Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump Is The Worst Role Model President Ever + Did The Boomers Really Ruin Everything?

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Full Episode - Trump Is The Worst Role Model President Ever + Did The Boomers Really Ruin Everything? · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: and rates may vary. Hello, They're happy Monday, and welcome
1:48
Speaker 1: to the day after Father's Day edition of the Chuck Podcast.
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Speaker 2: I give you that because I do.
1:54
Speaker 1: Have a little bit of a parenting theme to discussing
1:59
Speaker 1: the Trump presidency here, a little bit, especially the near term,
2:03
Speaker 1: because there's no doubt the reflecting pool right perfect metaphor
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Speaker 1: for the Trump era, right, and the Trump administration. I
2:10
Speaker 1: mean it is you know, it's funny, right. Is it
2:15
Speaker 1: the serious stuff that's going to take him down, like
2:17
Speaker 1: mismanagement of the Middle East and making around stronger not weaker?
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Speaker 1: Or is it that more people discover what a BS
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Speaker 1: artist he actually is due to the reflecting pool?
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Speaker 2: Nonsense? Right?
2:29
Speaker 1: And in some ways, maybe it is the reflecting pool
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Speaker 1: that ultimately is the thing that takes him down right.
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Speaker 1: Maybe it should be the graft, and it should be
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Speaker 1: all of these other things. But in some ways, when
2:41
Speaker 1: you're a presidency that is sort of manufactured BS, then
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Speaker 1: it isn't a moment where the a moment like the
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Speaker 1: reflecting pool, which is the ultimate the wizard, you know,
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Speaker 1: who is this man behind the curtain mindset? Maybe that
2:57
Speaker 1: is what should take him down right and talk about
3:00
Speaker 1: something that just sums up everything. There's a tweet out
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Speaker 1: there and my apologies, I am yes ripping off this
3:06
Speaker 1: tweet and I no, I cannot, I like cut and paste.
3:09
Speaker 1: I couldn't find the person who said it, so my
3:10
Speaker 1: apologies to you. But it's been making the round. But
3:14
Speaker 1: it really is. This reflecting pool is sort of the
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Speaker 1: perfect metaphor for the Trump presidency. Ignore experts in science
3:20
Speaker 1: overspend declare early in historic victory. Right, you know, the
3:25
Speaker 1: left's gonna hate this, so make it some sort of
3:27
Speaker 1: left right manufactured nonsense. It actually ends in total failure.
3:34
Speaker 1: Then the unfounded conspiracies about sabotage and bikers get arrested
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Speaker 1: because you know, now he claims some massive knife was
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Speaker 1: somehow brought into the reflecting pool under dark of night,
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Speaker 1: and nobody you know, of course, there was no witnesses
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Speaker 1: to any of this, And now his closest supporters are going,
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Speaker 1: why does the mainstream media keep bringing this up, ignoring
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Speaker 1: the fact that the only reason this is a story
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Speaker 1: is President has been manufacturing it. I've always thought you've
4:03
Speaker 1: seen that chart where he wanted to make sure people
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Speaker 1: understood that the reflecting pool was somehow taller than all
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Speaker 1: of the tall buildings in America. Now, I don't know
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Speaker 1: why we're laying flat any of the tall buildings to
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Speaker 1: measure against the reflecting pool, but imagine being the poor
4:22
Speaker 1: staffer who had to make that chart. There was a
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Speaker 1: pre made chart. We do need a lot more stories
4:30
Speaker 1: about the chart makers that have to manufacture his reality
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Speaker 1: in order to make him happy. And this clearly is
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Speaker 1: one of them. So look, I yes, to say that
4:42
Speaker 1: there is a parenting connection today is an understatement. I
4:46
Speaker 1: also want to tackle the Obama legacy a little bit.
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Speaker 1: We had that and in some ways we have seen
4:52
Speaker 1: in the last week both America is on display and
4:59
Speaker 1: Obama and are very much the IDs of both Americas,
5:05
Speaker 1: and I want to tackle that. Then I want to
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Speaker 1: do a little bit of preview of the Tuesday primaries
5:09
Speaker 1: and the coming I think it is fair to say
5:13
Speaker 1: there is now three distinct factions inside the Democratic Party
5:19
Speaker 1: fighting for control of the Democratic Party, and the Socialists
5:24
Speaker 1: are the ones that are going to be on the
5:26
Speaker 1: march on Tuesday, at least in New York City. We
5:29
Speaker 1: saw the big win for the Socialist in Washington, Washington,
5:33
Speaker 1: d C. And the question is what more is this
5:37
Speaker 1: going to pop? And it's sort of a storyline that
5:40
Speaker 1: I'm trying to give you guys a heads up on
5:41
Speaker 1: that is coming and that is going to be a
5:44
Speaker 1: driving narrative going forward. Of course, this is Monday, which
5:48
Speaker 1: means we do a little history.
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Speaker 2: Lesson and.
5:53
Speaker 1: I will I'm going to give you this clue about
5:57
Speaker 1: the topic, going to give you four numbers four O
6:02
Speaker 1: seven seven, that's all I'm giving you. Most of you
6:06
Speaker 1: have a certain age'll figure that out. Those of you
6:09
Speaker 1: a little less than that may struggle with that one.
6:13
Speaker 1: My guest is Paul Taylor, legendary Washington Post reporter. I've
6:17
Speaker 1: known him for years. He's got a great new book
6:20
Speaker 1: about boomers and essentially asking the questions how did boomers
6:24
Speaker 1: screw everything up? So, yeah, he takes after his own
6:29
Speaker 1: generational cohort. And you know that I those of you
6:34
Speaker 1: that know me well, I'm always here for a good boomer,
6:36
Speaker 1: you know, versus Xes. Nobody has screwed Gen X like
6:39
Speaker 1: the Boomers. And yes, maybe US Gen xers didn't didn't
6:42
Speaker 1: fight harder to displace the Boomers and essentially let it
6:46
Speaker 1: left millennials with the charge of beating back the Boomers,
6:49
Speaker 1: and that probably was a mistake. Although our generation is
6:53
Speaker 1: super small, so we didn't necessarily have the numbers to
6:57
Speaker 1: fight the boomers as well as perhaps we could.
7:03
Speaker 2: Now. Before I get to.
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Speaker 1: My little parenting metaphor that I want to share with
7:09
Speaker 1: you another way of looking at Donald Trump, I do
7:12
Speaker 1: want to get look, the Ron story is moving. The
7:15
Speaker 1: question is we've got these talks jd Vance is going
7:18
Speaker 1: there was a time where I thought he was going
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Speaker 1: to try to find his own distance from this. Marco
7:23
Speaker 1: Rubio is still Mia as you can tell on defending this.
7:26
Speaker 1: He did not go out on the Sunday shows to
7:28
Speaker 1: defend this. They sent the former National Security Advisor currently
7:32
Speaker 1: Ambassador of the United Nations, Mike Waltz, went out to
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Speaker 1: defend this deal.
7:36
Speaker 2: But they did not.
7:37
Speaker 1: And obviously Jadie Vance has been out there a lot
7:40
Speaker 1: defending this deal, while he's also been on book tour
7:44
Speaker 1: about his book on converting to Catholicism. And look, I
7:49
Speaker 1: think we are seeing you know, there's always been one there.
7:53
Speaker 1: You know, as the Pew typology taught us, there are
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Speaker 1: two wings to the Maga movement.
7:57
Speaker 2: Wing.
7:58
Speaker 1: One was the no apologies, the true core Maga that
8:03
Speaker 1: is JD.
8:03
Speaker 2: Vance.
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Speaker 1: That is the populace that is Donald Trump junior.
8:06
Speaker 2: Right.
8:07
Speaker 1: The adjacent group of people who are extraordinarily supportive of
8:11
Speaker 1: Trump are those that are that ground their beliefs as
8:15
Speaker 1: much in religion as they do in politics. And these
8:21
Speaker 1: folks are pretty pro Israel and pretty entire round. This
8:26
Speaker 1: was the one. And if there is a distinguishing characteristic
8:29
Speaker 1: between the two factions inside of MAGA, it is support
8:32
Speaker 1: for Israel.
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Speaker 2: Right.
8:33
Speaker 1: The pure Maga are not supportive of Israel in the
8:37
Speaker 1: way that the religious wing of MAGA is supportive of Israel.
8:41
Speaker 2: Right. They view it as.
8:44
Speaker 1: Their motivations for being pro Israel have always made me
8:47
Speaker 1: a little uncomfortable as someone who's Jewish, because it was
8:50
Speaker 1: basically it seems to be the wishes that we all
8:55
Speaker 1: get sent back to Israel for the second coming. This belief,
8:58
Speaker 1: so the preservation of Israel and the support of Israel
9:03
Speaker 1: I never found to be very comforting because their motivation
9:08
Speaker 1: was to eventually ship.
9:10
Speaker 2: Me out of the United States.
9:11
Speaker 1: At least that's that's if I were accepting their premise
9:16
Speaker 1: all the way through. But I say that that's my
9:20
Speaker 1: own thing, and you know me, I do try to
9:22
Speaker 1: separate my own personal views from my observations of this
9:26
Speaker 1: political situation. And the fact is you do have a
9:29
Speaker 1: divided MAGA here, and we're seeing this, right, You saw
9:32
Speaker 1: a very aggressive JD vance pushing back at Israel. You
9:36
Speaker 1: now see there is you know, there a lot of
9:38
Speaker 1: these folks that rationalize their support for Trump over their
9:44
Speaker 1: belief that somehow he was going to be tough on Iran,
9:47
Speaker 1: that he would let Israel do what Israel needed to do.
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Speaker 1: As always, everybody who counts on Trump to support whatever
9:57
Speaker 1: it is that they care about the most, they think
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Speaker 1: Trump's on their side, or they think they've written a
10:03
Speaker 1: big enough check to guarantee that Trump is on their side. Right,
10:10
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you realize he's always going to
10:14
Speaker 1: walk away from you on this front.
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Speaker 2: It is notable.
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Speaker 1: And you're already seeing these little interesting narrative fights back
10:22
Speaker 1: and forth between each faction. Right, you have this one
10:26
Speaker 1: faction that's ready to call out anybody that is critical
10:30
Speaker 1: of this disastrous mammum of under memo of understanding that
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Speaker 1: the United States has already agreed to. Right, that that
10:36
Speaker 1: literally capitulates to Iran things that Barack Obama never did
10:40
Speaker 1: in any part of his JP JPCOA nothing that comes
10:46
Speaker 1: close to this, you know. And so that the fact
10:52
Speaker 1: that they're saying, if you criticize that, you're somehow they're trying.
10:56
Speaker 1: And you saw this with a White House spokesperson sort
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Speaker 1: of aggressively pushing back I think through axios or through playbook,
11:01
Speaker 1: letting it be known anybody that criticizes this deal now
11:04
Speaker 1: going forward is going to be you know, called out
11:08
Speaker 1: by the President, it's going to be attacked by the president,
11:11
Speaker 1: is going to consistently be seen as somehow trader to
11:14
Speaker 1: the movement. So they're going to try to purge these folks.
11:18
Speaker 1: But in some ways, if you want to look at
11:21
Speaker 1: the Trump administration now is sort of divided into two,
11:24
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty fair to see it right in
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Speaker 1: Vance and Rubio in some ways, or the symbola or
11:30
Speaker 1: the symbols of the two wings if you will, of
11:34
Speaker 1: Trump's coalition. And what's interesting to me is in the
11:40
Speaker 1: first Trump term you had more staffers and more senior
11:44
Speaker 1: officials that were part of the part of the more
11:49
Speaker 1: pro Israel wing of the MAGA movement. In this second term,
11:54
Speaker 1: it's almost the exact opposite. Right, there's Marco Rubio, who, yes,
11:57
Speaker 1: as a huge portfolio and sobody who the establishment wing
12:02
Speaker 1: or the neo conservative wing, whatever wing you want to
12:04
Speaker 1: call that they could feel comforted by Rubio being both
12:08
Speaker 1: Secretary State National Security Advisor. And yet the staffing within
12:12
Speaker 1: the White House and the staffing all over the place
12:14
Speaker 1: outside of the State Department very much is more of
12:18
Speaker 1: the Vance advanced style populism.
12:22
Speaker 2: Right.
12:22
Speaker 1: Haig Seth comes from Vance, sort of the Vance wing
12:25
Speaker 1: of the party. He certainly doesn't come from the ruvial
12:27
Speaker 1: wing of the party. So I do think what we've
12:30
Speaker 1: learned here is that the president is surrounded by people
12:34
Speaker 1: that are more right. It's I interviewed Mike Pence earlier
12:39
Speaker 1: this week and we have this astonishing exchange on character,
12:44
Speaker 1: because he writes about the importance of character.
12:46
Speaker 2: The character for.
12:46
Speaker 1: Him does stop at the party's edge. Right, character is
12:50
Speaker 1: not a big enough deal for him not to support
12:52
Speaker 1: Ken Paxton, and we had this back and forth about it.
12:56
Speaker 1: I appreciate his honesty on it. Right, he didn't need
12:59
Speaker 1: any try to pretend he wasn't drawing a different line
13:02
Speaker 1: that he saw a political outcome is more important than
13:07
Speaker 1: characterist destiny argument that he does make in his own book,
13:11
Speaker 1: which is clearly a shot at Donald Trump. But I
13:14
Speaker 1: bring this up because you know, it is interesting how
13:18
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has essentially we know that there is he's
13:21
Speaker 1: a blank canvas. He is whoever his supporters want him
13:25
Speaker 1: to be at any given moment in time. And in
13:27
Speaker 1: his first term he let Mike Pence put together his administration,
13:31
Speaker 1: and in his second term, in some ways he's let
13:32
Speaker 1: jad Vance and Donald Trump Junior put this together, right,
13:35
Speaker 1: they have more of that purest maga wing isolation His
13:40
Speaker 1: view of the party Israel skeptic view, eurosceptic view, China
13:44
Speaker 1: skeptic view, right skeptic all over on that front versus
13:49
Speaker 1: you know, Mike Parents who was clearly believes that the
13:52
Speaker 1: United States should be the leader of the free world.
13:54
Speaker 2: Yes, they're the world's beat cop.
13:56
Speaker 1: Because if you're not the world's beat cop, somebody else
13:58
Speaker 1: is going to be, and you're not going to like
14:00
Speaker 1: somebody else's and that you know, by the way, that
14:03
Speaker 1: divide exists in both parties. And I think the scary
14:06
Speaker 1: thing for those of us that believe that America has
14:10
Speaker 1: no choice but to be the world's beat cop is
14:14
Speaker 1: that both parties that view is a is not an
14:19
Speaker 1: ascension at the moment, right, there isn't it. There is
14:22
Speaker 1: a growing movement in both parties of an isolator, of
14:26
Speaker 1: being more isolationists and of only and frankly, what you
14:32
Speaker 1: see and to me, that's both dangerous in the progressive
14:35
Speaker 1: socialist wing and this sort of nationalists populist ring on
14:40
Speaker 1: the right is both of them view form policy through
14:44
Speaker 1: their ideological end goals, right, whether it's Mom Donnie wanting
14:48
Speaker 1: to meet with the president of Columbia or whether it's
14:50
Speaker 1: Trump wanting to take signs in the Brazilian election. Right,
14:54
Speaker 1: that is what weakens America. Right, that is what makes
14:58
Speaker 1: us be seen more as as as a as a
15:05
Speaker 1: negative for people in this uh in the world, rather
15:09
Speaker 1: than as a net positive, not as always just us
15:11
Speaker 1: standing up for democracy no matter which direction of population
15:14
Speaker 1: chooses to go, if they choose to go socialists or
15:17
Speaker 1: they choose to go capitalists, if they're holding free and
15:20
Speaker 1: fair elections, our attitude had always been to support them,
15:24
Speaker 1: and we're obviously there's always been exceptions, because that's what
15:28
Speaker 1: that's what makes the United States, the United States a
15:30
Speaker 1: walking contradiction at times, Right, what we what we espouse,
15:34
Speaker 1: our is our north star, and sometimes how we go
15:37
Speaker 1: about it is two different things. But I do think right, look,
15:41
Speaker 1: we'll see how these Iran negotiations go. The fact is,
15:45
Speaker 1: here's my concern about Iran at the moment is that
15:48
Speaker 1: I think the Iranians have learned from Donald Trump how
15:50
Speaker 1: to manipulate the markets. And what's really scary is, you know,
15:54
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's mismanagement of this war, handing control of the
15:57
Speaker 1: Strait of horm moves to the Iranians, make nomous they
16:00
Speaker 1: have control of this. We do not, because he is
16:03
Speaker 1: not willing to commit the level of troops and military
16:08
Speaker 1: that's necessary to keep the Straight open. So he's essentially
16:12
Speaker 1: allowing the Iranians to dictate whether the Strait is open
16:15
Speaker 1: or closed. And the fact is the Iranians, you think
16:18
Speaker 1: they're not. They didn't learn from how Donald Trump and
16:20
Speaker 1: his cronies gained the market over the last sixty days
16:23
Speaker 1: during this Oh no, no, no, we're really close to
16:25
Speaker 1: a deal. Up, We're really close to a deal.
16:27
Speaker 2: No, we're not.
16:27
Speaker 1: We're really close to a deal. Meanwhile, somebody's gaming the
16:30
Speaker 1: markets and making and making billions. Well, the Iranians are
16:33
Speaker 1: going to do the same thing, and they're going to
16:36
Speaker 1: open and close the Straight whenever they need extra cash.
16:39
Speaker 1: You think they're not playing the markets on this.
16:41
Speaker 2: So this is.
16:44
Speaker 1: The point is is that this isn't going to get better.
16:46
Speaker 1: There is not going to be a grand deal. And
16:50
Speaker 1: no matter how big a check Trump promises to write
16:53
Speaker 1: the Iranians to keep the Straight open, they're always going
16:56
Speaker 1: to be looking for other angles to make more money
16:59
Speaker 1: off of their control of the Strait. So this is
17:01
Speaker 1: this is why this is I think it's a doomed policy.
17:05
Speaker 1: The Iran war is not going to end up like
17:08
Speaker 1: Korea in some sort of where you can say, well,
17:11
Speaker 1: there was positives and negatives. Oh no, it looks like
17:15
Speaker 1: it's all negative. And it's the frustrating thing is that
17:21
Speaker 1: he may be leaving the next president no choice but
17:26
Speaker 1: to have to do something, especially if the Iranians continue
17:30
Speaker 1: to open and close the straight or Horn moves, that
17:31
Speaker 1: will and that's where if the United States wants any
17:37
Speaker 1: more credibility around the world at all, at some point
17:39
Speaker 1: they're going to have to step in. But especially with
17:42
Speaker 1: the fact that if you just follow the party barn rules,
17:44
Speaker 1: we're the ones that broke it, that ended up closing
17:47
Speaker 1: the sucker, and so in some ways we're responsible for this.
17:53
Speaker 1: And so the next president has to deal with this
17:55
Speaker 1: in a lucid, sober way, and unfortunate Donald Trump may
18:00
Speaker 1: have committed somebody else to have to take military action
18:05
Speaker 1: because of his complete and utter carelessness and half assery
18:11
Speaker 1: in how he managed this war. And now we're trying
18:15
Speaker 1: to celebrate a humiliation and he's going to demand I mean,
18:19
Speaker 1: the question is going to be how many how many
18:24
Speaker 1: Republicans are going to suck up, suck it up and
18:28
Speaker 1: just pretend that he's a genius here, and how many
18:32
Speaker 1: of them are going to start speaking out? Look, I think,
18:34
Speaker 1: as we've learned, it's never a flood of new people
18:37
Speaker 1: that break from him. But it's never he never His
18:42
Speaker 1: coalition always gets smaller when he does these things, and
18:45
Speaker 1: there will be more that break, and it's only going
18:49
Speaker 1: to make his ability to govern that much harder in
18:52
Speaker 1: the next six months while he still has control of Congress,
18:55
Speaker 1: let alone, what would happen if he actually loses both houses.
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Speaker 1: seven seven seven seven zero seven eight sixty seven if
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Speaker 1: you're in Louisiana. You know, there's so many metaphors with
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Speaker 1: Iran that you could get to. We've talked about the
21:30
Speaker 1: reflecting pool and the Kennedy Center silliness, but I do
21:35
Speaker 1: think the silliness sometimes is the story, because at some
21:38
Speaker 1: point he's going to break, you know, his hold on
21:43
Speaker 1: whatever chunk of the electorate he has that keeps him
21:47
Speaker 1: politically relevant is going to break. And it's interesting, you know,
21:52
Speaker 1: on mother's days and Father's Days, but particularly on Father's Day,
21:56
Speaker 1: you can't help but constantly look at the role model
21:59
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has become and absolutely fear what young
22:06
Speaker 1: men and young boys think is someone to emulate, because
22:12
Speaker 1: there is no more, no worse figure that if any
22:17
Speaker 1: of our kids behave the way Donald Trump behaves as
22:19
Speaker 1: an adult, if they behave that way as an adolescent,
22:23
Speaker 1: we probably would be like Fred Trump and would have
22:27
Speaker 1: sent our kid to military school, which turned out not
22:29
Speaker 1: to work for him. But that's the thing that I
22:32
Speaker 1: want to focus on it because if you talk to
22:33
Speaker 1: parents right now, there is a distinct, almost nonpartisan exhaustion
22:38
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with marginal tax rates or
22:41
Speaker 1: executive orders. It's the basic baseline or character that we're
22:45
Speaker 1: trying to instill in our kids versus what we're being
22:48
Speaker 1: forced to normalize on the national stage. Charles Barkley said
22:53
Speaker 1: he didn't ask to be anybody's role model, and I
22:55
Speaker 1: agree with him, but he's not a bad role model.
22:58
Speaker 1: We want our president to be role models, and Donald
23:01
Speaker 1: Trump is the single worst role model as president we
23:05
Speaker 1: have ever had. Plenty of other presidents have got bad
23:11
Speaker 1: character traits, but nobody with as many as Donald Trump.
23:17
Speaker 1: And you know any parent knows this, drow you teach
23:19
Speaker 1: a kid the fundamentals, don't bully, don't take things that
23:22
Speaker 1: aren't yours, own up to your own mistakes, and if
23:25
Speaker 1: you break something, you clean it up. But if you
23:28
Speaker 1: look at the mechanics of the Trump administration, you can't
23:33
Speaker 1: really tell the whole story using a political science textbook.
23:37
Speaker 1: In some ways, the elementary school playground playbook actually tells
23:41
Speaker 1: the Trump story of the Trump presidency better than any
23:44
Speaker 1: political science textbook because it is a masterclass in the
23:48
Speaker 1: exact low character behavior that would end a kid's afternoon
23:52
Speaker 1: in the principal's office. So I'm going to break down
23:55
Speaker 1: this report card on this day after Father's Day, because
24:00
Speaker 1: we parents have never had a greater challenge to use
24:03
Speaker 1: the present. The good news is the presidency is sitting
24:05
Speaker 1: there as an example for us to parent against. The
24:08
Speaker 1: bad news is that the presidency is an example that
24:11
Speaker 1: we have to parent against. But we can see that
24:14
Speaker 1: behavior doesn't get rewarded.
24:16
Speaker 2: Let me show you how.
24:18
Speaker 1: So we're going to start with the lunch table and
24:20
Speaker 1: his lunch table tax another way that I will speak
24:24
Speaker 1: of self enrichment. We all know the kid who tries
24:26
Speaker 1: to charge classmates, you know, fifty cents or a dollar
24:30
Speaker 1: to sit at the cool table. But the second the
24:34
Speaker 1: recess monitor walks over to bust him, maybe he slides
24:38
Speaker 1: the monitor a candy bar, and the investigation of apter
24:40
Speaker 1: rates well in Washington, that candy bar is a billion
24:45
Speaker 1: dollar transaction. Right, Crypto dot com, they were facing a
24:48
Speaker 1: massive existential sec enforcement action.
24:51
Speaker 2: At what happens?
24:52
Speaker 1: They hire a Trump linked lobbyist, pour eleven million dollars
24:56
Speaker 1: into Trump super packs, and suddenly the federal investigation is
24:59
Speaker 1: di missed.
25:00
Speaker 2: With prejudice so they can't bring it back up.
25:03
Speaker 1: Months later, Crypto dot Com commits roughly a billion dollars
25:07
Speaker 1: into a joint venture with the president President's private media company,
25:11
Speaker 1: So the bribery is complete. How about the UAE. Four
25:15
Speaker 1: days before inauguration at Abu Dhabi Royal Fund quietly buys
25:19
Speaker 1: a forty nine percent stake in the Trump family's private
25:22
Speaker 1: crypto venture, World Liberty Financial for five hundred million dollars,
25:26
Speaker 1: wiring one hundred and eighty seven million dollars in cash
25:29
Speaker 1: immediately to Trump entities. Shortly after, the administration shreds years
25:33
Speaker 1: of strict bipartisan national security controls to approve exporting America's
25:38
Speaker 1: most advanced AI trips to the UAE, despite warnings that
25:42
Speaker 1: exporting to the OE could end up leaking. Seeing those
25:46
Speaker 1: chips leak straight to China in middle school, that's extortion
25:50
Speaker 1: and bribery. Here in the United States. Thanks to Trump's presidency,
25:56
Speaker 1: he's it's being treated as the cost of doing business.
25:59
Speaker 1: This is wrong, people. How about paying off bullies or
26:03
Speaker 1: rewarding bad actors. You don't cheer on the kids who
26:06
Speaker 1: beat up the hall monitors. You don't tell them they
26:08
Speaker 1: did a great job, and then try to raid the
26:10
Speaker 1: school's charity fund or the PTA fund to give them
26:14
Speaker 1: an allowance for their actions. But on day one, Donald
26:18
Speaker 1: Trump granted mass clemency to over fifteen hundred January sixth defendants.
26:22
Speaker 1: This wasn't a blanket pardon for people holding signs. It
26:25
Speaker 1: included full commutations for oathkeepers and proud boys convicted of
26:29
Speaker 1: seditious comparency. More than six hundred of them have been
26:32
Speaker 1: charged with assaulting or obstructing police officers. And then, of
26:37
Speaker 1: course comes the kicker. The administration actually tried to create
26:40
Speaker 1: a slush fund to reward these rioters and bullies for
26:44
Speaker 1: their actions. The Proud Boys leader en Rico Terrio, not
26:51
Speaker 1: exactly a pro American person, literally went on the record
26:56
Speaker 1: saying he would definitely apply for the cash. Even Mike
26:58
Speaker 1: Pence said anyone who assauld the cop that day shouldn't
27:01
Speaker 1: get a pass. But playground logic dictates that if you
27:03
Speaker 1: don't punish the bully, you put them on retainer. Apparently,
27:08
Speaker 1: then there's the blank check no consequences for friends. You
27:10
Speaker 1: don't let your buddy off the hook just because he's
27:12
Speaker 1: your buddy. That's one of the lessons you try to
27:14
Speaker 1: teach our friends. Why, because when you teach a kid
27:16
Speaker 1: that rules don't apply to their closest friends, they then
27:20
Speaker 1: guess what. They won't stop breaking the rules, They just
27:23
Speaker 1: start to break bigger ones and bigger ones. Predictably, the
27:26
Speaker 1: pardon pattern has already collapsed into a repeat offender loop
27:30
Speaker 1: here in the Trump administration. Since being let off the hook,
27:33
Speaker 1: at least forty pardon January sixth, defendants have already faced
27:36
Speaker 1: entirely new, unrelated criminal charges. At least a dozen of
27:40
Speaker 1: allegedly reoffended after their pardons, including arrest for illegal weapons,
27:43
Speaker 1: home invasion, and impaired driving offenses, two of which were fatal.
27:48
Speaker 1: To make it all worse, the Justice Department actively stretch
27:51
Speaker 1: those pardons to cover separate gun and drug charges that
27:54
Speaker 1: just happen to turn up during the initial searches. When
27:57
Speaker 1: you teach a child that a powerful friend is a
28:00
Speaker 1: out of jail free card, you aren't saving them, You're
28:02
Speaker 1: just subsidizing their next crime. How about straight up bolin
28:08
Speaker 1: punching down with a tank. This is the biggest kid
28:11
Speaker 1: in the fifth grade marching into the kindergarten playground with
28:14
Speaker 1: a group of older kids to quote restore order, completely
28:18
Speaker 1: ignoring the kid are and iron teachers or other safety
28:22
Speaker 1: patrol folks who tell them that they have no legal
28:25
Speaker 1: right to be there and there's no problem. While the
28:27
Speaker 1: administration bypassed, state governors entirely deployed thousands of National Guard
28:31
Speaker 1: troops and Marines and do only Democratic led cities like
28:35
Speaker 1: la Chicago and Portland under the guise of halting an invasion,
28:39
Speaker 1: federal courts repeatedly stepped in ruling the deployments flatly illegal
28:43
Speaker 1: under the Posse Commitatus Ack, the law that explicitly banned
28:48
Speaker 1: using the military for domestic policing. Troops were forced into
28:52
Speaker 1: total withdrawal by January of this year. In the irony,
28:54
Speaker 1: crime was already dropping significantly in those cities before the
28:57
Speaker 1: troops arrived. Memphis was at a twenty five year low.
29:00
Speaker 1: It was never about public safety. It was the ultimate
29:03
Speaker 1: act of playground intimidation, until the courts finally sent Donald
29:07
Speaker 1: Trump to the principal's office. How about stealing homework or
29:13
Speaker 1: not double checking your work?
29:15
Speaker 2: Right?
29:16
Speaker 1: In some ways, this is the kid who never does
29:18
Speaker 1: the homework but is desperate to get the credit. The
29:22
Speaker 1: kid who didn't look at the science project until Sunday night,
29:25
Speaker 1: refused to read the manual about what he was supposed
29:27
Speaker 1: to do because he already knew how to do it right,
29:29
Speaker 1: he's a genius, and then try to slap his own
29:31
Speaker 1: name in gold sharpie over the smart Kids poster board
29:34
Speaker 1: right before the science.
29:35
Speaker 2: Fair was to begin.
29:38
Speaker 1: So, when deep insecurity drives a kid, two things happen.
29:41
Speaker 1: They try to steal other people's achievements, and they break
29:44
Speaker 1: their own toys because they're too proud, perhaps to measure twice.
29:48
Speaker 2: Look at two.
29:49
Speaker 1: Iconic landmarks right here in Washington, DC. First, the homework stealing.
29:53
Speaker 1: For months, the administration demanded credit for the massive, highly
29:57
Speaker 1: praise structural expansion and capital upgrades at the CA Center.
30:01
Speaker 1: They went so far as to pack the board and
30:02
Speaker 1: try to illegally plaster Donald Trump's name across the front
30:06
Speaker 1: of the building. The problem, the actual heavy lifting, the planning,
30:09
Speaker 1: the funding, the architecture work was locked in years ago
30:12
Speaker 1: under the previous administration. A federal judge finally stepped in,
30:16
Speaker 1: ruled the renaming illegal and ordered the letters.
30:18
Speaker 2: Stripped off the facade.
30:20
Speaker 1: Guess what it turns out you can't get an A
30:22
Speaker 1: plus on a test that was taken by somebody else.
30:28
Speaker 1: But it gets worse when he actually tries to build
30:30
Speaker 1: something himself. Right, take the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. He
30:35
Speaker 1: decided entirely for cosmetic reasons that the historic gray Stone
30:38
Speaker 1: looked filthy on television. By passing the engineers, he boasted
30:42
Speaker 1: he could bring in a commercial pool builder from his
30:44
Speaker 1: real estate days and fix it in one week for
30:46
Speaker 1: about one point eight million by coding it in a
30:49
Speaker 1: vivid backyard shade he called American flag blue. He didn't
30:53
Speaker 1: do the research, He didn't wait for environmental studies, or
30:55
Speaker 1: he didn't look at the underlying water infrastructure. He just
30:58
Speaker 1: eyeballed it because she's a genie, right. The result, the
31:01
Speaker 1: rush no bid paint job completely failed. It's a laughing stock.
31:05
Speaker 1: Paint is literally peeling off the bottom of the pool.
31:08
Speaker 1: Within days, a massive algae bloom turned his American flag
31:12
Speaker 1: blue into a murky pea green soup. When they threw
31:16
Speaker 1: chemicals at it to kill the algae, the industrial coating
31:18
Speaker 1: began to peel off the concrete. I mean, you can't
31:23
Speaker 1: help but laugh at the incompetency.
31:25
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sorry.
31:26
Speaker 1: The pictures of the cotton no bin contractor that he got,
31:29
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like a kind of a Dick
31:30
Speaker 1: Tracy movie. It's a ridiculous caricature of who these people
31:34
Speaker 1: are and what's the kid's excuse When the project falls apart,
31:38
Speaker 1: He blames mysterious vandals. He claims invisible saboteurs sneaked onto
31:43
Speaker 1: the National pall poured secret chemicals into the water to
31:47
Speaker 1: ruin his beautiful work. Meanwhile, the price tag is ballooned
31:50
Speaker 1: from that promised one point eight million to now over
31:53
Speaker 1: fourteen million dollars attack fair money to clean up the mess.
31:56
Speaker 1: Look if your eight year old brought home a report
32:00
Speaker 1: card like this, you wouldn't just ground him. You'd worry
32:02
Speaker 1: about them. You'd realize that your kid has deep insecurity
32:06
Speaker 1: issues and it's making him a clearant and present danger
32:09
Speaker 1: in his own surroundings. Literally, you would probably think about
32:13
Speaker 1: a private school. I mean, it's understandable what the Trumps
32:18
Speaker 1: had to do with their adolescent The problem is they
32:21
Speaker 1: just hoped somebody else would take care of the problem,
32:24
Speaker 1: and they weren't there to parent themselves. They shipped them off,
32:28
Speaker 1: and we see what happened. Arrested development has been just
32:32
Speaker 1: you know, look, I empathize with parents that have a
32:37
Speaker 1: kid like Donald Trump. Okay, it is, you know, it is.
32:43
Speaker 1: It is not easy. But clearly this is a kid
32:47
Speaker 1: that was not parented at all, was not given any
32:50
Speaker 1: character tests. I mean, this is literally, I mean, and
32:54
Speaker 1: this is where I am careful not to mock his kids.
32:58
Speaker 1: His kids weren't raised by him. If they were, they'd
33:01
Speaker 1: probably be in federal prison.
33:04
Speaker 2: So it is.
33:06
Speaker 1: But I also understand that we all want to love
33:08
Speaker 1: our parents and love our fathers and want something out
33:11
Speaker 1: of this.
33:12
Speaker 2: But it is.
33:15
Speaker 1: Befuddling to me that we let we look the other
33:20
Speaker 1: way at a president of the United States doing things
33:23
Speaker 1: that would have us looking if this were happening with
33:26
Speaker 1: our eight nine ten year olds were behaving the exact
33:29
Speaker 1: same way, we would look for help to figure out
33:34
Speaker 1: how to intervene, to figure out how to deal with
33:37
Speaker 1: this better because we know that this was you were
33:40
Speaker 1: creating a future adult monster. Which is actually a good
33:47
Speaker 1: way to pivot to the issue of Barack Obama.
33:57
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump. And every time there is.
34:05
Speaker 1: A development in sort of the Obama Library or Obama
34:08
Speaker 1: becomes front and center, I inevitably get a question from
34:10
Speaker 1: somebody close to me that says, how are we supposed
34:13
Speaker 1: to assess Trump, the Trump presidency the Obama legacy when
34:20
Speaker 1: Trump is the president that was elected after how much
34:24
Speaker 1: a part of Obama's legacy is that? So I think
34:30
Speaker 1: this is worth chewing on, because, look, I think there's
34:36
Speaker 1: multiple ways you could look at the Obama presidency. You know,
34:39
Speaker 1: it was a solid presidency on the stewardship front, and
34:41
Speaker 1: it was a failure on the political front as a
34:43
Speaker 1: leader of his party right. And I could argue the
34:48
Speaker 1: Presidential Library ceremony was a reminder of Obama at his
34:51
Speaker 1: best and what the best part of his presidency was.
34:54
Speaker 1: Like Reagan, he had a way to make folks feel
34:59
Speaker 1: better about our place in the world. He was comforting, frankly,
35:02
Speaker 1: just like reg what he failed at was being a
35:05
Speaker 1: good political leader at a moment that his party needed
35:09
Speaker 1: good political leadership. And so the Obama Library dedication got
35:13
Speaker 1: me thinking about two images from the last week. One
35:17
Speaker 1: was Barack Obama standing in front of his Presidential library
35:20
Speaker 1: talking about citizenship, democracy, institution's character, and our obligations to
35:24
Speaker 1: one another. The other was a UFC event on the
35:27
Speaker 1: south lawn of the White House. And I couldn't help
35:30
Speaker 1: but think those are two very different visions of the
35:34
Speaker 1: American presidency, and in some ways there are two very
35:38
Speaker 1: different visions of America. One is the presidency that we
35:42
Speaker 1: want to believe in. The other may be the presidency
35:46
Speaker 1: we actually have. Now, look, I'm not trying to make
35:49
Speaker 1: a partisan point here. I don't think characters should be partisan.
35:53
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make an observational one, because if you
35:55
Speaker 1: listen to the to Obama at that library dedication, you
35:58
Speaker 1: heard almost everything Americans claim they want from their leaders. Character, integrity, humility, discipline,
36:10
Speaker 1: a belief that public service is actually service.
36:14
Speaker 2: To the people.
36:16
Speaker 1: Whether you agreed with its policies or not. Barack Obama
36:18
Speaker 1: and Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama embodied something that most Americans
36:24
Speaker 1: say they admire.
36:25
Speaker 2: Polls have shown.
36:26
Speaker 1: Ordinary people with extraordinary abilities who found their way to
36:30
Speaker 1: the highest office in the land. That's the story we
36:34
Speaker 1: believe in and we want to believe in. That's the
36:37
Speaker 1: American meritocracy story. And yes, the meritocracy doesn't always work
36:40
Speaker 1: the way it should, but it's a hell of a
36:43
Speaker 1: lot better than it works in most other countries. The
36:46
Speaker 1: American dream story, same thing. Now, it's the story we
36:50
Speaker 1: tell ourselves about what this country is supposed to reward.
36:54
Speaker 1: And then there's Donald Trump, a man who was born
36:57
Speaker 1: on third base, and it's spent his entire life trying
36:59
Speaker 1: to steal home handed wealth, handed connections, handed advantages, and
37:04
Speaker 1: yet somehow still perpetually dissatisfied, perpetually searching for more attention,
37:09
Speaker 1: more power, more validation. Perhaps it's his own way of
37:13
Speaker 1: knowing he hasn't accomplished a single thing, and he's desperate
37:16
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39:46
Speaker 2: But here's the uncomfortable thing. Both stories are American stories.
39:50
Speaker 1: Obama is the America we aspire to be, the more
39:53
Speaker 1: perfect unit. Trump may be the America that we actually
39:57
Speaker 1: are in the moment. That doesn't mean we can't be both.
40:00
Speaker 1: One story celebrates achievement, the other story simply celebrates winning
40:04
Speaker 1: almost at any cost. One story says character is destiny,
40:08
Speaker 1: the other says the ends justifies the means. And before
40:13
Speaker 1: Trump's supporters get angry with me, let's be honest here.
40:15
Speaker 1: The lack of character is obvious. If you try to
40:18
Speaker 1: claim he's a high character individual, just stop. If you
40:22
Speaker 1: want to make the low character argument to me, I
40:24
Speaker 1: will actually listen to that, because only the truly devoted
40:29
Speaker 1: don't see his low character. My guess is most of
40:33
Speaker 1: Trump's supporters see the low character. They simply rationalize it.
40:36
Speaker 1: The left is worse. This is an existential moment. The
40:39
Speaker 1: media is unfair, the system is corp The ends justifies
40:43
Speaker 1: the means. Maybe that's true me that isn't I know?
40:48
Speaker 1: It makes it a lot harder to raise our fricking
40:50
Speaker 1: kids with role models. This grotesque, But the rationalization itself
40:55
Speaker 1: proves the point. Nobody is defending the Trump's behavior on
40:59
Speaker 1: its merits anymore. They're defending it only as a necessity,
41:03
Speaker 1: if you will, Which brings me back to Obama's legacy,
41:07
Speaker 1: because the more times passes, the harder it becomes to
41:09
Speaker 1: separate Obama from Trump.
41:11
Speaker 2: Right.
41:11
Speaker 1: You know, there's the conventional wisdom that says, hey, they
41:13
Speaker 1: were both elected by the same forces.
41:15
Speaker 2: There's some truth to that.
41:17
Speaker 1: You know, one is you know, one is the angel,
41:20
Speaker 1: one is the devil, but both are there to do
41:22
Speaker 1: change right. One is Jack Nicholson from a few good men,
41:29
Speaker 1: and the other is Tom Cruise from a few good men.
41:31
Speaker 4: Right.
41:33
Speaker 1: In fact, Trump's presidency may ultimately become one of the
41:35
Speaker 1: defining lenses through which Obama's presidency is judged, and that's
41:40
Speaker 1: not going to be entirely fair. Obama was, by almost
41:43
Speaker 1: every conventional measure a successful president. Right, economy was better
41:49
Speaker 1: every you know, the economy was better when he left
41:54
Speaker 1: it then when he got it. The country was more
41:59
Speaker 1: unified when he left and we got it. Although I
42:01
Speaker 1: guess you could say the sixteen presidency disproves that that's
42:04
Speaker 1: an interesting debate.
42:06
Speaker 2: We could go back.
42:09
Speaker 1: He wound down wars, he didn't ramp him up. But
42:13
Speaker 1: the thing that I think is the fairest demerit on
42:17
Speaker 1: the Obama presidency is that he was a far less
42:20
Speaker 1: successful steward of his party. He may have been a
42:24
Speaker 1: really good steward of the country and may have been
42:28
Speaker 1: the sober driver of the country needed in the moment
42:30
Speaker 1: that we got, but he was not a good leader
42:33
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. And this is the part Democrats
42:35
Speaker 1: don't like discussing much. There really isn't a measure of
42:39
Speaker 1: Democratic Party strength that improved during the Obama years. Governorships,
42:42
Speaker 1: state legislatures, congressional seats, local office. The party weakened across
42:46
Speaker 1: the board. Of Obama himself remained enormously popular, his brand flourished,
42:50
Speaker 1: the party's brand did not. And that leads to the
42:53
Speaker 1: question that hangs to me over his legacy. Knowing what
42:56
Speaker 1: we know now, what could Obama have done differently, essentially
42:59
Speaker 1: to prevent the emergence of Donald Trump. So I've come
43:03
Speaker 1: up with three possibilities, but I'd love to hear more
43:05
Speaker 1: from you. The first is the financial crisis. You know,
43:08
Speaker 1: Rob Emmanuel has always said that was his biggest regret
43:11
Speaker 1: as chief of staff, not fighting hard enough for what
43:14
Speaker 1: he called old Testament justice. Yes, the Obama administration stabilized
43:19
Speaker 1: the economy, but it never satisfied the public's desire for accountability.
43:24
Speaker 1: Millions of Americans watched powerful people escape consequences while ordinary
43:27
Speaker 1: people literally paid the price for closures. Things like that.
43:31
Speaker 1: That feeling never really went away, and that's something that
43:36
Speaker 1: you know, what does that look like? Who is it
43:38
Speaker 1: that we would have put behind bars? I think that's
43:40
Speaker 1: a But the fact that it was never it was
43:43
Speaker 1: never thought of. I'm not saying it wasn't thought of,
43:47
Speaker 1: but they just was not a priority. Now you could say, hey,
43:52
Speaker 1: he was looking at the biggest of all pictures, and
43:54
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair that's a fair statement.
43:56
Speaker 2: Again, good steward of the country.
43:59
Speaker 1: Now the second past ability of how things could have
44:01
Speaker 1: been different as succession. Obama won because he represented change,
44:04
Speaker 1: but after winning, he spent surprisingly little time building the
44:07
Speaker 1: next generation inside the Democratic Party.
44:10
Speaker 2: What if he had.
44:10
Speaker 1: Chosen a younger running May twenty twelve. What if he
44:12
Speaker 1: had spent his second term identifying an air a parent
44:14
Speaker 1: from a younger generation. What if he had remembered the
44:17
Speaker 1: lesson of his own success in two thousand and eight.
44:19
Speaker 1: People weren't looking backward in two thousand and eight, which
44:21
Speaker 1: is why he won and why Clinton lost. They were
44:24
Speaker 1: looking forward. By twenty sixteen, Democrats were asking voters to
44:29
Speaker 1: look backward. Obama won as a change agent, Hillary Clinton
44:33
Speaker 1: ran his continuation. Those are not the same thing. And
44:37
Speaker 1: maybe Obama's biggest political mistake was forgetting why he won
44:41
Speaker 1: in the first place. Then there's the third possibility. My
44:45
Speaker 1: friend Mark Murray's brought this up to me and wondering
44:48
Speaker 1: if the twenty second Amendment was a mistake and that
44:51
Speaker 1: it actually damaged the power of both parties. And I
44:56
Speaker 1: know to some of you this may sound crazy, but
44:58
Speaker 1: what if Obama had been allowed run again? What if
45:01
Speaker 1: the amendment itself is part of the problem. Would the
45:04
Speaker 1: Democratic Party be healthier today if Obama had served a
45:06
Speaker 1: third term? Then again, wouldn't Bill Clinton have won a
45:08
Speaker 1: third term in two thousand? Would the transition from the
45:11
Speaker 1: Clinton generation to the next generation have happened more naturally?
45:15
Speaker 1: Three terms of Clinton Republicans probably went in four.
45:18
Speaker 2: You know, who knows?
45:19
Speaker 1: Right, would the party have avoided the ugly internal revolution
45:23
Speaker 1: it is experiencing now?
45:24
Speaker 2: I don't know.
45:28
Speaker 1: Maybe Trump was inevitable. Maybe the forces that produced Trump
45:31
Speaker 1: were bigger than Obama, bigger than the Democratic Party, bigger
45:33
Speaker 1: than anyone politician. But I do know this, The Obama
45:36
Speaker 1: presidency cannot be fully understood without understanding the Trump the
45:40
Speaker 1: rise of Trump, because Obama's greatest accomplishment was building a
45:44
Speaker 1: movement around himself, and his greatest failure may have been
45:47
Speaker 1: leaving behind a coalition that couldn't survive without him, which
45:51
Speaker 1: brings me back to those two images. Obama at his library,
45:55
Speaker 1: Trump at the USC fight on the White House lawn,
45:58
Speaker 1: the presidency. We want to believe in the presidency we have.
46:01
Speaker 1: The question isn't which one is real. The question is
46:05
Speaker 1: whether they're both real and what that says about ourselves,
46:13
Speaker 1: which then brings me to a quick preview of this
46:15
Speaker 1: week's primaries. Because this week's primaries on Tuesday, we will
46:21
Speaker 1: have Election Night Live, Election Night live stream, myself, Chris Elizza,
46:24
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Scaley over decision to SKHQ. It is a huge
46:31
Speaker 1: story that is going to get even bigger if things
46:37
Speaker 1: go a certain way. So Tuesday, New York is one
46:41
Speaker 1: of the states it's holding its primary, and I want
46:43
Speaker 1: to spend some real time on it to get you
46:46
Speaker 1: prepared for Tuesday night, because there's a fight building inside
46:49
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party that even those of you who follow
46:51
Speaker 1: this stuff for a living probably haven't been tracking as
46:54
Speaker 1: closely as you should. You may track progressive versus establishment,
46:58
Speaker 1: but this is going to perhaps look different in about
47:02
Speaker 1: seventy two hours. So let me set the table because
47:06
Speaker 1: this is about to matter well beyond New York. So,
47:10
Speaker 1: over the last decade, there's been an actual organized faction
47:13
Speaker 1: that has grown up inside the Democratic Party calling themselves
47:16
Speaker 1: the Democratic Socialists of America the DSSA. This is not
47:20
Speaker 1: a mood, it is not a hashtag. It's an actual
47:23
Speaker 1: dues paying membership organization with a platform and a candidate
47:28
Speaker 1: recruitment operation. It really is what the DLC was the
47:31
Speaker 1: Democratic Party in the Clinton years. I think the DSA
47:34
Speaker 1: is what Bernie Sanders would like to see happen inside
47:39
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. So what DLC did to shift the
47:42
Speaker 1: party to the right, the DSA wants to be the
47:45
Speaker 1: entity that shifts the party to the left. And it
47:50
Speaker 1: got its first jolt from Bernie Sanders in twenty sixteen,
47:53
Speaker 1: it grew under Trump, and last year it got its
47:55
Speaker 1: breakout star when Mom Dannie won the Mayor's office in
47:58
Speaker 1: New York City. Now here's the part you need to
48:01
Speaker 1: hold on to because it's the key to everything that's coming.
48:04
Speaker 1: I think the Democratic Party is not splitting into two camps,
48:07
Speaker 1: it's actually splitting into three. You will have your sort
48:10
Speaker 1: of establishment, pro business center left. That's Jeffreys Schumer, It's Obama. Frankly,
48:17
Speaker 1: it's the Clinton. It's the people whose whole job is
48:20
Speaker 1: simply winning majorities, who treat the word socialist like a
48:24
Speaker 1: lit match near a gas camp. Then there are the progressives,
48:27
Speaker 1: the big government liberals who want to hold ambitious policy,
48:30
Speaker 1: but who've spent the better part of a decade carefully
48:33
Speaker 1: insisting better part of a decade carefully insisting they are
48:37
Speaker 1: not socialists. And then there's the DSA, the actual card
48:40
Speaker 1: carrying socialists, organized, growing and increasingly done pretending the distinction
48:45
Speaker 1: between progressive and socialism matters.
48:47
Speaker 2: Now.
48:48
Speaker 1: For years, the middle group was the cover. Progressive was
48:50
Speaker 1: a big enough tent that a socialist and non socialist
48:53
Speaker 1: could stand under it and never have to say out
48:55
Speaker 1: loud which one they were. Tuesday is the day that
48:58
Speaker 1: that tent starts coming down. Because if Mom Donnie's socialists win,
49:04
Speaker 1: and I mean they beat sitting democratic incumbents, not just
49:08
Speaker 1: grab open seats, but be democratic incumbents, both on the
49:11
Speaker 1: legislative level, on the congressional level, then the question every
49:17
Speaker 1: Democrat has been ducking will get asked in the open,
49:20
Speaker 1: are you with the socialists or aren't you? And a
49:22
Speaker 1: three cornered fight that's been quietly running in city council
49:25
Speaker 1: races and low tenot primaries becomes the defining story of
49:28
Speaker 1: where this party goes next. You know, we've seen a
49:31
Speaker 1: piece of this a little bit in that Michigan Democratic
49:33
Speaker 1: Senate primary, where you've had the sort of the Chambers
49:36
Speaker 1: commerce left in Haley Stevens. You've had the progressive Bernie Sanders,
49:42
Speaker 1: socialist leaning in Abdullah Lsied. Then you've had Mallory McMorrow,
49:45
Speaker 1: who's tried to be a foot in every camp and
49:49
Speaker 1: whose support is shrunk the fastest over the last three months.
49:52
Speaker 1: Mcmorrow's right, and it's a reminder sometimes it's tough to
49:56
Speaker 1: be half in, half out of anything, right. You have
49:59
Speaker 1: to be all in or all out sometimes, at least
50:02
Speaker 1: in primary politics. You want to be in one foot everywhere.
50:05
Speaker 1: When you're running in a general election, it's not as
50:07
Speaker 1: healthy of a place to be in primary politics.
50:10
Speaker 2: So those are the stakes.
50:11
Speaker 1: Watch what mom Nani's actually doing, because it tells you
50:13
Speaker 1: he doesn't think he's joining a coalition. He thinks he's
50:17
Speaker 1: leading a movement. He went after his own parties incumbents.
50:20
Speaker 1: He backed primary challengers against sitting Democratic congressman, forcing the
50:24
Speaker 1: man who wants to be the next speaker to spend
50:26
Speaker 1: money defending his own people. And he and Alexandria Cassio Cortez,
50:30
Speaker 1: they carved up the map between them. He took the
50:33
Speaker 1: congressional races, she took the legislative races. She doesn't have
50:36
Speaker 1: the awkwardness of having to come out against colleagues, but
50:39
Speaker 1: she's doing the state legislative front. And together they cover
50:42
Speaker 1: almost the entire DSA slate that is not a faction
50:46
Speaker 1: asking for a seat at the table. That's an operation
50:49
Speaker 1: trying to take the table and be in charge of it.
50:52
Speaker 1: And if you think this is just a generational story,
50:54
Speaker 1: young progresses elbowing aside the old guard, look at what
50:57
Speaker 1: was on his calendar earlier this month got canceled. Mam
51:01
Speaker 1: Donnie scheduled to sit down with Gustavo Petro. He's the
51:03
Speaker 1: outgoing president of Columbia Democratic elected Socialists who shares Mam
51:08
Speaker 1: Donnie's politics, and they were going to be they were
51:11
Speaker 1: going to be together at a gathering of the global
51:13
Speaker 1: Left would have been the first time this mayor formally
51:15
Speaker 1: received a head of state. Mayors negotiate garbage contracts. Mom
51:19
Speaker 1: donnie was conducting foreign policy. It was extraordinary enough that
51:23
Speaker 1: the Trump administration reached in, warned it would violate Petro's
51:26
Speaker 1: US visa terms, and got the meeting called off. I
51:30
Speaker 1: sort of politically, I found it, you know, I actually
51:33
Speaker 1: think Trump did the Democratic Party of favor. For what
51:36
Speaker 1: it's worth, this would have elevated Mom Donnie even to
51:40
Speaker 1: a bigger figure, which some Republicans would love that to happen,
51:43
Speaker 1: and they think that would help them with swing VARs.
51:45
Speaker 1: We'll find out. I'm not one undred cent sure in
51:47
Speaker 1: either direction. But it doesn't matter. It didn't need to
51:49
Speaker 1: happen to make the point. The fact is it was
51:52
Speaker 1: ever on the calendar tells you everything. Mom Donnie does
51:55
Speaker 1: not see himself as the next generation of the Democratic Party.
51:57
Speaker 1: He's trying to convert it, and he's already looking for
52:00
Speaker 1: allies well beyond it. He's trying to remake the Democratic
52:02
Speaker 1: Party in his own image in a way that Barack
52:05
Speaker 1: Obama never did, and he had the presidency. Now, look,
52:09
Speaker 1: there's something real underneath all of it. New York elected
52:11
Speaker 1: a Democratic socialist, Washington just likely elected their own Democratic
52:15
Speaker 1: Socialists to be mayor. La has won in a runoff
52:18
Speaker 1: against a city Democratic mayor, and the biggest bluest cities
52:21
Speaker 1: in America. The energy has left the establishment and moved
52:24
Speaker 1: to the left of the left. So here's the only
52:27
Speaker 1: question that matters Tuesday, and it isn't who wins, because
52:30
Speaker 1: Mamdani's candidates will win plenty Tuesday. These June primers are
52:34
Speaker 1: super low turnout in New York. The question is whether
52:37
Speaker 1: the thing that wins in the city can survive at
52:39
Speaker 1: the trip to the suburbs, Whether the S word is
52:41
Speaker 1: marketable past the five boroughs. I'm skeptical, but we'll see.
52:46
Speaker 1: Recent history says it's a huge problem. The tel isn't
52:49
Speaker 1: a Republican attack at it's Democrats themselves. When Mandani won,
52:52
Speaker 1: the househeld a vote condemning socialism, and a big block
52:55
Speaker 1: of Democrats in tough districts crossed the out of vote
52:57
Speaker 1: for it. Their own leader are King Jeffreys Until the
53:00
Speaker 1: day before early voting to manage a lukewarm endorsement of
53:03
Speaker 1: Mom Donnie because he knew he was going to win anyway,
53:05
Speaker 1: then set out loud that he doesn't see Mom Donnie
53:07
Speaker 1: as the future of the party. Schumer didn't endorse at all.
53:10
Speaker 1: Obama called privately and stayed quiet in public and didn't appear,
53:13
Speaker 1: didn't do anything with him until after he won. That's
53:17
Speaker 1: not how a party treats an asset. It's how it
53:19
Speaker 1: treats what they think is a liability that all of
53:22
Speaker 1: these people believe they can't afford to be photographed next
53:24
Speaker 1: to him if they want to win general elections. The
53:27
Speaker 1: numbers tell them why. Socialism is the one word in
53:29
Speaker 1: American economic life that a majority have rejected for fifteen
53:32
Speaker 1: straight years. Thirty nine percent positive, fifty seven percent negative.
53:36
Speaker 1: Among independents, the people who decide a swing district, it's
53:39
Speaker 1: thirty eight percent. Among voters over sixty five, the people
53:41
Speaker 1: who actually show up in midterms, one fox Bow found
53:44
Speaker 1: three quarters of them calling a move towards socialism a
53:46
Speaker 1: bad idea. It sells in one place, with Democrats in
53:50
Speaker 1: the cities, which is precisely the trap. Now I'm going
53:54
Speaker 1: to be honest about the other side here, because the
53:55
Speaker 1: socialist boogeyman has a losing record. Republicans ran radical socialist
53:59
Speaker 1: who want Venezuela in twenty eighteen and Democrats flip forty
54:03
Speaker 1: one house seats. Right, they ran San Francisco values before that,
54:06
Speaker 1: and that flamed right. When voters are determined to throw
54:09
Speaker 1: people out, they're going to throw people out. And this
54:12
Speaker 1: year the contrast is muddier than the GOP would like
54:14
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump's out there capping credit card rates and
54:17
Speaker 1: taking government ownership stakes at private companies, making socialism look
54:20
Speaker 1: cool to the right. The same night Mom Donnie won
54:23
Speaker 1: New York, two moderates Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spamberg are
54:26
Speaker 1: won governorships running straight down the middle. So the label
54:29
Speaker 1: is not automatically fatal. It is missed before. But here's
54:33
Speaker 1: who Tuesday really puts in a box. And it's not
54:35
Speaker 1: the establishment, and it's not the socialists. It's that third group.
54:39
Speaker 1: It's the liberals or progressives aren't socialists. For a decade,
54:42
Speaker 1: they've had it both ways. They've ridden the less energy.
54:45
Speaker 1: It's volunteers, it's small dollar money, it's enthusiasm with that ever,
54:49
Speaker 1: having to wear the socialists label that scares the suburban voter.
54:53
Speaker 1: A win for Mom Donnie. Slate takes that option away,
54:56
Speaker 1: because once the socialists are beating incumbents, every progressive in
54:59
Speaker 1: the country gets the same question with nowhere to hide
55:02
Speaker 1: from it.
55:02
Speaker 2: Are you one of them? Aren't you?
55:04
Speaker 1: So yes and you pick up the baggage that loses
55:07
Speaker 1: a general election. Say no, and you're a sellout to
55:09
Speaker 1: the only voters who turn out for you in a primary.
55:12
Speaker 1: There's no comfortable answer. That's the box that Tuesday could
55:15
Speaker 1: be building for Democrats. And here's why the establishment should
55:18
Speaker 1: be more worried than its own.
55:19
Speaker 2: Polling makes it fit.
55:21
Speaker 1: You don't need a national majority to take over a party.
55:24
Speaker 1: You need its machinery, the money, the media, the donors,
55:26
Speaker 1: the turnout, and the talent, and all of it lives
55:29
Speaker 1: in the cities. This is the exact move The right
55:32
Speaker 1: just ran on itself. The Tea Party and then MAGA
55:35
Speaker 1: never won. A majority of America still have it. They
55:38
Speaker 1: won the primaries, they took the base, they seized the apparatus,
55:42
Speaker 1: They hijacked the entire party based on a faction of supporters.
55:47
Speaker 1: John Corny just lost his Senate seat to that dynamic.
55:50
Speaker 1: The Democratic establishment is now staring at its own version
55:52
Speaker 1: of it, and it's coming from the left. So that's
55:54
Speaker 1: what's on the ballot Tuesday, not a mayor, a direction,
55:58
Speaker 1: and the gamble underneath it all is a brute in
56:00
Speaker 1: its simplicity. When the five boroughs lose the four suburban seats,
56:03
Speaker 1: I flip the house and you haven't built the majority,
56:07
Speaker 1: You've potentially built a new political target. So the point is,
56:12
Speaker 1: tune in Tuesday night. There's a lot on the ballot.
56:15
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna sneak in a break and when
56:16
Speaker 1: we come back, we're gonna do some baby boomer bashing,
56:20
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna be doing it. I'm gonna let
56:21
Speaker 1: a fellow, a baby boomer, actually do it. Legendary political
56:25
Speaker 1: reporter Washington Post fame, Paul Taylor, very famous during the
56:31
Speaker 1: Gary Hart ordeal. And so we actually get into that too.
56:35
Speaker 1: So there's some good journalism conversation in there as well.
56:39
Speaker 1: I'll see on the other sign. This episode of the
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58:47
Speaker 1: me now he's just a little further ahead of me
58:49
Speaker 1: and the resume and and in fact, basically about a
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Speaker 1: half generation ahead of me, which is what makes this
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Speaker 1: conversation we're about to have even better. It's Paul Taylor,
59:00
Speaker 1: legendary political reporter from the Washington Post, but has done
59:03
Speaker 1: a lot of things since, including with a new book.
59:07
Speaker 1: And I think if I just read you a title,
59:10
Speaker 1: you'll understand the premise, which is the title is this
59:14
Speaker 1: is getting old two boomers and their generation at dusk.
59:18
Speaker 1: It's a little bit memoir, but it's a little bit
59:20
Speaker 1: on this topic that you've probably heard me rant about,
59:24
Speaker 1: a little bit about the baby boomer generation in a
59:26
Speaker 1: variety of ways, and Paul, I think the best way
59:29
Speaker 1: to start this conversation is the following factory is that
59:34
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two, the voters of this country chose
59:38
Speaker 1: to elect somebody as president who was born in August
59:40
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty six. And then in two thousand, this
59:44
Speaker 1: country decided to elect a president that was born in
59:47
Speaker 1: July of nineteen forty six. And then in twenty sixteen,
59:50
Speaker 1: this country decided to elect a president, and then in
59:53
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four they decided elected president that was born
59:56
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty six, just one month. Even before that one,
1:00:01
Speaker 1: we have had we're going to have twenty four of
1:00:07
Speaker 1: the last thirty two years of baby boomer presidents all
1:00:12
Speaker 1: born within ninety days of each other. How the hell
1:00:15
Speaker 1: did that happen?
1:00:18
Speaker 4: Great question, and I would just say, nothing like this
1:00:21
Speaker 4: has ever happened before in American history. So another way
1:00:25
Speaker 4: of saying you're right on Factoy is in the nine
1:00:31
Speaker 4: in the nine previous presidential elections we've had, boomers have
1:00:35
Speaker 4: won eight of them, and the only election that wasn't
1:00:37
Speaker 4: won by a boomer was won by somebody older than
1:00:40
Speaker 4: a Boomer Joe Biden.
1:00:41
Speaker 2: So there's never.
1:00:42
Speaker 4: Been a generation that has had this kind of political
1:00:46
Speaker 4: hegemony for this long, nor I would argue, has there
1:00:50
Speaker 4: ever been a generation that has held so much sway
1:00:54
Speaker 4: over the economy and the culture as the Boomers now.
1:00:57
Speaker 2: Part of it is we're a huge generation, famous and.
1:01:00
Speaker 4: That's where we get our name, the baby boom, And
1:01:02
Speaker 4: we don't people know the history.
1:01:03
Speaker 2: I don't they need to dwell on it.
1:01:05
Speaker 4: So in addition to holding those high offices, for this
1:01:09
Speaker 4: log and by the way, if you look at the
1:01:10
Speaker 4: US Senate today, sixty of the one hundred senators are Boomers.
1:01:16
Speaker 4: And if you look and you know this, chuck because
1:01:19
Speaker 4: you know these numbers as well as anybody in the country.
1:01:22
Speaker 2: If you look at all presidential elections for the.
1:01:24
Speaker 4: Last forty years, since the early eighties, Boomers have been
1:01:28
Speaker 4: the largest cohort in the election. I think this year
1:01:31
Speaker 4: will probably be the first time that we're finally overtaken
1:01:34
Speaker 4: not by your generation that unfortunately squeezed and diminished.
1:01:38
Speaker 2: Generation by the Boomers, but the millennials, who are also
1:01:41
Speaker 2: a pretty large generation.
1:01:43
Speaker 4: So this is ain't historical non effector has ever happened before,
1:01:49
Speaker 4: And The question I asked myself and a lot of
1:01:52
Speaker 4: people ask themselves, is what is it done to America?
1:01:55
Speaker 4: And here we are a month away, six weeks away
1:01:57
Speaker 4: from our two hundred and fifteth take, and what allows
1:02:02
Speaker 4: the time.
1:02:03
Speaker 2: To throw ourselves a birthday party?
1:02:05
Speaker 4: Because I'm a full generation older than you, and I
1:02:09
Speaker 4: have never and I'm an American show from this, and
1:02:12
Speaker 4: I'm an American patriot, and I you know, for all
1:02:14
Speaker 4: of our flaws, I think this is the greatest country
1:02:17
Speaker 4: in the world.
1:02:18
Speaker 2: But boy, we're in a dark place.
1:02:20
Speaker 4: And people like me and maybe listeners to your show
1:02:26
Speaker 4: will give a two word answer to why we're in
1:02:28
Speaker 4: such a dark place, and that two word answer would
1:02:31
Speaker 4: be Donald Trump.
1:02:31
Speaker 2: Now we can have that conversation or not have that conversation.
1:02:35
Speaker 4: But I would argue about Donald Trump, is he is
1:02:38
Speaker 4: more symptom than cause. He's certainly an accelerant of our troubles.
1:02:43
Speaker 4: But how did we get to a place where there
1:02:46
Speaker 4: was so much populist anger a foot in the land
1:02:50
Speaker 4: that half the country was willing to set aside. It's
1:02:54
Speaker 4: concerns about this man's character, and it's hard not to have.
1:02:58
Speaker 2: Concerns about this man's character.
1:03:00
Speaker 4: Because he touched some fairly deep mirrors and some fairly
1:03:03
Speaker 4: deep sensites of grievance. And there, I think you have
1:03:05
Speaker 4: to back up and take a look at what did
1:03:07
Speaker 4: my generation do with our long reign?
1:03:11
Speaker 2: And I would start.
1:03:12
Speaker 4: I would start with a story it's been told a
1:03:15
Speaker 4: bit of the last year or so.
1:03:16
Speaker 2: It touches me.
1:03:19
Speaker 4: In the mid nineteen fifties, the great cathedral of entertainment
1:03:24
Speaker 4: and the great symbol of America was Disneyland.
1:03:27
Speaker 2: Is The first Disneyland opened.
1:03:29
Speaker 4: In in nineteen fifty five, and it captured the innocence,
1:03:34
Speaker 4: that charm, the sense of possibilities makes no difference.
1:03:37
Speaker 2: To who you are.
1:03:39
Speaker 4: Everyone when you wish upon a star, makes no difference
1:03:43
Speaker 4: who you are.
1:03:44
Speaker 2: Everyone's a VIP.
1:03:46
Speaker 4: That was what Disneyland embodied today in Disneyland and its
1:03:51
Speaker 4: other theme parks, it makes a big difference who you
1:03:54
Speaker 4: are because if you want to avoid Disneyland's long lines,
1:03:59
Speaker 4: you just pay year way, you know, to the accelerated line.
1:04:02
Speaker 4: So there is a loss of sort of the egalitarian
1:04:06
Speaker 4: culture that was very much a part of the America
1:04:09
Speaker 4: that I was born into, that I grew up in.
1:04:12
Speaker 4: One last another way of expressing that is our economy.
1:04:18
Speaker 4: We now have an economy where the typical CEO of
1:04:21
Speaker 4: a fortune five hundred company earns nearly three hundred times
1:04:26
Speaker 4: more than his.
1:04:28
Speaker 2: Or her typical employee sixty years ago.
1:04:32
Speaker 4: As I was growing up, that was that three hundred
1:04:35
Speaker 4: to one was twenty to one. Imagine all the ways
1:04:39
Speaker 4: that an economy has to change, that a culture has
1:04:41
Speaker 4: to change, that a set of norms have to change
1:04:44
Speaker 4: to get to a place where we go from twenty
1:04:46
Speaker 4: to one income inequality to three hundred to one.
1:04:50
Speaker 2: And my generation facilitated that.
1:04:54
Speaker 4: We're not the only culprits, but we had the biggest
1:04:57
Speaker 4: hand in all of these changes. And now we're experiencing
1:05:01
Speaker 4: a populist reaction to it. And we have, in my view,
1:05:05
Speaker 4: you know, kind of a feral man man leading that
1:05:08
Speaker 4: populist the reaction. I would like to believe he will
1:05:11
Speaker 4: push it too far. We both cparently believe in cycles,
1:05:15
Speaker 4: and then I hope, well, there'll be a backlash to
1:05:17
Speaker 4: the backlash. But one we're deep into a backlash. That
1:05:21
Speaker 4: is a lot.
1:05:22
Speaker 2: Of formers have delivered to America. Well, let's unpack a
1:05:25
Speaker 2: little bit.
1:05:26
Speaker 1: And I always try to I try to think you know,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: I think about generations and they're definitely defined by the
1:05:37
Speaker 1: moment they come of age, right, for better or for worse.
1:05:41
Speaker 1: I came of age with the fall of.
1:05:42
Speaker 2: The Berlin Wall.
1:05:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in fact I pivoted the foreign language I
1:05:49
Speaker 1: needed to learn.
1:05:51
Speaker 2: I was Spanish, Spanish, Spanish.
1:05:53
Speaker 1: And then I was like, oh, the Berlin Wall fowl
1:05:55
Speaker 1: and I freshman year in college, I said, I learned German.
1:05:58
Speaker 1: It's probably going to be the language of finance. Whoops.
1:06:01
Speaker 1: Turned out it probably should have been Mandarin. But the
1:06:03
Speaker 1: point being, or even if you think the Gulf States
1:06:08
Speaker 1: are where you know finances, But the point was, that
1:06:13
Speaker 1: was my coming of age. And by the way, it
1:06:15
Speaker 1: was also a pretty pro America version of coming of age.
1:06:19
Speaker 1: We were winning, right, it was a freedom was on
1:06:22
Speaker 1: the march Communism.
1:06:24
Speaker 2: We did it.
1:06:25
Speaker 1: We won the Cold War, right, We somehow survived this.
1:06:29
Speaker 1: They spent themselves into oblivion just before we did. I
1:06:34
Speaker 1: think about the Boomers and when they turned eighteen, right, well,
1:06:38
Speaker 1: the Boomers turned eighteen. It arguably one of the most
1:06:41
Speaker 1: divisive times in the history of this country short of
1:06:44
Speaker 1: the Civil War. Right, when did the Boomers turn eighteen?
1:06:47
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty three, sixty four, sixty five, sixty six. Right,
1:06:52
Speaker 1: Holy cow. Yeah, So how much of that do you
1:06:56
Speaker 1: think impacts? Right, because I believe, just like anything, right,
1:07:02
Speaker 1: your initial experience as an adult is more defining than
1:07:06
Speaker 1: you fully realize until later in life. And so that's
1:07:12
Speaker 1: do you think because the boomers came of age in
1:07:15
Speaker 1: this tumult in a polarized world, and the nineteen sixty
1:07:19
Speaker 1: five America was very polarized, sixty eight America even more so. Right,
1:07:23
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of what we look at.
1:07:25
Speaker 2: Should we look.
1:07:26
Speaker 1: Back and say it was inevitable that once they were
1:07:28
Speaker 1: the largest voting block, polarization was going to be here
1:07:31
Speaker 1: to stay.
1:07:32
Speaker 4: No, Yeah, I mean it's a great setup for a question,
1:07:35
Speaker 4: and it is a great way to think about it and.
1:07:37
Speaker 2: To wind up, that's for sure. Yeah. And I thought
1:07:39
Speaker 2: about it in those very terms, and I'll I'll tell
1:07:42
Speaker 2: me about debunk it. Yeah. Yeah.
1:07:44
Speaker 4: So one important difference between the tumult then and the
1:07:48
Speaker 4: tumult now I can express in polling results. And you know,
1:07:51
Speaker 4: I spent a decade in my life pretending to be
1:07:53
Speaker 4: a year hanging out with some of the smartest pulses.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: Out By the way, one of the coolest things p
1:07:57
Speaker 1: was putting out. One of my favorite projects that they
1:07:59
Speaker 1: put out. It's the the typography results come out this Yay,
1:08:03
Speaker 1: I'm very feted.
1:08:04
Speaker 2: Anyway, go ahead.
1:08:05
Speaker 4: So there are questions that get at your underlying faith
1:08:10
Speaker 4: in core institutions and the system, and whether it's the government,
1:08:14
Speaker 4: whether it's a big business and all the rest. And
1:08:17
Speaker 4: some of those questions were asked back in the sixties
1:08:19
Speaker 4: and they've been asked.
1:08:20
Speaker 2: To this day.
1:08:20
Speaker 4: So you can do interesting comparisons and well throughout the sixties,
1:08:26
Speaker 4: throughout all the time aut that you describe assassinations, civil
1:08:29
Speaker 4: you know, riots, urban riots, the Andy Warton protests, et cetera,
1:08:33
Speaker 4: et cetera. More or less seventy five percent of public,
1:08:38
Speaker 4: including seventy five percent of boomers then teenagers or young adults, said, basically,
1:08:46
Speaker 4: the system is.
1:08:47
Speaker 2: Trying to do right by the American people.
1:08:49
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of us hate hate their policy
1:08:52
Speaker 4: if we can't stand the war, you know, civil righteous.
1:08:55
Speaker 1: What you're saying is they thought that the intentions were correct.
1:08:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, the underlying system was good. The piano work that
1:09:03
Speaker 4: we had laudsly piano players. Use any metaphor you want,
1:09:06
Speaker 4: but that described the coming of age worldview of my generation,
1:09:11
Speaker 4: the coming of a worldview of today's gen zers is
1:09:15
Speaker 4: it's all rigged. Certainly that's a worldview that Donald Trump
1:09:19
Speaker 4: and his supporters have embraced. So we're stuck now with
1:09:23
Speaker 4: a population old, too young that thinks it is all rigged.
1:09:29
Speaker 4: This is not a good situation now where I would
1:09:32
Speaker 4: full my generation and one of the chapters in this book,
1:09:36
Speaker 4: I went to my fifty fifth I went to Yale.
1:09:39
Speaker 4: I was a privileged I grew up middle class. But
1:09:42
Speaker 4: I you know, I describe myself as a pale male
1:09:45
Speaker 4: Stanle and Yale, and I don't have any to complain
1:09:47
Speaker 4: about it in my life. You know, the system has
1:09:49
Speaker 4: been rigged in favor of guys like me my whole life.
1:09:52
Speaker 2: And I get that. I and my class.
1:09:57
Speaker 4: I graduate from Yale in nineteen seventy, so I was
1:10:00
Speaker 4: college and the heat of the late sixties and all
1:10:02
Speaker 4: the craziness that went with it. And I believe pretty
1:10:06
Speaker 4: passionately as most of my classmates did in the civil
1:10:11
Speaker 4: rights movement, in the in the movement for individual freedoms,
1:10:14
Speaker 4: in gay rights and women's rights. I mean, I think
1:10:17
Speaker 4: this is to me, this is the proudest part of
1:10:19
Speaker 4: the boomer story.
1:10:20
Speaker 2: The most disappointing part of the boomer story, in my view,
1:10:23
Speaker 2: is that.
1:10:23
Speaker 4: Looking back now with the advantage of hindsight, we did
1:10:28
Speaker 4: undermine confidence in a lot of institutions because we thought
1:10:31
Speaker 4: they weren't working well.
1:10:34
Speaker 2: But what once we achieved our.
1:10:36
Speaker 4: Victories, what we failed to do, we failed to understand
1:10:38
Speaker 4: was really those institutions are guardians of the things that
1:10:42
Speaker 4: a society cares most about. They are the guardrails, They
1:10:46
Speaker 4: are the guardians. They instruct us for better and worse,
1:10:50
Speaker 4: and how we ought to live and how societies are
1:10:52
Speaker 4: to operate.
1:10:53
Speaker 2: And you know, the boomers I went.
1:10:57
Speaker 4: To college with were, or at least that we were
1:10:59
Speaker 4: very a very liberal group. But we never figured out
1:11:05
Speaker 4: that we needed to restore confidence and institutions.
1:11:07
Speaker 1: No, I hear that, But how many what percentage of
1:11:13
Speaker 1: boomers went to college?
1:11:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the other thing.
1:11:17
Speaker 1: Right, because you're now talking about a cohort that is
1:11:21
Speaker 1: a smaller percentage of a smaller percentage. It's not just college. Well,
1:11:24
Speaker 1: here's what I feel like college boomers, right, Like, that's
1:11:27
Speaker 1: a smaller subset.
1:11:29
Speaker 2: You're making another great point.
1:11:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, back then probably, but you know, probably only about
1:11:33
Speaker 4: a quarter of boomers went to college, and we're only
1:11:35
Speaker 4: up to thirty thirty five percent now. So there was
1:11:38
Speaker 4: a big social class distinction within the boomers.
1:11:41
Speaker 2: When people read.
1:11:42
Speaker 4: About the sixties, they read about my end of the
1:11:46
Speaker 4: boomer They read about the flower Children, the anti warp protesters,
1:11:50
Speaker 4: and all the rest, And we grabbed all the headline.
1:11:52
Speaker 4: We were Time Time, We were Time Magazine's Person of
1:11:56
Speaker 4: the Year, I think in nineteen sixty five, because the
1:11:59
Speaker 4: youth revolution was making itself, fell both in the culture sex, drugs.
1:12:02
Speaker 2: And rock and roll, in the women's movement, in the.
1:12:05
Speaker 4: Civil rights movement, and all the rest. But for every
1:12:10
Speaker 4: long haired you know, a flower child who was sitting
1:12:13
Speaker 4: in on the dean's office, there was a buzz cut
1:12:17
Speaker 4: Boomer waiting through the pattings of Vietnam. So there has
1:12:22
Speaker 4: always been this class distinction within the Boomer generates.
1:12:26
Speaker 2: True, the matter is, here's a tough quiz for you.
1:12:28
Speaker 4: You may be one of the few guys who can
1:12:30
Speaker 4: get close to the right answer. So Boomers had this
1:12:33
Speaker 4: reputation of being very liberal as they grew up. Boomers
1:12:36
Speaker 4: have now participated in fourteen presidential elections. The first one
1:12:40
Speaker 4: we were old enough to vote in was nineteen seventy two.
1:12:43
Speaker 4: The most recent one was a year and a half
1:12:46
Speaker 4: two years ago. Of those fourteen presidential elections, how many
1:12:50
Speaker 4: in how many of them did the Democratic nominee, whoever he.
1:12:54
Speaker 2: Was, win a majority of the boomer vote.
1:12:58
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess one, and that it was o'biden.
1:13:01
Speaker 2: Well, you got you. You're the first person I'd asked
1:13:03
Speaker 2: this question too.
1:13:03
Speaker 4: They got the number, right, you got the guy along
1:13:06
Speaker 4: Biden was closed. Jimmy Carter was the only one. And
1:13:12
Speaker 4: to be fair, Clinton got plurality. But but it was
1:13:15
Speaker 4: a three way raised both times he ran.
1:13:17
Speaker 2: So we never got to the reality.
1:13:19
Speaker 1: I thought Biden merely got it because you know, the
1:13:21
Speaker 1: other underrated you know you and I are talking here,
1:13:24
Speaker 1: is if boomers gave.
1:13:25
Speaker 2: Us Donald trumph.
1:13:26
Speaker 1: The irony is that the Trump's strongest generational demographic group
1:13:32
Speaker 1: is my generation, not yours.
1:13:33
Speaker 2: It's Jenicks.
1:13:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, and actually and actually, as you know, boom in
1:13:41
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, he made his greatest.
1:13:43
Speaker 2: Gains among the young. I mean right, The biggest thing
1:13:46
Speaker 2: is why he won.
1:13:48
Speaker 1: His Boomer numbers were not great.
1:13:49
Speaker 2: They were still a majority, but they were not great.
1:13:52
Speaker 2: That's right. So so it's it's to me it's not
1:13:55
Speaker 2: so well. Again, we have a society that.
1:14:03
Speaker 5: You know, you know, I'll give you another number that
1:14:05
Speaker 5: really really a Pew if you know, not only does
1:14:08
Speaker 5: a massive polling in this country, we Pew posed all
1:14:11
Speaker 5: over the world and periodically we asked fascinating questions and
1:14:15
Speaker 5: you get these global comparisons.
1:14:16
Speaker 4: So six months eight months ago, they asked the question,
1:14:20
Speaker 4: in twenty five country, what would you say about most
1:14:25
Speaker 4: of your fellow citizens? Are they most of them morally
1:14:29
Speaker 4: good or most of them morally bad. Of the twenty
1:14:34
Speaker 4: five countries tested, the United States was the only one
1:14:39
Speaker 4: where a majority of respondents said most of my fellow
1:14:43
Speaker 4: citizens are morally bad.
1:14:47
Speaker 2: Countries as disparate are neighbors. You know.
1:14:50
Speaker 4: In Mexico, eighty eight percent said most of my fellow citizens.
1:14:54
Speaker 2: Are morally good.
1:14:55
Speaker 4: And Canada Canada are fifty first Dake ninety two percent
1:14:59
Speaker 4: said most marley good. Japan, In the UK, Germany, you
1:15:05
Speaker 4: named the country.
1:15:14
Speaker 1: Were certain generations more likely to say we were morally
1:15:18
Speaker 1: bad versus Marley good.
1:15:19
Speaker 4: I think that one was across the board. I don't
1:15:22
Speaker 4: think there was a big generational cut on that one.
1:15:25
Speaker 4: But it goes to this sense that, you know, starting
1:15:30
Speaker 4: with the way we conduct our politics, which sort of
1:15:32
Speaker 4: chokes on its own bile, and the public square has
1:15:35
Speaker 4: just gotten so ugly. And again I go back, what
1:15:40
Speaker 4: are the roots of that? And I go back to
1:15:43
Speaker 4: I think some of it is political. There's this sense
1:15:46
Speaker 4: that we grew up with of entitlement. I mean, there
1:15:49
Speaker 4: was a triumphalism. You talked about it in nineteen eighty
1:15:53
Speaker 4: nine with the follow of the Berlin Wall, but there
1:15:55
Speaker 4: was actually a triumphalism as well in the fifties and sixties,
1:15:58
Speaker 4: coming out of the winning the most important war in
1:16:02
Speaker 4: my view, in human history, and singing the world from fascism.
1:16:07
Speaker 2: And the feeling and then this era of prosperity. The
1:16:10
Speaker 2: rest of the world was on his heels.
1:16:12
Speaker 4: America was an economic and political colossies. So we grow
1:16:16
Speaker 4: up with a feeling, and our parents raised us with
1:16:19
Speaker 4: the feeling. You were spared the horrors of the Great Depression,
1:16:22
Speaker 4: you were spared the horrors of the war it self,
1:16:24
Speaker 4: and now it's.
1:16:25
Speaker 2: All going to be great.
1:16:26
Speaker 1: Is this where American exceptionalism really gets born and sort
1:16:29
Speaker 1: of mutates a little bit you think.
1:16:32
Speaker 2: Yes, I think American exceptionalism has.
1:16:37
Speaker 4: Taken form really from the beginning, and I think the
1:16:41
Speaker 4: most extraordinary thing about American exceptionalism back you go back
1:16:46
Speaker 4: to two hundred and fifty years, so you certainly go
1:16:48
Speaker 4: back to the Constitution and the idea that we formed
1:16:52
Speaker 4: ourselves around the creed, around an idea which is a
1:16:55
Speaker 4: belief that all men or now we would say, oh,
1:16:57
Speaker 4: people are created people. We have never lived up to
1:17:01
Speaker 4: that creed, and part of the tragedy and glory and
1:17:06
Speaker 4: drama of America is distinct the distance between the beauty
1:17:11
Speaker 4: of that creed and the failure to reach it. But
1:17:14
Speaker 4: we're the only country in the history that started with
1:17:16
Speaker 4: that idea, and it's still the best idea we've ever had,
1:17:20
Speaker 4: anybody's ever.
1:17:21
Speaker 2: Had for a country.
1:17:22
Speaker 4: So it's I think it's taken different forms, and sometimes
1:17:26
Speaker 4: the patriotism, you know, turns in on itself and turns
1:17:29
Speaker 4: in on the world. But the other thing that that
1:17:35
Speaker 4: to me, is at the heart of American inceptionalism, and
1:17:40
Speaker 4: it's very much a part of current debate we're in
1:17:42
Speaker 4: right now, is our openness to people from Romario world.
1:17:45
Speaker 4: We were started by people who left the place because
1:17:48
Speaker 4: they wanted a better life, And two hundred and fifty
1:17:51
Speaker 4: years later, we as a country have received something like
1:17:56
Speaker 4: one hundred and ten million immigrants. There's no the country
1:18:00
Speaker 4: and the world that has received more than twelve or
1:18:03
Speaker 4: thirteen million immigrants. So even though there are some countries
1:18:06
Speaker 4: today that have a higher share of immigrants than we do,
1:18:09
Speaker 4: the incredible importance of the immigrant experience to this country,
1:18:15
Speaker 4: whether we're receiving it with open arms or we're having
1:18:18
Speaker 4: a backlash to it, and we've gone through those cycles
1:18:20
Speaker 4: and we're in the middle of one now.
1:18:23
Speaker 2: To me, that is as close to the heart and
1:18:26
Speaker 2: the idea.
1:18:27
Speaker 4: It's the diversity that comes with that, the energy that
1:18:30
Speaker 4: comes with that, and the challenges that.
1:18:31
Speaker 2: Come with that.
1:18:33
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting about there are our story as
1:18:36
Speaker 1: a nation of immigrants, is how much actually our history
1:18:39
Speaker 1: indicates we've been fighting that we've had that. It's to me,
1:18:44
Speaker 1: it's the through line tension the entire two and out
1:18:47
Speaker 1: of fifty years, which is we believe anybody can be
1:18:51
Speaker 1: an American, and yet we're constantly arguing about who gets
1:18:53
Speaker 1: to be an American.
1:18:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you're absolutely right, and you can you can
1:18:59
Speaker 4: you can go back to the know nothings, you can
1:19:01
Speaker 4: go back to the KKK, you can go back to
1:19:04
Speaker 4: moments in our history where the immigration just got to
1:19:08
Speaker 4: be too much and you had very serious political and
1:19:11
Speaker 4: economic backlashes.
1:19:13
Speaker 2: And certainly the Trump era is the latest chapter in that.
1:19:19
Speaker 4: I withdraw a distinction between the modern era immigration, which
1:19:23
Speaker 4: basically begins in the middle of that revolutionary nineteen sixties,
1:19:27
Speaker 4: when all the.
1:19:27
Speaker 2: Civil rights legislation was passing all the rest.
1:19:31
Speaker 1: And we change, I mean, we did open the doors more.
1:19:33
Speaker 2: We opened the door. We had clubs them in the
1:19:35
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties and reacted, and we did open them.
1:19:37
Speaker 1: I mean, the biggest change we made an immigration policy
1:19:39
Speaker 1: in this country is in the sixties, not in nineteen
1:19:41
Speaker 1: eighty six.
1:19:42
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty five.
1:19:44
Speaker 4: And so we have so a brief history and numbers up,
1:19:50
Speaker 4: you know, our entire history up to nineteen sixty five,
1:19:53
Speaker 4: America received about thirty two million immigrants over one hundred
1:19:57
Speaker 4: and fifty years. Ninety percent of them were white Europeans. Okay,
1:20:02
Speaker 4: in the modern era, since opening reopening our doors, having
1:20:05
Speaker 4: closed them through much of the middle of the twentieth century,
1:20:10
Speaker 4: In the last sixty years, since nineteen sixty five, we've
1:20:13
Speaker 4: received seventy two million.
1:20:15
Speaker 2: Immigrants, nine to ten of whom are non white.
1:20:19
Speaker 4: So they mostly come from Latin America and Asia, with
1:20:23
Speaker 4: a smattering of Africa and the Middle East, the Caribbean, etc.
1:20:26
Speaker 2: That is a big, big change, and it has.
1:20:30
Speaker 4: Taken a racial tatmstry that for most of our history
1:20:34
Speaker 4: was black and white and turned it into a coat
1:20:37
Speaker 4: of many colors. And it has produced a generation of
1:20:42
Speaker 4: young adults who are now, many of them the children
1:20:45
Speaker 4: of this wave of immigrants, the grandchildren now of this
1:20:48
Speaker 4: wave of immigrants, who have a different you know, the
1:20:52
Speaker 4: aspirational metaphor of our country for most of these centuries
1:20:56
Speaker 4: of immigration was melting pot.
1:20:59
Speaker 2: What you may have grown up with, what I grew
1:21:01
Speaker 2: up with. That's the beauty of America. People come from
1:21:03
Speaker 2: all over, we welcome them with open or.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: We eventually all look alike, and they.
1:21:08
Speaker 4: Give up their old language, they give up their old ways,
1:21:11
Speaker 4: and we're all Americans. And that is the genius today's young,
1:21:18
Speaker 4: don't you know. They don't aspire to them, but they
1:21:20
Speaker 4: don't want everybody to be like everybody else. They celebrate
1:21:25
Speaker 4: the beauty and the difference is a better metaphor for
1:21:27
Speaker 4: them is mosaic.
1:21:30
Speaker 2: It's mosaic racially, it's mosaic in.
1:21:32
Speaker 4: Terms of general gender identity, and there is no question
1:21:37
Speaker 4: that is a powerful and beautiful metaphor.
1:21:41
Speaker 2: Where I worry about these kids, however.
1:21:45
Speaker 4: Is they don't seem to appreciate that a mosaic needs
1:21:48
Speaker 4: more than that is, more than the sum of its
1:21:50
Speaker 4: beautiful pieces.
1:21:51
Speaker 2: The mosaic needs glue.
1:21:53
Speaker 4: And what we don't have, what they don't have, and
1:21:57
Speaker 4: I think even some older adults are losing is the
1:21:59
Speaker 4: sense what is what minds us together as a nation well?
1:22:05
Speaker 4: And have the thing of that happened.
1:22:09
Speaker 1: Let me get at one of to me your challenges,
1:22:12
Speaker 1: I think in this argument, and I say this, when
1:22:14
Speaker 1: I say your challenges, I'm saying your generation's challenges in
1:22:17
Speaker 1: this I think it's safe to say the following that
1:22:22
Speaker 1: the baby boomer's generation will be the last sort of
1:22:28
Speaker 1: generation to experience America as a single culture. And I
1:22:35
Speaker 1: think boomers still see America as a singular as sort
1:22:39
Speaker 1: of more of a single culture or certainly and and
1:22:44
Speaker 1: what you describe at the mosaic, I totally agree with right,
1:22:47
Speaker 1: And in some ways gen X we are definitely got
1:22:50
Speaker 1: more in common with boomers than we do with millennials.
1:22:53
Speaker 1: There's a sharp divide right. In fact, there's quite a
1:22:56
Speaker 1: few millennials who have boomer parents, right because Gen X
1:23:00
Speaker 1: waited so long to have kids. We're produced we you know,
1:23:04
Speaker 1: we produced the mostly the the the gen Z you know,
1:23:09
Speaker 1: some some millennial younger millennials, but mostly Gen Z. And
1:23:16
Speaker 1: I wonder if this that's a huge disconnect, that you
1:23:20
Speaker 1: have this one aging generation that is used to us
1:23:24
Speaker 1: basically a monoculture, and we have that now Gen Z
1:23:28
Speaker 1: and millennials together are more than half the electorate combined,
1:23:32
Speaker 1: and they see an entirely different culture. I mean, doesn't
1:23:35
Speaker 1: that explain the culture clash?
1:23:38
Speaker 4: You know, it's an It's an intriguing way to look
1:23:44
Speaker 4: at it. I'm going to have to confess to being
1:23:48
Speaker 4: kind of a hopeless American chauviness.
1:23:52
Speaker 2: I do. I do think that.
1:23:54
Speaker 1: I I share that, I share that with you, but God, I.
1:23:58
Speaker 4: Hope my number are really not to get too carried away.
1:24:02
Speaker 4: I believe in American exceptionalism for reasons. We've talked about it,
1:24:06
Speaker 4: and I think.
1:24:07
Speaker 2: That uh, nowhere in the world that I'm aware of.
1:24:11
Speaker 2: But I don't pretend to be.
1:24:12
Speaker 4: You know, we're a great world travel but the essence
1:24:16
Speaker 4: of individual.
1:24:17
Speaker 6: Liberty is just so powerful here, and it fuels our energy,
1:24:25
Speaker 6: It fuels our culture, it fuels our fuels, our economy.
1:24:29
Speaker 2: It can get teared away with itself.
1:24:30
Speaker 4: It can lead lead to these fractures that we're experiencing
1:24:33
Speaker 4: and can lead to this sort of capitalism on steroids.
1:24:36
Speaker 4: And we've gone through these periods before and they don't
1:24:39
Speaker 4: work out well, and we usually have a reaction against them.
1:24:42
Speaker 2: Right now, it's a right wing reaction. Maybe it'll turn
1:24:44
Speaker 2: into a left wing reaction. But I think.
1:24:46
Speaker 4: Underlying all that the energy that comes from our creed.
1:24:51
Speaker 4: We're not a blood and soil nation. Most most nations
1:24:54
Speaker 4: are blood and soil nations. We are a credal nation. Uh.
1:24:59
Speaker 4: It's the most power full creed out there. So I
1:25:02
Speaker 4: don't think that's going to disappear. And I what forms
1:25:05
Speaker 4: it takes.
1:25:07
Speaker 2: I don't know.
1:25:08
Speaker 4: And if I told you that I think everything's gonna
1:25:11
Speaker 4: be okay tomorrow, be kidding myself and you.
1:25:14
Speaker 2: I think we got a long way to go. I
1:25:15
Speaker 2: think a lot of damage has been done.
1:25:18
Speaker 4: But you know, I mean I read about I read
1:25:23
Speaker 4: about this a little bit in this book, and I,
1:25:27
Speaker 4: you know, I during the years I was a political
1:25:29
Speaker 4: reporter David Broder kind of the dean, you know, a great.
1:25:33
Speaker 2: Institution, and it was it was a privilege and a
1:25:38
Speaker 2: joy to being on a political staff with him.
1:25:40
Speaker 4: And one of the things he told us underlings was,
1:25:43
Speaker 4: you know, you're out there on the campaign trail, you're
1:25:46
Speaker 4: on the campaign bus.
1:25:47
Speaker 2: You're in a bubble.
1:25:49
Speaker 4: Get yourself off the bus, find a play, find a time,
1:25:52
Speaker 4: and just take twenty four to forty eight hours and
1:25:55
Speaker 4: go find a middle class, working class neighborhood somewhere. You know,
1:26:00
Speaker 4: it seems like it's a it's a swing swing neighborhood
1:26:03
Speaker 4: innes swing district.
1:26:04
Speaker 7: Can just spend the day or two knocking on doors
1:26:06
Speaker 7: and asking people what they think that And I did
1:26:09
Speaker 7: that for campaign after campaign, you know, in the mostly
1:26:13
Speaker 7: in the eighties and early nineties. And it left an
1:26:16
Speaker 7: impression on me that I fold to this day, because
1:26:19
Speaker 7: you would, you know, I'd be standing outside and knock
1:26:23
Speaker 7: and if somebody.
1:26:24
Speaker 4: Comes, and I'm on the other side of the screen door.
1:26:26
Speaker 4: And I introduced myself fall Taler. I'm a reporter from
1:26:29
Speaker 4: the Washington Post, and we're covering the Senate campaign, governor's campaign,
1:26:33
Speaker 4: and president of primary, whatever it was. And it is
1:26:35
Speaker 4: out there talking to folks about, you know, what they
1:26:37
Speaker 4: think about what's going on, and inevitably, the person not inevitably,
1:26:42
Speaker 4: but very often the person on the other end of
1:26:44
Speaker 4: the side of the screams, buddy, you come to the
1:26:47
Speaker 4: wrong playing.
1:26:48
Speaker 2: We don't give a crap about politics. I mean you know,
1:26:50
Speaker 2: I mean, we don't pay any attention. That's all they're
1:26:52
Speaker 2: all about it.
1:26:53
Speaker 1: You're like, no, no, that's exactly what I want to hear.
1:26:55
Speaker 2: Right, that's why.
1:26:56
Speaker 4: So if you have the skill, then you developed pudents
1:26:59
Speaker 4: and get past that initial organ.
1:27:01
Speaker 2: That's fine, I got it.
1:27:03
Speaker 4: Okay, let's just talk about your community, what's going on
1:27:05
Speaker 4: in your life. Well, you get that the initial resistance
1:27:09
Speaker 4: and people want to tell their story.
1:27:11
Speaker 2: That's what keeps people like you and be in business. Right,
1:27:13
Speaker 2: that's right?
1:27:14
Speaker 4: And and uh that those conversations led me to a
1:27:20
Speaker 4: pretty good feeling.
1:27:22
Speaker 2: About who Americans are. That are they are? They?
1:27:26
Speaker 4: Are they well informed on me all the issues of
1:27:28
Speaker 4: the day, often not?
1:27:30
Speaker 2: Are they misimported me? Yes? Often? Are? They? Are?
1:27:33
Speaker 4: They pragmatic people who just want to really solved problems
1:27:37
Speaker 4: because they know it's in their interest to work with
1:27:40
Speaker 4: other people.
1:27:41
Speaker 2: Actually, yes, they are. That was the America. So I
1:27:48
Speaker 2: think we are a good indecent people.
1:27:50
Speaker 4: I am appalled by the values represented, not just not
1:27:56
Speaker 4: just by Trump, but but to some degree by the
1:27:59
Speaker 4: whole political thoughts that has to react to Trump.
1:28:01
Speaker 2: And it's it seemed to.
1:28:02
Speaker 4: Me, we we hear it, the journalists, it's the Democrats
1:28:05
Speaker 4: and Republicans, everybody we go to have the same goddamn sinkhole,
1:28:09
Speaker 4: and it just we.
1:28:10
Speaker 2: Choke out our own bile.
1:28:12
Speaker 4: I still believe, however, that you you talk to most people,
1:28:16
Speaker 4: and even if you think they're Trump crazy or they.
1:28:18
Speaker 2: Think you know, you get yeah, past the first beer
1:28:22
Speaker 2: and you talk stuff, you get somewhere. Now. It's true
1:28:26
Speaker 2: you always do that. America is still there.
1:28:29
Speaker 4: And I think I think, you know, the old Marxist
1:28:31
Speaker 4: Lennon's Leonard is revolutionary. The worse it gets, the better
1:28:34
Speaker 4: it gains, because the revolution is gonna come. I think
1:28:37
Speaker 4: in terms of reacting to the way we conduct ourselves
1:28:40
Speaker 4: as the people, I think people are just appalled by it,
1:28:43
Speaker 4: and they yearn for something. I would like to believe
1:28:47
Speaker 4: that you should be on the progressive left. But but
1:28:51
Speaker 4: I would like to believe that the next wave of politics,
1:28:53
Speaker 4: whether we see it in five months or in two years,
1:28:57
Speaker 4: is a reaction to the way we're doing our politics now.
1:29:00
Speaker 2: So there's another.
1:29:03
Speaker 1: Simple fact that I say about boomers that is literally
1:29:10
Speaker 1: a curiosity. Which is the biggest change that will happen
1:29:14
Speaker 1: when then the boomers age out of voting, is we
1:29:17
Speaker 1: will lose the last generation in America that lived in
1:29:20
Speaker 1: segregated America. Yeah, And I think that is more than
1:29:25
Speaker 1: just a symbolic thing that changes. I think that when
1:29:32
Speaker 1: the memory of segregation is no longer alive, that the
1:29:39
Speaker 1: memory is literally in history books and is amongst the dead,
1:29:44
Speaker 1: I think that changes us a bit on race. I'm
1:29:48
Speaker 1: not saying it's going to solve all of the problems,
1:29:52
Speaker 1: but I do think it means we take another leap
1:29:55
Speaker 1: in the in the more perfect union direction, right that
1:29:59
Speaker 1: some times you have to sort of you know, I mean,
1:30:04
Speaker 1: I think about this all the time Paul I was
1:30:06
Speaker 1: within you know, I started elementary school public schools in
1:30:10
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven in Miami, Florida, and I'd been just
1:30:15
Speaker 1: born seven years sooner six years sooner i'd have been
1:30:20
Speaker 1: going probably bust or in a segregated you know, Miami
1:30:23
Speaker 1: was still as sid I always say, I was born
1:30:25
Speaker 1: in Miami, and I graduated high school in Miami. I mean,
1:30:28
Speaker 1: you know, it was still it was a southern city first,
1:30:32
Speaker 1: and that's a big thing. And yet that's only a
1:30:34
Speaker 1: couple of years different, right, I was only a few
1:30:36
Speaker 1: years removed from when a majority of the South still
1:30:39
Speaker 1: went to segregated schools, and that that will have a
1:30:42
Speaker 1: transformational impact on us. I'm just not sure, but I
1:30:46
Speaker 1: think it'll be one of those it's like it's like,
1:30:50
Speaker 1: oh my god, an earthquake's not happening, you know what
1:30:52
Speaker 1: I mean, It's something like that. It may not be felt.
1:30:55
Speaker 1: It'll just be Oh, have you noticed we're not as
1:30:59
Speaker 1: racially polarized anymore? Yeah, I think maybe I'm being Polyanna.
1:31:03
Speaker 2: No, I think you're right.
1:31:04
Speaker 8: I I think it's it's it's it's hard for anybody
1:31:08
Speaker 8: in that in that conversation around race just take a
1:31:13
Speaker 8: step back and the knowledge, holy shit, we've made a
1:31:16
Speaker 8: lot of progress.
1:31:16
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel that way because they're you know.
1:31:19
Speaker 1: But boil it ain't it ain't right yet, and it
1:31:22
Speaker 1: ain't right yet, but it is certainly better than it
1:31:25
Speaker 1: was right.
1:31:26
Speaker 2: And you can you can say the same thing about
1:31:28
Speaker 2: Willmen's right. You can say the same thing about gay rights.
1:31:30
Speaker 2: You can say the same thing about.
1:31:31
Speaker 1: The same We're all better, it is all better, and it.
1:31:35
Speaker 2: Is still and isn't that?
1:31:37
Speaker 4: Isn't that the nature of change when it happens, It
1:31:39
Speaker 4: happens too fast for some and not fast enough for others.
1:31:43
Speaker 2: You know, there's a there's a line.
1:31:44
Speaker 4: I caught it the books, you know, stuck between two worlds,
1:31:47
Speaker 4: you know, one day the other powerless to be born.
1:31:50
Speaker 2: We we are moving towards something again.
1:31:53
Speaker 4: The likes of which you know when when when I
1:31:55
Speaker 4: talked about the diversity and the credle nation. We are
1:31:59
Speaker 4: en route to big coming, something that no nation in
1:32:02
Speaker 4: history has ever been, including our nation. We are en
1:32:05
Speaker 4: route to becoming a country in which no single group,
1:32:09
Speaker 4: no single demographic group, is in the majority. Uh and
1:32:13
Speaker 4: yet everyone in every group, and it is multi racial,
1:32:18
Speaker 4: it is multi ethnic.
1:32:19
Speaker 2: And and at least we.
1:32:21
Speaker 4: Like to say that everyone in every group has an
1:32:24
Speaker 4: you know, has an equal shot in the economic opportunity,
1:32:27
Speaker 4: an individual agency to be whoever he or she wants
1:32:30
Speaker 4: to be uh, you know, and and an economic opportunity
1:32:35
Speaker 4: that is a hard thing to pull off.
1:32:38
Speaker 2: No nation has ever pulled it off. We are trying.
1:32:43
Speaker 4: And uh, I like, you know, I actually in that sense,
1:32:47
Speaker 4: I would put my money on the rising generation of kids.
1:32:51
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, And and but boy, it would be helped.
1:32:56
Speaker 2: They would help themselves.
1:32:58
Speaker 4: They would help themselves if they if they understood that
1:33:00
Speaker 4: they are actually the latest embodiment of this exceptions there,
1:33:05
Speaker 4: they are who they are, and they're living the lines.
1:33:08
Speaker 4: They can lead because they're in the country that has
1:33:11
Speaker 4: been trying to do this and get this right for
1:33:13
Speaker 4: a children and fifty years.
1:33:23
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the boomers versus everybody else.
1:33:26
Speaker 2: Why did it take so long?
1:33:28
Speaker 1: Why why has it taken so long to push boomers
1:33:33
Speaker 1: out of leadership? Boomers, we're very aggressive and pushing older
1:33:37
Speaker 1: people out of leadership. You know, where did my Where
1:33:40
Speaker 1: did I?
1:33:40
Speaker 2: Where did I go wrong? In Gen X?
1:33:42
Speaker 1: I always said, I think we were too accommodating. Where
1:33:45
Speaker 1: did the millennials go wrong? In some ways they look
1:33:48
Speaker 1: at they've just pushed us out of the way. Well,
1:33:50
Speaker 1: if you're not going to get them out, we're going
1:33:52
Speaker 1: to get them out. I mean, what's your what's your well?
1:33:55
Speaker 1: I think you come to start with your numbers. I mean,
1:33:57
Speaker 1: you know that was the baby boom is a devil.
1:34:00
Speaker 2: Graphically named generation.
1:34:01
Speaker 4: And there's never been there's never been a demographic blip
1:34:06
Speaker 4: like this. So you started in nineteen forty six. World
1:34:09
Speaker 4: War two has just ended. We won, the jedis come home. Hey, hey, hey,
1:34:13
Speaker 4: things are great. Let's make a.
1:34:15
Speaker 2: Lot of babies. And they made a lot of babies.
1:34:17
Speaker 4: So for those eighteen years, which is the general boundary
1:34:21
Speaker 4: that people used, nineteen forty six to nineteen sixty four,
1:34:25
Speaker 4: the typical woman in America had three babies before that.
1:34:30
Speaker 4: It was two since then. And by the way, so
1:34:33
Speaker 4: it's started, there was a specific start time the other
1:34:35
Speaker 4: of World War two. And by the way, there was
1:34:37
Speaker 4: a pretty specific end time, which was the introduction of
1:34:41
Speaker 4: the birth control pill, where the game easier not to
1:34:43
Speaker 4: have babies. Then a long comes to the women's rights
1:34:47
Speaker 4: movements and all sorts of other changes, and it turned
1:34:49
Speaker 4: out a lot of women, once they had their own
1:34:51
Speaker 4: economic agency, didn't necessarily want to have kids, ores medic kids.
1:34:56
Speaker 4: We are now down to about one point five point six,
1:35:00
Speaker 4: I mean, birth rates are falling all over the world.
1:35:03
Speaker 2: It's probably the same thing.
1:35:04
Speaker 1: Now we're going to need We're probably going to need
1:35:06
Speaker 1: financial stimulus to incentivize childbirth.
1:35:10
Speaker 4: Well, financial stimulus has never worked. People all over the
1:35:14
Speaker 4: world have tried it. It doesn't get the job done.
1:35:17
Speaker 2: I are you. I'm just saying I think that's coming. Next.
1:35:19
Speaker 1: Well, here's the way I would here. Look, it's a
1:35:22
Speaker 1: way to I look at it this way. I think
1:35:24
Speaker 1: universal childcare is something that you can that is I
1:35:30
Speaker 1: think a benefit that young parents need and I think
1:35:34
Speaker 1: if you want to be a working parent, you kind
1:35:36
Speaker 1: of need it.
1:35:36
Speaker 2: So if you're going to try.
1:35:38
Speaker 1: To make a baby boom happen, you better have the
1:35:41
Speaker 1: infrastructure available to handle a baby boom.
1:35:46
Speaker 2: And that's where I think is going to be the
1:35:48
Speaker 2: place to start. Well, listen, you can get it. Then
1:35:50
Speaker 2: into the whole argument.
1:35:51
Speaker 4: Well, to go back to your initial question, why have
1:35:54
Speaker 4: the boomers held power for so long?
1:35:57
Speaker 2: I think you startless your numbers. I mean that in
1:36:01
Speaker 2: politics and in the economy, sheer numbers, uh make a
1:36:05
Speaker 2: huge difference.
1:36:06
Speaker 4: Now we get to this, Now we get to this
1:36:08
Speaker 4: upside down the demographic chart.
1:36:10
Speaker 2: We had a lot of.
1:36:11
Speaker 4: Old people, people are living longer, and our right bloom
1:36:14
Speaker 4: of Cobourg is the picking up pipeon is now all
1:36:16
Speaker 4: drawing Social Security, which is going to run out of money,
1:36:19
Speaker 4: and we don't have enough workers to pay for the
1:36:21
Speaker 4: retiree So that is a problem. Uh, there are probably
1:36:26
Speaker 4: there are financial fixes to that. Unfortunately, what we've done
1:36:29
Speaker 4: is we've we've pushed that problem down the road. So
1:36:31
Speaker 4: we boomers and this to me is the greatest civic
1:36:34
Speaker 4: sin that we have committed.
1:36:35
Speaker 2: We're gonna go to the end.
1:36:37
Speaker 4: Getting our full benefits, and our kids and our grandkids
1:36:40
Speaker 4: are paying regressive taxes to pay for Social Security benefits
1:36:44
Speaker 4: and Medicare benefits that they themselves won't have.
1:36:46
Speaker 1: Well, you know what it could happen is that there
1:36:48
Speaker 1: could be a political revolution where they just tax the
1:36:51
Speaker 1: shit out of boomer wealth their Paul.
1:36:54
Speaker 4: I would, I would, But they're not going to do
1:36:56
Speaker 4: it because they want through it.
1:36:59
Speaker 1: We know, the death tax is one of the most
1:37:00
Speaker 1: brilliantly constructed phrase political phrases of all time.
1:37:04
Speaker 2: You know.
1:37:05
Speaker 4: So, but to your question, to your musings about how
1:37:08
Speaker 4: what would take to ignite another baby boom, let's bring
1:37:12
Speaker 4: another subject in And I'm no expert on it, but
1:37:14
Speaker 4: like everybody else fascinated by it.
1:37:16
Speaker 2: Uh Ai.
1:37:18
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean, I mean, do we need more
1:37:20
Speaker 4: workers or or five years, ten years down the road,
1:37:23
Speaker 4: or the robot's gonna be doing all the work any anyway.
1:37:26
Speaker 4: I mean, I think we're in the cusp of that
1:37:28
Speaker 4: revolution that we barely understand. But it is moving at
1:37:32
Speaker 4: warp speed, uh and it's gonna it.
1:37:35
Speaker 2: Will take us to places that I can barely imagine.
1:37:38
Speaker 2: But I, as someone who tends.
1:37:40
Speaker 4: To be a class half full guy, this one scares.
1:37:43
Speaker 2: The shit out of me quite frankly.
1:37:45
Speaker 4: Uh. In partly because what it's what it may do
1:37:48
Speaker 4: to human relationships is more and more young adults. You
1:37:50
Speaker 4: read these stories of young adults, we're pretty depressed, pretty isolated,
1:37:55
Speaker 4: and they're not forming families that are having romances. They're
1:37:59
Speaker 4: getting fairly deep attached to their favorite robot.
1:38:03
Speaker 1: Are American boomers different from European boomers?
1:38:07
Speaker 2: I think there are a lot of similarities.
1:38:10
Speaker 4: But I think that that that that.
1:38:13
Speaker 2: That self regard the me me meaning it's all about me.
1:38:19
Speaker 4: I think that is a particularly American version of the
1:38:24
Speaker 4: boomer experience. And again, I think it's reflective of the triumphalism. Uh,
1:38:28
Speaker 4: the America of the fifties in which we were raised.
1:38:31
Speaker 1: And you know, you're basically saying that the entire generation
1:38:37
Speaker 1: was raised to be narcissistic.
1:38:39
Speaker 4: No, I mean, listen, first of all, let's let's strap
1:38:42
Speaker 4: back generalizations about generations.
1:38:45
Speaker 2: I know we are not.
1:38:48
Speaker 1: I used to joke with Brokaw all the time. You
1:38:50
Speaker 1: get to write about the greatest generation, Can I write
1:38:52
Speaker 1: about yours calling it the shittiest generation?
1:38:55
Speaker 2: Right?
1:38:56
Speaker 4: But but but but you know, as look, you know,
1:39:01
Speaker 4: not all Texans are alike, not all New Yorkers are alike,
1:39:04
Speaker 4: not our friends are like. There as many differences within
1:39:07
Speaker 4: as a crossing a monk. But yes, if you if
1:39:10
Speaker 4: you look at the full cohort and you and you
1:39:13
Speaker 4: do the analyzes, and I can do them with numbers
1:39:15
Speaker 4: and survey results and all the rest.
1:39:18
Speaker 2: It is a fair generalization. We're not all narcissistic, but
1:39:22
Speaker 2: our generation is and has been.
1:39:25
Speaker 1: Sorry, I said, I want to pivot a little bit
1:39:28
Speaker 1: to if when people dig into your reporting career, you
1:39:31
Speaker 1: know it is no you were you are. This is
1:39:34
Speaker 1: one of those things, right, we all have I always joke,
1:39:36
Speaker 1: we all have things that we've done in our career
1:39:38
Speaker 1: at some point that will make it into our obituaries.
1:39:40
Speaker 1: You were the guy that asked Gary Hart if he
1:39:43
Speaker 1: had committed adultery. Yeah, from that moment, the way Americans
1:39:51
Speaker 1: processed character in politics has gone through all sorts of
1:39:56
Speaker 1: different different ways that we've processed character in politics. And
1:40:02
Speaker 1: when you've decided what is a moral sin and what
1:40:05
Speaker 1: is it all?
1:40:05
Speaker 4: Yeah?
1:40:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you look at Graham Platner, is there a
1:40:09
Speaker 1: straight line between Gary Hart and Graham Platner?
1:40:12
Speaker 2: Is there a way? I mean?
1:40:14
Speaker 1: And look, I think the question you asked, here's what
1:40:18
Speaker 1: I always people ask, well, what's fair game? Well, I'm like, ultimately,
1:40:23
Speaker 1: do the American voter anything can be fair game because
1:40:25
Speaker 1: every voter has a slightly different view. And I happen
1:40:29
Speaker 1: to think character matters a lot. Some people think character
1:40:33
Speaker 1: matters some right, Like we all have our different where
1:40:36
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a secret ballot for a reason. But
1:40:39
Speaker 1: I'm curious your take, you know, from Gary Heart to
1:40:41
Speaker 1: Grand Platiner, both from the press perspective, voter perspective, and
1:40:46
Speaker 1: cultural perspective.
1:40:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. You won't be surprised to
1:40:51
Speaker 2: hear that. Yeah, I thought about that very thing. I have.
1:40:55
Speaker 4: My closest childhood friend is a main Air Lindsen name.
1:40:58
Speaker 4: He's a platinum supporter. Character character matters. But I think
1:41:04
Speaker 4: you framed it exactly right. Every American has has his
1:41:07
Speaker 4: or her right to determine what part of the character matters,
1:41:11
Speaker 4: and how do you make that judge, and how you
1:41:13
Speaker 4: judge private personal behavior in terms of its impact on
1:41:17
Speaker 4: public behavior, and what kind of steward you're going to be.
1:41:21
Speaker 4: You know, when when I think back about the Gary
1:41:24
Speaker 4: Hart episode, the thing that always I was always surprised by,
1:41:29
Speaker 4: never fully understood, was why Hart even after his peccadillo
1:41:34
Speaker 4: was exposed by the Miami Herald and then in follow
1:41:37
Speaker 4: up reporting. Yeah, I asked the fairly aggressive set of
1:41:40
Speaker 4: questions when he seemed to be denying that anything untoward
1:41:43
Speaker 4: had happened, and I kind of hit him with the
1:41:46
Speaker 4: adultering question and that no question. That became a very
1:41:50
Speaker 4: powerful moment, the more so because seven or eight hours
1:41:53
Speaker 4: after I asked that question, he dropped out of the race.
1:41:55
Speaker 2: So it became Okay, I guess at the moment, it
1:41:58
Speaker 2: was I guess we can't.
1:42:01
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, Well, it's it's now thirty and forty years later,
1:42:05
Speaker 4: and we've had two pretty infamous adulterers in the office
1:42:09
Speaker 4: in Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
1:42:11
Speaker 2: So so that wasn't and that wasn't the right.
1:42:14
Speaker 4: Take my sense then and my sense now thirty some
1:42:19
Speaker 4: years almost forty years later, was Heart had plenty of
1:42:24
Speaker 4: room to acknowledge his his imperfections, to say to his family,
1:42:32
Speaker 4: to his supporters, to his country, Look, I'm not a
1:42:35
Speaker 4: perfect man.
1:42:35
Speaker 2: I screwed up. I made some mistakes. I'm gonna do.
1:42:39
Speaker 4: We know that.
1:42:40
Speaker 2: We know that speech.
1:42:41
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, Heart couldn't bring himself to go down
1:42:46
Speaker 1: defensive Heart, nobody had ever given that speech before.
1:42:50
Speaker 2: Well, I think, yeah, you know, that's that's a fair point.
1:42:54
Speaker 4: And I think then what we get to is we
1:42:56
Speaker 4: are you know, that's still younger, that's still in an
1:42:59
Speaker 4: age where where character does become a lynchpin around where
1:43:05
Speaker 4: people make their decisions about political figures, and that I
1:43:09
Speaker 4: think has everythingthing to do with it. We were then
1:43:11
Speaker 4: about two generations into the television era, where politicians began
1:43:15
Speaker 4: to present themselves as whole human beings and appeal to
1:43:18
Speaker 4: themselves that way. So if they're putting their characters sort
1:43:22
Speaker 4: of front and center in their campaigns.
1:43:25
Speaker 2: The press and the public at large, I think is
1:43:27
Speaker 2: going to be curious about those. In any case, he
1:43:30
Speaker 2: didn't go he didn't go down that route.
1:43:33
Speaker 4: Four years later, Bill Clinton hit with the Jennifer Flowers thing,
1:43:37
Speaker 4: you know, did go down that route, and he had
1:43:39
Speaker 4: a supportive wife and and on he went.
1:43:43
Speaker 2: So here we are now.
1:43:46
Speaker 4: With with Graham Plattner, who I'm he He has made
1:43:51
Speaker 4: an effort to say I screwed up.
1:43:54
Speaker 2: I was really messed up after I got back from Afghanistan.
1:43:58
Speaker 9: I'm not proud of the guy who that was, But
1:44:02
Speaker 9: I'm a better man today, and we're gonna by tonight
1:44:06
Speaker 9: will have some initial verdict as to.
1:44:08
Speaker 2: How there goes down.
1:44:10
Speaker 4: I have a lot of confidence in the common sense
1:44:12
Speaker 4: of the American public on that I don't I personally
1:44:16
Speaker 4: haven't followed closely enough to have a judgment. But Maine,
1:44:19
Speaker 4: the one thing I like about this situation is main
1:44:22
Speaker 4: is kind of a big small town, you know, Maine.
1:44:25
Speaker 2: Everybody kind of.
1:44:26
Speaker 4: Knows everybody, and I think almost all Maniers have had
1:44:29
Speaker 4: to kind of mull over the Grand Platner story, and
1:44:32
Speaker 4: they've had a few months and now with the latest round,
1:44:35
Speaker 4: so I have another four months and maybe haven't they
1:44:39
Speaker 4: and I don't. There's no there, you know, I think
1:44:42
Speaker 4: this is one of these things where there's no right
1:44:44
Speaker 4: or wrong answer. I will I will go with the
1:44:48
Speaker 4: American public on it, and then I always get it right,
1:44:51
Speaker 4: and again I think a dividay, I'm not getting it right.
1:44:54
Speaker 2: I go back to Donald Trump. This is not a
1:44:57
Speaker 2: man of good character.
1:44:58
Speaker 4: And he's never made any particular ever to hide the
1:45:01
Speaker 4: fact that he's not a man of good character, and
1:45:04
Speaker 4: for reasons that I I still struggle to understand, quite frankly,
1:45:08
Speaker 4: because I am such a fan of the American public.
1:45:10
Speaker 4: Uh and uh, the power of his populist appeal has
1:45:16
Speaker 4: been such for a decade now, or even all but
1:45:19
Speaker 4: his rabbit supporters.
1:45:20
Speaker 2: Maybe his rabbit supporters don't.
1:45:22
Speaker 10: Don't see the full Donald Trump, but that there are
1:45:25
Speaker 10: a lot of people who get it with Donald Trump.
1:45:27
Speaker 10: There's something off about this guy, and he doesn't ever,
1:45:30
Speaker 10: he's kind of pathologically committed to not telling the truth.
1:45:34
Speaker 2: But there's he's our guy, and and and we've been
1:45:37
Speaker 2: screwed over by the system.
1:45:39
Speaker 1: And yeah, the best the best explanation I I sort
1:45:44
Speaker 1: of simmaran is the public thinks it's the whole system
1:45:50
Speaker 1: is corrupt, and he's at least honest about his corruption.
1:45:53
Speaker 1: It's about the best explanation I got.
1:45:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what. But yeah, I would. I don't know
1:46:00
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. His sense of grieving and some.
1:46:04
Speaker 4: Strange guy, you know, given given the advantages in life
1:46:07
Speaker 4: that he was born into, he has an enormous sense
1:46:10
Speaker 4: of grieving. And I'm saying the same for you. It's
1:46:13
Speaker 4: the only authentic thing about him. He is really pissed
1:46:16
Speaker 4: off at the system. And then his followers say, right.
1:46:20
Speaker 2: Brother, we hear you. Yeah, Now they think he's really
1:46:24
Speaker 2: in it for them, and you know, and I've got
1:46:26
Speaker 2: to breaking book with this of them if they really
1:46:28
Speaker 2: think that.
1:46:28
Speaker 1: Well, is what I always say about Trump is he
1:46:31
Speaker 1: eventually alienates everybody around him.
1:46:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:46:34
Speaker 1: Uh, you know this because you know the words you've
1:46:37
Speaker 1: never heard. Donald Trump hung out with his longtime friend
1:46:41
Speaker 1: from college today, the guy he went he hung out
1:46:44
Speaker 1: with in high school, his best friend from college, his
1:46:47
Speaker 1: best friend he is he is no longer friends long
1:46:50
Speaker 1: term friends outside of Roger Stone. It's like literally the
1:46:52
Speaker 1: only person that has that has made it through multiple
1:46:56
Speaker 1: iterations of his life, which I think tells you that
1:46:59
Speaker 1: he eventually, I've done this research his inner circle almost
1:47:05
Speaker 1: universally turns over about every six years, whether it was
1:47:07
Speaker 1: in business or in politics, because eventually he pushes everybody away,
1:47:12
Speaker 1: like eventually it's like I can't right, the John Bolton's,
1:47:15
Speaker 1: the John Kelly, He's like, we've seen it politically, Michael Cohen,
1:47:19
Speaker 1: like you name it, like it has it mattered right,
1:47:22
Speaker 1: Everybody always say the only thing is nobody's timing on
1:47:27
Speaker 1: when they're when they're when Trump finally does it crosses
1:47:30
Speaker 1: their line, and it's just not always at the same time.
1:47:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not.
1:47:34
Speaker 4: It's not an an exact or perfect comparison. But going
1:47:37
Speaker 4: back to Gary Hark, to me is a conundrum. I've
1:47:41
Speaker 4: never understood why did do a better job of trying
1:47:43
Speaker 4: to survive?
1:47:45
Speaker 1: And it never never could explain he was he too
1:47:49
Speaker 1: was a loner, and that may explain it.
1:47:52
Speaker 4: Actually, So when the storm came, you need people to
1:47:55
Speaker 4: stand beside you and said, you know, he's screwed up,
1:47:58
Speaker 4: but he's our guy because he's for this, he's for that.
1:48:00
Speaker 4: And I I don't know if you recall when he
1:48:03
Speaker 4: announced for president the second time.
1:48:05
Speaker 2: The first time he was an incumbent.
1:48:06
Speaker 4: He came close, and he didn't topple Monde the second time,
1:48:09
Speaker 4: which was when he got into trouble. He's now the
1:48:13
Speaker 4: he's the front runner in the Orange Democratic class that
1:48:16
Speaker 4: included Joe Biden and others. And he did his announcement
1:48:21
Speaker 4: speech not in the ballroom with Bunting and hundreds of
1:48:25
Speaker 4: devoted followers. He say he stood alone on a rock
1:48:29
Speaker 4: in the in the Rocky Mountains, and it was just that,
1:48:32
Speaker 4: and it was he wanted to say something there, which
1:48:35
Speaker 4: is I'm the man against the system, and he was.
1:48:38
Speaker 2: It was his own form of populist a p I alone.
1:48:42
Speaker 4: And and you know it turns out in politics in
1:48:44
Speaker 4: many realms of life, but politicians you need true friends.
1:48:47
Speaker 2: You need people who were with you the whole way.
1:48:50
Speaker 2: And politicians who don't have that, you know they're in
1:48:54
Speaker 2: trouble when trouble comes.
1:48:55
Speaker 4: No.
1:48:56
Speaker 2: I mean, it's true.
1:48:57
Speaker 1: Most of our successful presidents have had this kitchen that
1:49:00
Speaker 1: you find out over time has been with them for decades.
1:49:04
Speaker 2: You know.
1:49:05
Speaker 1: You know, Clinton had it, Reagan had it, the Bushes
1:49:08
Speaker 1: had it in multiple generations, Obama had it, al Biden
1:49:11
Speaker 1: had it.
1:49:12
Speaker 2: The one guy that doesn't have it is Donald Trump.
1:49:16
Speaker 4: And yet he's got he's got a further base of support,
1:49:19
Speaker 4: the likes of which you know, as we are.
1:49:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, not in our lifetime.
1:49:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hey, Paul, this was a terrific discussion. I mean,
1:49:30
Speaker 1: do you feel like you feel like your fellow boomers
1:49:32
Speaker 1: are going to hate what they read?
1:49:35
Speaker 4: No?
1:49:35
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean I've got a little pushback.
1:49:39
Speaker 4: The book is not entirely actually the book is that
1:49:43
Speaker 4: Marien Right is an amalgam. It's it's a part of
1:49:46
Speaker 4: it is just about getting old. It's a very personal story.
1:49:50
Speaker 4: And my wife and I've been married for fifty five years,
1:49:52
Speaker 4: we've known each other, wait for it, for seventy four years.
1:49:55
Speaker 4: We met as toddlers in an ad Amundeck community in
1:49:59
Speaker 4: upstate New York, where we're now living most of the
1:50:01
Speaker 4: year and watching our grandkids playing with grand kids.
1:50:04
Speaker 2: And kids we grew up with. So part of it
1:50:06
Speaker 2: is just a personal journey into old age, and it comes.
1:50:10
Speaker 4: For everybody, even even pale, male, stale and yale, privileged
1:50:15
Speaker 4: people like me get creaky knees, and my wife is
1:50:18
Speaker 4: having a terrible vision problem to et cetera.
1:50:21
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
1:50:22
Speaker 4: I hope it's not a whini book. It's not meant
1:50:24
Speaker 4: to be a whiny book, but it's meant to be.
1:50:27
Speaker 4: You know, it gets a whole path from getting old,
1:50:30
Speaker 4: and so it's it's the small story of the two
1:50:34
Speaker 4: of us trying to make our wife through the adventures
1:50:36
Speaker 4: and misadventures, and then the big.
1:50:38
Speaker 2: Story of kind of a final scorecard of a generation
1:50:42
Speaker 2: that started.
1:50:43
Speaker 4: You know, I do want to say that that our
1:50:47
Speaker 4: generation the spirit of the sixties, the spirit of let's
1:50:51
Speaker 4: make the strike for everybody, and let's include everybody.
1:50:54
Speaker 2: It's it's a truly beautiful thing, and it hasn't disappeared.
1:50:58
Speaker 2: It's always been a part of the story.
1:51:00
Speaker 4: But there are darker parts of the story too, and
1:51:02
Speaker 4: there's a lot of massively left through others to clean up.
1:51:05
Speaker 1: Well, there's nothing like getting a little bit of memoir
1:51:07
Speaker 1: for a guy who's who's got a foundational amount of
1:51:11
Speaker 1: data flowing through his head from your years.
1:51:14
Speaker 2: I cannot love my friend.
1:51:16
Speaker 4: I mean, when we talk about data, I remember you
1:51:18
Speaker 4: when when you were starting out, So don't talk to
1:51:21
Speaker 4: me about data.
1:51:21
Speaker 2: You got it all upstairs. Well, but that's what made
1:51:25
Speaker 2: this book enjoyable. Hey, Paul, it's great to talk with you,
1:51:27
Speaker 2: great to catch up. Thank you so much for doing
1:51:29
Speaker 2: it well.
1:51:40
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Paul Taylor. Like
1:51:42
Speaker 1: I said, I've known him a long time and I
1:51:43
Speaker 1: thought we could talk a little bit of where the
1:51:45
Speaker 1: media is heading and how do you cover character in politics?
1:51:50
Speaker 2: Do you notice the theme with this podcast.
1:51:51
Speaker 1: I'm a little obsessed with character, character character.
1:51:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, to say the least, Yes, I am.
1:51:57
Speaker 1: All right, it is time machine. Let's go back into
1:51:59
Speaker 1: the time machine. We are going to June twenty fifth,
1:52:08
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty. That anniversary will be one that is notable
1:52:14
Speaker 1: this week, the seventy sixth anniversary to the start of
1:52:18
Speaker 1: the Korean War. It's a war that never ended. You
1:52:23
Speaker 1: probably know somebody who fought in Korea. Maybe it was
1:52:25
Speaker 1: a grandfather, maybe it was a great uncle. In my case,
1:52:28
Speaker 1: it was a great uncle. Like a lot of men
1:52:31
Speaker 1: of that generation, he didn't talk about it much, and
1:52:33
Speaker 1: if I'm being honest, I don't know nearly as much
1:52:35
Speaker 1: about his experience as I wish I did, which is
1:52:38
Speaker 1: strange because the Korean War is an ancient history. It's
1:52:42
Speaker 1: actually not even settled history, and in a very real sense.
1:52:46
Speaker 1: It's a war that has not yet ended. For a
1:52:49
Speaker 1: certain generation of Americans, Korea may actually be more familiar
1:52:51
Speaker 1: through Mash, the TV show than through History class. And
1:52:56
Speaker 1: even that is revealing because Mash was set during the
1:52:59
Speaker 1: Korean War, but it was really speaking to Americans about
1:53:02
Speaker 1: the Vietnam experience. That's part of Korea's strange place in
1:53:06
Speaker 1: our national memory.
1:53:08
Speaker 2: Right.
1:53:08
Speaker 1: Even the cultural aspect is somehow more rooted in Vietnam
1:53:12
Speaker 1: than Korea. Even our most famous cultural memory of the
1:53:16
Speaker 1: war was about another war. The Korean War is known
1:53:20
Speaker 1: as the forgotten War. By the way, one of the
1:53:24
Speaker 1: probably the second most moving memorial in Washington, d C.
1:53:28
Speaker 2: Is the Korean War Memorial. It's haunting.
1:53:31
Speaker 1: It depicts ice pat at the ice patty, that rice patties,
1:53:35
Speaker 1: excuse me, the soldiers having to walk through that, those
1:53:38
Speaker 1: muddy waters. It's it's eerie, especially at night in and
1:53:42
Speaker 1: around the Lincoln Memorial.
1:53:45
Speaker 4: It is it is.
1:53:47
Speaker 2: It says something that I think our two most.
1:53:48
Speaker 1: Consequential war memorials are the two.
1:53:51
Speaker 2: That we didn't win, Vietnam and Korea. But I digress.
1:53:56
Speaker 1: The question about the Korean War being the forgotten war.
1:54:00
Speaker 2: Is why is it forgotten?
1:54:01
Speaker 1: Because more than thirty six thousand Americans died there, millions
1:54:05
Speaker 1: of Koreans died.
1:54:07
Speaker 2: China entered the war.
1:54:09
Speaker 1: In fact, it's the first time the United States faced
1:54:12
Speaker 1: off against China a war because the United States also
1:54:15
Speaker 1: entered the war. The future of Asia has been shaped
1:54:18
Speaker 1: by the Korean War, and yet for many Americans, Korea
1:54:21
Speaker 1: occupies little more than a footnote somewhere between World War
1:54:24
Speaker 1: Two and Vietnam.
1:54:26
Speaker 3: So.
1:54:26
Speaker 1: The Korean War began on June twenty fifth, nineteen fifty,
1:54:28
Speaker 1: when North Korean forces crossed the thirty eighth Parallel and
1:54:31
Speaker 1: invaded South Korea.
1:54:32
Speaker 2: You've probably heard the thirty eighth parallel.
1:54:35
Speaker 1: Within day, South Korean forces were collapsing. Within weeks, American
1:54:38
Speaker 1: troops were arriving, and within months, what began as a
1:54:41
Speaker 1: civil conflict on the Korean Peninsula had become one of
1:54:44
Speaker 1: the first major confrontations of what was now known as
1:54:48
Speaker 1: the Cold War. Most Americans do know some version of
1:54:51
Speaker 1: this story. What many don't know is that the war
1:54:53
Speaker 1: produced a world we're still living in. Modern North Korea
1:54:57
Speaker 1: begins here, Modern South Korea begins here. The US China
1:55:01
Speaker 1: rivalry begins here. The modern American military presence in East
1:55:06
Speaker 1: Asia begins here. Even the modern presidency's approach to military
1:55:12
Speaker 1: intervention begins here. So for a forgotten war, it left
1:55:17
Speaker 1: an awfully large footprint.
1:55:20
Speaker 2: Now.
1:55:20
Speaker 1: One reason we struggled to remember Korea is that we
1:55:23
Speaker 1: made up our minds about it way too early. When
1:55:26
Speaker 1: the armistice was signed in nineteen fifty three, Americans looked
1:55:28
Speaker 1: at the map. The border hadn't moved very much. North
1:55:31
Speaker 1: Korea still existed, China still existed, American troops are coming home.
1:55:34
Speaker 1: The war seemed to end roughly where it began, and
1:55:37
Speaker 1: so we filed it away. Stalemate, draw, move on. The
1:55:41
Speaker 1: problem is history kept going and the most important consequences
1:55:46
Speaker 1: of the war had yet to happen. Consider South Korea.
1:55:50
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen fifties. South Korea was one of
1:55:52
Speaker 1: the poorest countries in the world. Its economy looked more
1:55:56
Speaker 1: like many struggling developing nations than the technological powerhouse we
1:56:00
Speaker 1: know today. A person standing in Soul in nineteen fifty
1:56:03
Speaker 1: five would have had a difficult time imagining Samsung, Hyundai,
1:56:07
Speaker 1: k Pop, or one of the world's leading technology economies.
1:56:11
Speaker 1: Yet that's exactly what happened. South Korea's economic rise is
1:56:15
Speaker 1: one of the most remarkable development stories in modern history.
1:56:18
Speaker 1: Forget Japan, South Korea. It's an unbelievable thing that justified
1:56:24
Speaker 1: the sacrifice wasn't visible though in nineteen fifty three it
1:56:28
Speaker 1: emerged over decades. There was no surrender ceremony attached to it,
1:56:31
Speaker 1: no famous photograph, no victory parade, just a poor country
1:56:35
Speaker 1: gradually becoming prosperous. And because the payoff arrived slowly, the
1:56:39
Speaker 1: war itself never got reclassified in the public mind. Americans
1:56:43
Speaker 1: remembered the stalemate in history kept writing the story. But
1:56:48
Speaker 1: that's not the whole story, of course, because the Korean
1:56:50
Speaker 1: War didn't just preserve South Korea and show what small
1:56:53
Speaker 1: d democratic, free market capitalism could do for a poor nation.
1:56:59
Speaker 1: The war also preserved North Korea, and this is where
1:57:02
Speaker 1: the story gets uncomfortable. Today, North Korea possesses nuclear weapons,
1:57:05
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles, cyber warfare capability, a growing defense industry, military
1:57:10
Speaker 1: relationships with Russia and other adversaries of the West. It
1:57:14
Speaker 1: exports weapons and military technology. It remains one of the
1:57:17
Speaker 1: most repressive states on Earth. So if your objective in
1:57:20
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty was eliminating the North Korean threat. That objective
1:57:24
Speaker 1: was clearly not achieved. The threat survived in some ways,
1:57:29
Speaker 1: it became more dangerous, which is why Korea remained so
1:57:31
Speaker 1: difficult to categorize. The armistice preserved one of the world's
1:57:35
Speaker 1: great success stories. It also preserved one of the world's
1:57:38
Speaker 1: most persistent security threats. Both things are.
1:57:41
Speaker 2: True at the same time.
1:57:42
Speaker 1: And that's another detail many Americans don't know. The Korean
1:57:46
Speaker 1: War has never actually ended. This is another one of
1:57:50
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's fantasies.
1:57:52
Speaker 2: He'll be the one to end the Korea War.
1:57:53
Speaker 1: That's somehow this will force him forced us to recognize
1:57:56
Speaker 1: his name and history, hence his you know beautiful love
1:58:00
Speaker 1: letters with Kim Jong Nutt. But of course the fighting stopped,
1:58:05
Speaker 1: even though the war has never ended. The agreement signed
1:58:08
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three was simply an armistice, not a
1:58:10
Speaker 1: peace treaty kind of maybe you might call it a
1:58:14
Speaker 1: memo of understanding. The guns largely fell simon, the conflict remained.
1:58:20
Speaker 1: Seventy three years later, North and South Korea remained separated
1:58:24
Speaker 1: by one of the most heavily fortified borders on Earth.
1:58:26
Speaker 1: The DMZ still exists. The armies still exists, the political
1:58:32
Speaker 1: conflict still exists. Most wars become history. Korea simply became geography.
1:58:38
Speaker 1: The war transformed China's role in the world. Before Korea,
1:58:41
Speaker 1: Communist China was a new regime still consolidating power. Then
1:58:45
Speaker 1: now intervened. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops entered the conflict.
1:58:49
Speaker 1: American forces suddenly found themselves fighting not just North.
1:58:52
Speaker 2: Korea, but China. It's all.
1:58:54
Speaker 1: It's difficult to overstate the significance of that moment. The
1:58:57
Speaker 1: first shooting conflict between the United States and communists China
1:59:00
Speaker 1: occurred in Korea in nineteen fifty. The strategic rivalry we're
1:59:05
Speaker 1: still talking about today has its roots in that war. Again,
1:59:09
Speaker 1: for a forgotten war, it's a remarkably long shadow. Korea
1:59:13
Speaker 1: also changed the presidency. Congress never declared war, so the
1:59:17
Speaker 1: first one of these. In fact, Truman didn't even seek
1:59:19
Speaker 1: congressional authorization. Instead, he relied on executive authority in the
1:59:24
Speaker 1: United Nations Resolution World Government Alert. A reporter famously described
1:59:29
Speaker 1: the conflict as a police action. Believe it or not,
1:59:32
Speaker 1: that label stock the president did too. Future presidents would
1:59:36
Speaker 1: generally seek congressional authorizations, not declarations of war authorizations, But
1:59:43
Speaker 1: Korea established the modern president that a president could commit
1:59:46
Speaker 1: American forces to a major conflict without a formal declaration
1:59:49
Speaker 1: of war. After Korea, we'd get Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and.
1:59:54
Speaker 2: Of course.
1:59:57
Speaker 1: Much of what we've done in the Middle East over
1:59:58
Speaker 1: the last quarter century. The roots of that argument run
2:00:01
Speaker 1: through Korea. So it's another enormous consequence that rarely enters
2:00:05
Speaker 1: public memory. You want to know why the War Powers
2:00:09
Speaker 1: Act is not clear to this day. It was in
2:00:13
Speaker 1: response to Vietnam at the time, but it really was
2:00:15
Speaker 1: in response to Korea, and we still haven't resolved that responsibility,
2:00:21
Speaker 1: which brings me to the reason why I think Korea
2:00:23
Speaker 1: still matters today. The Korean War may have been America's
2:00:25
Speaker 1: first modern forever war, not because American troops stayed forever,
2:00:29
Speaker 1: but because the conflict did. And once you start looking
2:00:32
Speaker 1: at Korea through that lens, it begins to feel surprisingly contemporary.
2:00:36
Speaker 2: In some ways.
2:00:36
Speaker 1: Korea was the first chapter of modern warfare in the
2:00:40
Speaker 1: post World War II era. A lot of modern American
2:00:43
Speaker 1: form policies debates now sound familiar when you look at
2:00:45
Speaker 1: it through that prism. What does success look like when
2:00:48
Speaker 1: does a war end? How long do you stay right?
2:00:51
Speaker 1: We've had these questions about Iraq, Afghanistan, in Iran, you
2:00:53
Speaker 1: name it. What if the best achievable outcome is in
2:00:56
Speaker 1: victory but stability. What if your objective shifts transformation to containment.
2:01:02
Speaker 1: Those are Korean War questions, and there are questions we've
2:01:05
Speaker 1: been asking repeatedly ever since. It's one reasons the debates
2:01:09
Speaker 1: over Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, broader Middle East often feel so unsatisfying.
2:01:14
Speaker 2: We Americans. We like our endings.
2:01:16
Speaker 1: Clean history never provides a clean ending. Sometimes the outcome
2:01:20
Speaker 1: isn't victory. Sometimes it isn't defeat. Sometimes it is simply management, containment, persistence,
2:01:28
Speaker 1: living with a problem rather than solving it, getting a
2:01:32
Speaker 1: prescription to live with a disease rather than curing it.
2:01:35
Speaker 1: That's not especially inspiring slogan now isn't. But you're still
2:01:39
Speaker 1: alive and you're still thriving. But it describes more of
2:01:42
Speaker 1: modern history than we often admit. And that's why the
2:01:45
Speaker 1: Korea remains relevant, not because it offers easy lessons, but
2:01:49
Speaker 1: because it doesn't. It actually is the first chapter in
2:01:54
Speaker 1: our debate over today's foreign policy. The war preserves South
2:01:57
Speaker 1: Korea and also preserve North Korea. The war contain communism,
2:02:00
Speaker 1: but it didn't eradicate it. The war created a nuclear
2:02:04
Speaker 1: armed rogue state. The war prevented catastrophe, it never produced resolution.
2:02:10
Speaker 1: These contradictions are why this war is difficult to remember.
2:02:14
Speaker 1: They're also why it's worth remembering, because Korea may have
2:02:17
Speaker 1: been the first American war that actually looked like the future,
2:02:21
Speaker 1: not a clear victory, not a clear defeat, a conflict
2:02:23
Speaker 1: that created long term commitments, long term threats, long term
2:02:26
Speaker 1: arguments about what success even means. So maybe the Korean
2:02:30
Speaker 1: War is the forgotten war because Americans reached a verdict
2:02:32
Speaker 1: too quickly. We looked at the armistice and the map,
2:02:37
Speaker 1: and we saw our border hadn't moved very much, and
2:02:39
Speaker 1: we followed away as a draw. The problem is history
2:02:42
Speaker 1: kept going. South Korea became one of the greatest economic
2:02:46
Speaker 1: success stories in modern era, so you can't say that
2:02:50
Speaker 1: the war was a total failure. North Korea became one
2:02:53
Speaker 1: of the world's most dangerous rogue states.
2:02:56
Speaker 2: So you can't say the war was a total success.
2:02:58
Speaker 1: The argument never ended in my fifty three, which means
2:03:01
Speaker 1: the verdict shouldn't have either victory and defeat are easy
2:03:04
Speaker 1: to remember. Stalemates are harder, especially the ones that never
2:03:07
Speaker 1: really end. And we may be just dealing with a
2:03:11
Speaker 1: new stalemate.
2:03:14
Speaker 2: In the Middle East.
2:03:22
Speaker 1: Ask Chuck, let's do some ass, Chuck, we're gonna do.
2:03:30
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do. We'll do five or six on this one.
2:03:32
Speaker 2: Let's see how long I go. All right?
2:03:34
Speaker 1: First question comes from Connor, who's in Morocco but originally
2:03:42
Speaker 1: from Oklahoma City, and he says, hey, Chuck, new dad
2:03:45
Speaker 1: here after a four am diaper change, I was wondering
2:03:47
Speaker 1: where's the best place to start with civics education and
2:03:50
Speaker 1: home for kids? And he go to resources or ways
2:03:52
Speaker 1: to introduce early Also random question to all presidents use
2:03:54
Speaker 1: those oversized markers when citing things or is that just
2:03:57
Speaker 1: a Trump thing? Thanks as always, Connor M and Robot Rocco,
2:04:00
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. All right, one, Yes, he is the
2:04:04
Speaker 1: sharpy guy. Nobody else.
2:04:05
Speaker 2: Now.
2:04:06
Speaker 1: I do think when you're a president you learn to
2:04:08
Speaker 1: sign larger somehow, in larger type, right, I mean, my goodness,
2:04:11
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's signature. But you know this is something to
2:04:15
Speaker 1: think about. The less we actually do the written word,
2:04:19
Speaker 1: the less we handwrite all the time, ask yourself, if
2:04:23
Speaker 1: you're of a certain age, when you sign a credit
2:04:26
Speaker 1: card slipt, what did your signature look like when you're
2:04:29
Speaker 1: in your twenties, And what does your signature look like
2:04:31
Speaker 1: in your thirties and your forties and your fifties. I
2:04:34
Speaker 1: literally am like scribbling that every once in a while,
2:04:37
Speaker 1: I try to do my thorough name if I think
2:04:39
Speaker 1: it's like a piece of paper that might be referenced again,
2:04:42
Speaker 1: So I'm like, well, I better have a recognizable signature.
2:04:46
Speaker 1: But I often wonder that the less physical handwriting we do,
2:04:49
Speaker 1: if that's going to be a skill that's so atrophies
2:04:51
Speaker 1: that the presidential signatures going forward are going to look
2:04:54
Speaker 1: less and less ornate. But anyway, I digress. You're looking
2:04:59
Speaker 1: for go to resource. Look, I'm gonna give you a
2:05:01
Speaker 1: few that I've enjoyed. I'll tell you the one that's
2:05:05
Speaker 1: fantastic for teaching the electoral college. It's I think it's
2:05:11
Speaker 1: Duck for President, and.
2:05:14
Speaker 4: It is.
2:05:16
Speaker 1: It is a way to just teach how we how
2:05:18
Speaker 1: the electoral college works. Doesn't sit here and it doesn't
2:05:23
Speaker 1: have a point of view on whether it should work
2:05:25
Speaker 1: or not. It just is, you know, sort of I
2:05:29
Speaker 1: think it's a farm decides to run an election, and
2:05:31
Speaker 1: you know, Duck runs for president type of thing. But uh,
2:05:37
Speaker 1: and Grace for President. So you have Duck for President
2:05:39
Speaker 1: and Grace for President. Both of them are very good
2:05:42
Speaker 1: children's books, perfect for single digit age. Obviously, Grace for
2:05:47
Speaker 1: President's about electing a girl class president.
2:05:50
Speaker 2: It also does a good job of teaching the electoral college.
2:05:53
Speaker 1: In fact, I think Grace for President is a little
2:05:55
Speaker 1: bit more detailed about it. But those were my Those
2:06:01
Speaker 1: were put it this way. Anytime I had a new
2:06:03
Speaker 1: staffer have a kid, this would sort of this would
2:06:08
Speaker 1: be missus Todd, and I's kind of go to go
2:06:11
Speaker 1: to first children's books. You know, the political your political friends,
2:06:15
Speaker 1: got your Grace for President or Duck for President or both.
2:06:19
Speaker 1: I just like I said, go check out both books. Okay,
2:06:23
Speaker 1: they it is literally civics civicsy without any partisanship at
2:06:29
Speaker 1: all whatsoever.
2:06:31
Speaker 2: So highly recommend them.
2:06:36
Speaker 1: And I love them both because they you know, I
2:06:41
Speaker 1: had a boy and a girl and I made sure
2:06:43
Speaker 1: they both read both books.
2:06:45
Speaker 2: So it's it's I love them both. Next question covers
2:06:49
Speaker 2: to Mark A. H Allen, Texas.
2:06:50
Speaker 1: He goes, hey, if you thought about creating an election manifesto,
2:06:52
Speaker 1: a set of rules or signals you rely on for
2:06:54
Speaker 1: predicting outcomes. Maybe a top five of the key indicators
2:06:57
Speaker 1: or patterns you trust most would love to hear what
2:06:59
Speaker 1: makes your lips? It's an interesting thought, I think as
2:07:02
Speaker 1: I get closer, you know, what I want to try
2:07:06
Speaker 1: to categorize, you know, is always the things that data
2:07:09
Speaker 1: doesn't quite capture, right. You know, some of it could
2:07:12
Speaker 1: be historical, some of it could be you know, very
2:07:16
Speaker 1: specific to a given region or a given state. You know,
2:07:24
Speaker 1: some of it could be you know, look, forty five
2:07:29
Speaker 1: percent means one thing if it shared brown, forty five
2:07:32
Speaker 1: percent means another thing if it's Josh Turic.
2:07:34
Speaker 2: What do I mean by that?
2:07:35
Speaker 1: Well, one is a semi incumbent that if they're still
2:07:39
Speaker 1: struggling to get to fifty percent, you wonder whether how
2:07:43
Speaker 1: much if they really have any room to grow versus
2:07:45
Speaker 1: Josh Turic, if you know, he's got a much lower
2:07:48
Speaker 1: name idea, and if he's sitting at forty four or
2:07:50
Speaker 1: forty five, then you're like, oh, he's.
2:07:51
Speaker 2: Got real room to grow.
2:07:53
Speaker 1: So it's little things like that, right, And there's these
2:07:56
Speaker 1: little nuances where not every forty five percent is the
2:07:59
Speaker 1: same even if it's both Democratic numbers both in red states, right,
2:08:03
Speaker 1: depends on who's running.
2:08:04
Speaker 2: Things like that.
2:08:05
Speaker 1: So, look, I am a I'm a enough believer in
2:08:11
Speaker 1: data that that every every everything has a data driven
2:08:15
Speaker 1: answer to it. We just haven't always found the piece
2:08:17
Speaker 1: of data that explains it yet. That's sort of my mindset,
2:08:23
Speaker 1: and so there are things that I use to sort
2:08:27
Speaker 1: of like you know, you know, like take take what's
2:08:35
Speaker 1: happening in Texas. It's pretty clear that the Republican campaign
2:08:39
Speaker 1: is to turn Tallerico into a weirdo.
2:08:42
Speaker 2: He's not one of us.
2:08:44
Speaker 1: It's a classic he's not one of us. But it's
2:08:46
Speaker 1: a different way of doing it. It's not doing it
2:08:48
Speaker 1: in a cookie cutter way. It's actually being it's being
2:08:50
Speaker 1: more specific to him, which can be very effective versus
2:08:57
Speaker 1: you know how much you know, hey, Ken Paxton's a
2:09:00
Speaker 1: bad guy.
2:09:01
Speaker 4: You know.
2:09:02
Speaker 2: Can you introduce new information? Right? This is?
2:09:05
Speaker 1: This is sometimes in campaigns, the campaign with more new
2:09:07
Speaker 1: information to introduce can sometimes have a greater impact.
2:09:12
Speaker 2: Then again, old baggage.
2:09:13
Speaker 1: Can linger right, just ask you know, the Clinton Trump
2:09:16
Speaker 1: race of sixteen was new baggage versus old baggage, what
2:09:20
Speaker 1: would voters care more about? And I think that's a
2:09:24
Speaker 1: that's going to be sort of the Texas Center race.
2:09:26
Speaker 1: So you're sort of saying, the question is how much
2:09:28
Speaker 1: of that's an intangible how much of that could be
2:09:30
Speaker 1: data driven and data.
2:09:31
Speaker 2: Tested and all of that.
2:09:32
Speaker 1: But those are I will, I will take your suggestion
2:09:38
Speaker 1: and I will try to share, you know. And then
2:09:41
Speaker 1: there's certain quirks I have about certain pollsters. Oh if
2:09:43
Speaker 1: you you know, I'm always you know, And I say
2:09:46
Speaker 1: this not that these pollsters do bad polls. These pollsters
2:09:52
Speaker 1: are regularly the ones that will allow that will have data.
2:09:56
Speaker 2: For public release.
2:09:57
Speaker 1: Whether it's the McLoughlin brothers on the right, I think
2:10:00
Speaker 1: they're very good pollsters. But I think what you see
2:10:02
Speaker 1: publicly is not always the process of their best work.
2:10:05
Speaker 2: It is more of the.
2:10:06
Speaker 1: Pr I think that way of PPP and change on
2:10:09
Speaker 1: the left very similar. You know, here's what you won't see.
2:10:13
Speaker 1: You rarely see a public opinion research poll use that way.
2:10:16
Speaker 1: You rarely see your heart research poll use that way.
2:10:19
Speaker 1: And there's other posters in that same category. So those
2:10:23
Speaker 1: are the type of like little tiny things that I
2:10:27
Speaker 1: use for various various ways of trying to determine why
2:10:31
Speaker 1: am I more bullish here than I am here?
2:10:33
Speaker 2: Et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, the point is is
2:10:38
Speaker 2: I will.
2:10:41
Speaker 1: I will take your in starting in the fall. Try
2:10:46
Speaker 1: to put some metrics around what you're asking. Next question
2:10:50
Speaker 1: comes from Brian in Massachusetts. He's been asking, Hey, I
2:10:52
Speaker 1: have been following your take that Democrats could retake Congress,
2:10:54
Speaker 1: but I'm curious about the broader implication. Do you see
2:10:57
Speaker 1: any realistic scenario where presidential powers could be used to
2:11:00
Speaker 1: influencer limit electoral outcomes? What guardrails exist to prevent that?
2:11:03
Speaker 1: Are they strong enough? Thanks Brian and Massachusetts. Well, look,
2:11:08
Speaker 1: I think I've expressed this before, but I'll express it again,
2:11:10
Speaker 1: which is, if you're asking me, where is their vulnerability
2:11:15
Speaker 1: in the system where Trump could exert certain powers, and
2:11:22
Speaker 1: it's in the House.
2:11:25
Speaker 2: But the power exists before.
2:11:30
Speaker 1: January third, twenty twenty seven. It's with the old Congress
2:11:37
Speaker 1: still in charge. Believe it or not, the House of
2:11:40
Speaker 1: Representatives can decide, can sort of supersede a certification in
2:11:47
Speaker 1: another district. Ultimately, the House has the ultimate authority over
2:11:51
Speaker 1: House elections. That is not the case with the Senate.
2:11:54
Speaker 1: But it is the case of the House. They literally
2:11:57
Speaker 1: can adjudicate things differently regardless, uh, And so that is
2:12:02
Speaker 1: they have the power to decide who's in and who's out.
2:12:04
Speaker 1: The power of the majority in theory, if we're looking
2:12:09
Speaker 1: at a very single digit gain for the Democrats, that
2:12:14
Speaker 1: would change majority. There are things that an outgoing majority
2:12:19
Speaker 1: could do to maybe disqualify, you know, create a situation
2:12:26
Speaker 1: where they're not where where they would not accept the
2:12:28
Speaker 1: results of certain elections that were certified. Now it's an
2:12:33
Speaker 1: extreme you know, it's an extreme measure. But if you're
2:12:36
Speaker 1: looking for where there really technically isn't a guardrail, it
2:12:41
Speaker 1: is in the House. That it is in the fact
2:12:43
Speaker 1: that the House, that minute, the way the House, the
2:12:47
Speaker 1: power the House of Representatives has over the administration of
2:12:50
Speaker 1: elections for the House of Representatives, in theory, creates a
2:12:54
Speaker 1: lot of loopholes here that could that could favor undemocratic means.
2:13:05
Speaker 1: I don't given the disunity and the Republican coalition, given
2:13:12
Speaker 1: all of the enemies Donald Trump has made inside the
2:13:16
Speaker 1: Republican Party with his I just don't think this current
2:13:19
Speaker 1: Congress is loyal enough. Congressional set of Congressional Republicans. Well,
2:13:23
Speaker 1: the House leadership may be loyal enough to him to
2:13:27
Speaker 1: attempt to do his bidding. Look at how much they
2:13:30
Speaker 1: struggled just to get you know, they couldn't even force
2:13:33
Speaker 1: Congress to give him his slush fund on January sixth.
2:13:36
Speaker 2: They couldn't force Congress.
2:13:38
Speaker 1: So I so maybe I'm being Pollyannish here, but you know,
2:13:42
Speaker 1: he couldn't get that stuff done. I don't know, literally
2:13:46
Speaker 1: sabotaging democratic elections in the House of Representative for the
2:13:50
Speaker 1: House of Representatives, I just don't imagine he's got a
2:13:53
Speaker 1: majority in the House to do that. For him to
2:13:56
Speaker 1: do that bidding for him, I don't. I know some
2:13:59
Speaker 1: of you were going, oh, you know that. I just again,
2:14:04
Speaker 1: he couldn't. He hasn't been able to get uh, you know,
2:14:08
Speaker 1: he's got these majorities, he can't get them to put
2:14:11
Speaker 1: his name on the Kennedy Center. By the way, the
2:14:13
Speaker 1: fact that he is so humiliated by this that he's
2:14:16
Speaker 1: refusing to let the public see that that his power
2:14:22
Speaker 1: is not that he's not all powerful.
2:14:25
Speaker 2: I mean.
2:14:30
Speaker 1: The fact that there have not been you know, if
2:14:33
Speaker 1: these vandals existed, they would have already taken down the
2:14:35
Speaker 1: shroud his the shroud of Trump, which I guess is
2:14:41
Speaker 1: what I'm what we have to start calling the scaffolding
2:14:43
Speaker 1: shroud to prevent the public from seeing that he actually
2:14:47
Speaker 1: followed the law and took his took his name off
2:14:50
Speaker 1: of building that it never belonged on in the first place.
2:14:58
Speaker 1: All right, Uh, Jane, he rights borring a question from
2:15:01
Speaker 1: Washington Week. If you could go back and warn the
2:15:03
Speaker 1: founders about one flower blind spot in the constitution or
2:15:05
Speaker 1: structural of government, what would it be? What do you
2:15:07
Speaker 1: think they couldn't have possibly foreseen? Curious for your take
2:15:11
Speaker 1: on I think it's an easy answer. It's the pardon power.
2:15:16
Speaker 4: It was.
2:15:17
Speaker 2: It is a massive loophole, not a small loophole. It's
2:15:20
Speaker 2: a big loophole.
2:15:22
Speaker 1: Why it exists, why it was given in the first place,
2:15:27
Speaker 1: is beyond me. I think it's a simple answer. And
2:15:29
Speaker 1: if this isn't the one reform we don't make of
2:15:32
Speaker 1: the Constitution, then we learn nothing from these Trump years.
2:15:37
Speaker 1: But I think it's a like I said, the part
2:15:38
Speaker 1: the power of the pardon, I mean this has been
2:15:41
Speaker 1: This is the amount of I think financial financial gains
2:15:45
Speaker 1: that Trump and his cronies have made selling pardons. I mean,
2:15:49
Speaker 1: this is you know, it's like there's so many scandals
2:15:51
Speaker 1: in playing sight, whether it's the buying off of his
2:15:55
Speaker 1: kid's crypto companies and all of that business, the selling
2:15:59
Speaker 1: of pardons, and the fact that this is kind of
2:16:01
Speaker 1: done on a weekly basis, like it's you know, like
2:16:03
Speaker 1: it's meeting payroll. Is is like among the where's the
2:16:08
Speaker 1: outrage moments? My you know, my homage to Bob Dole
2:16:13
Speaker 1: during the ninety six campaign was frustrated that his character
2:16:16
Speaker 1: attacks weren't sticking to Clinton. I think there's a plenty
2:16:19
Speaker 1: plenty of like where's the outrage here on something like this?
2:16:23
Speaker 1: I think the I think the pardon power, I mean,
2:16:26
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump has shown that you cannot there is no.
2:16:32
Speaker 2: There is no upside to giving.
2:16:37
Speaker 1: A man of his character this part, this kind of
2:16:39
Speaker 1: power part, and there has to be a check on that.
2:16:42
Speaker 2: In some form.
2:16:44
Speaker 1: I think the founders assumed that if a president abused
2:16:48
Speaker 1: the pardon process, that Congress would do its job and
2:16:50
Speaker 1: he eliminate and impeach and convict the president and kick
2:16:53
Speaker 1: him out of office. But look, I think the power
2:16:56
Speaker 1: of impeachment turned out to be a total and complete failure.
2:16:59
Speaker 2: It didn't work. Now, I don't.
2:17:04
Speaker 1: I actually don't know what else I would have done.
2:17:06
Speaker 1: I think the founders were right about that. I'll give
2:17:12
Speaker 1: you one other.
2:17:16
Speaker 2: And that is and that is.
2:17:23
Speaker 1: I think we could have done a hybrid parliamentary system
2:17:26
Speaker 1: that probably would have opened the door to more political parties,
2:17:31
Speaker 1: but instead going to the system that we did almost force,
2:17:34
Speaker 1: this binary two party system. The structure did create the
2:17:39
Speaker 1: two sides, the two factions, and I think not anticipating
2:17:46
Speaker 1: that better I would have been. But I think the
2:17:48
Speaker 1: biggest thing, it's not even close, calls the part of
2:17:51
Speaker 1: power never should have been. The whole point of the
2:17:54
Speaker 1: revolution was to not was to not allow our executive
2:17:58
Speaker 1: to have the powers of a king, and that is
2:18:00
Speaker 1: the one place we decided to give made no sense.
2:18:03
Speaker 1: It made no sense at the time, and it certainly
2:18:05
Speaker 1: looks like an hair and judgment in hindsight.
2:18:10
Speaker 2: Next question my man from Davy, Florida, Adam B.
2:18:15
Speaker 1: And he writes, Hey, there was a high profile walk
2:18:18
Speaker 1: off on a long running news show out of the
2:18:21
Speaker 1: the other weekend. That got me curious. What actually happens
2:18:23
Speaker 1: in these moments? Are they dramatic exits or more awkward
2:18:26
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. Any good walkout stories, Adam being a
2:18:29
Speaker 1: vendor ps Seth McFarland's The Orvile is fantastic, way more
2:18:32
Speaker 1: heart than I expected. Yes, I love The Orville, and
2:18:36
Speaker 1: I think The Orvile deserves a second look. When you
2:18:39
Speaker 1: realize that it's not meant to be a spit off
2:18:43
Speaker 1: of the Family Guy and instead it's meant to be
2:18:45
Speaker 1: an homage to Star Trek, it becomes exponentially more interesting
2:18:51
Speaker 1: and better.
2:18:51
Speaker 2: Okay, Adam or Vibe put us there.
2:18:57
Speaker 1: Look, the goal of news organizations is to not allow
2:19:05
Speaker 1: this stuff to lead into the public reporting, right. I
2:19:13
Speaker 1: never happened to be part of any entity that was
2:19:17
Speaker 1: either dealing with a walkout at the time. I certainly
2:19:21
Speaker 1: have been adjacent to walkouts, meaning, you know, we had
2:19:24
Speaker 1: certain parts of MSNBC and NBCU was sort of trying
2:19:29
Speaker 1: to unionize, but not all parts of it. So you know,
2:19:32
Speaker 1: I was never a part of any teams that were
2:19:34
Speaker 1: fully union shops. There would be different teams or different
2:19:38
Speaker 1: union shops involved with the Sunday Show. There were a
2:19:41
Speaker 1: handful of other union shops that sort of grew as
2:19:46
Speaker 1: MSNBC grew. I assume that was one of the other
2:19:49
Speaker 1: reasons why and Comcasts wanted to sort of get rid
2:19:52
Speaker 1: of MSNBC. I think it sort of got rid of
2:19:56
Speaker 1: some extra unionization efforts that Comcast wasn't in favor of
2:20:00
Speaker 1: in the NBCU days.
2:20:02
Speaker 2: And look, I'm of two minds, and I'm you know,
2:20:06
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not sure. I'm not a.
2:20:13
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a I think it's a close
2:20:15
Speaker 1: call about whether journalists need unions.
2:20:18
Speaker 2: I'm a.
2:20:19
Speaker 1: I am pro union for physical for the for for
2:20:21
Speaker 1: the physical jobs more than anything else.
2:20:24
Speaker 2: I think the desk jobs in unionization for me is
2:20:32
Speaker 2: up for debate.
2:20:34
Speaker 1: I'm not unpersuadable, but I'm skeptical. I just set that
2:20:40
Speaker 1: over here. I mean that, you know, and I think
2:20:41
Speaker 1: I'm not alone here. I think there's always been a
2:20:43
Speaker 1: that there's a healthy, healthy debate about that. But no,
2:20:49
Speaker 1: I've not I could just tell you that I know
2:20:51
Speaker 1: how the Washington Post handle to walk out, I know
2:20:53
Speaker 1: how the New York Times did. Sometimes you go without bylines,
2:20:56
Speaker 1: but you know, sort of there there is this mindset
2:20:58
Speaker 1: of the show must go on. You know, they's still
2:21:01
Speaker 1: news to report, and you don't want your labor disputes
2:21:04
Speaker 1: to get in the way of supposedly reporting the news,
2:21:06
Speaker 1: and that's the mindset that everybody has. But the fact
2:21:09
Speaker 1: is it's distraction whenever it happens, and less stuff gets done.
2:21:13
Speaker 1: And I think walcotts are really effective for what it's
2:21:23
Speaker 1: worth in my experience. But you asked, I just thought
2:21:29
Speaker 1: i'd give you my honest answer on that. One last
2:21:32
Speaker 1: question comes from Peter and he writes from Washington eight. First,
2:21:36
Speaker 1: thanks for the Washington State shout out. My question is
2:21:39
Speaker 1: about Venezuela. Washington eight is the one time swinging one
2:21:44
Speaker 1: of the swinging is districts in the country. It's pretty dee.
2:21:47
Speaker 1: I think it now leans d This is one of
2:21:49
Speaker 1: those suburban districts that used to be a swing district,
2:21:51
Speaker 1: but Donald Trump turned it into a blue district. He goes,
2:21:54
Speaker 1: I I keep hearing Trump that Trump solved Venezuela in
2:21:56
Speaker 1: the issue up and Duro's removal, But what has actually
2:21:58
Speaker 1: changed on the ground. Has there been aatingful political economic
2:22:01
Speaker 1: progress or his tensions simply shifted elsewhere because of other news.
2:22:04
Speaker 1: Thanks for all you do, go Koogs, Peter. It's a
2:22:06
Speaker 1: little bit of both. But the fact is that this
2:22:08
Speaker 1: Delca Rodriguez has released political prisoners there has been a
2:22:11
Speaker 1: little bit less repression. There has been zero repression, and
2:22:15
Speaker 1: there's no plan for new elections.
2:22:18
Speaker 2: This feels more like a.
2:22:22
Speaker 1: A American puppet state. And I'm not saying that for
2:22:26
Speaker 1: just shock value. I mean it is Delca Rodriguez works
2:22:30
Speaker 1: for the United States. It's it's more akin to if
2:22:34
Speaker 1: you want to you know, I've always said Donald Trump
2:22:36
Speaker 1: views himself as sort of a TV mobster, not how
2:22:38
Speaker 1: the real mob works, but how he thinks what television
2:22:41
Speaker 1: and the movies depict the mob ass. And he sees
2:22:44
Speaker 1: himself as sort of He's now acquired new turf and territory,
2:22:47
Speaker 1: and Delcia Rodriguez is one of his new copos. And
2:22:51
Speaker 1: I think that's how he views Venezuela and is certainly
2:22:54
Speaker 1: how he hopes to deal with Cuba. And he's trying
2:22:58
Speaker 1: to show in his own our way he thought Iran
2:23:01
Speaker 1: would behave the same way. This is a case where
2:23:04
Speaker 1: he didn't, you know, look there, there, there were it
2:23:08
Speaker 1: was clear that that people running Maduro's regimes were a
2:23:11
Speaker 1: bunch of It was a kleptocracy, and Donald Trump knows
2:23:15
Speaker 1: how to speak the language of kleptocracy. Aroan's not a cleptocracy, right,
2:23:20
Speaker 1: Aran is a real theocracy, and and Trump struggles with
2:23:23
Speaker 1: people that have that actually have a grounded set of beliefs.
2:23:26
Speaker 1: It's always been a struggle for him, right, And the
2:23:30
Speaker 1: Cubans may be more devout about their beliefs than the
2:23:33
Speaker 1: Venezuelan government ever was. So I think there's something to
2:23:36
Speaker 1: that as well. But what you're asking is no, I mean,
2:23:39
Speaker 1: I think I think that certainly Venezuela is stable, but
2:23:44
Speaker 1: it is not a democracy at the moment. It is
2:23:46
Speaker 1: a puppet state and it is not quite on you know,
2:23:53
Speaker 1: it's it's it's almost like the the United States is
2:23:57
Speaker 1: treating it.
2:23:59
Speaker 2: Almost the way.
2:24:00
Speaker 1: Probably the UK treats Bermuda. Doesn't really belong to the UK,
2:24:04
Speaker 1: but it's still part of the Commonwealth, and I think
2:24:07
Speaker 1: that's how Trump used it. But at some point we
2:24:11
Speaker 1: you know, we cannot judge Venezuela's success unless free and
2:24:15
Speaker 1: fair elections are held and that government is able to
2:24:19
Speaker 1: transition to another free and fair election like to me,
2:24:22
Speaker 1: what he did in Venezuela. We cannot decide is a
2:24:25
Speaker 1: success until we have two elections in a row that
2:24:29
Speaker 1: are peaceful, and that are and and and are handed
2:24:33
Speaker 1: off between entities. That's when we can deem Venezuela's success
2:24:38
Speaker 1: or not.
2:24:40
Speaker 2: H With that, I'm gonna put a pin in this episode.
2:24:46
Speaker 1: Appreciate you as always, Thanks for listening, Thanks for liking
2:24:51
Speaker 1: and subscribing. Appreciate your supporting our sponsors as well. This
2:24:54
Speaker 1: is how I keep this free for you guys. I
2:24:57
Speaker 1: never want to go behind a paywall because we are
2:25:00
Speaker 1: not here to narrow cast. We are here to broadcast
2:25:05
Speaker 1: and with that, I'll see it forty eight hours