Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - The SAVE Act Degrades Democracy, Not Save It + A Completely Unserious Leader At The Pentagon

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Chuck’s Commentary - The SAVE Act Degrades Democracy, Not Save It + A Completely Unserious Leader At The Pentagon · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: Hello there, welcome to Thursday edition of the Chuck Toodcast.
1:55
Speaker 1: We have a fantastic episode for you. My big guest
1:58
Speaker 1: today is Fiona Hill. You may remember Fiona Hill from
2:02
Speaker 1: the very first Trump administration. She was on the National
2:06
Speaker 1: Security Staff with the portfolio of Russia. She is not
2:11
Speaker 1: somebody you would call trumpy. I think she was arguably
2:13
Speaker 1: brought in by the hr Holdeman team and she was
2:16
Speaker 1: sort of part of that part of that group of
2:20
Speaker 1: Trump staffers. In term one that was there to restrain Trump,
2:26
Speaker 1: if you will, I don't know if she would put
2:29
Speaker 1: it as starkly as I put it, but whether it's
2:32
Speaker 1: hr McMaster or you had John Kelly or even a
2:36
Speaker 1: Wright's prebus, and you know that there was a lot,
2:39
Speaker 1: particularly in the national security space, of making sure all
2:45
Speaker 1: the guardrails were there, and it was about keeping him
2:49
Speaker 1: from going too much off the reservation. Obviously, folks like
2:54
Speaker 1: Fienna Hill were not welcome back into a second Trump term.
2:58
Speaker 1: But Fiona Hill's expertise on Russia in particular is no
3:02
Speaker 1: less important these days, and so we have a great
3:06
Speaker 1: conversation about how Russia may view Iran at the moment,
3:10
Speaker 1: how they view this war, where's this headed, but most importantly,
3:14
Speaker 1: where are we headed post Trump? What's the world going
3:17
Speaker 1: to look like? What is geopolitical politics going to look like.
3:20
Speaker 1: It's a pretty healthy exchange. And if you've ever spent
3:23
Speaker 1: time reading or hearing from Fiona Hill, I think you
3:25
Speaker 1: will enjoy this conversation. We spend a lot of time
3:28
Speaker 1: in the war, it so in Iran and sort of
3:30
Speaker 1: the whether Trump fully appreciates what he has gotten himself into.
3:34
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you just look at the headlines
3:36
Speaker 1: in the last twenty four hours. You know, what is
3:39
Speaker 1: happening is exactly what people like Fiona Hill and others
3:43
Speaker 1: would have warned him about and probably did warn him
3:45
Speaker 1: about in the first term, and did warn him when
3:48
Speaker 1: he made the decision to go after Solomoni, and did
3:50
Speaker 1: warn him when he made the decision to bomb Iran
3:52
Speaker 1: the first time, of what could happen. The fact that
3:56
Speaker 1: you may get an asymmetrical response. Well, we're in that
4:01
Speaker 1: awkward phase of this war where militarily it's a huge success.
4:05
Speaker 1: There's no doubt the targets that we have chosen to bomb,
4:11
Speaker 1: we've been successful with it. So as a military operation,
4:15
Speaker 1: everything is going fairly well. But the problem is that
4:20
Speaker 1: the definition of victory for the Iranians now is simply surviving. Right,
4:25
Speaker 1: just like in some ways in Fiona Hill, well she
4:28
Speaker 1: makes this direct comparison. It's sort of similar to how
4:32
Speaker 1: Russia viewed Ukraine. They thought it would be quick and dirty,
4:34
Speaker 1: they thought it would be easy, and then it wasn't.
4:38
Speaker 1: And then suddenly, even though maybe tactically Russia can make
4:42
Speaker 1: more advances into Ukraine and they're acquiring territory here, the
4:45
Speaker 1: fact that the Ukrainians haven't folded is in itself a
4:52
Speaker 1: loss for the Russians. And when you make regime change
4:57
Speaker 1: the focal point, which the President did when he first
5:01
Speaker 1: began this effort, when he said the goal he hoped
5:04
Speaker 1: that Iranians would stand up and take their government back,
5:08
Speaker 1: wasn't as direct as what the Israelis want. The Israelis
5:11
Speaker 1: have made no secret about their goals in this war,
5:14
Speaker 1: and they actually have very clear goals in this war.
5:17
Speaker 1: It is to eradicate the threat of this Iranian regime
5:21
Speaker 1: that includes regime chains, and this is why they're trying
5:23
Speaker 1: to eradicate as blood and right. So whatever, you may
5:26
Speaker 1: disagree with some of Israel's tactics, but unlike the United States,
5:30
Speaker 1: they have a clear mission. They have a clear set
5:32
Speaker 1: of goals, and they're trying to execute a strategy in
5:36
Speaker 1: order to achieve those goals. Obviously, we do not have
5:39
Speaker 1: those same set of goals. What does that look like?
5:43
Speaker 1: And he is he has boxed himself in because the
5:48
Speaker 1: military success is not leading to a policy victory, right,
5:54
Speaker 1: and suddenly just the regime surviving is in and of
5:57
Speaker 1: itself a victory for the Iranian reas because they weren't
6:01
Speaker 1: knocked out. They weren't taken out by the big bad
6:05
Speaker 1: Satan of the United States. Right, So he's got an
6:10
Speaker 1: energy crisis on his hands. And then if he wants
6:11
Speaker 1: to leave and I spend some time with her, it's
6:13
Speaker 1: like okay, Fiona Hill. He's going to want to get out.
6:17
Speaker 1: He knows this thing is on. How does he do it?
6:21
Speaker 2: And it's not.
6:21
Speaker 1: Clear how easily he can get out. He can stop
6:24
Speaker 1: the bombing, he can stop participating, but it doesn't mean
6:27
Speaker 1: the straits of horn Moves are going to be open
6:29
Speaker 1: for business for shipping, whether that's for oil or for goods.
6:34
Speaker 1: And they're still going to be a tactical need by
6:38
Speaker 1: the US military to protect our allies and to protect
6:41
Speaker 1: and to keep the waters open there. So he is
6:46
Speaker 1: going to get dragged in. So the question is does
6:48
Speaker 1: he get tucked into ground troops. One would assume he wouldn't,
6:51
Speaker 1: but if he wants to achieve the goal of regime change,
6:54
Speaker 1: he would have no other choice. Does he just keep
6:56
Speaker 1: this up and hope that over time they just wear
6:59
Speaker 1: them down? That awfully costly, it's softly expensive. And then
7:03
Speaker 1: you get accidents like the US military targeting a girls'
7:09
Speaker 1: school rather than it was it was the wrong target.
7:12
Speaker 1: We are now admitting this. We'll see if the President
7:15
Speaker 1: puts his own face behind this. It's unlikely he tried
7:19
Speaker 1: to say it might have been the Iranians that did it,
7:21
Speaker 1: using us stolen US weapons to somehow blame America for this.
7:29
Speaker 1: It is pretty clear that we either had old information
7:32
Speaker 1: targeting the wrong thing, but we are accepting the blame
7:36
Speaker 1: for this. The question is what you know, how how
7:39
Speaker 1: do we behave? How does the president behave and actually
7:46
Speaker 1: put this information out or is it a typical Trump
7:49
Speaker 1: and he refuses to do it and makes egg Seth
7:51
Speaker 1: do it or makes General Kine do it, which is
7:54
Speaker 1: also a possibility. Few other headlines that you shouldn't miss
7:59
Speaker 1: in the war itself. ABC News is reporting that the
8:03
Speaker 1: FBI let California sheriffs and other law enforcement officials know
8:10
Speaker 1: of a potential threat of Iranian drone strikes from the
8:15
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean targeting California towns that would be and this
8:22
Speaker 1: is the fear of this war is that it essentially
8:25
Speaker 1: goes asymmetrical or horizontal, where they try to make the
8:28
Speaker 1: cost of this very expensive bombing ports, putting minds in
8:33
Speaker 1: the straight of horn moves. There are sleepers, perhaps sleeper
8:39
Speaker 1: cells in western cities all over the world that get
8:45
Speaker 1: targeted with Iranian supported terrorist attacks. These are the concerns,
8:52
Speaker 1: and this is the metastasizing that's always been something that
8:56
Speaker 1: many a policy advisor to many a president who who
9:00
Speaker 1: is asked, Okay, what should we do here? Should we
9:02
Speaker 1: try to take out this regime has always been sort
9:06
Speaker 1: of pulled back by all of the potential fallout and
9:09
Speaker 1: how complicated.
9:10
Speaker 2: The fallout is.
9:12
Speaker 1: Unlike unlike Liberation Day, he can't just turn it off.
9:20
Speaker 1: And so it is we're we're He is in this.
9:23
Speaker 1: That's why I called it quicksand the other day. He's
9:25
Speaker 1: in quicksand now and it is hard to imagine how
9:28
Speaker 1: he's fully going to extricate himself from this without still
9:34
Speaker 1: doing a lot of damage to our alliances, leaving the
9:37
Speaker 1: Middle East in total shambles and screwing up the economy.
9:42
Speaker 1: Other than that, this is going really well. And again
9:45
Speaker 1: militarily it is, and it's and you know, I think
9:50
Speaker 1: there's a noble goal here. Getting rid of the scourge
9:53
Speaker 1: that is this Iranian regime would be good for the region,
9:57
Speaker 1: would be good for the Iranian people. But is this
10:01
Speaker 1: the best way to do it? And are we blowing
10:03
Speaker 1: our credibility to a point where this stuff's going to
10:06
Speaker 1: get harder down the road, not easier. So, and we
10:12
Speaker 1: also learned that the initial drone attack that killed those
10:15
Speaker 1: first service members that died, it's a pretty vicious attack.
10:18
Speaker 1: We've got seriously injured soldiers. This was a CBS News
10:21
Speaker 1: report that indicated this serious, seriously injured soldiers in that
10:27
Speaker 1: attack on an American installation in Kuwait. So the costs
10:32
Speaker 1: of this war are escalating and the actual cost of
10:38
Speaker 1: this war is going to be expensive, and it's going
10:40
Speaker 1: to be an extraordinarily tough vote in Congress that I
10:43
Speaker 1: can promise you. And Republicans already know this because they're
10:45
Speaker 1: thinking about doing a reconciliation bill, believe it or not. Right,
10:50
Speaker 1: they can't figure out an electioneer agenda. They can't agree
10:53
Speaker 1: on anything. They just had their House retreat where half
10:55
Speaker 1: the members didn't even show up. Right, this is a
10:59
Speaker 1: House republ look and majority that kind of knows it's
11:01
Speaker 1: over right. The rank and file look like they've already
11:04
Speaker 1: pulled ripcord. Half of them didn't show up. Now some
11:07
Speaker 1: of them are probably among that one hundred plus that
11:09
Speaker 1: didn't show up. A bunch of them are retiring, and
11:12
Speaker 1: a bunch of others are running for higher office and
11:14
Speaker 1: don't want to be associated with the House Republican brand
11:18
Speaker 1: at this point. But this is a demoralized majority. They
11:23
Speaker 1: don't know what to run on, and the war in
11:26
Speaker 1: Iran has now complicated this, and they're going to have
11:29
Speaker 1: to figure out how to fund this war, and it's
11:32
Speaker 1: possible the only way they could avoid a potential sixty
11:35
Speaker 1: vote threshold to fund this war in the Senate is
11:38
Speaker 1: to do this under the rules of reconciliation, which means
11:40
Speaker 1: no filibustering.
11:41
Speaker 2: Which means fifty votes.
11:44
Speaker 1: And the fact that they're already talking about that as
11:46
Speaker 1: a way to fund this war, in some ways, it's
11:49
Speaker 1: pretty self defeating. And they realize what a political loser
11:53
Speaker 1: this is, that the only choice they have is to
11:55
Speaker 1: make this a loyalty test for the President and that
11:57
Speaker 1: they're going to need him whipping the vote for this,
12:00
Speaker 1: and I think we know where that's going to come from.
12:04
Speaker 1: The other one other sort of extraneous war nugget that
12:08
Speaker 1: I wanted to get to is the boy this Pete
12:11
Speaker 1: hegseth Man.
12:12
Speaker 2: He is, he is.
12:15
Speaker 1: I'd say he's so thin skinned he has no skin left.
12:19
Speaker 1: Apparently they have now barred press photographers from the press
12:23
Speaker 1: briefing because they thought the photos that were circulating in
12:26
Speaker 1: the various syndication sites where people get photographs were unflattering
12:30
Speaker 1: to mister hag seth.
12:34
Speaker 2: Man.
12:34
Speaker 1: This guy's got a lot of issues. I don't know
12:37
Speaker 1: if they're Freudian these issues, if there's something else, but
12:41
Speaker 1: you know, his he definitely that guy. You could put
12:45
Speaker 1: him on the couch and go a lot of different directions,
12:48
Speaker 1: but he clearly that the fact that he's the guy
12:53
Speaker 1: in charge of this war at the moment. I'm gonna
12:57
Speaker 1: be honest, it's not very reassuring. You have somebody who's
13:01
Speaker 1: this thin skin, somebody who can't take any negative criticism
13:05
Speaker 1: at all, is supposed to be out there, you know,
13:08
Speaker 1: making the tough calls that are necessary when running a war.
13:13
Speaker 1: I mean talk about talk about not giving reassurance to
13:17
Speaker 1: the American people. This guy cannot give any real and
13:19
Speaker 1: his his overt his religiosity or I don't know if
13:24
Speaker 1: it's even real. It may be, it may be real, Right,
13:28
Speaker 1: I'm not going to question his faith, but to to
13:32
Speaker 1: insert it into the public square. The way he's doing
13:36
Speaker 1: it is it's not a unifying thing to do, and
13:41
Speaker 1: it certainly makes those that serve who are who don't
13:44
Speaker 1: share his faith and don't share his belief system really
13:48
Speaker 1: isolates them. And uh and and I think makes it
13:51
Speaker 1: that much harder to have a cohesive unit. So this is,
13:55
Speaker 1: you know, with a very serious war we're engaged in,
13:59
Speaker 1: and we have an completely unseerious and unprepared leader at
14:02
Speaker 1: the Defense Department. You know, look, he never should have
14:07
Speaker 1: been confirmed. A handful of Republican senators knew it, and
14:13
Speaker 1: they got They got extorted, basically. And when I say
14:18
Speaker 1: they got extorted, they got threatened, right, I think it's
14:21
Speaker 1: pretty clear Tilla Scott and Jonny Ernst were both threatened
14:24
Speaker 1: to points. And I think there's a reason neither one
14:26
Speaker 1: of them are running for reelection. And I think it
14:28
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with the confirmation fight over
14:32
Speaker 1: Haigsith because it was clear he was unqualified for this job.
14:35
Speaker 1: It was clear Jenny Earnst thought he was unqualified. It
14:37
Speaker 1: was clear Tom Tillis thought he was unqualified. They both
14:40
Speaker 1: ended up having to support this and they both decided
14:44
Speaker 1: not to seek reelection. That wasn't a coincidence, but we
14:48
Speaker 1: are now seeing why. And I'm sorry that they didn't
14:51
Speaker 1: have the guts then to stand up to what they
14:53
Speaker 1: knew it was wrong. They knew he was unqualified, and
14:56
Speaker 1: now we are paying the price for what happens. We
14:58
Speaker 1: have a very serious event here. Look, President made the decision.
15:02
Speaker 1: How we conduct ourselves, how we unwind from this. You
15:07
Speaker 1: need serious leadership with the Pentagon, and we do not
15:09
Speaker 1: have it at the moment. It's very disconcerting, and I
15:13
Speaker 1: think we this is one of those things where there's
15:16
Speaker 1: kind of a bipartisan consensus that that knows this. Yet
15:19
Speaker 1: we know you have to stay silent apparently if you're
15:25
Speaker 1: on the Republican side of aisle, and that that is
15:28
Speaker 1: a considering that life and death. These are somebody in
15:32
Speaker 1: charge of life and death decisions at the moment.
15:36
Speaker 2: I know if I was the parent of.
15:37
Speaker 1: A servant, an active duty service member right now, I'd
15:39
Speaker 1: be very very concerned about who is calling the shots here.
15:45
Speaker 1: All right, I want to move. I want to spend
15:47
Speaker 1: a little bit of time. This is a this is
15:49
Speaker 1: a request actually from from a few folks close to me,
15:52
Speaker 1: who I think there hasn't been a good explanation for
15:57
Speaker 1: what's this, This fight over the so called the Save Act,
16:03
Speaker 1: which is the Republican version of trying to deal with
16:07
Speaker 1: election integrity, and we had a Democratic version of this
16:10
Speaker 1: that was known as HR one back in twenty twenty one,
16:14
Speaker 1: and I thought it would be important to explain the
16:17
Speaker 1: actual details and explain the philosophical debate that is actually
16:22
Speaker 1: taking place between the two parties, and then the sort
16:26
Speaker 1: of demagoguery aspect of this that Trump is inserted in
16:29
Speaker 1: that is blowing this whole thing up. And of course
16:32
Speaker 1: the irony is that the fight over this, the polarization
16:36
Speaker 1: and the partisan weaponization of this bill, could lead Republicans
16:41
Speaker 1: in the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. Now
16:43
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical, but now, John Cornyn, I mean, here's a reminder.
16:47
Speaker 1: When you're desperate to win reelection, your principles are the
16:50
Speaker 1: first thing that go out the door. Apparently he is
16:53
Speaker 1: somebody that has been a fierce defender of the filibuster
16:57
Speaker 1: until it was got in the way of his need
17:00
Speaker 1: to get Donald Trump to endorse his runoff candidacy in Texas.
17:04
Speaker 1: And now he's flipped and he is willing to get
17:06
Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster if it is used to pass
17:09
Speaker 1: the so called Save Act. So maybe this is real.
17:13
Speaker 1: Maybe this is on the table. I'm skeptical the Republicans
17:16
Speaker 1: have the votes to kill the filibuster. I don't think
17:18
Speaker 1: they do. I think, you know, we know the least
17:20
Speaker 1: trumpy constituency left in the Republican Party are Senate Republicans.
17:25
Speaker 1: You know, I don't believe Mike Grounds will do this. Okay,
17:29
Speaker 1: I don't believe Tom Tillis is going to do this.
17:31
Speaker 1: I don't believe Bill Cassidy is going to do this,
17:34
Speaker 1: of course, but I would have said two days ago,
17:36
Speaker 1: I didn't believe John Cornyn was going to do this.
17:39
Speaker 1: But you know, everything is for sale in this version,
17:45
Speaker 1: in Donald Trump's version of the Republican Party, including integrity
17:48
Speaker 1: and principles. So thought I thought I would instead, let's
17:54
Speaker 1: lay out sort of the larger debate here over elect
18:00
Speaker 1: integrity and what are the true north stars of both parties.
18:04
Speaker 1: So the primary goal, right, I think this is an
18:07
Speaker 1: easy way to explain it. The primary goal of HR
18:09
Speaker 1: one Right for the People back in twenty twenty one
18:12
Speaker 1: was expansion and access. Essentially, they wanted to federalize standards
18:16
Speaker 1: to make voting easier. The primary goal of the Save
18:19
Speaker 1: America Act is security and verification. They want to federalized
18:23
Speaker 1: standards to make voter registration stricter. The Democrats and HR
18:30
Speaker 1: one wanted automatic voter registration right, they wanted to move
18:33
Speaker 1: the burden to the government to register you via the DMV.
18:38
Speaker 1: With the Republicans, they go the opposite way, and they
18:43
Speaker 1: wanted proof of citizenship and they are moving the burden
18:48
Speaker 1: to the voter to provide physical proof of citizenship in
18:52
Speaker 1: order to get to vote. When it comes to the
18:55
Speaker 1: voter rolls. HR one wanted to protect purging to prevent
19:00
Speaker 1: voters from being removed, whilst the Save Act wants to
19:05
Speaker 1: mandate frequent purges using DHS citizenship databases.
19:10
Speaker 2: To do this.
19:12
Speaker 1: Then, of course there's the issue of mail voting. Mandatory
19:15
Speaker 1: access required. The HR one was going to require states
19:18
Speaker 1: to offer that you had to offer no excuse mail
19:22
Speaker 1: in ballot options. They didn't say how many dates or
19:25
Speaker 1: whatever it was, but you know, whether it's a week,
19:27
Speaker 1: two weeks, etc. What the Save Act would do in
19:31
Speaker 1: its current form, it would seek to end universal mail
19:35
Speaker 1: in voting, and of course Trump wants to even put
19:37
Speaker 1: more curbs on that, which that version of it would
19:40
Speaker 1: have to pass one more time in the House because
19:42
Speaker 1: that wasn't in this version. So let's dig in deeper
19:46
Speaker 1: in here into the Save Act. There's a significant gap
19:50
Speaker 1: between the bill that cleared the House and the version
19:53
Speaker 1: that President Trump has been championing on the bully pulpit
19:57
Speaker 1: over the last couple of days. Here's what the actually
20:00
Speaker 1: passed the House. The core of it is the documentary
20:05
Speaker 1: proof of citizenship. So to register to vote in this
20:09
Speaker 1: bill that passed the House, you need a passport, a
20:11
Speaker 1: birth certificate, or a so called real ID that specifically
20:15
Speaker 1: denotes citizenship on the ID. And it also requires states
20:20
Speaker 1: to submit voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security
20:24
Speaker 1: for quote unquote scrubbing. Now, what Trump is advocating, he
20:29
Speaker 1: actually is up the Annie. He said he's not going
20:31
Speaker 1: to sign any major spending bills unless this Save Act
20:35
Speaker 1: is gold plate it. So he wants the following additions
20:38
Speaker 1: that were not in the original House text. He wants
20:41
Speaker 1: a total ban on mail in ballots except for military
20:45
Speaker 1: and disability. He wants a one day, one vote manday.
20:50
Speaker 1: He wants all voting on one day, and then he's
20:54
Speaker 1: got some unrelated culture war writers that he throws in
20:57
Speaker 1: their bands on transgender participation in sports.
21:00
Speaker 2: Things like that.
21:05
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22:36
Speaker 1: let's talk about the reality of the Senate. The bill
22:38
Speaker 1: is currently stalled in the Senate, and this is the
22:41
Speaker 1: bill without those extra gold plated editions that Trump wants advocated.
22:46
Speaker 1: It needs sixty votes to overcome a filibuster, and Republicans
22:49
Speaker 1: have a narrow majority. They don't have the sixty votes,
22:53
Speaker 1: and they're obviously this is the moment we're in. They're
22:55
Speaker 1: having this quote debate about whether they should nuke the filibuster,
22:59
Speaker 1: and like I said, I don't think they have the
23:02
Speaker 1: votes to do it, and if they do, and I
23:06
Speaker 1: specially think they don't have the votes to do it.
23:08
Speaker 1: Now when the reality of Democrats winning control of the
23:10
Speaker 1: Senate is not a fantasy anymore, it is a pretty
23:14
Speaker 1: realistic outcome of the twenty twenty six elections. Is it
23:17
Speaker 1: the most likely outcome? No, but it is not an
23:21
Speaker 1: unlikely outcome.
23:23
Speaker 2: Right.
23:23
Speaker 1: We are sitting in the forty percent range, forty to
23:25
Speaker 1: forty five percent range when it comes to Democrats' chances
23:28
Speaker 1: of taking the Senate, and I promise you, if the
23:31
Speaker 1: Republicans are the one to get rid of the Philipbuster,
23:32
Speaker 1: Democrats aren't going to be the ones to put it back. Now,
23:38
Speaker 1: let's talk about the core argument and what I think
23:41
Speaker 1: is a trap of this partisan power graph.
23:44
Speaker 2: Right.
23:45
Speaker 1: You see the framing of this, particularly with partisan influencers
23:49
Speaker 1: and partisan members of the press, that this is voter
23:51
Speaker 1: integrity versus voter suppression. But what this really is is
23:57
Speaker 1: I don't think election laws have any moral authority the
24:00
Speaker 1: public when they are passed on a fifty one to
24:02
Speaker 1: forty nine basis, And if you do this on a
24:04
Speaker 1: partisan basis, you literally delegitimize the democracy. And maybe that's
24:10
Speaker 1: the feature not the bug of what Donald Trump is
24:12
Speaker 1: up to. But let me set that aside. Here's what's
24:17
Speaker 1: interesting is how similar the oppositional rhetoric is to both bills. Right,
24:22
Speaker 1: when Democrats try to pass HR one, right, the same
24:24
Speaker 1: thing that happened here. Right, they passed it in the House.
24:26
Speaker 1: I couldn't get it done in the Senate. When Democrats
24:29
Speaker 1: passed HR one, Republicans called it a federal takeover and
24:33
Speaker 1: a power graph because it was written by one party
24:36
Speaker 1: to to benefit a their perceived base of younger urban voters. Well,
24:41
Speaker 1: we're sort of got a mirror image in the Save Act.
24:44
Speaker 1: The Save Act is seen by the left as a
24:46
Speaker 1: power grab designed to disenfranchise voters who lack easy access
24:50
Speaker 1: to birth certificates or who rely on mail in voting,
24:53
Speaker 1: like seniors and roll of voters. Now here's the problem.
24:58
Speaker 1: When the rules of the game change every four years
25:00
Speaker 1: based on who holds the power, the public will lose
25:03
Speaker 1: faith in the results of the game. Right, It's like
25:06
Speaker 1: allowing allowing the University of Miami or Indiana University. If
25:12
Speaker 1: the University of Miami's a home team, they get to
25:13
Speaker 1: pick the officials, and if Indiana University's they get to
25:16
Speaker 1: pick the officials, right, they get to hire the officials.
25:19
Speaker 2: We wouldn't.
25:20
Speaker 1: We're already a little skeptical when in these interconference matchups,
25:23
Speaker 1: when say it's Miami versus Florida and you have to
25:28
Speaker 1: deal with SEC officials or ACC officials, Right, one side
25:32
Speaker 1: doesn't trust that the other conference doesn't have you know,
25:35
Speaker 1: you want a neutral third party conference, right. I believe
25:38
Speaker 1: we had either big I think we had big ten
25:40
Speaker 1: officials doing the Miami Indiana National title game. He's not
25:44
Speaker 1: big ten officers, big twelve officials, I believe, or yes,
25:47
Speaker 1: it was big twelve officials. Then we had SEC officials
25:49
Speaker 1: I think for a game when we played Ohio State.
25:52
Speaker 1: But the point was you had neutral arbiters because there
25:55
Speaker 1: would have been questions of legitimacy and concerns that there
25:58
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be fairness there, particularly since there's a
26:01
Speaker 1: financial incentive for conferences to do well.
26:03
Speaker 2: In these in these in these deals.
26:07
Speaker 1: So this is you know, we're going to change the
26:10
Speaker 1: rules fifty one to forty nine. Right, Eventually the loser
26:13
Speaker 1: is never going to accept the outcome. And so this
26:17
Speaker 1: is why the Save Act isn't just about citizenship. It's
26:20
Speaker 1: a fundamental shift in the contract of American voting.
26:24
Speaker 2: It moves from.
26:25
Speaker 1: A system of self attestation, meaning I sign a legal
26:30
Speaker 1: oath under penalty of perjury if I'm lying about my
26:33
Speaker 1: citizenship or lying that I'm dual registered somewhere, to a
26:37
Speaker 1: permission based system where you have to have government has
26:40
Speaker 1: to verify whether you're allowed to vote. That's what the
26:44
Speaker 1: you know, Iranians decide who gets to vote, the Iranian
26:47
Speaker 1: government does. That's not the way the United States system
26:50
Speaker 1: was meant to work, all right. Now, let's dive into
26:55
Speaker 1: this election integrity war. It's a term, depending on who
27:00
Speaker 1: you ask, is either a shield for democracy or sel
27:03
Speaker 1: sledgehammer against it. So right now we are seeing a
27:06
Speaker 1: collision of two very different, very partisan visions of how
27:08
Speaker 1: you and I actually get a ballot. On one side,
27:11
Speaker 1: you have the ghost of HR one. On the other side,
27:14
Speaker 1: you of the current battle over the Save America Act. Now,
27:17
Speaker 1: if you're getting your news from social media, you probably
27:19
Speaker 1: think the Save Act is just common sense or total suppression, right,
27:22
Speaker 1: depending on which algorithm you're fed. But let's be honest,
27:27
Speaker 1: the policy reality is a lot more complicated, and the
27:30
Speaker 1: political strategy is even more cynical than itutlooks. So let's
27:35
Speaker 1: go back to twenty twenty one. Democrats wanted to federalize
27:37
Speaker 1: elections by mandating automatic voter registration. The idea the government
27:42
Speaker 1: should find you if you're at the DMV, you're on
27:44
Speaker 1: the rules. Well, fast forward to twenty twenty six. House
27:47
Speaker 1: Republicans pass the Save America Act, and it is the
27:51
Speaker 1: exact inverse. It doesn't just reject automatic registration. It makes
27:55
Speaker 1: registration eight show your papers event. It mandates documentary proof
28:00
Speaker 1: of citizenship. We're talking birth certificates, passports, and specific real
28:05
Speaker 1: IDs that denote citizenship. So this is what actually passed
28:09
Speaker 1: the House last month. A requirement for documentary proof of
28:13
Speaker 1: citizenship to register. So you'd have to go and get
28:16
Speaker 1: a birth certificate, which could take days or weeks depending
28:20
Speaker 1: on the jurisdiction you were born in. You need a
28:23
Speaker 1: mandate for states to purge voter roles using DHS databases
28:28
Speaker 1: controlled by people like Corey Lewandowski or once were you
28:32
Speaker 1: tell me whether you trust that a man who's bragging
28:35
Speaker 1: by the way that he thought he was bulletproof because
28:37
Speaker 1: no matter what he did, he'd get a pardon from Trump.
28:40
Speaker 1: That should make you feel good about DHS systems. And
28:44
Speaker 1: then there were strict voter idea requirements for both in
28:46
Speaker 1: person and mail in voting. But there's a massive gap
28:51
Speaker 1: between the bill of the House actually sent to the
28:53
Speaker 1: Senate and what Donald Trump is actually demanding. Untrue social right.
28:58
Speaker 1: The President wants even more this bill, which means they'd
29:01
Speaker 1: have to go back to the House and pass this again.
29:03
Speaker 1: Good luck doing that. But he you know, he told
29:06
Speaker 1: Senate Republicans not signing anything, effectively threatening a shutdown unless
29:09
Speaker 1: they add what he calls his non negotiables, total ban
29:13
Speaker 1: on mail in ballots except for the military. And get this,
29:15
Speaker 1: he wants to attach writers banning transgender women from sports
29:19
Speaker 1: and ending gender affirming care for minors, all in.
29:22
Speaker 2: This Save Act.
29:24
Speaker 1: So he took a focused, albeit controversial election bill and
29:27
Speaker 1: turned it into a Christmas tree of culture war grievances.
29:30
Speaker 1: He's not asking for just a change of the rules.
29:32
Speaker 1: He's asking for total transformation of the American voting experience,
29:36
Speaker 1: and he's doing it through ex executive pressure that even
29:39
Speaker 1: some of his own party in the Senate, namely John Thune,
29:42
Speaker 1: the Senate Republican leader, are looking with the hey, buddy,
29:46
Speaker 1: do you have a plan to get to sixty votes,
29:50
Speaker 1: whether it's HR one or the Save Act. We are
29:52
Speaker 1: stuck in this cycle of partisan electioneering. And here's the
29:59
Speaker 1: Here's important because we've had this game gamesmanship on elections
30:03
Speaker 1: before that were used to deny black people the opportunity
30:07
Speaker 1: to vote in the late nineteenth century, in most of
30:09
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and there was and we know, when
30:14
Speaker 1: one party changes the rules, it is not there to
30:17
Speaker 1: benefit everybody. It is there benefit only that one party.
30:22
Speaker 1: And there had been kind of an unspoken rule in
30:24
Speaker 1: the American democracy that you didn't change the rules of
30:27
Speaker 1: the game unless you had members of both teams agreeing
30:29
Speaker 1: to the rules changes. Democrats didn't bother to find Republicans
30:37
Speaker 1: or find a way to find broader appealing parts of
30:39
Speaker 1: their parts of the bill are very popular, just like
30:44
Speaker 1: parts of the Save bill for Republicans are very popular.
30:47
Speaker 1: But they're parts. And here's the reality that the Republicans
30:54
Speaker 1: jammed this through. It's a political nightmare for them and
30:58
Speaker 1: actually I think will only serve as a get out
31:00
Speaker 1: the vote mechanism for the left and the less actually
31:03
Speaker 1: going to do everything they're going to have, you know,
31:05
Speaker 1: you'll see people on tic tac.
31:08
Speaker 2: I'm showing my age.
31:09
Speaker 1: You'll see people on TikTok, you know, doing little songs
31:13
Speaker 1: and dances and how do you find your birth certificate?
31:15
Speaker 1: How do you request a copy of it? And this
31:17
Speaker 1: is what you do, and YadA, YadA YadA. Trust me,
31:20
Speaker 1: they'll figure it out pretty quickly and it will serve
31:23
Speaker 1: as an automatic motivator. I mean, the likelihood that this
31:27
Speaker 1: blows up in their face if they actually do this
31:29
Speaker 1: is just I mean, I mean, my God, to get
31:32
Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster to do this, and it would
31:34
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's like, it's like Trump and
31:36
Speaker 1: his absurd demand for partisan redistricting. Careful what you ask for.
31:40
Speaker 1: You might get it and it may end up blowing
31:42
Speaker 1: up in your face. Take the state of Virginia they're
31:45
Speaker 1: now going to who had them having a ten to
31:47
Speaker 1: one delegation on their bingo card a year ago? The
31:51
Speaker 1: answer is no one. Welcome to karma it So you
31:54
Speaker 1: know what, So now we ought to get to the
32:02
Speaker 1: uncomfortable part. And there are parts of both people's agendas
32:05
Speaker 1: that are both popular, in parts that are not at
32:08
Speaker 1: all okay. There is a pretty big disconnect between Washington
32:16
Speaker 1: and the rest of the country on some of these bills.
32:18
Speaker 1: Because if you listen to the debate on the House floor,
32:20
Speaker 1: you'd think the Save America Act was the most polarizing
32:23
Speaker 1: piece of legislation since.
32:24
Speaker 2: The Affordable Care Act.
32:26
Speaker 1: But if you actually look at the polling from this
32:28
Speaker 1: year Pew Gallop, even Maris, you're going to see something different.
32:32
Speaker 1: The voter ID concept is not controversial now. Most people
32:37
Speaker 1: are assuming it means the same, you know, same thing
32:39
Speaker 1: you do at the airport. You know, you just show
32:40
Speaker 1: your driver's license, that you should show your driver's license,
32:44
Speaker 1: your government issued photo ID right before you go vote.
32:47
Speaker 1: That has eighty three to eighty four percent support. That's
32:51
Speaker 1: not a Republican number, that's a consensus number. And there's
32:55
Speaker 1: even support for proof of citizenship for first time registrants
33:01
Speaker 1: that clocks in it over eighty percent support. All right,
33:04
Speaker 1: eighty percent. That's a big deal. Now again, first time registrants,
33:08
Speaker 1: that is not what this is. So this is where
33:14
Speaker 1: you see a lot of partisan commentators claim this is
33:19
Speaker 1: enormously popular. The Save Act is enormously The Save Act
33:23
Speaker 1: is not enormously popular. One piece of the Save Act
33:27
Speaker 1: is enormously popular. Right, this is friction versus the function functionality. So,
33:38
Speaker 1: and this is where we are having a debate over
33:42
Speaker 1: how much friction there should there be in the issue
33:44
Speaker 1: of voting. And right now, Republicans believe it should be
33:47
Speaker 1: harder to vote, and Democrats believe it should be easier
33:49
Speaker 1: to vote. Right and the Save Act moves friction to
33:52
Speaker 1: the front end, and it says you don't get in
33:54
Speaker 1: the door to vote until you prove who you are
33:57
Speaker 1: with a birth certificate.
33:58
Speaker 2: Or a passport.
34:00
Speaker 1: And guess what, roughly twenty one million Americans, most of
34:03
Speaker 1: them elderly, are the rural poor. Don't have those papers
34:06
Speaker 1: in our drawer ready to go. Then the Democrats with
34:10
Speaker 1: HR one wanted to get rid of all friction. It
34:12
Speaker 1: wanted automatic voter registration, basically saying the government should do
34:15
Speaker 1: the work for you. So the Democrats want to make
34:19
Speaker 1: the funnel as wide as possible to ensure no one
34:21
Speaker 1: is left out. The Republicans want to filter as fine
34:24
Speaker 1: as possible to ensure no one is in who shouldn't be. Now,
34:27
Speaker 1: both sides claiming they are protecting the sanctity of the
34:30
Speaker 1: vote and the spirit of democracy, but both sides are
34:33
Speaker 1: actually trying to engineer the electorate.
34:35
Speaker 2: To their own advantage.
34:40
Speaker 1: Right and the other parts of the Save Act are
34:43
Speaker 1: not popular. By demanding a total ban on mail in
34:46
Speaker 1: balance and attaching culture war writers to the bill, Trump
34:49
Speaker 1: is taking a simple policy like voter idea at the polls,
34:52
Speaker 1: that most Americans actually agree with, and wrapping in in
34:57
Speaker 1: a package that half the country finds tocks. And he's
35:00
Speaker 1: doing exactly what the Democrats did with HR One. They
35:03
Speaker 1: took some popular ideas like ethics reform and ending jerrymandering,
35:06
Speaker 1: and they stuffed him in a seven hundred page bill
35:08
Speaker 1: that included federal funding for campaigns. Total non starter for
35:11
Speaker 1: the right. But this is a classic Washington playbook. You
35:14
Speaker 1: take one popular idea, you poison it with partisan must haves,
35:19
Speaker 1: and then you blame the other side when it fails.
35:21
Speaker 1: It's a win win for the consultant community, it's a
35:24
Speaker 1: win win for your social media fundraising, but it's a
35:28
Speaker 1: lose lose for voter trust. And it brings us back
35:34
Speaker 1: to the larger point. You cannot save an election system
35:37
Speaker 1: by yourself. If the Save Act passes the Senate, by
35:40
Speaker 1: nuking the filibuster and getting fifty one Republican votes, half
35:43
Speaker 1: the country will view the twenty twenty six midterms is
35:45
Speaker 1: rigged before single ballot is cast, just as Republicans viewed
35:49
Speaker 1: HR one as a democratic coup in twenty twenty one.
35:53
Speaker 1: Stability in a democracy does not come from a fifty
35:55
Speaker 1: one percent majority. And I know right now everybody's assumption is, well,
36:00
Speaker 1: Trump is proving you can take a forty six percent
36:02
Speaker 1: majority and jamm through if you know how to use
36:05
Speaker 1: power or abuse power. But this stuff is not going
36:09
Speaker 1: to stick. There's a reason he can't couldn't get reelected
36:12
Speaker 1: once and he's yet to have a successful midterm. Okay,
36:17
Speaker 1: Stability in a democracy comes from consent, And when you
36:21
Speaker 1: change the rules of the game on a partisan basis,
36:23
Speaker 1: you aren't fixing the pipes. You're poisoning the well. And
36:26
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, the well is already running pretty dry.
36:32
Speaker 1: So let's get out of the theoretical and into the
36:34
Speaker 1: real world. Proponents of the Save Act say this is
36:40
Speaker 1: about one thing, ensuring that only citizens vote, and they
36:44
Speaker 1: point to the eighty percent of Americans who say, yeah,
36:47
Speaker 1: that sounds reasonable. Only citizens should vote, By the way,
36:50
Speaker 1: it's already the law of the lay it. But if
36:53
Speaker 1: we look at the states that have already tried a
36:54
Speaker 1: version of this bill, we're going to see a very
36:58
Speaker 1: different picture.
36:59
Speaker 2: Let me tell you the story of Arizona.
37:01
Speaker 1: For years, Arizona was the only state in the Union
37:03
Speaker 1: that required documentary proof of citizenship to register for state elections.
37:12
Speaker 1: And what did we find out? By the end of
37:14
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four there were nearly thirty four thousand federal
37:17
Speaker 1: only voters in Arizona. These are people who could not
37:21
Speaker 1: produce a birth certificate or a passport, so they were
37:24
Speaker 1: legally barred from voting for governor or state house. But
37:29
Speaker 1: thanks to the Supreme Court carve out, they could still
37:32
Speaker 1: vote for president and Congress. Thirty four thousand people. That's
37:39
Speaker 1: more than the average margin of victory in swing state
37:41
Speaker 1: Arizona these days. Right, These weren't illegals, by the way,
37:45
Speaker 1: They were citizens who just didn't have their papers in
37:47
Speaker 1: a shoe box. And here's the kicker. Georgia, another swing state,
37:55
Speaker 1: conducted its own Remember this is a Republican controlled state,
37:59
Speaker 1: Georgia that its own massive citizenship audit in twenty twenty four,
38:03
Speaker 1: cross referencing their roles with every database they can find.
38:07
Speaker 1: How many non citizens did they find? On a voter
38:11
Speaker 1: roll of millions of people in the state of Georgia,
38:13
Speaker 1: not in a small state, mind you, they found twenty
38:18
Speaker 1: two zero, not twenty thousand. Twenty out of those nine
38:25
Speaker 1: had actually voted over the span of seven years nine
38:29
Speaker 1: So eleven of the people they found never even voted.
38:33
Speaker 1: So the question for the Save Act isn't this bogus
38:36
Speaker 1: non citizen voting business that Trump claims. By the way,
38:42
Speaker 1: it's already a felony to vote if you're not a citizen.
38:45
Speaker 1: The question is is it worth adding a paperwork wall
38:51
Speaker 1: for twenty one million eligible Americans to catch nine people
38:56
Speaker 1: in the state of Georgia. In the policy world, that
39:00
Speaker 1: would be called a disproportionate response. In politics, we call
39:05
Speaker 1: it a barrier to entry. But the Save America Act
39:11
Speaker 1: that passed the House goes even further than what the
39:13
Speaker 1: state of Arizona did. It isn't just one and done
39:19
Speaker 1: check if you move or if you change your name,
39:22
Speaker 1: say because you got married. The Save Act treats you
39:26
Speaker 1: like a brand new applicant to vote, so you have
39:31
Speaker 1: to produce a whole round of new documentation all over again,
39:35
Speaker 1: not just a birth certificate but a marriage license.
39:39
Speaker 2: Think about that.
39:40
Speaker 1: There are seventy million married people in this country who
39:43
Speaker 1: have a different last name than the one on their
39:46
Speaker 1: birth certificate. Under the strictest reading of this House bill,
39:50
Speaker 1: if you don't have a passport, you might need to
39:52
Speaker 1: produce a birth certificate plus a marriage license just to
39:55
Speaker 1: update your address. Now, I don't want to go and
39:59
Speaker 1: do a huge amount of deep tales on my personal life,
40:01
Speaker 1: but my wife went through this where her passport didn't
40:07
Speaker 1: match your driver's license after we got married, and they
40:12
Speaker 1: wouldn't let her on a plane. This is after nine
40:14
Speaker 1: to eleven. We got married first, we got married just
40:16
Speaker 1: after nine eleven, less than a year after nine eleven,
40:19
Speaker 1: so there was you.
40:20
Speaker 2: Know, we were.
40:22
Speaker 1: And they said yet to produce a marriage certificate, which
40:27
Speaker 1: needed to know the exact date. Well, the marriage certificate
40:30
Speaker 1: that Nevada gave us did not have the exact date
40:32
Speaker 1: of when we got married, just the month in the year.
40:34
Speaker 1: And they said, no, no, no, you need a date. So
40:37
Speaker 1: we put we just wrote the date in. We're look,
40:40
Speaker 1: we don't know what else to do. It was a
40:44
Speaker 1: complicated mess. We missed a couple of flights because of it.
40:48
Speaker 1: We eventually got it worked out. This is a this
40:53
Speaker 1: is this you know, we've already you know, we already
40:55
Speaker 1: make it harder for women in this country and a
40:57
Speaker 1: lot of things due to you know, catching up on
41:00
Speaker 1: rules where we had sort of gender imbalance, whether it's
41:06
Speaker 1: for finances and all sorts of things. You know, wasn't
41:08
Speaker 1: that long ago then a married woman couldn't get a
41:10
Speaker 1: credit card without her husband's permission. So seventy million married
41:16
Speaker 1: people with a different last name. So in order to vote,
41:20
Speaker 1: if you just happen to move because your job transferred,
41:24
Speaker 1: you would have to produce a perth certificate plus the
41:26
Speaker 1: marriage license just to update your address. So we've moved
41:29
Speaker 1: from voter ID. Okay, which is what all of these
41:33
Speaker 1: misleading right wing commentators shoved down your throat and their feet.
41:38
Speaker 1: They are knowingly lying to you. And there's some really
41:41
Speaker 1: people that I used to respect who are just bullshitting
41:45
Speaker 1: all the way on this stuff. This is not about
41:48
Speaker 1: voter ID anymore. It's a long way away from voter ID.
41:52
Speaker 1: This is an entire elaborate piece of legislation just to
41:55
Speaker 1: make suthe Donald Trump's ego because he didn't win the
41:58
Speaker 1: popular vote in twenty sixteen, which he claimed is because
42:01
Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants voted in mass numbers against him, and he
42:05
Speaker 1: claims that mail in balloting is the reason why he
42:07
Speaker 1: lost in twenty twenty, not the fact that maybe he
42:10
Speaker 1: just wasn't popular enough to win the popular vote in
42:12
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and maybe it's because people thought he was
42:14
Speaker 1: sucked was president during COVID and they wanted to change
42:17
Speaker 1: in leadership. And they've just they literally are writing a
42:21
Speaker 1: bill in order to make his bullshit seem like it's
42:24
Speaker 1: a real grievance that should be fixed. So we've moved
42:30
Speaker 1: from voter ID which most people support, to voter paperwork,
42:34
Speaker 1: which most people will find exhausting. Do we really want
42:38
Speaker 1: to have the dmv afication of the most sacred right
42:42
Speaker 1: we have? I'll tell you though, Donald Trump terrible poker player, right.
42:48
Speaker 1: His recent pivot here is very revealing. By adding his
42:51
Speaker 1: demand for a ban on universal mail in voting and
42:53
Speaker 1: cultural world writers to the bill, he signaled that he
42:55
Speaker 1: actually doesn't want to see this bill pass. He simply
42:59
Speaker 1: wants to fight, just like HR one was never designed
43:02
Speaker 1: to pass. They just wanted to fight to say, Hey,
43:04
Speaker 1: those guys don't believe in democracy. They don't believe in
43:06
Speaker 1: election integrity, and what Trump wants to be able to
43:09
Speaker 1: say to his base is I tried to secure the elections,
43:11
Speaker 1: but the Democrats and the Senate Rhinos blocked me. So
43:15
Speaker 1: using a legitimate policy debate about citizenship verification as a
43:18
Speaker 1: trojan horse for a total overhaul of the voting calendar
43:22
Speaker 1: just to make his bullshit about what happened in twenty
43:25
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty twenty seem like it was legitimate. So
43:31
Speaker 1: when you take a common sense idea like citizen should
43:33
Speaker 1: vote and you turn it into a twenty one million
43:35
Speaker 1: person hurdle, you're not protecting the system. You're testing the
43:39
Speaker 1: breaking point. You don't want the democracy to succeed, You
43:43
Speaker 1: don't want more voters to the polls. If you do
43:46
Speaker 1: it without a single vote from the other side, you're
43:48
Speaker 1: telling half the country the only way to win is
43:50
Speaker 1: to change the rules so the other side can play.
43:52
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump actually said the quiet power out loud.
43:54
Speaker 1: He said, if we get this save bill pass the
43:56
Speaker 1: way I want it, Democrats won't win an election for
43:58
Speaker 1: fifty years. I don't happen to think that's true. But
44:04
Speaker 1: the fact that he said it only poisoned the well
44:07
Speaker 1: even more and made it an even to me, an
44:09
Speaker 1: easier decision not to support that bill. But here are
44:13
Speaker 1: some fun facts here about the access gap. This is
44:16
Speaker 1: just projections. In twenty twenty six, among total registered voters,
44:19
Speaker 1: fifty two percent do not have an unexpired passport. Among
44:23
Speaker 1: voters under the age of thirty, fifteen percent lacked easy
44:25
Speaker 1: access to a birth certificate. Among married women, thirty five
44:29
Speaker 1: percent have name match issues between their birth certificates and
44:32
Speaker 1: their ideas. And among low income voters, a disproportionate lack
44:38
Speaker 1: the one hundred dollars for a new passport and certified records.
44:45
Speaker 1: But let me conclude with the most uncomfortable truth of all,
44:49
Speaker 1: one that usually makes some of my poly sized students,
44:53
Speaker 1: if they haven't realized this yet, it can make their
44:56
Speaker 1: head spin. If you scour the US Constitution from the
45:00
Speaker 1: preamble to the last Amendment, you will not find the
45:03
Speaker 1: phrase that says, quote every citizen has an affirmative right
45:07
Speaker 1: to vote, because it's not there. What we have is
45:10
Speaker 1: a list of things you cannot do to stop someone
45:12
Speaker 1: from voting. You can't stop them because of their race.
45:16
Speaker 1: That's the fifteenth Amendment, their sex, that's the nineteenth amendment.
45:19
Speaker 1: Their failure to pay a poll tax, that's the twenty
45:21
Speaker 1: fourth Amendment, or because they're over eighteen, that's the twenty
45:24
Speaker 1: sixth Amendment. But as the Supreme Court famously reminded us
45:28
Speaker 1: in Bush v. Gore, the individual citizen has no federal
45:31
Speaker 1: constitutional right to vote for electors for the president of
45:34
Speaker 1: the United States. Maybe that is something we ought to
45:37
Speaker 1: change because the federal document, the US Constitution, is silent
45:46
Speaker 1: on this issue. There are state constitutions actually aren't. Nearly
45:49
Speaker 1: every single state constitution Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona explicitly guarantees that
45:56
Speaker 1: quote election shall be free and equal, or that every
45:59
Speaker 1: citizen shall be entitled to vote. And this is where
46:03
Speaker 1: the Save America Act hits a massive legal wall. If
46:05
Speaker 1: it's somehow magically passed. By mandating federal show us your
46:09
Speaker 1: paper requirements, Congress is essentially trying to override state level
46:14
Speaker 1: constitutional guarantees. Remember, the Constitution says it is up to
46:18
Speaker 1: the states to implement voting processes. So if a state
46:23
Speaker 1: constitution says a resident is entitled to vote and the
46:27
Speaker 1: federal government says not without a passport, you're not. We're
46:30
Speaker 1: looking at a pretty interesting tenth Amendment showdown that would
46:34
Speaker 1: make the nineteen sixties look like a warm up act.
46:38
Speaker 1: We actually already got a preview this when Kansas tried
46:41
Speaker 1: to version the Save Act. The courts eventually struck it down,
46:46
Speaker 1: partly because it created a dual class system of citizens,
46:49
Speaker 1: just like we have in Arizona. Right you have state
46:52
Speaker 1: voters and federal voters. You can't have federal voters and
46:55
Speaker 1: state voters living in the same house but using different rules.
46:58
Speaker 1: It's a recipe for administration. So here's the bottom line.
47:03
Speaker 1: When Democrats try to pass HR one, they were trying
47:06
Speaker 1: to use federal power to force states to make voting easier,
47:09
Speaker 1: and now with the Save Act, Republicans are trying to
47:11
Speaker 1: use federal power to force states to make voter registration harder.
47:15
Speaker 1: Both sides trying to build a national election system on
47:18
Speaker 1: a constitutional foundation that is frankly too thinner than it
47:21
Speaker 1: should be. So if you want to fundamentally change how
47:27
Speaker 1: Americans vote, you can't do it through a fifty one
47:29
Speaker 1: vote yatcha bill or a last minute writer on a
47:31
Speaker 1: spending package. You need a consensus that transcends the next
47:35
Speaker 1: election cycle. Because right now we're not saving the vote.
47:38
Speaker 1: We're just turning the rules of democracy to a partisan weapon.
47:41
Speaker 1: And when the rules become the weapon, the only thing
47:43
Speaker 1: that ends up dead is the public's trust in the outcome.
47:48
Speaker 1: So look, I hope I created a little bit of
47:50
Speaker 1: clarity of what this bill actually is, what the impact
47:54
Speaker 1: would be. I know I've been pretty dismissive. I am
47:58
Speaker 1: a hugely cynical about both of these bills because they
48:01
Speaker 1: were not designed to pass right. This is not about
48:07
Speaker 1: being a moderate a centrist. It is about me being
48:09
Speaker 1: an incrementalist, which means if you were trying to change
48:12
Speaker 1: the rules for three hundred and fifty million Americans, you
48:16
Speaker 1: better do it with massive consensus, not partisan demagogri Having
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50:09
Speaker 1: one comes from Julie from Portland. Hey, Chuck, it used
50:11
Speaker 1: to be that we had a long time in between
50:13
Speaker 1: a major crisis, and now we seem to beginning several
50:15
Speaker 1: every week since the beginning of the year. I can
50:17
Speaker 1: recall we've had Venezuela, Greenland, Minnesota, and now we're with Iron.
50:20
Speaker 2: And I feel that.
50:21
Speaker 1: There have been several more crises in between these things,
50:24
Speaker 1: but they come and go so rapidly that I can
50:26
Speaker 1: keep up. How's the psyche of the American people supposed
50:28
Speaker 1: to endure? With all these major changes and threats coming
50:31
Speaker 1: coming at us so quickly, the midterms seemed very far away.
50:33
Speaker 1: Not to mention twenty twenty eight, appreciate your thoughts. Things Well,
50:37
Speaker 1: this is when you hear the word chaos, right, And
50:40
Speaker 1: this became a popular buzzword on the campaign trail in
50:45
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen and twenty twenty because it grew out of
50:48
Speaker 1: a lot of good old fashioned voter focus groups. Right,
50:52
Speaker 1: And say what you will about focus grouping everything and
50:56
Speaker 1: things like this, I find voter focus groups pretty helpful
51:00
Speaker 1: because you do you know, you hear the words of
51:03
Speaker 1: actual voters, not you know, some posters interpretation, and what
51:09
Speaker 1: you're describing this is that it's you know, why you
51:13
Speaker 1: hear a lot of politicians, Hey, can we just stop
51:15
Speaker 1: the chaos? You know, can we just can we just
51:18
Speaker 1: you know, put a halt to this. Look, Joe Biden
51:21
Speaker 1: won because he was the anti chaos candidate, and then
51:23
Speaker 1: I think the mistake he made is he brought his
51:25
Speaker 1: own set of chaos to governing right when really.
51:30
Speaker 2: People just wanted to take a breath, you know.
51:32
Speaker 1: I think, you know, a little bit of Trump disruption
51:35
Speaker 1: was good. A lot of bit of Trump disruption is exhausting.
51:40
Speaker 2: I'm going to choose.
51:41
Speaker 1: I do think that in the long term we will
51:43
Speaker 1: look at Trump's presidencies as an important MRI for the country,
51:47
Speaker 1: for our soul, and hopefully we now see some things
51:53
Speaker 1: that we don't like and we want to do something
51:54
Speaker 1: about them. But I actually think this, this feeling that
52:03
Speaker 1: we don't have control of events right, that everything is
52:06
Speaker 1: moving so quickly we can't wrap our arms around it,
52:09
Speaker 1: is actually one of the It's one of those it's
52:13
Speaker 1: a it's a tough question to pull, you know, when
52:17
Speaker 1: you say, what are the most important issues? You know,
52:19
Speaker 1: if I ask you that as a polster, you're going
52:21
Speaker 1: to give me issues. But it sounds like for you
52:25
Speaker 1: one of the most important issues to Can we just
52:27
Speaker 1: slow down?
52:27
Speaker 2: Can we stop the chaos?
52:28
Speaker 1: Can we stop the you know, just sort of like
52:31
Speaker 1: you know, I think this is a feature of Trump, right,
52:35
Speaker 1: this is you know, he's got short attention span, he's
52:37
Speaker 1: got his version of add so he's making us all
52:41
Speaker 1: sort of conform to his way of doing things. He
52:44
Speaker 1: loves this, He doesn't he can't folk. Anybody that has
52:48
Speaker 1: ever tried to brief Donald Trump on a serious topic
52:50
Speaker 1: knows you've got about ten minutes. And you better bring
52:52
Speaker 1: pictures because if you go thirty minutes, forty five minutes
52:57
Speaker 1: and you know you're going to lose him. He's going
52:58
Speaker 1: to fall asleep. He's going to be distracted. He's going
53:00
Speaker 1: to take a call, he's going to ask for six
53:02
Speaker 1: die cokes. He is just not going to stay focused.
53:06
Speaker 1: He's going to order you in Floorsheim shoes if you're
53:08
Speaker 1: a guy, by guessing your shoe size. But he's he's
53:14
Speaker 1: he's not gonna and don't leave him something to read.
53:17
Speaker 1: He's not going to read it. This is going to
53:21
Speaker 1: sound snarky and cynical. I don't believe he has read
53:24
Speaker 1: a book from beginning to end in thirty years, specifically,
53:29
Speaker 1: and certainly not his own books. That that has been proven, actually,
53:34
Speaker 1: but I would love to be proven wrong that he
53:36
Speaker 1: has read a book from front to back, just one
53:40
Speaker 1: this century one.
53:43
Speaker 2: I don't buy it.
53:45
Speaker 1: That's how short his attention span is. And so this
53:47
Speaker 1: is why this is kind of a feature of this administration.
53:50
Speaker 1: He just gets bored. He can't singularly focus on one thing.
53:53
Speaker 2: At a time.
53:55
Speaker 1: So, but I think this is this is what exhausts
53:59
Speaker 1: the what I call them the silent majority, right. I
54:02
Speaker 1: think I gave that anecdote of sort of an acquaintance
54:06
Speaker 1: of mind that I ran into the day after the
54:07
Speaker 1: Texas primaries and he didn't realize the Texas primaries were happening,
54:11
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, what happened? And I told him
54:14
Speaker 1: what happened. He's like, oh, I just didn't want any
54:16
Speaker 1: more bomb throwers. Like there's an exhaustion out there. There's
54:19
Speaker 1: an exhaustion from the partisan warfare, there's an exhaustion from
54:22
Speaker 1: the crisis to crisis governance that that Trump is comfortable in.
54:27
Speaker 1: You know, here's the thing. We're all on the same
54:30
Speaker 1: roller coaster. He's just not thrown up and the rest
54:34
Speaker 1: of us are so I you know, this is why
54:40
Speaker 1: I spent a long time deciding to go deep on
54:43
Speaker 1: one issue, because I think I've glossed over some things
54:46
Speaker 1: because I moved from you know, I get a little
54:49
Speaker 1: too reactionary in the moment, and I think the thing
54:51
Speaker 1: that we can do best here in the independent space,
54:54
Speaker 1: in the podcast space, is to take the unlimited amount
54:57
Speaker 1: of time that I do have, unlimited amount of bandwidth
54:59
Speaker 1: in theory that is here, and the meticulously explain something
55:04
Speaker 1: all the way.
55:06
Speaker 2: From beginning to end.
55:08
Speaker 1: But you know, you're the feeling you have, you're not alone,
55:13
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think it is. It is among
55:17
Speaker 1: the most important issues that I think are going to
55:19
Speaker 1: drive independence towards candidates that are running against any Republican incumbent,
55:25
Speaker 1: whether it's an independent.
55:27
Speaker 2: Or a Democrat.
55:29
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Gaale Woodinville, Washington. Gail Rights, Hey, Chuck,
55:33
Speaker 1: thank you for the podcast that always calls it like
55:35
Speaker 1: it is. I appreciate you saying that, I know the
55:37
Speaker 1: war of the Ron and the Epstein files are taking
55:39
Speaker 1: up all of the attention lately.
55:40
Speaker 2: But I feel like it's.
55:41
Speaker 1: Just a distraction, just distracting us from the real issue
55:45
Speaker 1: at hand, which is winning the House in the Senate November.
55:47
Speaker 1: Shouldn't we be focus on the GOP enablers or allowing
55:49
Speaker 1: the destruction of our country and getting these pedophile protectors
55:52
Speaker 1: out of office.
55:53
Speaker 2: Thanks for all you do. You know, it's interesting.
55:57
Speaker 1: To sort of put these two questions together, right, they
56:00
Speaker 1: of go together. And you're both from the Northwest, right,
56:03
Speaker 1: Washington and Oregon. Julie from Portland, Gale from Wooden Bill, Washington.
56:09
Speaker 1: You know, everything is a distraction in the moment from
56:14
Speaker 1: something else that we should be focused on. And this
56:16
Speaker 1: is sort of the Trump era in a nutshell, right,
56:19
Speaker 1: he has started eight fires. We've got to put all
56:23
Speaker 1: eight fires out. Which fire do you put out first?
56:27
Speaker 2: Right?
56:27
Speaker 1: And it's the prioritization issue as always, look in theory,
56:35
Speaker 1: I'm with You're right. Everybody's got to you know, should
56:38
Speaker 1: stay in their lane and you know, make the main
56:41
Speaker 1: thing the main thing. But it is only March, and
56:45
Speaker 1: I would argue, if you're in elective office, you have
56:47
Speaker 1: some duty to try to deal with the situation that is,
56:51
Speaker 1: before you go to the voters hoping for a different
56:53
Speaker 1: set of people to work with to then deal with
56:56
Speaker 1: the situation that will be. But you're you know, look,
57:04
Speaker 1: I one could argue that the the the more Trump
57:11
Speaker 1: handles Iran and Epstein, the more the easier for Democrats
57:16
Speaker 1: to focus on the House and Senate because you know what,
57:20
Speaker 1: Trump's not focused on affordability. What Trump's not focused on
57:23
Speaker 1: is what there's domestic issues, the issue of rising health
57:28
Speaker 1: care costs, the issues rising electric bills, the issue of
57:31
Speaker 1: fear of AI job displacement. By the way, the most
57:34
Speaker 1: underreported number in the new NBC News poll is how
57:37
Speaker 1: unpopular AI is right now with the American people. What's
57:42
Speaker 1: interesting is how how cautious Democrats and elected office are
57:48
Speaker 1: at pushing back on AI. What they're really saying is
57:51
Speaker 1: they don't trust these Silicon Valley people to implement AI
57:55
Speaker 1: in a fair and equitable way. That's what this is
57:59
Speaker 1: telling me, right, the same people that brought you the
58:02
Speaker 1: success that is social media and what that's done. Do
58:05
Speaker 1: you think social media has been a success or a
58:06
Speaker 1: failure for American society? My guess is, if you asked
58:11
Speaker 1: it that way, and I would like some of my
58:14
Speaker 1: poster friends to ask this question and as neutral of
58:16
Speaker 1: the way as you can, I have a feeling that
58:18
Speaker 1: the yes no would look a lot like the favorable
58:23
Speaker 1: unfavorable view when it came to artificial intelligencers. Right now
58:26
Speaker 1: is upside down in underwater. So I take your point
58:30
Speaker 1: that everything looks like it's a distraction from a just
58:33
Speaker 1: from something else that ought to be the focus. But
58:36
Speaker 1: in some ways, it is that chaos that may actually
58:41
Speaker 1: serve as a voting motivator for some people who just
58:44
Speaker 1: want off the Trump roller coaster. All right, next question,
58:55
Speaker 1: I think it comes from somebody from Kansas, but I
58:58
Speaker 1: don't have a name, but let me.
59:01
Speaker 2: Read the question.
59:02
Speaker 1: He says, you've spoken a few times about the amount
59:03
Speaker 1: of money necessary for the Republicans to defend their Senate
59:06
Speaker 1: seat in Texas. Would argue that money is becoming less
59:08
Speaker 1: of an issue for two reasons. First, it seems to
59:10
Speaker 1: be available in unlimited quantities, well, if you're willing to
59:13
Speaker 1: wore yourself out for crypto or for AI. Yes, the
59:16
Speaker 1: amount of money spent in every election seems to increase
59:19
Speaker 1: since the last by wider and wider margins. Fact Check true,
59:23
Speaker 1: coupled with the law of diminishing returns, which says every
59:25
Speaker 1: additional dollar spent is less effective than the last.
59:28
Speaker 2: Also true.
59:29
Speaker 1: I think think there will always be enough money in
59:30
Speaker 1: every state that state it's needed in.
59:35
Speaker 2: What do you think? Thank you?
59:36
Speaker 1: I really enjoy your show and continue to wonder if
59:38
Speaker 1: Kansas will ever and then it trails off. So I
59:41
Speaker 1: think we missed one part of your secondary part of
59:45
Speaker 1: that question. I agree with you that you know, it's
59:50
Speaker 1: been interesting. You know, Trump was out spent in sixteen
59:53
Speaker 1: but won the presidential election. Trump was outspent in twenty twenty,
59:56
Speaker 1: but run the presidential election. Republicans are likely to outspend
59:59
Speaker 1: the Demo Crats in the midterms in twenty twenty six,
1:00:01
Speaker 1: and yet Democrats are likely to have a better.
1:00:03
Speaker 2: Midterm result than the Republicans.
1:00:06
Speaker 1: So you're not wrong that there is sort of a
1:00:09
Speaker 1: diminishing return with this big money. Part of it is
1:00:12
Speaker 1: the fragmentation issue, right, It is so much harder. You know,
1:00:17
Speaker 1: it used to be cheaper and efficient to reach ten
1:00:20
Speaker 1: million people with you know, just a just a you know,
1:00:24
Speaker 1: not a very diverse ad campaign. Now, of course you've
1:00:27
Speaker 1: got to you've got to maybe you know, and most
1:00:31
Speaker 1: political campaigns might produce six or seven unique television ads period.
1:00:36
Speaker 1: Now you need to do whatever your television message for
1:00:39
Speaker 1: the week is, you need to do six or seven
1:00:41
Speaker 1: different versions of it so that one makes sense on TikTok,
1:00:45
Speaker 1: and one makes sense on YouTube, and one makes sense
1:00:46
Speaker 1: on YouTube TV, and one makes sense on cable television
1:00:49
Speaker 1: and one makes sense on broadcasts.
1:00:50
Speaker 2: You know.
1:00:52
Speaker 1: So you know, part of it is that the cost
1:00:55
Speaker 1: of running these campaigns is exponentially grown as well. I
1:01:01
Speaker 1: understand the feeling that money is sort of like there's
1:01:04
Speaker 1: a there's always money, right, There's always money in the
1:01:06
Speaker 1: banana san right, So yes, I tend to agree with you,
1:01:11
Speaker 1: but we are getting you know, these large giant forces.
1:01:17
Speaker 1: Crypto AI are the two biggest ones, right. I mean,
1:01:22
Speaker 1: you look at what's happening in the Illinois Senate race,
1:01:24
Speaker 1: and it's just like there's a super pack for each
1:01:27
Speaker 1: candidate that is funded by some interest group that is
1:01:30
Speaker 1: not actually debate having an issue debated in this primary,
1:01:34
Speaker 1: but they're trying to buy an ally.
1:01:36
Speaker 2: Right.
1:01:36
Speaker 1: The Democratic primary for US Senate in Illinois is attracting
1:01:39
Speaker 1: huge money.
1:01:40
Speaker 2: People.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: Why because whoever wins a Democratic primary is going to
1:01:44
Speaker 1: be the US Senator in Illinois. So whether you're a
1:01:46
Speaker 1: crypto advocate, whether you're an AI no regulation advocate or
1:01:52
Speaker 1: an AI pro regulation advocate, you're trying to find your
1:01:56
Speaker 1: ally in this Democratic primary. So I don't disagree with
1:02:03
Speaker 1: you about your theory and money, but I do think
1:02:05
Speaker 1: we've sort of we've been overserved. It's time to step
1:02:09
Speaker 1: away from the bar. It's time to put some restrictions here.
1:02:13
Speaker 1: We're not asking for super restrictions, but we've got to
1:02:16
Speaker 1: have some because what you know, the fact that crypto
1:02:21
Speaker 1: and Silicon Valley and AI have essentially hijacked Washington financially
1:02:25
Speaker 1: right now, and they have is it's unprecedented what we've seen.
1:02:31
Speaker 1: And the dirty little secret is every elected officials kind
1:02:34
Speaker 1: of grossed out by this, but nobody wants to offend
1:02:38
Speaker 1: the money people that support them. So that's why this
1:02:42
Speaker 1: system isn't getting fixed. I mean, I go back to
1:02:46
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer telling a closed door meeting of Senate Democrats
1:02:50
Speaker 1: to suck it up and get on board crypto because
1:02:52
Speaker 1: the fair Shake people had too much money to go
1:02:55
Speaker 1: up against. The Senate Democrats have been extorted by the
1:03:02
Speaker 1: crypto folks is that the system we had in mind?
1:03:07
Speaker 1: Is that the system the founders had in mind?
1:03:09
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
1:03:11
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Jay in New York. Jay initial,
1:03:13
Speaker 1: not Jay, and Jay asked at what point does a
1:03:17
Speaker 1: fundraising discrepancy between an incumbent and a challenger outweigh the
1:03:20
Speaker 1: partisan lean of a race. For example, Lauren Bobert's Colorado
1:03:23
Speaker 1: four district is R plus nine. Trump got fifty seven
1:03:25
Speaker 1: percent of the vote, just beneath the fifty nine percent
1:03:27
Speaker 1: threshold you set. But in Q four, one democrat running
1:03:30
Speaker 1: against Bobert raised a staggering two million dollars compared to
1:03:32
Speaker 1: Boberts one hundred and seventy four thousand, and that democrat
1:03:34
Speaker 1: has two and a half million cash on hand compared
1:03:36
Speaker 1: to Bobert's two in a nineteen thousand cash on hand.
1:03:38
Speaker 1: Should Bobert be concerned about that much money? Or is
1:03:40
Speaker 1: her district truly too Republican? Look, I don't think it's greally.
1:03:45
Speaker 1: This is the sort of I think the old it's
1:03:49
Speaker 1: the old Wayne Allard's seat, That's what I remember it as.
1:03:51
Speaker 1: But it's like the fourth Congresion. The old fourth Congressional
1:03:54
Speaker 1: district up in Colorado was always sort of the conservative
1:03:57
Speaker 1: district that wasn't Colorado Springs, it was Greeley. It was
1:04:00
Speaker 1: always the center of it. I want to say Weld County,
1:04:04
Speaker 1: I think was the was one of the heart of that.
1:04:07
Speaker 1: Fort Collins used to be a part of it. They've
1:04:08
Speaker 1: now moved Fort Collins out of it because I think
1:04:10
Speaker 1: Fort Collins became too liberal and it was diluting that district,
1:04:15
Speaker 1: making it more competitive.
1:04:20
Speaker 2: I think we've learned, right, you can have.
1:04:24
Speaker 1: There. It really depends on the challenge of themselves, right,
1:04:28
Speaker 1: which is you have all the money in the world.
1:04:32
Speaker 1: We saw this in Jamie Harrison had more money than
1:04:35
Speaker 1: Lindsay Graham and South Carolina, but that wasn't going to
1:04:40
Speaker 1: be enough, and that that's about arguably about the same.
1:04:46
Speaker 1: Maybe South Carolina is slightly more Republican than the district
1:04:49
Speaker 1: you're describing here, So you know, this is kind of
1:04:54
Speaker 1: a you're you're pointing to about a ten to one
1:04:57
Speaker 1: cash advantage here. I think when you get to the
1:05:01
Speaker 1: twenty five to one with an incumbent member of Congress,
1:05:05
Speaker 1: because you're going to have outside groups that are going
1:05:06
Speaker 1: to come in for her. And that's the other part
1:05:09
Speaker 1: of this, right, A challenger might raise a bunch of
1:05:11
Speaker 1: money in a red leaning district, or a challenger might
1:05:14
Speaker 1: raise a bunch of money a Blue Republican in a
1:05:16
Speaker 1: blue leaning district. But are the third party groups, the
1:05:20
Speaker 1: independent expenditure group's going to come in behind them and
1:05:23
Speaker 1: to spend money there or are they going to consider
1:05:25
Speaker 1: it a waste of money versus those that know that
1:05:28
Speaker 1: that seat is winnable on their side and they come
1:05:30
Speaker 1: in there. So where what happens is I'm sure Bobert
1:05:34
Speaker 1: just knows because she's had this before. Outside groups are
1:05:37
Speaker 1: going to come in and save her if necessary, and
1:05:42
Speaker 1: outside democratic groups are likely not to spend their money there.
1:05:46
Speaker 1: There instead, and that it's specific in Colorado, they're probably
1:05:49
Speaker 1: going to spend money. I think they think they can
1:05:52
Speaker 1: flip the third district on the other side of the Rockies.
1:05:55
Speaker 1: They think maybe they can flip the Colorado Springs district,
1:05:59
Speaker 1: So I think they're more likely to concentrate their resources elsewhere.
1:06:02
Speaker 1: So it is it is about whether is is your
1:06:07
Speaker 1: race competitive enough that the outside groups will engage, And
1:06:12
Speaker 1: in this case, I think that's why that isn't the case.
1:06:14
Speaker 1: But is there a rule of thumb? Like I said,
1:06:18
Speaker 1: that's a ten to one, and I wouldn't still view
1:06:20
Speaker 1: that as you know, look, in a bad year for Republicans,
1:06:23
Speaker 1: they're going to lose some seats that that are plus
1:06:28
Speaker 1: nine plus ten Trump maybe even lose a seat or
1:06:31
Speaker 1: two that is. But usually there's some other reason, right,
1:06:35
Speaker 1: a scandal, lazy candidate, bad candidate, something like that. Now
1:06:40
Speaker 1: Bobert is not the best candidate, right, she doesn't always
1:06:44
Speaker 1: you know, runing come across as a conventional member of Congress,
1:06:48
Speaker 1: and she's already kind of a carpetbager. Right, it's not
1:06:50
Speaker 1: really from that area. She shopped that district. So I
1:06:54
Speaker 1: think she's being a little lazy here because I don't know.
1:06:58
Speaker 2: If she's as.
1:07:01
Speaker 1: As entrenched in this district as she was, you know,
1:07:05
Speaker 1: and you know, she moved district so she feared she
1:07:07
Speaker 1: was going to lose on that front. So I think that,
1:07:11
Speaker 1: you know, she probably has a false, a little false
1:07:13
Speaker 1: sense of security, but there's a reason she has that
1:07:17
Speaker 1: she feels that security. Next question comes from Andrew d goes,
1:07:20
Speaker 1: this is a little dark, a byproduct of reading too
1:07:22
Speaker 1: many Grisham novels. Okay, you're right, Grisham has gotten a
1:07:27
Speaker 1: little dark. In some of his more recent books. Anyway,
1:07:30
Speaker 1: he goes what a right wing magazella or even more nefarious,
1:07:32
Speaker 1: someone in Trump's inner circle set off a catastrophic public
1:07:35
Speaker 1: bomb and claim it was an Iranian terror cell towards
1:07:37
Speaker 1: the end of summer, thus resulting in the government having
1:07:40
Speaker 1: an excuse to shut down the midterm elections. Putin got
1:07:42
Speaker 1: where he is today doing the same thing, same type
1:07:45
Speaker 1: of thing in Chechia. I feel getting this out ahead
1:07:48
Speaker 1: of time could ruin the surprise intent of the people.
1:07:50
Speaker 1: Thank you PS Sunday's For eight years before my son
1:07:52
Speaker 1: went to college, was getting our breakfast cooked and ready
1:07:55
Speaker 1: so we could sit and watch me the press. Thanks
1:07:56
Speaker 1: for that routine, Andrew d Andrew, thanks for sharing that.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: Uh love love those father son stories. Uh those are
1:08:04
Speaker 1: neat When I go to college campuses and people say
1:08:06
Speaker 1: they grew up watching me, and of course I know
1:08:09
Speaker 1: they mean it as a compliment.
1:08:10
Speaker 2: It only makes me feel old. But that's neither here
1:08:13
Speaker 2: or there.
1:08:14
Speaker 1: Look, I did a whole thing on the Reichstag fire
1:08:16
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, which was an important moment
1:08:19
Speaker 1: for Hitler too. Essentially, uh use use the government against
1:08:26
Speaker 1: the people and to use government to.
1:08:32
Speaker 2: Acquire authoritarian legitimacy.
1:08:39
Speaker 1: So I have to say, I, I mean, you know,
1:08:47
Speaker 1: the end of succession. I'm starting the fire at the
1:08:50
Speaker 1: big central counting location in Milwaukee. Right, we've seen that
1:08:53
Speaker 1: one that would totally have been something you're like that
1:08:57
Speaker 1: scared the be Jesus out of a lot of people, going, Hey,
1:08:59
Speaker 1: that's seemed super realistic. Welcome to distrust in America, right,
1:09:07
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what you're describing, You're right, is
1:09:09
Speaker 1: something that most Russians just believe is fact, that that's
1:09:12
Speaker 1: just how the world works. I just I here's why
1:09:22
Speaker 1: I don't believe it's possible.
1:09:23
Speaker 2: I just think that.
1:09:28
Speaker 1: Those conspiracies never hold. They just don't. People break people.
1:09:35
Speaker 1: People you know, you know, do not let that go.
1:09:38
Speaker 1: And I just don't think it's you know, it's it is.
1:09:43
Speaker 1: I don't think that stuff gets suppressed. I think if
1:09:46
Speaker 1: you're waiting for some bombshell that you think has never
1:09:48
Speaker 1: been reported, it's never been reported because there's no bombshell
1:09:51
Speaker 1: there and a lot of these conspiracies that can get
1:09:56
Speaker 1: us all sent down certain rabbit holes. But hey, look
1:10:01
Speaker 1: you're not you're not putting out I wish I wish
1:10:06
Speaker 1: I would say, you're being crazy, Andrew. All Right, I
1:10:09
Speaker 1: don't believe it'll be and I don't believe that even
1:10:15
Speaker 1: Trump has enough support to pull something like this off
1:10:19
Speaker 1: without it, you know, without it sort of somebody whistleblowing.
1:10:27
Speaker 1: But that's life in a democracy that ultimately I count
1:10:30
Speaker 1: on somebody being a whistleblower, that at the end of
1:10:32
Speaker 1: the day, somebody's conscience gets the best of them.
1:10:34
Speaker 2: And you know, I would you.
1:10:36
Speaker 1: Know, it's interesting I saw the other day somebody dunking on.
1:10:42
Speaker 1: Somebody tweeted out a sort of regret on voting for Trump,
1:10:47
Speaker 1: and it was a long list. You know, I thought
1:10:49
Speaker 1: I was voting for this, this, and this, and I
1:10:54
Speaker 1: feel taken and you know, I regret my vote. And
1:10:59
Speaker 1: somebody tweeted above it and all the responses were, well,
1:11:03
Speaker 1: you're the more and I can't believe you.
1:11:04
Speaker 2: Fell for it. And I just was wanting to send
1:11:06
Speaker 2: There was somebody else.
1:11:06
Speaker 1: Who was quote tweeting it and just saying, you know,
1:11:09
Speaker 1: you need to ask yourself why you were so ignorant.
1:11:12
Speaker 1: And when I want to say to those folks, and
1:11:17
Speaker 1: I don't know if they listen to this podcast, because
1:11:19
Speaker 1: I'm not somebody who is a who just tells you
1:11:22
Speaker 1: what you want to hear. I just would never be
1:11:24
Speaker 1: able to do that. It's just not that's not who
1:11:27
Speaker 1: I am.
1:11:28
Speaker 2: So I'm not so.
1:11:29
Speaker 1: And I know that this may be saved for those
1:11:32
Speaker 1: partisan you know, those that you know are trying to
1:11:35
Speaker 1: save America, that claim they're saving America with their podcasts,
1:11:42
Speaker 1: which is, everybody's got a line that Trump crosses, but
1:11:48
Speaker 1: everybody's line is in a different place. I said something
1:11:52
Speaker 1: to a family member early on in the Trump years,
1:11:55
Speaker 1: and I said, it be careful being overly critical.
1:11:56
Speaker 2: Of some of these folks.
1:11:58
Speaker 1: I said, somebody you don't like today is going to
1:12:01
Speaker 1: be the hero of this story. And the punchline is,
1:12:04
Speaker 1: you know, at that moment, little did anybody know that
1:12:07
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney would be a hero for protecting democracy to
1:12:11
Speaker 1: many on the left some three years later, and yet.
1:12:15
Speaker 2: She was turned out.
1:12:17
Speaker 1: It was January sixth, was the line for her. Everybody
1:12:22
Speaker 1: has our line. It is not in the same place
1:12:26
Speaker 1: we live. If you want to live in a thriving democracy,
1:12:31
Speaker 1: you need to accept the premise that we all don't agree.
1:12:34
Speaker 1: That we all may have ethics and morals, but they're
1:12:37
Speaker 1: not in alignment with each other's ethics and morals, and
1:12:45
Speaker 1: that we all have our we all have our no
1:12:48
Speaker 1: go zones, right, we all have the line. If they
1:12:50
Speaker 1: crosses this line, I'm out. Welcome them, Welcome them to
1:12:57
Speaker 1: the bunker, don't lecture them for taking too long to
1:13:01
Speaker 1: get there. Next question comes from Amanda, and she writes,
1:13:16
Speaker 1: I had to stop what I was doing during your
1:13:17
Speaker 1: March second podcast because once again I found myself shouting,
1:13:20
Speaker 1: why don't you run for president?
1:13:21
Speaker 2: Mister Todd.
1:13:22
Speaker 1: The way you break down something as complex as the
1:13:24
Speaker 1: Iran assault with legal, historical, in fact driven clarity is
1:13:26
Speaker 1: exactly what.
1:13:27
Speaker 2: This country needs.
1:13:28
Speaker 1: You are truly one of the last honest, fair and
1:13:30
Speaker 1: balanced voices in the media, and I often have to
1:13:32
Speaker 1: listen twice just to absorb it all.
1:13:33
Speaker 2: Thank you for doing what you do. Gives me hope
1:13:35
Speaker 2: in a.
1:13:36
Speaker 1: Time when I often feel like we're living through the
1:13:38
Speaker 1: fall of Rome. Well, Amanda, I wonder what people in
1:13:42
Speaker 1: Rome at the time. Did they know what was all
1:13:43
Speaker 1: coming to an end? Or do they all think, oh, no,
1:13:45
Speaker 1: we can fix this right, whether they're naive like me, No, no, no,
1:13:48
Speaker 1: we'll figure it out. Well, I think you just described
1:13:53
Speaker 1: the reason why someone like me will never get elected, right,
1:13:57
Speaker 1: because you said, fact driven clarity is exactly what this
1:14:00
Speaker 1: country needs. What president has successfully used fact driven clarity
1:14:05
Speaker 1: to to get a majority on their side. A sort
1:14:12
Speaker 1: of half kid. And the candidates that that scratch my
1:14:18
Speaker 1: itch are usually the ones that are at one or
1:14:20
Speaker 1: two percent.
1:14:20
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, I was.
1:14:24
Speaker 1: One of the candidates that intrigued me the most on
1:14:26
Speaker 1: the Democratic side in twenty twenty. It was Michael Bennett,
1:14:31
Speaker 1: and I remember him at one debate he said the
1:14:34
Speaker 1: issue that I cared the most about. He says, if
1:14:36
Speaker 1: you elect me president, you might, I might, you might
1:14:39
Speaker 1: go three weeks without hearing from me. And I thought, yes,
1:14:41
Speaker 1: give me more of that. That resonated like a wet noodle. Right,
1:14:51
Speaker 1: But it's I appreciate you saying that. It's very kind
1:14:54
Speaker 1: of you, and I just I'll tell you why I've
1:14:58
Speaker 1: never even contemplated entering politics, because I think it would undermine.
1:15:05
Speaker 2: Elected office. I'll say this way.
1:15:06
Speaker 1: I always feared to underline my credibility on the media side,
1:15:09
Speaker 1: and not just mine, but other members of the media.
1:15:14
Speaker 1: You know, you play into the type that you know,
1:15:15
Speaker 1: you're an activist and all this stuff, and yet you
1:15:18
Speaker 1: know I'm a citizen too, and you're right, you know,
1:15:22
Speaker 1: so I you know, but I've decided to throw my efforts,
1:15:25
Speaker 1: my political efforts into restructuring the democracy, reforming, updating the
1:15:31
Speaker 1: infrastructure for the democracy. We need a couple of new
1:15:34
Speaker 1: constitutional amendments. It's pretty clear we need one on campaign money.
1:15:38
Speaker 1: It's pretty clear we need one on on some on
1:15:41
Speaker 1: some jerrymandering, and perhaps we need one and just a simple.
1:15:44
Speaker 2: Right to vote aspect in the constitution itself.
1:15:49
Speaker 1: And you know, if I feel like that's the place
1:15:52
Speaker 1: I can contribute best is sadly, running for president is
1:15:57
Speaker 1: just simply it's like agreeing to like the cast of Survivor,
1:16:04
Speaker 1: and that's just not something I've ever wanted to be
1:16:08
Speaker 1: a part of, if you get my drift. But clarity
1:16:12
Speaker 1: is my goal here. So the fact that you're getting clarity,
1:16:14
Speaker 1: I feel as if a mission as a president might
1:16:18
Speaker 1: say mission accomplished.
1:16:21
Speaker 2: All right.
1:16:22
Speaker 1: Last question comes from Jim in Pennsylvania, and he goes, hey,
1:16:25
Speaker 1: I've heard it said that the next president, regardless of
1:16:27
Speaker 1: whether they're Republican or Democrat, may have difficulty doing a
1:16:29
Speaker 1: one eighty on tariff. Says this may be the new
1:16:31
Speaker 1: norm as a revenue stream. If that is the case,
1:16:33
Speaker 1: how does the country go about removing tariffs? How did
1:16:35
Speaker 1: we change course from the Willie McKinley days when he
1:16:38
Speaker 1: was pro tariff to the free trade that we've had
1:16:40
Speaker 1: most recently. Is it something that can be done like
1:16:42
Speaker 1: a band aid that's ripped off, or does it take
1:16:44
Speaker 1: multiple presidencies and the building of goodwill to develop free trade? Well,
1:16:48
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be you know, I think
1:16:50
Speaker 1: goodwill is going to be one issue, right and we
1:16:53
Speaker 1: may have so many reciprocal tariffs that are impacting US.
1:16:57
Speaker 1: I don't think getting rid of the tariffs are going
1:16:59
Speaker 1: to be that difficult. I think what some people claim
1:17:04
Speaker 1: that will be difficult is giving how do you replace
1:17:06
Speaker 1: the revenue if it is bringing in so much revenue
1:17:11
Speaker 1: that it that if you get rid of it, then
1:17:16
Speaker 1: you have to find a way to replace the revenue. Now,
1:17:19
Speaker 1: I've always believed what Donald Trump was and what proponents
1:17:23
Speaker 1: of his tariff strategy were really hoping. Trump has said this,
1:17:27
Speaker 1: he wanted to get rid of the income tax. He
1:17:30
Speaker 1: wants to repeal the sixteenth Amendment. He wants to get
1:17:34
Speaker 1: rid of the income tax. Most rich people do. Rich
1:17:37
Speaker 1: people hated the income tax. The reason they put in
1:17:40
Speaker 1: we put in the income tax is because these industrialists
1:17:44
Speaker 1: were not paying their fair share, and the tariff system
1:17:47
Speaker 1: of taxation, which was the primary way the government raised money,
1:17:52
Speaker 1: made it so that essentially the working class and the
1:17:54
Speaker 1: working poor were actually paying more in tax than the
1:18:00
Speaker 1: wealthy work and so that's why we ended up with
1:18:04
Speaker 1: the income tax in the first place, and the property
1:18:07
Speaker 1: tax structure that we see some governors wanting to get
1:18:10
Speaker 1: rid of today, which if you get rid of that,
1:18:14
Speaker 1: all you're going to do is get rid of government
1:18:19
Speaker 1: services that a lot of people like and find yourself
1:18:23
Speaker 1: on the wrong end of a pitchfork that I promise you.
1:18:26
Speaker 1: So it's the revenue, the potential for the lost revenue
1:18:34
Speaker 1: that I think has made some people think they'll be
1:18:36
Speaker 1: harder to get rid of, which is obviously what Trump
1:18:38
Speaker 1: is hoping to do. But terror's not going to be
1:18:41
Speaker 1: hard to get rid of, not if you really want
1:18:43
Speaker 1: to do it. And it's but the problem, and I
1:18:47
Speaker 1: think now it's pretty clear they're not very effective, and
1:18:50
Speaker 1: they only seem to punish the American consumer, not the
1:18:53
Speaker 1: country we're intending to impact all right, Well, that does
1:18:59
Speaker 1: it for questions. It is It is perhaps the single
1:19:05
Speaker 1: greatest four day period for college basketball that there is.
1:19:09
Speaker 1: I know we're supposed to say the NCAA Tournament. It
1:19:14
Speaker 1: is amazing. I love the nca Tournament. And next weekend,
1:19:18
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's going to be very difficult
1:19:20
Speaker 1: for me to be doing tapings and paying attention. I
1:19:26
Speaker 1: have a TV within eyesight, within my eyeline here, I
1:19:31
Speaker 1: don't have it on. I am taping because right now,
1:19:33
Speaker 1: what I love about this week and this weekend is
1:19:37
Speaker 1: there is basketball that starts at ten am Eastern time.
1:19:40
Speaker 1: And there's basketball that I was watching last night Wednesday
1:19:45
Speaker 1: night that is Eastern Washington and I was watching that
1:19:48
Speaker 1: game and and uh and that was well past midnight
1:19:51
Speaker 1: one o'clock. And every game means something, right, everybody's got
1:19:57
Speaker 1: their own little uh march madness potential, right it is.
1:20:03
Speaker 1: This is it's it's funny, and it's like every other sport.
1:20:08
Speaker 1: You know, college basketball has a regular season problem, although
1:20:11
Speaker 1: I think this year was one of the better regular seasons.
1:20:14
Speaker 1: And please more more interconference scheduling in February that is fabulous.
1:20:19
Speaker 1: We had a lot of I mean that seeing Michigan
1:20:21
Speaker 1: and Duke play, you know, in a non conference game
1:20:24
Speaker 1: in the middle of so called conference season. In fact,
1:20:26
Speaker 1: I'd love to see a flip right start the conference
1:20:29
Speaker 1: schedules earlier in November and December, go ahead and the
1:20:33
Speaker 1: first matchups then and you know those are on campus
1:20:37
Speaker 1: games and all that stuff, and then like have some
1:20:39
Speaker 1: bigger games to start showcasing. Because one of the things
1:20:42
Speaker 1: we're learning about college basketball, I think in the NIL
1:20:45
Speaker 1: era is basically, if you're under six', five you now
1:20:51
Speaker 1: are more likely to, play and no matter how great you,
1:20:53
Speaker 1: are you're more likely to play for all four. Years
1:20:56
Speaker 1: and college one is it's just not a lot of
1:20:59
Speaker 1: appetite in THE nba for anybody under six.
1:21:02
Speaker 2: Five.
1:21:04
Speaker 1: And then if you're obviously if you're a center that's
1:21:06
Speaker 1: six 's nine, or shorter Unless you're bam Out of,
1:21:09
Speaker 1: bio right the shortest center. THERE is i mean talking
1:21:13
Speaker 1: about a guy who plays almost half a foot taller
1:21:16
Speaker 1: than he. Actually is i'm still just shocked by his
1:21:20
Speaker 1: eighty three, point, Game Right, kobe Bryan Not, luca RIGHT
1:21:25
Speaker 1: not i Mean. Not lebron like when you think who's
1:21:28
Speaker 1: number Two to, will right it's going to be such
1:21:31
Speaker 1: a such a great question in thirty, years right and
1:21:33
Speaker 1: people are going, To, guess.
1:21:34
Speaker 2: Wow maybe Was It? Magic johnson did he? Do It Did?
1:21:36
Speaker 1: Larry Bird And?
1:21:37
Speaker 2: Michael Jordan Did?
1:21:39
Speaker 1: Turk Nowitzki tim duncan you start? GO through, i MEAN
1:21:42
Speaker 1: if i put together thirty names top names in THE,
1:21:47
Speaker 1: CURRENT nba i don't KNOW when i would GET. TO
1:21:50
Speaker 1: bam i don't know if i'd GET to bam as
1:21:52
Speaker 1: potential for having an eighty three. Point game but when
1:21:55
Speaker 1: you start the first quarter with thirty, one points, you
1:21:57
Speaker 1: know you gotta love it that they, just fed, you
1:21:59
Speaker 1: know found ways to keep feeding them and keep.
1:22:02
Speaker 2: Doing THAT but i digressed a.
1:22:05
Speaker 1: Little bit the point being IS that i think that
1:22:07
Speaker 1: we are this the top twenty five teams in. College
1:22:12
Speaker 1: basketball so this will be when it comes to the
1:22:14
Speaker 1: seeding when we see the Brackets, on sunday the ONE
1:22:19
Speaker 1: through i would put here the one through, five SEEDS
1:22:22
Speaker 1: and i might expand it to the. SIX seeds i
1:22:24
Speaker 1: do think this is such a top heavy year that
1:22:26
Speaker 1: there is nobody outside the top six seeds will be
1:22:29
Speaker 1: In a.
1:22:29
Speaker 2: FINAL four.
1:22:31
Speaker 1: I do not think you'll see a seven or. HIGHER
1:22:33
Speaker 1: seat i think there is a. Huge gap, the gap
1:22:36
Speaker 1: THERE'S a i think there's there's sort of like there's
1:22:39
Speaker 1: the there's eight teams that seem super elite and seem
1:22:44
Speaker 1: like and obviously four of them aren't going to at
1:22:46
Speaker 1: least four of aret going to Make the final four and.
1:22:48
Speaker 2: All that then you.
1:22:49
Speaker 1: Have sort of the next twelve who can beat those
1:22:51
Speaker 1: top eight teams on any. Given night the question is
1:22:54
Speaker 1: can they beat two of them in a row right
1:22:57
Speaker 1: to make it to the to an eight or a
1:22:59
Speaker 1: sixty or.
1:23:00
Speaker 2: Final four.
1:23:03
Speaker 1: But enjoy these games because we are getting its high
1:23:08
Speaker 1: quality of college basketball matchups then we've gotten since. THE eighties,
1:23:12
Speaker 1: i mean, YOU know i think back at those golden
1:23:15
Speaker 1: years Of The, big east when you had When The
1:23:18
Speaker 1: big east was the. Deepest conference one year they came
1:23:22
Speaker 1: really close to getting. All four, in Fact At, boston
1:23:25
Speaker 1: college who was In The. Big east Then At, BOSTON
1:23:29
Speaker 1: college i think not lost In the elite Eight. To
1:23:33
Speaker 1: memphis the final four that Featured, For Villanova saint John's
1:23:37
Speaker 1: and georgetown would have been An All Big east. Final Four,
1:23:40
Speaker 1: BUT memphis i think is the BACK then i think
1:23:42
Speaker 1: they were Known As. MEMPHIS state i think it Was
1:23:44
Speaker 1: The keith lee team broke through and it was three of.
1:23:48
Speaker 1: The four but the quality of college basketball in the
1:23:52
Speaker 1: mid eighties when everybody had to stay, three years three,
1:23:54
Speaker 1: or fourth so you'd have these incredibly sort of. Mature
1:23:57
Speaker 1: teams that was one version. Of it now IN the, Nil,
1:23:59
Speaker 1: era no you're not going to get maybe players growing
1:24:03
Speaker 1: up with, each other solidifying over. Multiple seasons but you
1:24:07
Speaker 1: do see a big difference between the beginning of the
1:24:09
Speaker 1: season and the end of. The Season right i'm watching it.
1:24:11
Speaker 1: Very closely IN. The acc the hottest team IN the
1:24:14
Speaker 1: aec is not going to make.
1:24:14
Speaker 2: The Tournament It's.
1:24:15
Speaker 1: Florida State florida State since, february first has been fantastic
1:24:21
Speaker 1: and classic, new coach young team finally. Coming together they're
1:24:26
Speaker 1: the team no one wants to face in THE a.
1:24:27
Speaker 1: Sec Tournament RIGHT if i don't think they're going to
1:24:31
Speaker 1: win THE A, sec tournament but if they make the
1:24:33
Speaker 1: semis or, the finals not going to. Be shocked they've just,
1:24:37
Speaker 1: been playing, you know they've they've quote figured. It out
1:24:39
Speaker 1: and that's what's kind of, Fun. About right you can
1:24:41
Speaker 1: get hot in a tournament and suddenly you can find
1:24:43
Speaker 1: yourself in in the biggest of the biggest, of dances
1:24:47
Speaker 1: but enjoy. THESE matchups, I mean i just think we're
1:24:49
Speaker 1: we're going To have we're going to have as good
1:24:53
Speaker 1: Of an elite Eight and, sweet sixteen and these are
1:24:56
Speaker 1: going to be high. LEVEL matchups, i mean we are
1:25:01
Speaker 1: the depth of this year's. COLLEGE basketball I, Mean, Florida, Yukon, Houston,
1:25:13
Speaker 1: Arizona Duke. Saint john's, YOU know, i look i'd love
1:25:22
Speaker 1: to SAY my I think. Miami is i'm Really hoping
1:25:24
Speaker 1: miami gets a. Sixth SEED My, gw colonials, You Know
1:25:28
Speaker 1: i'm i'd like to see them make. A splash i
1:25:31
Speaker 1: think they're kind of running out of, gas unfortunately but
1:25:37
Speaker 1: uh My Buddy chris capudo's had a. Great season we are,
1:25:42
Speaker 1: you know we're not gonna get, twenty wins, but.
1:25:44
Speaker 2: Boy there there.
1:25:46
Speaker 1: Are three there are three or four wins sitting in
1:25:48
Speaker 1: that lost column THAT that, i think, you know a,
1:25:51
Speaker 1: bounce here a, bounce there and maybe we're a twenty
1:25:53
Speaker 1: one win team and maybe we're on the bubble on.
1:25:56
Speaker 1: That front and we came within three points of beating
1:25:58
Speaker 1: the one team of the eight ten that could make
1:26:00
Speaker 1: noise in the, nca tournament and That's The Saint. LOUIS
1:26:03
Speaker 1: billigans i bet you didn't know That the atlantic ten
1:26:07
Speaker 1: stretched all the Way To, saint louis.
1:26:10
Speaker 2: But, it.
1:26:10
Speaker 1: Does Right The atlantic ocean eventually finds its way Into,
1:26:13
Speaker 1: the mississippi which is close Enough To Saint.
1:26:15
Speaker 2: Louis university.
1:26:19
Speaker 1: But. ENJOY this I know. I am this is an.
1:26:21
Speaker 1: Amazing weekend throw IN the WBC and nfl, free AGENCY
1:26:25
Speaker 1: and i am getting a little concerned about what my
1:26:27
Speaker 1: packers are. Up to a lot of offensive linemen leaving
1:26:31
Speaker 1: the building waiting for the replenishment. Of, supplies, here guys
1:26:37
Speaker 1: totally Understand The romeo, dobbs thing Understand the gary trade
1:26:41
Speaker 1: less less sort of bought in on what's happening on the.
1:26:45
Speaker 1: Offensive line getting very nervous here. About that what was,
1:26:50
Speaker 1: you know that's been, a strength so we. Shall see
1:26:52
Speaker 1: we've got a pretty deep, receiver room but we have
1:26:54
Speaker 1: no first round draft pick. This Year That's michael parsons
1:26:57
Speaker 1: that's sitting on.
1:26:57
Speaker 2: The il so a little.
1:27:01
Speaker 1: Bit concerned but the, point is if you're looking to
1:27:05
Speaker 1: get distracted, by sports this is an amazing weekend to
1:27:09
Speaker 1: distract yourself from the horrors of what we're dealing with at.
1:27:12
Speaker 1: The moment to what is the euphoria had a lot
1:27:17
Speaker 1: of fun, to watch, and look these guys may, get
1:27:21
Speaker 1: paid they, deserve it and they still seem pretty excited.
1:27:26
Speaker 1: About it so enjoy, the weekend enjoy. The games i'll
1:27:29
Speaker 1: see in seventy.
1:27:29
Speaker 2: Two hours