1: you want to stick into politics?
2:02:20
Speaker 3: You know, look, I'm not thinking about anything on past
2:02:23
Speaker 3: November 3rd. But what I would say is, you know,
2:02:27
Speaker 3: it has been such a blessing. You know, people have
2:02:30
Speaker 3: asked me, like, are you tired of going around this day?
2:02:32
Speaker 2: I'm like, hell no.
2:02:33
Speaker 3: I'm as energized as I've been about anything in my life.
2:02:36
Speaker 3: Because when you talk to people and you see just
2:02:40
Speaker 3: the goodness, the decency of the people in this state
2:02:43
Speaker 3: and how hard they're working. And how difficult our government
2:02:47
Speaker 3: is making it on people. You realize just what fundamental
2:02:52
Speaker 3: change we need in our system. And I don't know
2:02:55
Speaker 3: what happens for me if I don't win on November 3rd.
2:02:58
Speaker 3: But I'll tell you, I am so grateful for the
2:03:01
Speaker 3: privilege of going around the state and meeting so many
2:03:03
Speaker 3: great Montanans, learning so much. And I believe more strongly
2:03:07
Speaker 3: today than I did in March that this is the
2:03:10
Speaker 3: type of change we need in this country.
2:03:11
Speaker 2: And are you a permanent independent?
2:03:15
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a permanent Montanan, working for Montana.
2:03:20
Speaker 2: I think we're in an age of political realignment.
2:03:22
Speaker 3: And the reason I say that, I think you saw
2:03:25
Speaker 3: in the 1850s, the Republican Party emerge out of the wigs.
2:03:29
Speaker 3: You saw Teddy Roosevelt, even though he wasn't successful with
2:03:33
Speaker 3: the third party, Teddy Roosevelt, what he talked about in
2:03:36
Speaker 3: terms of breaking up what he called the hard unholy
2:03:41
Speaker 3: alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics. You saw things
2:03:45
Speaker 3: emerge out of that. So I don't know what that
2:03:47
Speaker 3: looks like. Maybe we have maybe we renew the Bull
2:03:49
Speaker 3: Moose Party. Maybe, you know, maybe some things happen. But
2:03:52
Speaker 3: I think what I know is that we had reached
2:03:55
Speaker 3: an equilibrium. in this country and in this state that
2:03:59
Speaker 3: was an unhealthy equilibrium, where you have Republican dominance in
2:04:02
Speaker 3: places like Montana. And you're seeing that partisan label breaking
2:04:07
Speaker 3: up strong coalitions around issues, whether that's reproductive freedom, whether
2:04:12
Speaker 3: that's environmental stewardship, whether that's corporate regulation, that cut across
2:04:19
Speaker 3: current party lines. And that is something that I believe
2:04:23
Speaker 3: needs to change. That's part of what this campaign has
2:04:26
Speaker 3: been about. I believe those are things that are going
2:04:28
Speaker 3: to change. So I think it's going to be an interesting, uh,
2:04:31
Speaker 3: next five, six.
2:04:32
Speaker 2: Do you want to be in the middle of this?
2:04:33
Speaker 2: Is that what it sounds like?
2:04:34
Speaker 3: No matter what my wife and I did this, you know, we,
2:04:39
Speaker 3: I quit my job, uh, and, and jumped into this
2:04:43
Speaker 3: world for three reasons. And two of them are 16
2:04:46
Speaker 3: and one of them just turned 13. And I'm hell
2:04:50
Speaker 3: bent on making sure that I do everything that I
2:04:52
Speaker 3: possibly can and my wife and I can to shape
2:04:55
Speaker 3: a better future for our kids and people that are
2:04:57
Speaker 3: going to come after us. Nobody wants to leave a farm,
2:04:59
Speaker 3: a business, a ranch in worse condition for the people
2:05:03
Speaker 3: taking it over. And that's what we're on track to
2:05:06
Speaker 3: do for this country. I can't abide by that. So
2:05:08
Speaker 3: I don't know what my future holds. I believe it's
2:05:11
Speaker 3: going to hold a seat in the United States Senate.
2:05:13
Speaker 3: I think we're going to surprise some people on November 3rd.
2:05:15
Speaker 3: But I believe too much in this country to not
2:05:19
Speaker 3: care and just to watch as these things happen.
2:05:23
Speaker 2: Seth Bodnar, it was good to get to know you.
2:05:24
Speaker 3: Thanks, Chuck.
2:05:25
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. Thanks for the conversation.
2:05:37
Speaker 1: All right. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Mr.
2:05:39
Speaker 3: Bodnar.
2:05:40
Speaker 1: We will be watching Montana quite closely. Don't forget the
2:05:44
Speaker 1: election night live stream brought to you by Kalshi and
2:05:46
Speaker 1: New Sphere. Myself, Chris Eliza, DDHQ. We are the only
2:05:51
Speaker 1: place you get to see DDHQ's calls live. And so
2:05:57
Speaker 1: please join us for our live stream on election night.
2:06:00
Speaker 1: We'll start at 5 p.m.
2:06:01
Speaker 2: Eastern.
2:06:02
Speaker 1: We'll go to at least 3 a.m. That's when we
2:06:04
Speaker 1: we haven't called the Senate by 3 a.m.
2:06:06
Speaker 2: That in itself is a fascinating story. All right, let's
2:06:10
Speaker 2: get to some Ask Chuck. All righty. Assuming Republicans, this
2:06:14
Speaker 2: comes from Mike in Honolulu. All right.
2:06:16
Speaker 1: Assuming Republicans suffer significant losses in both the House and Senate,
2:06:21
Speaker 1: could they use impeachment proceedings as an opportunity to clean
2:06:23
Speaker 1: up the party's image and position themselves as champions of reform,
2:06:28
Speaker 1: even if it risks short-term backlash from their base? Could
2:06:30
Speaker 1: they frame it as a necessary reset under Democratic leadership? Thanks,
2:06:34
Speaker 1: as always, for a great pod. Boy, that's hard to imagine.
2:06:40
Speaker 1: And I want to remind you of the following. The
2:06:45
Speaker 1: next Congress, if Democrats have a huge night, the Republicans
2:06:49
Speaker 1: that get swept out aren't going to be a lot
2:06:51
Speaker 1: of MAGA Republicans. Yes, those are your Ken Paxtons of
2:06:54
Speaker 1: the world that won't get there, etc. But it's actually
2:06:56
Speaker 1: a lot of the more normie Republicans that lose in
2:06:59
Speaker 1: these swing states. John Husted, maybe Susan Collins, maybe Ashley Hinson,
2:07:03
Speaker 1: maybe Dan Sullivan. These aren't super MAGA people. These aren't
2:07:06
Speaker 1: people that have loved how Donald Trump has conducted himself
2:07:09
Speaker 1: in office. The Republicans that are left, the Republicans that
2:07:17
Speaker 1: are left in a big, in a scenario that you're
2:07:22
Speaker 1: painting are actually going to be more You know, those
2:07:26
Speaker 1: that are left will probably be closer to Trump politically,
2:07:29
Speaker 1: closer to Trump ideologically, and probably less interested in that. Now,
2:07:34
Speaker 1: the real question is, does Mitch McConnell have regrets about
2:07:38
Speaker 1: his decision in February of 2021? But that's something that
2:07:44
Speaker 1: maybe someday he'll admit.
2:07:48
Speaker 2: But who knows?
2:07:50
Speaker 1: All right. Kelly X in Aubrey, Texas, writes in. Kelly
2:07:56
Speaker 1: from Texas's 26th District.
2:07:58
Speaker 2: Five-timer.
2:07:59
Speaker 1: And in fact, wants to be the secretary of the
2:08:02
Speaker 1: five-timers club. You don't want to be president. You don't
2:08:05
Speaker 1: want to be the treasurer. You don't want to be
2:08:06
Speaker 1: vice president. You want to be the secretary here, in
2:08:09
Speaker 1: this case, the one keeping track of everything. You're going
2:08:12
Speaker 1: to be in charge of who's in and who's out.
2:08:14
Speaker 2: Maybe that's what you want anyway.
2:08:16
Speaker 1: As more Democrats adopt language like boys and girls sports,
2:08:19
Speaker 1: no gender surgeries for kids and fairness in sports, do
2:08:21
Speaker 1: you think they're deliberately leaving room to walk back those
2:08:25
Speaker 1: positions or are they preparing to abandon transgender rights to
2:08:28
Speaker 1: appeal to moderates? While Democrats like Sarah Jacobs and Ed
2:08:31
Speaker 1: Markey remain supportive, I worry the party could follow the
2:08:35
Speaker 1: UK's Labour Party in conceding too much on this issue.
2:08:39
Speaker 1: Thanks for continuing to discuss a topic that affects not
2:08:42
Speaker 1: only transgender Americans, but also their families and allies.
2:08:45
Speaker 2: Fins up. All right. Look at that Dolphins fan stuck
2:08:49
Speaker 2: in Aubrey, Texas.
2:08:52
Speaker 1: Look, I you know, I if you notice the language
2:08:55
Speaker 1: many of the Democrats use, I think. I think they
2:08:59
Speaker 1: are there. I think what they're trying to carve is
2:09:02
Speaker 1: a position that says, I don't know if it's fair
2:09:05
Speaker 1: to have trans women competing with biological women in either
2:09:11
Speaker 1: youth sports or, competition that doesn't mean they're not, um,
2:09:18
Speaker 1: that they're somehow against, uh, human rights for, uh, for
2:09:23
Speaker 1: trans women and trans men, et cetera. So I think
2:09:27
Speaker 1: that's the distinction. Um, but I can tell from your
2:09:31
Speaker 1: question and I've heard from others that those that are, uh,
2:09:34
Speaker 1: advocates for trans rights do not see it that way. Uh,
2:09:38
Speaker 1: and I, I think this is going to be a
2:09:39
Speaker 1: divide that isn't.
2:09:40
Speaker 2: Bridged right away.
2:09:42
Speaker 1: Um, But I do think the fact that, you know,
2:09:47
Speaker 1: and it's interesting with this, you know, I think about
2:09:55
Speaker 1: gay marriage in the 80s and 90s and how it
2:09:58
Speaker 1: was viewed and how it was seen as sort of, oh,
2:10:00
Speaker 1: you know, bridge too far, this isn't going to happen.
2:10:02
Speaker 1: So I think we always underestimate the American public on
2:10:08
Speaker 1: many of these cultural issues. I think A lot of
2:10:11
Speaker 1: times the public gets more comfortable than politicians do. And
2:10:16
Speaker 1: I think that's something that the speed with which same-sex
2:10:21
Speaker 1: marriage was accepted is a reminder of that. But I
2:10:26
Speaker 1: do think this, you know, because women's sports is having
2:10:29
Speaker 1: a moment, right? It's only growing in popularity, only growing
2:10:33
Speaker 1: in significance, only growing in importance, only growing as a business.
2:10:39
Speaker 1: And so I think that there is going to be
2:10:41
Speaker 1: this tension, right? I mean, take a, a strong progressive
2:10:46
Speaker 1: like Martina Navratilova. I follow her on my, uh, I, I,
2:10:50
Speaker 1: I follow her on social media. Uh, and she is,
2:10:54
Speaker 1: you know, as progressive as they come, but she's pretty, uh,
2:10:59
Speaker 1: I don't think you would call her an advocate for
2:11:01
Speaker 1: trans Americans. Um, now I think she would say she's
2:11:05
Speaker 1: just simply, um, somebody who doesn't believe that, uh, that, biological,
2:11:12
Speaker 1: you know, that trans women should be able to compete
2:11:14
Speaker 1: against biological women in sports. And that's where she thinks
2:11:18
Speaker 1: the line needs to be drawn. So I think that's
2:11:24
Speaker 1: maybe it's we're paralyzed on there for a moment, but
2:11:29
Speaker 1: I think that's where public opinion is. And if it
2:11:32
Speaker 1: weren't there, you'd hear different rhetoric from Democratic candidates. It
2:11:38
Speaker 1: is fascinating how much Republicans are running on this issue here.
2:11:42
Speaker 1: I don't know if it has the impact that it
2:11:49
Speaker 1: might have had in 24, but there are plenty of
2:11:54
Speaker 1: Republican strategists who think it will. And it's part of the–
2:11:59
Speaker 1: basically there are three issues that you hear Republicans using
2:12:02
Speaker 1: in their closing argument, not counting Donald Trump and all
2:12:05
Speaker 1: of his various bizarreness. One is, hey, don't you remember
2:12:09
Speaker 1: what the border looked like when Biden was president? Two
2:12:12
Speaker 1: was law and order issues, weak on crime, that sort
2:12:15
Speaker 1: of thing. And three is being supportive of surgeries for
2:12:23
Speaker 1: trans kids, et cetera. So they certainly see it as
2:12:27
Speaker 1: a potent political tool. And I think as long as
2:12:31
Speaker 1: it's viewed that way, this is probably the line you're
2:12:34
Speaker 1: going to see a lot of of purple and red
2:12:37
Speaker 1: state Democrats draw. But I guess what I would say
2:12:43
Speaker 1: to you, Kelly, is don't underestimate the American public. All right,
2:12:47
Speaker 1: next question comes from James P. Longtime listener, first time
2:12:50
Speaker 1: caller from New York's 18th congressional district. Having worked in
2:12:54
Speaker 1: sports and media communications for nearly 20 years with some
2:12:57
Speaker 1: of the industry's biggest names, I'm always curious about the
2:12:59
Speaker 1: PR side of politics, especially with so many politicians seem
2:13:03
Speaker 1: to receive terrible messaging advice. Do you think political gaffes
2:13:06
Speaker 1: and poor messaging are more a reflection of the candidates themselves,
2:13:10
Speaker 1: or are their communications teams filled with yes-men and yes-women
2:13:14
Speaker 1: more interested in writing coattails than offering honest advice? P.S.,
2:13:18
Speaker 1: big Pat Ryan fan here and hoping there are more
2:13:20
Speaker 1: like him in the pipeline.
2:13:21
Speaker 2: James P., I agree.
2:13:23
Speaker 1: Pat Ryan, I think it's funny how Democrats from a
2:13:29
Speaker 1: military background have become some of their more effective swing
2:13:32
Speaker 1: state candidates. And I think Pat Ryan is emblematic of that.
2:13:39
Speaker 1: I think the reason why it seems so off, it's
2:13:42
Speaker 1: because the politicians themselves usually insist on being their own messengers.
2:13:47
Speaker 1: A lot of times, politicians don't listen to PR consultants
2:13:50
Speaker 1: very much. We've come accustomed, and I think I probably
2:13:56
Speaker 1: have done this too often, where I'll blame advisors when ultimately,
2:14:00
Speaker 1: Nine times out of 10, it's the candidate. Nine times
2:14:03
Speaker 1: out of 10, it's the principal who thinks they're their
2:14:07
Speaker 1: own best messenger, who thinks they know this, and who
2:14:10
Speaker 1: will say, my name's on the ballot. I'm the one
2:14:13
Speaker 1: who figured out how to do this, not you. Have
2:14:16
Speaker 1: you ever run for office? I've heard plenty of politicians.
2:14:20
Speaker 1: I've had them say it to me when I've questioned
2:14:22
Speaker 1: certain decisions they've made. So no, I don't think it's
2:14:26
Speaker 1: a case where there's a whole bunch of, in fact,
2:14:28
Speaker 1: some of the smartest political crisis PR people I know
2:14:32
Speaker 1: all started in politics. And you know, the candidates who
2:14:38
Speaker 1: do listen to advice, they're the ones who usually have
2:14:42
Speaker 1: more success. So no, I don't think it really is.
2:14:47
Speaker 1: It really is more of a candidate issue than anything else.
2:14:50
Speaker 1: And I would say you, you, you show me the, the,
2:14:54
Speaker 1: the bad moment and I'll show you a candidate who
2:14:59
Speaker 1: ignored smart advice, and instead decided to do something other.
2:15:06
Speaker 2: Adam B.
2:15:07
Speaker 1: West Virginia's second congressional district chimes in. If Republicans suffer
2:15:10
Speaker 1: the midterm shellacking that polls are suggesting, how much could
2:15:13
Speaker 1: that hurt J.D. Vance's chances of securing the 2028 presidential nomination?
2:15:18
Speaker 1: Could such a defeat also give Republicans an opportunity to
2:15:21
Speaker 1: make a clean break from Trumpism and take the party
2:15:23
Speaker 1: in a different direction? Most sincerely, Adam B., Well, look,
2:15:28
Speaker 1: I've not thought that this is going to be that
2:15:33
Speaker 1: somehow things get so bad it costs Vance that much.
2:15:37
Speaker 1: That said, I think his behavior in Ohio these last
2:15:42
Speaker 1: two weeks, his decision to support Ramaswamy's disgusting exploitation of
2:15:52
Speaker 1: childhood trauma.
2:15:56
Speaker 2: Isn't going to go away. very quickly.
2:15:59
Speaker 1: If Ohio is the debacle for Republicans that I expect
2:16:02
Speaker 1: it to be, thanks to the Ramaswamy, you know, I
2:16:09
Speaker 1: don't know what else to call it, you know, decision
2:16:11
Speaker 1: to go pond scum.
2:16:15
Speaker 2: I think it could leave a mark, right? This is
2:16:17
Speaker 2: his home state. I think J.D.
2:16:20
Speaker 1: Vance is just a weak potential nominee. I said this,
2:16:25
Speaker 1: I say, I mean, Look at his own electoral track record.
2:16:29
Speaker 1: He's run for office once and he underperformed.
2:16:34
Speaker 2: Bigly.
2:16:35
Speaker 1: He had to get bailed out of his own. He
2:16:36
Speaker 1: wasn't going to win that primary until Peter Thiel and
2:16:39
Speaker 1: Donald Trump came in at the last minute and rescued
2:16:42
Speaker 1: him both financially and with the endorsement. He had to
2:16:46
Speaker 1: be dragged across the finish line in that campaign against Ryan.
2:16:50
Speaker 2: So Tim Ryan. We had Pat Ryan on the brain.
2:16:57
Speaker 2: I was worried about to say Pat Ryan, which is
2:16:58
Speaker 2: why I just said Ryan.
2:16:59
Speaker 1: So it's Tim Ryan. My apologies there. So I just
2:17:03
Speaker 1: don't think he's that good of a political athlete.
2:17:06
Speaker 3: Right.
2:17:06
Speaker 2: I think.
2:17:07
Speaker 1: And so I do think he's vulnerable to a dynamic
2:17:13
Speaker 1: challenger in the Republican Party. But, you know, look, George H.W. Bush,
2:17:19
Speaker 1: when he was running in 87 and 88, was a
2:17:21
Speaker 1: pretty at the time thought of as a weak vice president.
2:17:24
Speaker 1: he had two really strong opponents, Jack Kemp and Bob Dole,
2:17:29
Speaker 1: and neither one of them could prevent the sitting vice president.
2:17:32
Speaker 1: Because at the end of the day, as unpopular as
2:17:37
Speaker 1: a second term president might be with swing voters, they're
2:17:40
Speaker 1: usually still pretty popular with the base. And as long
2:17:43
Speaker 1: as Donald Trump says he's for J.D.
2:17:45
Speaker 2: Vance, then J.D. Vance is going to be fine.
2:17:47
Speaker 1: I think the real wild card, and I don't think the,
2:17:50
Speaker 1: I think there are plenty of Republicans that would like
2:17:52
Speaker 1: to turn the page on Trump, but as long as
2:17:54
Speaker 1: Trump's sitting in the Oval Office, they can't. He's not
2:17:56
Speaker 1: going to let them. He's made that crystal clear. He
2:17:59
Speaker 1: won't even let any Republicans diss, other than Susan Collins,
2:18:03
Speaker 1: who's he really allowing to distance themselves when they need
2:18:07
Speaker 1: to distance themselves, right? Byron Donald's tried to erased Trump
2:18:11
Speaker 1: images off his website and Trump lost his shit. And
2:18:14
Speaker 1: Donald's had to immediately apologize and showcase a photo on
2:18:19
Speaker 1: social media. I know that's not the version of events
2:18:22
Speaker 1: they want to say like, oh, no, that isn't. It's
2:18:25
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. And somebody warned Donald's, you just don't
2:18:28
Speaker 1: want to pick a fight with him on this. He'll
2:18:30
Speaker 1: he'll screw you, which is true. So I just don't
2:18:34
Speaker 1: think the party can move on from Trump while Trump
2:18:37
Speaker 1: sits in that Oval Office. So I don't think the
2:18:39
Speaker 1: Republican Party is going to be able to move on
2:18:42
Speaker 1: until Trump is no longer head of the party. And
2:18:48
Speaker 1: at least through the 2028 election, it's still Donald Trump's
2:18:52
Speaker 1: Republican Party. But I think Vance is quite weak. And
2:18:58
Speaker 1: there is– and this is– this, if he shows weakness–
2:19:03
Speaker 1: Trump could easily bail on him. And if Trump bails
2:19:06
Speaker 1: on him, Bantz is toast.
2:19:12
Speaker 2: Bill S.
2:19:12
Speaker 1: Newburgh, Oregon, writes, Hey, I'm heartened by your disgust with
2:19:17
Speaker 1: Ramaswamy's latest ad campaign, which echoes how many of us
2:19:21
Speaker 1: have felt since November 2016. I know you're reluctant to
2:19:23
Speaker 1: blame voters. Yeah, I don't blame voters. Voters are always right.
2:19:26
Speaker 1: Even when you think they're wrong, they're right. But I digress.
2:19:29
Speaker 1: But anyway, but if he wins despite what I see
2:19:32
Speaker 1: as an attempt to smear a victim, how should we
2:19:35
Speaker 1: think about fellow citizens who are willing to overlook that?
2:19:38
Speaker 1: What troubles me most is that millions of Americans see
2:19:42
Speaker 1: Trump and Ramaswamy as the best people to lead us
2:19:44
Speaker 1: despite their character concerns. How do we rebuild trust in
2:19:49
Speaker 1: our fellow voters? when it feels like some aren't just
2:19:53
Speaker 1: overlooking bad behavior, but celebrating it. Go Brew Crew and
2:19:57
Speaker 1: the U from Oregon's Fightin' Six.
2:19:59
Speaker 2: Thanks, Bill S. Well, Bill, I'm just, here's the thing.
2:20:03
Speaker 1: I don't want to entertain this question yet because I
2:20:05
Speaker 1: actually have a tad more faith in the voters. But
2:20:09
Speaker 1: just remember, it's never, I think you have to stop
2:20:13
Speaker 1: hoping that it's an 80-20 response. It's going to be
2:20:16
Speaker 1: a 53-47 response. Remember what Ohio's never done. Elected a
2:20:25
Speaker 1: woman governor. They've had a woman governor, but she assumed office.
2:20:29
Speaker 1: They've never elected a woman governor. It's a state that's
2:20:34
Speaker 1: been trending Republican, and she's a Democrat. She was the
2:20:38
Speaker 1: face of the COVID response, which we know in and
2:20:41
Speaker 1: itself can be polarizing. She wins with 52, 53, or 54%
2:20:46
Speaker 1: of the vote. It's enormously impressive. The point is, is
2:20:50
Speaker 1: that in a democracy, when you get 52, 53, 54%,
2:20:59
Speaker 1: celebrate it. Don't lament that a near majority wanted to
2:21:06
Speaker 1: go the other way.
2:21:09
Speaker 2: I hear you.
2:21:10
Speaker 1: I will be absolutely, look, if somehow this is seen
2:21:15
Speaker 1: as working, then yeah. I will lose some faith, but
2:21:24
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to lose faith in that. I always
2:21:26
Speaker 1: believe voters eventually get it right. They just don't always
2:21:30
Speaker 1: do it at the speed with which you and I
2:21:31
Speaker 1: wish they would. But I really think lived experience matters here.
2:21:37
Speaker 1: So let's see what happens on Tuesday night.
2:21:40
Speaker 3: All right.
2:21:41
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Emma from Melbourne.
2:21:46
Speaker 2: I'm curious if it's Melbourne, Australia or Melbourne, Florida. But anyway.
2:21:50
Speaker 1: What's behind the shocking Islamophobia and bigotry we're seeing from Republicans?
2:21:54
Speaker 1: From Tim Scott's reported training anti-remark to Roger Marshall's comments
2:21:59
Speaker 1: about Islam's, Trump's, and Mike Rogers' rhetoric about Al-Sayed and
2:22:03
Speaker 1: the constant attacks on Somalis and Ilhan Omar. Does this
2:22:07
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric actually resonate with voters? And why do
2:22:09
Speaker 1: Democrats in the media seem to let so much of
2:22:12
Speaker 1: it slide if similar language were directed at Jewish or
2:22:17
Speaker 1: Catholic Americans? narrator jumps in here and says they have.
2:22:21
Speaker 1: Wouldn't the backlash be enormous? Thanks, Emma, for Melbourne, where
2:22:25
Speaker 1: we got state elections next month. So this is Melbourne, Australia,
2:22:28
Speaker 1: on a Saturday with barbecues, rank choice voting and paper ballots.
2:22:31
Speaker 2: Imagine that.
2:22:32
Speaker 1: By the way, I love the idea that elections should
2:22:34
Speaker 1: be parties, should be celebrations, should be festivals. I'm a
2:22:39
Speaker 1: huge believer in that. I'd love to see, you know,
2:22:42
Speaker 1: make it the last, you know, make it a four
2:22:44
Speaker 1: day event, you know, Our election season should be a
2:22:48
Speaker 1: celebration of our freedom, celebration of our democracy. There should
2:22:51
Speaker 1: be a county fair, all these things. I love that
2:22:54
Speaker 1: concept of essentially, you know, celebrating Election Day, not dreading
2:22:59
Speaker 1: Election Day. Look, Donald Trump has poisoned this period. OK,
2:23:07
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Donald Trump invented Islamophobia, but Donald Trump
2:23:11
Speaker 1: mainstreamed Islamophobia. Guess who fought to try to stop Islamophobia?
2:23:15
Speaker 1: You had both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. They
2:23:19
Speaker 1: did not go out of their way to exploit it.
2:23:29
Speaker 1: They both in their own ways tried to remind people
2:23:34
Speaker 1: that America is an idea and there is no litmus test,
2:23:37
Speaker 1: there is no religious test, et cetera. You know, one
2:23:41
Speaker 1: of the most important The most impactful things any political
2:23:48
Speaker 1: leader in this country has said on a television show
2:23:52
Speaker 1: for me.
2:23:54
Speaker 2: Was Colin Powell.
2:23:55
Speaker 1: He was on Meet the Press in, I want to say,
2:23:59
Speaker 1: probably September of 2008. And he went on Meet the Press.
2:24:05
Speaker 1: It was being moderated by Tom Brokaw at the time.
2:24:07
Speaker 1: And he went on Meet the Press to announce that
2:24:11
Speaker 1: he was going to vote for Barack Obama. And it
2:24:13
Speaker 1: was a big deal. First time at the time, it
2:24:15
Speaker 1: was the first time he had ever supported a Democrat.
2:24:19
Speaker 1: But he brought up something more important. He said, look,
2:24:23
Speaker 1: you know, and it was at the time there were
2:24:24
Speaker 1: all these rumors that Obama, you know, that the right
2:24:27
Speaker 1: was trying to, like, he's a secret Muslim and this
2:24:29
Speaker 1: or that.
2:24:31
Speaker 2: And Colin Powell said something.
2:24:34
Speaker 1: That I thought deserves a lot more attention and is
2:24:39
Speaker 1: a reminder all the time. It was sort of like, Look,
2:24:41
Speaker 1: Barack Obama is not a Muslim, but so what if
2:24:43
Speaker 1: he was? In the United States of America, there is
2:24:47
Speaker 1: no religious test. And General Powell went on to say
2:24:55
Speaker 1: how much it bothered him that the idea that Obama
2:25:00
Speaker 1: was Muslim itself was somehow the problem.
2:25:04
Speaker 3: Right?
2:25:04
Speaker 2: So what if he is?
2:25:06
Speaker 1: Now, look, you can look at the possibility of America
2:25:10
Speaker 1: electing Abdul El-Sayed. to the United States Senate and say, boy,
2:25:14
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Islamophobia, or you can say, he's
2:25:17
Speaker 1: got a pretty good chance of winning. And we're about
2:25:19
Speaker 1: to elect, one of our states is gonna elect, a
2:25:21
Speaker 1: swing state no less, is gonna be comfortable sending a
2:25:25
Speaker 1: Muslim American to the United States Senate. But you ask,
2:25:33
Speaker 1: why is this? Our culture is shaped by our presidents.
2:25:41
Speaker 1: It always has been. And Donald Trump– and this is why–
2:25:45
Speaker 1: this is where I do agree with Steve Bannon on
2:25:49
Speaker 1: one concept, which is culture is downstream from politics or
2:25:52
Speaker 1: politics is downstream from culture, depending on how you want.
2:25:57
Speaker 2: To form that sentence. But essentially, you could argue it's
2:26:01
Speaker 2: one and the same.
2:26:04
Speaker 1: But our presidents do sort of give a green light
2:26:10
Speaker 1: or put up a red light on certain things. And
2:26:13
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has given a permission slip for bigotry. He's
2:26:17
Speaker 1: given a permission slip for grievance. I mean, you know,
2:26:22
Speaker 1: this is a separate, but, you know, look at how
2:26:27
Speaker 1: all these, a variety of sort of MAGA men have
2:26:32
Speaker 1: been behaving and how snowflakey they are, right? Whether it's
2:26:37
Speaker 1: a Pete Hanks, Donald Trump, right? Donald Trump has sort
2:26:40
Speaker 1: of created this market, you know, Pat McAfee like lost
2:26:44
Speaker 1: his shit because somebody made fun of him on an
2:26:47
Speaker 1: Instagram video. And he like suddenly got all, you know, snowflakey.
2:26:53
Speaker 1: And it's just like, you know, first of all, it's like, man,
2:26:56
Speaker 1: you're getting high in your own supply, dude. Get your
2:26:58
Speaker 1: head out of your ass. You know, there are going
2:27:00
Speaker 1: to be people that love you and people that hate you.
2:27:02
Speaker 1: Just suck it up and deal with it. You're enjoying
2:27:04
Speaker 1: your fame. Your fame is your fame. And when you
2:27:07
Speaker 1: when you're a well-known person, I promise you, you're not
2:27:09
Speaker 1: going to have a 100 percent approval rating.
2:27:11
Speaker 2: Deal with it. It's called life. This is what it is.
2:27:15
Speaker 1: You're making a ton of money because there are enough
2:27:18
Speaker 1: people that do like you. But this weird.
2:27:22
Speaker 2: Sort of.
2:27:24
Speaker 1: To be whiny all the time that somebody might criticize
2:27:28
Speaker 1: you and yet at the same time proclaim that you're
2:27:30
Speaker 1: a tough guy. But I think about it, it's like,
2:27:34
Speaker 1: where did these supposedly strong men get so weak? And
2:27:39
Speaker 1: I realized, it's Donald Trump.
2:27:41
Speaker 2: Right.
2:27:41
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is sort of he is the poster child
2:27:44
Speaker 1: for fake toughness, but actually really weak.
2:27:48
Speaker 2: Right.
2:27:49
Speaker 1: But he's also greenlit bigotry. He's greenlit, you know, this
2:27:53
Speaker 1: bullying nature of our politics. And It's the language of
2:27:58
Speaker 1: our politics right now.
2:27:59
Speaker 2: It shouldn't be. But it's going to take.
2:28:03
Speaker 1: Another president setting a different tone and a different culture.
2:28:08
Speaker 1: And I know you think, well, how come others? Look,
2:28:10
Speaker 1: plenty of people deride this. Plenty of people criticize this. But,
2:28:18
Speaker 1: you know, there's only so many times you can say
2:28:20
Speaker 1: the sky is falling before people stop listening to you
2:28:23
Speaker 1: that the sky is falling. So I think these days,
2:28:26
Speaker 1: many of us pick our spots.
2:28:28
Speaker 2: You know, I'm careful. I try to I try not to.
2:28:34
Speaker 2: I do.
2:28:34
Speaker 1: I try to focus on the most egregious. You know,
2:28:38
Speaker 1: the ones that I know there's going to be a
2:28:40
Speaker 1: 70 percent approval to remind people that, you know, this
2:28:44
Speaker 1: is not who we are.
2:28:46
Speaker 2: It's embarrassing.
2:28:49
Speaker 1: The picture of America that the world has, thanks to
2:28:51
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. He has humiliated so many of us.
2:28:54
Speaker 2: He has embarrassed us.
2:28:59
Speaker 1: There's a reason why many people have bought Maple Leaf
2:29:01
Speaker 1: backpacks so they can go to Europe and not have
2:29:05
Speaker 1: to feel like they have to defend, have to sit
2:29:09
Speaker 1: here and answer for Donald Trump. But you're asking, where
2:29:13
Speaker 1: did all this come from?
2:29:14
Speaker 2: It came from him.
2:29:15
Speaker 1: He's created this. He gave the permission slip. Plenty of
2:29:20
Speaker 1: people didn't behave this way before Donald Trump because they
2:29:22
Speaker 1: kind of knew they'd be shamed out of it. Donald
2:29:26
Speaker 1: Trump has introduced this idea that you should be able
2:29:31
Speaker 1: to get away with it. Look, we overcorrected in one
2:29:35
Speaker 1: way on political correctness, and now we're overcorrecting the other way.
2:29:40
Speaker 1: We're kind of like the bowling ball that bounces back
2:29:43
Speaker 1: and forth between the guardrails. I think we'll eventually hit
2:29:45
Speaker 1: the center pin. but we need a new recalibration and
2:29:50
Speaker 1: it isn't going to change until Trump leaves. But I
2:29:53
Speaker 1: do think, for instance, what, you know, it's like what
2:29:57
Speaker 1: we've seen with the immigration debate in this country. We
2:30:03
Speaker 1: didn't want chaos at the border and we don't want
2:30:06
Speaker 1: people profiled and harshly treated. Right. And so I think
2:30:13
Speaker 1: lived experience is telling the voters that, you know, they don't,
2:30:17
Speaker 1: you know, They're tired of living this way. So I
2:30:22
Speaker 1: do think we're, you know, it goes back to, you know,
2:30:26
Speaker 1: a quote that I used to attribute to Churchill that
2:30:29
Speaker 1: I know is not a Churchill quote. But it is,
2:30:33
Speaker 1: you can always count on the Americans to do the
2:30:35
Speaker 1: right thing after they've exhausted every other path. Some other
2:30:39
Speaker 1: diplomat who said it. But I feel like this is
2:30:42
Speaker 1: one of those cases where the quote is appropriate. Our
2:30:54
Speaker 1: next question comes from Vince, Maryland's eighth district.
2:30:57
Speaker 2: That's Montgomery County.
2:30:59
Speaker 1: I've been following you since your television debut on NBC
2:31:02
Speaker 1: years ago. And I once heard that Tim Russert was
2:31:04
Speaker 1: the one who advocated for you to become a regular
2:31:06
Speaker 1: fixture on TV.
2:31:07
Speaker 2: Is that true?
2:31:08
Speaker 1: And what do you remember about his influence on your career?
2:31:11
Speaker 1: Election night is always exciting and your coverage is consistently great,
2:31:14
Speaker 1: but it's also a reminder of how much I miss
2:31:16
Speaker 1: a giant like Tim Russert.
2:31:17
Speaker 2: Thanks. Hey, Vince, I appreciate the question.
2:31:19
Speaker 1: I actually did a fun little interview, long form interview
2:31:25
Speaker 1: with over on LinkedIn where I go through a lot
2:31:28
Speaker 1: of this. Actually, it was it was with Andrew Murphitt
2:31:32
Speaker 1: over at LinkedIn. So take a look at it.
2:31:35
Speaker 2: I actually there's some detail in there that you might
2:31:37
Speaker 2: find interesting.
2:31:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:31:40
Speaker 3: No.
2:31:40
Speaker 1: When Tim, you know, Tim was looking for a new
2:31:42
Speaker 1: political director at NBC. Um, and he said, he was
2:31:46
Speaker 1: just sort of, he knew that the, uh, as the
2:31:48
Speaker 1: 08 campaign was beginning, um, he said, well, look, I'm,
2:31:52
Speaker 1: I can't do every cable hit, you know? Um, but
2:31:56
Speaker 1: I was mostly being hired for off-air stuff to help,
2:31:59
Speaker 1: you know, help with the coverage of the campaign. We, uh,
2:32:02
Speaker 1: NBC that year was, you know, it was the second, uh,
2:32:05
Speaker 1: cycle that they were doing embeds. Uh, and the political
2:32:09
Speaker 1: director was managing, uh, was to manage that program as well.
2:32:12
Speaker 1: And I had actually been working with another news organization
2:32:15
Speaker 1: that was partnering with NBC at the time with the
2:32:18
Speaker 1: embed program. But yeah, you know, I'll never forget when
2:32:23
Speaker 1: I accepted the job. I first turned it down because
2:32:32
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed, I was editor-in-chief of the hotline and
2:32:35
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of helping with a massive
2:32:40
Speaker 1: redesign and re-imagination of the Atlantic. The Atlantic, you know
2:32:45
Speaker 1: and see today. At the time, I was in the
2:32:50
Speaker 1: factory there. We were helping to reimagine how you could
2:32:54
Speaker 1: take an incredible magazine with incredible history and reimagine it
2:32:59
Speaker 1: for the 21st century. And I thought that was the
2:33:03
Speaker 1: path I was on. I was not really sort of
2:33:05
Speaker 1: thinking of a TV career for.
2:33:07
Speaker 2: What it's worth.
2:33:09
Speaker 1: And I accepted the job on February 10th, 2007. Why
2:33:14
Speaker 1: do I remember I accepted the job on February 10th, 2007?
2:33:17
Speaker 1: Because that was the day Barack Obama announced his candidacy
2:33:20
Speaker 1: for president. And I remember I called him up.
2:33:22
Speaker 2: It was a Saturday. And I and we had we
2:33:26
Speaker 2: had agreed to talk.
2:33:28
Speaker 1: That day where I was, you know, where we were
2:33:30
Speaker 1: going to. We had one more back and forth on salary,
2:33:33
Speaker 1: if you really want to know.
2:33:34
Speaker 2: Some of the details.
2:33:37
Speaker 1: But I accepted on the phone and then we watched
2:33:39
Speaker 1: the speech together on the phone. That was my first
2:33:41
Speaker 1: sort of work interaction with Tim. And, you know, as
2:33:47
Speaker 1: I said, it was sort of like it was like
2:33:52
Speaker 1: I was being it was like he was the it's
2:33:54
Speaker 1: like we were at a buddy cop movie or whatever.
2:33:58
Speaker 1: And I was the new trainee and he was bringing
2:34:00
Speaker 1: in and he was taking me around on all his
2:34:02
Speaker 1: beats and stuff. And that's how I got to spend
2:34:05
Speaker 1: 18 months or about 15 months with him until he
2:34:07
Speaker 1: passed in June of 2008.
2:34:08
Speaker 2: He was a short time.
2:34:13
Speaker 1: But particularly the last six months, I really felt like
2:34:16
Speaker 1: we really got to know each other and I learned
2:34:18
Speaker 1: a lot from him. And yeah, his enthusiasm for elections.
2:34:22
Speaker 1: I mean, Super Tuesday night in 2008, I mean, that
2:34:28
Speaker 1: was a big night.
2:34:30
Speaker 2: For me. It was the first time I was on the.
2:34:33
Speaker 1: Network and I was in charge of the delegate count.
2:34:38
Speaker 1: And I went out on a limb and I said, hey,
2:34:40
Speaker 1: According to my math, Obama's going to win Super Tuesday
2:34:43
Speaker 1: on the delegate front. Hillary Clinton had won more states.
2:34:47
Speaker 1: We at NBC decided, who do you, you know, who
2:34:51
Speaker 1: quote unquote wins Super Tuesday? Well, the person with the
2:34:53
Speaker 1: most delegates. That was my argument. Tim agreed with that argument.
2:34:57
Speaker 1: We all, and we were the one network that basically
2:35:00
Speaker 1: said Obama won the night while the Clinton campaign was spinning.
2:35:03
Speaker 1: Other networks said, hey, we won more states. We won
2:35:06
Speaker 1: Super Tuesday, but you didn't win more delegates. and the
2:35:10
Speaker 1: name of the game is delegates. And my numbers held up.
2:35:15
Speaker 1: I was sort of like, you know, had my own
2:35:18
Speaker 1: little ass showing there, but the numbers held up. And
2:35:21
Speaker 1: I remember the night that he declared Clinton's candidacy over.
2:35:26
Speaker 1: It was the night of the Indiana and North Carolina primary.
2:35:30
Speaker 2: And it was.
2:35:30
Speaker 1: Basically the math that Mark Murray, who was my partner
2:35:33
Speaker 1: at the political unit, was the math Mark Murray and
2:35:36
Speaker 1: myself were doing. We said, hey, is the fact that,
2:35:41
Speaker 1: you know, Obama got close in Indiana, he didn't quite
2:35:43
Speaker 1: win Indiana, but it didn't matter. He'd won enough delegates
2:35:47
Speaker 1: both in Indiana and he'd won and he blew her
2:35:49
Speaker 1: out in North Carolina that the math was done. You know,
2:35:54
Speaker 1: the only way she could win the nomination is a
2:35:56
Speaker 1: bunch of superdelegates basically over decided to support her despite
2:36:01
Speaker 1: Obama's lead from delegates earned in primaries and caucuses, which
2:36:05
Speaker 1: we knew wasn't going to happen. And so, He went
2:36:09
Speaker 1: out there and declared it, declared her candidacy, you know, that, hey,
2:36:12
Speaker 1: she can't win.
2:36:13
Speaker 2: This is over.
2:36:15
Speaker 1: And when Tim Russert said it, it was a big deal.
2:36:18
Speaker 1: It was sort of the I remember it was blaring,
2:36:20
Speaker 1: you know, headline on the judge report drove it. Clinton
2:36:23
Speaker 1: campaign was very upset, but we were just reporting the math,
2:36:27
Speaker 1: pure and simple. It was not personal for a while.
2:36:30
Speaker 1: They took it personally, but I think they over time
2:36:32
Speaker 1: they realized the math was the math.
2:36:35
Speaker 2: But yeah.
2:36:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:36:38
Speaker 1: It was a short time, but it was an amazing
2:36:40
Speaker 1: 15 months being able to sort of ride shotgun with
2:36:46
Speaker 1: Sheriff Russert.
2:36:48
Speaker 2: All right. Last question for this episode.
2:36:51
Speaker 1: Matthew K., Rock Island. Hoping to get my second question
2:36:55
Speaker 1: on the air. How do you think Trump's foreign policy
2:36:57
Speaker 1: will change after the midterms, especially if his current approach
2:37:00
Speaker 1: towards Russia and Iran is partly driven by a desire
2:37:03
Speaker 1: to keep oil prices down before Election Day? With no
2:37:06
Speaker 1: reelection ahead and his foreign policy legacy on the line,
2:37:09
Speaker 1: will he take a tougher stance against Russia and pursue
2:37:11
Speaker 1: military action in Iran? Will he continue favoring appeasement and negotiations? Also,
2:37:17
Speaker 1: how will you be covering election night? I'd love to
2:37:18
Speaker 1: follow your analysis of the results.
2:37:20
Speaker 2: Roll in.
2:37:20
Speaker 1: Thanks again, Rock, for Mark and Matthew K.
2:37:23
Speaker 2: Well, Matthew K.
2:37:24
Speaker 1: we're doing an election night live stream. You can, it's myself,
2:37:28
Speaker 1: Decision Desk HQ, the Chuck Todd cast, Chris Saliza, on
2:37:33
Speaker 1: all of our YouTube streams, our X streams. So if
2:37:36
Speaker 1: you follow me on X or YouTube, it's going to
2:37:39
Speaker 1: be live streamed right there. You can watch our, and
2:37:41
Speaker 1: it's a serious production. I was just looking at the
2:37:44
Speaker 1: graphics that we're making. I mean, essentially we're doing a
2:37:47
Speaker 1: full-fledged competitive net, you know, if you, you know, sort
2:37:53
Speaker 1: of what some of you might say is an old
2:37:55
Speaker 1: school network coverage, except we're, you know, we're, we're doing
2:37:59
Speaker 1: it for streaming and we're going to have, we're, we're
2:38:02
Speaker 1: the official, we're the official broadcast for DD HQs, decision
2:38:10
Speaker 1: desk HQs projections. And in fact, That's the name of
2:38:15
Speaker 1: the program. We are joint owners of the program. We're
2:38:19
Speaker 1: calling it The Projection. And yes, we don't plan on
2:38:24
Speaker 1: only having one episode on election night, but we'll be
2:38:27
Speaker 1: starting at 5 p.m.
2:38:28
Speaker 2: Eastern.
2:38:28
Speaker 1: You can find us on all your, right? X, Substack, YouTube,
2:38:33
Speaker 1: whether my feed, Decision Desk HQ's feed, DDHQ's feed, Chris
2:38:36
Speaker 1: Eliza's feeds, you name it. It'll be in all these places, Facebook, wherever.
2:38:40
Speaker 1: You tell us where you want to watch this live stream.
2:38:42
Speaker 1: I promise you.
2:38:43
Speaker 2: We'll be able to get.
2:38:45
Speaker 1: Get you that. So we will have continuous coverage, 5 p.m.
2:38:49
Speaker 1: to at least 3 a.m. Hopefully, if we've called both
2:38:53
Speaker 1: the House and the Senate by then, you know, I
2:38:57
Speaker 1: need about a two-hour nap, but then I'll be doing
2:39:00
Speaker 1: post-election analysis throughout that Wednesday and Thursday. So that's where
2:39:03
Speaker 1: you can find me, myself, Chris Eliza, DDHQ's analysis.
2:39:07
Speaker 2: We'll be doing all of this. Election Night livestream only.
2:39:11
Speaker 2: It is.
2:39:14
Speaker 1: It will be different and more unique, but it will
2:39:16
Speaker 1: be data driven. And I think you'll enjoy it. As
2:39:22
Speaker 1: for what Trump might do, I appreciate your optimism that
2:39:29
Speaker 1: somehow he might get tougher on Russia. He's never been
2:39:32
Speaker 1: able to find himself get tougher on Russia. I think
2:39:38
Speaker 1: it's an open question whether he decides to, you know,
2:39:41
Speaker 1: most presidents are in those final two years, once they've
2:39:45
Speaker 1: lost any ability to influence Congress, usually do turn their
2:39:49
Speaker 1: attention overseas. But he's got to figure out how to
2:39:51
Speaker 1: resolve this Iran war. I don't know what he plans
2:39:55
Speaker 1: to do here with Russia and Ukraine. I think if
2:39:59
Speaker 1: he loses, he's going to continue to blame Ukraine somehow
2:40:04
Speaker 1: for this, even though instead of his decision to go to.
2:40:07
Speaker 2: War in Iran.
2:40:09
Speaker 1: I do think he still thinks there's an opportunity for
2:40:14
Speaker 1: expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, recognizing Israel.
2:40:19
Speaker 1: I think that is a feather in his cap that
2:40:20
Speaker 1: he would like to have. I do assume he turns
2:40:24
Speaker 1: his attention to Cuba, which he, I think, will think
2:40:27
Speaker 1: is easy. I'm not sure it's going to be as
2:40:30
Speaker 1: easy as he thinks it is, but I could imagine that.
2:40:34
Speaker 1: But he'll be looking for what I would call the
2:40:36
Speaker 1: easy foreign policy wins, right? Things that he thinks might
2:40:43
Speaker 1: give him some sort of legacy.
2:40:46
Speaker 2: Cuba would be a big one, I think, in his head.
2:40:51
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel would be a big one. Those
2:40:56
Speaker 1: are the type of things I think he focuses on.
2:40:59
Speaker 1: He's not going to somehow get tougher on Russia. There's
2:41:02
Speaker 1: no evidence that he ever has. And I don't think
2:41:05
Speaker 1: there's any evidence that he ever will. And my concern
2:41:08
Speaker 1: is I think that Russia is going to try to
2:41:11
Speaker 1: test the resolve of NATO and see what happens if
2:41:14
Speaker 1: they encroach on a NATO country. How will the United
2:41:18
Speaker 1: States led by Donald Trump react? So I fear a
2:41:22
Speaker 1: couple of foreign policy crises that he doesn't respond to
2:41:27
Speaker 1: in the way any other American president would respond to.
2:41:30
Speaker 1: 2027 is also the year that supposedly China was ready
2:41:35
Speaker 1: to find a way to bring Taiwan into its orbit. Well,
2:41:39
Speaker 1: what does that look Are we prepared for that? So, no,
2:41:44
Speaker 1: I worry that the next two years are going to
2:41:46
Speaker 1: bring a lot of instability in the foreign affairs space.
2:41:50
Speaker 1: I do think Trump's going to try to find some
2:41:53
Speaker 1: legacy achievements, Cuba and Saudi Arabia being the two that
2:41:56
Speaker 1: I pointed out. But I'm a little bearish on how
2:42:00
Speaker 1: things are going to go, because I think that if
2:42:03
Speaker 1: you're Putin and Xi, you see that Trump's days are numbered.
2:42:07
Speaker 1: Trump's been a huge boon for Putin and Xi, right?
2:42:10
Speaker 2: I mean, this has been the.
2:42:11
Speaker 1: Best best 10 years China's had around the world. So
2:42:18
Speaker 1: I think they're going to try to extract any and Putin.
2:42:22
Speaker 3: Right.
2:42:22
Speaker 1: He's been able to weaken NATO in his head, weaken
2:42:24
Speaker 1: the Western alliance. So, you know, my concern is that
2:42:29
Speaker 1: the next two years are filled with attempts by Putin
2:42:32
Speaker 1: and Xi to sort of take advantage of Trump, you know,
2:42:37
Speaker 1: for every second that he's still the American president before.
2:42:41
Speaker 1: somebody who's a bit more pro-American becomes the American president,
2:42:44
Speaker 1: regardless of party. I can't imagine that we will ever
2:42:48
Speaker 1: have a president who is more, that is somehow more pro-Russia,
2:42:52
Speaker 1: more pro-authoritarian than this guy. So on that upbeat note,
2:43:00
Speaker 1: I will leave it there.
2:43:02
Speaker 2: All right.
2:43:05
Speaker 1: Coming Thursday, I got a big deep dive preview of
2:43:08
Speaker 1: state legislatures and where governorships are going and the battle
2:43:11
Speaker 1: for the states with my longtime and old colleague of mine,
2:43:14
Speaker 1: good friend Reed Wilson. That's coming in the Thursday episode.
2:43:17
Speaker 1: So we'll have all those updates coming there. Plus, of course,
2:43:21
Speaker 1: if it's Thursday, it's a big college football preview. Halloween, Saturday,
2:43:26
Speaker 1: that is scaring the bejesus out of me when it
2:43:29
Speaker 1: comes to college football. It's look ahead Saturday for my
2:43:32
Speaker 1: beloved Miami Hurricanes. So I am to say that I'm
2:43:35
Speaker 1: nervous about playing a night game. On Halloween night, the
2:43:40
Speaker 1: week before the biggest game of the year. Yeah, I'm
2:43:44
Speaker 1: already getting a little nervous about that. So with that,
2:43:47
Speaker 1: I'll stick a fork in this episode and I'll see
2:43:49
Speaker 1: you in 24 hours. Thanks for listening. And until we
2:43:51
Speaker 1: upload again.