Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Reaction to Tuesday's elections + Failure for Trump in Iran + Can America Live Up to Its Founding Principles?

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Full Episode - Reaction to Tuesday's elections + Failure for Trump in Iran + Can America Live Up to Its Founding Principles? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: may vary. Hello, They're happy Wednesday, and welcome to another
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Podcast. We've got a pretty busy
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: episode here, got an interesting interview. Look, we're having a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: big debate about the politics of patriotism with the pull
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: with the President deciding to turn the of July and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the two hundred and fiftieth birthday into something that is
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: fused with his own personal brand and personal celebrity, it
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: is only adding to the politics of patriotism. So I
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: had an interesting conversation with the author Dominic er Dezaan.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: He's got a book called to Love a Country, and
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  Speaker 1: it really is about sort of the history of patriotism
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  Speaker 1: in this country and what is the line between patriotism
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  Speaker 1: and nationalism, the role of American exceptionalism in this conversation
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: about patriotism anyway, Look, this is a topic that I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: think there's going to be more discussion of the closer
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: we get to July fourth, and the more President Trump
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: decides to put his imprint in, to try to fuse
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: his own brand with something that is supposed to belong
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to every American, regardless of political persuasion. So that's the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: conversation for today. But I'm I got a few topics
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I want to get to. We got the election results
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: from last night, We got the latest on the Iran
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: deal or what we don't know about the Iran deal.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: And then there's a story that is probably the single
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: most important story you haven't heard about this week. But
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: it's quite frightening, it's quite important, and it's quite familiar.
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  Speaker 1: I also have a top five list this week. It
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: is the top five most underrated races out there, five
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: races that are much more competitive than the coverage by
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the political media would let you would let on. And
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  Speaker 1: of course we will take some questions, but let me
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: just start with last night and what happened. Let's look
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: at it big picture. In the battle for control of Congress,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: there was really only one race that mattered. It was
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the runoff for the Republican Senate nomination in Georgia. The
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: question was who was going to get that nomination to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: face off against Democratic and comment Senator John Ossoff. If
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: you're John Ossoff, I think and your choices were a
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: sitting member of Congress and Mike Collins and an outsider
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  Speaker 1: former football coach and the son of a legendary Georgia
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  Speaker 1: football coach, Derek Dooley. You wanted to face the member
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  Speaker 1: of Congress. Right, what's the more unpopular institution, football or Congress? Right,
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  Speaker 1: It's a pretty easy call. Now, Donald Trump endorsed Mike Collins.
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  Speaker 1: He did not endorse Derek Dooley. And there's one good
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: reason why he didn't do it. He didn't endorse Derek Dooley,
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  Speaker 1: because Derek Dooley is Brian Kemp's candidate. This is who
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the governor recruited to run. And of course the President
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: did when he did his endorsement for Mike Collins late
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  Speaker 1: last week, he made a point to note that Derek Dooley.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons he didn't want to support Derek
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Dooley is Derek Dooley correctly knew who won the twenty
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: twenty election. Is Joe Biden won the election. He does
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: not believe in Donald Trump's manufactured fantasy land. And of
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: course when you don't believe in his fantasies about the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty election, you don't get his support. Well, look,
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  Speaker 1: the Trump endorsement has not been a guarantee this primary
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  Speaker 1: season of victory, but it was enough to get Mike Collins.
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  Speaker 1: Now we're going to get to something here, because Donald
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Trump did not go undefeated in Georgia. He actually went
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: one and one, and that is bad news for him,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: but it's actually good news for the Republican Party. I'm
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: going to get to that in a minute, but let
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  Speaker 1: me go to the Senate race. Look, the fact of
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  Speaker 1: the matter is, and I mentioned this before, in the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Big seven states right the seventh battleground stage, of which
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Georgia is one of them. But if you look at Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, when Donald Trump has the Donald Trump endorsed
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: candidates have fallen on their face. They are terrible general
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: election candidates. They just don't succeed Herschel Walker and Georgia,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Mark Robinson, Kerrie Lake in Arizona. We've seen it in
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: that the Mastriano character in Pennsylvania. Before that you had
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: doctor Oz. So the Donald Trump endorsement in one of
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: these battleground states is a net negative in a general election.
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  Speaker 1: Never mind that he's actually more unpopular now than he
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  Speaker 1: was before. His track record in these swing states was
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: pretty bad in general elections when he had a better
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: jobberpoople rating, but now his jobberpoovle rating is in the
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: mid to high thirties. So I think if you're John
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Ossoff tonight or this morning, excuse me, on Wednesday morning,
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  Speaker 1: you would rather run against Congressman Mike Collins than coach
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Derek Dooley. So I think it's pretty clear and it's
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: interesting national Republicans. I have a feeling that Mike Collins
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  Speaker 1: is going to be on his own if Osoff builds
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  Speaker 1: a lead of anywhere, signify when you look at the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: money suck that Ken pactice. Ken Paxton's campaign is going
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  Speaker 1: to be in Texas. You know, I don't think the
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  Speaker 1: party and they certainly have to throw everything they can
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  Speaker 1: to hold Ohio. They have to throw everything they hand
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  Speaker 1: to hold Texas. I think they are going to have
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  Speaker 1: an opportunity going offense in Michigan that leaves Georgia and
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  Speaker 1: North Carolina in precarious positions here. I think now the
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  Speaker 1: Republican Party has two week nominees, by the way, nominees
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  Speaker 1: that are their thanks to Donald Trump, and the association
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  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump has made these gentlemen weaker general election candidates.
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  Speaker 1: May have helped them in a primary. Michael Wattley didn't
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  Speaker 1: even have a primary. The field got cleared for him
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  Speaker 1: North Carolina or Mike Collins. So there's that. Now, let's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: talk about the governor's race, because here I think Republicans
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  Speaker 1: caught a break and Democrats are a little bit disappointed
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: in the results. On Tuesday night, Rick Jackson, the outsider
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  Speaker 1: businessman who did not have Trump's endorsement, certainly spent money
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  Speaker 1: like he was Tom Stier. He's essentially the Tom Styer
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  Speaker 1: the Republican Party.
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  Speaker 2: This year.
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  Speaker 1: He did not spend as much money as Tom Sire
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  Speaker 1: did in California, but George is not as big as
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  Speaker 1: California per capita. He came awfully close to spending a
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  Speaker 1: similar amount of money in Georgia as Stier did in California.
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  Speaker 1: And Jackson beat the Trump endorsed sitting Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones.
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  Speaker 1: Now Burt Jones' total election denier. This is an again
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  Speaker 1: and go back to the point I was making about
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  Speaker 1: Mike Collins here. Probably in this political environment, in a
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  Speaker 1: battleground state, probably unelectable, and certainly Democrats were really feeling
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  Speaker 1: pretty good about their chances to win the Georgia gubernatorial
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  Speaker 1: seat if Burt Jones was the nominee. But he's not
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  Speaker 1: going to be the nominee. Rick Jackson's a different story.
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  Speaker 1: Keisha Lance Bottoms is a Democratic nominee. She was able
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  Speaker 1: to get that nomination without having to be forced into
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  Speaker 1: a runoff. And now so look the best thing she's
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  Speaker 1: got going for her is John ossof he's going to
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: have a bunch of extra money. So the combination of
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  Speaker 1: the ticket, I mean it, look, this is this is
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  Speaker 1: going to be a very close race. You know, ken Osoff.
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  Speaker 1: Can the National Environment pull Keisha Lan's bottoms over the
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  Speaker 1: finish line? I think that's the open question here. But
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  Speaker 1: if you're the Democrats, you're disappointed in this result from
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  Speaker 1: last night. Rick Jackson, he doesn't have to carry the
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  Speaker 1: baggage of Trump. Sure, certainly he's embraced saying that, you know,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: sort of finds ways to compare himself to Trump, you know,
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  Speaker 1: as an outsider, as a businessman. But he's it's been
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  Speaker 1: an I think he's run a very as smart of
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  Speaker 1: a campaign as you can when you have this cult
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  Speaker 1: of personality that hovers over the party. So I think
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  Speaker 1: this is it's funny the White House isn't happy because
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  Speaker 1: you know, he's always unhappy when he looks like a loser.
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  Speaker 1: But the Republican Party now has a better chance of
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  Speaker 1: holding the Georgia Governor's mansion Wednesday morning because of Rick
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  Speaker 1: Jackson than they would had Burt Jones been that nominee Alabama.
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  Speaker 1: One thing I was watching there is if Barrymore was
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: going to find out that being a member of Congress
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  Speaker 1: in a runoff against an outsider populist on the right.
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  Speaker 1: Was that going to end as badly as it did
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  Speaker 1: for Randy Feincher in Iowa. It did not in Alabama.
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  Speaker 1: More with Trump's endorsement is there and he's going to
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: be the next US senator, Democrats are not really putting
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: up a big fight there. If they put up any
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: fight in Alabama, it's going to be in that governor's race.
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  Speaker 1: And in fact, I'll have more on that governor's race
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  Speaker 1: in that top five list I talked to you about
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and that I teased you about earlier this week. We're
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: going to have a runoff in Oklahoma. That's interesting in governor.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: But look, this is a one party state, so the
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: primary is the general. So in that case, the runoff
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: is in some ways now the general election there. And look,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: I think the only other race of significance Tuesday night
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: that we do not have the result of is DC mayor.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Are they going to elect a socialist mayor or are
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: they going to elect somebody from the mainstream wing of
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the party. That's the question. This thing's going to rank
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: choice voting. We'll find out. What's interesting is by the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: last couple weeks of the campaign, both candidates for DC
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: mayor were being very sort of trying to show themselves
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: willing to be confrontational with the Trump administration if necessary,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: sort of trying to take a different tack that Mario
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Bowser had taken over the last certainly over the last
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: eighteen months since Donald Trump's returned to office here. So
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see if the DSA candidate wins,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: how the Trump administration responds, and how much they're going
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to be tempted to try to use this as an
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: exploitive way to try to paint the Democratic Party nationally.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Is somehow a part of this. You know, it didn't
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: work with mam Donni. Republicans thought they could use Mamdanni
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: to at least cause problems for Mikey Cheryl in that
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: New Jersey governor's race back in November twenty twenty five.
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  Speaker 1: It had zero impact. I don't think this stuff has
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: impact outside of the actual jurisdiction that the election is
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: in now, though, I want to pivot to what we
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: know and don't know about the arandeal. First of all,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it's interesting to watch the Trump administration scramble here and
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: essentially trying not to talk about the details of this
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: arandeal I guess we'll see it on Friday. You have
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: John Thune publicly asking for more details on this deal.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: You have the Iranians leaking what they say are the
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: details of this, which includes accessing a three hundred billion
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: dollar fund for reconstruction. It's it's interesting Vice President of Vance,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: who went on The View and some other places to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: try to spin and sell this deal seem to hint
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: wanted to make it clear, well that money isn't coming
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: directly from the United States, and it's like, it's obvious
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: what Trump is going to try to do, which is
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: he's laundering this the money that's being used to essentially
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: bribe the Iranians to open the strait before they do
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: anything about the nuclear discussion. Is money in some way
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: that we're opening up? Are we funneling it through the
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Gulf States? You know, money is fungible. So it's funny
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: because Donald Trump, mister palletts of cash attack line that
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: he used a lot against Barack Obama and the original
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Iran nuclear deal. He's so desperate to preserve that talking
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: point that they want to try to convince people that
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: all of this cash that the Iranians are getting it's
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: not directly coming from the United States. Instead, it's coming
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: because the United States completely miscalculated in this war. But
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: there's a few things that are notable to me about this.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: If the Iranians spin on what the deal looks like,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: what the memo of understanding looks like, we're flat out wrong.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: The Administration would be able to provide details to prove
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: that we're flat out wrong. They have not done that.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: It is clear that the administration was desperate to do
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: whatever it took to open the strait. The economic pain
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: that this was causing them, the political pain that this
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: was causing them, they were just this was a They
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: were just incredibly desperate to do whatever it took, and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: they seem to have handed the Iranians what is a
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: victory here. The Iranians are getting a lot of what
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: they're asking for here, probably more than they expected. And
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: it's simply because they control the strait of hormones and that,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you know that, ultimately is what makes this entire rn
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: escapade just a giant, colossal failure. And again I've said
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: this before, I respect the the There there's two sides
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of this art. There was this. There's the side of
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the argument that says you shouldn't have started the war
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: in the first place. And then there's the side of
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the argument that says, if you're gonna do this, you're
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: gonna you need to you need to go all in.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: You can't half ass it. Donald Trump doesn't know any
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: other thing other in life other than half assing everything.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: He always does everything half assed. Just ask look at
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the reflecting pool. Right, he thought a code of paint
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: was going to clean up the problem, you know, when
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: actually the algae issue is something more complicated, takes hard work. Actually,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: you know, these are things that Donald Trump knows nothing about. Right,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: he just wants to splash a code of paint. Hey
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: take a look at this, and in July fifth, he
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't care. In fact, watch what they do with this
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: reflecting reflecting pool. Not to divert too much here for Iran.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: All he cares about is a reflecting pool not have
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: algae in it between now and July fourth. Right, So
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: they're going to constantly probably overpay people, throw money at
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the problem, do whatever they can to constantly try to
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: skim the reflecting pool. And then in July fifth, he's
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: not going to give a shit anymore and he's just
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: going to walk away and again never actually having fixed
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: the problem. It's basically what the Trump presidency is going
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: to look like in hindsight. Boy, he did a lot
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: of stuff. He broke a lot of stuff. He didn't
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: do a lot of stuff, and half the stuff they did,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: we've got to start back over and do it again.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: It's probably going to be the lesson of that East
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: wing when we get closer to it. But going back
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to Iran, I do think there are there are hawks
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: inside the Trump coalition that are going to finally leave
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: him over this. They haven't left him yet, they're all
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting. I interviewed Mike Pence earlier this
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: week before and vie for is going to appear a
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: newsphere uh and my Newsfare show on Sunday, But we
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: released an early clip about the Iran portion of our conversation,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and the former Vice president in some ways was very
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: consistent in how whenever he's wanted to level criticism on
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and he's not the only person that does this.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You get it from those that like Lindsey Graham, right,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: those that are that know what he's doing here. You know,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: it's like ten x worse than anything they ever criticized
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Obama for. And they know what kind of hypocrites they
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: look like. But you know, Trump's that sensitive they can't
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: ever look like they're criticizing them. So what the former
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: vice president did with me, and what you see all
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: these Republicans do is they begin with this this bizarre praise, right,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: and the former vice president said, well, look, you know
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: this president had the guts to confront the Iranians in
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: ways that previous presidents had, So it's basic the choosing
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: to act. He was trying to praise and I'm like,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and but the plan was bad. The plan was a failure.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: And while he wouldn't accept the premise that it's a failure,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: yet he said, it doesn't look good. And then he
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: finally admits, I would he would not if he had
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: been president, or if he had still been vice president
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: advising President Trump. He would not have advocating advocated stopping
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the military campaign. And he thinks that the stopping of
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the military campaign essentially handed the Iranians leverage and they've
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: run with it. And here we are, what's going to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: be interesting is Israel's behavior between now and the next
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: sixty days. It's clear this deal is politically a disaster
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: for BB domestically, right, because here he has been dining
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: out on his relationship with Donald Trump, dining out in
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: his ability to get Donald Trump to essentially to do
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the bidding and to sort of that of Israel when
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: it comes to their foreign policy goals. That is no
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: longer the case, and BB now looks oddly weak, right.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: He's going to get attacked in this, you know, and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: he's going to be up for election this fall. He's
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: going to get attacked essentially won't be necessarily from his right,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: but it's going to be from hawks who say, hey,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: you you essentially threw yourself in with Donald Trump, and
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Israel is paying the price, right they they essentially outsourced
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: their military sovereignty to the United States. That's going to
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: be the criticism on Israel. And I know some of
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: you out there are very critical of Israel's foreign policy,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: but I'm just talking about the domestic politics here. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: trust me, if bib Netnaho is not the Prime minister
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: six months from now, that might be you know that
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: that is something that politically may benefit Democrats down the road,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: because I think the person that is the biggest polarizing
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: force on the issue of Israel in American politics, it's
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: not Donald Trump, it's actually bb and if Netanyahu is
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: not there, and this essentially, this deal that Trump cuts
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: with the Iranians essentially spells the end of Bibi's political career,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: which it may, it's this could be the beginning of
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that that's going to have an interesting unintended consequences on
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: some domestic debates inside the Democratic Party regarding Israel. And
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: if that is, if that is less front and center
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of an issue, that might mean that Democrats won't be
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: as divided going into twenty eight as some people think
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: self included.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: That they could be.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: But bottom line is, you know, it's interesting here about
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: this and one last point here in Iran is you know,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the one thing that the Obama administration would regularly do
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: when Trump was was attacking them, what the Clinton campaign
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: would regularly do when Trump was attacking them, would Democrats
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: would do what some of us in the media would
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: do when Trump was attacking us is not respond is
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: not fill the void. And it turned out to be
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: a mistake because Trump's ability to sort of own the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: conversation to fill the vacuum, even with misinformation, made it
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: that much harder down the road for the truth to
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: ever surface back up. Well, what's funny is watching the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Trump White House basically get played the way they normally
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: play others, and the Iranians are playing them. And it
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: certainly appears that the President is so afraid of this
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: fragile deal collapsing that he's letting the Iranians essentially dominate
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: this this current vacuum fill it in with what more
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and more folks are wondering, Boy, are the Iranians giving
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: us more details than our own government is giving us?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: And if those details are remotely true, on my word,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: it's going to make many conservatives long for the original
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Iran deal that Barack Obama song. So look, as I
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: said the other day about the only the only praise
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: you can give Trump on this is that at least
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: he understood that he had to stop digging, right, he
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: could have doubled down and tried to half ass this
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: war longer air strike his way out of it. You know,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: I'm one of those who thinks that if he were
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: serious about this, and he really wanted regime change, which,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of course now he says he's never talked about it,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: never wanted it, doesn't care about it. I know there
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: is nothing he says you can take at face value.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't know why I bother even reflecting what
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: he may say for one minute, because the mind's going
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: to change later. But given all the damage that has
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: already come here, Trump would have been better off doubling down,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: sending in ground troops and trying to actually do this
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the hard way. And there was the only way you
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: were going to pull this off, so that if you
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: were going to do this the hard way, there was
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: no easy way to do this. But Donald Trump doesn't
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: know any other way. The idea of doing of trying
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to do something that's hard, that's anathema to him. So
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I have a few more things I wanted to say
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: about sort of what Trump's been trying to do. Right,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: He's been trying to fuse America's birthday, his birthday. He's
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: been desperate to He's desperate to leave an imprint on
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the country in some form or another. Right he is. So,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: whether it's his own personal neediness, maybe it's his fear
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that history is going to treat him accurately, and he
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: knows if history treats him accurately, he won't just be
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: reflected in history. He might get erased from history. And
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: it's clearly a fear. And I think that fear has
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: driven him to desperately attach his name and reflected glory
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: on anything he can get his hands on. Right, if
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: he could have figured out a way to get somebody
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: to chisel his face on Mount Rushmore, he would have
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: done it. It's clear that that was too hard of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a task. So that's why he tried things like attaching
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: his name to the Kennedy And I do think symbolically
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the fact that his name has been physically taken off,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the fact that he lost this one, I do think
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: it's any acknowledgment. And I know we've said this before,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: and I hesitate even uttering the phrase I'm about to say,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: but I think this is symbolically the beginning of the
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: end of the Trump era and of Trump. First of all,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: if you watched him at all during the G seven,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: this is this is suddenly he's he looks as bad
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: as Biden did on any of those trips in twenty
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: four And we know, look at eighty years old. These
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: foreign trips take an enormous toll. Remember Biden was was
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: apparently barely coherent at that George Clooney fundraiser when he
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: did like a nine hour flight from Italy for a
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: similar meeting that Donald Trump's been at this week, and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Trump's been he just you know, you could look at
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: he stayed up half the night for is Chuck E.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Cheese's birthday party in the South Lawn with the UFC fight,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: he immediately cops on a plane and goes to the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: G seven. And he's eighty years old, right, these are
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: he does not have. You know, there's not many eighty
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: year olds out there that could handle a schedule like his,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: let alone somebody who was in such poor health, who
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: does no exercise, who does not eat well. Right, he
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: doesn't even make an attempt to try to make it
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit easier to try to live a healthy
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: life at eighty years old. But I do think that
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the image of that name being brought down and why look,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Trump knew it, right, this is why they put the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: fear of God and those poor gentlemen that they had
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: to go find like extra bed sheets to cover up
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the scaffolding while they pulled the name down, but I
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: do want you to sit with that image because I
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: think it's the most honest portrait we have of this
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: presidency right now. Not the controversies, not January six, not
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the tariffs, none of the stuff that we spend so
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: much time arguing about. It's the scaffolding, right, It's a
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: good symbol. Because here's the thing about Donald Trump that
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think we say enough. He chases a monument
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: to himself without ever building the thing that a monument
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: is actually supposed to commemorate. Right, let me just look
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: at his entire career. His lasting marks aren't constructions outside
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: of Trump Tower. His lasting marks, politically are demolitions. And
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that's the whole problem when you are so desperate to
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: see your name in marble because you don't see buildings
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: named after a wrecking ball. Let's think about the names
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that actually end up on things from American history. Roosevelt
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: social Security still cutting checks ninety years later, Eisenhower, the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Interstate Highway System, NATA, Lyndon Johnson for all of his
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: wreckage at the war, the Civil Rights Act, medicare. These
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: men have their names on buildings and bills and airports,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: because they actually built something that outlived them, and a
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: grateful country, sometimes decades later, decided to carve their name
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: in stone. The commemoration came at the end. It was
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: granted by other people. Eisenhower didn't force his own name
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: on the interstate highway system. Right, that's the difference. Now,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: a fair critic might stop me and say, hey, come on,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Trump has some durable accomplishments that may deserve commemoration at
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: some point, three Supreme Court justices, a whole new branch
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of the military space force, and those things are true,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and those things will outlast them. But look closer at
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: both of those so called accomplishments. The three Supreme Court seats, Well,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: that's just an actuary old draw right, like he just
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: happened to preside when they became open. A death, a retirement,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: another death, plus Mitch McConnell's procedural hardball right hand, those
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: same three vacancies and that same Senate to any Republican president,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and you get probably the same three justices off the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: same Federalist Society list.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: There is nothing in those picks that is distinctly Trump.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Where you said, boy, without Trump, you wouldn't have them. It's, frankly,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the most generic thing a president can do. A point
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: a spring Court justice. And then there's Space Force. It's
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: one thing he's actually credited with building in his first term.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: But here's the part that never gets told about that
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the idea didn't come from Trump. It came out of Congress,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: and it was bipartisan. It was a Republican and a
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Democrat on the Armed Services Committee that was pushing something
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: called the Space Corps back in twenty seventeen. And Trump's
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: own administration actually fought the idea.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: At first, his.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Own Defense secretary wrote a rare letter opposing the idea.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: His own White House called it premature, put it on
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: the list of they didn't want. They said that they
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: leave it out of the Defense bill. Well in twenty seventeen,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump lost that fight. Then a year later, you know, frankly,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: this is not the dumbest idea, it's good politics. He
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: decided to turn around adopt the idea he had opposed,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and changed exactly one thing about it, the name space Corps.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Turned it to Space Force. The Senate backed his name.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: The House called the identical thing a space Corps. So
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the one institution he supposedly built. His contribution was simply
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the branding. It's kind of on brand for him, right.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: He put his label on a blueprint somebody else drew
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and his own Pentagon had tried to kill, which, when
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you think about it, is the Kennedy Center move, just
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: earlier and legal because that time he got Congress to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: ratify the name. But if you want to understand the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: real cost of all this, the cost of wanting the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: prestige without doing the actual work, look at North Korea.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Because I did. Look, I wanted to tackle this issue
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: of him desperately to the to like create a monument
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: to himself. Has he done anything that's even worthy? You know,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and you consider and say, okay, there's a few things.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: That's why Space Force. Sure any president would have done it.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: In fact, he tried to stop it. The Supreme Court
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Justices again actuary tables.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: There was one.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Unique thing he did, and that was try to change
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: how we dealt with North Korea. So he did the
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: thing no living president would do. He walked across that line.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: He shook Kim Jong UN's hand, he got the photographs,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: he got the summit, he got the historic first, and
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: then he skipped the part that actually mattered, you know,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the hard work, the years of grinding, unglamorous shared credit
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: diplomacy that might have produced a real constraint on that regime.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: But all he wanted was the picture, not the agreement.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: So here's the scoreboard. Today, in twenty twenty six, North
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Korea is not less dangerous, it is more dangerous. Pyongyang
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: is racing its nuclear program forward, firing more missiles in
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: a month than it has in years. It's being bankrolled
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: by Russia cash, defense technology, a security guarantee in exchange
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: for troops and artillery shells for Russia's war with Ukraine.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: The sanctions regime that used to give us leverage Russia
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: veto did there is nothing we can offer Kim Jong
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: un now that Moscow isn't offering more of The handshake
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: didn't freeze the problem. It blessed it, and then it
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: got worse. And that's what impatience spies you. The flashy
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: first and a problem harder than the one you found. Frankly,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the same thing that's happened with Iran now. But you
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: want the thesis in one image, not a metaphor an
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: actual building, Well, then you get to look at the
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: east wing of the White House. He told us the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: ball He told us the ballroom wasn't going to touch
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the east wing, wasn't going to interfere with the existing structure.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: That was last July. By October the wrecking crews were there,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and within weeks the entire east wing, a wing that
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: had stood since nineteen oh two that held the First
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Lady's offices, was gone, leveled, hauled off in dumpsters. And
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: the ballroom he tore it down for the four hundred
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: million dollar ballroom. Well, a federal judge is now frozen
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: because they started swinging the wrecking ball before anybody signed
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: off on the building. So sit with the picture. The
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: demolition is finished, the construction is not. There is a
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: hole on the east side of the White House where
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: something stood for one and nearly one hundred and twenty
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: five years, and the monument that was supposed to replace
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: it exists only in a rendering that he likes to
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: wave around on Air Force one, that is Trump in
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: one giant pile of rubble. He got the tearing down done.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: He's good at tearing things down. The building is now
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: going to be somebody else's problem, or it judge's or
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty nines. So put it together. Durable accomplishments are slow,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and they're kind of born. The credit gets shared, the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: payoff is delayed, and the monument, if it does come,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: comes at the end and somebody else decides to build
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: that monument for you. Donald Trump wants the reward up front,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: so he seizes the name before he's done the work.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: He declares the first, before he secured the deal. He
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: brands the building before he has ever even built it,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and sometimes he never builds it at all. He just
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: knocks down the thing that was already standing. So two
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: pictures this spring that I do think spell the end.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: We know the Trump ra is coming to an end.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe a bumpy landing, and maybe I have terrible end,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: maybe a crash landing, but it is coming.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: To an end.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And those two pictures, the scaffolding at the Kennedy Center
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: to pull his name off a building that he didn't build.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: At the White House, you've got scaffolding going up over
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the wreckage of the one building he did tear down,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: same instinct, same season, same man. He will be remembered,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I have no doubt about that. And he may be
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: the most consequential president we've had since FDR. But consequential
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and commemorated are not the same thing. One you earn
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: by what you teared out, the other you earned by
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: what you leave standing. And we are running low on
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: things this president has left standing. He can't even get
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: woke algae out of the reflecting pool. Sorry, I can't
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: help myself. I find the woke ideology woke algae kind
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: of dad pun too good to pass out. He can't
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: even get that done right. You don't name buildings after
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the wrecking ball, and make no mistake, that is what
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: this presidency is going to be known for, a wrecking ball.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: And by the way, the estimate for the East Wing
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: is now up to six hundred million, and it's likely
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: that taxpayers are going to have to pick up the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: tab to rebuild whatever is left of this rubble once
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: once we find out what's legal and what's proper. Before
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I get to my conversation about the politics of patriotism,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you about a story that I
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: think it's the single most important story that has not
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: gotten enough attention to the United States this weekend. It
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: weirdly is understandable why it hasn't. We have some other
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: stuff going on, but trust me, it's an incredibly important story.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: In fact, if you glance at the headlines this week internationally,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: you might have caught a brief mention of a court
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: case in London. A twenty two year old builder named
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Roman was convicted of setting fire to properties linked to
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: British Prime Minister Keres Starmer. Yes, Kure Starmer's still the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Prime Minister, he hasn't been thrown out office yet. But
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: this person tried to set fire to a hall where
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: the Prime Minister's family was sleeping. On the surface, it
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: looked like a terrifying, localized lone wolf attack. But a
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: massive joint investigation by the Financial Times and Panorama, which
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: is the BBC's flagship investigative program, their version of sixty minutes,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: has just pulled back the curtain on what is actually
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the most important story you missed this week. Because Roman
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't acting alone. He was a weaponized proxy, and he
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: was and the puppet master pulling the strings the Russian state. Now,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: let's be entirely square about what the Russians were trying
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: to achieve here. This wasn't just some random act of
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: state sponsored arson going after the Prime Minister. The explicit
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: strategic objective of the Kremlin was to make the British
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: public believe that their Prime Minister was being physically hunted
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and attacked by angry, radicalized Muslims. And to pull this off,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: here's how the operation worked. A single three year old
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Russian name, Evgeny Lukshan, operating within elite Kremlin diplomatic circles,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: ran a dual sided psychological trap over telegram. On one side,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: all of this is in this BBC report, with the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Financial Times. On one side. He manufactured a fake online
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: group called the Takbir Foundation, pretending to be an extremist
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Islamic cell calling for jihad in England. He paid local
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: actors to paint religious graffiti on public buildings to intentionally
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: terrify the British public and stoke anti Islamic fury. Then
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Lukshan switched accounts and launched direct Action UK. This was
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: a fake far right group. This group posted videos branding
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the Prime Minister a trader and offered cryptocurrency bounties for attacks.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: They used an ordinary online jobs board to trap a
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: young Ukrainian builder who I'd just told you about, escalating
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: him from minor vandalism to setting fire to a residential building,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: and again the goal was total societal polarization in the UK.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Paint the target on the Prime Minister, blame the country's
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Muslim population, and watch British society tear itself apart from
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the inside out. Now I know what you're thinking. I've
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: seen this story before, Avnai. Yes you have. If this
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: sounds shockingly sophisticated, it actually shouldn't. We need to remind
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: ourselves that this operation is almost identical to what the
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Special Council Robert Muller successfully uncovered and documented it in
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen Russia Investigation. People often
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: forget that the Muller report exposed a Russian Internet research
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: agency playbook that did this exact same thing to the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: American electorate in twenty sixteen. Russian operatives didn't just postpartisan memes.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: They built large fake Facebook groups representing opposite sides of
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: America's deepest fractures. They created a fake page called United
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Muslims of America to harvest hundreds of thousands of followers
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: while simultaneously running fake white nationalists and anti immigration groups.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Mueller documented cases where Russian handlers thousands of miles away
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: literally paid real unsuspecting Americans to stage opposing protests on
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: the exact same street corners in Texas and Florida, intentionally
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: weaponizing citizens against one another. The London Arson plot is
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: simply the twenty sixteen Muller blueprint, updated with cryptocurrency and
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: escalated to physical terrorism. Now this story is really important.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Look how just look closely at how this story went public.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Tracing ENCRYPTID telegram metadapa directly to the son of a
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: senior Russian diplomat photograph standing behind Russia's deputy foreign minister.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: That requires incredibly high grade operational data. All right, I
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: know a lot of great investigative journalists. None of them
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: are going to have the resources.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: To do this.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: And while Scotland Yard formerly maintains a cautious public stance,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: this kind of deep forensic dump across major press outlets
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: carries all the hallmarks of an intentional move by British
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: intelligence to bypass standard diplomatic channels and force a warning
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: into the open. Frankly good for British intel if they
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: did do this. This needs to be out there. People
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: need to know what the Russians are doing. Yes, we
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: can self polarize as human beings, but the Russians are
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: doing it intentionally all over the West. By the way,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: here's what's a little struggling this week. G seven leaders
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: are gathered at the moment, and we have heard absolute
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: silence from Washington and other Western capitals over the literal
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: targeting of an Allies prime minister. Now, part of that
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: is driven by the sheer political chaos in London right now,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: following disastrous local election results, Starmer's leadership is on life support.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Some domestic critics have viewed this year's Arson story through
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: a deeply cynical lens as a political shield to paint
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Starmer as a national security victim and to try to
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: quiet the political dogs at home right, But focusing strictly
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: on the domestic political theater here completely misses the point.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: The real reason for the silence. The West has taken
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: its eye off the Russian ball. Russia successfully confused the
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: American public over the last few years into thinking this
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: threat went away, but the Kremlin never stopped. And to
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: understand just how deep this confusion goes, you only have
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: to look at Washington. Just a few days ago, in
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: her final weeks, the Director of National Intel Diligence, Tulsa Gabbert,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: because she's still director until the end of the month,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: issued a sweeping declassification drop claiming to blow the lid
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: off a global network of over one hundred US funded
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: bio labs in Ukraine. Now, connecting all of these dots
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: requires analytical caution. What Gabbert declassified as a matter of
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: public record, so she didn't declassify a thing. The decades
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: old US Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which openly funds overseas
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: labs to secure old Soviet pathogens and to monitor disease.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: The Soviets were doing all sorts of a bioweapons crap
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: that we were trying to stop for and have it spread.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: It is also considered a public health initiative. But what
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Telsea Gabbert did for her friends over in Russia by
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: repackaging these standard facilities as secretive, dangerous biolabs with minimal oversight,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Gabbert effectively laundered a notorious Russian talking point pumped out
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: by Moscow since twenty twenty two into official US intelligence disclosure.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Do you know that Robert F. Kennedy Junior sort of
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: praised this disclosure, claiming she broke some new ground. So
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: did Roger Stone. If you needed a parade of suspects
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: of who's potentially on a Russian payroll, I think their
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: self identifying for what it's worth. But the point is
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: this is where the physical sabotage in London meets the
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: psychological sabotage here in Washington. Russia doesn't need to win
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: conventional wars to paralyze the West. By deploying this low
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: cost proxy to set a fire in London, they trigger
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: inner internal political cynicism by planning a narrative virus years
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: ago about biolabs. They watch as a high ranking US
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: official eventually nurture it into mainstream reality to think that
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the head of one of our major intelligence agencies is
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: spreading Russian propaganda and there has been barely a peep
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: about this. I mean, somebody is doing backflips in Moscow
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: right now. But the reason I wanted to make sure
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: you didn't lose the story because themo hasn't changed since
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen in Ukraine, twenty sixteen in America, or today
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: in the Ukraine. Russia is really good at locating our
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: fractures injecting this poison and then stepping back and allowing
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: our own political system and our own media echo chambers
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: to finish the job for him. It's twenty twenty six.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: They started doing this to us in twenty fifteen, and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: we've had a president for eight of those years who
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: not only wants to do six of those years, not
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: only wants to do nothing about it, but is convinced
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: half the country that all of this has been a hoax.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: That's cure Starmer's family, who could have get lit on fire,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: whether this stuff's a hoax. All right, with that, let's
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: sneak at a break and then we're gonna have our
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: tough conversation about the politics of patriotism. The biggest stage
• 46:20
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  Speaker 1: So what does that mean if you're like me and
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• 46:50
  Speaker 1: of this big event, and yeah, you're gonna jump on
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: a bandwagon, And yeah, I'm jumping on the obvious bandwagon.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It's Team USA for me, and I enjoyed what four
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: to one. Look, some of us snarky sports fans you
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: would sometimes like to complain, oh, there's not enough scoring
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: in soccer. Well man, the first half of that match
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: against Paraguay, there's a lot of scoring. Three that counted,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: one that didn't. And look, I'm gonna be honest, it's
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: they're raising the bar, they're raising expectations for me. So
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Australia beat Turkey two to nothing, US beat Paraguay.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: Four to one.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Now Australia and the US meet this Friday, and there's Look,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: there's only one way I'm going to bet. It's going
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to be on you, on Team USA. And the best part,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: by the way of the US planet Australia, is that,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: you know, for all of US casual bandwagon fans who
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: get mocked by our serious football friends for calling it soccer, well,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: guess what, so does Australia, So we can actually America
• 48:02
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• 48:06
  Speaker 1: this might be the only actual soccer match on both sides.
• 48:12
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• 48:13
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• 49:10
  Speaker 1: called one eight seven seven seven seven zero seven eight
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: six seven in Louisiana. So, my next guest has a
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: fascinating book out. It's called to Love a Country. Its
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: name's dominic Erdozane, and in some ways it's a it's
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: a it's an analysis of America sort of understanding what
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: is American patriotism, what does it mean? I think in
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: many ways the book identifies the inherent tension between American
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: patriotism American exceptionalism, and and whether any of that is
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: has any sort of divine explanation for America's rise and
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: things like that.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: But in some.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Ways, you know, I always say, the best thing I
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: learned about the American experiment came from somebody who was
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: not an American.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: It was to tooke Full in his.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Uber analysis of democracy in America, when back in the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, is still useful and helpful to this day.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: So I think in many ways, you know, you need
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: an outsider's perspective to sometimes understand the tension inside a country,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and I think this book does a good.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Job of that. Dominic joins me. Now, Dominic, welcome to
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: the top.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: Thanks very much. I mean, you're it's a kind introduction.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: I think that there's a downside of travel and the
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: outside of perspective of Samuel Johnson joke that nothing narrows
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: the mind like travel.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: You know, you go abroad and you cling.
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: To what you know, and then you judge the other
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: country accordingly, But I think the comparative dimension.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: You know, Mark Twain talks about that a lot, and I.
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: Think he diverted his own passionate kind of anti imperialism
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: from his year of traveling of chasing equations.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I love the the anergy with the top Ville.
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: And I think the Topville is great because although he
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: does actually criticize this kind of very garrulous patriotism of
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: thinking we're the best, he does it with such warmth
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: that he really does feel that this is the crucible
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: of history. This is the experience of democracy happening for
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: our eyes. And I think that if you're only coming
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: in from the negative side, then you're not.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: Going to have illuminating insights. But it's the balance.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Well, look, I think the you know, look you grab,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: you sort of get it this tension immediately because you
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: separate out I guess Americanism, right, which would be nationalism, exceptionalism,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: this providential, this idea that you know, we have a
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: divine right to our destiny versus the promise of America,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: which is a bit more concrete. Right equity, democracy, human rights,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: human dignity, right to pursue happiness, that is not divine.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: That is the assumption that we're all, you know, all
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: humans have this opportunity in an essence, and that I
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: think the Founders would would have believed that they weren't.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think the Founders, and I'm curious where you
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: come down on this. I don't think the Founders that
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: they were creating a country that was to be exceptional
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: from all others. I think they were hoping they were
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: creating a model of a country that would be copied
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: by all others.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they still had an idea of an exceptionalism,
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: but I think you're right that they didn't had they
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: believed in natural rights.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: They believed they did have.
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: A doctrine creation, but all people being created equal and
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: being created good. So I quoted somewhere a biograph a
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: biographer of Benjamin Rush who said that his theology was
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: what the biographer called the loving heresy of universal salvation.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: So the idea that everybody.
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: Is inherently good and everybody has the possibility for salvation.
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: So there's a theology it is on that kind of
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: universalistic side. But the complexity comes in from the fact
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: that they leaved in a sort of form of Calvinism
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: or that are a very specific kind of providence when
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: it came to their understanding of America in history. So
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: someone like Thomas Paine is writing common sense, he's using
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: John Locke's idea of natural rights, but he's also talking
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: about this messianic nation, that it's the birth of the
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: new world as at hand, So you kind of there's
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: a tension between the two right from the start.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Explain your motivation for doing this book. What was the trigger?
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, we were talking earlier about whether
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: historian is a therapist. You know, I write things to
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: work through my own traumas and dilemmas, and I think
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: that what really got me with twenty sixteen. Of course
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: that was a trauma from my own British perspective. With Brexit,
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: I started to see myself as much more of a
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: European and there was that kind of blow and.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Then you didn't know that you had to choose until
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Brexit was exactly and I started.
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: To sort of like the idea of you know, I
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: never really sort of brought into cosmopolitanism, the idea that
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: you could be of no nation, and I found some
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: writing very inspiring on that level. But it doesn't really
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: go anywhere. Ultimately, you need to have a grounding and
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: attachment to somewhere. But I like the idea of wearing
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: national identity light as a sort of coat, rather than
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: a kind of iron identity or iron cage, as some
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: people would put it. I and then the Trump election
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: and this sort of surge of nationalism which seemed to
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: prompt in some ways a rebirth of American exceptionalism. Are
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: kind of grown up American exceptionalism and a few historians
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: talking about the soul of America, and I think the
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: sort of the Biden response to that in twenty twenty
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: was very much, this is not who we are. And
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: I felt there was something a little bit superficial about that,
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: and particularly in relation to.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: One of the big themes of the book is militarism.
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: And I thought, well, you still get militarism from both sides,
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: and there are more benign forms of exceptionalism that don't
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: see nationalists, that still lead you down the same route.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden used to use the phrase worthy essential nation.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: He would not say exceptional, but he said essential, which
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: I found to be, which is just really a synonym
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: for exceptional.
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: I think it is a synonym, and there's been some
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: interesting writing on that recently. And then you've got Madeline
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Albright saying we're the indispensable nation, and then you go
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: back to Henry Lou's The American Century says we are
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: the vital nation.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: So you can pick your adjective.
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: Right, but if it means that you are not going
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: to listen to other people, it's deeply problematic. I think
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: that the tension for me is how it plays out
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: in terms of collaboration or in terms of democratic processes.
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: You have people like the hero of the book at
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: the end is JFK giving the speeches in nineteen sixty
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: three talking about partnership and shared mortality with the Soviets
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: world human we will breathe the same math. So there
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: are sort of very exciting mainstream alternatives to this. But
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: the negative side of it would be John Foster Dulles
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: saying briefing his own diplomats before the meeting in Geneva,
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: to say, they want to have a quality with us.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: The Soviets and the Chinese do not do anything that
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: could give a sense that we.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: Afford equality or we grant quality to them, which in
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: a way it's the very opposite of the national creed
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: of equality. So it's that kind of whether you're vital
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: or indispensable. If you're looking down on others, you're you're
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: portraying the democratic promise.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: I think, what if you call yourself an American exceptionalist
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: because you're you believe that democracy is the only way,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: and you're you know, and that's the that's what you're
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: really that's really what your exceptionalism is about it. But
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: because America is the leading democracy and has to be
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the protector of it, and look, let me, I'll put
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: it in this. Sorry, I'm beating around the bush. That's how
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: I view this country. I feel like, I feel as
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: if we are the stewards of democracy around the world,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and when we don't you then we have problems then
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: in things atrophy, and that it is in our national
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: security interest to defend democracy around the world because the
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: more democracy flourishes, the safer we're going to be. Right,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: And so that's sort of how I come about a
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: version of an exceptionalism, at least when I think how
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: the United States should behave around the world, where would
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: that fall in your.
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: I think it's perfectly reasonable historically to say that it's
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: a pioneer democracy and that it's the first to have
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: these constitutions that allow universal although manhood, franchise, franchise. You know,
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: it's slow on both the feminist side and on the
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: race racial culture. We all know that, I do think
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: there's anything wrong with you.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Know, and it is faster than every other form, every
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: other system that was tried. Yeah, you know, I mean
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I hear you on this and I always sit there,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: you know, whether it's on slavery, with all of these
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: terrible things that this democracy sort of allowed to fall
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: under the umbrella of democracy until we realized that it didn't.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: As slow as democracy is, it moves faster than every
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: other system.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: I think someone who comes to mind here would be
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: William Jennings Bryan, because he was a fierce opponent of
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: imperialism in nineteen hundred and he was saying that if
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: you say that we're a pioneer democracy, it doesn't mean
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: that we can export it. It doesn't come with a
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: gatling gun attachment, the idea that you can impose that
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: on the Filipinos. So I think the question here would
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: be about means and ends that if you really do
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: believe in democracy, you've got to believe in the principle
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: of consent, and consent doesn't go with militarism. And there's
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: a fine line between saying you have to defend democracy,
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: defend the national interest and actually imposing it at the
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: points of a gun. The one final thing I'd say
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: to your comment was William J. Watkins, African American freeman
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: of the midnighteenth century. He says, the essence of the
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: democratic idea is the unity of humankind.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: So with people up willing Lloyd Garrison, the abolition as
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: they have.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: You know, our country is the world and our countrymen
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: or man kind for them, equality within the nation involved
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: a basic human solidarity. So when you say the way
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: the guardians of democracy, there's a danger saying we're still
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: there first, where the pioneers and we get to make
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: the rules.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: That's fair.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this is it a Is democracy
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: and self determination the same thing? Or can you support
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: self determination if it leads to a monarchy?
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: That's a good point.
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: No, I think they're not the same thing, and I
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: think nations can vote for undemocratcratic structures of government and
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: undemocratic leaders. There's a danger that all these things has
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: become a shell for something that is nationalistic or something
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: that is potentially tyrannical.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: They're not synonymous if you do something that's a little
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: bit unique for an historian when tackling sort of the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: American question, the American question, you don't paint Lincoln in
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: the best of life.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: I don't because I think that as someone who lives
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: in the South and feels a lot of the sense
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: of Abah.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: Let people know you're in Emory, you grew up in
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the UK. I think you're and I live here in Atlanta.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: You're in Emory.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I spent a lot of time in South Carolina.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: I don't defend the South and.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: It's it's causing the Civil War.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: But I think that so many people at the time
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: warned Lincoln about the cost of the war and that
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: it wouldn't be over by Christmas. And this idea that
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: you call up in ninety thousand.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: Militia and it's all going to be over in a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: couple of months.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: But if you want to have you know, Winfield Scott
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: is his senior military leader, wanted me, if you want
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: to have political units at the end, you have to
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: be very careful. Again, we're back to means and ends
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: that you could argue, people like Robert man Warren argue
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: that the Southern identity was actually created by the Civil War,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: the US and them.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: There were previous hundreds.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what the Southern identity would
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: be today without the Civil War, do you?
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: No? It own't and I don't think there was.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: You know, you look at people like Colin Woodard in
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: his book American Nations, and he will draw strong distinctions
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: between Appalatia, the Deep South, and the Upper South. And
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: the Civil War created an embittered identity which made the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: foundation of reconstruction almost impossible. I mean, I quote Lysander
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: Spoon and saying he mixed analogy with imagine.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: Roger Williams in Rhode Island.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: If he decided, after creating this haven for religious freedom,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: to suddenly employ the methods of the inquisition and start
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: persecuting heretics to the point of death. That would be
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: no less extreme than this idea of a civil war
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: for democracy. And I think that that's the long term legacy,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: is that violence kind of breads violence, and it was
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: the worst.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: Possible foundation for African American freedom.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: What did we get right with the Marshall plan, that
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: we got wrong with reconstruction.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: I think, I mean, that's a good question.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: I think that perhaps the defeat of Hitler was such
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: that the German nation, well that the German nation itself,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: but Europe as a whole, did not have any lost
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: cause kind of sentimentality.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: I think that there isn't you're.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: Not building on a grievance in w Why And I
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: guess that's the ultimate question.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: Why does Germany not?
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: Look I'm sure there are pockets that there's some lost cause, right,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: we know, you know, there's always a small pocket here
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: or there.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: But why was there not? Why did we not see
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: that lost cause in Germany? But that we saw on
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: this out.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: I don't know whether it would have been the same
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: thing if Germany had been incorporated into the American nation
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: or into the British nation of.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: Churchill, etc.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Had we tried to force them, had they been a
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: they lost.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Their own national identity.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: I think it's you know, it's hard to you know,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: I tought you did the comparison with the with the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: revolution War, but most of the loyalists after the Revolutionary
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: War either went to Canada or they went back home
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: or they quietly disappeared. It's it's not the same as
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: then governing people under the bayonet and under the said,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: you know, the.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: Authority that's just defeated you.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: So I think that the fractuicidal struggle of the war
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: made it in some ways harder to resolve afterwards than
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: you know, foreign languages, you know, and geographically different nations.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: I want to sit in Lincoln here. You call it
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: the Gettysburg doctrine. You call it the biggest lie in
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: the nation ever told itself.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: I was listening to Peter Peter Brown's a pre eminent
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: historian of late antiquity, and he's talking about the fusion
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: of Christianity with the sort of a warrior codes to
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: the Middle Ages, and he talks about Beerwalf the epic poems,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: saying these poems were the gene pool.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: Of cultural gene pool for a warrior aristocracy.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: And I think what really gets me with the Gettysburg
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: address is that you have these young men who are,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: as I explained in the chapter I, pretty much sent
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: to their death. By this point, most of them are
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: either being conscripted or they're being forced into fighting pretty
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: much against their will. Many of them are immigrants and
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: couldn't really follow the ideology. Many of them didn't fire
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: their weapons. A large number of weapons incorrectly loaded, et cetera.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: Were discovered after battle, but they're killed in devastating numbers.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: And then in the Getsburg Address, Lincoln speaks for them.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: He basically says, we've got to keep this war going on.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: Behalf of them. He allows his case to be made
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: through them. So he's kind of been ventriloquising the dead
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: in some way. And then you notice how that language
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: is used by Wilson in the First World War, It's
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: used by true and in justifying nuclear energy, It's used
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: by George W.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: Bush and Dick cheneyed to justify Iraq.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: It becomes every doesn't every leader overseeing a military conflict
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: do this.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: I think they do, But I think what excites me
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: going in to bring out the inner to top film,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: he's thrilled by the the the non militaristic nature of
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: American society, and he has this he said to America
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: is that the least militaristic nation in the world.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: It doesn't need a big professional army.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: And he sees he says, you ought to destroy democracy basically.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: Started game one hundred years too soon, it turned out.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: But anyway, go ahead.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think if you if you want
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: to undermine the process of of of of of freedom
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: of expression and free elections, if you want to undermine
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: the nuts and bolts or that the procedures of democracy,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: you start a war.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: So Lincoln attack that.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: But I think the fundamental issue for me is the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: myth that unity somehow comes through blood and through conflict,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: because I think history shows that you give a good
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: example with Germany, but typically wars to create long legacies
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: of alienation, and that has been sort of baked into
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: our sectional politics and baked into our our kind of
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: culture war.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: In a sense, it sounds like you come down on
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: the side that we haven't resolved the Civil War yet
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: psychological we have.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: And I think I think that there's a lot of language.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: You know, I follow some of these groups for research
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 4: purposes on social media, and I think it's there's a
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: sense of being judged by the Yankees, and there's a
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: sense of being sort of you know that.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Languageay's elites are the nineteenth century Yankees.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: Right, Yes, And you see that with COVID debates and others.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: I'm not legitimizing it, but I think if you want
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: Heario A. J. Musty says, you know, the problem with
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: the war comes with the victor and not the defeated,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: because he thinks he's just shown that the violence pays,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: and now he finds that it's harder, you know, to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: win hearts than to win battles. So I think with Lincoln,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: I used to love his eloquence and the profundity of
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: his statements, and when I looked at it through the
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: lens of there's a book of the people's history of
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: the Civil War, and you look at it through the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: lens of the ordinary person who's not a slave owner,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: who was forced to fight, leave that the family fending
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: for themselves, and these people deserted, some of them were
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: executed for desertion. That war is not about glittering phrases.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: It's just about suffering. And so I became very I
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: started to see it as mythologized. And then I started
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: to see his own cabinet generally wanting about these things before,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: and I thought of him in a less positive life.
• 1:07:45
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  Speaker 1: that code in some ways you make the case, but
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  Speaker 1: this is true of any nation that survives a civil
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  Speaker 1: ward They're gonna mythologize it, right, and the winner gets
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: to decide with the with the myth what the myth is.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: But I think that democracy itself, and one of your
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: discussions or one of your shows, you're talking about politics
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: as a way to solve problems without punching each other
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: or having a fight now.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's how I defend politics.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: I'm like, look, we created it as human beings because
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: we're exhausted from violence.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, And John Locke would say the same thing.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: You know that the civil society is a state of
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: peace as opposed to a state of war that you.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: Can't get there.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's complicated with him because he will justify
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: morally justifying armed rebellion against tyranny.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: But the civil war is a different ballgame.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: And you're trying to create this civil society, this peaceful
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: union through violent means, and the two just don't add up.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Love of country versus worship of country. You know, it's
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: funny that, you know, you sort of I feel like
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: you're debating. You're clearly on one side that debate. And
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: I always say this about Polatins. You can love a politician,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: but be careful if you worship them. Yes, right, there's
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: this fine line, and you know, we we were seeing
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: you know, we're seeing it in the Trump movement. Right,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: there's the point of worship, which sort of where critical
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: thinking disappears and things like that. You know, but there's
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: there's this fine line, so.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Where where.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: You know, how do we both how do we sell
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: the American story without going down a cult?
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: I was really struck by something.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Feels like that's where you were trying to get out here.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: I think that spot On and Raphael want said a
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: lovely thing the other day in a nanty said that
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: you know, we're as a nation, we're family like all families.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: We have a complicated family history and just to be.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: And the Emma Goldman quote at the start, you know,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: there's a different there are different kinds of love.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: There's a love that can.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: Look at a spouse or farther and not sort of
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: blind worship. You know that there's almost more depth to
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: love that can be critical. And that quote I had
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: at the start from a guy called Abraham Bishop who's saying, really,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: national greatness is where individual greatness dies because you lose
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: your self respect and you worship a leader, a nation,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: or an idea that and.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: This is the point made by throw. I mean, Therow
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: is pretty polemical about it.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: He's talking about Patrick's and being like a maggot in
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: the brain, which is a nasty way to put it,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: but he's concerned about lots of self respect that if
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: you sell your identity in a way to the group
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: you lose that. I mean, one of the examples I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: do like is Gandhi, because Gandhi is wrestling with Tagre
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: Tagare's this purity saying, you know, we don't want He's
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: the poet, the Nobel Prize winning poet. He says, we
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: don't want to be nationalists because nationalism who has ruined us,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: British nationalism has crushed our people. And Gandhi said, yeah,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: but we need to stand on our own two feet.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: I want to have the windows open to my house
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: and let the cultures of the world flow through it.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: But I don't want to be blown off my feet
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: by any So he's quite strong in defending a national identity,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: but not in worshiping the nation.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: You know, it's so true.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: It's like, if you don't have an identity, you're probably
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: not going to have a successful country. But every time,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: but the minute you tip to nationalism, right, that's when
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: you know people start.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: To lose freedom.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Right, any country that starts to embrace some form of nationalism,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: somebody is going to lose some freedoms.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: And it seems that's go ahead. Yeah, no, no, I
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: think that that's that's the issue.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: And I think that the problem with exceptionalism is that
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: it inches towards that idea.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: You know, George Orway's got a great essay notes on nationalism.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: He teases the idea that patriotism can be the inoculation
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: for nationalism. But when he talks about patriotism, there's such
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: kind of benign and innocent things like gardening or flower
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: ranging or drinking tea in the English sense, that anything
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: that smacks of superiority or kind of egoism is going
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: to be dangerous. So that's that's the problem. And I say,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: you know, from a British perspective, you know, most of
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: these ideas were taken from us, you know, the Puritan idea,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: the city on the hill. So it's how to love
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: your country. I think people like Randolph Bourne I talk
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: about in the World War One chapter Capture that, you know,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: loving the diversity and loving the cities as a model
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: of American.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Look, a lot of your critique it has to do
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: with sort of media ecosystems too, whether it's Hollywood, historians, journalists, politicians.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: That's a part right myth making. Put it this way,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: the older I get, the more important it is to
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: me to find out more about the author of a
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: history book rather than the history itself, because so much
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: of the history book is going to be through the
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: prism of what they've experienced. Right. One of my favorite
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: examples on this is I've read probably five different books
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: in the eighteen seventy six election, right, and the differences
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: the facts don't change, the interpretation of the facts change,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: and it's all based on the author and their sort
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: of wherever their beliefs are right, wherever they sort of
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: fall on the idea of of of who was voting
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: when you know, stuff like this, and I you know,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: but then again, I don't know how you write a
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: good history book without without sort of your own you know.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: I always say we're all born with original bias, meaning
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: where we're born, how who were born into where we
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: grow up? You know, these are choices we didn't make,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: but they they create a bias.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: And how do you how do you talk about yours
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: in your book?
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: I think that's it's a fair observation. I think the
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: issue there was at one time a myth of the
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: objective historian and impartiality, and the.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: I don't think that exists at all. And I think
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: we have to just study that. What do you have it?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: I always say that there's fairness, like the trope of
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: fair and balanced was you know, balance was bs but fair?
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: Are you fair? I'm fair.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: I may not agree, but I'll be fair and give
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: somebody the chance to give their point of view.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: I think that's really good.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: I don't claim to be neutral, and I say that
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: in the prologue I'm not that scientific. You know impartial
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: commentator that you know Devere Allen is referring to, and
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: he says, you know, no one really approaches patriotism with
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 4: scientific detachment. I think that the idea of the myth
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: of impartiality is pretty much gone. You might get some
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: old school historians who are very snooty about presentism, that
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: you shouldn't.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: Be righting for the present.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: But we do live in the present and we've rested
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: with our problems. The great American historians like Richard Hofstatter
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: are open and saying we need to understand our times.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: And I think as a scholar, you've just got to
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: be I think your word fairness is crucial. I'm not
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: being neutral, I'm trying to be fair, but I'm offering perspective,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: which takes up.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: So someone like David Williams says it's a people's history.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: He's looking at the soldiers who had to fight this
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: war and he's putting their perspective ahead of that of statesmen.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: And in the same way, I'm owning the fact that
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: I had come from this country. I do love it,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: and I have deep attachment to it and deep immersion in,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: you know, in the game, so to speak. But I
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: also I'm very troubled by militarism. And you know, I
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: haven't experienced the race, the race issue that I discussed
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: in the same way, but I think the issue of
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: militarism is one that has affected me. So that is
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: kind of in the way the lens I'm looking.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: At it through.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about and I'm curious you because you
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: talk about the patriotic myth when it comes to Cold
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: war mythology in Iraq war mythology. Let's delve more into
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: that a little bit for me of what you were
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: trying to get at here, because I look, I think
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: you're right, you know, when it comes to the Cold War,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: and and you know, it's funny sometimes the more we know,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: the messier it is, and the harder it would be
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: to keep the unity you might have needed. Right, Some
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: would argue that a my mythology is sometimes useful to
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: create cohesiveness.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, I think there are some scholars who'll
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: say that it was an imaginary war, but it was really.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: And I could argue all religion is a myth. The
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: creation of religion itself is the great mythology.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: Maker of our times.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that someone or well would say that, yes,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: but there was religion and the superstition, and then we've
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: just created new versions of that kind of thing around
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: ourselves and about ideologies or about nations.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: So you know, I think we are myth making creatures.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: I think that you know that analogy of like a
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: positive myth, you know, Roland Bart who you'd take noble
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: myths about because you believe the best about somebody. It
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 4: might actually build trust in, might actually build positive outcomes.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: But if you're believing a myth about yourself and your
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: own innocence, that's dangerous.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: With the Cold War, I'm persuaded by those.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 5: Who who argued that it was a confected crisis that
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 5: you know, George Kennan and the Long Telegram, which implied
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 5: that the Soviets were almost both ideologically and kind of
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 5: ethnically wired for war.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: And the Soviets had just lost more than twenty million
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: people in the Second World War, and when they did
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: not have a nuclear weapon at the time, they were
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: not gearing up for World War Three. And Kenan lived
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: to regret his role.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: In that, But I feel that that was a situation
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: we could have been spared a nuclear age. There is
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: actually no reason to believe that nucle weapons were going
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: to become a normal And this is what Kennedy realizes.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: After the Bay of Pigs fiasco and then the Cuban
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 4: missile crisis, he starts to realize that the drivers for
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: war were as much within his own government, within his
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: own military as they were within the circuits. And then
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: he starts opens up this back channel of diplomacy. You've
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: got Norman Cousins going over to going over to Russia,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: and then at one point actually hanging out with Kristjoff
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: at his Philip on the Black Sea and his children
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: are borrowing Chris joff swimming trunks. That detail is not
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: in a book, but I can't get over the fact
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: that they wore Chris Jof's swimming trunks six months after
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: the world nearly blew up. And it's a tragedy that
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: JFK died because I think he, you know, is as
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: a British commentator said at the time, he isn't just
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 4: calling for disarmament.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: He's just called off the Cold War, right, and.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: I think he sort of demystifies the enmity so that
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: we don't need to hate each other, we don't need
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: to agree on everything, but we could admire the Russian
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 4: people while distancing ourselves from that ideology. He's very clear
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 4: about that, and that makes me think how many other
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: leaders could have actually or could now be doing that.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: No, it's a it's a fair point, and you know,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: we it's funny what we do. And I always think
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: about what did I try to put myself back in?
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: You know, what did the sixteen year old version of
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: me think of the Soviet Union seventeen year old version
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: of me then it fell, you know, But.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: It's funny about war. I remember my father.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Being pet paranoid about Gorbachev because Gorbachev was the first
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: Soviet leader who had no memory of World War Two,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and he used to take solace in the previous Soviet
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: leaders who were all of fighting age during World War Two,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: and he goes, you know, because they paid a deed,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: they paid the deeds. Nobody paid a bigger price in
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: the war than the Soviets, and right, they lost more,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: they and in some ways, you know, in his mind,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: he always felt he always felt like the Soviets were
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: never going to start a war because they paid. They
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: they had a memory of it. And his fear was
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: what happens when that memory fades. And I worry about
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: this all the time with our own memories, you know,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: whether it's fating memories and how how to regulate a democracy,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: fading memories of how our constitution's supposed to work. Like,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes if things the further away something is,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: the harder it is to perceive as a as a
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: righteous idea in the present.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think on the war thing, it's it's
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: definitely true that some of the greatest hawks have been
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: people who didn't actually fight and do have this sort of.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: Romanticized view.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: I've got I've got an uncle who's not a big
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: fan of chickenhawks, as he calls them.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: There's a couple of books with that and that title,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: And I think it's probably a fair comment that if
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: if you experience it, but I think that you know,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: books that really do draw out that common experiences are
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: really valuable.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: Certainly you do something that I think was very necessary,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: and we really have it dug into this enough in
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: a scholarly way. And that is what happened to us
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: as a society in the first few years after nine
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: to eleven, and how much we surrendered constitutional rights very quickly,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: how quickly you know, if you didn't wear a flag
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: pin right like it was we we we took patriotism
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: to a level we'd never done before, arguably, or at
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: least that since the draft, those that died to the
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: draft in the seventies. Do you think we've properly reckoned
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: with that yet?
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: I don't think so, no, And I think that's that
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: this was the background of the book. And I mentioned,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: you know, the issue of militarism and feeling that there
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: was a sort of you know with Biden, you know,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 4: when he was interviewed on CBS, he was asked, if
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 4: you know, we're capable of sustaining conflicts in Ukraine and
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: Garzare at the same time, and he just spat at
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: almost of course we are. You know, it's the United
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: States of America, you know, with the greatest nation history
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: in the.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: History of the world.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: And that was such a jolting insight for me that
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: that idea is still there, and it's it's a kind
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: of by partisan idea. I think that looking at the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: way I mean, I think things have changed in the
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: last six months in terms of the legacy media and
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: their balance on that particular issue of Gaza, But I
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 4: did see a lot of this very kind of block thinking,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 4: which is how I would sort of describe the nationalistic mentality.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: Of good guys, bad guys. We know who our allies are.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: And I think the most telling thing for me was
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: someone like Dan Rather because I quote him on both
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: sides of that, really that he starts off saying, you know,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: he's the president, He'll tell me how to serve, and
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: I'll just line up and serve, and that I'm basically
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: not going to be a journalist right now, and then.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: In a later interview with the BBC, he says I'm worried.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 4: About Patrick's and run a mock here and that we
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: kind of the times we really needed to ask the
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: tough questions about weapons of mass destruction.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: We just didn't. So I think that that's shaking out.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: There's still people who really did back the war who
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: are kind of I'm not saying that should necessarily be tainted,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: but they are.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 4: I don't think that that has really worked through, that's
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: really been sufficiently acknowledged.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: How much right the Vietnam guys were never allowed back
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: into the circle, Is that right?
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: Geniuses behind Vietnam and Kennedy and Johnson, they didn't come
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: back in Carter.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: They didn't come back if any of them were still
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: So in some ways, you're right, we've not had that
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: reckoning with the Rocks this day the way we did
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: even with Vietnam. But this brings back something else. I mean,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: when do we start reassessing great power war warfare versus
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: supposed lesser nations? And I say this, I mean asymmetric warfare.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, in some ways, World War two
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: and World War One are exceptions. Every other major battle
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: that sort of that America is either you know, touched
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: by in some way or a part of.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: It is.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: It is asymmetric warfare that has been more successful than
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: great power warfare.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've seen a couple of pieces in the New
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 4: York Times just saying that, you know, these humble drones
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: are doing more damage than these great mighty Tomahawk missiles.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 4: I go back to Kennedy, and you know, I reference
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 4: Jeffrey Sachs as a person who really introduced me to
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: this idea.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: But what Kennedy.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: Does in that strategy for Speech for Peace speech of
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: nineteen sixty three and then a later one in September
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: of the United Nations, he says, we need something more
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: powerful than intercontinental ballistic missiles. If you think about that,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: something more powerful, what is more powerful? Because dialogue, international cooperation.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: I think that to how the leader of the most
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: powerful nation in the world say, actually, our weapons do
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 4: not provide security because he realizes after Cuba that the
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 4: two most the two nations most in danger of nuclear
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 4: annihilation are in Russia and the USA.
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  Speaker 2: held them right.
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  Speaker 1: You know, it's always like the You know, I'm not
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: going to keep a gun in my house because the
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: statistics say the likelihood of somebody getting shot in your
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  Speaker 1: house exponentially grows. If you have a gun in the house,
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  Speaker 1: you want to take away. You want a less in
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: the odds. Somebody gets shot.
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  Speaker 2: In your own house. Don't have a gun in your house.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: You want to less in the odds.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: If there's not nuclear weapons used in your country, don't
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: have nuclear weapons.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: I like the way you put that because I think
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: in my own work in more incline with a slightly
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: more moralistic approach, and I think this takes us back
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: to the loving a country, not worshiping it, and certainly
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: not despising it.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: Is that's too much of.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: This commentary on the left is of this spirit of
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: some contempt for US Empire, and it expresses it polemically
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: if you can express it like JFF. Hey, let's say, look,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: we're still Americans one hundred percent, but we're not really
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: helping ourselves here.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: I think those conversations could be had. It's can be
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: very well.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: I mean if the Kennedy legacy after that, you could
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: argue is expanding soft power?
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: What it was the peace quote within an attempt to
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: expand soft power. And you know, I look at this
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: current situation that we're dealing with with in Africa with
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: the Ebola, and I say, we the world is dealing
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: with but the United States is not on the front
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: lines like we normally are. And you know, here was
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: a case where we understood that was the one you
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: want to talk about. Something we we had gotten right
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: during the Cold War was that, hey, soft power was
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: a great diplomatic tool and it would certainly help us
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: make sure nations, you know, stayed friendly with us, even
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: if they wanted to be friendly with both the Soviets
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: on us.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 4: No, we have a friend here who is whose mother's
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 4: was a nurse in in Sierra Leoni and said that
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 4: they worshiped George W. Bush because of what he did
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 4: the AIDS prevention and the USA did it's extraordinary to
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: see the other side of that.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: And and I don't think that's necessarily done as soft.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, we're not doing this out of
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: the I mean, that's the thing. Like this goes back
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: to what are your what is your motive? You know,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: I'm you know is your It's all about incentives, right.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: The incentive for soft power was not just to make
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: ourselves feel better. The incentive for soft power was to
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: just build that build alliances that would be or to
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: protect our own shores, Like you know, why we're why
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: did we regularly have our own folks on the front
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: lines in Africa when they're being a bowler outbreak, Because
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: we didn't want it to come here, right, and we
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: wanted to help manage it there.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just out of the goodness of our heart.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: It was actually make protecting Americans.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: You know, at the end of the day, someone like
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 4: Kennedy could help to recapture the word realism. It does
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 4: disappoint me the way realism in international affairs is linked
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 4: to militarism, because actually there's much more realism in those
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 4: kind of strategies. And the other thing I liked from
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 4: him was saying as still as much prestige granted to
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 4: the conscientious objective as there is.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: To the soldier, you know, we won't have peace.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: And I think he's still talking about national prestige, but
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 4: it's a redirected form where it's a more generous form perhaps.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so let me ask you about again and
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: peace through strength? What do you meant?
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: What does that praise mean to you?
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: It doesn't mean an awful lot. I think that in
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: that sense, if we really have got.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: These weapons that can destroy civilization, and you know, it's
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 4: I hesitate to use the word miracle, but it is
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 4: remarkable that there were not more accidents, that there were
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 4: not more, that there still hasn't been a major nuclear conflict,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 4: and there still could be. I mean, this is something
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: that Ted Turner said just before he died with the
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 4: big regrets is that we still have nuclear weapons. So
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: you say, you know, not you but something like Reagan
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 4: would talk about peace through strength. But it's just we're
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 4: very fortunate that it didn't end in disaster. And I
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 4: don't think it's real peace. I don't think it's I
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 4: think it's a truce is not the same as peace.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 4: I think it's a nervous, kind of cagey way to live.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: M That's a great line. Truth is is is not
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: the same as peace. I like that. Let's talk about
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: your framework though.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: When you have a guy like Putin doing what he's
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: doing in Ukraine, at that point, militarism's justified, isn't.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: That ab certainly straight beyond my expertise.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: I think that.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: The question is how much you're fueling the fire.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 4: I mean, I am a believer in nonviolent resistance. I'm
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 4: not saying that this is something that can be just
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 4: learned spontaneously.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the thing about Gandhes.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: He's spent a long time, nineteen years in South Africa
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 4: developing these techniques and he comes back to India and
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: applies to them. But it's a long time in the making.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 4: And I'm not saying even to suddenly apply that in Ukraine.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 4: But I just fear the development of a proxy war.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 4: Well it is a proxy war, but I fear the
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 4: development of something beyond that. I'm not saying that there
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 4: isn't a role for a kind of an international police force,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 4: but it worries me that you know, you're dealing with
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 4: nuclear powers here, and you know a lot of the
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 4: rationale behind mutually assured destruction, et cetera.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: Base it assumes rational leaders.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: But as people get older and as people get more desperate,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: they're not necessarily going to act rationally. So it would
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 4: worry me that military resistance could provoke a nuclear attack.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 4: But then, as I say, this is not my Arab expertise.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: No, but in some ways though, I mean, do you
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: really think Ukraine could survive by not fighting back.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: I think in the early.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: Stages of World War Two and the Nazi invasion of Denmark,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 4: there was some very effective non cooperation where everyone just
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: refuses to communicate, to cooperate to mount public services. I
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 4: think if you have enough people, or you know, you
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: look at micro cases like Andre trock May in the
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 4: village of Shambon in France, where you know you have
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 4: up to five thousand Jews hidden protected and you know
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 4: you have a small instance of non violent resistance. But again,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 4: that was through intensely well organized and well led resistance.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying that that's necessarily feasible on a national level,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 4: but I.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 3: Do worry when the assumption.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is something that Jeffrey Sax has written
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 4: about quite a lot of spoken about is you know,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: there's there's a kind of provocation with the expansion of NATO,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 4: and then when there's a reaction. And I'm not justifying reaction,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 4: of course, the assumption is that militarism is the only
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 4: way one has to keep diplomatic channels open if you can.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: Does all patriotism have to eventually lead to nationalism or
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: do you think that that there's that it doesn't always
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: have to end up because I agree that nationalism usually
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: leads to militarism.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that the City on the Hill.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: Does all patriotism lead to nationalism?
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 4: No? I think the city on the Hill idea does
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 4: lead naturally in that direction.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: You think that you really are kind of called to lead.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 4: But I think that someone like Jane Adams I talk
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 4: about a lot, and she talks about this sort of
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 4: this cosmic patriotism where you or cosmic politanism within you say,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 4: where you embrace the different varieties of different insights and
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 4: cultures in a city like Chicago, in a city like
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: New York, and you sort of embrace that. I mean,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 4: Frederick Douglas talks about this. He's got this essay The
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: Composite nation. He says, trust me, we've got something to
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 4: learn from the Chinese. We should we should let them
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: come and we should should we should learn and embrace
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 4: some of their their ways of thinking. Randolph Bourne, who
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 4: he talks about transnational America, he uses the analogy of
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 4: a university where when you're at a university, you make
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: friendships across the globe without even thinking about it, and
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 4: you're not you don't cease to be American. But the
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 4: sting of rivalry is is to some extent taken out
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 4: mean I think the Olympics or obviously we've had doping
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 4: in the Olympics and we still do. English football is
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 4: obviously very bad example of sporting rivalries. But big sporting
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 4: festivals could be an example of patriotism without nationalism, without hostility.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 4: And I think that's what could certainly be a patriot
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 4: without being a nationalist. But I think there needs to
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 4: be a retuning of that.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: Look, one of the things that I think you want
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: to talk about a myth that we Americans still feel,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: and I think you could get this left and right,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: is there's this great Reagan line. During his farewell speech,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: he says, you know, somebody can go to Japan but
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: they're not going to become Japanese. But somebody can move
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: to America and they can eventually become an American. I
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: think that's at the roots of our exceptionalism trait, the
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: good and the bad version of it, which I think
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: you do a good job of frankly exposing both aspects
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: of it. But that is what makes us different.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: You bring up the Olympics.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: I remember Obama made this observation once and he was
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: talking about, like, you know, why we should be we
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: should have we should realize how great immigration has been
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: for the United States. It's like the reason the United
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: States is one of the few countries that can compete
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: both in the you know, ends up with competitors and
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: near the top of metal standings in the winter or
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: the summer. Americans, because we basically come from all over
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: the world, come in all.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: Shapes and sizes, so specialty sport.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: We have the super small people to do gymnastics, the
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: super big people, you know. You know, we're not an
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: ethnic based we're not sort of regionally based, you know,
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: and anything like that that is a superpower of some sort,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: is it not.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, I love that.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: I love the Obama statements and the Reigan when I
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 4: wasn't aware of that.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's farewell, it's a great it's a you know,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: he says, you can go to Japan, but you don't
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: become Japanese. You can move to France, but you don't
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: really become French. You know, here in America it is
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: one of a few places, and when you come here,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: eventually you become an American.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure if I've qualified for that among my
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 4: circle of clothes, but yes, I agree, and I think that,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 4: you know, you can criticize America and then you go
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 4: back and look at what's going on in Europe at
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 4: the moment, and you see the sort of the smugness
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 4: is a with the American patriotism.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 3: There is this test and enthusiasm, even though it can
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: sometimes be over the top.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 4: I think that when you see the sort of the
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 4: negative version of that and the kind of sterile version
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: of that that I think, as we've had and it's
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 4: coming back in Britain with post Brexit and the Reform Party,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: you think I definitely take the American side of that
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 4: equation certainly. So, yes, you can be a patriot, but
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: I think that it's about wearing it more lightly. And
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 4: I like the sporting a sport is play. You're not
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 4: taking in theory, you're not taking yourself too seriously. I loved,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 4: you know, the speed skating, sorry, the figure skaters, alis
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 4: alu some holding hands with the Japanese.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: Medalists on the podium.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 4: You know, that's an image of what I think patriotism
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: should be, because they still want to win, but then
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 4: winning in friendship.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: Well, look, I think the thing that.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: You expose so clearly in the book, and I'd like
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: to close with this, is that you're essentially challenging US
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: Americans to live up to the ideals we've written down
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: on paper because we haven't. And I think that's the
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: fairest critique of all in your book.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's there. It's always been there and happening.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 4: But it's a matter of kind of embracing it.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: That phrase more perfect unions doing a lot of work
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: these days, isn't it. I always say, you know, we
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: do eventually, look it incrematically, incrementally, incrementically, incrementally.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: We are always trying to get better.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we sort of stumble around and you know,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: we get there most of the time faster than most
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: other places, but not always.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: But we kind of you know the Martin.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: Luther King quote, the arc of justice, Benz towards the
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: arc of history, towards justice. What I always like to
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: remind people is, if you've ever been on some arcs,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: like to get on a highway, sometimes you have to
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: go backwards.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: To go forwards.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think right now we're on one of
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: those periods of the arc of history where we might
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: be having to take a few steps backwards to make
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: this long arc sort of a turn towards the future
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: that maybe we'll get there in twenty forty five.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: We just need We're just going to take a few detours.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: I'd agree with that.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, let me.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: Give me your pitch for why a liberal ought to
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: read this book, And give me your pitch to why
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: a conservative how to read this book.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: Ooh, I think a liberal should see in boy liberal.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 3: We mean the Democrats.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know that.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: I know that's I look, I'm more of a classical person.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: I look at liberalists sort of more of the broader
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: And I think you're a classical liberal. You know a
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of people that are in the
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: writer A classic liberals, you know what I mean?
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: I think that we.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 4: Should see that we could just we're just as inclined
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 4: to self deception as liberals thinking we have a good polity,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 4: we have a good system, and not see how unfair
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 4: it is and who's who's been the loser of that?
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 4: And you know I mentioned this theme of war that
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 4: you know, Lincoln is politically a liberal, but he does
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 4: find this intensely violent war and it has complexities that
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 4: we weren't aware of, or we haven't been aware of
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 4: so much. I think a conservative, I think it's the
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: degree to which the national rhetoric can cover a I'm
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: saying the same thing because it's it's.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 3: The rehetric is a cover for for unfair.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 4: You know that the national greatness can be to cover
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 4: for really old world thinking, and that you know, we're
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 4: we're confident we're not monarchists, but in some ways monarchy
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 4: is baked in all the divine right of kings is
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 4: in a sense baked into being the chosen nation. So
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 4: if you want to be true to the American Constitution,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 4: we have to be less nationalistic.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: That's the inner libertarian, which is really it could be
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: the ideology that we Americans really actually are more foundational
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: about than any other. But good luck watching our Libertarian
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: party become a governing force. They can't get out of
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: their own way. Hey, Domic, this is a great look,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: intellectually challenging book in a good way.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: And it's you know, one of these things. There's no
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: right or wrong answer.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: This was about you prodding us to look deeper at
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: ourselves a little bit.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: So nothing wrong with that kind of scholarship. So congratulations,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: thanks very much.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 3: Enjoyed it a lot, Thank you.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: All Right, it is my top five list, and of
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: course my top five list this week is brought to
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: you by Fan Duels. So my top five list this
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: week is pretty simple. They're what I'm calling the five
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: most underrated races so far in twenty six And how
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: am I classifying underrated underrated to me is these are
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: races that are as competitive as Texas Senate, as competitive
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: maybe as Ohio Senate, Texas Senate, Main Senate, Iowa Governor,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: but are not getting the attention that they deserve. They're
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: sort of getting second tier attention. And just because they're
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: getting second tier attention doesn't mean they're not super super
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: competitive for the purposes of this exercise. Of these five races,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: three are Republican health seats that Democrats are hoping to flip,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: and two are Democratic health seats that Republicans are hoping
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: to flip. So look, my number five most underrated race
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: that I'm putting on here is Minnesota Senate. Uh. This
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: is a race where you have I think you're you're
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: gonna have a progressive versus sort of center left primary
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: that's taking place right now between Angie Craig and Peggy
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: Peggy flan Again. Peggy Flanagin has the support the progressives.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: Angie Craig has the support of sort of the establishment
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: wing of the party. It is I think a year
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: ago more people would have favored Craig. I think Flannagan has.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: There was some concern by some Democrats that Flannagan, being
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: the sitting LG was was was gonna have problems separating
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: herself from Tim Wallas, whose governorship has become a bit
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: more unpopular since he was Kamala Harris's running mate. But
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: that's not turned out to be the case. Flan Again
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: has had a very strongly Uh. She seems to have
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: benefited more from the ice protests than than Angie Craig has.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: I think she has seen as a more genuine fighter
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: on that issue and that's helped her a lot. But
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: the reason I think if flannagain wins this Rice now, look,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: I think this is gonna be a good Democratic year,
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: and in a good Democratic year, I cannot imagine a
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: scenario where a Republican can win in Minnesota. But I
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: do think that Michelle Tafoya, the former ESPN broadcasters, the
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: presumed Republican nominee for Senate there is going to be
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: a stronger candidate than folks realize.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: She is not.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: She's It's interesting she is. Certainly she's not been afraid
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: to talk about being a conservative, but she has been
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: careful not to overly attach herself to Trump. She seems
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: self aware of the state she's running in, and I
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: get the sense that she knows she might get two
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: bites at the apple here. Right Amy Klobashar gets elected governor,
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: there's going to be another special election to replace. If
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: Amy Klobashar indeed wins the governorship there, which I think
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: is highly likely, there'll be a special and replacers of
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Michelle Tafoya doesn't win the senence eat in twenty six
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: she may it a second chance, and that extra name
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: recognition could actually make her quite formidable then. But look,
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: Minnesota has been a state that's been teetering on the
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: battleground right. We've had you know, we've a lot of
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: times the blue leaning media will tell you, hey, is
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: Texas going to turn blue? The red leaning media to
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: be spending more time in Minnesota because Minnesota, of all
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: the blue states that have a chance at moving the
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: other direction, it probably I mean, just you know, Minnesota
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: is surrounded by red states and swing states. They don't
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: touch many other blue states, So the likelihood that Minnesota
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: shifts more to the right than over the next few
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: years I think is highly likely. So that's number five
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: on my list. Number four on my list is the
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: other Republican race that I have here, and you know, look,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: it's going to be a Democratic gear which is why
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: the two Republican races are five and four and not
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: not higher in the list. But it's organ governor Oregon
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: is one of it's not is one of the longest
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: streaks Democrats have of holding a governor's mansion of any
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: of the fifty states, and yet over the last few cycles,
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: Oregon governors, whether they've been sitting incumbents or term limited
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: incumbents who were carrying a lot of baggage, have really
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: pushed the envelope here and given Republicans opportunities here before,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: and they've come up just short. Chris Dudley, the former
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: Portland trail Blazer, came within a few thousand votes of
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: winning the governorship about a decade or so ago. Well,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: this time we have a bit of a rematch, and
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: boy rematches and governor's races, especially if the governor is
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: more unpopular than when she took over, can can can
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: become quite problematic. Tina Kotec, she won a tough, essentially
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: semi three way race back in twenty twenty two. She's
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: going to face crist Steam Drazen, who is going to
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: be the Republican nominee. But this time, you know, instead
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: of Kotech was not the sitting incumbent before, so she
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: didn't have to own sort of the negative views and
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: feelings that many voters had about how the governance of
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: Portland or in the protests and the governance of the
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: state itself. Now four years later, Kotech has to own
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: those things and there has been every cycle, it does
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: seem as if there's been just more and more suburban
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: erosion from the Democratic total. Now again, I think in
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: this political environment, it's going to be very difficult for
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: Republican to pull an up set in the blue state.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: But all the ingredients are in Oregon. And if you
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: pull an upset in an environment where the winds are
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: blown against you nationally, it's more likely to happen in
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: a governor's race, which can sometimes create their own weather, right.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: A governor's race is sometimes not a part of the
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: national conversation. So it's certainly I think it's I think
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: it's a I'm just saying it's a it's a close
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: race that's being slept on number three on my list,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: Alabama governor. I've talked about this before. I think tom
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: this rematch of Tommy Tupperville and Doug Jones, the Tupperville
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: residency issues are not small. I think that's one of
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: those things that will bother voters, even those that maybe
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: think they'll never vote for a Democrat. Doug Jones being
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: the last Democrat to win statewide, granted it was against
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: Roy Moore, certainly I think has the temperament to win
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: over sort of conservative independence. The question is can he
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: do it just with a surgeon African American turnout plus
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: winning independence and hope that Maga stays home. I think
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: that's the recipe. All three of those things have to happen.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Maybe a long shot, but it's not
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: an impossible shot. And I think it's a race. People
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: are sleeping up number two for some of the similar reasons,
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: which is a fired up African American voter base. Is
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: why I put Mississippi Senate in a in a higher
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: tier than others do. I think Missippi Senate is totally
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: being slept on. I think Democrats, I think the likelihood
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: they have an African American nominee here, I think the
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: likelihood that you're gonna have a lot of upset African
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: Americans about what's happened with the voting rights ack. I
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: think this puts his name. Scott Cullum is the is
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: the potential. Is the Democratic nominee there? Sidney Hyde Smith,
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: the Republican incumbent. She didn't. She won by single digits
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: the first time when she ran against Mike sip sp
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: and the political environment was slightly better for Republicans than
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: it is now. So again it's just one. Do I
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: think Democrats are going to ever be favored in this race? No,
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: I think this one's going to be a heck of
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: a lot closer than that. And then to me, the
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: number one to overlook race that is super competitive and
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: is as competitive and as close as any in the
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: country Ohio Governor. And I think the reason it's going
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: to stay competitive, and the reason it's going to stay
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: a one or two point race is because the Republican
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: nominee Ramaswami uh is pretty closely tied to Trump, pretty
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: closely tied to what is becoming increasingly unpopular that hold
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: doge business. He's got his own issues, trying to shut
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: down half the state universities with a proposal that is
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: that is going over like a lead balloon. And the
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: Democratic candidate Amy Actin has just been she is she
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: is just it is a classic tortoise hair and in fact,
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: I think Ramaswami acting is of all the races out there,
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: the closest to being the tortoise and hair metaphor. Where
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: she's the tortoise, he's the hair. He leaped out in front,
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: he grabbed the Trump endorsement, grabbed the Wines endorsement, cleared
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: the field. Look like he was just going to be
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: able to run away with the race, and Amy act
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: then just grind it away, grind it away. And this
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: thing has been a one point race for three months,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: and I don't think it's going to change to now
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: in November, and in fact, come October November, I think
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: it's going to be one of the ten races that
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: even the national media acknowledges is one to watch. So
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: we're there, there's my top five list for the week,
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: and now let's do some questions. All right, let's do
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: a little last chuck. First question here comes from Brian
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: de and he goes, hey, long time listener from the
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest. Hey, I hope you love that I did
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: some Oregon gov for you in the top five list
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: this week. By by the way, he goes, really value
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: your inside. Thank you. It seems like Trump maybe looking
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: for an off ramp on our run. But does that
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: effectively make him the primary negotiator and shaping how this
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: plays out? Do you think that dynamic is a run
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: leverage in this situation? Bres briand yet yes, it's clear
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: Iran has leverage. By the way, there's one other thing.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: I'm glad the first question was on Iran because I
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: left out one other important little nugget from my Iran
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: report earlier in this podcast episode, and that is the
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: fact that it's JD Vance that has to sell this deal,
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: and that there I think I tweeted this a couple
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: of days ago that we have put I have put
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: out an APB for the Secretary of State. If somebody
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: can tell me where Marko Rubio is on this deal,
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: I'd love to know. He is the living embodiment of
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: the Homer Simpson meme that backs into the bushes. It's
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: as if he wants nothing to do with this. If
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: you're going to defend appeasement, then let JD. Jd Vance
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: be the guy that defends appeasement. But yes, look, Trump,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: Trump is the one that wants to deal in the
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: worst way. The Iranians are not stupid. They see that
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: he wants to deal in the worst way. And you
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: know what's going to happen this memo of understanding, because
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: guess what Donald Trump will not do between now and November.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: He's not going to relaunch trans this thing has been
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: a financial disaster for the global economy. We are lucky
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: this hasn't triggered a recession, and if this kept going,
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: it could have triggered a recession. He does not want
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: to mess with that. And so you think the Iranians
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: are just going to somehow not use that leverage to
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: their advantage. I mean, they basically already have the fact
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: that they've already gotten sanctions, promise of sanctions relief immediately
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: tapping into an investment fund that I guess is on
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: paper being funded by the Golf States, but we know
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: this has sort of passed through money, right, Yeah, I
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: mean the art of the deal. I thought he put
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: this in his book, but never look like you want
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: the deal worse than the person you're negotiating with. I
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: assume that would have been advice he would have given
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: in his book. Then again, we know he didn't actually
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: write the book, and I think all of us are.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: They're certainly a part of me that's wondered if he's
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: ever actually read the book. Next question comes from Brenton Phoenix,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: and he says, Hey, Chuck, I'm here to defend the
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen playoff. Okay, at the FCS level, it works well.
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: Conference champs get in, plus at large teams and there's
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: far less controversy. Could a similar model at the FBS
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: level help address concerns about inequity, especially beyond the SEC
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: in a Big ten. Look, if all I want is
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: there to be a I don't want a committee to
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: decide anything when it comes to the college football playoffs.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: It should be all done on the field by record, right,
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: just like it works in the NFL playoffs. You know,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: it isn't a committee that decides oh, you know, seventh seed. Man,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: I know the tiebreaker went to the Jacksonville Jaguars, but man, wait,
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: nobody wants to watch them on TV. You know, Dallas
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: didn't make the playoffs, but they're only a game behind,
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: and you know their body of work, Yeah, it's a
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: much better body of work they played. They played a
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: tougher schedule. Let's get let's put them in as the
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: seven as a seventh. See how ridiculous would that be
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: if the NFL did it that way, or if baseball
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: decided you know, boy that you know, let's say show
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: Aton show Aotani got hurt for the next four months
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: and the Dodgers record was, you know, collapsed. Then he
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: comes back in the last week and Major League Baseball decides,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: you know, the Dodgers don't have a record to qualify
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: for the playoffs, but we know with a healthy show Aotani,
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: they're one of the best teams who We're just going
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: to go ahead and put them in the playoffs ahead
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: of the Washington Nationals, who have a better record. Again,
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: it's insanity. So the point is, if you want to
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: sell me a twenty fourteen playoff, then you better it.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to know that you can earn
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: the slot. I don't want some knucklehead ad making this decision,
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: or some executive at ESPN making this decision, or some
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: executive at FONT Sports making this decision. Right, I take
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: Paul Finbaum making the decision before I take some of
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: those clowns making those decisions. By the way, So look,
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: all I ask is I look, take your point. In
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: the FCS. I believe it's earned on the field. All
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: I ask is, no committeees. Just use a committee for seating.
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: That's it. Do not use a committee to decide who
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: gets into the playoffs. Make sure it's a meritocracy. Make
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: sure it's by record, and make sure there isn't some
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: sort of extra advantage. Well, nine and three in the
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: SEC is better than nine and three. No, it's we
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: have no idea because of the randomization of who you
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: might play in a given year in the in the
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: eighteen team league or twenty team deep lead of the
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: Big ten. So that's I still think twenty fourteen. My
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: issue with twenty fourteen playoff is that I do think
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: that finally does real damage to the regular season the
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: last two or three games of the year. If you
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: start out nine to zero, right, you've you know, ten
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: and one, and you're playing your take Georgia Georgia Tech.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: What is the incentive for that rivalry game, which is
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: always slated for the end of the last game of
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: the season, after the SEC, after the SEC schedule ends,
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: after the ACC schedule ends. Is there gonna be any
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: incentive for that game to matter? If you go to
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: this twenty fourteen playoff like that and then you have
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: this one sidedness that matters, That's what I worry about.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, college football might have this what other sport
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: as a as a more meaningful regular season than college football.
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: It's one of its best attributes. Why would you want
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: to lose that. Nathan in Rockville rights, Hey, let's choose
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: are I know where you're coming from. Friend mentioned we
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: might be in a post scandal world, but I'm not
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: sure that's true. Who ultimately decides what counts as a scandal, voters, media,
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: or whether it actually changes behavior like votes are approval,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: and our standards just more fragmented now rather than gone entirely.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: I'll hang up and listen. Nathan and Rockville. Well, it's
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: an interesting question, right I have. I can't wait for
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: you to hear. But I posed a question to the
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: former Vice president Mike Pence about character and said, you know,
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: isn't the most principled position when it comes to character
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: in politics as being a person who both opposes Paxton
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: and opposes Graham Platner. I can't wait for you to
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: hear his answer. I'm not going to give it away yet,
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: but most of you won't be surprised at at what
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: you hear. So it's not that scandal. We're in a
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: post scandal world, is I think it's the second part
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: of your question that you've hit the nail, and it's
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: that we're very fragmented, so nothing, nothing breaks through right.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think everybody paid attention to the UFC fight
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: and is outraged as some of the UFC stuff might
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: have been to many people. I think there was a
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: lot of people that said, you know what, that's ridiculous,
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: I'm tuning out and didn't even pay attention at all,
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: and so that that you know, that guy who talked
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: about his Lord and Savior and then attacked Michelle Obama.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: By the way, there is nothing if you're a if
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: you're a real Christian evangelist, you should be offended by
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: these knuckleheads who praise Jesus Christ on one in literally
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: one sentence and then think that that's some sort of
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: get out of jail free card to act like a
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: complete and utter a whole everywhere else in life. Just
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: because you utter your beliefs doesn't mean you're a person.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 2: Of high character.
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: You could be a really low character individual and still
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: utter a belief in your faith. And if you think
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: that hides who you are, it's it's set. Put it
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: this way, I really hope most people don't buy that
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: BS when they see when they see these folks do it.
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: But the point is is that I don't know. I
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: think we're so fragmented is that I don't think that
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: moment broke through. I think it broke through to those
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: paying attention, But to those that wanted to tune that out,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: they could easily tune that out. And so it's sort
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: of like and then there's sort of we're numb to Trump.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if we're in post scandal or
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: if we're just we're just sort of we're just we're
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: just sort of living in this Trump kryptonite shield right
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: from scandal. And then once Trump goes away, scandal comes back.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: And it's not like scandal went away. Look at my business.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of famous people in my business who
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: couldn't you know, scandal got them right. Whether you want
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: to talk uh, Matt Lower, you want to talk Harvey Weinstein,
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: you want to talk Charlie Rose, you want to talk
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: Mark Halprin, right, all of these people, you know, scandal
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: got got them right. And so I don't want to
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: say that it's it's that we're in a post scandal world.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: But I do think Trump clouds things. But I think
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: your fragmentation point, I think some of this stuff doesn't
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: fully penetrate. Last question that I'm gonna save I got
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: a bunch more here. We're gonna save them. I'm gonna
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: do a little extra mailbag on Thursday for I promise.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: Last question, If trumps settlement with the Irs stems from
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: the leak of his tax information, does that imply the
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: amounts reported in those returns were accurate or those separate
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: issues entirely? How should people think about the distinction between
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: the legality of the leak and the accuracy of the
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: underlying tax filings? Donald Allen, Deerfield Beach ps can the
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: White House higher Bagdad Bob to deliver updates and they
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: ran war. I think they have. I think his name
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: might be Stephen Chung. I think he's playing the role
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: of Bagdad Bob for some of this stuff. But your
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: important point, Yes, the information is accurate, which is why
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: he sued. Right, if the information wasn't accurate, he never
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: would have sued. So that is why he sued. That
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: is why he got angry because the information was accurate. Look,
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: the bigger issue here, though, is this crazy deal to essentially,
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: and you know, give him blanket immunity from being a
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: tax chief for the last for his entire life up
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: until the tax year twenty twenty five. Apparently everything through
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. That's what part of this deal is.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: So even though Todd blanche has said that there will
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: be no weaponization fund that will sort of dole out
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: money to January sixth rioters and things like that, the deal,
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: that the whole deal hasn't been expunged yet. Republican senators
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: had a chance to do it, and the Yolo Caucus
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: choked and they decided not to kill the deal. But
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: right now, Donald Trump's going to get blanket immunity for
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: all for anything he is, you know, for whatever, either
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: intentional in intentional mistakes on his tax turns or unintentional
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: mistakes in his tax returned. He has still got this
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: blanket immunity according to the steal and that that is
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: something that I think is just politically has the chance
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: to be weaponized in campaign ads quite successfully. You know.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: The irs is one of those places and this is
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: one of those things where you know, look, there's some
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: things that people think, well, Donald Trump's a wealthy guy.
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: He gets away with certain things, and hey, he can
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: get away with those things, but people do get offended
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: when they can't get away with the same thing. You
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: got away with and that's where, you know, it's almost
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: like it's a form of jealousy that they'd like to
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: get away with it and they can't, so they're going
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: to say, hey, screw you man. So you know, I
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: don't think this is going you know this, this is
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: this fund and being able to essentially get off