Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump’s Corrupt Act Is Finally Wearing Itself Out + The New York Times & The Fight For Journalism In The Trump Era

Transcript

Full Episode - Trump’s Corrupt Act Is Finally Wearing Itself Out + The New York Times & The Fight For Journalism In The Trump Era · The Chuck ToddCast

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you
0:02
Speaker 1: by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about medicare is
0:06
Speaker 1: somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere, and you're skeptical
0:12
Speaker 1: of that, as you should be. I get it. I mean,
0:14
Speaker 1: there's a federal lawsuit going on right now over exactly
0:18
Speaker 1: this companies that branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing
0:22
Speaker 1: people toward whatever would pay them the most, as some
0:26
Speaker 1: sort of broker. So if your default is to distrust
0:28
Speaker 1: everyone in this space, honestly, I get it. I'm a
0:31
Speaker 1: bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole reason I
0:34
Speaker 1: want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent medicare advisors
0:38
Speaker 1: whose entire model is that their advisors are not paid
0:42
Speaker 1: to push any one plan. They're just trying to help. Yes,
0:46
Speaker 1: there's compensation that goes with it, but it's across the
0:49
Speaker 1: board is what they're trying to do. At the end
0:51
Speaker 1: of the day, they're advocating for you. They're not the
0:53
Speaker 1: insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person who actually goes
0:57
Speaker 1: through your doctors, your prescriptions needs, and then compares them
1:02
Speaker 1: to every single plan available to find the best one.
1:05
Speaker 1: That will work for you and hopefully send save you
1:07
Speaker 1: a couple of dollars too. And here's the part that
1:11
Speaker 1: sets Chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've been in
1:14
Speaker 1: a role. They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
1:17
Speaker 1: of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there.
1:19
Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know the plan,
1:22
Speaker 1: you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever
1:24
Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
1:28
Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
1:31
Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
1:35
Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
1:38
Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
1:41
Speaker 1: When I like about these Chapter folks, I've spent time
1:44
Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare,
1:49
Speaker 1: and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
1:53
Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
1:56
Speaker 1: and less confusing. Okay, so look, take this cup justicism
2:00
Speaker 1: you already have in all of this, point it at
2:02
Speaker 1: your own plan for twenty minutes. It's free, there's no pressure,
2:06
Speaker 1: and then call Chapter today at nine eight zero seven
2:09
Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Hello, they're happy Monday Day,
2:19
Speaker 1: two days now after the fourth of July, America's two
2:22
Speaker 1: hundred and fiftieth birthday. And I'm going to have a
2:25
Speaker 1: lot more to say about sort of what the weekend
2:29
Speaker 1: delivered to us as a nation and the unfortunate divisiveness
2:33
Speaker 1: that the whole weekend felt and all of that. But
2:36
Speaker 1: as you know here at the check Tad cast, I'm
2:39
Speaker 1: just promising you politics for the rest of us. This
2:42
Speaker 1: is not going to be some left wing screed or
2:44
Speaker 1: right wings screen. It is just an attempt to sort of, hey,
2:51
Speaker 1: what about what does this all mean for the rest
2:53
Speaker 1: of us? Politics for the rest of us as I want,
2:56
Speaker 1: as I'm calling it these days, and of course a
2:59
Speaker 1: reminder that I cover politics as it is and then
3:02
Speaker 1: do my best to try to give you some ideas
3:06
Speaker 1: and how we can make it a little bit better.
3:08
Speaker 1: And let me give you the quick little rundown of today.
3:12
Speaker 1: Like I said, I will have a lot, particularly on
3:14
Speaker 1: the president's financial disclosure. I think the most remarkable thing
3:18
Speaker 1: is what he's fessed up to, and I want to
3:20
Speaker 1: get into that for a few minutes. My guest today
3:24
Speaker 1: is the managing editor for politics for the New York Times.
3:28
Speaker 1: It's Carolyn Ryan. I think understanding the decisions that America's
3:34
Speaker 1: most important news organization makes on any given day, any
3:38
Speaker 1: given week, how they go about it is extraordinarily important.
3:42
Speaker 1: I've known Carolyn a long time, and I think this
3:45
Speaker 1: is a good way to get a better understanding of
3:50
Speaker 1: how the Times does its job. What does the firewall
3:53
Speaker 1: look like with the opinion page? What is their investment
3:56
Speaker 1: in polling that seems to be more robust this year
3:59
Speaker 1: than any other time before. So we get into a
4:03
Speaker 1: lot of it. What is it like to be a
4:05
Speaker 1: reporter there that's working on a book, and what is
4:07
Speaker 1: the demands that the news organization has versus what the
4:11
Speaker 1: book publisher wants. The point is I try to anticipate
4:16
Speaker 1: every question you might have for somebody in the leadership
4:20
Speaker 1: and in the mass at the New York Times, and
4:22
Speaker 1: did my best channel that. So I really think for
4:24
Speaker 1: those of you interested in how the media does its job,
4:28
Speaker 1: this will be an excellent interview. It is Monday, which
4:31
Speaker 1: means we're going to go back into the into my
4:34
Speaker 1: toodcast time machine, and I'm going to take you back
4:38
Speaker 1: to an era when politicians use geography to cement political power. Frankly,
4:47
Speaker 1: it's not new, but it is a reminder that how
4:51
Speaker 1: we tell our stories, how we tell our history, can
4:56
Speaker 1: sometimes mask what the real intent of what happened actually
5:03
Speaker 1: was about. And so that is my one hint that
5:07
Speaker 1: I'm giving you. It is about the nineteenth century and
5:10
Speaker 1: it really rings true with the current situation that we're
5:14
Speaker 1: living in at the moment. Then I'm going to give
5:18
Speaker 1: you my hot takes on Lebron. I've got a lot
5:20
Speaker 1: of hot takes on Lebron, and gosh on it, I
5:24
Speaker 1: want to send out my hot takes before Lebron signs
5:27
Speaker 1: with the team and makes all of us Lebron watchers
5:30
Speaker 1: feel silly or then some at that, I will talk
5:35
Speaker 1: about the one Nationals All Star snub and then give
5:38
Speaker 1: you your complete Remember we're doing two episodes for the
5:41
Speaker 1: month of July rather than three, So I'll have a
5:44
Speaker 1: drop today Monday here and we'll have another drop on Thursday.
5:49
Speaker 1: So with that, let me get started. You know, one
5:53
Speaker 1: of the hallmarks of Donald Trump and one of the
5:58
Speaker 1: worst set predictions there have been over during the Donald
6:05
Speaker 1: Trump eras you know, some form of ah, he'll never
6:09
Speaker 1: recover from this one, and yet Donald Trump recovers from
6:13
Speaker 1: this one. But the fact of the matter is, even
6:16
Speaker 1: somebody with as many political lives as Donald Trump, a
6:20
Speaker 1: man who seems to use teflon as sunscreen, he's bathed
6:25
Speaker 1: in so much of it, and stuff just slips off
6:28
Speaker 1: of him so easily that we somehow many people may
6:32
Speaker 1: have convinced themselves nothing's ever going to take this guy down.
6:35
Speaker 1: And sort of what I would say is, I do
6:38
Speaker 1: think we know the ending. We just don't know when
6:40
Speaker 1: the ending is going to happen. Right. We know this
6:43
Speaker 1: is going to be not a spectacular ending, but a
6:46
Speaker 1: dumb ending. Right. We know this is going to be
6:49
Speaker 1: the moment when you're just sort of trying to look away.
6:53
Speaker 1: You don't even want to remember the era. You don't
6:56
Speaker 1: want to look at the time period. You want to
6:58
Speaker 1: pretend it didn't happen, just sort of, you know, wish
7:02
Speaker 1: showed away, you know, sort of the way some want
7:05
Speaker 1: to wish away than what actually happened in the nineteenth
7:08
Speaker 1: century in American history, versus what we want to tell
7:10
Speaker 1: ourselves of what happened in the nineteenth century. And I
7:14
Speaker 1: think that in some ways, we as a coping MECHANI
7:18
Speaker 1: we went, jeez, nothing's going to get Trump. But the
7:20
Speaker 1: fact is the Trump Era is going to end, and
7:24
Speaker 1: it's going to end in a whimper. The Trump era
7:27
Speaker 1: is going to be is going to be, is not
7:32
Speaker 1: going to be something that survived that somehow gets better
7:37
Speaker 1: with age. History is going to treat it in one
7:41
Speaker 1: of the most damning ways. They'll explain it, History will
7:44
Speaker 1: explain it, and we'll understand it. But this is not right.
7:48
Speaker 1: There's no There are going to be very few pieces
7:52
Speaker 1: of probably positive impact that you're going to be able
7:55
Speaker 1: to apply to the Trump presidency. And in fact, I
7:58
Speaker 1: kind of think it is going to be just simply
8:02
Speaker 1: less memorable. Like I think, you know, we always have
8:05
Speaker 1: this recency bias that somehow, you know, what's happening now
8:09
Speaker 1: will be so memorable. But as I you know, think
8:12
Speaker 1: about one of the most bizarre things we had done
8:15
Speaker 1: in our history before Donald Trump did it himself, which
8:18
Speaker 1: is elected president a second time after that president was
8:24
Speaker 1: voted out of office like we did with Grover Cleveland.
8:27
Speaker 1: I'm sure when it happened, there were people at the
8:29
Speaker 1: time going, boy, this is going to be one for
8:32
Speaker 1: the history books, and that this is going to be
8:34
Speaker 1: an incredibly historic presidency and one that's remembered quite well.
8:40
Speaker 1: Other than this one factoid about Grover Cleveland, what the
8:44
Speaker 1: hell else is he known for, basically other than being
8:47
Speaker 1: the Democrat that the only Democrat that could win a
8:50
Speaker 1: majority between Lincoln and Hoover. Right, with apologies to mister
8:57
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson, who got to the presidency split decision. So
9:03
Speaker 1: the point is is that I look at sort of
9:05
Speaker 1: how little impact Grover Cleveland had on history and how
9:12
Speaker 1: essentially it just sort of it was a classic fading away. Right.
9:19
Speaker 1: I know that that seems to be the least likely
9:21
Speaker 1: scenario because we can't help ourselves in the moment, but hey,
9:25
Speaker 1: there was a time Dick Van Dyke was the most
9:27
Speaker 1: famous American on television type of thing, right, you know
9:30
Speaker 1: the things. Things can come and go, And it wouldn't
9:34
Speaker 1: shock me if one hundred years from now Trump is
9:37
Speaker 1: as memorable of a president as Grover Cleveland or Polk
9:43
Speaker 1: or Millard Fillmore Right, the likelihood that he is in
9:48
Speaker 1: the either now he could be memorable a lah. Richard
9:51
Speaker 1: Nixon and Warren Harding are two most corrupt presidents that
9:55
Speaker 1: we've ever had. But that is the likelihood of his
10:02
Speaker 1: I think of his historical significance. So what is all
10:05
Speaker 1: this preamble about. Well, look, I've done it myself. What
10:11
Speaker 1: I thought had been career killers from him haven't been.
10:15
Speaker 1: But there's something about these last three weeks. Donald Trump's
10:19
Speaker 1: behavior in and around everything having to do with America
10:22
Speaker 1: at two fifty and the just extraordinary financial disclosure form
10:30
Speaker 1: that he cop to right he admitted to profiting off
10:35
Speaker 1: the presidency in a government form that in some ways
10:40
Speaker 1: is shocking in its brazenness. And the question is, like,
10:46
Speaker 1: his entire career is filled with these moments where it
10:49
Speaker 1: it's just over, and sometimes he certainly doesn't know when
10:53
Speaker 1: it's over, but eventually the public lets him know when
10:57
Speaker 1: it's over. Generation this gave this phenomenon the title Jumped
11:04
Speaker 1: the Shark, based on a Happy Day's episode that actually
11:07
Speaker 1: didn't signify the end of Happy Days right away, but
11:11
Speaker 1: it's always been associated with This was when Happy Days
11:14
Speaker 1: lost its way, when they tried too hard to make
11:16
Speaker 1: Fonds cool, when he decided he was going to jump
11:19
Speaker 1: over a shark. And so while I know that that
11:23
Speaker 1: phrase jump the shark has also jumped the shark, I
11:27
Speaker 1: actually think when you're talking about Donald Trump, and you're
11:29
Speaker 1: doing and you're using references like jump the shark. It's
11:32
Speaker 1: actually very appropriate. He is somebody who in some ways
11:38
Speaker 1: that era is such a defining era for him, and
11:42
Speaker 1: it's the era he lives in. I think in his
11:44
Speaker 1: world it is still nineteen seventy six, somewhere between nineteen
11:47
Speaker 1: seventy six and nineteen ninety which was his peak period
11:51
Speaker 1: of relevance, and he has been trying to capture that
11:55
Speaker 1: glory ever since. And he's, my word, gotten quite a
11:59
Speaker 1: taste of it by hijacking a political party. So that's
12:04
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this this morning. At some point
12:06
Speaker 1: the act wears out, that's welcome, right. And It's been
12:09
Speaker 1: the theory of Donald Trump's public life, not that there
12:12
Speaker 1: is one perfect scandal, that there is one magic headline, ah,
12:16
Speaker 1: this is it. Not that the country wakes up morning
12:19
Speaker 1: one morning, sees one new piece of evidence and says, oh,
12:24
Speaker 1: now we understand who this man is. That isn't going
12:27
Speaker 1: to be how Trump collapses. Trump collapses when the product
12:32
Speaker 1: becomes too much in and of itself, Right, when the
12:35
Speaker 1: gimmick becomes so obvious that even the people who wanted
12:38
Speaker 1: to believe in it, start to feel embarrassed for having
12:41
Speaker 1: believed in it. And we saw this with the financial
12:44
Speaker 1: disclosure this last week. The Wall Streeternal editorial page just
12:47
Speaker 1: eviscerating him over it, as they should as any anybody
12:51
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to be accused of hypocrisy. Right, if
12:53
Speaker 1: you've spent a minute criticizing the Bidens for profiting Hunter
12:57
Speaker 1: Biden for profiting off his father, then you should be
13:00
Speaker 1: beyond outrage and probably introducing articles of impeachment, given that
13:04
Speaker 1: there actually is a constitutional provision here that in theory,
13:09
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has violated on this front. But when you had,
13:14
Speaker 1: like the Free Press, you know some you know which
13:18
Speaker 1: certainly is very shall we say particular about how often
13:25
Speaker 1: it criticizes Trump, meaning they don't like to do it
13:27
Speaker 1: very often, right, they want to be a bit right coded.
13:31
Speaker 1: They eviscerated him over this. Wall Street Journal editorial page
13:35
Speaker 1: eviscerated him. And I think there is this There's a
13:37
Speaker 1: lot of people who have used their own political prestige
13:44
Speaker 1: to criticize the Bidens and the Clintons over the years
13:47
Speaker 1: for making money off of government, and no one has
13:51
Speaker 1: done it like Donald Trump. The man has perfected it, right,
13:56
Speaker 1: and so the idea that you do have a lot
13:58
Speaker 1: of people, but it for Donald Trump, feeling an embarrassed
14:01
Speaker 1: by his behavior is not a surprise to me, because
14:04
Speaker 1: when the sales pitch keeps going after the room has changed,
14:09
Speaker 1: it's just sort of right. When the gold lettering is
14:12
Speaker 1: still on the wall, the lights are still flashing, the
14:15
Speaker 1: matre d is still pretending that this place is exclusive,
14:18
Speaker 1: but the carpet it smells old. The money is gone.
14:21
Speaker 1: And everybody has seen this episode before. Every era of
14:25
Speaker 1: Trump's public life has ended with a whimper like this,
14:29
Speaker 1: and so this is why it's likely to end end
14:33
Speaker 1: with a whimper. And I've made it clear. I think
14:35
Speaker 1: he's already in lane duck territory. We just all haven't.
14:40
Speaker 1: Just there isn't majority acceptance of this just yet. And
14:44
Speaker 1: it's hard to say, oh, jeez, he's a lame duck
14:47
Speaker 1: when he can still have influence on Republican primaries, right,
14:50
Speaker 1: So he's not. He is not a lame duck without
14:54
Speaker 1: some power left. But this is the question is are
14:59
Speaker 1: we the beginning of the end, or we in the
15:01
Speaker 1: middle of the end, or are we starting to come
15:03
Speaker 1: to the end of the end. But I definitely believe
15:06
Speaker 1: we're in the ending. The Atlantic City era ended this
15:10
Speaker 1: way for him. The casinos were supposed to be proof
15:12
Speaker 1: that he was some genius, a visionary, the master builder,
15:15
Speaker 1: the deal maker, the guy who could, who was going
15:19
Speaker 1: to create an East Coast Vegas and if anything, it
15:22
Speaker 1: had more advantages than Las Vegas had. And then the
15:25
Speaker 1: whole thing, thanks to Donald Trump, became debt bankruptcy overreach
15:30
Speaker 1: in pure ruins. Right, nobody has had a bigger negative
15:34
Speaker 1: impact on a city on the East Coast than Donald
15:37
Speaker 1: Trump and Atlantic City. The inherited business myth ended this
15:41
Speaker 1: way right. The story is that Donald Trump was some
15:44
Speaker 1: self made billionaire, when the more honest version of that literally,
15:47
Speaker 1: he inherited his place at third Base, got a fortune,
15:53
Speaker 1: and if he had just invested that fortune would be
15:56
Speaker 1: wealthier today pre presidency. As the president, he has given
16:00
Speaker 1: him access to wealth beyond his own imagination, but he
16:05
Speaker 1: had not. If he had just taken his dad's fortune
16:08
Speaker 1: and just literally bought you know, ad and t he'd
16:12
Speaker 1: have more money than he did today, and he had
16:14
Speaker 1: been a billionaire sooner. But of course he has spent
16:16
Speaker 1: the rest of his life trying to convince everyone that
16:19
Speaker 1: while he was born on third base, that somehow he
16:23
Speaker 1: hit his own grand slam. Donald Trump, real estate mogul.
16:29
Speaker 1: That act ended this way. The branding, deals, the licensing,
16:32
Speaker 1: the gold plated fantasy of wealth and taste. Right. It
16:35
Speaker 1: works until people start noticing that the brand is not
16:38
Speaker 1: proof of success. The brand was the product, the image
16:42
Speaker 1: was an asset, and the illusion was the actual business.
16:45
Speaker 1: His television era ended this way, right. The Apprentice worked
16:49
Speaker 1: until it didn't. It was a hit until the trick
16:52
Speaker 1: got old. It made him look like the businessman he
16:55
Speaker 1: had spent decades pretending to be. It put him behind
16:58
Speaker 1: a desk, surrounded him with glass and steel and fear,
17:01
Speaker 1: and edited him into some executive genius that he had
17:05
Speaker 1: always fantasized that he was. And then when the format
17:09
Speaker 1: started to fade, he turned it into celebrity apprentice, which
17:14
Speaker 1: really is probably the single most revealing cultural artifact of
17:20
Speaker 1: the Trump age. Donald Trump sitting across from Gary Busey,
17:25
Speaker 1: pretending this was still a high stakes boardroom and not
17:28
Speaker 1: a failing franchise trying to resuscitate itself through absurdity. In
17:33
Speaker 1: some ways, Trump and Gary Busey together explained trump Ism
17:38
Speaker 1: better than most political science can celebrity without excellence, drama
17:43
Speaker 1: without stakes, authority without competence. Is that that's not Donald Trump.
17:48
Speaker 1: I don't know what is the aesthetics of power, right,
17:55
Speaker 1: the look and feel of power, but it's empty of
18:00
Speaker 1: everything that is actually supposed to make power legitimate. The
18:04
Speaker 1: only strange thing is that the Gary Busey phase of
18:07
Speaker 1: his celebrity era happened before the presidency and not after.
18:11
Speaker 1: Politics has been the exception. In politics, Trump has had
18:15
Speaker 1: nine lives. Things that would ordinarily end a public figure
18:19
Speaker 1: did not end him. Things that would have destroyed any
18:21
Speaker 1: other politician made him stronger with the people most invested
18:24
Speaker 1: in his brand. So I'm going to start with a
18:27
Speaker 1: little humility on this prediction. We've been here before, and yes,
18:32
Speaker 1: even before, I probably can be quoted as saying you
18:35
Speaker 1: can find a quote that saying, wow, this time is different.
18:38
Speaker 2: Right.
18:39
Speaker 1: Insulting John McCain seemed like a bridge too far, a
18:41
Speaker 1: Republican candidate for president mocking a prisoner of war that
18:46
Speaker 1: was supposed to be impossible and certainly something that would
18:50
Speaker 1: have made somebody unhireable. Axes, Hollywood, you can grab him
18:58
Speaker 1: by the you know what, that should have been disqualify.
19:03
Speaker 1: How about his own confession the Fifth Avenue lie Trump
19:07
Speaker 1: said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue
19:09
Speaker 1: shoot somebody and not lose voters. And the shocking thing
19:12
Speaker 1: is not just that he said it. The shocking thing
19:15
Speaker 1: is that became a pretty decent description of his political
19:18
Speaker 1: immunity for a good six years. How About in his
19:22
Speaker 1: first term the Helsinki Summit that seemed like a bridge
19:26
Speaker 1: too far, standing next to Vladimir Putin, casting down an
19:29
Speaker 1: American intelligence siding with the Russian propagandist, that seemed like
19:35
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that would break the fever. Didn't
19:38
Speaker 1: do it. This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought
19:44
Speaker 1: to you by Quints. Look, one thing I love about
19:46
Speaker 1: summer is anything that just makes everything feel easy. Right,
19:51
Speaker 1: That's what we all think of as a summer day.
19:53
Speaker 1: The days are a little more relaxed. You find yourself
19:56
Speaker 1: reaching for maybe the same comfortable go any wear clothes
20:01
Speaker 1: again and again. It's why I keep coming back to Quints,
20:04
Speaker 1: because they have all these comfortable clothes. They focus on
20:06
Speaker 1: the well made essentials that naturally become those everyday staples
20:11
Speaker 1: you actually live in all season long. The teas are
20:14
Speaker 1: soft enough to live in all day. They're lightweight cotton
20:18
Speaker 1: sweaters or exactly what you kind of want on a
20:20
Speaker 1: summer night when you feel like I gotta have a
20:21
Speaker 1: long sleep, but I don't want to sweat. Right, Everything
20:24
Speaker 1: at Quint's is priced fifty to eighty percent less than
20:27
Speaker 1: similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories. They cut
20:31
Speaker 1: out the middlemen, so you're paying for exceptional quality, but
20:36
Speaker 1: you're paying much less of that mark up. Look, I've
20:40
Speaker 1: loved what I've gotten from Quint's. I have you see
20:44
Speaker 1: more Quint's clothes on me than you may realize. You know,
20:47
Speaker 1: they're not somebody that shoves their label out the door,
20:49
Speaker 1: which frankly I kind of like too. All right, I'm
20:52
Speaker 1: not here, trust me, I've been wearing a lot of
20:54
Speaker 1: quint by the way, not just clothing. Quin's has become
20:56
Speaker 1: a trusted favorite for everything from home to travel, and
20:59
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of everyday essentials. So make your
21:04
Speaker 1: summer wardrobe easier. Go to quins dot com slash chuck
21:07
Speaker 1: for free shipping on your order. Three hundred and sixty
21:10
Speaker 1: five day returns now available in Canada as well. That's
21:13
Speaker 1: q u I n CE dot com slash chuck for
21:17
Speaker 1: free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns
21:20
Speaker 1: quints dot com slash chuck. How about him going to
21:28
Speaker 1: a foreign government begging them to help him in his
21:31
Speaker 1: re election campaign. That was the Ukraine call. It led
21:36
Speaker 1: to impeachment, he was acquitted. Then there's January six, where
21:45
Speaker 1: he literally instigated a riot against the country, trying to
21:49
Speaker 1: stop certification of a free and fair election. I'm sure
21:54
Speaker 1: if you told people in twenty fifteen that a president
21:57
Speaker 1: would try to overturn an election, that a mob would
21:59
Speaker 1: storm the capital, that the president would be impeached for,
22:02
Speaker 1: and that he would then return to power and pardon
22:04
Speaker 1: nearly everyone charged in connection with the attack, most people
22:07
Speaker 1: would have thought America had been lost and that somehow
22:13
Speaker 1: we were part of a first reach of some sort,
22:17
Speaker 1: because that's how ridiculous that scenario would have sounded, even
22:20
Speaker 1: to the ears of a political electorate in twenty fifty.
22:24
Speaker 1: But all of that happened. I haven't even brought up
22:29
Speaker 1: him stealing classified documents as a civilian and former president,
22:34
Speaker 1: or the felony conviction that he received in New York.
22:41
Speaker 1: Then the pardons of the January sixth rioters, you know,
22:48
Speaker 1: just all of them across the board. The guitar plane.
22:53
Speaker 1: A foreign government literally bribes an American president with a
22:56
Speaker 1: luxury Seber forty seven, and the bribe works. Katar's got
23:01
Speaker 1: a security agreement with the United States signed by Donald
23:03
Speaker 1: Trump after they gifted this plane. The quid, the pro
23:07
Speaker 1: and the quot is all right there staring us in
23:09
Speaker 1: the face. And if somehow the official posture is, why
23:12
Speaker 1: would anybody have a problem with this? He just wants
23:15
Speaker 1: a plane, and we're going to take care of catter.
23:18
Speaker 1: We got a military base there, so what's wrong with that?
23:20
Speaker 1: We might have done this anyway. There's the UAE crypto
23:26
Speaker 1: investment right that. My god, every time you think it
23:32
Speaker 1: can't get worse, it gets worse. A Trump link crypto venture,
23:36
Speaker 1: a stable coin, billions in foreign backed investment, propping up
23:40
Speaker 1: giving his sons, oh wait, Hunter Biden was criticized by
23:46
Speaker 1: some of Trump's supporters for making money off of his paintings.
23:51
Speaker 1: These guys are selling American foreign policy to the highest
23:57
Speaker 1: bidder in the golf. Remember what the UA bought with
24:02
Speaker 1: this bribe of Trump's kids. They got access to important
24:08
Speaker 1: chips that Donald Trump now, is the UEE an important
24:15
Speaker 1: ally of the United States strategically in the region, Sure
24:17
Speaker 1: it is. That does it mean you're justified going into
24:25
Speaker 1: business with them while you're also in charge of taxpayer
24:29
Speaker 1: decisions about how we interact with said government. And yet
24:37
Speaker 1: here we are. So I'm not going to sit here
24:40
Speaker 1: say very confidently this is it. Nobody should pretend the
24:44
Speaker 1: outrage itself is a strategy, and we shouldn't pretend the
24:48
Speaker 1: country has some hidden emergency break that automatically activates when
24:51
Speaker 1: a president crosses the moral line.
24:53
Speaker 2: Right.
24:54
Speaker 1: We have learned all too painfully that it does not.
24:57
Speaker 1: I think all of us wish we had one, But
24:58
Speaker 1: there's not. But there is another lesson. Immunity is not immortality.
25:05
Speaker 1: And there's a difference between surviving a scandal, keeping power,
25:10
Speaker 1: staying in office, and remaining compelling and remaining influential. And
25:15
Speaker 1: that's really the argument of me. He has no ability
25:18
Speaker 1: to influence beyond his most devoted followers, and it's a
25:23
Speaker 1: shrinking and shrinking group of people that are still drinking
25:28
Speaker 1: the Trump cooler. Because there is a difference between getting
25:31
Speaker 1: away with something and keeping the audience. And there's a
25:35
Speaker 1: difference between shocking people and boring them. And Trump's entire
25:40
Speaker 1: theory of political powers dependent on his ability to turn
25:43
Speaker 1: misconduct into some larger spectacle. Right, he could make scandal
25:48
Speaker 1: feel like domination. He could make disgrace look like proof
25:51
Speaker 1: he was just fighting the system like you are, you know,
25:54
Speaker 1: and they're coming after him simply because he's standing in
25:57
Speaker 1: the way of them coming after you. He could make
26:01
Speaker 1: every indictment and investigation and outrage condemnation part of the show.
26:08
Speaker 1: But what happens when the show gets old? What happens
26:11
Speaker 1: when you start to look like Garry Busey yourself, which
26:13
Speaker 1: lately Donald Trump has. What happens when scandal no longer
26:17
Speaker 1: feels like rebellion, it just looks like an invoice. And
26:23
Speaker 1: what happens when the corruption is not even hidden anymore?
26:26
Speaker 1: Not even clever, He's not even he's not even trying
26:30
Speaker 1: to spin his greed. Just a nine hundred and twenty
26:34
Speaker 1: seven page government filing that reads like a catalog of
26:39
Speaker 1: impeachable offenses. That's where we are now. The last few
26:47
Speaker 1: weeks have been one of the most intense pressure tests
26:50
Speaker 1: of the Trump spell. That we know much of the
26:55
Speaker 1: country is in not because one new fact is more
26:58
Speaker 1: shocking than January sixth, not because one new grift is
27:03
Speaker 1: more corrupting than everything that came before it, but now
27:09
Speaker 1: the whole thing feels so undisguised. Right, he's not even
27:14
Speaker 1: trying to hide it anymore. He's not even trying to
27:16
Speaker 1: explain it away spraise it. It's so strangely tired that
27:22
Speaker 1: that's why you can feel this act entering a late
27:25
Speaker 1: stage form, right. The financial disclosure, basically because he has
27:32
Speaker 1: so warped the system. He's like, I'm going to disclose
27:35
Speaker 1: all the different ways that I am using my office
27:38
Speaker 1: to personally profit, and no one's going to give a shit.
27:41
Speaker 1: That's how little he thinks of you. The crypto money,
27:45
Speaker 1: the branded bibles, I mean, it's so gross. This guy
27:48
Speaker 1: sells bibles with his name on it, watches coins, all
27:53
Speaker 1: to monetize whatever popularity he has within this presidency. Then,
27:59
Speaker 1: of course, a guy who from a political party that
28:02
Speaker 1: wants to banstock trading. All the guy does is trade
28:05
Speaker 1: off of policy in advance. I had already brought up
28:10
Speaker 1: the plane, the crypto UAE crypto story. Then there's the
28:14
Speaker 1: America two fifty celebration that he completely co opted and
28:19
Speaker 1: made it a Trump branded spectacle, literally driving people away.
28:23
Speaker 1: Fewer people came to Washington. Not the white supremacists, they
28:26
Speaker 1: felt welcome, but fewer regular Americans decided to come because
28:31
Speaker 1: he just made it less. He basically made it that
28:35
Speaker 1: if you showed up to an event in Washington, you
28:37
Speaker 1: were endorsing him. He tried to make the America two
28:41
Speaker 1: fifty an endorsement ad. And you know what, plenty of
28:44
Speaker 1: people are like, I'm endorsing America the idea. I'm not
28:48
Speaker 1: celebrating your fat ass. I know I got a little,
28:55
Speaker 1: but it's just so insulting what he's done to us.
28:59
Speaker 1: It's so insulting. He gets to insult us with small,
29:02
Speaker 1: stupid playground, and then the rest of us, if you
29:05
Speaker 1: fight back, you look like the smaller one, right, I mean,
29:12
Speaker 1: the reflecting pool in itself has been so symbolically obvious,
29:19
Speaker 1: right of just what a ridiculous presidency this is turning into. Again,
29:28
Speaker 1: maybe he survives all of us, but when you're like
29:31
Speaker 1: monetizing patriotism like this, literally selling the presidency to the
29:39
Speaker 1: highest bidder, selling pardons, selling policy, literally is doing these things.
29:45
Speaker 1: This is not made up shit, and yet it always
29:49
Speaker 1: is like, oh, Trump's Trump's Trump's critics are going over
29:52
Speaker 1: the top. No, it's under the It's like literally underplayed.
29:58
Speaker 1: That's what made thank God for this government for me
30:00
Speaker 1: actually filled it out. By the way, do we think
30:04
Speaker 1: he's been one hundred percent honist? Imagine the stuff he's
30:06
Speaker 1: not copping to. So look, he has survived more than
30:13
Speaker 1: enough for skepticism to be an honest position here. But
30:20
Speaker 1: the question is no longer whether Trump has done anything disqualifying.
30:24
Speaker 1: That ship sailed a long time ago. The question is
30:26
Speaker 1: whether the public is finally beginning to experience him not
30:29
Speaker 1: as just some sort of transgressive rebel, not as entertaining,
30:34
Speaker 1: not as strong, but as exhausting, and as an act
30:37
Speaker 1: that it's worn, worn itself out. It's a faded act, right,
30:42
Speaker 1: It's Morton Downey junior. For those of you at a
30:44
Speaker 1: certain age, if you know, you know. That is the
30:48
Speaker 1: jump to sharp theory, not the theory that the law
30:51
Speaker 1: finally catches up to him. Not the theory that Republicans
30:54
Speaker 1: suddenly recover a conscience, Not the theory that his stronger
30:58
Speaker 1: supporters instantly abandon him, realizing they're the mark owning the Libs. No,
31:04
Speaker 1: we know who he owns. Just look at that government form.
31:07
Speaker 1: He owns his own supporters. He monetizes the bibles, the watches,
31:11
Speaker 1: the gold coins, all sorts of gaudy TACKI stuff. The
31:16
Speaker 1: theory is simple. Every Trump Act eventually wears out. It's welcome. Right.
31:22
Speaker 1: He did so in Atlantic City and literally destroyed the city.
31:27
Speaker 1: All right, what should have been East Coast Vegas. Everything
31:33
Speaker 1: that Vegas is today is because Donald Trump wasn't allowed
31:36
Speaker 1: in to smuck it. Literally. The difference is one city
31:40
Speaker 1: wouldn't give him a a casino license to actually open
31:43
Speaker 1: a casino one day. Which city would you rather be?
31:47
Speaker 1: Las Vegas or Atlantic City? And this is why I
31:54
Speaker 1: think the moment where the political act is going to
31:57
Speaker 1: start to feel the same. Finny disclosure. It's not a
32:01
Speaker 1: rumor or a leak or opposition research. This wasn't like
32:05
Speaker 1: a whispering from an anonymous source, elked tax return, an
32:10
Speaker 1: official government ethics disclosure, and what he admitted to we're
32:18
Speaker 1: impeachable offenses. We don't even know what's not on there now.
32:22
Speaker 1: Remember why we even have this document. It's one of
32:24
Speaker 1: the few things still surviving. The Watergate ethics reforms we
32:34
Speaker 1: decided in the late seventies, the public had a right
32:36
Speaker 1: to know whether people in power were using power to
32:38
Speaker 1: enrich themselves simply letting us know what's your wealth. You
32:42
Speaker 1: want to be, you want to make public taxpayer decisions
32:45
Speaker 1: and public taxpayer money, You've got to let us know
32:48
Speaker 1: about your financial situation. That's why financial disclosure exists. It's
32:53
Speaker 1: a relic of an era when reform was still possible,
32:57
Speaker 1: when scandal produced two ethics laws, when exposure would produce
33:04
Speaker 1: new guard rails, and the country believes sunlight might actually disinfect.
33:10
Speaker 1: Now the Trump era is testing whether sunlight still has
33:13
Speaker 1: got any sort of impact, any sort of ability to disinfect.
33:18
Speaker 1: Because the most shocking thing about the financial disclosure is
33:21
Speaker 1: not just the money or the scale, it's so much
33:25
Speaker 1: of its sitting right there on paper. The disclosure runs
33:28
Speaker 1: nine hundred and twenty seven pages. For comparison, Obama's financial
33:33
Speaker 1: disclosure with eight, Biden's was eleven. Vance JD Vance's current
33:38
Speaker 1: one was seventeen. Trump's is nine hundred and twenty seven pages.
33:44
Speaker 1: So before you even have to you go through it
33:46
Speaker 1: page by page. The scale tells you something. This is
33:50
Speaker 1: not a president with a few boring mutual funds. This
33:53
Speaker 1: is not a president whose finances are simplified to avoid conflicts,
33:57
Speaker 1: or if somehow put himself in a blind trust. This
34:01
Speaker 1: is not somebody trying to build a wall between public
34:03
Speaker 1: office and private gain. This is a financial universe, and
34:09
Speaker 1: it is a universe built around the Trump brand. The
34:14
Speaker 1: filing shows hundreds of millions of dollars tied to that
34:17
Speaker 1: questionable crypto investment, mostly coming from UAE and the Meme coins.
34:22
Speaker 1: There's six hundred and thirty five million dollars in royalties
34:26
Speaker 1: from a licensing deal tied to Celebration coins, hundreds of
34:32
Speaker 1: millions tied to that World Liberty financial token sale, stable
34:36
Speaker 1: coin related entities, and other crypto link proceeds. And I
34:39
Speaker 1: know somebody you are going with the hell. Yes, this
34:42
Speaker 1: is a part of the investment community that not everybody
34:45
Speaker 1: thinks is even legitimate yet, and whether it is legitimate
34:49
Speaker 1: is a regulatory decision by Trump's administration. So what did
34:53
Speaker 1: he do? He put his policy position up for sale,
34:56
Speaker 1: because originally Trump was anti crypto, but then he realized
35:00
Speaker 1: there was money to be made, so he sold his
35:03
Speaker 1: position to the highest bidder. Now, depending on how you
35:06
Speaker 1: categorize these entities, you are talking about well over a
35:09
Speaker 1: billion dollars just in these crypto related bribes. And I'm
35:13
Speaker 1: sorry I'm calling them bribes because again, he literally believed
35:17
Speaker 1: one thing. He got all this money, and now he's
35:19
Speaker 1: doing another. A sitting present, mean coins, token sales, stable
35:24
Speaker 1: coin proceeds, all this stuff, right. Then there's the other part, right,
35:28
Speaker 1: the licensing arrangements, the family brand, the office. You know,
35:32
Speaker 1: it all creates this aura of power. Now, of course
35:36
Speaker 1: Trump just says, well, the market went up. Please, this
35:38
Speaker 1: is not the market went up. This is a presidency
35:41
Speaker 1: being converted into a new business for him in order
35:48
Speaker 1: to solidify wealth that he used to pretend he had
35:53
Speaker 1: and now he actually has it. Right, he was a
35:55
Speaker 1: fake billionaire and now politics has let him become a
35:58
Speaker 1: real billionaire. And then there's all the merchandise, right, the
36:04
Speaker 1: disclosure shows money from selling Trump branded bibles. The fact
36:08
Speaker 1: that he's there's no shame with that, right, this guy
36:11
Speaker 1: thinks he can sell a Bible. And we wonder why
36:14
Speaker 1: more people are questioning organized religion, and certainly questioning certain
36:19
Speaker 1: Christian pastors. Excuse I don't even want to They're not
36:22
Speaker 1: serious religious people. They're just grifters using religion There's the
36:29
Speaker 1: brand Trump branded watches, the Trump sneakers, Trump fragrances, there's
36:34
Speaker 1: Trump guitars in there, right, an entire retail universe of
36:40
Speaker 1: political devotion, all all tied to revenue for him and
36:46
Speaker 1: his sons. And this part deserves some moral focus as
36:52
Speaker 1: well as legal attention, because the saddest part of the
36:56
Speaker 1: Trump era has always been this. The people he owns
36:58
Speaker 1: are not the liberals or the left. It's not the media.
37:03
Speaker 1: It doesn't own the media, right. He doesn't own the
37:06
Speaker 1: elites he claims to be humiliating. He owns the people
37:09
Speaker 1: who send him money, the people who buy the Bible
37:13
Speaker 1: with his name on it, the people who buy the
37:16
Speaker 1: cheap watch that's marked up, the people who buy the
37:20
Speaker 1: meme coin that they know, in their heart of hearts
37:23
Speaker 1: is worthless. The people who buy the collectible. They're told
37:28
Speaker 1: if if they purchase some little piece of Trump branded air,
37:31
Speaker 1: it will become valuable because he is valuable. It's quite
37:36
Speaker 1: the con. The people who think they are owning the
37:38
Speaker 1: libs are the people being monetized. They are the product.
37:42
Speaker 1: Maga is the product, and his financial disclosure is the
37:46
Speaker 1: biggest middle finger to you guys. I don't get it.
37:49
Speaker 1: I don't understand. I'd be pissed off. They've been taken
37:53
Speaker 1: like this by somebody I trust it, and he is
37:56
Speaker 1: literally stealing from you. The MAGA movement, the people who
38:04
Speaker 1: think they are defending America are being directed to a
38:07
Speaker 1: merchandising table. I'm sorry. I know you think you're part
38:13
Speaker 1: of a movement, but he's simply is treating you like
38:15
Speaker 1: a customer to be taken advantage of, not even a
38:18
Speaker 1: customer that he that he that he cares about. You
38:24
Speaker 1: think you're a part of history. He's trying to sell
38:27
Speaker 1: you a souvenir. You think you're buying into the future.
38:30
Speaker 1: He's just selling you a token. You may think he's
38:35
Speaker 1: your champion. He's monetizing your loyalty. I know some people, Hey,
38:43
Speaker 1: well he chose it. They chose it. Adults make choices. Okay,
38:50
Speaker 1: but leadership still has sort of moral con you know,
38:56
Speaker 1: you should still have some morality to this. You know,
39:06
Speaker 1: politics still has moral We should still have a moral
39:11
Speaker 1: clause in it. There's still something rotten about a man
39:14
Speaker 1: who takes the faith and loyalty of his most devoted
39:16
Speaker 1: supporters and just simply converts them into a sales funnel.
39:22
Speaker 1: It's not just monetizing the presidency, He's monetizing devotion.
39:26
Speaker 2: Right.
39:26
Speaker 1: He's as bad as any one of those Jimmy Swaggert
39:30
Speaker 1: era preachers, right, he really I think he's Trump is
39:33
Speaker 1: best understood through the seventies and eighties televangelists, grifters. Right,
39:39
Speaker 1: your Swaggert's your folks like that. Franklin Graham is kind
39:45
Speaker 1: of one of those people. Billy was. Billy wanted. Billy
39:48
Speaker 1: Graham always wanted to avoid being seen as a total hawkster. Well,
39:56
Speaker 1: this episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you
39:58
Speaker 1: by Fandel, the biggest stage in world soccer. Trust me,
40:03
Speaker 1: you got Americans caring about soccer. I'm sitting suddenly carrying.
40:07
Speaker 1: Every goal changes everything. And now FanDuel it's giving you
40:11
Speaker 1: a reason to root for every single goal that gets
40:15
Speaker 1: scored because they have something called every goal pays bet
40:18
Speaker 1: on a match and you get bonus bets for every
40:21
Speaker 1: goal scored in that match. So, hey, you think France
40:24
Speaker 1: is rolling right or Norway? I think my friends in
40:27
Speaker 1: Mexico are going to keep kicking and win by two
40:30
Speaker 1: or three goals. You get a bonus bet, right, So
40:32
Speaker 1: you bet on a match, you get these bonus bets
40:34
Speaker 1: for every single goal scored in that match. More goals
40:38
Speaker 1: means more bonus bets, and all you have to do
40:41
Speaker 1: is turn on your token. Be honest, Sus Americans here
40:45
Speaker 1: who didn't necessarily have soccer as their first love, we
40:49
Speaker 1: like a little more scoring. Well, that's your opportunity here.
40:51
Speaker 1: It gives you an opportunity to root for more scoring.
40:53
Speaker 1: Now do your scouting carefully. You've got some defensive minded
40:57
Speaker 1: teams there. Once they get their one or two goals,
40:59
Speaker 1: that's it. But if you think you have some high
41:01
Speaker 1: flyers here like England Mexico, these are some aggressive teams.
41:05
Speaker 1: I can't wait for that match. That's one where it
41:08
Speaker 1: feels like, eh, trust me, I'm even knowing who the
41:11
Speaker 1: heck Harry Kane is right, there's gonna be some goals
41:14
Speaker 1: scored potentially in that one. Well, that's your opportunity to
41:17
Speaker 1: mess around and have that. So from the opening list
41:20
Speaker 1: to the final kick, let there be goals on Fandel.
41:24
Speaker 1: Visit Fandel dot com to get started now twenty one
41:27
Speaker 1: plus in select states for Kansas and affiliation with the
41:30
Speaker 1: Kansas Star Casino. It's eighteen plus in DC Kentucky, Wyoming.
41:34
Speaker 1: If you have a gambling problem, call one eight hundred
41:36
Speaker 1: Gambler or one eight hundred MI Reset or call one
41:40
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven.
41:44
Speaker 1: You can also visit CCPG dot org slash chat. In Connecticut,
41:49
Speaker 1: you can visit the MD gamblinghelp dot org. In Maryland
41:54
Speaker 1: for help, you can visit Gamblinghelplinema dot org. You can
41:58
Speaker 1: call eight hundred three to two seven five zero five zero.
42:01
Speaker 1: In Massachusetts, you can call one eight seven seven eight
42:05
Speaker 1: Hope and Why, or you can simply text hope and
42:08
Speaker 1: Why New York in order to get some help with
42:12
Speaker 1: any gambling concerns. Finally, you can also call one eight
42:15
Speaker 1: seven seven seven seven zero seven eight sixty seven if
42:18
Speaker 1: you're in Louisiana. And then there's the Spin's what's amazing here?
42:26
Speaker 1: And this is why I can't. This is why I
42:29
Speaker 1: think this is this careful saying that this time is different.
42:33
Speaker 1: But this is why I think this time is different.
42:35
Speaker 1: It's the lame spin. When Trump was asked about all
42:38
Speaker 1: of this, his answer was basically, well, the stock market
42:39
Speaker 1: is going up. Everybody's profiting, So that answer matters because one,
42:44
Speaker 1: it is so weak, right, and two, it's oblivious to
42:49
Speaker 1: his to work with people in this country. You know,
42:52
Speaker 1: Trump so lives in the K shaped economy. He doesn't
42:55
Speaker 1: realize what's going on on the on the on the
42:57
Speaker 1: downslope of that K, right, because he has money, and
43:01
Speaker 1: because everybody he interacts with has money, he assumes everybody
43:04
Speaker 1: has money. This truly is a guy who lives in
43:08
Speaker 1: a gilded cage and has no idea what the rest
43:10
Speaker 1: of the world is experiencing. You know, it is another
43:17
Speaker 1: thing to look at a filing full of crypto royalties,
43:21
Speaker 1: token sale proceeds, stable coin money, branded watches and bibles,
43:25
Speaker 1: foreign income and say everybody's making money. No, everybody didn't
43:29
Speaker 1: make money this way. But the fact is, it's not
43:32
Speaker 1: even a good explanation. I mean, he's literally like a
43:37
Speaker 1: magician pointing to his left hand after we all saw
43:40
Speaker 1: the card fall out of his sleeve. You know, that's
43:44
Speaker 1: why this feels different. Trump is not more corrupt than
43:48
Speaker 1: he was before. He's saying the corruption has been obvious
43:50
Speaker 1: for decades. But what feels different is that the concealment
43:55
Speaker 1: is con right and the salesmanship is worse, because, in
43:59
Speaker 1: his own way, he keeps you know how he's thinking,
44:01
Speaker 1: I keep getting away with it, so this is working.
44:04
Speaker 1: The old Trump would have made the grift feel like
44:05
Speaker 1: a crusade, and the new Trump seems to think the
44:07
Speaker 1: existence of the grift is itself the argument. He's robbing
44:10
Speaker 1: the bank in broad daylight and even finding a disclosure
44:13
Speaker 1: form to let you know what he robbed. Right, The
44:18
Speaker 1: portfolio shows, and then you look at his stock trading.
44:21
Speaker 1: My goodness, tens of thousands of stocks trading. He's got
44:25
Speaker 1: stakes in company after company with government contracts, regulatory interests,
44:29
Speaker 1: national security connections, immigration connections, defense connections, AI and tech connections.
44:36
Speaker 1: And the problem is not that every trade proves a
44:38
Speaker 1: secret policy is attached to it. The problem is the
44:41
Speaker 1: system itself. The problem is that this is a conflict
44:45
Speaker 1: of interest machine in the disclosure form just just screaming
44:48
Speaker 1: at Neon signs right, he's invested in something called the
44:52
Speaker 1: Geo Group. He bought and sold shares of the Geo Group,
44:56
Speaker 1: a private prison and detention contractor oh immigration enforcement and
45:01
Speaker 1: detention or central news policy agenda. The money and the
45:04
Speaker 1: policy occupy the same world. That is the scandal. The
45:08
Speaker 1: money follows the power. The old question, can you prove
45:13
Speaker 1: the corruption. My god, it's out in plain sight to me.
45:19
Speaker 1: The better question is what would non corruption even look
45:22
Speaker 1: like inside this arrangement? If the president is financially tied
45:26
Speaker 1: to crypto and the government takes a friendly turns toward Crypto,
45:29
Speaker 1: what is the public supposed to conclude? If the president's
45:33
Speaker 1: family business makes foreign deals with the countries that negotiate
45:37
Speaker 1: with the United States for treaties and other national security commitments,
45:41
Speaker 1: what else is the public supposed to conclude. You do
45:47
Speaker 1: not need to find the secret envelope in the locked
45:49
Speaker 1: drawer to understand this arrangement. He's telling you, He's showing you.
45:58
Speaker 1: His simple pearance is the scandal. And in a healthy
46:03
Speaker 1: political system, the appearance would be enough to force retreat.
46:07
Speaker 1: In this political system, the appearance has become a business model.
46:12
Speaker 1: It's the Trump ethic. Why bother? Why bother with concealment, restraint, shame,
46:17
Speaker 1: Why bother with the norms that kept earlier presidents from
46:19
Speaker 1: doing the thing that might be technically possible but obviously
46:23
Speaker 1: corrodes public trust. Why bother the pretending the presidency is
46:29
Speaker 1: not a licensing opportunity. My goodness to you, how much
46:31
Speaker 1: money the Reagans could have made or the Obamas had
46:35
Speaker 1: they done this. Why bother pretending the office is not
46:38
Speaker 1: a set of keys and the country is not just
46:42
Speaker 1: simply a customer base for a new CEO. That's where
46:47
Speaker 1: we are. But every con does have an emotional expiration date.
46:53
Speaker 1: Not with everyone. Some people will never leave. Some people
46:57
Speaker 1: will go down with the ship, insisting that the water
46:59
Speaker 1: in the cabin fake news as their draw roll. Living
47:02
Speaker 1: him the gurgles, right, oh, this is not true. But
47:07
Speaker 1: political movements are not sustained just by the true believers.
47:10
Speaker 1: They require the porifield believers, right, the ones that say, wow,
47:14
Speaker 1: I think he's kind of a I you know, he's
47:17
Speaker 1: kind of an a whole, but he's my a hole.
47:19
Speaker 1: The soft supporters, the people who don't read every filing
47:23
Speaker 1: but have a general feeling, well, he seems to be
47:25
Speaker 1: strong or entertaining. He's always a fighter, and they're always
47:28
Speaker 1: coming after him. The question is whether those people begin
47:32
Speaker 1: to feel not outrage but embarrassment. And that's what you sense.
47:37
Speaker 1: Notice who wasn't with him in the fourth of July.
47:40
Speaker 1: I couldn't find many elected Republicans, certainly not anybody that
47:43
Speaker 1: is in a swing election these people are not going
47:45
Speaker 1: to be inviting Trump.
47:48
Speaker 2: Right.
47:49
Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to be standing with him when he was
47:51
Speaker 1: monetizing the fourth of July and America's two hundred fiftieth birthday.
47:54
Speaker 1: It's notable who didn't want to be with him. Outrage
48:02
Speaker 1: might be polarizing, but embarrassment, that's corrosive. Embarrassment turns into distance.
48:09
Speaker 1: And this is what happened to the previous Trump acts,
48:11
Speaker 1: right the Casino's not They didn't become morally worse than
48:15
Speaker 1: one day. They became bad bets. The TV show did
48:17
Speaker 1: not become fake one day. It just became stale. The
48:20
Speaker 1: brand did not collapse because everyone suddenly discovered that the
48:23
Speaker 1: guy was full of shit. It collapsed because the performance
48:26
Speaker 1: stopped producing the feeling and promise. Trump's political danger right
48:30
Speaker 1: now is not that people discover he's selfish. They knew
48:33
Speaker 1: that going in. His danger is that the selfishness stops
48:37
Speaker 1: looking like a strength, that the Cohn stops feeling like
48:41
Speaker 1: rebellion and starts feeling like a guy selling watches from
48:43
Speaker 1: the Oval office. And then, of course, what he did
48:48
Speaker 1: to the tw hundred and fiftieth anniversary. It was the
48:51
Speaker 1: easiest assignment in American politics. You are the president of
48:54
Speaker 1: the United States. The country's turning two hundred and fifty.
48:56
Speaker 1: You don't have to be brilliant. You don't have to
48:59
Speaker 1: solve every division. You don't have to give the Gettysburg address.
49:01
Speaker 1: You just have to make the holiday itself bigger than you.
49:05
Speaker 1: That's it. That was the entire assignment. Make it about
49:09
Speaker 1: the country and not yourself. Make it about the founding,
49:11
Speaker 1: but also about the founders. Make it about people who
49:15
Speaker 1: expanded the promise of the founding. Make it about the soldiers,
49:18
Speaker 1: the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the immigrants, the inventors. Make it
49:23
Speaker 1: about a country that has failed often and endured anyway.
49:28
Speaker 1: It was a layup, and Trump could not help himself right.
49:33
Speaker 1: He couldn't accept it bipartisan commission to run these things.
49:37
Speaker 1: He had to have his own structure, his own task
49:40
Speaker 1: force that turned into another slush fund. And of course
49:48
Speaker 1: his alternative organization was just doing ideas or revolved around
49:52
Speaker 1: his tastes, his politics, and he made everything about his
49:58
Speaker 1: own political brand. A normal president would have looked at
50:03
Speaker 1: America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday and understood the assignment.
50:05
Speaker 1: Disappear into the office. Let the country be the star.
50:08
Speaker 1: Let the flag be bigger than the man standing in
50:10
Speaker 1: front of it. Gerald Ford did it the bi centennial.
50:15
Speaker 1: This president couldn't do it. He saw a stage and
50:19
Speaker 1: he believed that two hundred and fiftieth birthday was his.
50:34
Speaker 1: You know it's funny is that Trump cared so little
50:36
Speaker 1: about his own people that he did not heed warnings
50:43
Speaker 1: that people made about heat. Right, Washington's Actual and Independence
50:47
Speaker 1: Today parade had to be canceled because of the heat.
50:52
Speaker 1: Organized canceled it after an the extreme heat warning. The
50:55
Speaker 1: temperatures are expected to push into dangerous territory. On all
50:58
Speaker 1: those things, the city made the obvious public safety decision.
51:04
Speaker 1: Don't put people in the pavement for a parade in
51:06
Speaker 1: dangerous he that's what civic institutions do. They look out
51:10
Speaker 1: for the general public. Besides, the celebration is not worth
51:14
Speaker 1: hurting people. What was Trump's response. It wasn't let's be careful,
51:20
Speaker 1: it was not let's make this day about the people.
51:25
Speaker 1: His response was, I'm going to talk longer. It's going
51:29
Speaker 1: to be approximately one hundred and seven degrees. I'm going
51:31
Speaker 1: to go and I'm going to make it a really
51:32
Speaker 1: long speech just to show that I can do anything. Again,
51:36
Speaker 1: He's not even hid it just to show that I
51:37
Speaker 1: could do anything. Not to honor the country, unify the country,
51:42
Speaker 1: celebrate the declaration of independence. He just wants to use
51:45
Speaker 1: the event to show he can do anything he wants. Well,
51:49
Speaker 1: in some ways, it's a confession. It's the Trump presidency.
51:52
Speaker 1: In one sentence, a public safety concern becomes a masculinity
51:58
Speaker 1: a fake masculinity test. A national birthday becomes his endurance stunt. Look,
52:05
Speaker 1: the country's feeling it. The country wanted permission to celebrate itself.
52:09
Speaker 1: It wanted a moment, and Trump gave it more Trump
52:12
Speaker 1: and so people walked away. That's why nobody showed up
52:14
Speaker 1: to this fair. That's why attendance was so poor. Right,
52:19
Speaker 1: you know they've got they should be thankful for all
52:21
Speaker 1: of these weather warnings because they can now hide the
52:24
Speaker 1: low attendance and the lack of interest behind that. And
52:29
Speaker 1: that's the tragedy of this moment. He can't let anything
52:32
Speaker 1: just belong to the country. Everything has to pass through him,
52:36
Speaker 1: even the reflecting pool.
52:37
Speaker 2: Right.
52:42
Speaker 1: Look, sometimes history is too on the nose. Trump wanted
52:44
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool degree resurfaced an American flag blue,
52:51
Speaker 1: not for a civic reason, he just wanted it blue.
52:55
Speaker 1: He looked at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and saw
52:58
Speaker 1: a swimming pool, and of course he knew a guy,
53:05
Speaker 1: no big contract, I mean the whole thing. Right, this
53:07
Speaker 1: is an incredible metaphor. And then he's trying to blame
53:12
Speaker 1: other people. You know, sabotage makes up all sorts of
53:14
Speaker 1: fake news. Right, It's the perfect little Trump story. The
53:19
Speaker 1: National Monument gets treated like a backdrop, the public space
53:23
Speaker 1: gets turned into a branding exercise, the job itself costs
53:27
Speaker 1: more than it's promised, the result looks worse than it
53:29
Speaker 1: was promised, and then he shifts the blame to somebody else.
53:33
Speaker 1: This is not just an anecdote about a pool. It's
53:35
Speaker 1: been his entire philosophy. By the way, the reflecting pool
53:41
Speaker 1: exists to reflect. It's supposed to reflect Lincoln and the
53:44
Speaker 1: Washington Monument. It's supposed to reflect the national story back
53:48
Speaker 1: at itself, flawed, solemn, open to interpretation. Trump looked at
53:53
Speaker 1: a reflecting pool and thought not blue enough, like totally
53:56
Speaker 1: not even understanding why it's position where it's positioned, and
54:03
Speaker 1: then he turns it into a no big cost overrun,
54:05
Speaker 1: blame shifting fiasco. He sees an institution and all he
54:11
Speaker 1: thinks is how can I brand it? How can I
54:13
Speaker 1: give it the Trump brand. He never has an instinct
54:18
Speaker 1: to be a steward or a custodian. It's always how
54:22
Speaker 1: does this look on television? But hey, the reflecting pool
54:27
Speaker 1: story works. The naked Emperor is not just naked. He's
54:30
Speaker 1: standing next to a blue reflecting pool in dangerous He
54:33
Speaker 1: promising a really long speech just to show he could
54:35
Speaker 1: do anything, while the country's birthday party becomes another episode
54:38
Speaker 1: of his show. And then, because subtlety is completely dead,
54:45
Speaker 1: a bunch of white supremacists from the Patriot Front show
54:47
Speaker 1: up in Washington on July fourth. Look, I'm not saying
54:53
Speaker 1: Trump organized it, I'm not saying he invited them, and
54:56
Speaker 1: I'm not implying there was any coordination. You don't need
54:59
Speaker 1: to say any of it. The point is simpler and
55:00
Speaker 1: more damning movements here dog whistles, and they hear signals,
55:06
Speaker 1: and they hear permission, and they knew Donald Trump was
55:12
Speaker 1: fine if they showed up. So when a white nationalist
55:14
Speaker 1: group shows up on America two hudred and fiftieth Birthday,
55:18
Speaker 1: It's not whether Trump sent them an invite. The question
55:20
Speaker 1: is why did they feel so at home in Trump's Washington.
55:30
Speaker 1: And this is where I have a very little patience
55:32
Speaker 1: for the Republican party sudden lectures about extremism in the
55:35
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. There's this whole cottage industry of worried conservatives
55:40
Speaker 1: who want to tell Democrats that they aren't fighting their
55:42
Speaker 1: own insurgency hard enough. They want to lecture Democrats. But
55:45
Speaker 1: the dangers of a party being pulled too far to
55:48
Speaker 1: its extreme position or being captured by activists losing touch
55:53
Speaker 1: with the mainstream of America. Parties can be captured. They
55:56
Speaker 1: get captured all the time. They're vehicles. They're not inherently
55:59
Speaker 1: good about. But I'm old enough to remember when the
56:03
Speaker 1: political party with the elephant as at symbol faced an
56:05
Speaker 1: insurgency of its own, And how did that go? Did
56:07
Speaker 1: they stand up? Did they defend the constitution? Did they
56:10
Speaker 1: say no to a demagogue? Did they protect the country
56:12
Speaker 1: from a cult of personality? Did they put institutional responsibility
56:16
Speaker 1: above short term power? Now they folded, they negotiated, they excused,
56:22
Speaker 1: they normalized, Then they became it. So careful of those
56:26
Speaker 1: lectures about what's happening on the left in the Democratic
56:29
Speaker 1: Party by people who watch their own party become a
56:33
Speaker 1: vehicle for Donald Trump and now want to offer seminars
56:37
Speaker 1: on responsible gatekeeping. Just remember, the Republican Party had a
56:43
Speaker 1: lot of chances to stop this. The McCain moment, the
56:46
Speaker 1: Axis Hollywood moment, the Helsinki moment, the first impeachment January sixth,
56:52
Speaker 1: the second impeachment, the criminal indictments, the conviction, the pardons.
57:00
Speaker 1: There were plenty of Republicans wh knew better about every
57:02
Speaker 1: one of these things. Some said it privately, some leaked
57:05
Speaker 1: their concerns anonymously. Some wrote books after they left the Senate,
57:09
Speaker 1: some gave solemn speeches after it was too late to matter.
57:13
Speaker 1: But institutionally, they chose power. And that's why Trump's survival
57:18
Speaker 1: is not just the story of Trump, story about elite surrender,
57:23
Speaker 1: a story of cowardice, and a story about a party
57:26
Speaker 1: that decided the danger of losing its voters was worse
57:29
Speaker 1: than the danger of losing its soul. And now that
57:32
Speaker 1: same party wants to warn everybody else about extremism. So
57:40
Speaker 1: why might this time be different? And why are we
57:43
Speaker 1: I think in the end stages of the Trump era
57:46
Speaker 1: there are three reasons. One, Trump is older, and old
57:49
Speaker 1: Trump had kind of a feral media instinct. The older
57:52
Speaker 1: version of Trump, Yes he was cruel and reckless and
57:56
Speaker 1: all of those things, but he had a weird animal
57:58
Speaker 1: sense for the camera and what would work work. He
58:01
Speaker 1: knew how to manipulate the attention economy. The instinct is
58:05
Speaker 1: still there, but he's a lot less sharp.
58:07
Speaker 2: Right.
58:07
Speaker 1: The rallies ramble more, the explanations are weaker, the spin
58:11
Speaker 1: is not as clean. The answer to financial disclosure everybody's
58:15
Speaker 1: profiting from it. Vintage Trump would have turned the accusation
58:18
Speaker 1: into a slogan. Right Instead, he just you know, the
58:25
Speaker 1: corruption now is less deniable because it's less hidden. Literally,
58:28
Speaker 1: it's he's admitting all of this right here. Look at
58:32
Speaker 1: how I've ripped off my own supporters by selling them
58:34
Speaker 1: bibles and watches. It's not a conspiracy theory if the
58:39
Speaker 1: form itself says it. Third of the country is simply tired.
58:43
Speaker 1: And that's the hardest thing to quantify, because you can
58:45
Speaker 1: feel it, and the numbers start to support it. It's
58:51
Speaker 1: pretty clear the country was not in the mood for
58:53
Speaker 1: a Trump branded spectacle. For the fourth it wanted some
58:57
Speaker 1: reassurance and steadiness, and Trump gave him more Trump, and
59:01
Speaker 1: I think it's a huge mistake. I think this is
59:03
Speaker 1: going to linger because when people are angry, he can
59:08
Speaker 1: use anger, and he can sometimes use revenge. But when
59:12
Speaker 1: people are exhausted, more Trump is never the solution and
59:18
Speaker 1: the one thing. And this is why I'm pretty convinced
59:22
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not going to be remembered as a
59:24
Speaker 1: great American president. Unless America gives up on history, unless
59:28
Speaker 1: we become a country that literally erases memory, manufactures mythology,
59:32
Speaker 1: and treats the archives, historical archives as enemies, he will
59:36
Speaker 1: not be celebrated as a great leader. He will simply
59:39
Speaker 1: be remembered as a warning. Not because historians are liberal,
59:43
Speaker 1: because the record is the record. Two impeachments January sixth,
59:46
Speaker 1: try to overturn election, monetize the public office, normalize political violence,
59:50
Speaker 1: constant war. In truth, there's no serious version of history
59:55
Speaker 1: in which that resume becomes a mount Rus Rushmore resume.
1:00:07
Speaker 1: And I think this is where Trump's fear really lies.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: He's not fearful of losing another election or legal account
1:00:13
Speaker 1: of His biggest fear has always been exposure. He's got
1:00:16
Speaker 1: the worst foam of posure complex. Ever, right, exposure as
1:00:22
Speaker 1: in ridicule is what he fears. Right, it was always
1:00:26
Speaker 1: ridicule that motivated him, supposedly to run for president in
1:00:29
Speaker 1: the first place. He didn't like that people were making
1:00:31
Speaker 1: fun of the guy. What a joke, He can't ever
1:00:33
Speaker 1: be president? Well, he got to tell us, right, the
1:00:37
Speaker 1: strong man is not strong in the way he said it.
1:00:39
Speaker 1: The winner is not winning the way he said it.
1:00:42
Speaker 1: The emperor has no close is not a legal argument.
1:00:46
Speaker 1: So that's why I think we're here in this jump
1:00:49
Speaker 1: the shark moment. He's in a humiliation We're in the
1:00:53
Speaker 1: humiliation portion. The audience is finally seeing the trick and
1:00:57
Speaker 1: feeling stupid for clapping. And look, I don't think this
1:01:02
Speaker 1: is going to end cleanly. It won't. It's not going
1:01:07
Speaker 1: to end with a grain confession. The strongest MAGA believers
1:01:11
Speaker 1: are not going to wake up and say I have
1:01:12
Speaker 1: reviewed the Office of Government Ethics Disclosure Form and reconsidered
1:01:16
Speaker 1: my life. But it does end with slippage. There's less energy,
1:01:21
Speaker 1: more distance, less laughter, as jokes, more Republicans quietly calculating
1:01:26
Speaker 1: that he is a burden. Right, it's not a dramatic
1:01:30
Speaker 1: exit it's people leaving before the encore. We've seen this,
1:01:33
Speaker 1: people leave his rallies earlier. It's why the Gary Busey
1:01:38
Speaker 1: image is where I'm going here, and it's the one
1:01:41
Speaker 1: thing I want to leave you with is Gary Busey.
1:01:43
Speaker 1: It ends when the desperation becomes visible, when the guest
1:01:47
Speaker 1: stars get weirder, when the format gets louder, when the
1:01:51
Speaker 1: producers keep adding spectacle because the core thing no longer works.
1:01:57
Speaker 1: That's why Trump is politically vulnerable in this moment. He
1:02:02
Speaker 1: is suddenly doing things that are out of character. It's
1:02:06
Speaker 1: not because he's doing things that are out of character.
1:02:08
Speaker 1: He's actually being more trumpy than ever. The problem is
1:02:12
Speaker 1: they look like reruns, right, It's the version we always
1:02:18
Speaker 1: knew was there. Is all we're seeing. We're not seeing
1:02:22
Speaker 1: the fun guy, the good salesman, the interesting marketer. It's
1:02:26
Speaker 1: just the grifter in all of its glory. Now, look,
1:02:30
Speaker 1: if you want to be skeptical, trust me all you've
1:02:33
Speaker 1: earned that right. We've all watched Trump survive things that
1:02:36
Speaker 1: should have ended any other political career ten times over.
1:02:40
Speaker 1: But at some point every spell breaks. At some point
1:02:44
Speaker 1: the audience stops mistaking shamelessness for strength. Trump has spent
1:02:49
Speaker 1: ten years testing this electric fence, right, he touched it
1:02:53
Speaker 1: with McCain, nothing, Access, Hollywood, nothing, Russia, Ukraine January sixth.
1:02:57
Speaker 1: You get the point. Maybe this time the shock is
1:03:04
Speaker 1: not going to be in dramatic bolt. Maybe it is
1:03:07
Speaker 1: a buzz or a hum, but it's the sound of
1:03:10
Speaker 1: people finally saying, ah, enough of this crap. Because explaining
1:03:14
Speaker 1: the failure the Trump years are going to be quite easy.
1:03:16
Speaker 1: Explaining why it took so long is going to be harder.
1:03:19
Speaker 1: How did a country this wealthy, this educated, this historically
1:03:23
Speaker 1: mature fall for this not once, but twice. How did
1:03:27
Speaker 1: a republic built around suspicion of kings become so fascinated
1:03:30
Speaker 1: by a man who want to be treated like one.
1:03:33
Speaker 1: How did millions of people who said they hated elites
1:03:35
Speaker 1: turn themselves over to a golden penthouse salesman who sold
1:03:39
Speaker 1: them coins, watches, bibles ingrievance? And how did a political
1:03:44
Speaker 1: party that claim to love the Constitution become a protection
1:03:46
Speaker 1: racket for a man who tried to overturn an election.
1:03:50
Speaker 1: That's going to be the questions historians ask, and the
1:03:52
Speaker 1: answers are not going to be flattering. Exhaustion the audience
1:04:01
Speaker 1: has seen the trick. The brand is overextended, the con
1:04:04
Speaker 1: is just too visible. So the jump the shark moment
1:04:09
Speaker 1: is not when Trump becomes someone else. It is when
1:04:12
Speaker 1: everyone can finally see that he has always been exactly this,
1:04:19
Speaker 1: a man who confuses attention with love, money with somehow merit,
1:04:24
Speaker 1: and dominance with greatness, and the country with himself. And
1:04:29
Speaker 1: I have a feeling every day more people are starting
1:04:32
Speaker 1: to see the difference. So is this the beginning of
1:04:36
Speaker 1: the end? Now? I think that's already happened? Are we
1:04:38
Speaker 1: in the middle of the end. That's probably the fairest
1:04:41
Speaker 1: look at this, But we are closer to the end
1:04:45
Speaker 1: than we are at the beginning. All right, let's sneak
1:04:49
Speaker 1: in a break. I know I had a lot to
1:04:50
Speaker 1: say there, but boy, this, in some ways a lot
1:04:54
Speaker 1: happened over five days, and he helped paint a picture
1:05:00
Speaker 1: of a president who just doesn't even care what it
1:05:04
Speaker 1: looks like. That what he's doing is what now it
1:05:07
Speaker 1: looks like. So we'll sneaking a break and we'll come
1:05:10
Speaker 1: back inside The New York Times with managing editor Carolyn Ryant.
1:05:21
Speaker 1: So joining me now is Carolyn Ryan. I've had parallel
1:05:25
Speaker 1: tracks at major big news organizations covering politics, covering Washington.
1:05:30
Speaker 1: Carolyn is the managing editor for the New York Times,
1:05:33
Speaker 1: overseeing the Washington Bureau politics and as you said, new York.
1:05:38
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that mean, Carolyn, when you say
1:05:40
Speaker 1: you oversee New York. Is it New York City bureau
1:05:43
Speaker 1: stuff political or is it more than that?
1:05:45
Speaker 2: Well, there's, first of all, thanks for having me on.
1:05:49
Speaker 2: So there we have about sixty staffers on our metro department.
1:05:55
Speaker 2: So that's really you know that, crime, transportation, politics. Quite frankly,
1:06:01
Speaker 2: the last six months even more have been politics, I
1:06:05
Speaker 2: mean New York politicians. I have to tell you my
1:06:08
Speaker 2: very first job at the New York Times, I came
1:06:09
Speaker 2: from the Boston Globe, was New York Politics editor. So
1:06:13
Speaker 2: it was Bloomberg, it was Charlie Rangel, it was Spitzer,
1:06:17
Speaker 2: it was Hillary Clinton. And it was the best job.
1:06:20
Speaker 2: And because New York has this outsize kind of drama
1:06:24
Speaker 2: to it and personality, and once again you have this
1:06:28
Speaker 2: movement that is emanating from New York and kind of
1:06:32
Speaker 2: an earthquake in terms of the New York primaries. And
1:06:36
Speaker 2: it's fascinating to me right now.
1:06:38
Speaker 1: You know, Adam mcgerney, who got his start covering Albany.
1:06:42
Speaker 1: You know what, would tell me all the time. He
1:06:45
Speaker 1: said New York politics was so much more fun. And
1:06:48
Speaker 1: of course he has war stories that go back when
1:06:51
Speaker 1: Tim Russard was a political operative and he goes, you
1:06:54
Speaker 1: have no idea, right, you know, type of thing, Adam.
1:06:57
Speaker 1: I have some great stories that I'll never share from
1:07:00
Speaker 1: Adam about tims Day's as a political operative. They're fantastic.
1:07:04
Speaker 1: But so look, you guys are I want to talk
1:07:07
Speaker 1: a little bit. We talk about independent media. Right The
1:07:10
Speaker 1: most successful independent news organization we have in the country's
1:07:13
Speaker 1: in New York Times. Right now, you guys are are
1:07:16
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's setting the bar high and well,
1:07:21
Speaker 1: and the only thing I think we're all concerned about
1:07:23
Speaker 1: is that you're alone and that you know, because you know,
1:07:28
Speaker 1: you know, one isn't enough, right, You need we need
1:07:31
Speaker 1: independent news organizations to feel empowered up and down, up
1:07:36
Speaker 1: and down the food chain, if you will, of this,
1:07:42
Speaker 1: what do you see as this state of independent journalism
1:07:46
Speaker 1: at the moment? You know, I've always said the best
1:07:50
Speaker 1: time to get into journalism is actually when it's in
1:07:52
Speaker 1: a in a downturn. That's how I've been trying to
1:07:54
Speaker 1: tell young people don't give up on us. This is
1:07:56
Speaker 1: actually the best time to jump on. This is how
1:07:58
Speaker 1: I got my break. But how do you see the
1:08:02
Speaker 1: state and what are what are some positives and what
1:08:05
Speaker 1: concerned you?
1:08:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question, and I think, like you,
1:08:09
Speaker 2: I kind of obsess about the state of local media, especially.
1:08:13
Speaker 2: I came out of small papers in Massachusetts, came up
1:08:17
Speaker 2: to the Boston.
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Globe and grew up in Massachusetts.
1:08:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I grew up on the Sash Shore and started
1:08:24
Speaker 2: covering small town life. There. My big break, I should
1:08:28
Speaker 2: tell you Chuck Ted Kennedy was running for reelection in
1:08:33
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. Nobody wanted to cover him in the
1:08:35
Speaker 2: newsroom because he always cruised to reelection. I put my
1:08:38
Speaker 2: hand up and that was the year a man named
1:08:41
Speaker 2: Romney decided to run against him. So it became a
1:08:44
Speaker 2: national process. So but here's the thing, you know, The
1:08:49
Speaker 2: Times is uh has a set of principles that guide us.
1:08:54
Speaker 2: And whatever you think of The Times or their opinion page,
1:08:59
Speaker 2: the without fear of favor is who we are. And
1:09:03
Speaker 2: the notion of being independent of any party of any
1:09:06
Speaker 2: ideology is something that the owners of this paper, of
1:09:11
Speaker 2: this news organization, truly believe. But it's also those are
1:09:15
Speaker 2: the values that we really look to instill in people
1:09:19
Speaker 2: who come to work here who might not have had
1:09:21
Speaker 2: the benefit of working at the Boston Globe or Roll
1:09:24
Speaker 2: Call or coming up in these ways. And it's really learning,
1:09:29
Speaker 2: you know, fact based independent reporting and helping inform a
1:09:35
Speaker 2: public at a time when algorithms and social media tend
1:09:41
Speaker 2: to reward very different value systems, if you can even
1:09:45
Speaker 2: call it value systems.
1:09:47
Speaker 1: One of the things that I always say the biggest
1:09:49
Speaker 1: thing I miss about being in a big news organization
1:09:52
Speaker 1: is the resources, you know, and it is it's something
1:09:57
Speaker 1: as much as you know, I can send and beat
1:10:00
Speaker 1: my chest about my independence, and there's there is a
1:10:03
Speaker 1: lot to it. There are things I cannot I would
1:10:07
Speaker 1: like to do a dive on this, but you know,
1:10:09
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of also starting trying to you know,
1:10:12
Speaker 1: run a business over here and do all this, and
1:10:14
Speaker 1: I don't have the research department, or I don't have
1:10:20
Speaker 1: this collaboration of a bureau where I can you know,
1:10:24
Speaker 1: or I can take two months off to do this.
1:10:28
Speaker 1: This is what a really good independent news organization can do.
1:10:33
Speaker 1: And my concern right now is that I think the
1:10:36
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal has resources and they use them. I
1:10:39
Speaker 1: think the Post has resources, and I hope they're going
1:10:43
Speaker 1: to continue to use them. We can. I think more
1:10:46
Speaker 1: of their issues are on the opinion side than anywhere
1:10:48
Speaker 1: else these days, and a little bit of the identity
1:10:51
Speaker 1: crisis that the Washington Post goes through every decade. Are
1:10:53
Speaker 1: we a local paper or renational paper? You know, you
1:10:55
Speaker 1: guys gave up being a local paper long ago. I'm teasing,
1:11:00
Speaker 1: so I would love for you to explain just the
1:11:06
Speaker 1: level of resources that you have as a reporter at
1:11:09
Speaker 1: the times that you really don't have anywhere else.
1:11:11
Speaker 2: Well, it was really kind of moving last week someone
1:11:16
Speaker 2: you and I both know, Jonathan Swan. We had a
1:11:19
Speaker 2: book party because Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have this
1:11:23
Speaker 2: book about the Trump administration, and he was reflecting on
1:11:28
Speaker 2: something that I think a lot of journalists think about
1:11:31
Speaker 2: these days, which is do you go to a sub
1:11:33
Speaker 2: stack or do kind of a newsletter go truly independent?
1:11:37
Speaker 2: But the things that come into play when you're doing
1:11:41
Speaker 2: independent reporting, especially hard reporting, investigative resources, frankly, legal resources.
1:11:49
Speaker 1: Now this is people I work on that harder than
1:11:54
Speaker 1: anything else, and it's the hardest not to crack. I
1:11:57
Speaker 1: know journalists who do a lot of Epstein reporting, who
1:12:01
Speaker 1: literally can get insured because they do Epstein recording.
1:12:05
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. I mean the other resources that are
1:12:09
Speaker 2: sort of breathtaking at a place like The Times, that
1:12:11
Speaker 2: really invest in in journalism, you know, video investigations, being
1:12:18
Speaker 2: able to look at satellite imagery in the middle of
1:12:21
Speaker 2: a war and guide people into where a tax are
1:12:25
Speaker 2: being placed. Having investigative teams, you know, not just in
1:12:30
Speaker 2: New York, but overseas, having them in Washington. You know,
1:12:34
Speaker 2: some of our best stuff which I know, you know,
1:12:36
Speaker 2: Eric Lipton and others about Trump and the ways that
1:12:40
Speaker 2: he has benefited and really his fortune has ballooned during
1:12:45
Speaker 2: this administration. That takes a lot of time. It takes
1:12:49
Speaker 2: a lot of time to do really deep stuff, as
1:12:52
Speaker 2: Sue Craig did on Trump's taxes in the beginning of
1:12:55
Speaker 2: all of this. It takes time. Even we can talk
1:12:58
Speaker 2: about this, we had a breakthrough story on the platinum
1:13:02
Speaker 2: race talking to women who had dated him, you know,
1:13:07
Speaker 2: you know as well as I do. Like, that's a
1:13:09
Speaker 2: long time talking to people they might leave legal We're
1:13:15
Speaker 2: lucky to have the best I think legal team. And
1:13:19
Speaker 2: I have to say, Chuck, when Trump was running again
1:13:22
Speaker 2: and some of the threats were beginning, uh, they really
1:13:26
Speaker 2: got ready and uh some of the stuff that we're
1:13:29
Speaker 2: seeing now play out at the Pentagon and elsewhere. You know,
1:13:32
Speaker 2: they were really kind of looking at scenarios and uh.
1:13:37
Speaker 2: And when you talk about are we alone? Uh, you know,
1:13:41
Speaker 2: it's really important right now for news organizations like ours
1:13:46
Speaker 2: and others to come together in these moments and stand
1:13:49
Speaker 2: up for these uh basic values and kind of issues
1:13:53
Speaker 2: of access. And so some of that has been heartening
1:13:58
Speaker 2: when people do some of that. It's been a little
1:14:00
Speaker 2: disheartening when some of the some of our traditional allies
1:14:05
Speaker 2: have not been there.
1:14:07
Speaker 1: Interesting, I hear you on that, and I've looked there
1:14:12
Speaker 1: are other news organizations and this has been look the
1:14:17
Speaker 1: I hate sounding like some sort of radical on this,
1:14:22
Speaker 1: but I do now see that a publicly traded company
1:14:26
Speaker 1: owning a news organization, if it is not their primary business,
1:14:30
Speaker 1: puts that new news organization in a vulnerable position. And
1:14:33
Speaker 1: I've watched other news organizations pull back in certain ways,
1:14:39
Speaker 1: and it's very subtle, whether it's you know, having people
1:14:43
Speaker 1: tell reporters don't do shouted questions when you're in the pool.
1:14:48
Speaker 1: Don't be the person that asks a certain question of
1:14:51
Speaker 1: the day. Don't create a confrontation. And I understand the
1:14:55
Speaker 1: business side of it, like I'm not I'm not crazy,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: and I think these there have been I look at
1:15:00
Speaker 1: these big media companies, you know, I'm What Disney ended
1:15:04
Speaker 1: up doing was a disaster for all of us. It
1:15:06
Speaker 1: hurt all of us. I think Eiger now knows this.
1:15:09
Speaker 1: I think that's why Disney's fighting fighting what's going on
1:15:12
Speaker 1: at the FCC now. They made a mistake. I appreciate
1:15:16
Speaker 1: that they learned from their mistake that not standing up
1:15:19
Speaker 1: and fighting that Stephanopolis lawsuit damaged all of us. It
1:15:24
Speaker 1: absolutely had a big impact. And I don't think that
1:15:28
Speaker 1: was the intent. But they had shareholders, and I get it,
1:15:31
Speaker 1: and I really don't know. I mean, look, you guys
1:15:35
Speaker 1: are a publicly traded company, but there is this sort
1:15:37
Speaker 1: of independent ownership structure that does seem as and you
1:15:41
Speaker 1: don't have other businesses that are bigger revenue streams than
1:15:47
Speaker 1: the business that you have. Correct.
1:15:50
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good point. I mean, the
1:15:53
Speaker 2: Sulzberger family, I think is ride or die with the
1:15:56
Speaker 2: mission of they will die on this hill. They are
1:15:59
Speaker 2: very committed to it. And that's a family that you know,
1:16:02
Speaker 2: for generations has been there. And the other thing, as
1:16:07
Speaker 2: you say, they are not looking to get government contracts.
1:16:10
Speaker 2: They're not looking to go to space.
1:16:13
Speaker 1: You know.
1:16:13
Speaker 2: They not to take anything away from people who are,
1:16:16
Speaker 2: but they are not. What they care about and what
1:16:19
Speaker 2: is their identity. Their identity is journalism. Their identity is
1:16:23
Speaker 2: The New York Times in a way that is deeper.
1:16:25
Speaker 2: I think it's not a diversified business in that sense,
1:16:29
Speaker 2: and it's no question like where the values are. So
1:16:33
Speaker 2: I think that's right, and I think your observation is correct.
1:16:37
Speaker 2: I do have to say, and you're a student of
1:16:40
Speaker 2: this as well, there are some good things happening around
1:16:42
Speaker 2: the country, just in terms of nonprofit news organizations, people
1:16:47
Speaker 2: who have grown up in newsrooms like ours and are
1:16:52
Speaker 2: you know, going to places where good journalism is really needed.
1:16:56
Speaker 2: And I think readers reward that and they know what
1:17:00
Speaker 2: is straight up good journalism, and so part of what
1:17:03
Speaker 2: we're trying to do. You know, you probably know this,
1:17:06
Speaker 2: but we have Dean Baquet, our former editor, is doing
1:17:09
Speaker 2: a bunch of investigative projects around the country with local
1:17:13
Speaker 2: news organizations.
1:17:14
Speaker 1: We do it. I love that you're doing this. I mean, look,
1:17:17
Speaker 1: it's what the Pro Publica started doing this, and I'm
1:17:20
Speaker 1: so glad you guys are are doing this. I will
1:17:23
Speaker 1: tell you you know what. Look, I think I've said
1:17:27
Speaker 1: it out loud. I don't care. I hope somebody steals
1:17:29
Speaker 1: the idea. You know, my goal is to figure out
1:17:32
Speaker 1: how do you network? How do we create a cooperative?
1:17:35
Speaker 1: You know, in the history of media, the UPI was
1:17:39
Speaker 1: a cooperative. It wasn't it wasn't like a nonprofit like AP.
1:17:43
Speaker 1: It was actually a for profit cooperative. And literally it
1:17:46
Speaker 1: was trading resources and it was a way for individual
1:17:49
Speaker 1: local news organizations to have some sort of national identity
1:17:54
Speaker 1: when they needed it or some sort of resource when
1:17:56
Speaker 1: they needed it. But everybody also individually owned their own
1:17:59
Speaker 1: IP and individually. You know, I would love to see
1:18:02
Speaker 1: us be able to build a robust, independent network. And
1:18:05
Speaker 1: I think you guys have this ability. Frankly, to essentially
1:18:10
Speaker 1: help grow a network. You don't have to own it.
1:18:12
Speaker 1: In fact, I don't. I think it's bad if it's
1:18:14
Speaker 1: the New York Times owns local news organization acts. It
1:18:18
Speaker 1: is more that the New York Times is supportive of
1:18:20
Speaker 1: this cooperative of shared resources, of making sure there's legal
1:18:25
Speaker 1: insurance for small local, independent news organizations that can't afford
1:18:29
Speaker 1: that policy, but maybe as a collective can, right. I
1:18:33
Speaker 1: think that's what's needed in order to boost this. So
1:18:35
Speaker 1: I'm glad. You know, the more we can raise the
1:18:39
Speaker 1: profile of this of these independent locals, the better.
1:18:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that's right. And you know,
1:18:46
Speaker 2: there are small ways, there are big ways. I mean,
1:18:48
Speaker 2: even doing you probably saw this, but like some of
1:18:51
Speaker 2: our pulling for the midterms.
1:18:53
Speaker 1: Have been huge partnerships with locals.
1:18:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, Portland Press Herald would not have access to that
1:18:59
Speaker 2: kind of and and we're glad to do it. We
1:19:02
Speaker 2: did something in Pennsylvania the same way. And you know,
1:19:05
Speaker 2: at the same time, we're also building hubs in some
1:19:09
Speaker 2: of these places like Texas where we need to get
1:19:13
Speaker 2: deeper into news, uh, state politics, et cetera, because our
1:19:18
Speaker 2: readers are demanding it.
1:19:21
Speaker 1: So that that's a big part of our investment. You
1:19:24
Speaker 1: brought up Maggie and Jonathan Haber Swan. You know, move
1:19:31
Speaker 1: over Woodstein. We know of haber Swamp. Look, there's the
1:19:36
Speaker 1: there's there's always and it's just in journalism circles. Hey,
1:19:39
Speaker 1: did they hold their scoops for their book or this?
1:19:43
Speaker 1: And look, I don't even think it's a close call.
1:19:47
Speaker 1: I am on the side of this is much more
1:19:51
Speaker 1: powerful coming out in one book than it would be
1:19:55
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm of two minds on most Trump books. Yeah,
1:19:59
Speaker 1: tell me which is which is? There are a ton
1:20:02
Speaker 1: of them, and I always say every book's the same
1:20:06
Speaker 1: in one respect. You won't believe what he tried to do.
1:20:09
Speaker 1: You won't believe how he stopped, how he was stopped
1:20:12
Speaker 1: or why. You know, there's always that, there's this, you know,
1:20:15
Speaker 1: and it's always like so and so actually stopped him,
1:20:17
Speaker 1: and you're like, so and so, I didn't think so
1:20:19
Speaker 1: and so would do that, Right, there's a little bit
1:20:22
Speaker 1: of that, and then there's the and then there's frankly,
1:20:27
Speaker 1: there are new anecdotes, but it doesn't it isn't necessarily
1:20:32
Speaker 1: a new understanding. Does that make sense? Like and that
1:20:37
Speaker 1: is the most fascinating thing about this book is that
1:20:39
Speaker 1: if you covered the first term very closely, Yeah, nothing
1:20:44
Speaker 1: in here is I don't want to say news is
1:20:46
Speaker 1: the wrong way. I don't want to call it non news.
1:20:47
Speaker 1: It is news. None of this is surprising. It's almost like, well, yeah,
1:20:52
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we saw that you saw, that's what
1:20:55
Speaker 1: he was hoping to do then and he couldn't quite
1:20:57
Speaker 1: do it. Now he did it right?
1:20:58
Speaker 2: It is?
1:20:59
Speaker 1: It is certainly you see the culmination of everything he
1:21:03
Speaker 1: tried to do in his first term. And I think
1:21:06
Speaker 1: that what I give. I am glad this is on
1:21:09
Speaker 1: the record on account, but explain your policy. What is
1:21:14
Speaker 1: that balance? How much did you have Maggie and Jonathan
1:21:18
Speaker 1: check in with you? How often did they say, hey,
1:21:20
Speaker 1: we have we have something here. Did you rely on
1:21:24
Speaker 1: them to come to you when they thought, hey, we
1:21:26
Speaker 1: shouldn't hold this, or did you regularly check in on them?
1:21:30
Speaker 2: Right? Right? People ask about this. First of all, I
1:21:33
Speaker 2: just have to say, I don't know if you've had
1:21:36
Speaker 2: a chance.
1:21:36
Speaker 1: To read the book yet, because in the middle of
1:21:38
Speaker 1: it it's wonderfully written to it's a nice read.
1:21:41
Speaker 2: It's yeah, and the level of detail the description of
1:21:46
Speaker 2: these scenes is I feel like the thing that it
1:21:50
Speaker 2: makes me think about is Robert Carrow, just in terms
1:21:53
Speaker 2: of recreating like you are in the situation room.
1:21:56
Speaker 1: And the best compliment they could get is the Trump
1:22:01
Speaker 1: White House tried to create a rumor that there's a
1:22:03
Speaker 1: secret recording, and you're like, oh, so it was that
1:22:06
Speaker 1: accurate anyway, that.
1:22:08
Speaker 2: Was pretty nice. Maggie and Jonathan, as you know, are
1:22:12
Speaker 2: our singular reporters. I don't think there's anyone like them
1:22:15
Speaker 2: right now, and I feel like part of what you
1:22:18
Speaker 2: see with them coming forward, you know, and some of
1:22:21
Speaker 2: the excerpts we've run, but certainly in the book is
1:22:25
Speaker 2: just the way inside this orbit. I mean for me,
1:22:30
Speaker 2: and this goes to your question about us talking, we
1:22:33
Speaker 2: are talking to them constantly. Maggie is probably no even
1:22:38
Speaker 2: when she's on book lead, she has more bylines than
1:22:41
Speaker 2: like most ordinary reports. She is just constantly. She's a
1:22:44
Speaker 2: scoop machine, and that doesn't her brain does not turn off.
1:22:48
Speaker 2: So if you look at even the time she was
1:22:50
Speaker 2: on book lead, scoop after scoop. And so for me,
1:22:54
Speaker 2: the best example when people ask about this U and
1:22:57
Speaker 2: you saw it was reporting that they did on the
1:23:02
Speaker 2: run up to the war net Yahu inside the situation
1:23:06
Speaker 2: room and what was said to me that was revelatory
1:23:10
Speaker 2: and eye opening, and they broke that in our paper,
1:23:15
Speaker 2: you know, months before the book I think came out
1:23:18
Speaker 2: last week and that was back in March, I think, so.
1:23:21
Speaker 1: They did that, But how did that develop? Was that
1:23:23
Speaker 1: just more of you guys. You guys were constantly going, hey,
1:23:26
Speaker 1: this this, we got to do this because we're about
1:23:29
Speaker 1: to go to war. We got yeah, I think it was.
1:23:32
Speaker 2: Six weeks after the war started and they got So
1:23:35
Speaker 2: it felt incredibly timely and urgent. And as you know,
1:23:39
Speaker 2: when you're writing a book, you're having all these conversations,
1:23:42
Speaker 2: but you also have to fact check like crazy, especially
1:23:45
Speaker 2: you're going to publish something you know in the New
1:23:48
Speaker 2: York Times, there's just a whole process to confirmation of
1:23:52
Speaker 2: that stuff. So they were doing it in real time,
1:23:56
Speaker 2: breaking off pieces, and this was one where they really
1:24:00
Speaker 2: let us know, and that felt like it landed, you know,
1:24:03
Speaker 2: when the country was really grappling with how the hell
1:24:05
Speaker 2: did we get here? What were the decision points? Well,
1:24:08
Speaker 2: here's the reporting in real time. So you know, there's
1:24:13
Speaker 2: a level of depth that comes with book reporting, and
1:24:16
Speaker 2: there's a level of candor that sometimes you can get
1:24:21
Speaker 2: and I feel like they are sort of model journalists
1:24:28
Speaker 2: and the way that they balance both you know, breaking
1:24:31
Speaker 2: timely news but also delivering a book. As you say
1:24:34
Speaker 2: that like has a certain impact, and it felt to
1:24:38
Speaker 2: me like there was a frame and an arc to
1:24:41
Speaker 2: that story and just a precision of the reporting that
1:24:46
Speaker 2: you just don't see anywhere else. I mean, even when
1:24:48
Speaker 2: the Trump people are inside the situation room talking about
1:24:52
Speaker 2: the Epstein files and like what to do about their boss,
1:24:56
Speaker 2: and he's in there, and there's just to me, it
1:25:00
Speaker 2: was very eye opening, and you know, frankly, there's nobody
1:25:03
Speaker 2: like them, No.
1:25:12
Speaker 1: And I guess what I would say to anybody that's
1:25:15
Speaker 1: like saying that they held for the book, and I
1:25:18
Speaker 1: would say, is if the point is to make sure
1:25:21
Speaker 1: people are reading your work and consuming your work, and
1:25:25
Speaker 1: if these are vital stories for understanding where the Republic
1:25:30
Speaker 1: stands literally at this moment, well the book is more
1:25:34
Speaker 1: impactful way to do that.
1:25:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's an interesting question for us
1:25:40
Speaker 2: because you know the number of people who write books
1:25:45
Speaker 2: on our staff. You know, I got to The Times
1:25:48
Speaker 2: in seven and it's definitely more.
1:25:51
Speaker 1: Doesn't the book deal come with the Times hiring? I'm
1:25:54
Speaker 1: half kidding, right, but certainly plenty of Times reporters want
1:25:57
Speaker 1: to believe that, right, And so it's I think they're
1:26:00
Speaker 1: about to bring up something that I am curious about,
1:26:03
Speaker 1: which is, you've got a lot of reporters that they
1:26:05
Speaker 1: want to write a book. You know, you can't let
1:26:08
Speaker 1: them all go on bookly. But at the same time,
1:26:10
Speaker 1: you know, and so that has to also be a balance, correct.
1:26:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that is a real balance. And also, you know,
1:26:19
Speaker 2: it's kind of fascinating to me just the kinds of
1:26:23
Speaker 2: people go through a little process here if they want
1:26:26
Speaker 2: to write a book. Some people are covering a beat
1:26:29
Speaker 2: like Trump, and they're like, I want to go deeper
1:26:31
Speaker 2: on this, and here's how I want to do it,
1:26:33
Speaker 2: and here's how I'll manage my beat. Some people are saying,
1:26:37
Speaker 2: I cover this beat and actually I want to spend
1:26:40
Speaker 2: a year writing about Buddhist poetry, and please give me
1:26:44
Speaker 2: time to do that so that my brain won't hurt
1:26:48
Speaker 2: in the same way. And so and we've had people
1:26:50
Speaker 2: write novels, We've had you know, people go into you know,
1:26:55
Speaker 2: you probably know Fleischmann is in Trouble. Taffy Ackner wrote
1:27:01
Speaker 2: this novel that became a streaming series, and now you
1:27:05
Speaker 2: have the interestion of Hollywood, and so it's not like
1:27:10
Speaker 2: it's not like it was when I was coming up
1:27:13
Speaker 2: in kind of small journalism.
1:27:15
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about what you guys are doing in polling.
1:27:22
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. You've been at the Times a
1:27:24
Speaker 1: long time, and I'll just be honest. Before this partnership
1:27:29
Speaker 1: with Sienna Times, reputation in polling was not good. It's
1:27:33
Speaker 1: not polling community. Its national poll was not great. It
1:27:38
Speaker 1: was that CBS partnership. It was always there were more
1:27:42
Speaker 1: outliers that always felt like coming out of the tide
1:27:44
Speaker 1: was the one of the I remember back in the
1:27:46
Speaker 1: old Hoghline days, it would be like, why does the
1:27:51
Speaker 1: greatest news organization put up with this? That just it
1:27:54
Speaker 1: would be our sort of and look, you guys done
1:27:57
Speaker 1: to me a dramatic one to eighty. It's a much
1:27:59
Speaker 1: more rigorous polling unit you've created. Nate con really works
1:28:04
Speaker 1: hard on these things. And as more news organizations can't
1:28:08
Speaker 1: afford quality state polls. I mean, right now, it's you
1:28:11
Speaker 1: and ARP. If I didn't have you ARP and occasionally
1:28:14
Speaker 1: the Fox News pulling unit, who I think is a
1:28:16
Speaker 1: very good polling unit. They're the only ones doing quality
1:28:20
Speaker 1: state level polling. This is pretty expensive stuff and you
1:28:27
Speaker 1: could easily have a bean counter say to you, you're
1:28:29
Speaker 1: not getting your bang for your buck here.
1:28:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean this is a big investment area.
1:28:34
Speaker 2: There are a few investment areas I should probably mention.
1:28:37
Speaker 2: One is pulling, one is data, and we can get
1:28:42
Speaker 2: to video, which is another huge area of expansion. But
1:28:46
Speaker 2: it's really important for us because we have I think, Chuck,
1:28:52
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just thinking about midterm cycles. I think
1:28:54
Speaker 2: we're spending double on polling right now. That's an investment
1:28:58
Speaker 2: that the public sure was willing to make. And it's
1:29:02
Speaker 2: partly because, like other organizations, we set up a poll tracker.
1:29:06
Speaker 2: Let's see what's happening in Michigan. You know, you look
1:29:11
Speaker 2: at the quality poland yeah.
1:29:12
Speaker 1: That's right now you have it's usually a bunch of
1:29:15
Speaker 1: partisan polls that you kind of have to like, Okay,
1:29:18
Speaker 1: you know, how much do I weigh this? You know,
1:29:21
Speaker 1: you know all that stuff and.
1:29:23
Speaker 2: You get really fluky stuff and you sense how hungry
1:29:27
Speaker 2: the electorate and the people who care about politics in
1:29:29
Speaker 2: that state are, and they stop, they start sharing their
1:29:32
Speaker 2: own internals and you feel kind of lost.
1:29:36
Speaker 1: Now.
1:29:36
Speaker 2: The good thing for us is it feels like we
1:29:39
Speaker 2: can go out into these states. You saw, we just
1:29:41
Speaker 2: did the six areas where the Democrats are hoping to
1:29:45
Speaker 2: make there there are.
1:29:45
Speaker 1: Two states that I you didn't do that. I went like,
1:29:49
Speaker 1: where is that state? You know, Michigan and Nebraska.
1:29:52
Speaker 2: So Nebraska is interesting ant.
1:29:55
Speaker 1: And where's my Michigan numbers? I know you there's no
1:29:58
Speaker 1: way you're skipping Michigan waiting to see what you guys
1:30:01
Speaker 1: are doing with Michigan here.
1:30:02
Speaker 2: But anyway, but in terms of polling, look, the part
1:30:07
Speaker 2: of it is obviously these races are of huge consequence,
1:30:11
Speaker 2: and what happens in the midterms and in terms of
1:30:13
Speaker 2: the Trump agenda is huge. But honestly, it's also a
1:30:18
Speaker 2: way for us to take the temperature on these other
1:30:21
Speaker 2: issues that our leaders are so interested in. I mean,
1:30:24
Speaker 2: you've seen this, but the shift on Israel is like
1:30:30
Speaker 2: something I haven't experienced in a very long time.
1:30:34
Speaker 1: The only thing that has moved this fast culturally is
1:30:38
Speaker 1: same sex marriage.
1:30:40
Speaker 2: Same sex marriage.
1:30:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of something that was a given and
1:30:43
Speaker 1: then suddenly wasn't the right type of thing right where
1:30:46
Speaker 1: everybody was over here, and then suddenly everybody went over here.
1:30:49
Speaker 1: It is I can't it's about That's always been the
1:30:54
Speaker 1: was always the issue. I always say, what is anything
1:30:57
Speaker 1: moved fast. It's like that is something that moved fast.
1:30:59
Speaker 1: I mean we were banning them in four banning same
1:31:03
Speaker 1: sex marriage, and every swing state that like, every single
1:31:07
Speaker 1: this is two thousand and four, this was I always
1:31:08
Speaker 1: say this was nineteen eighty four, you know, and literally
1:31:12
Speaker 1: by twenty twelve, it's legal everywhere, you know.
1:31:17
Speaker 2: But the Israel thing is especially interesting, as you can
1:31:21
Speaker 2: imagine being here in New York, you know, where it
1:31:24
Speaker 2: was an issue on some of the college campuses, the protests.
1:31:28
Speaker 2: There's a significant Jewish demographic in terms of the electorate
1:31:34
Speaker 2: and the history of who represents New York and kind
1:31:38
Speaker 2: of the support for Israel and just watching that get
1:31:43
Speaker 2: wobbly and then the distance now is something that has
1:31:47
Speaker 2: been very eye opening.
1:31:48
Speaker 1: But I do think Carolin, very recently, I was covering
1:31:51
Speaker 1: I was in New York covering a pretty big gathering
1:31:54
Speaker 1: of sort of Jewish activists. Yeah, and they did their
1:31:58
Speaker 1: shout out to the local officials showed up for it,
1:32:00
Speaker 1: and there was one and I was like, there was
1:32:05
Speaker 1: one and it was like one of those I'm like,
1:32:08
Speaker 1: you know, literally, in nineteen ninety seven, it would have
1:32:11
Speaker 1: taken an hour to read every local elected official that
1:32:14
Speaker 1: showed up to this sent events and it was just
1:32:17
Speaker 1: you could see this is shifted not just in the
1:32:20
Speaker 1: grassroots but also in that sort of elite circles too
1:32:23
Speaker 1: and here right right.
1:32:25
Speaker 2: So the so some of that investment that we're making
1:32:29
Speaker 2: is to pick up on those things and to heldon
1:32:32
Speaker 2: reporters dig deeper. You probably saw Shane Goldmarker had a
1:32:36
Speaker 2: pretty good story where he went deep on this whole
1:32:39
Speaker 2: question of Trump and the working class and kind of
1:32:43
Speaker 2: where are the shifts happening now in terms of is
1:32:46
Speaker 2: Trump losing support among the voters that shifted toward him
1:32:51
Speaker 2: just as recently as twenty twenty four. And you know,
1:32:55
Speaker 2: I got to mention, as we're talking about polls and politics,
1:33:00
Speaker 2: we had to tell these stories in ways that are
1:33:04
Speaker 2: accessible to a new generation of news consumers. So a
1:33:08
Speaker 2: big area where we're investing in terms of politics, but
1:33:12
Speaker 2: in terms of news internationally and elsewhere is video. Like
1:33:17
Speaker 2: you got to be able to put Nate Cone on
1:33:20
Speaker 2: video and explain to you what's going on and why
1:33:23
Speaker 2: they should care, and to do that in a way
1:33:25
Speaker 2: that's concise and authoritative. And so I think monthly now
1:33:33
Speaker 2: we're doing about seventy five hours of video, which is
1:33:36
Speaker 2: a huge increase, and so the newsroom has really embraced it.
1:33:40
Speaker 2: I think there was you know, people were a little
1:33:43
Speaker 2: tentative or as you know, you got to be there.
1:33:48
Speaker 1: No, I you know, I tell myself, I have to
1:33:51
Speaker 1: tell remind myself of the break I caught. So when
1:33:55
Speaker 1: we started a political website in partnership when I was
1:33:58
Speaker 1: back at National Journal we started in partnership with the
1:34:01
Speaker 1: Washington Post and ABC News and Newsweek. This is in
1:34:03
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety six. And the dirty little
1:34:06
Speaker 1: secret was nobody at the Washington Post, ABC or Newsweek
1:34:09
Speaker 1: wanted to write for the Internet. So it was twenty
1:34:11
Speaker 1: three year old me that got to write for the internet.
1:34:13
Speaker 1: And it was a whole bunch of us twenty somethings
1:34:15
Speaker 1: that got to write for the Internet because none of
1:34:17
Speaker 1: them under the auspices of this political website of the
1:34:20
Speaker 1: Washington Post, ABC News at Newsweek. And you know, it's
1:34:25
Speaker 1: a story I like to tell that, Like I have
1:34:28
Speaker 1: to tell myself, don't be a snob about technology. The
1:34:31
Speaker 1: biggest problem in journalism is we and I do it.
1:34:34
Speaker 1: I'm like I roll my eyes at TikTok, right, I
1:34:37
Speaker 1: look fully confess, right, oh jeez, or really, I got
1:34:41
Speaker 1: to do an what do I what is? What's the
1:34:43
Speaker 1: best way to do? What's happened?
1:34:44
Speaker 2: What you know?
1:34:45
Speaker 1: And like I, you know, I get the and I'm like, yeah,
1:34:48
Speaker 1: David Broder thought writing for the Internet was a waste
1:34:50
Speaker 1: of time in nineteen ninety five, right, like you know,
1:34:52
Speaker 1: So I you know, I don't want to be that guy.
1:34:55
Speaker 1: And I think every I think now more and more
1:34:57
Speaker 1: journalists realize that that you got to got to be
1:34:59
Speaker 1: plaied for neutral that's exactly right. And I say that
1:35:03
Speaker 1: And I have yet to get on a Twitch stream.
1:35:04
Speaker 2: Have you no, But I'm waiting for you the most.
1:35:09
Speaker 2: I think last year, I think this is wrong, but
1:35:12
Speaker 2: maybe in the last sixteen months or so, one of
1:35:14
Speaker 2: the most watched videos was Maggie Haberman after Trump's got
1:35:19
Speaker 2: initially convicted in his New York trial, and she was
1:35:24
Speaker 2: just walking you through what happened in the courtroom, what
1:35:28
Speaker 2: it meant. And you think, what you have to do
1:35:31
Speaker 2: is like you got to take you got to marry
1:35:34
Speaker 2: the expertise of reporters like that with the forms that
1:35:38
Speaker 2: feel accessible to whatever generation of readers. And so we're
1:35:43
Speaker 2: always trying new things. We're always looking for ways to
1:35:45
Speaker 2: reach new audiences. And you're absolutely right. I mean, even
1:35:49
Speaker 2: like newsletters, bringing people into what we are doing and
1:35:55
Speaker 2: making them feel like The New York Times is a
1:35:58
Speaker 2: place that is held full for their understanding of the world.
1:36:03
Speaker 1: Talk about two sort of perception challenges, and some of
1:36:06
Speaker 1: them are real challenges and some of them are just
1:36:08
Speaker 1: perceived and sort of manufactured. Look, ninety percent of the
1:36:13
Speaker 1: criticism of the coverage of The Times is usually through
1:36:17
Speaker 1: the prism of the op ed page and the editorial page.
1:36:19
Speaker 1: It is not about the actual reporting or the journalists.
1:36:22
Speaker 1: It is about the perception, right, I mean, trust me,
1:36:26
Speaker 1: I sort of experienced this myself through the prism of
1:36:28
Speaker 1: NBC versus MSNBC, right, which we had this naive notion, Oh,
1:36:33
Speaker 1: MSNBC is just the op ed page of NBC News.
1:36:35
Speaker 1: Remember we tried that spin for a while. That didn't
1:36:38
Speaker 1: work out so well. But should the opinion section be
1:36:47
Speaker 1: spot off completely and it should be still branded New
1:36:50
Speaker 1: York Times Opinion? Should it be merged? I will tell
1:36:53
Speaker 1: you where I struggle. And I say this as a reader.
1:36:57
Speaker 1: I know there's a bright line between the editorial side
1:37:00
Speaker 1: and the opinion side. But if I consume the app,
1:37:04
Speaker 1: I love the app. I think you guys are the
1:37:06
Speaker 1: best app of all of them, because there's still this
1:37:08
Speaker 1: feeling of scrolling through a newspaper in that I can
1:37:11
Speaker 1: go section to section. I enjoy accidentally reading stuff I
1:37:15
Speaker 1: miss that.
1:37:16
Speaker 2: That's the goody. I love it.
1:37:18
Speaker 1: So that's the beauty of this. But you guys spend
1:37:23
Speaker 1: a lot of time promoting the opinion section. It's clearly
1:37:26
Speaker 1: a traffic driver. And so that's always because to me,
1:37:30
Speaker 1: audience capture is a concern, and any of us doing
1:37:34
Speaker 1: this in this news independent news world, which is you
1:37:39
Speaker 1: were suddenly your audience is pushing you away from certain
1:37:42
Speaker 1: stories because they won't like it if you go down
1:37:44
Speaker 1: that road versus you know, if you go right, there's
1:37:46
Speaker 1: all this. So what are your safeguards And would you
1:37:50
Speaker 1: like to see more of a brighter line publicly between
1:37:54
Speaker 1: the opinion section, because you guys merge it. And sometimes
1:37:56
Speaker 1: I always say, you know, the photos of the opinion
1:37:58
Speaker 1: writers seem to be bigger than the photos are the journalists,
1:38:01
Speaker 1: and and I'm always like, I'd rather to me the
1:38:03
Speaker 1: journalists are the stars of the times. But I'm I'm
1:38:06
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna want to being stained wretch.
1:38:08
Speaker 2: They're they're they're sometimes better looking in their photos. I
1:38:11
Speaker 2: got to say a couple of things. One I just
1:38:13
Speaker 2: want to say one thing on audience capture because I
1:38:15
Speaker 2: think about this a lot. There are a lot of
1:38:17
Speaker 2: things you can criticize The New York Times for, and
1:38:20
Speaker 2: people do they have strong feelings about it. I do
1:38:24
Speaker 2: think we are not We are a place that is
1:38:29
Speaker 2: sending people to the Congo for a bulla where people
1:38:34
Speaker 2: we cover classical music. We are not guided by audience capture.
1:38:40
Speaker 2: We're lucky to have this business structure where you know
1:38:43
Speaker 2: where I'm not looking to as a reporter say I
1:38:46
Speaker 2: have to get my clicks or I have to get
1:38:48
Speaker 2: page views or something. That's not the value system. I
1:38:51
Speaker 2: would say this about the the opinion content is is
1:38:58
Speaker 2: an important way for people to understand our analysis of
1:39:02
Speaker 2: the world and to come to familiar voices many of you,
1:39:07
Speaker 2: many of whom you know, like a morningdowed on a Saturday.
1:39:10
Speaker 2: People want. However, I do think that what you're driving
1:39:15
Speaker 2: at is that we need to do a better job.
1:39:18
Speaker 2: If someone like you, who's very sophisticated and lives in
1:39:23
Speaker 2: the news world. You know, you have this observation people
1:39:26
Speaker 2: who are far less sophisticated about what is the New
1:39:29
Speaker 2: York Times need to understand the difference. And it's something
1:39:33
Speaker 2: that we're really working on. We have pat Heally, who
1:39:36
Speaker 2: you know, is you know, doing We've got to sort
1:39:40
Speaker 2: of guide the reader a little bit more. One thing
1:39:42
Speaker 2: we did we made some changes to the design of
1:39:45
Speaker 2: the opinion content to try to distinguish it more from news.
1:39:50
Speaker 2: You know, the place where I really noticed it after
1:39:55
Speaker 2: Biden's disastrous debate performance with Trump, had a number of
1:40:00
Speaker 2: opinion columnists coming out and saying, you know, Biden, she's
1:40:05
Speaker 2: needs to step aside. So there was kind of a
1:40:07
Speaker 2: periode of that and so what should that look like
1:40:10
Speaker 2: on the app and making sure that that feels different
1:40:13
Speaker 2: from our news coverage, which was also very dynamic. So
1:40:19
Speaker 2: you know, we're we are the beneficiaries of having a
1:40:23
Speaker 2: very well resourced newsroom in a very well resourced opinion department.
1:40:28
Speaker 2: But I think you're getting it something important, which is
1:40:31
Speaker 2: articulating what is different.
1:40:43
Speaker 1: Well, we saw it with the Nick Christoff controversy, and
1:40:46
Speaker 1: I think the question was are the standards of the
1:40:50
Speaker 1: opinion section. When it comes to fact checking, you know,
1:40:53
Speaker 1: how much do we know for sure it's the same standards,
1:40:57
Speaker 1: right because we know and I think it's to me
1:41:00
Speaker 1: was a fair question to ask if you're from the outside,
1:41:03
Speaker 1: because we know a columnist gets a bit more leeway,
1:41:07
Speaker 1: right A than somebody writing even news analysis, right A
1:41:11
Speaker 1: Peter Baker news analysis piece is going to get the
1:41:14
Speaker 1: fact checker scrutiny. That And I'm not saying fact checks
1:41:17
Speaker 1: aren't getting the scrutiny on the opinion page, but there's
1:41:19
Speaker 1: sort of that's it's just slightly different. I mean, you know,
1:41:24
Speaker 1: and so but is it you know, in that specific case,
1:41:29
Speaker 1: was the good old fashioned New York Times fact checkers
1:41:31
Speaker 1: on this or was it treated slightly differently?
1:41:35
Speaker 2: Yeah? The I mean, I'm obviously not involved in the
1:41:38
Speaker 2: production of the opinion pieces or Knicks piece. I know
1:41:43
Speaker 2: that they obviously have spoken to this, and they have
1:41:47
Speaker 2: a fact checking system. I think what you're getting at
1:41:51
Speaker 2: is a little bit different, which is point of view
1:41:56
Speaker 2: and coming at something and presenting it. It's not it's
1:42:00
Speaker 2: not so much do they have fact checkers. It's presenting
1:42:04
Speaker 2: something with a point of view and through that framework,
1:42:06
Speaker 2: that's the essence of what they do what we're doing
1:42:09
Speaker 2: is obviously something different.
1:42:12
Speaker 1: No, And I just think that that the problem is,
1:42:14
Speaker 1: I know you're doing that. I went through this argument
1:42:16
Speaker 1: all the time internally, and it took frankly, and NBC
1:42:20
Speaker 1: didn't act until it's been too late, right, They didn't
1:42:22
Speaker 1: spin off ms NBC until it was too late, I
1:42:25
Speaker 1: think personally. But it was the same issue, which is,
1:42:28
Speaker 1: we know there's a difference, but what does the public see? Right?
1:42:35
Speaker 2: What is the you know?
1:42:36
Speaker 1: And I always said, the peacock was on my show
1:42:40
Speaker 1: and the peacock was on Rachel's show, and the peacock
1:42:43
Speaker 1: was and there are plenty of people who don't see
1:42:46
Speaker 1: the distinction. And why are we making the viewer do
1:42:49
Speaker 1: more work or the reader do more work to understand
1:42:52
Speaker 1: your system? Right type of thing? And that's always that
1:42:55
Speaker 1: to me, that's the line. I feel like you have
1:42:58
Speaker 1: to find it, find a way to walk well.
1:43:03
Speaker 2: I get that. I mean, part of what you're getting
1:43:04
Speaker 2: at is news literacy, and part of what we need
1:43:08
Speaker 2: to do better, I think, and what we are investing
1:43:11
Speaker 2: in doing better is telling our story, you know, basically
1:43:17
Speaker 2: explaining and describing how we do our work and it's
1:43:22
Speaker 2: sort of amazing to me still how many people imagine
1:43:27
Speaker 2: that reporters are at their desk coming up with takes
1:43:30
Speaker 2: when they're out, you know, in the country or they're
1:43:34
Speaker 2: out on Capitol Hill and they are checking things with sources.
1:43:39
Speaker 2: And but we have we you know, I need to
1:43:43
Speaker 2: cop to it. I've been in this business for a while.
1:43:45
Speaker 2: I don't think we've done a great job of explaining
1:43:48
Speaker 2: what it means to be a reporter, what it means
1:43:51
Speaker 2: to confirm facts, what it means to get a story
1:43:55
Speaker 2: ready for a place like NBC or The New York Times.
1:43:58
Speaker 2: And that's partly why we are trying to, you know,
1:44:02
Speaker 2: be really forthright. Some of the videos that we're doing, frankly,
1:44:06
Speaker 2: are just explaining what we do and want answering the
1:44:09
Speaker 2: kinds of questions that you have, like about like how
1:44:13
Speaker 2: do we handle it when someone wants to write a book,
1:44:16
Speaker 2: because as you know, on social media, some narrative will
1:44:19
Speaker 2: take hold and it could be wildly off. But it's
1:44:23
Speaker 2: up to us to respond.
1:44:25
Speaker 1: What are the other things that I think I worry
1:44:29
Speaker 1: about with myself and my own coverage is geography capture,
1:44:36
Speaker 1: if you will, right, And that is you know, I've
1:44:39
Speaker 1: often I've often joked if the capital of the media
1:44:43
Speaker 1: world were Topeka instead of New York City, I promise
1:44:46
Speaker 1: you the coverage of religion would be different, That's right,
1:44:49
Speaker 1: And that because you just the local culture of church
1:44:54
Speaker 1: going and stuff would be different. It would sort of
1:44:57
Speaker 1: work its way into the system. Right. So I have
1:45:02
Speaker 1: been heartened by one of the trends that I've noticed
1:45:05
Speaker 1: at the Times, which is that you are trying to
1:45:09
Speaker 1: have people geographically located outside of the Acela corridor. Like
1:45:13
Speaker 1: I whether it's I'm trying to remember the reporter, but
1:45:17
Speaker 1: there was one of your political reports based in Cincinnati,
1:45:20
Speaker 1: and I'm like, good, I want to I want to
1:45:21
Speaker 1: know that your Industrial Midwest reporter actually lives in the
1:45:24
Speaker 1: industrial Midwest, right, and those sort of things. How how
1:45:29
Speaker 1: much are you doing that? What is your balance of
1:45:31
Speaker 1: political staff not based in DC in New York versus
1:45:34
Speaker 1: based in DC.
1:45:35
Speaker 2: And the Ork. I mean, this is a huge effort
1:45:38
Speaker 2: of ours and frankly an obsession of mine. The kinds
1:45:42
Speaker 2: of conversations that you.
1:45:43
Speaker 1: And I have had this conversation years ago in different ways,
1:45:46
Speaker 1: but we're back when we were both sort of is
1:45:48
Speaker 1: there ways we could work together better, like is there
1:45:50
Speaker 1: can we do some things because we had the same
1:45:52
Speaker 1: issue we wanted to be you know, we we had
1:45:55
Speaker 1: our MBED program that was that had a lot of
1:45:58
Speaker 1: success with it, and you guys did I mean, we
1:46:00
Speaker 1: were constantly worried about this issue. But back then you
1:46:04
Speaker 1: still felt you needed alliance, share of these reporters in
1:46:07
Speaker 1: your own newsroom in New York and d C. Right,
1:46:09
Speaker 1: you couldn't afford to let them live in these other locations.
1:46:12
Speaker 1: A sense that's changed, that's changed. And you mentioned religion.
1:46:16
Speaker 1: I mean, one of our best reporters, Ruth Graham, is
1:46:19
Speaker 1: down in Texas. She covers uh, you know, mainly covers Christianity,
1:46:24
Speaker 1: and the context that she has with ministers, with pastors,
1:46:31
Speaker 1: with heads have come congregations, members of congregations, the conversations
1:46:36
Speaker 1: that she has, you know, you call Ruth Graham and
1:46:40
Speaker 1: she's sitting in the kitchen of a pastor of a
1:46:42
Speaker 1: church who's going to be in a story, and it's
1:46:45
Speaker 1: just a different level of trust. It's just a different
1:46:49
Speaker 1: level of familiarity. The people we have in Georgia, you know,
1:46:53
Speaker 1: the investment that we've made there and in some of
1:46:56
Speaker 1: the other states, like in the SEC corridor which you're familiar.
1:47:00
Speaker 2: Uh. It just it really makes a difference. And then
1:47:03
Speaker 2: when something happens like in Rome, Georgia, when they have
1:47:06
Speaker 2: COVID outbreak or some of the political fights, you know,
1:47:10
Speaker 2: you have a different level of granularity. These are people
1:47:14
Speaker 2: who are living in these places. They know the cost
1:47:16
Speaker 2: of living in these places. They know uh frankly, where
1:47:20
Speaker 2: the traffic uh you know, problems are the airport. It's
1:47:24
Speaker 2: just a different uh context. So I think Arthur sulsworger
1:47:28
Speaker 2: ag is really thoughtful about this. We want to be everywhere,
1:47:32
Speaker 2: and we don't want to be what they used to
1:47:35
Speaker 2: call a toe touch. You know, Johnny Apple would come.
1:47:38
Speaker 1: In and parachute in and changed the my line there
1:47:41
Speaker 1: it is Sarah dooga and readers.
1:47:45
Speaker 2: See through that, you know immediately. Uh So it really
1:47:49
Speaker 2: matters if you're in places like Ohio, if you're in
1:47:52
Speaker 2: places like western Pennsylvania, and uh, readers sense it. And
1:47:57
Speaker 2: it's it's actually good for us. Uh. It's it's kind
1:48:00
Speaker 2: of a way of giving a reporter and experience and
1:48:05
Speaker 2: also hiring people. We're hiring people who are in Texas
1:48:09
Speaker 2: who know Texas right, you know, And it's really helping
1:48:12
Speaker 2: our coverage overall.
1:48:14
Speaker 1: Well, and I'm just going to be crass about it.
1:48:17
Speaker 1: It's when you're in, when you're kind of by yourself
1:48:20
Speaker 1: in a geographic location, away from the main parts of
1:48:25
Speaker 1: where the decisions are being made and stuff, you really
1:48:28
Speaker 1: find out who can sink or swim and you realize,
1:48:31
Speaker 1: I mean the stars you develop and the stars we
1:48:34
Speaker 1: were able to develop with our embeds, like we just
1:48:37
Speaker 1: through these. You know, obviously you try to hire people
1:48:41
Speaker 1: that you thought could be could handle it, but you know,
1:48:45
Speaker 1: every best reporter that we were able to develop over
1:48:48
Speaker 1: the last twenty years, almost all of them came through
1:48:51
Speaker 1: our MBED program because frankly, they had to go and
1:48:54
Speaker 1: they had to go do that. And I'm like, you
1:48:56
Speaker 1: just have to go start meeting people. I'll give you
1:48:57
Speaker 1: four or five people to start calling, but after that,
1:49:00
Speaker 1: just you know, go to go, go. And it's a
1:49:03
Speaker 1: great way to separate, you know, basically the career journalists
1:49:07
Speaker 1: from those that, uh don't have it.
1:49:10
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Those And you know, we we elevated
1:49:14
Speaker 2: somebody out of Florida and you know, the politics editors
1:49:17
Speaker 2: saying how they knew she would do so well because
1:49:21
Speaker 2: the way that she owned Florida, and that's just like
1:49:24
Speaker 2: she knew everyone, she knew how to get to them,
1:49:27
Speaker 2: she knew who to trust, and like, you know, I
1:49:30
Speaker 2: felt like people who came out of Massachusetts and New
1:49:32
Speaker 2: York politics, you've got to see a little bit of
1:49:35
Speaker 2: what they could do. And so we want to do
1:49:38
Speaker 2: that all over the country. And we're lucky enough to
1:49:41
Speaker 2: have uh kind of areas where we're growing these hubs,
1:49:45
Speaker 2: and that to me is the future. And we can
1:49:48
Speaker 2: also work in partnership with some of the local news is.
1:49:52
Speaker 1: Where are you strongest outside of New York and where
1:49:54
Speaker 1: are you looking for?
1:49:56
Speaker 2: Uh?
1:49:56
Speaker 1: Where do you? Where are you?
1:49:57
Speaker 2: Uh?
1:49:58
Speaker 1: This is your time to ask your bosses right publicly
1:50:00
Speaker 1: for more investment. Where do you feel a little underserved?
1:50:04
Speaker 2: Love? I love that we're investing in Texas for a
1:50:07
Speaker 2: couple of reasons. I think it's the best story right now,
1:50:10
Speaker 2: just in terms of the future of America where things
1:50:14
Speaker 2: are going. You sort of have everything there. You surban,
1:50:18
Speaker 2: you got agricultural, you got demographic groups. So we're creating
1:50:24
Speaker 2: a news hub there, so that means that you'd be
1:50:28
Speaker 2: doing deeper political stories, but you also the news of
1:50:31
Speaker 2: the day if something happens, people who know those community,
1:50:34
Speaker 2: who know Houston or Fort Worth, going to be on it.
1:50:37
Speaker 2: So to me, that's a really good model.
1:50:39
Speaker 1: So you'll get a Texas perspective on a spike in
1:50:42
Speaker 1: gas prices as well as your sort of write the
1:50:45
Speaker 1: typical stuff that had been done. And I know that
1:50:47
Speaker 1: that seems like a silly thing, but geographic diversity and
1:50:50
Speaker 1: reacting to a story, I mean, that's the American political electorate.
1:50:53
Speaker 1: You've got to have those things.
1:50:55
Speaker 2: I mean, the other places where we're doing that are
1:50:57
Speaker 2: like agricultural manufacturing. You know, we're strong in the southeast
1:51:02
Speaker 2: part of the US, and we're getting stronger and stronger
1:51:05
Speaker 2: in the Midwest. Minnesota certainly, like Wisconsin. Julie Bosman could
1:51:11
Speaker 2: kind of own Wisconsin, so some of those areas. The
1:51:14
Speaker 2: Mountain West is also like generationally and growth wise, a
1:51:19
Speaker 2: really important area for US. So it feels to me
1:51:23
Speaker 2: like a true national strategy. You want to have somebody
1:51:26
Speaker 2: in every state, and you want to keep developing the
1:51:31
Speaker 2: next generation of journalists and instilling those values out there.
1:51:40
Speaker 1: I think one of the hardest things to do right
1:51:43
Speaker 1: now in covering Washington and the Trump administration is dealing
1:51:50
Speaker 1: when dealing with a source that you know is lying
1:51:53
Speaker 1: to you, but it is the on the record statement.
1:51:56
Speaker 1: It is the or even on background explanation. And certainly
1:52:02
Speaker 1: you guys do a good job of identifying, you know,
1:52:04
Speaker 1: here's you know, it'll be this, and then here's this,
1:52:06
Speaker 1: you know statement from that. I think this has been
1:52:11
Speaker 1: a very difficult thing for all of us in journalism
1:52:13
Speaker 1: to convey the sort of this is unprecedented, this is unique,
1:52:19
Speaker 1: this is different, this is and I know I'm out
1:52:23
Speaker 1: of vocabulary, you know, type of thing. And you know,
1:52:28
Speaker 1: there's always been this pressure you guys get put under.
1:52:30
Speaker 1: Just say it, say it in the lead of the story.
1:52:33
Speaker 1: You know, the Trump administration lied about this today, you know,
1:52:36
Speaker 1: and you're like, look, the L word is a you know,
1:52:40
Speaker 1: that's motive. And you know, yeah, I'm always you know,
1:52:46
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta you can't. None of us know
1:52:49
Speaker 1: how to crawl inside of the people's heads, right, you know,
1:52:52
Speaker 1: we don't know is somebody misleading us on purpose? Maybe
1:52:55
Speaker 1: they've been misled, right, there's always there's a potential explanation
1:52:58
Speaker 1: in you the journalist candle any of the outcomes. Yeah,
1:53:02
Speaker 1: but there's a pattern here, right, and we know there's
1:53:05
Speaker 1: a pattern here. And while you can show a pattern
1:53:08
Speaker 1: maybe every once in a while like Peter Baker will
1:53:10
Speaker 1: do terrific you knows, or news analysis that sort of
1:53:13
Speaker 1: strings all this together, But the day to day it's
1:53:17
Speaker 1: a real challenge. I mean, is it. Do you have
1:53:20
Speaker 1: a hard and fast rule? I mean, how have you
1:53:22
Speaker 1: guys wanted to tackle this when it's just sort of
1:53:25
Speaker 1: literally they want to tell you the sun is rising
1:53:27
Speaker 1: in the west. You know this isn't true, but you
1:53:30
Speaker 1: have to cover what they're saying.
1:53:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was part of the I think
1:53:34
Speaker 2: the first conversation about whether to put Trump lying on
1:53:40
Speaker 2: the front page back in twenty sixteen, which was I.
1:53:43
Speaker 1: Used falsehoods and I got criticized for using falsehoods. And
1:53:46
Speaker 1: that's what I used in my infamous Kelly Ann back
1:53:48
Speaker 1: and forth. I said, you know that was you know,
1:53:52
Speaker 1: and there's a real if during the y I'll never
1:53:56
Speaker 1: I thought about saying lie, and I didn't. I was like,
1:53:59
Speaker 1: I'm not handing her a defense to hang herself on.
1:54:03
Speaker 1: How do you know we're lying? That's you know that.
1:54:05
Speaker 1: I can't believe you're calling somebody a liar, right, You
1:54:07
Speaker 1: get I wanted to avoid going down that rabbit hole
1:54:11
Speaker 1: and keep the focus on the on the on the
1:54:14
Speaker 1: on the falsehood. And I and I got critique for
1:54:18
Speaker 1: like pulling my punches, and I'm like, I didn't feel
1:54:20
Speaker 1: like I've pulled a punch. I was being as accurate
1:54:23
Speaker 1: as I could be in that moment.
1:54:25
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing I mean, in terms of accuracy,
1:54:28
Speaker 2: you have to be able to show intent. The story
1:54:31
Speaker 2: that we called Trump described him as lying, which you'll remember,
1:54:35
Speaker 2: is when he came out and it was over the
1:54:38
Speaker 2: Birther thing, his attack on Obama and said it started
1:54:42
Speaker 2: with Hillary Clinton. And so we did a very direct story.
1:54:46
Speaker 2: Dean Becket, Michael Brow and I had a really long
1:54:50
Speaker 2: conversation about how to do that and how to make
1:54:52
Speaker 2: sure we were signaling to how we knew that And
1:54:57
Speaker 2: I think, you know, quite honest, some of the journalistic
1:55:01
Speaker 2: conventions and forms were not ready for Trump in terms
1:55:05
Speaker 2: of this very question that you're getting at. And there
1:55:08
Speaker 2: was a little bit of a way, I think initially
1:55:11
Speaker 2: throughout the media that the forms themselves lagged what people
1:55:16
Speaker 2: What people want is very direct, I don't think hyperbolic,
1:55:20
Speaker 2: but very direct description of what is happening and what
1:55:24
Speaker 2: we can say.
1:55:25
Speaker 1: I have said that, Yeah, I have said, for instance,
1:55:27
Speaker 1: I will confess to have rounding the edges over the years, right,
1:55:31
Speaker 1: because you're you know, look, I took the very definition
1:55:35
Speaker 1: of being a broadcaster at a broadcast network, which meant
1:55:38
Speaker 1: I had a broad audience. I was trying to speak
1:55:39
Speaker 1: to the largest group of people to trust or at
1:55:43
Speaker 1: least at least consider what I was reporting to them,
1:55:45
Speaker 1: et cetera. So I did believe you had to round
1:55:49
Speaker 1: some edges because I'm widening the aperture. And then there
1:55:52
Speaker 1: was a point I'm like, you know, we have to
1:55:53
Speaker 1: stop rounding the edges, right, And now it's a fine line,
1:55:58
Speaker 1: like it doesn't mean you're between being straightforward and coming
1:56:02
Speaker 1: across as an activist, right right, right, No, I.
1:56:06
Speaker 2: Think that's right. And look, there's going to be scrutiny
1:56:09
Speaker 2: of there's going to be a lot of wordsmith thing
1:56:11
Speaker 2: and I get it. People really care about how we
1:56:14
Speaker 2: describe this stuff. I feel proudest of our reporting about
1:56:19
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice and what they are doing, and
1:56:22
Speaker 2: with that level of precision and directness about how the
1:56:26
Speaker 2: Department of Justice is being used by this president, that's
1:56:30
Speaker 2: the kind of thing I think Joe Cohn, who's our
1:56:32
Speaker 2: executive editor, he does not want language to be hysterical.
1:56:35
Speaker 2: He wants it to be very direct and forthright. And
1:56:38
Speaker 2: that's what we're trying to do.
1:56:40
Speaker 1: No, the words themselves matter, right, because it is it is.
1:56:47
Speaker 1: It's like, you don't want to make it fuzzy, right,
1:56:51
Speaker 1: you're not trying to blur things. But it's it's the hyperbole.
1:56:58
Speaker 1: Like it's why I think the corruption stories don't hit anymore.
1:57:02
Speaker 1: And so I think the corruption stories don't hit it's
1:57:05
Speaker 1: because we've it's the it's my it's a my broken
1:57:09
Speaker 1: windows theory of corruption, of political corruption. Meaning's take the
1:57:13
Speaker 1: Ruben Diego story. Okay, so Ruben Diego is being investigated
1:57:18
Speaker 1: for basically using his political campaign fund for personal expenses.
1:57:23
Speaker 1: If you scrutinize ninety seven of one hundred senators in
1:57:27
Speaker 1: how they use their campaign money, I'm sure they've all
1:57:30
Speaker 1: done this, and some are more abusing, abusive other process. Right.
1:57:33
Speaker 1: And so what I'm saying is is that we've you know,
1:57:36
Speaker 1: over time, we've even us as reporters. You're like, yeah,
1:57:40
Speaker 1: that's just your typical that's that's the typical Congressman rip off.
1:57:44
Speaker 1: Part of this it's the price of doing business, right,
1:57:46
Speaker 1: which is that's a you know, another plane land safely
1:57:49
Speaker 1: at National story and it's unfortunate that it is. Right,
1:57:53
Speaker 1: It goes to it's like the broken windows theory. Right,
1:57:55
Speaker 1: if you let a few, if you don't repair the
1:57:56
Speaker 1: broken windows, eventually people will stop caring if something's happened
1:58:00
Speaker 1: in that community. If I think we've done this with
1:58:03
Speaker 1: corruption because there's so much low level sort of legalized
1:58:09
Speaker 1: wealth creation in the political space or expense abuse or
1:58:15
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, that it has numbed
1:58:19
Speaker 1: us to the big stuff. And I don't have a
1:58:23
Speaker 1: good answer to this. I think it's the genius of Trump, right,
1:58:26
Speaker 1: which is there's you know, he is always able to
1:58:28
Speaker 1: say what about what about is and is always technically there. Well,
1:58:33
Speaker 1: that is true. You know, Hunter Biden did make money
1:58:36
Speaker 1: off of his last name selling paintings, right, and it
1:58:40
Speaker 1: is nowhere near the corruption of the crypto side of things, right,
1:58:43
Speaker 1: So I don't have a good answer to how to
1:58:47
Speaker 1: make how to But I think that's my theory is
1:58:50
Speaker 1: why this doesn't land the way it did in the seventies.
1:58:54
Speaker 2: Well, I you know, we don't have time to test this,
1:58:57
Speaker 2: but I would guess I would just say a couple
1:58:59
Speaker 2: of things so that One, I think the scale of
1:59:02
Speaker 2: what Trump himself, the ways that he's benefiting, including our
1:59:07
Speaker 2: story today about just I mean, it's eye popping amount
1:59:11
Speaker 2: of money, but.
1:59:12
Speaker 1: They're numbers that don't even seem real. So you're just like, Wow,
1:59:15
Speaker 1: the president of the United States pocket at two billion
1:59:17
Speaker 1: dollars as president.
1:59:19
Speaker 3: What It's very difficult, But I would say the impeachment
1:59:23
Speaker 3: investigation started yet, like it's what of it? I don't
1:59:26
Speaker 3: be like, you know, it's like, you know, there's a
1:59:28
Speaker 3: reason jd Vance said Nick Nixon would be a ten
1:59:30
Speaker 3: hour story, yeah, compared to this.
1:59:34
Speaker 2: Well there, I guess I would push back on a
1:59:36
Speaker 2: couple of things. One, I was really struck this week
1:59:39
Speaker 2: that the New York Post editorialized in favor or in
1:59:42
Speaker 2: support of some of our investigations into some of these
1:59:48
Speaker 2: questionable practices. I think that it resonates and Chuck, this
1:59:53
Speaker 2: is a whole different show or conversation. But I think
1:59:56
Speaker 2: some of the agitation against the establishment it is because
2:00:01
Speaker 2: people are really hurting economically and they're seeing people get
2:00:05
Speaker 2: rich in this way. So I think it resonates. It's
2:00:08
Speaker 2: just it's not in the immediate way that you might
2:00:11
Speaker 2: have seen in the seventies.
2:00:12
Speaker 1: No, And I think that's right. It's taken a different
2:00:15
Speaker 1: It is sort of it's like, well, I can't get
2:00:18
Speaker 1: to Trump, so I'm going to get to you congresswoman,
2:00:20
Speaker 1: to get like you know what I mean, Like there's
2:00:22
Speaker 1: a you know, you know I can't I can't get
2:00:26
Speaker 1: to Trump. So sorry, Michael Bennett, I'm not promoting you
2:00:29
Speaker 1: to governor. You know that's just not going to happen.
2:00:31
Speaker 1: You re parted this system. You you either didn't do
2:00:35
Speaker 1: enough to prevent it and you're a bad police officer,
2:00:39
Speaker 1: or you're on the take too right, or you're not
2:00:43
Speaker 1: fighting it in.
2:00:44
Speaker 2: A way that feels like if you look at Colorado
2:00:47
Speaker 2: last night, why did the AG do better then? But
2:00:51
Speaker 2: it's because he's seen as fighting it, and I think
2:00:55
Speaker 2: a little bit of the frustration. I think it's not
2:00:58
Speaker 2: entirely unrelated to corrupt.
2:01:00
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny, Carolyn, I'm like had a flashback
2:01:03
Speaker 1: to the Tea Party, because the biggest hit on both
2:01:06
Speaker 1: Michael Bennett and John Hickenlooper by their opponents where their
2:01:10
Speaker 1: votes to confirm a handful of Trump cabinet secretaries. They
2:01:14
Speaker 1: voted to confirm the supposed less controversial ones like Brook
2:01:18
Speaker 1: Rollins at USDA, And I'm like, boy, I remember when
2:01:23
Speaker 1: that was a litmus test on the right when you
2:01:25
Speaker 1: voted to confirm an Obama cabinet secretary. How dare you
2:01:29
Speaker 1: type of thing? This is where there are the similarities
2:01:33
Speaker 1: we're starting. You know, nothing is exactly the same, nothing
2:01:36
Speaker 1: is a mirror image, but there's certainly a reflection there
2:01:38
Speaker 1: that looks familiar absolutely.
2:01:41
Speaker 2: I mean, and you know what does that become? That's
2:01:44
Speaker 2: where the energy is right now. Does that become a
2:01:46
Speaker 2: bigger part of the identity of the Democratic Party or
2:01:51
Speaker 2: does it break away in some way? And it's really
2:01:55
Speaker 2: unclear to me how the Democratic establishment is going to respond.
2:02:00
Speaker 1: I think it depends what the results are in November.
2:02:02
Speaker 1: I think it's a I think it's a fascinating The
2:02:05
Speaker 1: House becomes a fascinating place on the Democratic side. If
2:02:08
Speaker 1: the Democrats do not win the Senate, they win the Senate,
2:02:12
Speaker 1: then there's probably a little bit more The fight doesn't
2:02:16
Speaker 1: begin for a couple of months between the but if
2:02:19
Speaker 1: they only get if they don't succeed the way then
2:02:22
Speaker 1: the finger pointing right and the cross you can picture that.
2:02:27
Speaker 1: Let me get to you out of here on this
2:02:30
Speaker 1: and it's slightly different, but it's the.
2:02:37
Speaker 2: Is it.
2:02:39
Speaker 1: I don't want to say not being at the Pentagon
2:02:41
Speaker 1: is a good is somehow a good thing for reporting,
2:02:45
Speaker 1: But what would you say is being missed by not
2:02:47
Speaker 1: being there? And is there an upside to sort of
2:02:53
Speaker 1: not having to be force fed the kool aid?
2:02:58
Speaker 2: Well, I'm and I think our reporters are such that
2:03:02
Speaker 2: they would not force fit.
2:03:04
Speaker 1: They're not cool a drinkers drinks I would give you.
2:03:08
Speaker 2: I think our access we have protested and challenged the restrictions.
2:03:16
Speaker 1: Someways. You're the almost the financial lead here, so it's
2:03:19
Speaker 1: an important you guys have to do this on behalf
2:03:22
Speaker 1: of all of us. So I'm glad you're doing it,
2:03:25
Speaker 1: just though I'm curious, like in some ways it's not
2:03:28
Speaker 1: going to prevent good reporting, is it.
2:03:30
Speaker 2: Well, you're making a really interesting point. I mean, I
2:03:33
Speaker 2: do think the notion of a policy put forth by
2:03:37
Speaker 2: the federal government saying that you cannot speak to members
2:03:40
Speaker 2: of the military who are not authorized is you know,
2:03:44
Speaker 2: unconstitutional and frankly ridiculous and it's.
2:03:47
Speaker 1: Just amended violation heart stats.
2:03:49
Speaker 2: But the thing, but to your point about New York
2:03:52
Speaker 2: Times reporters and the investment in good beat reporting around
2:03:56
Speaker 2: the Pentagon and within the administration, what story did we
2:03:59
Speaker 2: break in the midst of all these Pentagon cracks downs,
2:04:03
Speaker 2: throwing us out, taking away our badges. It was one
2:04:06
Speaker 2: of the most dramatic stories out of the Pentagon, which
2:04:09
Speaker 2: was they were about to give a briefing on China
2:04:13
Speaker 2: to Elon Musk when Elon was riding high. And that's
2:04:16
Speaker 2: a story that you break because of devotion, conscientious cultivation
2:04:21
Speaker 2: of sources within the military. And that's reporting. And so
2:04:26
Speaker 2: as you say, reporting is not being force fed something
2:04:29
Speaker 2: at a press conference, that's reporting. That's what we're going
2:04:32
Speaker 2: to keep on doing.
2:04:33
Speaker 1: You know. It's one of those things that's like, I
2:04:35
Speaker 1: just I think it's important to fight for access to
2:04:38
Speaker 1: these spaces hard stop. It is not an excuse not
2:04:42
Speaker 1: to report.
2:04:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it goes back to what we were saying earlier,
2:04:46
Speaker 2: we're going to fight for access. We also need to
2:04:49
Speaker 2: explain to the American people and people beyond what is
2:04:53
Speaker 2: reporting like and what your point is like, we're going
2:04:57
Speaker 2: to report the hell out of these stories wherever we are.
2:05:00
Speaker 2: However we can.
2:05:01
Speaker 1: How do you access matters to a point I always say,
2:05:03
Speaker 1: you know, people talk about access journalism and like, you know,
2:05:07
Speaker 1: if you got rid of access journalism, you wouldn't have
2:05:10
Speaker 1: a sports reporter in the country getting you any information,
2:05:14
Speaker 1: because you know, that's a world that if you're not
2:05:17
Speaker 1: allowed in the facility, and those are private organizations, you're
2:05:21
Speaker 1: just not going to get information. It is. Yes, you
2:05:24
Speaker 1: can source, build it is. You know, I always said
2:05:27
Speaker 1: it's at least us political reporters have the power of
2:05:30
Speaker 1: a Freedom of Information Act. You know, I can't make
2:05:33
Speaker 1: Dan Schneider do anything via a Foyer request when he
2:05:36
Speaker 1: was the owner of the Washington football team, but you
2:05:39
Speaker 1: can force the Pentagon to have to disclose them. Now,
2:05:42
Speaker 1: they may drag their feet, they may do all these things,
2:05:45
Speaker 1: but there's some and so I'm always I don't want
2:05:48
Speaker 1: to be an absolutist about access journalism because there's certain
2:05:50
Speaker 1: beats you have to be there, that's right, you know,
2:05:54
Speaker 1: the body matters, and I think that explaining that's why
2:05:58
Speaker 1: I hate the term access. We know who the access journalists,
2:06:01
Speaker 1: but you know what journalism needs those folks too. That's right.
2:06:05
Speaker 2: People need a lot, they need a lot of entry
2:06:07
Speaker 2: points to this stuff. We need, Yeah, we need rishability
2:06:10
Speaker 2: into these worlds. And you and I are both sports fans,
2:06:13
Speaker 2: so a good beat reporter on a team you care
2:06:16
Speaker 2: about that's priceless too.
2:06:18
Speaker 1: It is, and you do trust them in the same trust.
2:06:21
Speaker 1: It's really frankly, Caroly, it's what I think what you
2:06:24
Speaker 1: and I always aspired to. We wanted to be as
2:06:26
Speaker 1: trusted as the beat report, the sports beat reporter for
2:06:28
Speaker 1: our favorite team. And you're right, there is something. There
2:06:31
Speaker 1: is something to that. Yeah, absolutely, well, this was great.
2:06:37
Speaker 1: The only thing I left on the table was, you know,
2:06:40
Speaker 1: is was going to be a question about the Athletic
2:06:43
Speaker 1: Are they bully New York Times reporters or are they
2:06:46
Speaker 1: a separate entity.
2:06:47
Speaker 2: They're run as a separate entity. They're there, They're a
2:06:49
Speaker 2: separate newsroom. They have kind of they were built up
2:06:56
Speaker 2: differently out of local markets, and they have a very
2:06:58
Speaker 2: presence in London and h football over there, so they're
2:07:05
Speaker 2: run separately from us. Uh. You know, as much as
2:07:08
Speaker 2: I care about their coverage of the Red Sox and
2:07:10
Speaker 2: Wimbledon and all that stuff, I have nothing to do
2:07:12
Speaker 2: with it. Uh and uh, you know, they're growing and
2:07:17
Speaker 2: having a real impact and uh, you know, but they are.
2:07:21
Speaker 2: They're entirely separate, different news from different union, different work forms.
2:07:26
Speaker 2: Like most people in New York Times reporters come into
2:07:29
Speaker 2: the office and so forth, they're out covering a team.
2:07:33
Speaker 2: It's just a whole different system.
2:07:35
Speaker 1: Right right. Great to talk with you. Great catching up.
2:07:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love seeing you on all your good work.
2:07:42
Speaker 2: It's great.
2:07:42
Speaker 1: Well, you know, give me I just need some Nebraska.
2:07:46
Speaker 1: I'd also like Kansas. That's an obsession of mine. Mississippi.
2:07:52
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with that one too. So you know, you
2:07:56
Speaker 1: got a few more. And don't forget our independent friend
2:07:58
Speaker 1: in Montana who might be making a little bit of
2:08:00
Speaker 1: an interesting point. Interesting. We got to get Nate on it, man.
2:08:03
Speaker 1: We got three or four more states. We got to
2:08:05
Speaker 1: add to the punch. Better than all right, we'll do.
2:08:06
Speaker 2: It's great to see you. Take care, Bob.
2:08:17
Speaker 1: You enjoyed that conversation about how what's happening inside and
2:08:21
Speaker 1: some of the inner workings of the New York Times
2:08:24
Speaker 1: on that front. By the way, there's probably a good
2:08:27
Speaker 1: way to understand if you're trying to understand the difference
2:08:30
Speaker 1: between the New York Times polls that you saw over
2:08:32
Speaker 1: the last week and the Fox News polls you've seen
2:08:34
Speaker 1: over the last week, and you think whoa Fox is
2:08:36
Speaker 1: showing Democrats doing better than the Times is well, First
2:08:40
Speaker 1: of all, it's a reminder that pollsters all have their
2:08:42
Speaker 1: own formulas for what they do things. And I can
2:08:46
Speaker 1: tell you this. What the Times is doing is waiting
2:08:49
Speaker 1: their results based on what they are projecting the November
2:08:54
Speaker 1: turnout to be. It is a forecasting wait as much
2:08:59
Speaker 1: as is it a It is not designed to tell
2:09:02
Speaker 1: you where the race stands today. It is designed to
2:09:07
Speaker 1: tell you where the race is likely to be given
2:09:10
Speaker 1: the current circumstances, assuming the turnout we assume. So the
2:09:14
Speaker 1: point is is that, yes, it made the Republicans look
2:09:18
Speaker 1: stronger because we have seen this trend line that come
2:09:20
Speaker 1: election Day there will be a higher floor for the
2:09:23
Speaker 1: Republican vote. What the Fox polsters are doing is the
2:09:28
Speaker 1: snapshot in time type of poll. They're basically saying, here's
2:09:31
Speaker 1: what it says at the moment, We're going to wait
2:09:33
Speaker 1: it to know what turnout looks like, right, what it
2:09:38
Speaker 1: would look like under these circumstances at the moment and
2:09:41
Speaker 1: right now at the moment, the Democrats have the large advantage, right,
2:09:44
Speaker 1: they have the advantage and enthusiasm. So it is how
2:09:47
Speaker 1: both polls can be right and yet at the same
2:09:53
Speaker 1: time show a different result because one is waiting towards
2:09:56
Speaker 1: a forecasting model projection of what November is going to
2:09:59
Speaker 1: look like, and one is literally doing the snap shot
2:10:03
Speaker 1: in time. Where is the race right now? And I
2:10:06
Speaker 1: do believe the race right now in Iowa is a
2:10:09
Speaker 1: Democrat lead both in the governors and center race, and
2:10:13
Speaker 1: I do believe that come election Day it's going to
2:10:17
Speaker 1: be a one point race one way or the other.
2:10:20
Speaker 1: So the point is is that treat the Fox polls
2:10:23
Speaker 1: as the snap shot and treat the Times polls as
2:10:26
Speaker 1: the forecast. On that front, anyway, just a little consumer
2:10:31
Speaker 1: advice for understanding all of these conflicting poll numbers that
2:10:35
Speaker 1: you have out there. By the way, this is why
2:10:38
Speaker 1: the people that want to wait but want to just
2:10:40
Speaker 1: combine and aggregate poll numbers are doing a disservice because
2:10:45
Speaker 1: you're literally aggregating two types of methodologies, two types of waiting.
2:10:49
Speaker 1: And this is why people like me think that anybody
2:10:52
Speaker 1: that relies on this combined stuff is literally misi down
2:10:56
Speaker 1: the road, misleading themselves. Anyway, with that, let's get to
2:11:02
Speaker 1: the time machine. I got a good one today, and
2:11:11
Speaker 1: an involves expansion of the US Senate. So July tenth,
2:11:17
Speaker 1: eighteen nine, that is the anniversary of Wyoming being brought
2:11:22
Speaker 1: into the statehood. So here's a fun little fact that
2:11:24
Speaker 1: many of you, I bet she didn't know. Between November
2:11:28
Speaker 1: of eighteen eighty nine and July of eighteen ninety, the
2:11:32
Speaker 1: United States admitted six new western states, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho,
2:11:38
Speaker 1: and Wyoming. Those six states immediately sent twelve new senators
2:11:42
Speaker 1: to Washington. Every single one of those twelve was a Republican. Now,
2:11:47
Speaker 1: imagine if that happened today. Imagine Congress admitting six new
2:11:51
Speaker 1: states in eight months. Imagine all twelve new senators belonged
2:11:55
Speaker 1: to the same political party. We'd spend the next ten
2:11:59
Speaker 1: years arguing about whether the system had been manipulated and corrupted.
2:12:04
Speaker 1: And yet that's exactly what happened in the late nineteenth century. Now,
2:12:09
Speaker 1: the funny thing is we almost never tell the story
2:12:12
Speaker 1: this way. We call it westward expansion, manifest destiny. We
2:12:18
Speaker 1: tell the story through wagon trains and railroads and homesteaders.
2:12:22
Speaker 1: All of that happened. It's not untrue, but it's just
2:12:25
Speaker 1: one part of the story. So, while settlers were building
2:12:29
Speaker 1: the American West, politicians were building the United States Senate.
2:12:35
Speaker 1: So to understand why, though, you have to understand the moment,
2:12:38
Speaker 1: right the Civil War was over. The Union had won,
2:12:41
Speaker 1: which meant Republicans had won. They preserved the Union, They
2:12:45
Speaker 1: ended slavery, they passed the Reconstruction amendments, built a stronger
2:12:50
Speaker 1: national government, created a national banking system, funded the trans
2:12:55
Speaker 1: Continental railroads, protected American industry with high tariffs. That was
2:13:00
Speaker 1: the theory of the case of trade at the time,
2:13:03
Speaker 1: considering how slow shipping was around the world. Whether you
2:13:07
Speaker 1: agree with all of those policies today is not the point.
2:13:10
Speaker 1: By the eighteen eighties, Republicans had spent twenty years building
2:13:14
Speaker 1: this governing philosophy. Then Reconstruction began collapsing. The federal troops
2:13:20
Speaker 1: that were stationed in the South were withdrawng right that
2:13:24
Speaker 1: you know, the eighteen seventy six Compromise rigged election. If
2:13:28
Speaker 1: you will gave us this, one Southern state after another
2:13:32
Speaker 1: returned to Democratic control. The solid South wasn't just becoming democratic.
2:13:37
Speaker 1: It was becoming politically unreachable for the Republicans. So put
2:13:41
Speaker 1: yourselves in the shoes of a Republican senator in eighteen
2:13:44
Speaker 1: eighty eight. You've just watched the South completely slip away.
2:13:48
Speaker 1: The region on your party once hoped to compete in
2:13:51
Speaker 1: is now almost entirely gone, preventing all these new black
2:13:56
Speaker 1: voters from voting. Coolition that won the Civil War is shrinking.
2:14:04
Speaker 1: So the question isn't whether you'll lose seats. The question
2:14:06
Speaker 1: is whether you're going to eventually lose the country. Where
2:14:10
Speaker 1: do you find replacement votes for all the lost votes
2:14:13
Speaker 1: in the South. Where do you find replacement senators? The
2:14:16
Speaker 1: answer wasn't New England or the Midwest. They'd maxed out,
2:14:19
Speaker 1: and it was West. The frontier wasn't simply America's future.
2:14:23
Speaker 1: It became the Republican Party's future. Now, this is where
2:14:27
Speaker 1: the map becomes really political. We tend to think of
2:14:30
Speaker 1: maps as geography. Politicians think of maps as votes. Right,
2:14:34
Speaker 1: every territory representative choice. Congress could leave it as a territory,
2:14:39
Speaker 1: or they could admit it as a state Congress controlled
2:14:42
Speaker 1: the timing and timing is one of the oldest political
2:14:45
Speaker 1: weapons in Washington. Take the Dakota territory today, we assume
2:14:51
Speaker 1: there were always two Dakotas history says. Otherwise, Congress hadn't
2:14:55
Speaker 1: plenty of options. One territory could have become one state. Instead,
2:14:59
Speaker 1: it became two one territory, four new senators. Now there
2:15:04
Speaker 1: were some legitimate reasons to divide it. The territory was enormous,
2:15:09
Speaker 1: Its population centers had developed differently, but we let Montana
2:15:14
Speaker 1: be an enormous land grab state. And there were some
2:15:18
Speaker 1: administrative arguments. But politics doesn't require to invent opportunities. It
2:15:22
Speaker 1: reward you for recognizing opportunities that already exist. And Republicans
2:15:28
Speaker 1: understood exactly what two Dakota's meant, and Democrats understood it too.
2:15:33
Speaker 1: Nobody in Washington was confused about the math, and the
2:15:37
Speaker 1: admissions came quickly. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, wy.
2:15:41
Speaker 1: Only eight months, six states, twelve new senators, All twelve
2:15:46
Speaker 1: were Republicans. It wasn't the whole Republican coalition, but it
2:15:51
Speaker 1: became one of the strongest pillars. And boy did the
2:15:54
Speaker 1: timing matter because these weren't just senators, they were votes
2:15:58
Speaker 1: to preserve a philosophy, votes for protective terrorists, which Republicans
2:16:05
Speaker 1: believe would help American industry compete against cheaper foreign imports.
2:16:09
Speaker 1: They were votes for continued railroad development. They were votes
2:16:13
Speaker 1: for Western infrastructure. They were votes for veterans pensions. They
2:16:19
Speaker 1: were votes for a much stronger national government than many
2:16:22
Speaker 1: of the Southern Democrats of that era wanted. So the
2:16:26
Speaker 1: Senate wasn't simply deciding legislation. It was literally deciding what
2:16:30
Speaker 1: kind of economy the United States was going to build
2:16:33
Speaker 1: for the next fifty years. And one thing that struck
2:16:38
Speaker 1: me while researching this story is how often we talk
2:16:40
Speaker 1: about manifest destiny as though it explains Western inks alone,
2:16:45
Speaker 1: explains Western expansion. It explains why Americans wanted the land, sure,
2:16:51
Speaker 1: but it doesn't explain why statehood happened when it did.
2:16:54
Speaker 1: And that's a much different question, and it's a very
2:16:57
Speaker 1: political one. Institutions aren't built in a vacuum. They're built
2:17:01
Speaker 1: in moments of political opportunity. Republicans believed they had an opportunity,
2:17:05
Speaker 1: just as importantly, many northern voters believe they should take it.
2:17:09
Speaker 1: Remember this is only twenty five years after epimatics. Many
2:17:14
Speaker 1: people who fought the Civil War were still alive. The
2:17:18
Speaker 1: memory of secession wasn't some distant chapter in a textbook.
2:17:21
Speaker 1: It was pretty recent. So aggressively admitting Western states, if
2:17:26
Speaker 1: that is what was going to help prevent the old
2:17:28
Speaker 1: Southern Democratic establishment from regaining power in Washington, many Republicans
2:17:32
Speaker 1: and many Northern voters thought that was perfectly legitimate, even
2:17:37
Speaker 1: if the means were a little questionable, and that context matters, right,
2:17:42
Speaker 1: you had basically you had a popular mandate to get
2:17:45
Speaker 1: away with it. So this wasn't simply partisan hardball. It
2:17:49
Speaker 1: was partisan hardball operating inside the long shadow of the
2:17:54
Speaker 1: bloody shirt of the Civil War. So did it work?
2:17:59
Speaker 1: Certainly helped. Republicans didn't win every presidential election for the
2:18:04
Speaker 1: next fifty years, but Grover Cleveland interrupted them. Woodrow Wilson
2:18:08
Speaker 1: interrupted them after Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican Party in
2:18:12
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve. But they were literally interruptions to a broader
2:18:15
Speaker 1: era of Republican dominance. From Lincoln through Hoover, Republicans built
2:18:19
Speaker 1: and largely maintained the governing coalition that defined the Gilded
2:18:23
Speaker 1: Age and much of the Progressive era. Now, those Western
2:18:26
Speaker 1: states didn't create the coalition by themselves. The industrialization actually mattered,
2:18:31
Speaker 1: immigration mattered, civil war matter. All of that mattered, but
2:18:35
Speaker 1: a Western leaning Senate helped sustain it. And that's the
2:18:39
Speaker 1: part of the story we don't tell with great emphasis.
2:18:42
Speaker 1: Now fast forward to today, listening to debates about Washington,
2:18:45
Speaker 1: DC statehood in Puerto Rico representation. The Senate supporters argue democracy,
2:18:50
Speaker 1: opponents argue partisan advantage. Everybody insists there motivated by principle.
2:18:55
Speaker 1: Everybody also understands the math, and that shouldn't surprise us
2:19:00
Speaker 1: been arguing over who gets to build the Senate for
2:19:02
Speaker 1: more than a century. The parties have changed, the coalitions
2:19:05
Speaker 1: have changed, right, the solid Democratic South is now the
2:19:08
Speaker 1: solid Republicans out right. The issues have changed. The incentives,
2:19:12
Speaker 1: though barely, have changed it all. And that's the larger lesson.
2:19:16
Speaker 1: We imagine our institution simply evolved, no, they were built.
2:19:22
Speaker 1: The Constitution tells us every state gets two senators, but
2:19:25
Speaker 1: it says remarkably little on what it takes to become
2:19:27
Speaker 1: a state that's always been left to politics, And politics
2:19:32
Speaker 1: asks the same question most of the time, not whether
2:19:34
Speaker 1: an opportunity exists, but how much of it can we
2:19:36
Speaker 1: legitimately take advantage of the question has never been whether
2:19:42
Speaker 1: politicians will seek the maximum political advantage. They always will.
2:19:46
Speaker 1: The real question is how much of that advantage is
2:19:48
Speaker 1: the public willing to tolerate in that particular historical moment,
2:19:52
Speaker 1: And in the late nineteenth century, after a civil war
2:19:55
Speaker 1: and a collapsing reconstruction, the answer was quite a lot.
2:19:58
Speaker 1: So we remember the pioneer, the railroads, Michael Landon, No,
2:20:05
Speaker 1: I'm teasing remember manifest destiny. We spend much less time
2:20:09
Speaker 1: remembering that while Americans were settling the frontier, politicians were
2:20:13
Speaker 1: settling something else. They were settling the future of the
2:20:16
Speaker 1: United States. Side for it more than a generation. And
2:20:20
Speaker 1: once you see that, the map of America stops looking
2:20:23
Speaker 1: inevitable and it starts looking like what it has always
2:20:26
Speaker 1: been a series of political decisions made at very specific
2:20:30
Speaker 1: moments by people who understood that geography could become political power.
2:20:38
Speaker 1: So the point is we're going to get to new
2:20:40
Speaker 1: states at it, DC and Puerto Rico were coming. It's
2:20:47
Speaker 1: just a matter of when does political will match the
2:20:52
Speaker 1: public's appetite for acceptance match the political party who wants
2:21:00
Speaker 1: it being in power having enough power to pull it off. Right,
2:21:06
Speaker 1: So you need timing, you need some form of a
2:21:10
Speaker 1: popular mandate for it, and you can see how this
2:21:16
Speaker 1: will happen. We just haven't hit that moment yet, ask Chuck.
2:21:35
Speaker 1: All right, let's do a little last Chuck. We're going
2:21:37
Speaker 1: to start with Kevin from Spokane, Washington. Longtime listener, first
2:21:40
Speaker 1: time questioner. I've heard you advocate for explaining the House,
2:21:43
Speaker 1: but I'm curious about your thoughts on DC statehood. With
2:21:45
Speaker 1: roughly seven hundred thousand residents and no full congressional representation,
2:21:48
Speaker 1: do you support statehood? And, as partis in politics, the
2:21:51
Speaker 1: main obstacle, what would realistically need to happen to make
2:21:53
Speaker 1: it possible? Thank you for all you do, Kevin. How
2:21:56
Speaker 1: great is it that I just did a toodcast time
2:21:59
Speaker 1: machine this week in history on this very topic about
2:22:04
Speaker 1: the last time we went through an aggressive expansion of
2:22:09
Speaker 1: the states. It was always done with political power and mind,
2:22:13
Speaker 1: and I think that gets lost. The point is statehood
2:22:17
Speaker 1: is usually a political It is always a political question.
2:22:21
Speaker 1: It is not something else entirely. And the fact of
2:22:25
Speaker 1: the matter is, when you have a bunch of people
2:22:29
Speaker 1: without rights whose population is larger than nearly a dozen
2:22:34
Speaker 1: states or approximately a dozen states, you got a problem, right,
2:22:39
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, no taxation without representation seems like
2:22:42
Speaker 1: a pretty good slogan for statehood, which has been the
2:22:45
Speaker 1: mantra of Washington, d C. For some thirty years now.
2:22:49
Speaker 1: It's been on the license plate. So look, it's going
2:22:52
Speaker 1: to happen. I still think DC and Puerto Rico coming together.
2:22:57
Speaker 1: I've done if you want to go back into my archives,
2:22:58
Speaker 1: I've had an interesting conversation with a DC politician and
2:23:02
Speaker 1: a Puerto Rican politician about you know, right now, the
2:23:05
Speaker 1: two sides don't work with each other, but there's real
2:23:08
Speaker 1: Republican support for Puerto Rican statehood. Rick Scott Marco Rubio
2:23:12
Speaker 1: both publicly are on the record for it. And so
2:23:15
Speaker 1: the point is, and Portercus currently as a Republican governor,
2:23:18
Speaker 1: both polaces deserve statehood if you could make the argument
2:23:22
Speaker 1: that it might not necessarily upset the balance of power
2:23:26
Speaker 1: but will make people more repre I think that's how
2:23:28
Speaker 1: you would sell it in today's political environment. But I
2:23:32
Speaker 1: will say this the next time. Democrats, if they can,
2:23:36
Speaker 1: if they get to say, they're not going to leave
2:23:38
Speaker 1: DC on the cutting room floor like they did during
2:23:41
Speaker 1: the Obama era when they had sixty Senate votes and
2:23:44
Speaker 1: a massive you know, when they had the ability probably
2:23:47
Speaker 1: to force statehood through They could have done it then,
2:23:50
Speaker 1: and they chose not to because Obama didn't. He feared
2:23:53
Speaker 1: these backlash. He really didn't want to become a polarizing president.
2:23:57
Speaker 1: And he certainly was less polarizing the Donald Trump because
2:24:00
Speaker 1: he chose to avoid some of these fights over power. Now,
2:24:04
Speaker 1: some base support as the Democratic Party look back and
2:24:07
Speaker 1: say this and see the Obama era sometimes as a
2:24:11
Speaker 1: failure because he didn't aggressively use power when he had
2:24:15
Speaker 1: the power, right when he had sixty sentence seats, even
2:24:17
Speaker 1: though it was brief for fifty nine, even for a
2:24:20
Speaker 1: period of time that he could have, he could have
2:24:23
Speaker 1: done some things that cemented certain certain parts of the
2:24:28
Speaker 1: system that over time might have favored the Democratic Party
2:24:32
Speaker 1: but would have been defensible as being an advancement for
2:24:35
Speaker 1: the country. Right. So the point is is that I'm
2:24:39
Speaker 1: curious how you would have Kevin rewarded your question after
2:24:43
Speaker 1: hearing my little history lesson for the week about the
2:24:52
Speaker 1: aggressive expansion in the Republican power play of the late
2:24:56
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. All Right, Mark writes, Hey, Cholorado seven, here
2:25:02
Speaker 1: I miss she had MTP, but really enjoy what you're
2:25:05
Speaker 1: able to do with this medium. I am a commercial
2:25:07
Speaker 1: pilot who can't hear his girlfriend when she talks in
2:25:11
Speaker 1: a noisy restaurant or bar, but can hear a cricket
2:25:13
Speaker 1: around the corner. You need a WD forty sprints on
2:25:16
Speaker 1: that chair. Ha ha oh interesting, So I see what
2:25:19
Speaker 1: you're saying. My question, given how third party voters votes
2:25:23
Speaker 1: can become counterproductive in presidential election, what would actually have
2:25:26
Speaker 1: to change for America to have a viable third option
2:25:28
Speaker 1: with a real chance of winning in schemes we trust Mark,
2:25:36
Speaker 1: So look, I think it's I go back to it's
2:25:41
Speaker 1: pretty simple. What the third party needs or an independent
2:25:44
Speaker 1: needs is you need a charismatic leader. A charismatic leader,
2:25:49
Speaker 1: and you need and I also believe if you have
2:25:51
Speaker 1: a charismatic leader, that gives people because the independent or
2:25:58
Speaker 1: third party movement will defined by the leader, whoever that
2:26:01
Speaker 1: is anyway, So that's why you need a charismatic leader.
2:26:07
Speaker 1: You probably need a few converts, high profile converts, so
2:26:12
Speaker 1: well known political brands who choose to leave their party
2:26:16
Speaker 1: either the Deers or the ours for this new movement
2:26:18
Speaker 1: or become independent. So you and I think you need
2:26:21
Speaker 1: both right. That gives it some legitimacy to you know,
2:26:26
Speaker 1: maybe those that want to be supportive but are skeptical,
2:26:29
Speaker 1: if they see others willing to sort of change their
2:26:31
Speaker 1: party allegiance to get on board, then they might be
2:26:34
Speaker 1: more open minded to do it. So I think you
2:26:36
Speaker 1: need both right. There's no doubt there's an opportunity. The
2:26:40
Speaker 1: conditions are there. It's like it's like talking about the
2:26:43
Speaker 1: conditions have never been greater for horrible storms to be
2:26:47
Speaker 1: to develop thanks to a warming Pacific ocean and what's coming.
2:26:51
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean the storm develops, right. You still need
2:26:54
Speaker 1: a few other features for it to develop. In this case,
2:26:57
Speaker 1: there is a storm waiting to overthrow both parts. But
2:27:01
Speaker 1: you need a charismatic leader and you need a sort
2:27:05
Speaker 1: of a realistic belief that you can win. Right. And
2:27:09
Speaker 1: it's sort of like one doesn't happen without the other.
2:27:11
Speaker 1: They're both sort of combined. And I think the two
2:27:14
Speaker 1: necessary ingredients are the charismatic leader and the high profile
2:27:21
Speaker 1: conference who basically leave right who flip You know, if
2:27:28
Speaker 1: you think about it, if you follow sports at all,
2:27:31
Speaker 1: and you see, you know, when a program is trying
2:27:36
Speaker 1: to be it is trying to gain traction, or maybe
2:27:40
Speaker 1: when a competing league, right, you need a few high
2:27:44
Speaker 1: like the USFL got off the ground because they had
2:27:46
Speaker 1: a few really high profile people willing to take the plunge.
2:27:49
Speaker 1: People that you knew would be stars in the NFL
2:27:51
Speaker 1: were willing to go to the USFL. First. You saw
2:27:53
Speaker 1: it with the AVA. You know you need some of those, right,
2:27:57
Speaker 1: That's why you need that too. But I think you
2:27:59
Speaker 1: need both of those ingredients first and foremost. And apologies
2:28:04
Speaker 1: for the squeaky chair. You crack me up, but it
2:28:07
Speaker 1: shows you. I have very similar hearing, and I've always
2:28:10
Speaker 1: wanted to understand this. I can hear an individual sound
2:28:16
Speaker 1: in the faintest way. It is when there's multiple pieces
2:28:20
Speaker 1: of sound, right, it's discerning sound, when you know, the
2:28:24
Speaker 1: being on an airplane when you have sort of that
2:28:26
Speaker 1: constant white noise behind and then suddenly it covers up
2:28:29
Speaker 1: some things you can't hear. So I heard myself in
2:28:34
Speaker 1: your critique and your remarks. Next question, Grand f in Minnesota.
2:28:39
Speaker 1: He writes from a rare toss up district, So I'm
2:28:41
Speaker 1: guessing he's in the first or the I think the first.
2:28:45
Speaker 1: If that's the case. Quick question about the proposed Trump
2:28:47
Speaker 1: Arch and Washington, d C. It's actually in an Arlington, Virginia.
2:28:49
Speaker 1: If you're keeping score. If construction begins but Democrats take
2:28:52
Speaker 1: control of Congress after the midterms, what would be their
2:28:54
Speaker 1: smartest move? Should they halt the project and risk leaving
2:28:57
Speaker 1: a half finished I saw a scale up back and
2:28:58
Speaker 1: complete a less extravag virgin Politically, practically, which approached makes
2:29:02
Speaker 1: the most sense? Look Grant aff The approach it makes
2:29:05
Speaker 1: the most sense is just taking the recommendation of the
2:29:07
Speaker 1: original architect. This arch, this idea for an arch at
2:29:12
Speaker 1: that circle is not the craziest idea. It's been proposed
2:29:17
Speaker 1: by previous folks. It's the size of the arch. It's
2:29:20
Speaker 1: what you would call the arch. So I think what
2:29:24
Speaker 1: you would do is make sure its original size so
2:29:28
Speaker 1: it's within reason. Again, this is not saying the idea,
2:29:33
Speaker 1: it's it's with everything with Trump, Not every idea is bad.
2:29:35
Speaker 1: It's his execution that's horrendous. You know, nobody wants the
2:29:39
Speaker 1: largest arch of mankind, and it's supposed to actually sort
2:29:44
Speaker 1: of convey something about where you're headed, on your way
2:29:47
Speaker 1: to the Lincoln Memorial, on your way to the nation's capital,
2:29:51
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's a gateway as you're going,
2:29:55
Speaker 1: and there needs to be some humility because it's connecting
2:29:58
Speaker 1: Arlington Cemetery in the Lincoln memori there needs to be
2:30:01
Speaker 1: real humility there. It's connecting where Abe Lincoln sits and
2:30:07
Speaker 1: where Robert E. Lee's land was used to bury the
2:30:09
Speaker 1: Civil War dead, right, So you know it needs to
2:30:13
Speaker 1: have that. So I think in both, I don't think
2:30:17
Speaker 1: you get rid of it. I just think you right
2:30:18
Speaker 1: size it and you make sure it is not named
2:30:23
Speaker 1: for any one individual. So that'd be I think the
2:30:31
Speaker 1: not everything should be a culture war fight, right, And
2:30:34
Speaker 1: I know the instinct of some will be just not
2:30:36
Speaker 1: to do it. But there was you know, had there
2:30:38
Speaker 1: been a democratic president, this idea was there too. Okay,
2:30:41
Speaker 1: it was from a bipartisan This was not invented. It
2:30:45
Speaker 1: was like he just saw something and said I want that.
2:30:48
Speaker 1: It was like he was given a catalog of choices,
2:30:51
Speaker 1: Give me that, and can I can I deck at it?
2:30:54
Speaker 1: Can I can I trick it out with my brand
2:30:56
Speaker 1: on it and my name and da da da da da.
2:31:00
Speaker 1: And it's a bummer because the whole idea now has
2:31:02
Speaker 1: been like Trump ruins everything right, he can take something
2:31:06
Speaker 1: that generically would have been celebrated and seen as a
2:31:09
Speaker 1: fine idea. Maybe you turn it into a fountain, or
2:31:12
Speaker 1: you turn it into something else too. But it's like
2:31:14
Speaker 1: the whole now, the whole idea of an arch Like,
2:31:17
Speaker 1: there'll be some people who can't even vote for an arch.
2:31:19
Speaker 1: But again, it was originally an idea of sort of
2:31:24
Speaker 1: of of historians, and so that that's why my instinct
2:31:29
Speaker 1: would be, let's make it work and make sure Trump's
2:31:33
Speaker 1: fingerprints are not on it at all. All right, andre
2:31:39
Speaker 1: in la Rights, four time, long time, all right, proud
2:31:41
Speaker 1: member of the four Timers club. All right, I think
2:31:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if we have merged
2:31:46
Speaker 1: for four timers yet, but we'll get there. My questions
2:31:48
Speaker 1: about the Ohio governor's rates. Vivika Ramaswami has Trump's endorsement
2:31:51
Speaker 1: and has seemingly been running for years, yet he continues
2:31:54
Speaker 1: to trail slightly at several poles in a Republican leaning
2:31:56
Speaker 1: state like Ohio. What do you think of as holding
2:31:58
Speaker 1: him back regards? So, I think there are some obvious
2:32:01
Speaker 1: things holding him back, and then I think there's one
2:32:04
Speaker 1: issue that we shouldn't pretend isn't there. I think the
2:32:08
Speaker 1: big thing is he's a national Republican and national conservative,
2:32:12
Speaker 1: and he's really sort of an outlier in Ohio Republican
2:32:15
Speaker 1: politics compared to your Mike the wine you're John Hughes said,
2:32:18
Speaker 1: even jd Vance right, I think Doje itself was unpopular.
2:32:22
Speaker 1: I think he's kind of a he's always been kind
2:32:25
Speaker 1: of a polarizing name. He's actually proposed one idea he's proposed,
2:32:30
Speaker 1: it's been absolutely gotten a terrible response, which is he
2:32:36
Speaker 1: wanted to consolidate you know, some of the state's universities,
2:32:40
Speaker 1: like Ohio is a ton of state universities, and the
2:32:44
Speaker 1: original goal was that somebody was no more than thirty
2:32:47
Speaker 1: minutes away from a college education. And that was the theory.
2:32:51
Speaker 1: That's why there, that's why the MAC exists right the
2:32:54
Speaker 1: Mid American Conference, and why it's almost entirely Ohio schools.
2:32:57
Speaker 1: Not all right, there's a handful of Michigan school in there,
2:33:00
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of little Ohio towns that have
2:33:01
Speaker 1: their own universities. Well guess what, people have a lot
2:33:04
Speaker 1: of pride in those local universities, and so Ramaswami wanted
2:33:07
Speaker 1: to consolidate some get rid of a few. It's like
2:33:11
Speaker 1: getting rid of a military base.
2:33:12
Speaker 2: Right.
2:33:13
Speaker 1: Everybody agrees that the military bases that are wasteful spending
2:33:16
Speaker 1: ought to go. But the one in my community is
2:33:18
Speaker 1: never about wasteful spending. It's an important part of my community.
2:33:22
Speaker 1: And that's how people feel about their universities. It's somebody
2:33:24
Speaker 1: else's university that's a waste of money, not the one
2:33:27
Speaker 1: in my community. Right. So I think all of that
2:33:30
Speaker 1: explains why he's had trouble. I don't think we should
2:33:35
Speaker 1: assume race isn't playing some role here. It's impossible to,
2:33:39
Speaker 1: you know, And look, well, I was going to make
2:33:42
Speaker 1: history either way, right, They're going to elect a non
2:33:44
Speaker 1: white guy governor or, they're going to elect a woman governor.
2:33:47
Speaker 1: The only person that served as only woman that served
2:33:50
Speaker 1: as governor Ohio is somebody who assumed office after Governor
2:33:57
Speaker 1: George Wanovitch won a Senate see and left office early.
2:34:00
Speaker 1: But the point is is that so either way, there's
2:34:04
Speaker 1: a small I it's a I don't know how to me.
2:34:08
Speaker 1: These things are are not always pollable, but I do
2:34:15
Speaker 1: I do think there's a little there's it's just sits there.
2:34:19
Speaker 1: Right again, unpollable, but he's not doing as well with
2:34:23
Speaker 1: Republican voters as he should be. So you have to
2:34:26
Speaker 1: ask yourself, what do we miss it?
2:34:28
Speaker 2: So?
2:34:28
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot of little things, right. I
2:34:30
Speaker 1: think he has sort of branded himself as rich guy,
2:34:33
Speaker 1: tech entrepreneur. I think not everybody sees him as a
2:34:35
Speaker 1: local Cincinnati kid. So I think you've put all those
2:34:39
Speaker 1: things together and it's you know, I'm I'm a I've
2:34:43
Speaker 1: been on the Amy acting like keep an eye on
2:34:46
Speaker 1: her before it was cool that bandwagon. I still believe
2:34:50
Speaker 1: in it. The two doctor the two women doctors running
2:34:54
Speaker 1: Amy acting in Ohio and any Andrews against Lindsay Graham
2:34:57
Speaker 1: in South Carolina. I think one of the two wins,
2:35:01
Speaker 1: and I think the one that doesn't win is going
2:35:03
Speaker 1: to come awfully close. Just fole that sucker earlier. All right.
2:35:10
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Julie, who lives in an Organ's
2:35:13
Speaker 1: sixth Congressional district. In Julie rights, I'm not sure I
2:35:15
Speaker 1: fully understand the birthright citizenship ruling. If a constitutional amendment
2:35:19
Speaker 1: requires broad approval and ratification, how can five Supreme Court
2:35:21
Speaker 1: justices effectively overturn or reinterpret it? Do you do they
2:35:26
Speaker 1: really have that power or is there some nuance in
2:35:27
Speaker 1: the ruling I'm missing. Thank you so much, Julie who
2:35:30
Speaker 1: lives in organ sics. Well, that's the thing with the
2:35:33
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is that you know, you, you know, we
2:35:35
Speaker 1: sit here and think that there are certain specific rules
2:35:37
Speaker 1: of law, and ultimately the Supreme Court decides how we
2:35:41
Speaker 1: interpret the so called rule of law. Right, So it's
2:35:43
Speaker 1: certainly an interpretation. In this case, the interpretation is whether
2:35:47
Speaker 1: the executive branch gets to decide the definition of birthright citizenship.
2:35:53
Speaker 1: And to me, that was a glaring no that if
2:35:55
Speaker 1: you were going to change how you interpret birthright citizenship,
2:35:59
Speaker 1: you need to start in the legislative branch. You were
2:36:01
Speaker 1: never going to see this court at John Roberts Court,
2:36:04
Speaker 1: I think that the executive branch had this kind of
2:36:06
Speaker 1: interpretive interpretive power to it. But again, I guess, you know,
2:36:14
Speaker 1: I know, I understand why so many people want to
2:36:16
Speaker 1: focus on the dissent, But in these polarizing times, the
2:36:20
Speaker 1: fact that that the Court said what it said, and
2:36:25
Speaker 1: it was by the way, only if you want to
2:36:29
Speaker 1: do it. By the Trump numbers, the Trump appointees voted
2:36:33
Speaker 1: two and a half to a half in favor of
2:36:35
Speaker 1: birthrights citizenship right, right?
2:36:39
Speaker 2: Uh?
2:36:39
Speaker 1: Well, I guess it was one and a half to
2:36:42
Speaker 1: one and a half, right. Gorsitch was on one side,
2:36:45
Speaker 1: Barrett's on the another, and Kavanaugh split the difference. So
2:36:47
Speaker 1: the fact that he didn't have unanimity for his own
2:36:49
Speaker 1: position with his own people, his own appointees, I think
2:36:53
Speaker 1: should we should see that as a as a positive? Uh?
2:36:58
Speaker 2: And not?
2:36:59
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes I do think coverage can be so
2:37:01
Speaker 1: focused on the negative. The fact is we're not going
2:37:03
Speaker 1: to have somebody try this from the executive branch again.
2:37:07
Speaker 1: But I do think when you you know, if Congress
2:37:13
Speaker 1: try to put some limitations on it, it would probably
2:37:16
Speaker 1: go back to the court. And is it birth tourism? Right?
2:37:19
Speaker 1: And you know, no one I think that that's the question.
2:37:23
Speaker 1: And if again, like with everything Trump does, right, if
2:37:26
Speaker 1: he really wanted voter ID for elections, he could have
2:37:29
Speaker 1: just gotten voter ID passed, But that isn't what he wanted.
2:37:31
Speaker 1: He wanted to essentially change the election rules so dramatically
2:37:38
Speaker 1: that his side had an early advantage. He wasn't interested
2:37:42
Speaker 1: in the longer term goal. And I think the same
2:37:44
Speaker 1: thing here. If he focused on birth tourism and just
2:37:48
Speaker 1: focused on that, try to get a law passed. You
2:37:49
Speaker 1: probably get a pretty in Congress pass the law that
2:37:52
Speaker 1: he signs. You might have had a court that would
2:37:54
Speaker 1: have accepted the premise that some limitations can be around it,
2:37:59
Speaker 1: around some form. Maybe it's of if you know how
2:38:03
Speaker 1: you know, whether anybody attempts to reside in the country
2:38:05
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, if you're just showing up to
2:38:07
Speaker 1: get birth and leaving just so that your kid can
2:38:09
Speaker 1: have the option, right that is there is there legislation
2:38:15
Speaker 1: you could pass around that. That's That's something that I
2:38:18
Speaker 1: think is is if you care about this issue, that's
2:38:21
Speaker 1: worth trying to deal with. And I think that's and
2:38:25
Speaker 1: at that point this court might be more open to
2:38:28
Speaker 1: that final question. Robbie S and Charleston, South Carolina. Right, Hey,
2:38:34
Speaker 1: I caught your political an assis on CNN the other
2:38:36
Speaker 1: day and couldn't help but notice the Miami hurricane something
2:38:38
Speaker 1: in the background. As a Miami native now living in Charleston,
2:38:40
Speaker 1: seeing the you always feels like a little piece of home.
2:38:42
Speaker 1: Just wanted to say thanks for proudly displaying it. Definitely
2:38:45
Speaker 1: didn't go unnoticed. Appreciate it. Robbie, uh uh And by
2:38:49
Speaker 1: the way, man, I love Charleston, South Carolina. I have
2:38:52
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine kid is going to be
2:38:56
Speaker 1: getting married there next year and I can't wait to
2:38:59
Speaker 1: go have a great weekend in the in the spring
2:39:02
Speaker 1: in Charleston, South Carolina. But yes, it's not just any
2:39:06
Speaker 1: you helmet. It is autographed by none other than Jimmy Johnson,
2:39:15
Speaker 1: the one place that when he is on his death
2:39:18
Speaker 1: bet he's going to say, my greatest time coaching was
2:39:22
Speaker 1: not being a Dallas cowboy. It was all about the you.
2:39:27
Speaker 1: All right with that? Thanks for letting me show off
2:39:32
Speaker 1: my memorabilia there. Appreciate that, Robbie. And with that, I'll
2:39:37
Speaker 1: see you in seventy two hours. Oh should I do
2:39:43
Speaker 1: my lebron thing real quick? Yeah? Yeah, I did. I
2:39:47
Speaker 1: teased it. Let me just do it, yep, all right, yep,
2:39:50
Speaker 1: I'll keep it going. Three to one, all right, just
2:39:53
Speaker 1: I got I told you I had some lebron hot takes.
2:39:55
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to sign on, you know,
2:39:58
Speaker 1: as a signer of the Declaration of Independence. I'd have
2:40:00
Speaker 1: been me too in it, and let me sign too.
2:40:03
Speaker 1: I'm going to sign on to a piece of pure
2:40:06
Speaker 1: speculation from Bill Simmons where his theory is that is
2:40:09
Speaker 1: that Lebron James could pull a Roger Clements and just
2:40:12
Speaker 1: decide not to sign until essentially January and just make
2:40:17
Speaker 1: the quote unquote playoff front. God, I hope Lebron doesn't
2:40:21
Speaker 1: listen to him on this. God, I hope Bill Simmons
2:40:23
Speaker 1: isn't getting insider access to Rich Paul, who is a
2:40:28
Speaker 1: contributor to the rate and that this is like, this
2:40:31
Speaker 1: is informed speculation, not just idle speculation. I hope this
2:40:35
Speaker 1: isn't true. But gosh, I hate how much sense it
2:40:38
Speaker 1: may Now. I have my own personal hottakes on this.
2:40:42
Speaker 1: I love that Rich by the way, I do the
2:40:46
Speaker 1: fact that Rich Paul gave the entire NBA basketball community
2:40:50
Speaker 1: like a bunch of content to just pour over. Like
2:40:53
Speaker 1: we were like we're looking for We're watching the movie
2:40:58
Speaker 1: National Treasure, and we're looking for all the hidden clues, right,
2:41:01
Speaker 1: so we have this entire whiteboard that Rich Paul did.
2:41:06
Speaker 1: Look what I love about it is the stuff I
2:41:09
Speaker 1: can tell you what I took away from it. He's
2:41:12
Speaker 1: not going to Cleveland. He didn't say he wasn't going
2:41:14
Speaker 1: to Cleveland, but he's not going to Cleveland. Because they
2:41:16
Speaker 1: ain't no way he's going to play with James Harden.
2:41:18
Speaker 1: Now why did he say that? Because very quietly in
2:41:20
Speaker 1: the corner, even though Cleveland's clearly one of the five
2:41:23
Speaker 1: teams they're considering where Lebron's addition would add something, They're like, oh, no, no,
2:41:30
Speaker 1: Darius Garland. Do we really think that Lebron James said
2:41:33
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to play with Darius Garland? Or is
2:41:35
Speaker 1: that code for n FW? Is he playing with James Harden.
2:41:40
Speaker 1: I'm going to choose the James Harden motivation as a
2:41:45
Speaker 1: as a Bandwagon Heat fan. I am glad that there
2:41:50
Speaker 1: was no sort of subtext, and I actually think he
2:41:53
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense for the Heat. In fact,
2:41:56
Speaker 1: I think the Heat is one of the there are
2:41:58
Speaker 1: two teams where if he if he joins, he makes
2:42:01
Speaker 1: them title contenders, but without him, they're not. One is
2:42:04
Speaker 1: Denver and the others the Heat pure and simple. Now,
2:42:07
Speaker 1: I'm a believer that he's going to look east. Well,
2:42:10
Speaker 1: here's the thing we don't know for sure. Does Lebron
2:42:13
Speaker 1: want to maximize his impact on the attention economy or
2:42:18
Speaker 1: is he really chased on a fifth rank? Because I
2:42:21
Speaker 1: will say this right now he doesn't get a he
2:42:25
Speaker 1: doesn't have a place at the five ring table. Right,
2:42:28
Speaker 1: Kobe is a place at the five ring table. Magic
2:42:30
Speaker 1: is a place at the five ring table. Kareem has
2:42:32
Speaker 1: a place at the five ring table. Michael has a
2:42:35
Speaker 1: place at the fiver ring table. He's got a place
2:42:37
Speaker 1: at the six ring table. Right. You know he's in
2:42:39
Speaker 1: a separate table with Bill Russell. Right. The point is
2:42:43
Speaker 1: Lebron's got four? So how bad is this about looking
2:42:47
Speaker 1: for a fifth title? Is it about maximizing the attention economy?
2:42:51
Speaker 1: Is he trying to have his cake and eat it too? Right,
2:42:54
Speaker 1: Miami could be a cake and eat it too scenario
2:42:57
Speaker 1: Golden State. If he goes to Golden State, he's not
2:42:59
Speaker 1: interesting winning a title. He's just interested in maximizing the
2:43:02
Speaker 1: attention economy and having a good time while he does this.
2:43:05
Speaker 1: Farewell too. You go to Miami, you go to Denver,
2:43:09
Speaker 1: you're making a you want to a show that like,
2:43:12
Speaker 1: if he's truly ring chasing, it's please san Antonio. I'll
2:43:15
Speaker 1: sign for literally the league minimum. So he's not purely there.
2:43:18
Speaker 1: He wants to be an important piece, right, It's not
2:43:22
Speaker 1: just the Robert Horry ring chase, it's something a little
2:43:25
Speaker 1: bit different. And you look at these different scenarios. I
2:43:30
Speaker 1: could see Lebron being probably has a friendship with Alex
2:43:36
Speaker 1: Rodriguez that makes Minnesota potentially probably more of a player
2:43:40
Speaker 1: than they should be. But Lebron has to play in
2:43:45
Speaker 1: the front court if he goes to Minnesota. Lebron gets
2:43:48
Speaker 1: to play in the back court if he goes to
2:43:50
Speaker 1: the Heat. That's why I think the Heat, for what
2:43:53
Speaker 1: the style of play he wouldn't want to have, it
2:43:56
Speaker 1: makes more sense for him to be in the Heat.
2:43:58
Speaker 1: By the way, I think that's I would argue that
2:44:01
Speaker 1: that might be the case with Denver too, that he
2:44:03
Speaker 1: gets to be gets to play a little bit more,
2:44:07
Speaker 1: a little bit more in the back court necessarily that
2:44:09
Speaker 1: he is in the in the front court, where at
2:44:11
Speaker 1: Minnesota he'd have to be a front quarter. And I
2:44:15
Speaker 1: just you know, with both LaMelo and aunt one in
2:44:17
Speaker 1: the ball and that just feels like too many. It
2:44:19
Speaker 1: feels like the same situation that he's walking away from
2:44:21
Speaker 1: in La and Reeves and Luca. That's why Minnesota did
2:44:25
Speaker 1: so you start looking around. So for me, by the way,
2:44:29
Speaker 1: why aren't the Wizards on the list? We have everything
2:44:32
Speaker 1: and Lebron would be Lebron actually probably would make the
2:44:36
Speaker 1: Wizards at least a contender for the six or five
2:44:39
Speaker 1: spot in the East. And then you never know. But
2:44:43
Speaker 1: in trying to read the Lebron tea leaves and there's
2:44:47
Speaker 1: one other factor nobody is factoring in here. His son
2:44:49
Speaker 1: is going to be a red shirt freshman at the
2:44:51
Speaker 1: University of Arizona. How close does he want to be
2:44:54
Speaker 1: to Touson to be able to catch as many games
2:44:56
Speaker 1: as he possibly can? Denver becomes the idea spot for
2:45:00
Speaker 1: him if it's about Bryce, If the University of Miami
2:45:05
Speaker 1: has is if he wants to go two years, and
2:45:09
Speaker 1: the University of Miami and Jay Lucas, son of John Lucas,
2:45:12
Speaker 1: who probably has an interesting relationship with might have some
2:45:15
Speaker 1: personal relationship with Lebron James or at least be be
2:45:19
Speaker 1: able to have a conversation. Does Jay Lucas want to
2:45:22
Speaker 1: coach Lebron's son at the University of Miami and then
2:45:24
Speaker 1: does that become a package deal at any point in time? Now,
2:45:28
Speaker 1: the portal in college basketball doesn't open up until March
2:45:30
Speaker 1: of next year, so this would to me only work
2:45:34
Speaker 1: if Lebron's going to sit out for four or five months,
2:45:37
Speaker 1: then decide what team he's going to play for for
2:45:39
Speaker 1: the next eighteen months. That's where I think the Heat
2:45:42
Speaker 1: would be a contender. But bottom line is for me,
2:45:47
Speaker 1: the two teams where he would have the biggest impact
2:45:50
Speaker 1: and truly turn them into an interesting title contender Denver,
2:45:54
Speaker 1: which is kind of the one. Even though, like I say,
2:45:56
Speaker 1: I'm a bandwagon Heat fan, I kind of want to
2:45:59
Speaker 1: see him with Denver, Jokic and Lebron. I would love
2:46:03
Speaker 1: to watch that. I don't know if it works, but
2:46:05
Speaker 1: it feels like I know, I don't know if i'd
2:46:09
Speaker 1: want to face that team if I were Oklahoma City
2:46:11
Speaker 1: for San Antonio. But the shortest path to the finals
2:46:15
Speaker 1: it's in the East, and I still think it's you know,
2:46:20
Speaker 1: if it ain't the next don't I don't buy the
2:46:24
Speaker 1: Sixers with an MB that may or may not be healthy,
2:46:28
Speaker 1: the Heat or the Sure Bet as far as I'm concerned.
2:46:30
Speaker 1: So there's my totally fan driven Lebron set of hot takes.
2:46:38
Speaker 1: Enjoy them while they're still available, and with that, I'll
2:46:42
Speaker 1: see in seventy two hours