Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - MAGA Influencers Go To War With Each Other + Epstein Gets The Headlines… The Destruction At HHS SHOULD

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - MAGA Influencers Go To War With Each Other + Epstein Gets The Headlines… The Destruction At HHS SHOULD · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: that code. Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd. Welcome to another
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Podcast. Let's just say, in my
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: personal sports fandom, I experienced the old wide world of sports,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: full of victory, agne, agony of defeat, all in the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: same day. The thrill of Miami's victory. I will tell
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: you more at the U during my college football update
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and get into the details. My picks, my my nit picks.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I have plenty of them, particularly in the Miami offense.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: But there are some observations on that game that if
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: you weren't there, you don't fully appreciate the game, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: you're probably are stupidly believing Ohio State's gonna blow Miami
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: out because that ain't gonna happen that, I will guarantee you,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: but I will explain when I get to that. But
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: of course the agony of defeat was the most bizarre.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: If you know, when you do all these, you know,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the dumbest thing that has been added to televised sports
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: is the so and so and so team as a
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: ninety seven percent chance to win. Well, I mean, you know,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: to quote Hans Solo, don't ever give me the odds,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: you know, type of thing, because that is not why
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: any of us watch sports. All right. Yes, there's a
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: handful of gamblers that may watch sports just to make
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: sure they have bet the odds correctly, but most of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: the time we watch sports for the improbable, not the probable,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and so those stats are sort of weirdly annoying. All
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: that set the fact that the Bears were down ten
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: at the two minute warning, had to make a field
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: goal and swirling win recovering on sidekick, and then they
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: stupidly don't go for two on the time on the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: touchdown and play for overtime. It worked out for them,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: but it was one of the more shocking decisions because
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: it kept the Packers back into that game. But it's
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: just at some point that except I am reminded of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: myself that regular season NFL, no matter how important that
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: game is, pales in comparison to college football. You have
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: this kind of when you care this much about a
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: college football team, and anybody who's a college football fanatic,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: remember fanas short for fanatic, You probably know what I mean.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But I will save the college football as I always promise.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: For the end of the podcast, let me give you
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the full rundown of what we got here and what
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: we got all week. This is a holiday week. Instead
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: of three downloads this week, there will be two, although
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: there'll actually be a third download, but it'll be sort
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of a flashback, if you will. An interview I did
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: six a few months ago that we think is especially
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: relevant now. That will come later this week, but I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: will have two new episodes this week. I also have
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: my podcast time Machine, and we're going to We're not
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: going to go that far back. We're going to go
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: back to the very early nineties. And I'll just give
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: you one word clue. It's pretty easy one if you're
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of a certain age, peristroke, and we'll leave it at that.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I'll do a little Q and A. Let me get
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: into a few things here, obviously. Look, the most dominant
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: story of the weekend is for sort of one set
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of political junkies. And I say one set because I
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: don't count my I believe I'm a political junkie. I
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: don't count myself consumed with the Epstein store. I feel
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: like I know the broad strokes of the Epstein story.
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  Speaker 1: There's no doubt there might be details that embarrass individuals,
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  Speaker 1: but I think we know the broad strokes. What are
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  Speaker 1: the broad strokes? Rich guy gets access because he's rich
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  Speaker 1: and has a plane. And too many famous people who
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  Speaker 1: want free rides, too many politicians who want free plane
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  Speaker 1: rides and big donor checks. Look the other way at
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: shitty character people. Okay, bottom line we've seen this is
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: this is, this goes back forever. If you've got enough money,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: you can essentially bribe your way out of bad character traits.
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  Speaker 1: That's really what we have here. Here's a rich guy
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  Speaker 1: who used his wealth to pretend he had powerful friends
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  Speaker 1: and famous celebrity people. And why did these celebrities and
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  Speaker 1: powerful people get suckered into Epstein's world Because they're consumed
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: with their own celebrity and they enjoyed sort of the
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  Speaker 1: trappings of wealth, the trappings of exclusivity. And I'll keep
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: going back free private plane rides. So it is not
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  Speaker 1: to me, it is not. I'm not here to excuse
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  Speaker 1: anybody that is connected to Jeffrey Epstein. Actually just the opposite.
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  Speaker 1: To me, it's sort of like, great, it's an MRI.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to find out who's high character, who's low character.
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  Speaker 1: And for me, your explanation. You know, at the end
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  Speaker 1: of the day, you wanted to hang out with the
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  Speaker 1: rich people, you wanted to be in the celebrity. Anybody
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  Speaker 1: can be suckered into it. It is a lot of
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  Speaker 1: fun been to some of these exclusive VIP opportunities at
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: big events and supporting events. Don't get me wrong, it's
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: pretty cool and all of us I think, whenever we've
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: had that brief moment of access behind the velvet rope,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: it's really cool to be behind the velvet rope. And
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: then sometimes you get behind the velvet rope and you think,
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  Speaker 1: why is there a velvet rope here? Should there even
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: be one at all? But anyway, I am digressing, But
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: what are we learning from the Epstein files. Well, if
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  Speaker 1: you run the government, you get to you know, and
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: you decide you're going to follow the law. And it
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: looks like the the Justice Department is, you know, going
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: to follow the law on their own pace. They didn't
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  Speaker 1: nothing in the laws said what order they had to
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  Speaker 1: release the files, and they're taking advantage of this. Am
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: I surprised? I don't think any of us should be
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: surprised that the first tranch of files would be which
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: was going to get the most attention, would have the
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: least amount of Trump in it and the most amount
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  Speaker 1: of Bill Clinton in it. Right this is you know,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: it's like being shocked that there's game going on. And
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: if you need to know what that reference is, just
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: go watch the movie Costablanca. And by the way, I
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: don't care how old you are, go watch the movie Costablanca.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: First of all, it'll help you understand half the references
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: of your parents and grandparents if you've never seen the movie.
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  Speaker 1: But second, it's a really good movie. It's still a
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: really good movie. It holds up pretty well. Yes, I'm
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: not going to get into the parts about personal relationships,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: but the sort of the larger concept of the film,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it holds up pretty well. So go watch it so
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: you can understand some of these references. But the point
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: is is that I don't think we should be surprised
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  Speaker 1: that the Trump Justice Department is if they feel as
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: if they will eventually release all the stuff that includes Trump,
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  Speaker 1: it will be probably in as low of a profile
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: day as you can possibly have, And so I suspect
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: will continue to see the as whatever early stuff they
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  Speaker 1: can that they will frontload anything that embarrasses Democrats and
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: backload anything that embarrasses Trump or any allies of Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 1: I say allies of Donald Trump, because remember they'll be
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  Speaker 1: Republicans early on in this but if they're not allies
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  Speaker 1: of Trump, they'll have no problem trying to embarrass those folks.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: And of course you do have the Democrats on the
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: House Oversight Committee who've been doing their own version of
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  Speaker 1: trickling out sort of information that is, you know, emphasizes
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  Speaker 1: stuff that makes Trump or people that Democrats don't like
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  Speaker 1: look bad, like we saw with the David Brooks situation.
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  Speaker 1: David Brooks gave an explanation saying it was the only
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  Speaker 1: time he'd ever attended event with Epstein at it didn't
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  Speaker 1: quite know. I think it's a plausible explanation. I think
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  Speaker 1: people you look at a track record over time, right,
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  Speaker 1: being in a room once with Jeffrey Epstein shouldn't be
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: an indidable defense. It's when you've consistently done it, when
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  Speaker 1: you knew that there were questions about him, when you
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: knew sort of as Donald to use the words of
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, he kind of likes them young. Yeah, it's
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: not as if this was a hidden secret. But again,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: people look the other way because he was rich and
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: he was offering them free playing rides. So I'm not
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: surprised that what we're seeing. You shouldn't be surprised. And
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: this is one of those stories that if you really
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: care about it, you're going to find something in this
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: release that reinforces your view of all of it. And
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: if you've noticed I didn't say, which that's the point.
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  Speaker 1: It will simply reinforce your view of all of it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: The question is what are the facts. There will be
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: individual people whose character I think correctly gets essentially demoted
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: in polite society by what we see and what we hear.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I am sorry, Here's what I hope the real fallout
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: is from this. Can we make character matter again? Do
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: we now see that character is destiny? That character does count?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Because you know here we are obsessing over the Epstein
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: story sort of collectively is sort of in the in
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the more populist media world. And I say populous, I
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: mean that the influencer culture and this or that, and
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: certainly mainstream media and the and the fight for clicks
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and the in the gaming of algorithmic media. Epstein is
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: this sort of you know, sticky story that people want
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: to get to trust. How do I know it's I
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: always know it? How do I know it's sticky? When
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I'm with family and people who are who I don't
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: consider huge political junkies ask me about certain stories. This
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: is one that they're asking me about. By the way,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: speaking of that, I had a friend of mine the
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: other day during the during the earlier part of the week,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: ask me, this is an old old friend of mine.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Did Trump really pave over the rose garden? And he
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: is not, And this is my friend is not a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: huge political junkie. I mean, he's got a great life,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: runs it he's been sort of runs a car dealership
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and just lives a different life, doesn't is it consumed
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: by politics? Right? But is smart and follows current events
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and sort of pays attention, don't get me wrong, but
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't sit here and pay attention to some of these things.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's like the rose garden thing. You know,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: some of you that are probably listening to this podcast,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Oh I knew he paved over the rose guard. Yes,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: because you're kind of into it, right, you've chosen to
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: subscribe to my podcast. You're kind of into politics. But
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: it was a reminder of how much of this sort
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of ridiculous stuff Trump has done that people haven't noticed
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: or perhaps didn't really believe. Right, you think, no way,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: he paved over the rose garden. Oh, yes, he paved
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: over the rose garden. He turned he turned out the
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: area outside the Oval office into some sort of nineteen
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: fifties era Florida patio. I think the only thing missing
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: is a tarazzo and uh and the umbrellas. But other
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: than that, that's what he's done. You know. Look, I've
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: grown up in Florida, spending a lot of time in Texas.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I love me a good patio bar, don't get me wrong,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: But I don't think anybody wanted the White House turned
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: into a patio bar, which is kind of what he
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: turned the Rose Garden into. But it was such an
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: incredible reminder about what doesn't penetrate, what doesn't break through.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: So Epstein breaks through. You know what didn't break through
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: this week was uh, was a story about public health.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So I had, as you know, a few months ago,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I was very focused almost week to week about all
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the damage that I believed Robert F. Kennedy Junior was
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: doing to the nation's health, putting our children in harm's way.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: And now we have sort of, we do have a
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: pretty good report that puts it to it. And Peter Odez,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: who is one of the world's leading epandemiologists, he is
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: somebody that was a frequent expert I used during our
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: COVID coverage back in the NBC days. Just he's a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: scientist first Okay, Now he's an outspoken scientist. He really
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: bothers him when you have people not using science in
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: order to persuade or gas like or mislead the public.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And one of his tweets caught my eye where he
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: talked about so the HHETS put out a put out
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: a tweet if you will, that said, let me quote
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: it accurately. So HHS puts out a tweet that says
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: you are biggest Maha wins this year. And Peter Otez said,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: biggest Maha wins. Hey measles returned after twenty five years,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: whooping cough is back. The National Pandemic Preparedness canceled along
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: with mRNA technology. America's children are now at risk for
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: chronic appatitis and liver cancer, a swing and a miss
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: on autism, and the CDC is in tatters. Now, if
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: you're a proponent of Bobby Kennedy here Junior on this stuff,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: if you are a vaccine skeptic, you may think Peter
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Opez is the devil, and you may think, oh, he
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: is spinning and he is this or that. But the
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: fact of the matter is what he said is backed
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: up by facts, and what HHS has done is not.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the extraordinarily alarming numbers. And this
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: to me is nine thousand times more important than the
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Epstein files. And I'm not trying to belittle the victims here,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, what this administration
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: is doing to our children in the area of public
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: health should alarm folks. So we have now two thousand
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: confirmed cases of measles in the United States. Okay, we're
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: on the verge of losing our measles free status that
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: we've held since two thousand and it's not just whooping call,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: which is a brutal respiratory infection, and those of us
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: at a certain age we never thought we were going
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: to get whooping cough. Why because we had a vaccine
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: for it. We have a vaccine for it, Okay, and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: it is back with a vengeance. Now, HHS will say, well,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: this is the reason that measles and whooping cough are
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: back is because the public doesn't trust public health or
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the CDC. Yes, because of what you've done to public
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: health in the CDC. Bobby Kennedy Judy said, well, the
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: public doesn't trust it. Yeah, because somebody who's completely uninformed,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: who speaking of character is destiny pretty much the lowest
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: character person you could put in office. Given his personal mean,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: just think about the uncomfortable, gross and disgusting back and
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: force between him and his digital paramour, Olivia Newsy and
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: that whole. Look. I did not want to get into
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the Liz of Newsy business, but Kennedy sort of roll
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: in it. This is, you know, a creepy seventy year
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: old guy who had his own really disturbing, disturbing relationship
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: with one of his wives that ended in her suicide.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: This is a such a low character individual and he's
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: doing all of this. Look, the point is is that
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: this stuff it is. I bring it up because it
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: is a reminder why we should We should care about
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the character of people that are in public offices, and
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: character should matter a lot. So, yes, there's a crisis
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of trust when it comes to public health, all due
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: to one man and his crusader crazy and vengeance on
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the public health entity. And it is Robert Kennedy Junior.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: The fact that all of this is a whooping coffin
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: measles and we didn't have this at all. This is
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: made Look, there is one thing that collectively, both the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: scientific community and those in the MAHA are giving them
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: a little bit of credit. And that is on the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: issue of food dies. Okay. Doctor Otes and other mainstream
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: medical people agree that the US has been a bit
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of a wild West when it comes to allowing certain
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: food dies in our foods compared to Europe. Europe much more,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: much stricter on this stuff, much more careful on this stuff.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: By the way, I just noticed, I'm obsessed with Cheerios.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: They have a healthier version of fruit loops, essentially gluten
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: free fruit loops, if you will. And you could see
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: in the summer they had food dyed. Now they don't.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: It's paler. They quote fruity. It doesn't pop out of
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: the bowl. But that's okay, tastes great. I like it.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: It's one of my guilty pleasures at night. It's a
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: version of deserved for me. Having good life insurance is
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: incredibly important. I know from personal experience. I was sixty
• 19:00
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• 20:31
  Speaker 1: especially if you've got a growing family. But while you
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: can give them credit for that, the fact that they
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: have not used take the issue of autism. Saying that
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the science doesn't prove that vaccines don't cause autism. Okay,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: but what science proves that it could be. There's been
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: no study that is said vaccines trigger autism. So because
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: you've yet to find a study that does it and doesn't,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it isn't scientifically proven yet that it.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: You see, this is how gaslighting works, right, They sort
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: of makes your mind go, wait what, wait what the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: fact of matters? No scientific study backs up the idea
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: that vaccines cause autism, and so then they change it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: But no scientific study backs up the idea that there's
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: an open question about it. There's only an open question
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: about it from people who just refuse to look at
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the science. The scientific answers have said one thing and
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: then getting rid of mRNA technology. And this goes back
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: to what was poor messaging on the COVID vaccine. In fact,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I just did a media hit the other day for
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a for a smaller news organization that was asking me, well,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: didn't the media contribute to the public's mistru distrust of
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: public health? You know, I don't think the person is wrong.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: There was a there were too many people who touted
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the vaccine as a cure for COVID, out to the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: vaccine as a shield for COVID. What the vaccine was,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and what, for instance, what I always emphasized at my
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: coverage of it, what every expert I would be very
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: careful in particular about asking the following question, Does this
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: prevent you from getting COVID? No? But it does is
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it increases the likelihood that it is you get over
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: COVID faster, you're less likely to be hospitalized, which means
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: you're less likely to pass it on. It never said
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: it was a zero, And so what happened was a
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: few people sort of in characterizing it, well, do you
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: know this is going to go away? This is the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: way to shield yourself. Look, it was a protection, right,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: It's a ninety eight point six percent type of protection, right,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't one hundred percent. It wasn't going to
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: prevent you from getting COVID. It was going to prevent
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: you from having COVID kill you. There is a huge difference.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It's more like the flu vaccine and how it was,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: how it was communicated, how it was communicated between experts,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: those of us in the media, back to you interpret it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And so what happened is you had people who exploited
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the and say, Aha, you said there'd be no more
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: COVID cases and I still got COVID. This vaccine doesn't work,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and that stuff went like wildfire. And this is what
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: is really sort of given mRNA vaccine's a bad name
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: when it is a technological marvel. And if we cut
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: why would we cut funding? Why would you cut funding
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: on a cutting edge technology. I understand if you want
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: to increase scrutiny of the research that comes out of this,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: but why would you cut the funding and allow other
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: countries were the United States of America. We're the first
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: country in first world? Why would we intentionally put ourselves
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: behind on science intentionally? Put again, nobody is saying you
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: just take it as you go. If you want to
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: increase scrutiny of mRNA vaccines, be my guest. Okay, that
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: is helpful to everybody, but you just cut funding is
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: cutting off your nose's spece. It's almost like you don't
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: want to hear of the great breakthroughs that mRNA vaccines
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: might be able to create. So it is it is
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: when you see stories like what we see, we're really
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: one of the most devastating parts of the Trump administration
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: this year, all right, has been in the area of
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: public health. And yet this is sort of like it's
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: always kind of a sidebar conversation. It is never and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I think part of it is you've got plenty of
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: people who are uncomfortable with the technical aspects of the
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: debate don't want to get caught. Trust me, I'm always
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: constantly trying to make sure I'm saying these things correctly.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: So I think people hesitate to jump into this debate
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: too much because of the technical aspect of it. They
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: don't want to say something that makes them look stupid.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: But the fact is, let's just look at the results.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And ever since Bobby Kennedy Junior essentially became the face
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: of public health, fewer people are getting the visils vaccine.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: We're now going to have fewer people getting a hepatitis
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: B vaccine. Fewer people are getting a whooping cop vaccine.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: He is mainstreaming fringe ideas, fringe beliefs, fringe thoughts about
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: science that are just not backed up by actual facts
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and figures, and it is putting kids in harm's way.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And ultimately, I still believe this is a suburban nightmare.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I think this is an underrated political issue, and I
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: think it's one. I think it's one that Republicans, particularly
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in Capitol Hill, ought to be a bit more mindful
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: of speaking of things that I think are a weird moment.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And I wanted to talk about this a minute because
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: speaking like the Epstein Files, there's another story that I
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: just don't quite care about or get my arms about,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: but I feel like I have to care about it
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: because I cover politics, and that is this dust up
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: within the world of Magan between Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Barry Wise, Megan Kelly, all of this. You know, if
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, but if you don't, you don't.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: And I consider myself somebody who really doesn't know. But
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I have to know, so I do my best to
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: follow it pretty closely to try to understand it. But
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: what you're really seeing. And I think the best is
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: sort of what we're watching because a lot of elected
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Republicans care a lot about what Tucker Carlson is saying,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: what Candace Owens is saying, or what Megan Kelly is saying,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: or some folks that are really kind of fringe people
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: to sort of normal Americans, right, the folks that are
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: not obsessed with politics every day. In fact, these are
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: people that have no name. ID was sort of the
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: broad swath of normal voters, right. Maybe they've heard of
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, but Candace Owens, who's that? Right? They may
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: remember Megan Kelly from mainstream media days, Ben Shapiro, Oh,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: they've seen some things about him, you know, maybe Barry
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Wise now, But it's sort of these aren't sort of
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: well known figures to sort of a broad swath of
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the middle. I know this because unlike the story like Epstein,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: which did penetrate, you know, this story really hasn't penetrated.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: But I've had a few people try to like, what
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: is this mess? Can you explain this? Candace owns and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. And I think the best way to
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: think about it is that the MAGA influencer in fighting
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: that we're seeing right now is actually very similar to
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: sort of the relationship between the Democratic Party, say twenty
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: fourteen to twenty twenty two, to the groups, where it
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: felt like the party was more captured by the groups.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: So if you look at sort of twenty fourteen to
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two Democrats went through, you might call it
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: a great awokening. Right, the woke movement started to take off,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and it appears to be a mirror image of what
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: we're seeing in maga world right now, and especially in Republicans. Right,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: they're very striking when you compare the groups on the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: left to the influencers on the right and how they've
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: hijacked the conversation away from the average voter and sort
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: of the same thing that helped Republicans paint Democrats as
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: sort of, man, they're consumed with the groups, they don't
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: really care about you. Well, we're now seeing Republicans are
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: consumed with their influencers. Are they really care about you? Right? So,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: from in twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two, the Power
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Center and the Democratic Party were these groups, right, They
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: were the non profits or the activists, NGOs, the academic departments,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you know, always coming up, you know, with a new
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: way to described, to describe a group of people as
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: as victims of something. Well, in the right, that power
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: center is independent podcasters, it's X personalities, Twitter personalities, alternative
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: media mobiles, right, like Megan calit And what were these
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: groups trying to do. On the left, Well, they were
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: creating purity tests. Right, if you didn't use the latest terminology, right,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Latin X right, that was a creation of the groups,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: didn't come from the actual Latino community. But if you
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: didn't use it, well you weren't you weren't awoke, you
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: were problematic. Well, on the right, it's sort of more
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the loyalty test is if you don't believe the latest
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory. You know, candae Owe's has wanted something to
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: do with Egyptian airplanes stalking the Kirks in some form
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: or another. I mean the point is the more I articulated,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the crazier it sounds. And you're like, these people have influence, Yeah,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: they have influence. If you're not at least buying or
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: just asking questions on the latest conspiracy theory, then you're
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: part of the controlled opposition. You're bought and paid for. Right,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: could be by the Jews, right, you're bought and paid
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: for by the pharmaceutical companies. You're bought and paid for
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: by the deep state. But that's sort of how that's
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: in the same way. You know, these groups sort of
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: shamed Democrats and what they were doing. Oh you're you know,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: you're you're you're not woke, you don't really care. It's
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a similar type of shaming. So what happened, Well, for
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: about ten years, Democratic politicians were petrified of their own
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: activist base. They were petrified of pissing off the groups
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: so that they would back off certain policy solutions because well,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the groups won't like that one, even if it was
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: going to be more popular or actually have a better
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: chance of passing. Well, now what you have with these
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: crazy maga influencers. Republican politicians are terrified of their influencer base,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and it leads them to entertain some fringe theories that
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: they shouldn't be entertaining and what normal voters find bizarre. So,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting the right is currently late to
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the party, I guess you could say in terms of
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: institutional capture, right, because for a long time, the Republican
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Party was a top down organization, the RNC, Fox News,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: maybe Heritage Foundation A. The structures completely change, right, there's
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: no more referee on the right anymore. In the Obama era,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the democratic referees were the activists, some of them were
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: in the media, some of them weren't. On the right.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Fox News was basically the referee. Now, if Fox says
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: something that the base doesn't like, the base just switches
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: to crazy right Tucker Carlson's network, Candice owns YouTube, you know,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: maybe oan or something like that, And there's sort of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: an incentive for like to find new weird ways to
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: capture the imaginations right. So democratic groups were incentivized to
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: find new forms of systemic oppression to stay relevant. Well,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: right wing influencers are incentivized to find new conspiracies or
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: hidden truth to keep their subscribers paying. If you just
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: talk about marginal tax rates, you're not going to get
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: five million views. But if you talk about assassination plots
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and Egyptian airplanes following mega influencers around, hey, guess what
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: you might be able to get five million people. And
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: then try to explain this though to the normal voters
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: right who haven't woke on the left or red pilled
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: on the right. So it did seem as if for
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: a decade, way too many Democratic politicians essentially subcontracted their brain,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: if you will, to activist groups. Instead of talking to
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: a plumber in Ohio, right, they talked to the head
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: of a racial justice NGO in DC to find out
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: quote what voters wanted. Well, on the right, Republican politicians
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: are subcontracting their brain to influencers, and instead of talking
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: to a small business owner in Florida, they look at
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: what Charlie Kirker Nick Funte's is. You know, what's something
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: that about Charlie Kirk or Erica Kirk or Nick Fluntes
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: is on X to decide what their base may care about.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: They've convinced themselves that the act somehow, their actual political
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: base cares about what some of these fringe figures think.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: You know, and there may be a handful of grasstops,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: but this gets to the feedback loop, right, And the
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: fact is the activists know how to make the politicians
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: seem as if they're hearing from the public when they're
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: really not. They're hearing from organized campaigns, either algorithms or
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: paid or or some sort of paid campaign of sorts,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And I have to be honest, there's a whole vacuum
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: here now. And I think in the same way that
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: I think that, I think the democratic attachment to the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: groups is breaking. It's not broken yet, but I think
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: they're getting they're sobering up here, and you're seeing more
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Democrats behave a lot more independently, think a little more independently.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we see that right right now.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: On the right, they seemed to still be a bit consumed.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: What does Trump think a bit consumed? What do these
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: influencers think first rather than actually just talking to their
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: voters first on that side, And in that sense, it's
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: a form of audience capture, right And it's pretty clear
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I think Democrats for about a decade were captured by
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: this wolk left. You saw it in the governance of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the first half of the Biden four years, particularly with
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: how they handled the border that was done by groups,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: that was done so they didn't offend the groups rather
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: than just solving the problem and moving on. They eventually
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: figured out that the groups were wrong about this, but
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: they didn't start that process on the border until about
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: the last year eighteen months of the Biden presidency At
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: this point, I think the rights captured by this crazy right.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: They're sort of so consumed, they've sort of forgotten the plot,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: and that's the only reason to pay any attention to
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: what appears to be some sort of circle circular firing
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: squad here. I don't even know who's who stands where
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: anymore between your Candae Sowans, your Tucker Carlsons Berry wise
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: as you're making Kelly, you know, the shots across the bars.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: There's accusations of anti Semitism here. I think there's some
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: real issues there, don't get me wrong, But it's a
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: It's what it really is. It's just a battle for attention.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: It's a battle for clicks. So to me, the main
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: players that I'm all talking about here, I don't think
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: any of them are very honest. I think they just
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: simply care about their grift. They care about exploiting the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: moment for maximum financial gain that they're part of an
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: independent podcasting network that they've developed because they're refugees from
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: what was a more mainstream version of media that they
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: were a part of. Think Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly or
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: they just want this relevance and they don't like it
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: that Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson from mainstream media are
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: taken there and they're going, oh yeah, well we can
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: go crazier than candae oms. So it's a I do
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: think it's it's the only reason to pay attention to
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: it is that it is I think, really putting Republicans,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of the average elected Republican. They they
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: are they're way too consumed with what they're input. This
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: is exactly like what happened on the left. The left
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: got so consumed about the group's think they stopped worrying
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: about what voters think. Well, we now have elected Republicans
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: so consumed about what their influencers think that they've actually
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: forgotten about the voters. And I think that this is
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: something that could, you know, could end up becoming a yet,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: especially when when the economy is not good, especially when
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: there's job displacement with the I. Instead of focusing on
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: those problems, they've been obsessed with this, right you can
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: it's it goes back to the infamous ad that worked
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: against Kamala Harris. She's for they them, he's for you. Well,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: in this case, these republic elected Republicans seem to care
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: more about they them on their influencer side than the
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: rest of us in the actual voting electric. All right,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: with that, I will sneak in a break. As you see,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't even get to the whole Kennedy Center business.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why, because you know, this is
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: this is Trump's brilliance with his buffoonery, which is you know,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: if you if you sort of over index and complain
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: too much, how you put his name on a building
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and it's on an arts building or it's on the
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: institute a piece, is this really a big deal? You know,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: don't take your eye off the ball with the voters.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Look you. But at the same time, the guy's more
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: obsessed with manufacturing a legacy that is going to get
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: a erased the second he dies, rather than worrying about
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: lowering the cost of groceries for you. So look, I
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: happen to think all this, everything that's been done, all
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: of that, none of it is good politics, ran and
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: all of it is just going to accumulate. It is
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: it is one of those things. This is incremental and
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to just go beat up the same metaphor
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I use quite a bit. It is is this is
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: happening slowly until it ends up happening quickly. And we're
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: seeing this slow build of a movement that is about
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: to come is going. When it crashes, it's going to
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: crash hard, and it's going to seem like it happened quickly.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: But we're in the middle of seeing a lot of it.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Whether it's the influencers becoming their own version of a
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: woke right and basically making elected Republicans way out of
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: touch with the average person. Right, that's happening. You've got
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Trump so consumed with his own ego that he has
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: stopped worrying of being a populist for the people that
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: he said were the forgotten men and women of America.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: He apparently has forgotten them when he thinks about life
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: at the Kennedy Center. All of this is accumulating, and
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: it may look slow, and it's a drip here and
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: a drip there, and then all of a sudden, it's
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: going to be an avalanche. Do you hate hangovers, Well,
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• 40:58
  Speaker 1: go into the podcast time Machine for our little history
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: lesson of the week, and we are going back to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety one. For a reminder. How
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: do I pick my historical deep dives for the toodcast
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: time Machine. I just look at the week we are
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: in and look back in history for essentially this week
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: in history, but instead of calling it this week in history,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: you do the podcast time Machine. So we're going back
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: to December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety one. It's pretty momentous
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: day in world history. It was the day that the
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union formally dissolved, officially ending the Cold War. On
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: December twenty seventh, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as leader of said
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union, and so we thought the end of history.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: But it's actually a pretty good reminder, and it's actually
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: go dovetails pretty well with the time machine episode. We
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: did a couple of weeks ago on the fall of
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire, and how you know, some things are
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: still not resolved. Okay, And in the fall of the
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire and World War One, we haven't resolved War
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: War one. We resolved World War two more than we've
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: resolved World War One. Well, the collapse of the Soviet Union,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: I would argue, is still unresolved. Right it is? It
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: is too I could it is too soon to declare
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: whether it was an historical positive or an historical negative.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Why do I say that, Well, let me let's go
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: back down. Let's go into the rabbit hole that is
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the collapse of the Soviet Union. So it's late ninety
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: and the Soviet flag comes down over the Kremlin. The
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Cold War ended, not with a bang, not with a war,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: but simply with a resignation, right for Mikhail Gorbachev, and
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: we all exhaled because for the first time in nearly
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: half a century, Americans, we're going to go into a
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: new year without a superpower rival staring us down. No
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: nuclear brinksmanship, no ideological stand up, no Berlin Wall. I
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: mean I had, by the way, I had matchbox cars
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: that were made in West Germany. Okay, So for me,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: my fifty three years on this planet, this is still
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: a monumental and unbelievable event, especially when you're raised one
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: way and all of a sudden everything is new. But
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: all of this felt final, right, It felt resolved. It
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: felt like history chose a winner. Francis Fukuyama famously even
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: called it the end of history. We'll get into that
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: actually in my time machine segment here. But as it
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: turns out, we were not witnessing the end of anything.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: It was essentially the end of the first act. It
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: was arguably the be the end of the beginning, as
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: they say, and I don't know if we're now at
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the end. So when the Subby Union
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: formally dissolved on December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety one, the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: dominant emotion in the West wasn't fear. It was confidence.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Communism had failed, market capitalism had won. Small l small
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: d liberal democracy stood alone. The liberal Democrats won, and
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: that confidence found its most famous intellectual expression in the
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: work of Francis Fuguiyama, whose argument popularized by the headline
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: that was the end of history. Sometimes headlines can warp
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a perception of very detailed analysis, but it did capture
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: the mood of the moment right there. Is no more
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: historical fight over authoritarianism or democracy. Democracy was the winner,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: And that is what he was arguing in that sense,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: is that there wasn't He was essentially saying, wasn't going
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: to be the end of history, maybe even the end
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: of authoritarianism, but there was no more legitimate ideological rival
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: to liberal democracy. But I did a lot of people
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: here instead. Hey, the hard part is over. The direction
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: of history is settled, and what comes next is just implementation.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: You know, once we introduce democracy fully in Russia, piece
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: of cake. Unfortunately, when you think that way, you stop
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: asking certain questions, right, And one of the biggest mistakes
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: I think that we made in the early nineteen nineties
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: was treating the Soviet Union like it was simply a
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: failed state, one country. It wasn't. This was a collapsed empire,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: allah the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Empire collapses don't
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: behave like regime changes. They actually behave like massive earthquakes. Right,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of aftershocks. Borders will move faster than
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: identities do. Institutions disappear faster than replacements can be built
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: because of this large structure. That's what we saw at
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: That's what we saw the fall of the Soviet Union,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: and the humiliation often outweighs the liberation. It's not like
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: people the humiliation of the Soviet Union or the former
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union, particularly Russia, didn't necessarily lead to euphoria there.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: And so that's why I think the better. You know,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: we sort of treated the fall of the Soviet Union
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: like the post war Germany or post war Japan, when
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: it really should have been treated like the Ottoman Empire.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Then again, we didn't do that one right either, right,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: so we had new nations with weak institutions of former
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Soviet republics. There was deep resentment in the former Imperial
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Corps because they'd lost their status. So, you know, Russians
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: weren't all enthusiastic about this, as we know, as Vladimir
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: Putin did this day professes, and we've had decades of
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: instability before anything that's resembled small de democratic normalcy which
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: has emerged. It's happened in a few places, but it's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: still fledgling, right. You know, it's better in your Estonias
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: and in your Polands, it's less so even in your
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Ukraine's not good and hungry certainly terrible in Russia. On
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire, the best you know post fall story
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: is Turkey, and that's not exactly a great story. And
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: in fact, it had its ups and downs. Even after
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: the fall of the empire. It took us, there was
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: a coup, there was another collapse. So it was this
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: we should have realized this was not going to be
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: a straight line and so, but it doesn't introduce the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: question why is democracy not taken in Russia? Right? And
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: there's always been this sense of well, if if a
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: society doesn't have a history of it, it's not going
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: to work that they You're going to have a few
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: sort of false starts, right, But the question is that
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the people or was it structural? And I think there's
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: a good argument here on structure. Look, there wasn't any
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: democratic muscle memory, right, that was a big problem. Okay,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: not easy. I think Poland had a better shot because
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: you had an opposition, right Lequalessa was the opposition, but
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: it was an opposition in some ways, it was like
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: a government in exile. So there was you could sort
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: of see how a democracy would work. There'd be a
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: debate and such. But you know, that's may explain why
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Poland worked in Russia didn't. The other part is there
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: was no tradition of independent courts in a lot of
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: these places, There was no free media, and they hadn't
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: had a history of peaceful transfers of power. You also
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: had an economic collapse that was taking place even as
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: they were trying. The West was trying to help with
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: so called reform. But what happened was the quick privatization
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: of the Soviet sort of public markets to the private
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: markets essentially created oligarchs, not a middle class. Right, Wealthy
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: people were just sort of created out of thin air,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: very similar to what we saw in the fall of
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire. Right, you get a king kingdom, you
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: get a kingdom, you don't get a king. This tribe here,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: this tribe there, Yes, this tribe here, this tribe here,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and no. Right, you run the oil company, will make
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: you wealthy and rich and will privatize it's all yours.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: You do this. Sorry, No, So what happened. You created
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: super wealthy people, but you never created a middle class.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: It didn't you know, actual free market capitalism. You know,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you sort of go from zero to wealthy and you
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: sort of earn your way up there. When you just
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: sort of get handed it, there's no appreciation, there's there's
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: just no you know, then you end up running it
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the way the only way you knew how it was
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: run when you were in charge as an apparatchic of
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: right the Communist Party. And so what happened the average Russian?
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: They thought, this is democracy a bunch of oligarchs. So
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: instead of one dictator threatening gulag, we now have all
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the these rich people who are just basically ripping off
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the government. So it's no wonder that they didn't fully
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: buy into democracy as much as say we did here
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: in the United States, which of course, oh by the way,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: took quite a bit of time before we became a
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: full democracy. Arguably it took us all the way. Our
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: founding was in seventeen seventy six. We didn't become a
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: full multi ethnic democracy until nineteen sixty five. It's an
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: important fact that we sometimes forget when we criticize the
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: inability of other countries to hurry up and have democracy
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: ten years after an authoritarian regime falls. So I think
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: you had millions of Russians who didn't believe that boy,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: these first few years of democracy don't look like we
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: don't look any good to them. They're just creating rich dictators.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: And then the third sort of issue was the imperial
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: identity didn't disappear, right, it just sort of and how
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: do we know this? See Vladimir Putin. And you also
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: had some weirdness because of the way the Soviet Union
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Russians went and moved to other places. So you had
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: this sort of a lot of ethnic Russians who woke
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: up suddenly outside of Russia's borders, right, former client states
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: suddenly became sovereign neighbors, and it just it just became
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: it sapped the identity. And I think we we didn't
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: fully appreciate that a dictator or somebody with some charisma
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: could quickly exploit that loss of identity, right, And we've
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: seen when you feel like you lose identity, you're more
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: likely to you know, not be a fan of democracy
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and instead follow a follow a charismatic leader who will
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: who will bring this back to you. So there were
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: a few mistakes I think in hindsight that we didn't
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: fully understand. Right. So the first choice that still defined
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: some of the debates that we're having today with the
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: fall of the Soviet Union. Was the expansion of NATO
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: in the nineties. It was Eastern European nations that wanted
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: it on NATO because they feared Russia essentially reformulating into
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: an empire again. So you had Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: you know, their long history is of a very hostile
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Russia as a neighbor, and they wanted some security, so
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: they wanted in on NATO. And you know, there was
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of people on the pro NATO side had thought, okay,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: bringing NATO, bringing these countries into NATO will lock in
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: democratic reforms in these countries, which for the most part
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: it actually did. Prevents a security vacuum, which in those
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and many of the countries it did, and reassure nations
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: that had been invaded before. But there were some warnings.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: George can Right, who was famous to be the architect
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: of the Cold War containment strategy, he'd argued that NATO
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: expansion would be a tragic mistake and he believed it
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: would humiliate Russia at its weakest moment, that that was
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: a mistake, it would strengthen nationalistic forces. Well we've seen
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: that that has been true, and it would redefine Russia
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: as a permanent outsider. Now, there were those pro NATO
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: expansionists who thought someday Russia might be a part of NATO,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: and a small, d democratic Russia would indeed be a
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: part of NATO. Hey, guess what, we're thirty years in.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Anything can happen, Okay, It's not as if any of
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: us thought that the former Yugoslavia would just disappear off
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: the face of the earth. Right, so these things happen.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: The other decision that came in the wake of the
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: fall of the Soviet Union was the decision by Ukraine
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: to give up its news which now I wonder how
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: many Ukrainians think this was a mistake. Ukraine possessed at
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: one time the world's third largest nuclear arsenal, but under
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: the Buddhapest member and Amid agreed that if they got
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: rid of essentially got rid of their nukes, they would
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: receive security assurances. But they didn't get binding guarantees. That
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: would be a problem, right, you want the guarantee on
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: the box, as my friend and Tommy Boy once said. So, look,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: we were all in favor of non proliferation. The fall
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union made everybody feel as if nuclear
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: confrontation was going away anyway. So the fear was loose nukes,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: and so the fear was, hey, consolidate, get his try
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to get these weapons out of these sort of smaller
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: former Russian Soviet republics, because you didn't want this stuff
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: ending up in the black market, ending up in the
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: hands of non state actors, etc. And it seemed to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: make sense on arguably now and till Ukraine was invaded
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: by Russia. Right that suddenly now seems like how it
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: was done Now, part of it was looks like Ukraine
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: didn't ask for enough in return. You give up nukes,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: NATO membership, hard stop Right, That ultimately, in hindsight, should
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: have been what the deal was. So what did the
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: end of history really cost us? Well, the biggest mistake
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: wasn't NATO expansion, It wasn't Ukraine's nuclear decision, It wasn't
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: even the economic shock. The mistake was assuming that direction
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: was destiny. We confused the absence of our ideological rival
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: with the presence of stability. We treated legitimacy as an inevitability,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: and we underestimated how long it takes societies not systems,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: but societies to change. Even Fukuyama himself acknowledged that nationalism, identity,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: and power politics never disappeared. They just simply went dormant.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: And that's what we've seen, right, We're seeing a rise
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: of nationalism that looks like we're repeating the nineteen twenties
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: and thirties here in this country and in Europe and
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: frankly around the world. A reminder this stuff is dormant.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: It never goes away. So it's a reminder that history
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: as a way, histories don't necessarily end, right, It's that
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: we just sort of stopped chronicling on him sometimes. And
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: this is where I want to leave you in that
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: this story isn't finished. We are very bad at recognizing
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: where we are in the story while we're living in it.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: Take France, they failed at democracy repeatedly before succeeding. Right,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: France was an empire at one point Napoleon et cetera.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Germany's first democratic experiment collapsed catastrophically. The weim are republic right,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: even the United States, we required a civil war, reconstruction,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: multiple interventions, a constitutional Memen to give women the right
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: to vote. Right, we had all sorts of things we
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: had to do before we could succeed as a democracy.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: So we're now thirty years, right, a little more than
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: thirty years after the collapse of the so Union. And
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: when you could look at it one way you said, boy,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: that was a failure. You could look at them another way.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: It's more successful than a failure. Or you could just
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: say to yourself, do you judge history on a single generation?
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Because what if the following happens? What if in another
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: thirty years this period looks like a painful but necessary transition.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: If in another thirty years Russia is a stable democracy
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: just like Germany. I mean, imagine asking Americans in nineteen
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: forty four and telling them that Germany would be this robust, small,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: de democratic leader of Europe in partnership with France in
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the UK right. It would have seemed unbelievable to Americans
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four, let alone Europeans right, and essentially
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: within two generations that is what happened, and were only
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: one generation removed the fall of the Soviet Union. So
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: it's likely we're in the middle of this and I'd
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: like to I hope to see the end of this story,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: but I don't think we've seen the end of this story.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: It's likely that my son and daughter will see the
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: end of this story. It's also possible we see a
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: re emergence of another empire before we have another another
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: shot at a democracy. Look, Germany went through this multiple times,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: France went through this multiple times, and again so did we.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: So it's thirty plus years. The fall of the Soviet
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: Union wasn't the end of history. It was literally a pivot.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: It was another It was a fork in the road,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: and we went down the democracy fork pretty strongly. We're
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: drifting right now. There is an authoritarian movement lurking out there,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: but we're also only thirty years removed. And if things
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: turn out to be in a more small, d democratic
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: place around the world in the next thirty to fifty years,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: than this period that we're all living in the moment
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: that feels very unstable will simply be seen as oh,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: just a couple of bumps in the road on the
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: way to what was the ultimate destiny. So there you go.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Here's your history lesson and the Toddcast time machine for
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: this week. There's a reason results matter more than promises,
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• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: So that let's get a few questions as Chuck. First
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: question comes from Randall from across the Atlantic. Any rights,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Hey check. I'm a butcher and barbecue enthusiast from Europe
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and your podcast is part of my weekly routine. Working
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: with food and people reminds me how much community, trust
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: and shared traditions matter, especially around Christmas. So my question is,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: what do you think is historically made the bond between
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: the US and Europe so strong? And why does it
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: feel like such a loss that we're letting that connection
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: fade at a time when the world needs more shared
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: values and good will. Greetings from Leiden in the Netherlands
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: from what may be your most loyal barbecue loving butcher
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: across the Atlantic. I love that, and I'd love to
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: be trying some Nordic barbecue. Go to northern Europe for barbecue.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: I love this. Who's to say you can't cook over
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a hot flame with some good sauces anywhere around this globe.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. Look, I think it's obvious why we have
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: why we should feel as if we have more shared values?
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Right it was we were are. The first rounds of
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: immigrants into this country came from Europe, right all over Europe.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: First Western Europe, then we sort of moved to Central Europe.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Then it became Eastern Europe, et cetera. Right, And in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: some ways, this whole thing has always moved around the globe.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: America's been at first a magnet for Europe. Then it
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: became a magnet, you know, all of the Americas were
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: a magnet for Europe, by the way, right, South America
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: magnet from from Western Europe as well. And then you know,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: it's sort of kept moving around the globe. And you
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: know in some ways that I think that's that's the
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: shortest answer. And there's some shared religious traditions, right, shared
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: you know, shared traditions in general. I just take the
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Christmas season in some ways, the Santa Claus, I believe
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: essentially was a Northern European phenomenon that migrated its way
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: around the globe and for all of us, and certainly
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: became another shared symbol, if you will, between Europe and America.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think that's you know, I think
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: that's why we have such a historical bond. I think
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: for those of us of a certain age, our parents
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: and grandparents, you know, the two big wars of the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: twentieth century are still are still sort of in our
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: recent memory. And by the way, and again there's sort
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: of dovetails with the history lesson, which is sometimes we
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: forget where we are, and that we sometimes forget that
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: the moment we're living in we may be just in
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: the middle of an historical epoch, if you will, right,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: we're in the middle of something that if we stuck
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: around another hundred years, it would be more understandable. I've
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: always said I can't wait to see what political scientists
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: and social scientists say about the era that I'm living
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: in now. Fifty years from now. Maybe I'll be coherent
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: and alive at one hundred and three, and it'll be
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: really interesting to read some of these political science journals
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: or have them embedded in a brain chip in my brain,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: whatever ai version of learning is that we use. Then,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: So I don't want to cop out, if you will,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: I don't want to use that as a cop out,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: but it is. It is a little bit I think
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: we I wonder the further away I mean, we're seeing
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: it now, right, the further away. World War two is
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: the further away. The Old War is the further away.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: These moments that did bound us, you know, where we
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: had to stick together to fight for our values, not
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: just for something, not just for something tangible like land
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: or resources. We're really fighting for our values, particularly with
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: World War Two. The further that gets away, the more
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: the more detached we get from it, and I think
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: actually the less likely we'll see, well, we'll see some
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: of those bonds you know, you see it now, right
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Once you get to third or fourth generation away from something,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: you know, you lose the bond to that and you
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: sort of your identity becomes more formed by the present
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: or by the very very recent path. So and I
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: wish I could felt like I fear I'm not giving
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: you the intellectually the substance of an argument that you
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: may been looking for to give you a deeper answer
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: in that. But that's I hope you see where I
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: was going there. I appreciate the question right now. Next
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: question comes from Brad. He said this, after FDR died,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Congress took action to limit future presidents to do terms.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: Do you think that after the Trump era, Congress may
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: limit the pardon power president since it was abused by
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Biden and Trump? And if so, what should the limits be? Specifically? Also,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: what was the reason the Founders allowed presidents to pardon
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: anyone without any checks? Did they not think of would
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: ever be abused like this? Brad Well. Brad I asked
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: this question in a podcast interview I did with a
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: historian for the woman who runs the George Washington Presidential Library.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: She's a founding Father's historian, written a bunch of books, terrific,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: terrific historian, Lindsay Shervinsky, doctor Lindsay Shervinsky, And I asked
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: her this very question. I said, I said, you know,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: putting the pardon power to the executive in the Constitution,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: how did a whole group of men who were essentially
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: trying to resist a monarchy allow a power that a
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: monarch had to be given to the executive, which the
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: whole point was not to allow him to become a king,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: But she gave him one king like power. And she
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: didn't have a good explanation other than you know her.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: She joked, there's probably somebody at the Constitutional Convention that
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: wanted to pardon and wanted to make sure that that
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: possibility existed. I completely agree with you, Rad. I think
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: that Allah. I think the FDR president is the perfect precedent, right,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: just like the Kennedy assassination gave us the twenty fifth Amendment.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: We're like, whoa, what would have happened if he had
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: survived but not been but not but had been incapacitated?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: And so look, there's nothing wrong with our constitution being
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: reactive to the moment. It's like, frankly, it's like how
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: the college football playoff. Oh well, maybe we should have
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: a different scenario in how we decide tiebreakers at the
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: acc right, you know, you sometimes have to see something
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: happen to go, oh, we missed that loophole. Let's close
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: that loophole. So you had the two term issue with FDR,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: you had the incapacitation issue after the Kennedy assassination that
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: gave us twenty fifth Amendment. And I absolutely believe we'll
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: have something here. Look, I think a lot of states
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: have pardon boards where there is where, you know, where
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: the governor has is sort of has has influenced, but
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: he's just a vote, He's not the vote. I think
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: you could argue that you could create a presidential pardon
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: board made up of you know, the chief Justice of
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, you know, you know, and the two
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: most senior justices including you know, not including the Chief Justice,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: maybe the the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: the House Judiciary committees chairmen and ranking members. You know,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: you just create an eight eight person pardon board, six
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: person pardon board of some sort and not have one
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: person be able to do these things. There's no doubt
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: this has been among and I think it's certainly it's
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: just been abused egregiously by Trump. Right, there's no and
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: I think and I think you're right. It is easy
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: to both sides. This to me a good way in
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: order to try to get bipartisan support for you simply,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: let's just not let another president have this type of
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the bottom line is norms or nothing. Right.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: It's like we've had norms with this naming business, right,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Trump putting his name on Kennedy Center. It turns out
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: there's no law, right, there's just been norms. Right, you know,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: we kind of thought as a society, boy, it's unseemly
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: to elect current elected officials have stuff named after him.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: By the way, the state of Florida actually doesn't allow
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: living doesn't allow anything in the state to be named
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: after a living person. But if a locality wants to
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: do it, or if a university wants to do it,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: There are some exceptions, but that's it's the state of Florida,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: and it all depends on how much influence the state has. So,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: for instance, there's some movement to rename the Palm Beach
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: Airport after Donald Trump. I got to think, Look, if
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: you've got to name something after him, sure make it
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: the Palm Beach Airport. Make him the you know, in
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: some ways he is emblematic of that Palm Beach crowd,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it together.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: I actually find it kind of appropriate if that were
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: the airport that was named after him. Right, he doesn't
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: belong on Miami's airport. He has no association with Miami
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: whatsoever in my opinion. But Palm Beach. Sure, He's always
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: wanted to be the king of Palm Beach after since
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: he couldn't be the King of Manhattan. So absolutely right,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: it's one of those in a weird way, it's perfectly fitting.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: But it turns out those were all norms, right, and
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: there's really it's really hard, you know. Yes, Congress is
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: the only one that can officially name the Kennedy Center.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: Congress is the only one that can officially decide what
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: these names are but you know, this is Trump sort
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: of pushing, basically daring Congress to use its authority if
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: it wants to, and things like this. But the bottom
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: line is, I think if the trump eras taught us
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: anything that if there's a norm that we think there's
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: eighty percent agreement on, make it the letter of the law.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Either make it a constitutional amendment or just simply pass
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: along Congress. But you can't just assume anything anymore because
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: of the temptation to exploit and the fact that we
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: have an American public that will not punish shamelessness the
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: way I think we all thought, right, the greatest power
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: Donald Trumpe has is his power not to feel shame,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: which is why we have to have certain laws on
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: the books and certain amendments in our constitution. All right,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: next question comes from It's a simple one, Christopher to
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Carla Long Island, New York. What do you think the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: GOP looks like if it loses in twenty twenty eight.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a little bit like
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: the Democrats Serica nineteen ninety. I think you will have
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: a huge fight between multiple wings. You will have the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: sort of more call it the traditional wing of the party,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: but you will have sort of I think you will
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: have a more open warfare between sort of the what
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: will feel like the aging mega populists, what is the
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the financial and business wing of the party, what I
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: refer to sometimes as the Chamber of Commerce wing. I
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: think a loss by Vance or somebody else sufficiently considered
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: MAGA will embolden I think the business wing of the
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: party to try to to try to reclaim some status,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: and you might see, you might even you might see
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: a resurgent sort of libertarian wing. Right. I'm curious to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: see Rand Paul's presidential campaign and how much traction it
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: can get. How big is that faction inside the Republican Party,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: and could he tear pieces of the quote mega coalition
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: away into something that's that's that. So, you know, it
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: may look a little bit like Democrats and nine he
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: may also look a little bit like what happened to
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: Democrats after sixty eight, right, and when in Vietnam and
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: it was you know, you had this, you know, suddenly
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: govern ends up the nominee and you had sort of
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: the southern conservative Democrats starting to totally splinter away. So
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's a combination of sort of the chaos
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: that the Democrats had going into the seventy two presidential campaign,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: so from seventy to seventy two, and the chaos the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: Democrats had after the eighty eight Ducacus debacle in sort
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: of nine that was represented by sort of the fight
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: between Bill proxy arguments and fights between Bill Clinton and
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson, something akin to that. I think it will
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: look less like the fight in fifty two between sort
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: of the Eisenhower wing and the Taft wing of the party.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: I think. I think in some ways that was the
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: previous debate that in this time the Taft wing won
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: the fight, which got represented by Trump. I think this
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: one it will be a fight to even just what
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: is conservative right. It'll be a I hope it's an
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: I hope it's an intellectual debate rather than a personality
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: or influencer debate. I think it could be. I think,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: what kind of debate does it end up being right?
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Is it one defined by cult of personality or one
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: defined by actual ideological disagreement? And that that to me
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: is what I wouldn't I don't. That's an unknown here,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: and until we knew that part of it, that will
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: shape what the debate itself looks like all right. Last
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: question comes from David S. Fort Worth, Texas. Hey, Chuck,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: big fan of the podcast. I was surprised and delighted
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: discover your meet the Press era Tops trading cards while
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: searching for merch. Oh yes, Alan and Ginter twenty fourteen.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: My friend anyway, because I picked up a Chuck Todd
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: relic cart on eBay. That's cool, I thought, my I
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: have a friend from high school who swores hespot. All
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: of them that almost put together. I gave them a
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: tie tops a tie to cut up. And so there's
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: a couple of like very rare items. You can get
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: a relic of my a red tie, So don't trust me.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: I did you know there's nothing lamer than getting a
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: relic card that's just like a piece of white or
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: gray jersey. I made sure to give a red tie
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: form my relic card. And then there's some you know,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: number to ten I think autographed cards still that are
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: out there. They can get a little premium on that anyway.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: He says this as a fellow sports card collector, I'd
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: love to hear about your experience working with TOPS. Also
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: curious how you see the hobby today, does it still
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: feel like collecting or has it crossed into regulated gambling. Man,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: we're gamifying. We're gamblifying everything, aren't We were gamblifying politics.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: We're gambled. We're taking sports to a whole new level. Yes,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: there's some In fact, I fully, I fully confess to
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: viewing some of my sports card speculating. I don't call
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: this part collecting. I collect, but then I have a
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: fun time speculating. But I view it as instead of
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: buying a long term future. I'll give you an example,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: instead of buying a long term future at the beginning
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: of the season on the Denver Broncos winning the Super Bowl,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: where if they don't win the Super Bowl, your ticket
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: is worthless. You instead buy bonus, you know, a high
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: end Bonix rookie card, because your ticket won't be worth
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: zero if they fail. But you can also you will
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: benefit if they actually do go on that Super Bowl
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: run and you have an opportunity to cash out multiple
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: times before. So I I confess that I have I
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: have taken one part of my sports card fandom because
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: I look at it this way. I'm trying to minimize
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: how much money I spend on my sports card collecting
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: and I use I I basically side hustle my way
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: to try to cut the costs of what this is.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: So I do submit cards for grading and sell them
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: on the side, and you can you know, I'm not
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: going to tell you I don't. I really have been careful.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: I don't want to combine my side hustle on sports
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: card with the podcast. I just haven't done that. As
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: for TOPS, look, I I'll tell you my experience. All
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: of everything you've ever read on the back of a
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: card is true. A TOPS representative, I remember that came
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: to Rockefeller Center, New York. That was in New York Day.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: They brought all the cards. They stayed in my office
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: while I signed every card I promised to sign, did
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: all that. They witnessed the whole time. Then he takes it,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: he puts it, and he takes it away. It wasn't
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: like he left it with me, wasn't shipped and said, hey,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: can you sign this and send it back. He really
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: did witness me doing everything on that front. So I
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: viewed it as a great experience. Look, I'm a I'm
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: an institutionalist, which means I love me some TOPS. And
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: you know, TOPS is a reliable brand. I'm always, though,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: worried about market consolidation because market consolidation usually panealizes people
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: like you and me, right, and everything has gotten more
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: expensive since things have gotten consolidated. I do think the
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling that if there ever is I
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: think that Fanatics, who is now the parent company of Tops,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: is going to get scrutiny at some point from a
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: more robust government agency. They're not nobody's getting that kind
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: of scrutiny now because it's pay to play. Were living
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: in a pay to play. But if we ever get
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: back to a more traditional way of trying to question
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: consolidated power, trying to regulate these things, I think Fanatics
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: could could you know whether they you know the fact
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: that they have the exclusive license and only they can
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: produce these products, so they can set the market. They can,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: they can sort of really they they decide supply and demand,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: right I have, it doesn't feel like it does feel
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: like they're building a monopoly. And I'll I think Pannini
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: hasn't been very good at articulating its case or taking
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: its They've yet to find they've how they've gone about it.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's been very poor but at some point
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: I think you'll have some better lawyer louring there and
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: you'll get a judge that's a bit more empathetic and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: a little skeptical of the consolidation that Fanatics has successfully
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: pulled off here in the sports card market, especially as
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: there's more money involved. Right I say that, I'm I
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: like that Fanatics has taken sports card collecting and made
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: it more mainstream. Right, So that's a good thing that
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: they have done with the hobby that they have made it.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: They have sort of cleaned things up a little bit.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: I think quality control has gotten better, but there is
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: a it does feel like there's a haves and have
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: not aspect to card collecting. Now, if you've got some money,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: you can get access to really cool cards. If you
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of money, you can't. You know
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: that In the way I grew up with them, right,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: we all sort of had the same access. Certainly, you know,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: maybe one family could afford to buy more packs of cards,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: but we were all buying the same packs of cards.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: But literally, there are now packs of cards simply for
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: the super wealthy, and then there are packs of cards
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: for everybody else. You know, Right now, we call them
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: plaster boxes, and then you have hobby boxes and stuff
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: like that. But it's it's that is a you know,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: is there is there a point where there's too many
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: velvet ropes around card collecting, you know, And that's I
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: think there's there's still got to be a lottery ticket
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: aspect to it. You know, there's and you've probably seen
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: the news of a a Tani card that got sold
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: for a certain amount of money, but just it took
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of money to have even access to getting
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: that card. And uh, I'm not as anti breaking as
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: some are. I don't participate in breaks or anything like that.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: That's not how I want to spend my time. Uh.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: And if you're wondering what the hell breaking is, go
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: look it up. I'm not gonna. But essentially, it's instead
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: of it's another way of you know, it's sort of
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: another It's that's the way the influencer world works. Like
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: by a case of cards and say hey, I will
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: I will give you all the Dodgers in this case.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm gonna sell the Dodgers for you know, one
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars and you may get that'll be awesome.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: I'll also give you all the white Sox cards. In
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: this case, you may sell that for sixty dollars and
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: you'll get all the white socks. You may get a
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: lot of Frank Thomas autographs, and you may get a
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: lot of show Hey O Tommy right. Or but if
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: but if Shoa Tony's in an Angel's uniform, the person
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: who bought the Angels slot will get the card, not
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: the person who bought the Dodger slot. So it's an
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: interesting way to sell. I think that's you know, To me,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: that's just you know, interesting retail capitalism and the market
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: behaving the way a market should, coming up with unique
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: ways to slice and dice the cards. So I'm not
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: as anti gambling as others are. I do think it's
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: very It adds to the speculation. It is, in theory,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: a cheaper way to get a bigger card. But you
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: your odds are still pretty the odds are still not
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: very much in your favor, and in some cases could
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: be even worse. So because you don't, you don't get
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: you're better off buying the whole case yourself. Because even
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: if it's a card for a team you didn't like,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: at least do you have a chance to get your
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: money back selling it's somebody else when they want it.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: I got a little rambling there, because I do enjoy it,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: I do care about it. I do. I do a
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: little bit of of it as a side hustle, but
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: primarily just to support my collecting. And I have some
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: fun things that I love. I collect. I collect certain players.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: I collect a lot of Max Sures or collect each Hero.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: I collect Greg Maddox, and I collect Sandy Kofax and
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: Roy Campano. But then I love like super old Basketball.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm always I'm always on the hunt for
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: interesting George Mike and cards. You know. I just sort
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, little little nuggets like that. One
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: of my favorite sets that I built was the nineteen
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: fifty five College Football card set All American Set. Wizard
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: White is in that set, former Supreme Court justice. So anyway,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: as you he just he just touched the nerd button
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: on me, obviously, So yes, I've just given you a
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: little bit more. But please, I do not I do
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: not want to mix too much of the card world
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: into the political world, because I I don't like it.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: Anytime I've heard you know, for the most part, any
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: most of the stuff I consume in the card world.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: By the way I collect every I try to get
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: PSA tens of every president that has appeared in a
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: sports card set, and that's a lot of fun as well.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: So you know, that's my you know figure that you know,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: that's appropriate for me, the political junkie, to have that.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: So you know, there was, believe it or not, a
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: lot of older sets in the early twentieth century that
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: had some that didn't hold presidential presidential cards. In fact,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite recent sets that I wish top
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: Tops would bring back was the two thousand and nine
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: American History set, which did things like have subsets of
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Medal of honor folks, so it was like a history
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: we were just great history online. So I collected it,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: built the set with my kids as a way to
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: teach American history. It was, it was, It was fabulous,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: and I wish Tops would bring you up back all right,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: since we got the sports cards, it's a perfect transition
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: to get to college football and my experience at Kyle Field.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: I will start very will I will start with this.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: It's my fourth Miami road game in a stadium that's
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: seats more than one hundred thousand people. I was at
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Penn State in two thousand and one for a Miami
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Penn State game Miami one. That game, I was in
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: Tennessee two thousand and three, I think it was for
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: a Miami Tennessee game Miami one. I've been to the
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: Rose Bowl. I believe they seed one hundred thousand so
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: and that was for the lone Rose Bowl that Miami
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: appeared in and they won. So I think I have
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: that going for me, which is I've never seen Miami
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: lose win in a hundred thousand seed stadium. They've lost
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: a one hundred thousand seat staums, but not when I've
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: been in attendance. They lost a game at Michigan once,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: and I think they lost a game at Ohio State once,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: so both of which, of course seed over one hundred
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: thousand and one. Thing you will learn is it wasn't
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: bad getting into a stadium that seats one hundred thousand. Boy,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: when everybody stays to the end, it is really hard
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: to get out of a stadium that seats one hundred thousand.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: That was quite the ordeal. And all that Texa and
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: m fans were great. You know, I have a lot
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: of UT fans in my life, who don't have many
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: nice things to say about the Aggies, So I had
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: I perhaps came in with super low expectations and a
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: little leariness. I'm sorry I did. I thought everything was great,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: even in losing. I have this memory of this one
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: A and M fan cowboy hat. He looks at me
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: and he just opens his arms. He says, can you
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: give me a hug? I was like, okay. He had
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: a few. His family I think was wondering what's he
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: about to do? But it was actually a very nice interaction.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: All of it was very nice interactions. Look, let's talk
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: about the game itself. If you weren't at the game,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: you probably and you're only watching on TV, you thought, boy,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: these offenses are futrid? What's going on here? The wind
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: was a serious factor. In fact, every time there was
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: a time out, Carson Beck was throwing was was throwing
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: the football, So either one or two things. Either he
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: had something going on with his arm that he was
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: trying to deal with, which I don't think it was,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: or he was trying to figure out how to throw
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: better in this swirling wind. He was constantly trying to
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: warm up. And I mean every time out he'd be
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: out in the field trying to do this. I saw
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: a similar situation with all of the Texas A and
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: M side. They were doing their long snaps a lot
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: more practicing sort of in between during timeouts, during work stoppages.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: This wasn't just stuff you saw pre or just on
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: the sideline. They'd literally move out into the field when
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: they had it. This would be during the commercial break.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: So the wind was really throwing everybody off, and I
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: think it really threw Back off. I don't think he
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: ever felt comfortable throwing the football at all. I think
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: it showed, you know, is it an arm strength issue?
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: Was it just the wind? Was that swirly that day?
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: It was a real factor, and it absolutely contributed to
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: the bizarre kicking game problems, which mine really didn't have
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: an issue with all yr I know TEXTA, A and
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: M had their share, not a few other observations. Very
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: frustrated as always with the play calling. I will say
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: this a win. I am grateful and satisfied that Miami
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: got this win. But this is one of those games
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: where and I'm sure Texas A and M fans look
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: at that game and go, we had so many chances
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: to win that game. That's true, and a Miami fan
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: looks at that game and go, we had so many
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: chances to have blown them out, which is also true.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: It was it was a game where nobody took advantage
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: of the mistakes the other team was making or not
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: nearly enough, and then there was a few sort of
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: questionable decision making. The fake punt to me, was a
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: questionable decision Biolko at the time, especially in that way.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: Your your own quarterbacks having a hard time throwing the
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: ball in the wind, so now you expect your punter
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: to be able to throw in the in the crazy
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: swirly win seemed like a you you know. And look
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: to Miami's credit and kudos to the special teams coaching.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: They were they were ready, and everybody stayed at home,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: and uh they were able to make sure that that
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: didn't pay off. But I think that was a questionable
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: to say, and it sort of gave Miami a break
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: at a time when when they could use one. I
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: didn't want him having to start start start their drive
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: inside their twenty again. But my issue with the play
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: calling is saying it's my observation about all year. I
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: feel like the offensive coordinator is always trying to figure
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: out like which plays work with his offense rather than
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: game planning towards the team he's playing. And it isn't
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: till sometime in the second half that he finally pivots
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: the play calling to what's actually happening on the field
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: and with the opponent. Were actually facing the fact that
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: Mark Fletcher, who had a tremendous game the running back,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: the best most of yardists he had ever had as
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: a Miami running back, didn't touch the ball once. When
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: Miami had a first and goal at the ten early
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: on in the game. It was one of those drives
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: with the ded up with a missfield goal every time
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: until the fourth quarter, every time Mark Fletcher got a
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: run that succeeded, say six yards or more, it seemed
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: like they waited three or four plays before they ever
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: went back to it. Finally in the fourth core they realized, well,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: what's working this A and M defense? As their pass
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: rush was getting through and was making back uncomfortable. And
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: I think it was the wind that made the pass
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: rush more effective than anything else. But we could run
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: on these guys and yet you know, they were just
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: they kept so it felt as if it was almost
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: like he was, Hey, let me see if this play
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: how this play? You know, And there's sort of these
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: their trick plays, but they're kind of high schoolish, one
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: dimensional trick plays. Oh, let's line up Tony in the wildcat,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: let's do this, let's you know it. They're weirdly predictable.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: And it was almost as all right, I'm gonna try
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: to get the ball into Tony's hands without actually thinking
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: about the defense that they're facing. By the fourth quarter
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: they realized, well, when they really have to get some yards,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: they should just run the ball. And suddenly Fletcher and
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: they pounded the rock. For us older Miami fans, it
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: reminded me of one of the worst play calling decisions ever,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: which was infamous, an infamous game back in the eighties
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: between Miami and Penn State, one of the best Miami
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: teams of all time, and they didn't win a national title.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: They lost. They lost it to Joe Paterno's Penn State
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: squad in the in the eighty six season eighty seven
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: Fiesta Bowl, where they had first they were inside the ten,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: basically going in for the winning touchdown, and they decided
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: to throw the ball and not hand the ball to
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: Lonzo Heismith, who was just not going to be denied
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: that day. And that's how I felt about Mark Fletcher.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: You're like, this dude has a nose for the end zone.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: He always runs north south. He is not going to
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: get denied. Some guys just have it. You feed the ball,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: you give him the ball, and you go and you
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: wear that out. Then you worry about other things. So
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: I just I don't love the way this goes about.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: He doesn't. I don't feel like it's a game plan.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's a set of offensive schemes that
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: he's doing on a whiteboard that he's not thinking about
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: the opponent that they're facing. I gotta think that's going
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: to change for Ohio State. But we'll say. The other
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: thing I take away is I think Miami's defense I
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: think it's absurd. You know, sometimes perception in college football,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: perception is always way ahead of the reality, and I
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: think right now, I see it in the early lines
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: of Miami, Ohia State or a state's a nine and
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: a half point favorite. Please, that's great. Look, I know
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: I'm a homer, but that's insane. Okay, no Miami team,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think. I don't think Miami's lost by
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: more than nine points in over two years. It's just
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: I will Especially the way Mario Christophale coaches, He's a
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: very risk averse coach. It drives me crazy, but it
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: keeps him in every game. This guy is not going
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: to not be in this game. He is not going
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: to let the team sort of be put in a
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: position like that. And Ohio State, isn't it I, you know,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: against the Miami defense, I just don't see it. And
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: this is where it's a reminder that the reason that
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: the expression defense wins championships is that, you know, Miami
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: had a very uneven orderline, bad offensive day, and we're
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: able to win because the defense was able to prevent
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: the other offense from doing anything. If you have a
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: bad day on offense and your defense's mediocre, you had
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: the situation that Miami had to do with last year,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: when we had this great offense that would have a
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: couple of clunker quarters that suddenly the defense would allow
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: up twenty one points to the other side, and then
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: suddenly you were in a hole. You dug yourself a
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: hole or something. So I know we won and we're
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: not supposed to pick at nits, but it's a big
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: one to pay, because Miami's not going to win another
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: game if they don't perform slightly better on offense. They
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: have all the talent in the world. I just think
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: this offensive scheme just doesn't take advantage of the talent
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: that they have. It's like wide receiver screen, wide receiver screen,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: Malachi Tony trick play, throw the ball deep. They don't
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: use the middle of the field enough. I'd like to
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: see more of it. And I'll say something I've said
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: in earlier roundups about this Miami team. The coaches seem
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: to always be worried about putting too much in Carson
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: Beck's hands. What are you waiting for? It's do or die.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: It's ride or die with him. Unlet's ride or die.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: Open it up a little bit. You have the talent,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: open up the middle of the field a little bit.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: It's if you're not going to win more big games
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: if you don't trust your quarterback. And I do get
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: the sense that this coaching staff doesn't quite trust him completely.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: And you can say he's not earned the trust. Well,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: at this point it doesn't matter. But look, I had
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: said before my expectation was we were going to win
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: this game. I look at it now, I think we
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: should have won by more. I don't think this means
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: that techs A and m you know, didn't belong there.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I love these Notre Dame fans
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: that look at the Miami tex same game. They were
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: better than both teams. You lost to both teams like that, they,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: you know, be mad about the group of five situations.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: And I do think it is amazing how often the
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: college to the leaders of college football don't think about
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: things as don't sort of have the ability to see
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: the potential scenarios that could get created. Look, the reason
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: a group of five has access is they don't want
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: an anti trust lawsuit. They don't want to deal with that.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: So they've got to at least give the illusion that
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: all of Division I college football has access to the playoff.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: But you know, they forgot the whole top fifteen part, right.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: You know, if you have a twelve team playoff, I
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: think it's reasonable to say, as a conference champion, you
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: only get to qualify if you're ranked in the top fifteen.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: If it's a sixteen playoff, sixteen team playoff, you can
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: put that to the top twenty. But that way at
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: least guarantee because neither Tulane or James Madison were in
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: the top fifteen. Boise State last year was. But the
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: other problem for the poor group of five is anil
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: on the portal. Three or four years ago, you could
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: have you always had a handful of group of five
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: teams that basically just found more diamonds in the rough,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: and we're able to build successful programs around those diamonds
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: in the rough. And in fact, some of these programs
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: were so good they became Power Conference power players Utah. Right, Formally,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: a group of five ends up in the Power for
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: all right, and they're they're a They're a mainstream power
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: for conference right right, They're not like fledgling right. SMU
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: is another one that was able to move up. But
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: I think now with so many big time programs with
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: their own scouting departments, these group these group of five
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: programs just can't keep these players. The minute they find
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: a diamond in the rough, they're gone. Ditto on the fcs.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: So the gap between the haves and the have nots
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: is only going to grow in college football. So you
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: had this, I mean both group of both group of
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: five programs were just it was so clear they didn't
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: belong on the same field due to size and speed.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: They may have the as good of coaches, they may
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: have as good schemes, but they just simply didn't have
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: enough size and they didn't have enough speed. And they're
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: never going to have enough size and they're never going
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: to have enough speed under these under this current scenario.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: But it's clear they got to put in some sort
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: of you know, I think I think we all believe,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I look at sports in the same way
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: look at you know, I think there should be a meritocra.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: I think you should have. You know, if somebody, you know,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: if a Northern Illinois alum is suddenly the next big
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: tech financier makes billions and billions of dollars and wants
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: to turn Northern Illinois into a power there should be
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: It's just you know that pay that's the way the
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: market works at the moment. Uh. And if they acquire
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: enough talent and they're ranked in the top fifteen and
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: they you know, more power to them. So, but you
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: can come up with some sort of safety net in
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: your rules in the playoffs so that you don't get
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: embarrassing mismatches. Because here you had of the four playoff games,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: two tremendous playoff games between one Alabama and Oklahoma, and
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: one that was a defensive battle between techs A and
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: M and Miami, and two just real duds. Wouldn't have
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: been better to see BYU and note BYU playing Ole
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: Miss and say Oregon playing Notre Dame. Right, Look, we're
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: gonna have four tremendous games coming up. Texas, Tech Oregon,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: two programs that want to be haves, but they don't
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: have the pedigree yet. They have the money, but they
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: don't have the pedigree. I think Miami Ohise State. That's
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: a battle of I think combined they have over a
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: dozen national titles between them. You have Indiana, Alabama, New Money,
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: Old Money, Right, that's a fun one. And then we
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: have Georgia Ole Miss, where we're gonna probably you know,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm pretty pessimistic on I think I think
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: Old Miss rallies around hating Lyn Kiffin once, can you
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: do it a second time? I think that's especially in
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: a game that takes place one day before the portal
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: officially opens and we know there is going to be
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: an explosion of ole miss players that will be raising
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: their hands for contracts from Lane Kiffin's LSU program, So
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: we shall see. Look, I'm excited. I'm like I told
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: you before, I love Miami's path because there's all these
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: sort of revenge moments. It's now been Listen. It's not
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: lost on me that Miami has won eleven games and
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: this is the that the last time they did that,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: I had no kids. My daughter is twenty one years old,
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: is a senior in college, and it's the first time
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: in her lifetime that Miami's won eleven or more games.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: So it's a reminder write history. It all depends your perspective.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: For me, Miami's heyday is recent history. For my daughter,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: it's ancient history. I think that probably serves as a
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: good way to say goodbye to college football segment because
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: in some ways it dovetails with everything we've been talking
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: about today. If there is a through line of any
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: of it, all right with that, I'll sign off. I
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: will have, like I said, one more episode later this week.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: Plus we're going to drop, like I said, a best
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: of It's an interview that I did a few months
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: ago that will be super relevant for a campaign that's
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: taking place in the spring of twenty six. So with that,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: i'll sign off and i'll see in forty eight hours.