Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - The Iran War Risks Going Global + Mitch McConnell’s Disappearing Act & How Democrats Can Win In Trump Country

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Full Episode - The Iran War Risks Going Global + Mitch McConnell’s Disappearing Act & How Democrats Can Win In Trump Country · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: eight zero seven three four three nine eight five. Hello there,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the Thursday episode of the Chuck Todcast,
2:21
Speaker 1: where I promise politics for the rest of us, right,
2:27
Speaker 1: a little bit of normalcy in a world dominated by extremes.
2:33
Speaker 1: At least, that's my pledge to you. Here, got a
2:36
Speaker 1: nice loaded up pack show. Great guest today, Andy Basheer,
2:40
Speaker 1: current governor of Kentucky. Let's just say he's got a
2:43
Speaker 1: lot of things to say about both of Kentucky's US
2:47
Speaker 1: senators who have been in the news this week, whether
2:49
Speaker 1: it's Mitch McConnell and his inability to talk about what's
2:53
Speaker 1: happening with his current situation, or Ran Paul in his
2:58
Speaker 1: obsession over Tony Fauci. I will have a little bit
3:00
Speaker 1: more on that in my own segment here later in
3:03
Speaker 1: a minute, but we also do a trip through the country.
3:08
Speaker 1: He is, of course, Andy Basheer's the chair of the
3:09
Speaker 1: Democratic Governors Association, so we spend a lot of time
3:12
Speaker 1: in battleground states, also talking about Iowa and Ohio, and
3:17
Speaker 1: we go everywhere on that, including a topic that I'm
3:21
Speaker 1: going to do a bit of a deep dive on
3:23
Speaker 1: here in a minute, and that is the politics of
3:26
Speaker 1: AI and where this is all heading on that front.
3:31
Speaker 1: I'll also have a top five list for you. Of
3:34
Speaker 1: course we'll have some questions, and like I said, I
3:37
Speaker 1: got a busy couple of topics I want to get to,
3:40
Speaker 1: including what you don't maybe you don't fully appreciate about
3:45
Speaker 1: what's happening with Iran right now. Like I said, where
3:49
Speaker 1: the politics of AI are heading. It's fascinating and I've
3:53
Speaker 1: had my own unique front row seat on this issue.
3:58
Speaker 1: To put it succinctly, this anger over data centers ain't
4:03
Speaker 1: about data centers, but I will explain that. And then,
4:06
Speaker 1: of course we are less than a week away from
4:09
Speaker 1: the start of the final primary sprints, and boy do
4:13
Speaker 1: we got a big one coming up on August fourth,
4:16
Speaker 1: multiple states, but the big one being Michigan. So I
4:18
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a campaign notebook to share
4:22
Speaker 1: with you as well. But look, this is a politics podcast,
4:27
Speaker 1: right every day, every time I come on at the
4:29
Speaker 1: end of you know, I always want to begin trying
4:32
Speaker 1: to do my best to say where are we right,
4:36
Speaker 1: where are we headed? What's going on? Less than one
4:38
Speaker 1: hundred days from the election day, And so I guess
4:42
Speaker 1: I would title this part of my segment the main
4:45
Speaker 1: thing is still the main thing, and one thing I've
4:50
Speaker 1: learned covering politics for as long as I have is
4:52
Speaker 1: it I can usually tell what worries a political party
4:57
Speaker 1: by what it suddenly wants to talk about. When the
5:01
Speaker 1: campaign message starts sounding like a Greatest Hits album, it's
5:05
Speaker 1: usually because the new material isn't testing very well. And
5:10
Speaker 1: that's what you can sense happening right now amongst the Republicans.
5:16
Speaker 1: If you look at just the last ten days, the
5:19
Speaker 1: intentional news that the administration or Republicans in Washington have
5:24
Speaker 1: tried to make include an obsession over Faucian COVID the Smithsonian,
5:31
Speaker 1: and this decision to put warning labels outside that Donald
5:35
Speaker 1: Trump got involved with. I haven't even brought up the
5:39
Speaker 1: weird obsession that Trump clearly has with Sammy the Boll
5:44
Speaker 1: Gravano and what the word eighty six means and that
5:48
Speaker 1: whole bizarreness call me. He's tried to relitigate the twenty
5:52
Speaker 1: twenty election multiple times, right including what that speechs in
5:55
Speaker 1: the nation.
5:55
Speaker 2: We got the.
5:56
Speaker 1: Release of these Biden conversations with his author and you
6:02
Speaker 1: look at it. I'm not saying these stories aren't interesting.
6:05
Speaker 1: I'm not saying some of these stories aren't legitimate. Maybe
6:08
Speaker 1: there's something to debate, and maybe some deserve some scrutiny.
6:12
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, but notice what all of those
6:15
Speaker 1: stories have in common at the moment. They're all about
6:19
Speaker 1: essentially yesterday, but today's headlines. What's actually happening in everyday
6:25
Speaker 1: people's lives. Those headlines suck for this administration and for
6:30
Speaker 1: the party in power. It's the Middle East, it's tariffs,
6:33
Speaker 1: it's inflation, it's a price of groceries, it's interest rates.
6:40
Speaker 1: The issues that got Donald Trump elected are the issues
6:43
Speaker 1: he's ignoring at the moment, and the issues that he
6:45
Speaker 1: said were going to be issues had Kamala Harris gotten
6:51
Speaker 1: elected or suddenly the issues he's dealing with and Iran war,
6:58
Speaker 1: rising prices, inflation. And the point is, guess what were
7:06
Speaker 1: the top issues in twenty twenty four are still the
7:09
Speaker 1: top issues today with a few added on, including AI,
7:13
Speaker 1: which really is an extension of the economic anxiety aspect
7:18
Speaker 1: of things.
7:18
Speaker 2: It's already out there.
7:22
Speaker 1: And so it's pretty obvious to be that like this
7:26
Speaker 1: is one of those spaghetti at the wall situations and
7:29
Speaker 1: word look, by the time September comes along, he can
7:32
Speaker 1: try all he wants to try to throw a get out.
7:36
Speaker 1: Don't you remember COVID? And trust me, if the Democrats
7:39
Speaker 1: were losing right now in the midterms, right now, they're
7:41
Speaker 1: in the right now, they're ahead.
7:43
Speaker 2: Right.
7:43
Speaker 1: If you were just saying which parties ahead, the Democrats
7:45
Speaker 1: are ahead, right. They're more likely to gain Senate seats
7:48
Speaker 1: and House seats. Republicans are more likely to lose Senate
7:50
Speaker 1: seats and lose House seats. We disagree on whether they're
7:53
Speaker 1: going to lose enough for the majority, right, we don't
7:55
Speaker 1: know that that's what's up for grabs, what seems to
7:58
Speaker 1: be whatever. But nobody's expect the Republicans that gain anything,
8:01
Speaker 1: which means they're going to The question is are they.
8:03
Speaker 2: Going to lose by a litter or lose by a lot.
8:08
Speaker 1: If the Democrats are in the situation, they'd be talking
8:10
Speaker 1: about election denihialism. They'd be talking about January sixth. The
8:13
Speaker 1: point is when you can't talk about the issues that
8:17
Speaker 1: are currently impacting everybody's everyday lives because you think it's
8:22
Speaker 1: bad for you politically, and you start talking about the
8:27
Speaker 1: issues that used to work for you and the greatest
8:30
Speaker 1: hits and so what I would say is, as you
8:33
Speaker 1: sort of consume all of this sort of wait a minute,
8:36
Speaker 1: what's why are we relitigating COVID? Are we still talking
8:41
Speaker 1: about the twenty twenty election. What it really is is
8:45
Speaker 1: a massive tell that Republicans would like, look, this is
8:50
Speaker 1: base management, and I don't think it's going to work right.
8:53
Speaker 1: These issues, everything we've talked about, Nobody in the mainstream
8:56
Speaker 1: world is paying any attention to them. Doesn't mean they
9:00
Speaker 1: may not have opinions about this, That doesn't mean they
9:02
Speaker 1: may not be empathetic to what Team Red or Team
9:05
Speaker 1: Blue thinks on these issues. But this is not voting
9:09
Speaker 1: issues for them, And if anything, I think that the
9:13
Speaker 1: I think Republicans see this as a way to try
9:15
Speaker 1: to keep the base from, you know, beating them up
9:18
Speaker 1: over Iran, keep the base from being frustrated about Epstein,
9:22
Speaker 1: keep the base from being frustrated by this economy. So
9:24
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, I throw them some red meat, distract, distract, distract,
9:28
Speaker 1: let's do fauci, let's do this right. It is it's
9:31
Speaker 1: sort of it's it's sort of right in the regular
9:36
Speaker 1: sort of what do you do when you're on the
9:39
Speaker 1: when your side is losing, Try to change the subject,
9:43
Speaker 1: Try to talk about something that's in better shape.
9:46
Speaker 2: And I think that.
9:49
Speaker 1: I guess what I would say is that's how you
9:51
Speaker 1: should process what you're seeing come out of the White House.
9:55
Speaker 1: They would love the culture war stuff they think gets
9:58
Speaker 1: their voters out. Talking about Fauci they think gets their
10:02
Speaker 1: voters out. I'm not so sure, and I'm not sure
10:06
Speaker 1: that any game they think they get in the base.
10:10
Speaker 1: The tradeoff is losing an independent who are like, what
10:14
Speaker 1: are you guys doing right? The independent voter may think
10:17
Speaker 1: the Democrats are too liberal and the Republicans are too trumpy.
10:22
Speaker 1: The political party getting caught behaving like their stereotype is
10:27
Speaker 1: the one Independence punished the most come election day.
10:29
Speaker 2: And right now.
10:32
Speaker 1: It does appear as if Republicans are shaving more like
10:34
Speaker 1: their stereotype. So we'll see how many socialists and up
10:37
Speaker 1: nominees going into the general election. But that's sort of
10:46
Speaker 1: where I wanted to kick things off. But I want
10:47
Speaker 1: to transition to I think what is a much.
10:53
Speaker 2: This is going to.
10:53
Speaker 1: Sound ridiculous in one regard. Somehow I think the Iran
10:57
Speaker 1: War is being underplayed And what do I mean by that?
11:03
Speaker 1: I want to try something with you before I get
11:05
Speaker 1: totally into this subject. This is not a prediction, it's
11:07
Speaker 1: simply a census. Here's the question, all right, I want
11:10
Speaker 1: you to sit with this question as I tick through
11:13
Speaker 1: everything with you. Think about the war with Iron a minute.
11:16
Speaker 1: Ask you think about how many countries do you think
11:19
Speaker 1: have been directly involved, not sympathetic to the war, but
11:24
Speaker 1: not concerned about actually involved either shot at, somebody got
11:30
Speaker 1: shot at, intercepted something, hosted something, or brokened something. Pick
11:36
Speaker 1: a number, hold on to it. No, I'm not doing
11:38
Speaker 1: some mental trick here, Oz you know, ah, I will
11:41
Speaker 1: take you. See I told you you had the number
11:43
Speaker 1: seven in your head, right, But I digress. Most people
11:48
Speaker 1: are probably going to immediately say, well, there's three countries
11:50
Speaker 1: in the war with around the United States? Is real Iran?
11:53
Speaker 1: Some people who've been paying really close attentions might say
11:56
Speaker 1: six or seven, right, they might add Lebanon, Yemen or Rock.
12:01
Speaker 1: Guess what the real number is. It's close to thirty
12:05
Speaker 1: three zero. And I want to talk you through it
12:09
Speaker 1: because this walk through the data is the argument I'm
12:14
Speaker 1: about to make. Let's start with who's actually fighting the
12:18
Speaker 1: United States Israel Iran. Then there's Iran's network of proxies
12:24
Speaker 1: as below, which of course Lebanon, the UTIs of Yemen,
12:28
Speaker 1: the Amal Movement, the Popular Mobilization forces, and the Islamic
12:32
Speaker 1: resistance in Iraq. There's a lot of these these sort
12:36
Speaker 1: of Irani Iranian proxies in Iraq. So we're already well
12:40
Speaker 1: past three countries just what I described. Now let's look
12:45
Speaker 1: at a sort of second ring here, and that's territories
12:47
Speaker 1: that have been hit in this war. So let's look
12:51
Speaker 1: at whose actual soil has been struck Iran, Israel, Lebanon, obviously, Iraq,
12:59
Speaker 1: the Kurdistown region. Then you have the Gulf States, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Cutter,
13:06
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ue and Olmont. And
13:11
Speaker 1: then here's where it can get a bit strained. Azerbaijan.
13:14
Speaker 1: Two drones hit an enclave out there, damaged an airport. Turkey,
13:21
Speaker 1: a NATO member, had Iranian ballistic missiles come down on
13:26
Speaker 1: parts of their country. A drone hit Britain's Royal Air
13:29
Speaker 1: Force base on Cyprus, and Iran took a shot at
13:34
Speaker 1: Diego Garcia, a joint USUK base in the middle of
13:37
Speaker 1: the Indian Ocean. Roughly twenty three hundred miles from Iran.
13:45
Speaker 1: I mean Diego Garcia. Reminder that this is not a
13:47
Speaker 1: regional war. Now, Iran is disputing it happened, calls it
13:51
Speaker 1: a false flag. US officials say a missile broke up
13:54
Speaker 1: mid flight and another was intercepted, so there's some question there.
14:03
Speaker 1: Now the question is who's pulling triggers. Here's the tier.
14:06
Speaker 1: Nobody seems to count countries that have actually shot at something.
14:11
Speaker 1: Cutter shot down two Iranian SU twenty four bombers, the
14:15
Speaker 1: first country in this war to down an Iranian aircraft.
14:19
Speaker 1: It's not the United States with Cutter. NATO has intercepted
14:22
Speaker 1: four ballistic missiles over Turkish air space. Britain intercepted a
14:26
Speaker 1: drone headed for a rock. Then there's the one that'll
14:28
Speaker 1: stay with you for a while. A Kuwaiti faighteen pilot
14:31
Speaker 1: shot down three American F fifteen's friendly fire, three of them.
14:37
Speaker 1: Now let's go to the Europeans. Greece is that frigates
14:40
Speaker 1: and F sixteens to defend Cyprus, Italy, the Netherlands and
14:44
Speaker 1: Spain sent warships. Ireland offered a French soldier was killed
14:49
Speaker 1: by a drum strike in Iraqi. Kurdistan American b ones
14:53
Speaker 1: and B two staged out of Britain and Germany and
14:59
Speaker 1: then two that's unlike they're from a different country. Sri
15:02
Speaker 1: Lanka interned in Iranian tanker in its port. That's the
15:07
Speaker 1: first time a warship has been interned in a neutral
15:10
Speaker 1: country since the Second World War. And an American submarine
15:15
Speaker 1: sank an Iranian frigate off the coast of Sri Lanka,
15:18
Speaker 1: a ship that was on its way home from a
15:21
Speaker 1: multi national naval exercise in India. It is the first
15:25
Speaker 1: ship sunk by a submarine in combat since the Falklands,
15:30
Speaker 1: first by an American submarine since World War II. There's
15:35
Speaker 1: one more outer ring the mediators. Pakistan broker the April
15:40
Speaker 1: Seas fire. The Prime Minister and the Army chief were
15:42
Speaker 1: personally involved. Pakistan hosted the highest level talks between the
15:45
Speaker 1: United States and Iran since nineteen seventy nine. Oman and
15:49
Speaker 1: Kadar have hosted the rest.
15:52
Speaker 2: So did you do the count?
15:57
Speaker 1: Thirty?
15:58
Speaker 2: Now?
15:59
Speaker 1: What did you guess? So here's where I want to
16:03
Speaker 1: be careful because I think the loudest voices on this
16:06
Speaker 1: have been wrong for three years running. Every time something escalates,
16:13
Speaker 1: somebody says world War three. Donald Trump's been the biggest
16:17
Speaker 1: sort of Cassandra on this, and they've been wrong every time.
16:22
Speaker 1: There's no World War. Nobody's drafting anybody, we don't have
16:26
Speaker 1: any general mobilization. The great power blocks have not hardened
16:32
Speaker 1: into two teams, if you will, the way they did
16:35
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen for World War One or nineteen thirty
16:39
Speaker 1: nine for World War Two, And honestly, the formal alliances
16:43
Speaker 1: didn't even show up. In March, Trump asked NATO to
16:46
Speaker 1: help reopen the Strait. NATO said no, China said no.
16:51
Speaker 1: He turned around and publicly attacked Japan, South Korea, and
16:54
Speaker 1: Australia for not joining, and declared the United States doesn't
16:57
Speaker 1: need anybody's help. So if your test is did the
17:01
Speaker 1: treaty system activate, the answer is no. The treaty system
17:05
Speaker 1: set this one out. So in that sense, the catastrophists
17:08
Speaker 1: here have lost that argument. But I think that's the
17:13
Speaker 1: wrong test here. The question was never whether the alliances
17:16
Speaker 1: would formalize. It's whether the wars would merge, and that's
17:23
Speaker 1: something we need to be very concerned about at the moment,
17:26
Speaker 1: because they have. They haven't merged through treaties. The war
17:30
Speaker 1: between Russia and Ukraine, and the war between US, Iran
17:32
Speaker 1: and Israel have merged through supply chains. I think much
17:38
Speaker 1: scarier than we are fully appreciating. Let me show you
17:44
Speaker 1: what I mean, because this is the first time I've
17:49
Speaker 1: been nervous about the idea that this could go global.
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19:45
Speaker 1: know the first half of this story. After Russian invaded Ukraine,
19:47
Speaker 1: Aaran became one of Moscow's most important arms suppliers, those
19:52
Speaker 1: shah Head drones right then the production technology, then they
19:58
Speaker 1: licensed a factory on Russians soil. Russia has fired tens
20:02
Speaker 1: of thousands of them at Ukrainian cities. It was a
20:06
Speaker 1: huge advantage for a time for Russia using the Iranian drones. Well,
20:11
Speaker 1: as we all know now, Ukraine is now the world's
20:15
Speaker 1: foremost expert on drone warfare. Russia is now shipping Irony
20:23
Speaker 1: now because of the Iran's needs, Russia now has to
20:26
Speaker 1: ship Russian made Iranian drones essentially back to Iran.
20:32
Speaker 2: How do we know this?
20:33
Speaker 1: Zelensky told us. He told us that this spring, So
20:37
Speaker 1: just sit with the submitting Iran to signed the weapon.
20:41
Speaker 1: Russian licensed it, mass produced it, improved it under live
20:44
Speaker 1: fire in Ukraine, and now the improved version is back
20:48
Speaker 1: in Iran to be fired at American troops in the
20:51
Speaker 1: Persian Gulf. It's not two wars learning from each other.
20:58
Speaker 1: That's one production line with two customers, and it runs
21:06
Speaker 1: the other direction just as fast. Ukraine has become the
21:09
Speaker 1: world's leading practitioner of shooting these things down. They're experts
21:14
Speaker 1: because it's had four years of practice. So this spring,
21:18
Speaker 1: Ukraine deployed two hundred and twenty eight military specialists of
21:22
Speaker 1: five countries, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Cutter, Kuwait, and Jordan
21:29
Speaker 1: it's the first time Ukrainian air defense teams have ever
21:31
Speaker 1: been sent to another country's war. Local forces handled the
21:39
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles. The Ukrainians handled the drones because they know
21:42
Speaker 1: the drum. They've been living with it since twenty twenty two.
21:47
Speaker 1: Zelenski flew to Saudi Arabia to sign a security agreement.
21:50
Speaker 1: Saudi Aramco got in line to buy Ukrainian interceptors, and
21:55
Speaker 1: the deal on the table is barder Ukraine's cheap interceptors
21:58
Speaker 1: in exchange for the Western air defense missiles that Ukraine
22:02
Speaker 1: can't get enough of. Iran understands exactly what happened. Tehran's
22:09
Speaker 1: envoy and Kiev called it a stunt, and an Iranian
22:12
Speaker 1: member of parliament announced that all of Ukraine is now
22:15
Speaker 1: a legitimate target. So a war in Eastern Europe and
22:19
Speaker 1: a war in the Persian Gulf just declared each other
22:22
Speaker 1: in scope. They are part of the targets.
22:29
Speaker 2: Now.
22:29
Speaker 1: The drone story is the elegant vision version of this argument.
22:34
Speaker 1: Here's the version you can argue with. It's about inventory
22:38
Speaker 1: and analysis out this week from the Center from Strategic
22:40
Speaker 1: International Studies here in DC estimates that the American stockpile
22:44
Speaker 1: of Patriot interceptors has gone from about twenty three hundred
22:48
Speaker 1: before this war began to somewhere between seven hundred and
22:51
Speaker 1: fifty and eight hundred and twenty five today. That's a
22:54
Speaker 1: decline of at least sixty five percent. Those interceptors are
22:58
Speaker 1: down at least thirty eight percent even after partial replenishment.
23:03
Speaker 1: Now you know why some of Trump's boy who cried
23:08
Speaker 1: wolf war, if you will, they have been able to
23:11
Speaker 1: follow through because we have a munitions problem. The inventory
23:19
Speaker 1: is now changing how the war gets fought. My friends
23:21
Speaker 1: of our NBC reported that the American commanders are choosing
23:24
Speaker 1: not to shoot down Iranian projectiles headed for empty parts
23:27
Speaker 1: of their own basis because the interceptor is worth more
23:31
Speaker 1: than the crater it will create. We're literally having to
23:35
Speaker 1: cherry pick what's worth. You're doing almost a cost assessment there.
23:43
Speaker 1: What's it going to hit? Yeah, that's all right, let
23:46
Speaker 1: it be. Let's not waste the fire. We are rationing
23:52
Speaker 1: our defense. The United States of America is having to ration.
24:00
Speaker 1: There was no planning for this war whatsoever. How much
24:03
Speaker 1: more evidence do we meet? This is the single dumbest
24:08
Speaker 1: and biggest mistake a president has made in my lifetime.
24:12
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it is hard. You cannot This is when
24:16
Speaker 1: you see the cost of this down the road. It's
24:20
Speaker 1: not even going to be a close call when history
24:24
Speaker 1: has its judgment on this. This is absolutely turning into
24:30
Speaker 1: just a total and utter mess. We just have to
24:35
Speaker 1: hope it doesn't become a catastrophe, because here's where the
24:38
Speaker 1: two wars stop being a metaphor and start becoming a
24:40
Speaker 1: subtraction problem. The State Department has already warned that allies
24:44
Speaker 1: that patriot deliveries to Ukraine could be delayed because the
24:47
Speaker 1: Pentagon is prioritizing the Middle East. Some of those allies
24:50
Speaker 1: are worried that missiles they already bought and paid for
24:53
Speaker 1: could get diverted to refill American shells. So an interceptor
24:57
Speaker 1: fired over Rheia in Saudi Arabia as an inner after
25:00
Speaker 1: not fired over Kharkievs, same missile, same production line, one
25:04
Speaker 1: war competing with the other four. It's not necessarily two
25:08
Speaker 1: conflicts influencing each other, but it is two conflicts eating
25:11
Speaker 1: from the same plate. It's one more connection between these wars,
25:19
Speaker 1: and it's the one that should bother everybody. Regardless of
25:21
Speaker 1: what you said in March to blunt the economic damage
25:23
Speaker 1: of its own war, our government temporarily lifted restrictions in
25:27
Speaker 1: the sale of Russian oil. Dumb ass, just a dumb,
25:31
Speaker 1: dumb decision.
25:33
Speaker 2: Read that again.
25:33
Speaker 1: A war fought in part to squeeze Tehran ended up
25:36
Speaker 1: unsqueezing Moscow, which of course only helped the Iranians. Oil
25:41
Speaker 1: rose more than forty percent, largest oil supply disruptis since
25:44
Speaker 1: the seventies, and China, which buys more than eighty percent
25:47
Speaker 1: of Iron's oil at a steep discount, ends up the
25:50
Speaker 1: other beneficiary. So the war made Russia's war cheaper to fund.
25:58
Speaker 1: That's right. Heck of a job, trumpy declaring war in
26:02
Speaker 1: Iran handed more resources to Russia. Now that brings me
26:09
Speaker 1: to the last part of this, and it's the one
26:11
Speaker 1: that's watching all of it. China is no bystander here.
26:15
Speaker 1: Beijing deployed vessels capable of tracking the American fleet. Chinese
26:19
Speaker 1: companies published satellite photos of US assets in the region
26:23
Speaker 1: that thad Battery and Jordan f twenty twos in Israel.
26:25
Speaker 1: That's not intelligence gathering. It's a message. We see you,
26:29
Speaker 1: and we can show anybody.
26:32
Speaker 2: What you have.
26:35
Speaker 1: Look, this is not a seamless axis we don't necessarily
26:38
Speaker 1: this is not like it doesn't quite split up this way,
26:40
Speaker 1: but it's getting close. Iran has blocked two Chinese ships
26:44
Speaker 1: from the strait. Trump said the Navy intercepted what he
26:46
Speaker 1: called a gift from China. Had to do Iran. There's
26:49
Speaker 1: some friction in there, but what is real and specific
26:53
Speaker 1: is this. There's an argument out this month in law
26:56
Speaker 1: Fair that is as good as anything written about this war.
27:00
Speaker 2: Interesting.
27:00
Speaker 1: Here's the US and Israel opened this war with exactly
27:02
Speaker 1: the kind of decapitating strike Beijing has always imagined using
27:06
Speaker 1: on Taipei, and before dawn on February twenty eight, they
27:10
Speaker 1: killed the spring leader of Iran and much of the
27:11
Speaker 1: senior military command, and it end the war. Successor named
27:16
Speaker 1: within days, chain of command held within hours. The Revolutionary
27:19
Speaker 1: Guard was basically in charge in firing back. It's the
27:23
Speaker 1: same verdict Russia got outside a Kiev in twenty twenty two.
27:26
Speaker 1: Decapitation doesn't work. Denying a choke point is cheap to
27:29
Speaker 1: do and expensive don do, and a long war favors
27:33
Speaker 1: the dispersed defender, not the sophisticated superpower. So Beijing is watching,
27:40
Speaker 1: so is Taipei, where a government watchdog in their country said,
27:45
Speaker 1: Taiwan's own counter drone defenses are ineffective. So the Pentagon,
27:48
Speaker 1: where the head of the Indo Pacific Command, wants to
27:50
Speaker 1: fill the Taiwan straight with thousands of drums. So everybody's
27:55
Speaker 1: watching the same tape here, everybody's learning from each other,
27:58
Speaker 1: which means everybody's learning the same life lessons, including your adversary.
28:02
Speaker 1: So we'll see where this is headed. But let's go
28:07
Speaker 1: back to that big number of thirty, the fact that
28:12
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't realize thirty countries are already involved in this
28:15
Speaker 1: war that we started with Iran. The fact that you
28:19
Speaker 1: don't know is thirty. It's not a failure in your part,
28:21
Speaker 1: it's a failure on a whole bunch of ranges. So
28:29
Speaker 1: this is not World War three, But it is harder
28:34
Speaker 1: to see how this war cleanly ends. This strategic the
28:41
Speaker 1: number of strategic mistakes and missteps that have been made here,
28:46
Speaker 1: this is not And here's the thing you really can separate.
28:49
Speaker 1: Whatever our military has been asked to do, they've done well.
28:53
Speaker 1: The problem is the leadership. The problem is the strategy
28:58
Speaker 1: or lack thereof, the problem is the sort of failure
29:03
Speaker 1: of imagination to understand what's been happening around the world,
29:08
Speaker 1: underestimating what's been happening in Russia and Ukraine as well.
29:13
Speaker 1: Like I said, I don't like to be an alarmist.
29:15
Speaker 1: You know that I just wrote a whole column. You'd
29:18
Speaker 1: be vigilant, not an alarmist. But this is where our
29:22
Speaker 1: Congress is letting us down. What I just explained to
29:27
Speaker 1: you should be the single most important thing that Congress
29:32
Speaker 1: focuses on at the moment. Nothing is impacting our economy
29:37
Speaker 1: more than this war. Nothing is impacting our security in
29:42
Speaker 1: the future more than this war. This should be front
29:47
Speaker 1: and center of concern. This should be front and center
29:51
Speaker 1: of information that the American people need to know. But
29:55
Speaker 1: this is unraveling before our eyes, our leaders. I have
30:00
Speaker 1: no idea how to end this thing. It's clearly now
30:05
Speaker 1: a war that never should have been started. And now
30:10
Speaker 1: we're stuck. And I've said this you before that sat
30:16
Speaker 1: the scariest thing is one of his most viable options
30:24
Speaker 1: is escalation and a ground invasion, which then really could
30:30
Speaker 1: trigger World War three. But just look at already how
30:34
Speaker 1: this war is fantastasized. What started. There's a dispute between
30:43
Speaker 1: Israel and Iran has got the three superpowers involved. If
30:51
Speaker 1: you count the Russians as superpower, they have nukes, so
30:53
Speaker 1: I guess you have to count them as one. And
30:59
Speaker 1: look at how many countries in the Middle East have
31:00
Speaker 1: already dealt with live fire, and some of them have
31:03
Speaker 1: had to deliver live fire. What a total and utter mess.
31:10
Speaker 1: Political disaster, strategic disaster. Let's just hope this doesn't become
31:15
Speaker 1: a human disaster.
31:20
Speaker 2: All right.
31:21
Speaker 1: I got another big topic that I want to sort
31:25
Speaker 1: of spend a few minutes on, and it's what I
31:27
Speaker 1: wrote about this week. If you caught my column a
31:29
Speaker 1: new sphere or on sub stack, you know where this
31:33
Speaker 1: is going. Because I want to spend a few minutes
31:37
Speaker 1: about data centers, right. I don't think it's about data centers, right,
31:43
Speaker 1: And I do think this is a fascinating political story.
31:48
Speaker 1: But it's also a story about a political opening that
31:51
Speaker 1: neither party has figured out yet. And the more I've
31:54
Speaker 1: thought about it over the last six months, the more
31:55
Speaker 1: I'm convinced that the politics of AI hasn't been invented yet.
32:02
Speaker 1: We don't know where this is going. I have we
32:04
Speaker 1: think we know where it should go. I know where
32:06
Speaker 1: I wanted to go I want Teddy Roosevelt. We need
32:09
Speaker 1: Teddy here. We need somebody to channel some Teddy energy
32:13
Speaker 1: and some Teddy vibes. And I'm going to get to that.
32:18
Speaker 1: But the public is ahead of the politicians right now.
32:21
Speaker 1: They are much further ahead. In fact, I saw a
32:24
Speaker 1: poll earlier this week that reinforced something I've already been
32:26
Speaker 1: thinking about for months.
32:30
Speaker 2: Now.
32:30
Speaker 1: This poll was commissioned by the Little Tech Association. It's
32:34
Speaker 1: a new trade group representing smaller tech companies. So yes,
32:37
Speaker 1: they have a stake in this going after big tech,
32:39
Speaker 1: of will. Their whole mission is to make sure the
32:42
Speaker 1: smaller tech firms have a voice and they want to
32:44
Speaker 1: check the power of the biggest tech companies. So they
32:47
Speaker 1: have their own agenda and you should know that upfront.
32:50
Speaker 1: But the survey itself conducted by you gov. They interviewed
32:54
Speaker 1: more than twelve hundred Americans and here's what jumped out.
32:59
Speaker 1: Get this, two percent of Americans say they've used AI
33:02
Speaker 1: in just the last three months. Most of those users
33:05
Speaker 1: users claim they've had a positive experience.
33:08
Speaker 2: So just sit with that.
33:09
Speaker 1: A second, because it's important to understand here, Americans aren't
33:14
Speaker 1: rejecting artificial intelligence. My goodness, three quarters of us are
33:19
Speaker 1: using it, and most of us that are using it
33:22
Speaker 1: like it. But here's the other half of the story.
33:25
Speaker 1: Fewer than one in five Americans trust big tech to
33:28
Speaker 1: manage AI responsibly, seven and ten say the biggest tech
33:33
Speaker 1: companies have too much power, ninety percent say they're concerned
33:37
Speaker 1: about how large corporations collect and use their personal data,
33:42
Speaker 1: and nearly seven and ten support using existing antitrust laws
33:46
Speaker 1: against the biggest tech companies. They don't know it, but
33:49
Speaker 1: they're calling for Teddy. They want Teddy, bring on Teddy.
33:54
Speaker 1: And maybe the most remarkable number of all of it,
33:56
Speaker 1: nearly half of Americans don't trust anybody to manage AI
33:59
Speaker 1: respect They don't trust Congress, we know this. They don't
34:03
Speaker 1: trust the Trump administration. They don't trust their state government,
34:07
Speaker 1: they don't trust their local government. They certainly don't trust
34:09
Speaker 1: big tech. They don't trust anybody right now, right that's
34:13
Speaker 1: our trust deficit. Now, think about what those numbers are
34:17
Speaker 1: actually telling us. Though the public has separated the technology
34:21
Speaker 1: from the technologists, Washington hasn't done that yet. And I
34:27
Speaker 1: think that's the biggest disconnect going on right now between
34:30
Speaker 1: the public and the politicians. Because if you asked most
34:34
Speaker 1: politicians about AI today, they almost immediately start talking about China,
34:39
Speaker 1: or economic competitiveness, or permitting or electricity, maybe transmission lines.
34:45
Speaker 1: All of those are legitimate conversations happening at the execution
34:50
Speaker 1: level of expanding our infrastructure for AI. But it's not
34:55
Speaker 1: the conversation the public is having, and that's what's interesting
35:02
Speaker 1: to me politically. Let me walk you through this. For
35:05
Speaker 1: the last six months, I've had a theory about this
35:07
Speaker 1: data center situation. I've been testing that they're out in
35:10
Speaker 1: many of my interviews for newsphere and right here at
35:12
Speaker 1: the Check podcast in theory, and you're going to hear
35:15
Speaker 1: it again in my conversation with Adie Bisheer coming up.
35:19
Speaker 1: The theory wasn't really about artificial intelligence, and it wasn't
35:22
Speaker 1: even really about the data center pushback. My theory was
35:26
Speaker 1: that the growing backlash over data centers wasn't actually about
35:29
Speaker 1: the buildings or where these were going. The buildings were
35:33
Speaker 1: simply the first physical manifestation of something much larger and
35:38
Speaker 1: a much bigger concern to the public. Twenty five years
35:42
Speaker 1: of accumulated frustration with big tech finally finding a physical
35:48
Speaker 1: manifestation to express frustration so every one of my interviews
35:53
Speaker 1: has become a little research project, if you will. I
35:55
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in the various policy proposals while they should
35:58
Speaker 1: pay for their own power. Yeah, all those things are true.
36:00
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what the politicians were learning from
36:03
Speaker 1: this pushback from the public. How were they framing the issue.
36:08
Speaker 1: Did they see what I thought I was saying, or
36:11
Speaker 1: were they still treating this as some sort of isolated
36:13
Speaker 1: zoning fight. I've've talked with Byron Donald's about this, Doug Jones,
36:18
Speaker 1: John Tester sua superman, congressmen just next door to me
36:24
Speaker 1: in northern Virginia. Plenty of Republicans Democrats are from different states, rural, urban,
36:28
Speaker 1: you name it, different politics. They all had different solutions,
36:33
Speaker 1: But underneath all of the differences something else struck me.
36:37
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted to just manage this backlash. Almost nobody wanted
36:43
Speaker 1: to delve into why the backlash existed in the first place. Right,
36:47
Speaker 1: Republicans have been talking about protecting neighborhoods. Democrats talked about
36:51
Speaker 1: the need to have transparency in the process of deciding
36:54
Speaker 1: where these data centers go. Some of them were arguing
36:57
Speaker 1: for temporary moratoriums, and others we're wanting to create better
37:01
Speaker 1: permitting rules. All those certainly, those are some answers, but
37:06
Speaker 1: I kept waiting for somebody to answer a different question.
37:09
Speaker 1: Why has this become such a potent political issue? In
37:12
Speaker 1: the first place, I was in Dothan, Alabama. I've been
37:16
Speaker 1: in Pensacola. This isn't just Silicon Valley, this isn't just
37:20
Speaker 1: this is everywhere, and nobody seems interested in answering that question.
37:25
Speaker 1: And I think the politicians in this case are behind
37:28
Speaker 1: the public. As many of you know, I've been in
37:32
Speaker 1: Pensacola for the last couple of months. During the Blue
37:35
Speaker 1: Angels air show a couple of weeks ago, it was
37:40
Speaker 1: the usual advertising banners that you get when you're at
37:43
Speaker 1: any beach. If you've ever hung out at a beach,
37:46
Speaker 1: you know. We've got a local place here called Flounders,
37:49
Speaker 1: and they love their banner that says sex on the beach.
37:53
Speaker 2: Right.
37:53
Speaker 1: They put it in quotes, five dollars Flounders, right. Honestly,
37:59
Speaker 1: I've been come here fifteen years, ninety You know there's
38:02
Speaker 1: that there's a place called Crabs. You know, have you
38:05
Speaker 1: gotten Crabs like? You know, all sorts of punds that
38:07
Speaker 1: they use if you've again you got any beach in
38:11
Speaker 1: the southeast in Atlantic at this time of year, you know, Northeast.
38:15
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about, These little these little
38:18
Speaker 1: planes with banners around them, right, And one thing, Pensacola
38:22
Speaker 1: is many things. I didn't think it was ground zero
38:25
Speaker 1: for the Ai Revolution. Well, one of the banners that
38:31
Speaker 1: circulated quite frequently during the Blue Angels show was a
38:36
Speaker 1: political banner attacking data centers. And it wasn't paid for
38:39
Speaker 1: by Democrats. It was paid for by one of the
38:42
Speaker 1: one Republican attacking another Republican and a Republican primary. It
38:46
Speaker 1: was one of Byron Donald's primary opponents who paid for
38:49
Speaker 1: the banner. A few days later, I'm in Dothan, Alabama,
38:53
Speaker 1: which about forty five minutes kind of due north of
38:57
Speaker 1: Tallahassee if you're trying to picture it on a map.
39:00
Speaker 1: That's why I was with Doug Jones, Democratic candidate for governor,
39:02
Speaker 1: and he told me that one of the biggest issues
39:04
Speaker 1: coming up in his conversations all over the state wasn't
39:08
Speaker 1: about immigration, inflation, Donald Trump. Nope, not even about college
39:13
Speaker 1: football in Alabama. Right, It's about data centers. Pensacola is
39:17
Speaker 1: not northern Virginia and Dothan is not Silicon Valley. These
39:22
Speaker 1: aren't places you'd expect to be arguing about artificial intelligence.
39:26
Speaker 1: If this were simply a debate about local electric grids
39:29
Speaker 1: or local zoning, i'd expect the politics of this to
39:32
Speaker 1: say where the projects actually are said. The politics are
39:36
Speaker 1: spreading faster than the infrastructure. And that's how you know,
39:42
Speaker 1: we're not watching a story about the politics of data centers.
39:47
Speaker 1: We're watching the creation of the politics of AI. And
39:52
Speaker 1: here's what we don't know. None of us have figured
39:54
Speaker 1: out what those politics are actually are yet. And both
39:57
Speaker 1: parties are sort of behind the eight fall here, and
40:00
Speaker 1: they're they're sort of they're stuck in their old way,
40:02
Speaker 1: so they're just you know, they're doing campaign money or
40:06
Speaker 1: you know this or that or environmental you know, it's
40:09
Speaker 1: like the right, you know, their environmental regulation guys, and
40:12
Speaker 1: they're just obsessed with campaign money. They're not quite sure
40:15
Speaker 1: how to do this. And I think one of the
40:17
Speaker 1: reasons why Washington has struggled with this is because this
40:21
Speaker 1: issue developed almost the exact opposite way most divisive political
40:26
Speaker 1: issues developed. Normally, politics works like this. Consultants will see
40:30
Speaker 1: an issue that has the potential of percolate. Posters will
40:33
Speaker 1: test it out, maybe interest groups will start organizing around it.
40:37
Speaker 1: Maybe even a think tank is asked to come up
40:39
Speaker 1: with a couple of proposals. And then the politicians said
40:42
Speaker 1: on a message, and eventually, you know, the public is
40:46
Speaker 1: brought in on it a little bit. That's not what's
40:48
Speaker 1: happened here. Public was here way before. Politicians have been
40:53
Speaker 1: Politicians are still trying to.
40:54
Speaker 2: Play catch up.
40:57
Speaker 1: And that brings me to a larger question of of
41:00
Speaker 1: what I think actually has changed over the last twenty
41:01
Speaker 1: five years. Because this story doesn't start with AI, It
41:07
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42:59
Speaker 2: So what change.
43:01
Speaker 1: The relationship between the American public and the tech industry
43:04
Speaker 1: didn't begin with suspicion, my goodness, Quite the opposite. Think
43:08
Speaker 1: back to the first Internet revolution. Search engines put the
43:12
Speaker 1: world's information at our fingertips. GPS fundamentally changed the way
43:17
Speaker 1: we traveled. Online shopping changed the way we bought almost
43:20
Speaker 1: everything eBay. It was so cool, still is kind of cool.
43:24
Speaker 1: Smartphones put more computing power in our pockets than NASA
43:28
Speaker 1: had when it sent astronauts to the moon. Right, it's
43:30
Speaker 1: a cliche we've heard over and over. Technology generally made
43:34
Speaker 1: life better, and Americans rewarded the companies that built it.
43:39
Speaker 1: Those companies became enormously successful, the Magnificent Seven.
43:43
Speaker 2: Many of them are a part of Right.
43:47
Speaker 1: Nobody really complained because the bargain at the time felt fair.
43:52
Speaker 1: It's how American capitalism is supposed to work. Somebody invents
43:55
Speaker 1: something that improves people's lives. Customers benefit, investors benefit, entrepreneurs
44:00
Speaker 1: become wealthy. Everybody walks away feeling like the system worked.
44:05
Speaker 1: And I don't think that's the bargain people believe they're
44:08
Speaker 1: making any more with these companies. Somewhere along the way,
44:11
Speaker 1: these incentives changed, and they went in the wrong direction.
44:15
Speaker 1: Technology companies gradually stopped competing primarily to make our lives
44:19
Speaker 1: easier and increasingly competed to make sure we spent more
44:23
Speaker 1: of our lives with them. You may think that's a
44:27
Speaker 1: subtle distinction.
44:29
Speaker 2: I don't.
44:30
Speaker 1: It fundamentally changed the relationship. Social media is where that
44:34
Speaker 1: became impossible to ignore. Right first, it looked like another
44:37
Speaker 1: extraordinary American success story. We reconnected families and reunited old
44:42
Speaker 1: friends and helped neighborhoods organize, and quilters got to hang
44:46
Speaker 1: out with fellow quilters, and baseball card collectors got to
44:49
Speaker 1: hang out with fellow baseball card collectors. Gave ordinary people
44:52
Speaker 1: a voice they thought they never really had before, and
44:55
Speaker 1: there's some truth to that. Then something changed. First, it
44:58
Speaker 1: was gradual, and we didn't quite see it right away.
45:03
Speaker 1: Building community became less important to these tech companies than
45:07
Speaker 1: capturing our attention. The longer we stayed, they figured out,
45:12
Speaker 1: the more advertising we saw, the more money they made
45:14
Speaker 1: off of us, the more data we generated for them,
45:17
Speaker 1: the more valuable we became to them. So at some
45:20
Speaker 1: point a lot of Americans stopped feeling like customers to
45:24
Speaker 1: big tech, and they started wondering where they'd become the
45:27
Speaker 1: product instead. Now, I'm not going to sit here and
45:31
Speaker 1: say this happened because of one company or one ceo
45:34
Speaker 1: or one terrible decision. Relationships deteriorate incrementally, right, they erode
45:42
Speaker 1: until one day both sides realized, holy cow, we're talking
45:45
Speaker 1: two completely different relationships and two different worldviews. And that's
45:50
Speaker 1: where we are with tech. Tech companies still largely see
45:53
Speaker 1: themselves as building products that improve people's lives, and millions
45:57
Speaker 1: of Americans increasingly feel that they're simply are We're just
46:02
Speaker 1: simply being optimized by these companies rather than served. These
46:08
Speaker 1: are not the same things. And to me, one of
46:11
Speaker 1: the clearest political signs that something changed has almost nothing
46:15
Speaker 1: to do with AI. It was the movement to get
46:17
Speaker 1: phones out of classrooms. And look, history may eventually decide
46:22
Speaker 1: those laws. These laws have been a mistake that we overreacted.
46:26
Speaker 1: But politically that's beside the point. The fact of the
46:31
Speaker 1: matter is republican governors, democratic governors, republican legislatures, democratic legislatures.
46:38
Speaker 1: Just about every Western country around the world, some states
46:42
Speaker 1: that can't agree on anything have increasingly agreed on one thing.
46:47
Speaker 1: Kids should spend less time on the products Silicon Valley
46:50
Speaker 1: spent years trying to make indispensable hard stop. That's a
46:54
Speaker 1: big political development because whether Silicon Valley agrees with whether
47:00
Speaker 1: this is a correct decision by local politicians or it overreaction,
47:06
Speaker 1: the public has rendered its verdict, because remember, these people
47:09
Speaker 1: are representative of the public. And that's why I think
47:13
Speaker 1: AI is entering a very different political environment than Internet.
47:17
Speaker 1: One point, Oh, did the Internet arrived in a country
47:20
Speaker 1: that trusted tech companies? We loved Apple. AI is arriving
47:25
Speaker 1: after much of that trust has already been spent, And
47:29
Speaker 1: that's a big difference. That's a much different starting point.
47:32
Speaker 1: And I think this is the biggest disconnect of them all.
47:35
Speaker 1: I don't think Silicon Valley understands the conversation the country
47:38
Speaker 1: thinks it's having. And I say that because I've watched
47:41
Speaker 1: politicians make this mistake for decades. Candidates answer questions and
47:45
Speaker 1: nobody's actually asking all the time, and sometimes they do
47:49
Speaker 1: it on purpose so they don't have to answer the question.
47:51
Speaker 1: And big tech is doing this now. So where does
47:54
Speaker 1: this leave us? Well, the politics of AI, it just
47:58
Speaker 1: hasn't been invented yet, don't have We haven't found this
48:02
Speaker 1: person to capture the moment. Look, plenty of Americans have
48:06
Speaker 1: opinions on this. The public is there, Washington isn't. And
48:11
Speaker 1: it's a huge distinction. The public is separated the technology
48:14
Speaker 1: from the technologists. They're not rejecting AI, they're rejecting the
48:19
Speaker 1: relationship that no longer feels like a partnership. That's what
48:23
Speaker 1: everybody's getting wrong here. So I don't think the next
48:26
Speaker 1: successful presidential candidate is going to win this issue by
48:29
Speaker 1: promising either more data centers or less data centers, or
48:33
Speaker 1: a better permitting process or a moratorium. Those are answers
48:40
Speaker 1: to the questions politicians are asking, but they're actually not
48:44
Speaker 1: the answers to the question the public is asking. The
48:47
Speaker 1: public is asking something much simpler. How do we make
48:49
Speaker 1: sure the next great wave of American innovation actually benefits America.
48:55
Speaker 1: It's a simple question. It's a complicated answer, But it's
48:58
Speaker 1: a different conversation, and we're not having this. Our politicians
49:01
Speaker 1: aren't having this conversation with you. Donald Trump actually illustrates
49:05
Speaker 1: this trap. You know. The irony is that he could
49:07
Speaker 1: have been His political rise was built on the idea
49:10
Speaker 1: that America's elites had actually stopped listening to ordinary people.
49:14
Speaker 1: So if there was ever a politician in theory position
49:17
Speaker 1: to redefine America's relationship with big tech, it should have
49:21
Speaker 1: been the great populist, orange haired man. And to be fair,
49:27
Speaker 1: he did do some things that previous Republican presidents probably
49:29
Speaker 1: wouldn't have imagined. Right, the government now owns pieces of
49:33
Speaker 1: industrial policy, an equity stake, and Intel a share of
49:37
Speaker 1: Navidia's chip sales to China, interests tied to rare earths.
49:44
Speaker 1: This isn't las a fair republicanism. I'm not sure it's
49:48
Speaker 1: a good idea long term, but I will he deserves
49:51
Speaker 1: it at least, I guess credit for trying something here.
49:57
Speaker 1: But look who got the steak, Donald Trump, his cronies
50:02
Speaker 1: or Washington got the stake, not the communities that are
50:06
Speaker 1: being used for the infrastructure. So in this case, Washington
50:10
Speaker 1: negotiated for Washington Donald Trump negotiated for Donald Trump, but
50:15
Speaker 1: Pensacola got an airplane banner, and that's the trap. So
50:19
Speaker 1: I think neither political party has figured this out yet.
50:23
Speaker 1: History suggests moments like this don't get solved by the
50:26
Speaker 1: political establishment. Teddy Roosevelt was a member of the establishment,
50:30
Speaker 1: but by the time, but it was when he was
50:33
Speaker 1: an outsider did he have the credibility to rail against
50:36
Speaker 1: the system. And in some ways, maybe that's what we're
50:40
Speaker 1: looking for. Somebody who was born into power but eventually
50:44
Speaker 1: becomes unusually free from many of the pressures that would
50:48
Speaker 1: have constrained many of his contemporaries. And that's what gave
50:53
Speaker 1: Teddy room to redefine the relationship between government and concentrated
50:56
Speaker 1: economic power. Something is going to happen here. The question
51:01
Speaker 1: is is going to happen in time before this industry
51:04
Speaker 1: eats up everything. And I do believe there's a real
51:08
Speaker 1: reward at the end of this rainbow. The first politician
51:10
Speaker 1: who really understands this issue, I don't think is going
51:14
Speaker 1: to come from sort of the mainstream of either party.
51:17
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll be a governor, maybe it'll be someone wealthy
51:19
Speaker 1: enough not to depend on money, because that's the other
51:22
Speaker 1: part of this, a lot of politicians are captured by
51:24
Speaker 1: all this cash from these tech companies, or if anything,
51:29
Speaker 1: they're afraid of the cash or the tech companies. I mean,
51:31
Speaker 1: you know Chuck Schumer gave away when he surrendered on crypto, right,
51:36
Speaker 1: I mean to me, that's when he sort of just said,
51:38
Speaker 1: I surrender being representative of the people. But it was
51:42
Speaker 1: because the cash had captured him and captured the mindset
51:48
Speaker 1: of Democrats on crypto. So maybe it'll be somebody who
51:52
Speaker 1: built this industry that now has found that now has
51:55
Speaker 1: enough credibility to tell hard truths, right, like what we
51:57
Speaker 1: saw in Hungary, Right, it was a former or bond
52:00
Speaker 1: guy who had the credibility to take on or one
52:05
Speaker 1: point is I don't know who it'll be, but I
52:07
Speaker 1: know what they're going to sound like. They're not going
52:10
Speaker 1: to run against technology, and they're not going to surrender
52:12
Speaker 1: to it either. They're going to insist the American people
52:16
Speaker 1: are not just a customer, and they're not just the workforce,
52:19
Speaker 1: and they're not just your data, and they're not just
52:22
Speaker 1: a temporary place to do something while you figure out
52:26
Speaker 1: how to export all this into space. They're supposed to
52:30
Speaker 1: be the primary beneficiary of American innovation. And when somebody
52:35
Speaker 1: finally says that and then stands up to these tech
52:38
Speaker 1: companies and means it, that's when you're going to know
52:41
Speaker 1: the politics of AI has arrived. Because after six months
52:44
Speaker 1: of these interviews, it's the only conclusion I've come to,
52:48
Speaker 1: because the more politicians I've interviewed on this issue, the
52:51
Speaker 1: less interested I became in the data center issue themselves.
52:55
Speaker 1: They were never really the story. The story was always
52:58
Speaker 1: the relationship with big tech. Big tech let us down,
53:03
Speaker 1: Big tech lost trust with the American people. The data
53:07
Speaker 1: centers simply happened to be where the relationship finally became
53:11
Speaker 1: impossible for these big tech companies to ignore. All Right,
53:16
Speaker 1: very quickly, I said I was going to have a
53:17
Speaker 1: little something here on Fauci. And look, as you know,
53:26
Speaker 1: there's a million different ways to look at this Fauci situation.
53:29
Speaker 1: It is frustrating that our political energy is not being
53:32
Speaker 1: spent on preparing for the next pandemic. We're not talking
53:37
Speaker 1: about how we'd handle another novel virus like the coronavirus.
53:40
Speaker 1: We're not debating what lessons we should actually take away.
53:43
Speaker 1: We're having an argument about Tony Fauci, who's an eighty
53:46
Speaker 1: five year old retired government worker. Now that's our politics
53:52
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty six. Remember Fauci is retired. He became
54:02
Speaker 1: the vessel, though, in which Americans poured every frustration they
54:04
Speaker 1: had about COVID. So look, before we decide whether Fauci
54:08
Speaker 1: got everything right, and he didn't nobody did, let's remember
54:11
Speaker 1: what job he actually had. His job wasn't to balance
54:14
Speaker 1: the economy. It wasn't to decide whether schools reopened or not.
54:18
Speaker 1: Whether he didn't decide whether who got unemployment benefits. His
54:22
Speaker 1: job wasn't to figure out how to keep restaurants alive.
54:25
Speaker 1: His job wasn't weighing mental health against lockdowns. His assignment
54:29
Speaker 1: was much narrower. Tell the country what he believed the
54:31
Speaker 1: medical risks were. That's it. Public health officials have always
54:36
Speaker 1: leaned towards caution, not because they're always right, but because
54:40
Speaker 1: the consequences of understanding danger are almost always worse than
54:44
Speaker 1: the consequences of overstating danger. If he had understated the
54:50
Speaker 1: danger of this, and you have thousands of people dying
54:54
Speaker 1: a day which we had, trust me, there'd be many
54:59
Speaker 1: people angry to about that. With fauci as they would
55:02
Speaker 1: have been as they are today. For those who are
55:04
Speaker 1: literally not remembering a thing about reality on this, think
55:13
Speaker 1: about how government warnings work. Though The National Weather Service
55:15
Speaker 1: warns about hurricanes that end up turning, the FDA issues
55:19
Speaker 1: recall that sometimes affect products you never would have gotten
55:23
Speaker 1: sick from local officiency, evacuate towns that never flood, and
55:28
Speaker 1: public health agencies warn us every flu season, and yet
55:32
Speaker 1: sometimes you don't get the flu to you, and most
55:35
Speaker 1: of us ignore plenty of those warnings and go about
55:36
Speaker 1: our lives. Nobody holds a hearing because a hurricane changed course.
55:41
Speaker 1: But imagine the opposite. Imagine a government officials saying this
55:44
Speaker 1: is probably isn't a big deal, and thousands more people die.
55:49
Speaker 1: We'd still be investigating that mistake today. Oh right, it's
55:52
Speaker 1: called Katrina. Do you remember? So? Look, we know what's
55:55
Speaker 1: happened here. Our memory has compressed COVID. We remember the arguments,
56:00
Speaker 1: we don't always remember the atmosphere. We remember March and
56:03
Speaker 1: April of twenty twenty. We remember hospitals filling up. I'd
56:07
Speaker 1: like to think some people will remember the refrigerated trucks
56:10
Speaker 1: outside holding dead bodies. Nurses having to wear garbage bags
56:13
Speaker 1: because protective equipment was running short. We had two thousand
56:17
Speaker 1: Americans dying a day during some days, at the worst moments,
56:21
Speaker 1: more than three thousand people in a single day. There
56:24
Speaker 1: was no vaccine, there was no immunity. Nobody knew what
56:27
Speaker 1: the next six months look like. Nobody knew whether schools
56:30
Speaker 1: could safely reopen. Nobody knew whether we'd have a treatment
56:32
Speaker 1: by summer or by Christmas. Look, I'm a proud Floridian
56:37
Speaker 1: and here's a cold, hard truth. The only people I
56:39
Speaker 1: personally know who died of COVID lived in the state
56:42
Speaker 1: of Florida, and they weren't all elderly. COVID didn't discriminate,
56:46
Speaker 1: but people who assumed it couldn't touch them often increased
56:49
Speaker 1: their own risk. Does that mean every restriction was right. No.
56:53
Speaker 1: Does it mean every school closure was justified? No. Does
56:57
Speaker 1: it mean nobody overreached? Of course not. But let's just
57:01
Speaker 1: remember the conditions under which those decisions were being made. Now,
57:06
Speaker 1: let's talk about Rand Paul, A side I've said before,
57:10
Speaker 1: I think Rand Paul is one of the more interesting
57:12
Speaker 1: members of the Senate. He brings a libertarian perspective that
57:15
Speaker 1: often challenges consensus in his own party. I find it
57:20
Speaker 1: very valuable and it's healthy in our society. Oversight is
57:23
Speaker 1: also valuable. Congress absolutely has a responsibility to investigate how
57:27
Speaker 1: the government handles COVID. The questions matter, but there comes
57:31
Speaker 1: a point where oversight starts to look like a grievance.
57:38
Speaker 1: Rand Paul decided to release more than an eleven hundred
57:41
Speaker 1: pages of Fauci's pandemic era journal's diaries, whatever you want
57:44
Speaker 1: to call them. Then he questioned him in a highly
57:46
Speaker 1: charged Senate hearing. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment and advisive
57:49
Speaker 1: counsel after arguing that Paul's investigation had become personal vendetta. Look,
57:55
Speaker 1: I'm sorry Fauci took the Fifth I think that just
58:00
Speaker 1: you know, I think that makes people look guiltier than
58:02
Speaker 1: they are. I understand why a lawyer told him to
58:04
Speaker 1: do it. There's no doubt you have a justice department
58:07
Speaker 1: that isn't on the up and up.
58:08
Speaker 2: That does not right.
58:10
Speaker 1: This is a very politically charged justice department who will
58:14
Speaker 1: you can't trust? So I understand why a lawyer would
58:16
Speaker 1: preach this caution of Fauci. And he's eighty five, he's
58:21
Speaker 1: you know, it's ridiculous that that he's being you know,
58:24
Speaker 1: this is basically Rand Paul, I think is participating in
58:28
Speaker 1: elder abuse here. That doesn't mean I don't think Fauci
58:32
Speaker 1: should have to answer questions, but releasing the private journals
58:37
Speaker 1: was just gross. That's not fact finding. It was just
58:41
Speaker 1: a public humiliation. And you know, here's the irony here.
58:45
Speaker 1: So what did we learn? Anthony Fauci enjoyed the media attention.
58:50
Speaker 1: You know else enjoys a lot of media attention Rand Paul.
58:53
Speaker 1: In fact, if we indicted every single person in Washington
58:57
Speaker 1: who enjoyed being recognized by Barbara Strikes and Julia Roberts
59:02
Speaker 1: or Kelsey Grammar, there'd be nobody left to serve. So look,
59:10
Speaker 1: it's very frustrating watching all this. We know Rand Paul's
59:13
Speaker 1: obsession is origin of COVID, and we get it. The
59:16
Speaker 1: Internet demands one answer, reality gives us usually two. This
59:21
Speaker 1: virus may have the answer. Everybody may be right. It's
59:25
Speaker 1: very likely. The most likely aspect of this is that
59:28
Speaker 1: the virus originated naturally. It was being studied in a
59:31
Speaker 1: laboratory after already being found naturally, and it all escaped.
59:39
Speaker 1: But the point is origin and release are not the
59:42
Speaker 1: same thing, and one doesn't automatically answer the other, and
59:47
Speaker 1: it doesn't do anything to help us prepare for the
59:49
Speaker 1: next pandemic. So look, it is it is. I just
59:55
Speaker 1: find this thing. It's obvious what it is. It's a
59:58
Speaker 1: political distraction to the to what's going on right now
1:00:01
Speaker 1: with Republican Party politics. For Rand Paul, it's just an obsession.
1:00:06
Speaker 1: It's a grievance, and I think it's a terrible look
1:00:09
Speaker 1: on him. I genuinely think this is, you know, a
1:00:13
Speaker 1: pretty thoughtful senator, you know, sixty to eighty percent of
1:00:16
Speaker 1: the time, you know. And I'm a believer in you know,
1:00:21
Speaker 1: I think we need some socialist senators, you need some
1:00:23
Speaker 1: libertarian senators, you need center left, you need center right.
1:00:25
Speaker 1: Like I am a believer in pluralism, because I'm a
1:00:30
Speaker 1: believer that when you have all those voices in the room,
1:00:32
Speaker 1: you'll get to one answer that may not be the
1:00:35
Speaker 1: most efficient answer, but it will be the one that's
1:00:38
Speaker 1: most accepted in a democracy. Right. That's why I think
1:00:42
Speaker 1: it can be a good thing. But Rand Paul, what
1:00:45
Speaker 1: he's doing, Anthony Fauci, is only undermining his own his
1:00:50
Speaker 1: own credibility here, and I just you know again, it
1:00:55
Speaker 1: looks to me like the biggest sin Anthony Fauci made
1:00:59
Speaker 1: was enjoying becoming friendly with Julia Roberts. Throw the book
1:01:06
Speaker 1: at him. All right, with that, a few quick campaign
1:01:13
Speaker 1: notebook items, because we've had him here, we've had Todd Achilles,
1:01:16
Speaker 1: the independent candidate running for US Senate in Idaho. Well,
1:01:18
Speaker 1: he got a huge break this week. The Democratic nominee
1:01:21
Speaker 1: with Drew Todd Achilles gets a one on one with
1:01:23
Speaker 1: Jim Risch. We are about to find out if having
1:01:26
Speaker 1: an eye next to your name suddenly makes a US
1:01:31
Speaker 1: Senate seat more competitive even in ruby red Idaho. But
1:01:35
Speaker 1: as good of news as an independent got in Idaho
1:01:37
Speaker 1: is as bad as news as an independent gout in Montana.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: Montana Secretary State said, even if the Democratic nominee withdraws,
1:01:43
Speaker 1: this is Seth Bodner, who John Tester is endorsed. This
1:01:47
Speaker 1: is the open Montana seat. Right Steve Danes chose to
1:01:50
Speaker 1: retire the Republican nominee, the US Attorney Democratic nominee has
1:01:55
Speaker 1: pledged to stay in. Most of the party is actually
1:01:58
Speaker 1: rallied around this. Seth Bodner, former president used in Montana
1:02:01
Speaker 1: in one on ones, it looks like Badner would have
1:02:03
Speaker 1: a fifty to fifty shot at winning this seat as
1:02:06
Speaker 1: an independent, but the Democratic nominee doesn't want to get out,
1:02:09
Speaker 1: and the Secretary of State said, even if the Democratic
1:02:11
Speaker 1: nominee gets out, state law says they have to replace
1:02:14
Speaker 1: the candidate on the ballot. So I think if you
1:02:17
Speaker 1: were the Democrats try to win control the Senate, you
1:02:20
Speaker 1: would have rather had the Idaho You would either have
1:02:25
Speaker 1: the Montana rulings go be how Idaho went, not how
1:02:30
Speaker 1: Idaho went versus Montana, but it was what it was
1:02:35
Speaker 1: on that front. And one other thing to keep in
1:02:43
Speaker 1: mind the most the thing that's coming next with the
1:02:47
Speaker 1: Michigan primary next week is we're about to find out
1:02:50
Speaker 1: how many people release some bullshit polls, because there's been
1:02:53
Speaker 1: a lot of polling released that frankly feels as if
1:02:58
Speaker 1: everybody has put their their thumb on the scale for
1:03:01
Speaker 1: what they hope the result will be, not what the
1:03:05
Speaker 1: result will actually be. Here's something to contemplate before I
1:03:11
Speaker 1: take a break and we bring in our guests, And
1:03:13
Speaker 1: I'd love your reaction to this. If I'll du al
1:03:16
Speaker 1: saye loses, does Mom Donnie due to his due to
1:03:22
Speaker 1: his decision to what he to do be is high
1:03:25
Speaker 1: profile with his speech about babyhou and having him arrested.
1:03:33
Speaker 1: Was that did he actually cost? Abdul Sat sort of
1:03:40
Speaker 1: paint the movement, this sort of socialist adjacent movement, as
1:03:45
Speaker 1: being too obsessed over an issue that has nothing to
1:03:48
Speaker 1: do with bringing down the cost of groceries for New
1:03:50
Speaker 1: Yorkers or Michie Anders. Something I'm watching, something I'm curious about,
1:03:56
Speaker 1: and something I'm curious what you guys think on that front?
1:03:59
Speaker 1: All right, that I'll speak of a break. We come
1:04:01
Speaker 1: back on my top five list after my fascinating interview
1:04:06
Speaker 1: with the governor of Kentucky and likely presidential candidate Andy bsher.
1:04:22
Speaker 2: Well.
1:04:22
Speaker 1: Joining me now is the Governor of Kentucky, Andy Basheer.
1:04:26
Speaker 1: He's got there's a variety of reasons why I might
1:04:29
Speaker 1: want to talk to Governor Basheer. These days, he's chairman
1:04:32
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Governor Association, which means he's sort of
1:04:34
Speaker 1: the lead governor helping make, you know, make decisions where
1:04:39
Speaker 1: the party should focus its efforts try to win governor's races.
1:04:41
Speaker 1: I know he's really focused, probably in particular on the
1:04:44
Speaker 1: seven Swing States and there's you know, Democrats had five
1:04:48
Speaker 1: of those seven governorships. Are they going to be able
1:04:51
Speaker 1: to keep five of those seven? Considering how important those
1:04:54
Speaker 1: states are in a presidential race. We'll discuss that. He's
1:04:56
Speaker 1: of course also somebody many people would like to see
1:04:59
Speaker 1: run for president and so, and he hasn't been shy
1:05:01
Speaker 1: at least about answering those questions. We'll see how shy
1:05:03
Speaker 1: he gets here with me, and then of course in
1:05:05
Speaker 1: the immediacy he's been in the news regarding the state's
1:05:10
Speaker 1: senior senator, Mitch McConnell, governor for shared. It's good to
1:05:12
Speaker 1: see you. It is great to be on So look,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: before I get to sort of a bunch of these questions,
1:05:20
Speaker 1: this one of the coolest political events that takes place
1:05:24
Speaker 1: around the country is the Fancy Farm Picnic. I am
1:05:28
Speaker 1: speaking to you, I believe, about three or four days
1:05:30
Speaker 1: before it opens. I'm guessing you've been going to this
1:05:34
Speaker 1: since before you remember going to this.
1:05:37
Speaker 2: I have been a number of times with my family
1:05:40
Speaker 2: growing up, when I was running for attorney general and
1:05:43
Speaker 2: serving many times while i've been governor. While I won't
1:05:47
Speaker 2: make it this year, we are going to have both
1:05:50
Speaker 2: candidates for US Senate. We're going to have multiple announced
1:05:54
Speaker 2: candidates on the Democratic side for governor, and so it
1:05:57
Speaker 2: will be an opportunity to start hearing what people's earliest
1:06:00
Speaker 2: pitch is. And then you always have to throw in,
1:06:04
Speaker 2: you know, one or two one liners. But if you're
1:06:06
Speaker 2: doing it right, and it's always tough, if you're doing
1:06:09
Speaker 2: it right, you're funny, you're not mean, and it's an
1:06:12
Speaker 2: opportunity to actually talk about what you would do.
1:06:15
Speaker 1: Look, one of my first great memories was going to locally.
1:06:18
Speaker 1: It was the Dante Facell picnic and he used to
1:06:21
Speaker 1: be a member of Congress down in Miami for forever.
1:06:26
Speaker 1: And I've been to a variety of different of these
1:06:28
Speaker 1: political events. Virginia's got one. I think everybody wants to
1:06:31
Speaker 1: fry a fish of some sort. There's always you know,
1:06:34
Speaker 1: sometimes at one of these events we do that.
1:06:36
Speaker 2: I worry.
1:06:37
Speaker 1: I worry that they're going to start fading because we
1:06:40
Speaker 1: don't like to be in the same room with each
1:06:41
Speaker 1: other and the polarization. And that's why I really love
1:06:44
Speaker 1: Fancy Farm is that it still seems to be a
1:06:48
Speaker 1: magnet that everybody realized that, you know what, we all
1:06:50
Speaker 1: got to go here, no matter what you think of
1:06:52
Speaker 1: the hard right, hard left, center right, center left.
1:06:54
Speaker 2: Well, I agree that we need to be in the
1:06:56
Speaker 2: same room together. We do need to get back to
1:06:59
Speaker 2: a level civility that I hope Fancy Farm will live
1:07:02
Speaker 2: up to. This year. Sometimes it struggled a little bit.
1:07:06
Speaker 2: It's one where again, you can be funny. People know
1:07:09
Speaker 2: that there is conflict, but you don't have to be
1:07:11
Speaker 2: a jerk. And that's a problem in our politics right now.
1:07:15
Speaker 2: We can argue, we can push really hard for the
1:07:18
Speaker 2: things that we believe in. But the problem with the
1:07:21
Speaker 2: Trump administration, one of the many, is how far they
1:07:24
Speaker 2: go over the line they try to make someone who
1:07:27
Speaker 2: has different political beliefs and enemy, actually calling them the
1:07:31
Speaker 2: enemy from within you if you are out there running
1:07:33
Speaker 2: that is patriotic in and of itself, and trying to
1:07:36
Speaker 2: cast each other as anti American, which happens in a
1:07:39
Speaker 2: lot of these rooms. Is I think one of the
1:07:41
Speaker 2: reasons we don't see it as much.
1:07:44
Speaker 1: You're not going, Look, this is the fall, You've got
1:07:48
Speaker 1: this national position, I kind of understand, and you're not
1:07:50
Speaker 1: going to be on the ballot in Kentucky.
1:07:52
Speaker 2: Perhaps I'm not going because it is my son's final
1:07:56
Speaker 2: Trouble baseball tournament of his high school career. He's going
1:07:59
Speaker 2: to play college ball, which is exciting. That is great.
1:08:02
Speaker 1: Where's you go?
1:08:03
Speaker 2: He's going to sphomore so smart kids. We're really proud
1:08:07
Speaker 2: of him. But this is this is my last opportunity
1:08:10
Speaker 2: to watch him play like this, And I'm always going
1:08:12
Speaker 2: to put my family first. No you will.
1:08:15
Speaker 1: I learned this too many ways the hard way. No
1:08:19
Speaker 1: matter what somebody tells you how important some event is,
1:08:22
Speaker 1: you don't remember why you missed a family You don't
1:08:25
Speaker 1: remember the event you missed on your family side of things.
1:08:30
Speaker 1: Ten years later, you always remember the family event you
1:08:33
Speaker 1: missed for some political thing you can't.
1:08:34
Speaker 2: Remember, right, And I've got an amazing family. When people
1:08:39
Speaker 2: say how do you put up with politics? I say,
1:08:42
Speaker 2: I've got a wife and kids that love me and
1:08:43
Speaker 2: a dog that kind of likes me. But being able
1:08:47
Speaker 2: to spend this last amount of time, I've got a
1:08:49
Speaker 2: son who's a rising senior, daughter who's a rising junior.
1:08:52
Speaker 2: So Brittany and I will be empty nesters in about
1:08:55
Speaker 2: two years, and well, teenagers can be difficult. I still
1:08:58
Speaker 2: want to spend as much time as I can.
1:09:00
Speaker 1: And before they head off well, Governor, I'm this is
1:09:03
Speaker 1: this is a missus toddcasts the nice first summer of
1:09:05
Speaker 1: empty nesting. It's strange, But I will tell you this
1:09:10
Speaker 1: parenting doesn't end. That's all I'm going to say. The
1:09:12
Speaker 1: parenting doesn't end when they leave.
1:09:15
Speaker 2: When they leave the next time I'm on, I'm sure
1:09:17
Speaker 2: I'll be asking for advice. Anyway, let me start with
1:09:21
Speaker 2: news of the moment you've been.
1:09:23
Speaker 1: You've been pretty publicly, I guess I would say concerned
1:09:30
Speaker 1: about the lack of information you're getting from Senator McConnell's
1:09:34
Speaker 1: office and from Senator McConnell. Have you spoken with Senator McConnell,
1:09:38
Speaker 1: and who if you haven't, who have you spoken with
1:09:42
Speaker 1: that is as close to McConnell as you've been able
1:09:44
Speaker 1: to get.
1:09:45
Speaker 2: I haven't spoken to the Senator, and he has now
1:09:48
Speaker 2: been gone from work in a hospital for about six weeks.
1:09:53
Speaker 2: And anybody out there who works a job and has
1:09:56
Speaker 2: a boss couldn't take six weeks off without calling that
1:09:59
Speaker 2: ball and saying here's what's going on, and here's when
1:10:03
Speaker 2: I can return to work. Well, when you're a senator
1:10:05
Speaker 2: or a governor, your boss are the people that elected you.
1:10:08
Speaker 2: There is a duty for Senator McConnell to level with
1:10:12
Speaker 2: the people of Kentucky and to prove that he still
1:10:16
Speaker 2: has the ability to do this job. That's not some
1:10:19
Speaker 2: mean thing I'm trying to press on him. It is
1:10:21
Speaker 2: the basic honesty and transparency that people deserve, and his
1:10:26
Speaker 2: failure to do it has fueled this wild speculation, especially online,
1:10:31
Speaker 2: about what's going on, and that's on him.
1:10:34
Speaker 1: Now.
1:10:34
Speaker 2: Supposedly he's had a seventeen minute conversation with one of
1:10:37
Speaker 2: his protegees, but he can't call a TV station and
1:10:40
Speaker 2: have a three minute conversation, and that just adds more
1:10:43
Speaker 2: fuel to the fire. Now, those who are saying we
1:10:47
Speaker 2: don't think he has the ability to continue to serve
1:10:50
Speaker 2: have been calling on me to do things that a
1:10:52
Speaker 2: governor can't do. Right, if a state level officer could
1:10:56
Speaker 2: declare a vacancy in a federal office, then you would
1:10:59
Speaker 2: have seen lots of things happen in.
1:11:01
Speaker 1: Our history, more than one civil war if you do
1:11:05
Speaker 1: things like that. Yeah.
1:11:06
Speaker 2: So, so, there are three ways that a vacancy can
1:11:10
Speaker 2: be created based on on on our research. One is
1:11:13
Speaker 2: a death, two is a resignation, or three is an
1:11:16
Speaker 2: expulsion from the Senate. And so I've called on John Thune.
1:11:19
Speaker 2: He's the Majority leader. He's got a duty to ensure
1:11:22
Speaker 2: that the members of his caucus have the capacity to serve.
1:11:26
Speaker 2: And he's right there in DC. He can go see
1:11:29
Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell, he can report on how he's doing, and
1:11:32
Speaker 2: we can put all that speculation to rest.
1:11:36
Speaker 1: He has supposedly talked with Scott Jennings, John Thune, and
1:11:39
Speaker 1: John Barressa. Do you believe they've that he has actually
1:11:43
Speaker 1: talked with those three people.
1:11:46
Speaker 2: Well, you'd have to ask those three people. But when
1:11:49
Speaker 2: John Thune got a letter from me saying it's your
1:11:52
Speaker 2: job to make sure that Mitch McConnell's okay and can
1:11:55
Speaker 2: continue to serve, he said, that's between Mitch and the
1:11:59
Speaker 2: people of Kentucky. That is a concerning answer from the
1:12:02
Speaker 2: Majority leader. And Scott Jennings works for CNN and refuses
1:12:07
Speaker 2: to call him on air. I didn't know you could
1:12:09
Speaker 2: do that when you actually work for a network, you
1:12:12
Speaker 2: have a source. And the story is that big. I
1:12:15
Speaker 2: guess the rules are different from for him than for others.
1:12:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, the uh that that's that is up to CNN
1:12:22
Speaker 1: to how they plan to enforce, how how people prove
1:12:27
Speaker 1: their reporting. I will tell you why I've been less
1:12:33
Speaker 1: bothered by this than others, and it's that it does
1:12:35
Speaker 1: feel as this his terms coming to an end.
1:12:41
Speaker 2: There really is.
1:12:44
Speaker 1: There's like, you know, I know, the conspiracy theories is
1:12:46
Speaker 1: that they're afraid that somehow you'll be able to call
1:12:48
Speaker 1: a special It's like the window is too small, and
1:12:52
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the last thing you want to do is
1:12:54
Speaker 1: deal with a special election to fill out a month
1:12:56
Speaker 1: and a half of a term. So what do you
1:13:02
Speaker 1: believe is the harm here?
1:13:04
Speaker 2: Well, I believe that the harm is a senator refuses
1:13:08
Speaker 2: to level with the people that he serves about how
1:13:12
Speaker 2: he is doing, and that is the most basic duty
1:13:17
Speaker 2: in any of these offices. I will say this. Some
1:13:20
Speaker 2: people say, well, if this was in the reverse, Mitch
1:13:24
Speaker 2: McConnell would be ruthless, Well, you know what he would be,
1:13:27
Speaker 2: knowing him my entire life, he would be ruthlessly tactical.
1:13:31
Speaker 2: And what we're seeing right now. What we're seeing right
1:13:35
Speaker 2: now is a special election would probably go Republican. We
1:13:38
Speaker 2: haven't had a Democratic US senator in Kentucky since nineteen
1:13:42
Speaker 2: ninety two. So to those online that are thinking this through,
1:13:48
Speaker 2: what i'd say is right now. With him not showing
1:13:51
Speaker 2: up to work, there's one less vote for the Save Act,
1:13:54
Speaker 2: one less vote to support the president's war of choice
1:13:57
Speaker 2: on Iran. There is one less vote for a potential
1:14:00
Speaker 2: replacement of a conservative Supreme Court justice, And if if
1:14:04
Speaker 2: there was a replacement via special election, they would probably
1:14:08
Speaker 2: be more beholden to Trump than even Mitch McConnell's.
1:14:11
Speaker 1: I'm glad you point this out, because if you want
1:14:14
Speaker 1: to just totally look at this through a partisan land,
1:14:18
Speaker 1: the people who should be angriest about this are not
1:14:20
Speaker 1: the folks on the left. It should be the votes
1:14:22
Speaker 1: in Trump's corner. Because here's what we also know. Mitch
1:14:25
Speaker 1: McConnell's no automatic vote on most of Trump's stuff these days.
1:14:30
Speaker 1: Whatever you think of McConnell politically on the left, he's
1:14:34
Speaker 1: no Trump fan either.
1:14:37
Speaker 2: You would think that the other Republican US senators would
1:14:40
Speaker 2: be pushing, would be pushing for transparency because they are
1:14:44
Speaker 2: one vote down.
1:14:45
Speaker 1: But my goal is, don't you think this is where
1:14:48
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theories are actually percolating. The hottest are actually
1:14:52
Speaker 1: on the right hand side of the information ecosystem.
1:14:55
Speaker 2: I think they're percolating everywhere at this point because sad
1:14:58
Speaker 2: lest next week's two votos and two official statements. Just
1:15:04
Speaker 2: in this world where where you you do this, and
1:15:07
Speaker 2: and I've got a podcast and we we have social
1:15:10
Speaker 2: media is just so little that it creates this this vacuum.
1:15:17
Speaker 1: Look, I'm a I don't know if you've seen the
1:15:19
Speaker 1: Odyssey yet. Have you seen the Odyssey?
1:15:20
Speaker 2: I have not seen it yet. Okay, so I won't
1:15:22
Speaker 2: quote the Odyssey at three plus hours as governor, I hear.
1:15:26
Speaker 1: You, but go find it. All I will say is
1:15:28
Speaker 1: go find it. It's it's three hours. It's three hours
1:15:30
Speaker 1: that you won't feel like you wasted. But he said, Sally,
1:15:33
Speaker 1: there's a there's a running theme about the Golden rule.
1:15:36
Speaker 1: It's called the Zeus's law, but it's the Golden rule.
1:15:40
Speaker 1: And I've been thinking about this a lot. When it
1:15:42
Speaker 1: comes to politics, and on this McConnell thing, I'm a
1:15:46
Speaker 1: mixed mess because you're absolutely right, McConnell would never be
1:15:50
Speaker 1: giving grace to the other side in a moment like this.
1:15:53
Speaker 1: He is, you know, you never let a moment to
1:15:55
Speaker 1: be wasted to advance your agenda, advance your party. That
1:15:59
Speaker 1: is what has made him effective and arguably unpopular, right, like,
1:16:04
Speaker 1: when you're that ruthless about it.
1:16:06
Speaker 2: So I understand.
1:16:08
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a part of my brain it
1:16:10
Speaker 1: has very little empathy for the situation he finds himself
1:16:14
Speaker 1: in because of the ruthless ways he practiced. You know,
1:16:17
Speaker 1: you do unto others as you want done unto you,
1:16:20
Speaker 1: and so you could respond. But let me flip it here.
1:16:23
Speaker 1: Are you comfortable that this has gotten this way? And
1:16:26
Speaker 1: if you were a member of your party, would you
1:16:28
Speaker 1: be as aggressive if you weren't getting answers?
1:16:32
Speaker 2: Well, I think you make a good point in that
1:16:34
Speaker 2: I don't believe the way that Democrats win elections and
1:16:38
Speaker 2: ultimately govern is to be a democratic version of McConnell
1:16:42
Speaker 2: or a democratic version of Trump. Now we are set
1:16:46
Speaker 2: to do well in the congressional races, we have a
1:16:48
Speaker 2: chance to make a run at the US Senate. We're
1:16:50
Speaker 2: going to win governors races in places people aren't expecting.
1:16:54
Speaker 2: And none of that is us acting like the opposite
1:16:58
Speaker 2: or acting like Trump. And McConnell's offering people a better
1:17:01
Speaker 2: alternative and an actual focus not on politics, but on
1:17:04
Speaker 2: prices in people's daily lives. You know, I live my
1:17:07
Speaker 2: life by that Golden Rule. My faith is my why
1:17:10
Speaker 2: the Golden Rule says me to treat it says to
1:17:12
Speaker 2: treat everyone, uh, like my neighbor, and the parable the
1:17:15
Speaker 2: Good Samaritan says everyone is my neighbor. But yes, I'm
1:17:19
Speaker 2: comfortable with what I'm asking for here, because I would
1:17:22
Speaker 2: fully expect if I was gone for six weeks as
1:17:25
Speaker 2: governor for someone to say, hey, you need to talk
1:17:28
Speaker 2: to the people of Kentucky. If I'm out a week,
1:17:31
Speaker 2: I'm expected to do that.
1:17:32
Speaker 1: You can't even go on the Appalachian Trail anymore as governor.
1:17:35
Speaker 1: Considering what happened, Yeah, what happened to a governor that
1:17:38
Speaker 1: once claimed he did that?
1:17:39
Speaker 2: Sorry I thought you. I want to touch on that one.
1:17:41
Speaker 2: But if you go back to COVID, which I had
1:17:44
Speaker 2: to govern through, you know, if you were exposed as governor,
1:17:47
Speaker 2: you needed to come forward, even though you could still work,
1:17:49
Speaker 2: even though maybe you had to isolate for a period
1:17:52
Speaker 2: of time. So so I'm more than comfortable and how
1:17:55
Speaker 2: I'm calling for it. The challenge here is it continues
1:17:59
Speaker 2: to add fuel to the fire when he simply refuses
1:18:02
Speaker 2: to do a short video, and it creates the impression
1:18:06
Speaker 2: that maybe he can't. Now, I certainly hope that he can.
1:18:09
Speaker 2: I've known as members of his family for a good
1:18:11
Speaker 2: part of my life, and we want him to be okay.
1:18:14
Speaker 2: But the people of Kentucky deserve a basic level of transparency.
1:18:20
Speaker 1: What is the relationship between McConnell and your dad and
1:18:23
Speaker 1: you and McConnell. I say this because you know, there's
1:18:27
Speaker 1: a part of me that knows that there's that in
1:18:30
Speaker 1: a lot of these political you know, these states where
1:18:32
Speaker 1: you've had very successful politicians from opposite parties, there's this
1:18:37
Speaker 1: over time grudging respect and friendship and all this.
1:18:41
Speaker 2: I don't sense that here. Oh, I think that we
1:18:44
Speaker 2: are all civil to each other. Now, my dad ran
1:18:47
Speaker 2: against Mitch McConnell, and I remember the race, and that
1:18:50
Speaker 2: didn't turn out well for the Beshear's. But Mitch McConnell
1:18:53
Speaker 2: has now tried to beat me three straight times in
1:18:56
Speaker 2: a Trump state, and we have beaten him every single time.
1:19:00
Speaker 1: Right, Well, it's a it's an unfortunate way that this
1:19:05
Speaker 1: is ending in his career.
1:19:08
Speaker 2: That's a really good point. And I was thinking about
1:19:12
Speaker 2: He talks about his legacy a lot, and he talks
1:19:14
Speaker 2: about being the longest serving leader in the Senate. But
1:19:20
Speaker 2: what he's doing right now by failing to come forward
1:19:22
Speaker 2: and being transparent, maybe more of the Wikipedia page that's
1:19:25
Speaker 2: written about him is going to be about this than
1:19:28
Speaker 2: anything else.
1:19:29
Speaker 1: But all you know who I was just going to say,
1:19:33
Speaker 1: I want to go back and check. But I wonder
1:19:34
Speaker 1: what his thoughts were on Robert Bird at the very end,
1:19:38
Speaker 1: when frankly he had no business being in the United
1:19:40
Speaker 1: States Senate. Well here he was, you know us. And
1:19:44
Speaker 1: I think in some ways McConnell sees himself as the
1:19:46
Speaker 1: Bird error in some ways right as the institutionalist, and
1:19:50
Speaker 1: cares so much about it. But you hang on too
1:19:52
Speaker 1: long and all the work you think you've accomplished. Yeah,
1:19:58
Speaker 1: you may have set some new precedents, but I'm not
1:20:00
Speaker 1: sure it's going to play the way you think it's
1:20:02
Speaker 1: going to play.
1:20:03
Speaker 2: You look at today while we're recording this, Ran Paul
1:20:07
Speaker 2: has dragged in an eighty five year old Anthony Fauci
1:20:10
Speaker 2: because he says he has to answer to the American people,
1:20:13
Speaker 2: but he won't ask an eighty four year old Mitch
1:20:15
Speaker 2: McConnell to do the same. And Fauci is retired and
1:20:20
Speaker 2: McConnell is a serving US senator, and all of these
1:20:24
Speaker 2: folks talked about Biden and how he was doing well.
1:20:28
Speaker 2: Guess what Biden was showing up. Biden was speaking yes
1:20:31
Speaker 2: into a microphone. It is night and day from what
1:20:34
Speaker 2: they criticized to their refusal to ask for just a
1:20:37
Speaker 2: little bit of honesty and directness right now.
1:20:49
Speaker 1: Look, I was actually going to bring this up. You
1:20:51
Speaker 1: certainly have your United States senators do their best to
1:20:53
Speaker 1: try to make news.
1:20:57
Speaker 2: This this I don't look.
1:21:00
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a character assassination, a ton
1:21:03
Speaker 1: of chouraging. And if you started to prosecute everybody in
1:21:09
Speaker 1: Washington who got a bit self absorbed, there'd be nobody
1:21:13
Speaker 1: left to serve. So I think if, if, if his
1:21:18
Speaker 1: greatest sin is simply he enjoyed hanging out with Julia Roberts,
1:21:23
Speaker 1: you know, okay, how many how much should we flog
1:21:26
Speaker 1: him for this? I don't I don't quite get.
1:21:29
Speaker 2: The I what do.
1:21:34
Speaker 1: Ran Paul to me is somebody who I constantly am
1:21:38
Speaker 1: glad that he's one of the one hundred because we
1:21:40
Speaker 1: have a very diverse political set of Americans, and I
1:21:44
Speaker 1: think he does represent a part of the country, a
1:21:47
Speaker 1: part of the electorate that not a lot of that
1:21:49
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot to say so in the Senate.
1:21:51
Speaker 1: So and I'm somebody who thinks all these voices, there
1:21:54
Speaker 1: needs to be voices, right, we need some socialists, you
1:21:56
Speaker 1: need this. Ultimately, you figure it out somewhere. You know,
1:21:59
Speaker 1: everybody has some sadness and a lot of times Rand
1:22:03
Speaker 1: Paul will bring up issues that make everybody uncomfortable, left
1:22:06
Speaker 1: and right, and so he could This feels like a
1:22:10
Speaker 1: personal vendetta. Do you understand where this comes from and
1:22:14
Speaker 1: the source of this.
1:22:16
Speaker 2: It absolutely feels like a personal vendetta. I mean to
1:22:20
Speaker 2: kick someone's lawyer out of a hearing while they're testifying,
1:22:25
Speaker 2: and then you heard not only his questioning, but Josh Hawley's.
1:22:29
Speaker 2: And he's got the poster of Anthony Fauci up. But
1:22:32
Speaker 2: look at how many hours Josh Hawley spends on his
1:22:35
Speaker 2: hair every morning before he steps out in front of
1:22:38
Speaker 2: that camera. So self absorption in anything new in those rooms.
1:22:43
Speaker 2: You know I was there when this was happening. I
1:22:47
Speaker 2: was a new governor. I was three months in and
1:22:50
Speaker 2: I remember the calls. Mike Pence had set up the team.
1:22:53
Speaker 2: And I will actually give Mike Pence credit. He set
1:22:56
Speaker 2: up a good team. He was available.
1:22:59
Speaker 1: We heard this from a variety of governors, left, the right, center,
1:23:03
Speaker 1: you name it, that Pence was basically the most competent
1:23:07
Speaker 1: West wing official. You could deal with it.
1:23:09
Speaker 2: You can get him in thirty minutes, didn't matter if
1:23:11
Speaker 2: you were a Democrat or a Republican. You could get
1:23:15
Speaker 2: Fauci or others on the phone. This attempt at revisionist
1:23:18
Speaker 2: history about shutting down the economy. I was on that
1:23:21
Speaker 2: call too, And you know who told us to do it,
1:23:24
Speaker 2: Donald J. Trump directly about doing it, and now attacking
1:23:30
Speaker 2: what was their own team is pretty crazy. And I
1:23:34
Speaker 2: guess this really interesting world we're living in right now.
1:23:40
Speaker 2: But I think back to the fact that Donald Trump
1:23:43
Speaker 2: has had multiple Mount Rushmore moments, and I know he
1:23:46
Speaker 2: thinks that he should be up there. If he would
1:23:50
Speaker 2: have followed the medical and health advice, his administration would
1:23:56
Speaker 2: have created the fastest vaccine to end a pen in
1:24:00
Speaker 2: human history, and he would have won reelection running away.
1:24:04
Speaker 2: And he couldn't do it because a small group of
1:24:07
Speaker 2: folks bent on conspiracy theories were out there and he
1:24:11
Speaker 2: would rather glom onto that than save as many lives
1:24:15
Speaker 2: as possible and ultimately do the right thing.
1:24:17
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Look, let's say you're at president of
1:24:19
Speaker 1: the United States in the next pandemic. I've always said, look,
1:24:26
Speaker 1: POUCHI was in a known situation. If you're not, you know,
1:24:31
Speaker 1: And I've always expect, I expect government. Government tells me
1:24:34
Speaker 1: all sorts of things I shouldn't do. You know, whether
1:24:37
Speaker 1: it's air quality warning, whether it's ingesting a certain product,
1:24:42
Speaker 1: whether it's alcohol, tobacco, cannabis. Right, there's plenty of government warnings.
1:24:48
Speaker 1: And if the government didn't provide those warnings and folks
1:24:52
Speaker 1: were harmed by it, there would be all sorts of lawsuits,
1:24:56
Speaker 1: political retribution for not warning the American people of these dangers.
1:25:03
Speaker 1: So I have always assumed that government's job is to
1:25:07
Speaker 1: basically be probably a little bit more cautious because you're
1:25:11
Speaker 1: governing three hundred and fifty million people, and that at
1:25:14
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we live in somewhat of
1:25:16
Speaker 1: a you know, ultimately it's up to you. Right, We
1:25:19
Speaker 1: don't tell you shouldn't smoke. We warn you of the problems.
1:25:23
Speaker 1: Nobody said you had to wear a mask in your
1:25:26
Speaker 1: own house and all these places. We just warned you
1:25:28
Speaker 1: what would happen if we did. Do you believe that,
1:25:34
Speaker 1: in hindsight, Fauci was overly cautious or do you think
1:25:37
Speaker 1: that federal government has to be overly cautious.
1:25:41
Speaker 2: Well, I think doctor Falci was providing the best advice
1:25:44
Speaker 2: he could at the time in dealing with something that
1:25:47
Speaker 2: none of us had ever seen. To me, I made
1:25:49
Speaker 2: my decisions through what is almost a basic math equation,
1:25:52
Speaker 2: and it was about saving the most lives. Listen, I
1:25:55
Speaker 2: had to put my head down on my pillow every
1:25:57
Speaker 2: night having read the death list outline that day. Even
1:26:01
Speaker 2: if it was going to get me run out of town,
1:26:03
Speaker 2: I was going to do the best I could to
1:26:05
Speaker 2: save the most people. But that does not mean you
1:26:07
Speaker 2: remember which days.
1:26:08
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do, where you had you couldn't believe
1:26:12
Speaker 1: the death toll in your state.
1:26:13
Speaker 2: I remember the first time that we lost someone. I
1:26:16
Speaker 2: remember the first time we had ten. I remember the
1:26:18
Speaker 2: first time we had one hundred. I remember the first
1:26:20
Speaker 2: time that I knew someone on that list. And I
1:26:23
Speaker 2: remember the time that I knew about five people on it.
1:26:25
Speaker 2: It's one of the toughest things I've ever had to do.
1:26:28
Speaker 2: But every day I addressed the people of Kentucky, and
1:26:30
Speaker 2: every day I read that list because I didn't want
1:26:32
Speaker 2: anybody else to have to. But having governed through that,
1:26:36
Speaker 2: the way to do this is it is the rules
1:26:43
Speaker 2: and the regulations and how effective they could be times
1:26:46
Speaker 2: the number of people that will follow them. Right, you
1:26:49
Speaker 2: have the health piece, and then you have I don't
1:26:52
Speaker 2: want to call it the political piece, but just knowing
1:26:55
Speaker 2: what's a little too much for folks and trying to
1:26:59
Speaker 2: hit that week spot where people would be willing to
1:27:02
Speaker 2: sacrifice for each other. And in many ways, looking back,
1:27:05
Speaker 2: and I talked about it at the time, this was
1:27:07
Speaker 2: the ultimate test of the parable the good Samaritan. Are
1:27:10
Speaker 2: you willing to sacrifice in your own life for things
1:27:14
Speaker 2: to be a little uncomfortable if it saved someone else's
1:27:17
Speaker 2: life And here it's probably someone that you would never
1:27:20
Speaker 2: know and you would never meet, but you were called
1:27:22
Speaker 2: on to do it. I think one thing that we
1:27:25
Speaker 2: missed from the federal level, if we could go back
1:27:27
Speaker 2: in time as a real call to patriotism, and this
1:27:30
Speaker 2: was coming to take as many American lives in Kentucky.
1:27:34
Speaker 2: We lost more.
1:27:34
Speaker 1: People here identifying what I've always thought was the biggest
1:27:37
Speaker 1: problem with COVID is we just had the wrong leader
1:27:40
Speaker 1: in the wrong moment. It was a leadership back in
1:27:42
Speaker 1: more nanny.
1:27:43
Speaker 2: If you think about losing more people at least in
1:27:45
Speaker 2: Kentucky to it than we did to the Vietnam, Korean War,
1:27:49
Speaker 2: World War two put together, then this was in many
1:27:53
Speaker 2: ways the war of our time, coming for as many
1:27:56
Speaker 2: of our friends and neighbors as it could. And that's
1:27:59
Speaker 2: how we cast it here. And when people look back here,
1:28:02
Speaker 2: sure they have questions. And if we knew everything at
1:28:05
Speaker 2: the end, at the beginning, remember we're dealing with the
1:28:07
Speaker 2: different strain at that point. Though, Oh my god, I mean,
1:28:09
Speaker 2: that's the thing.
1:28:10
Speaker 1: It's easy now to say, well, I guess maybe we
1:28:12
Speaker 1: could have opened schools here. We could have done maybe
1:28:15
Speaker 1: two weeks on, two weeks off. But that's because we
1:28:19
Speaker 1: know how it all worked.
1:28:21
Speaker 2: And I think a miss at the federal level that
1:28:25
Speaker 2: we got right early on in Kentucky and then others followed,
1:28:28
Speaker 2: is teachers and educators needed to be in that very
1:28:31
Speaker 2: first batch for the vaccine. We needed to recognize that
1:28:35
Speaker 2: one of the most important things that we needed open
1:28:37
Speaker 2: and fully open were our schools and that should have
1:28:41
Speaker 2: been that one a category. When we look back, I.
1:28:43
Speaker 1: Had Michael Osterhomon, who was sort of in the in
1:28:46
Speaker 1: the academia world, sort of the expert i'd go to
1:28:50
Speaker 1: if Fauci wasn't available back during those times. And you know,
1:28:55
Speaker 1: the one the one thing that I know he recommended
1:28:58
Speaker 1: the time, and it just never took off because frankly,
1:29:01
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough trust out there, is that he really
1:29:03
Speaker 1: wanted a weather forecasting like model, meaning, hey, guess what,
1:29:07
Speaker 1: for two weeks, we know when the peaks. The peak
1:29:11
Speaker 1: in Florida is different than the peak in Michigan, the
1:29:13
Speaker 1: peak in New York was different than the peak in Nevada.
1:29:16
Speaker 1: And we saw this right when in Florida it was
1:29:20
Speaker 1: in the hottest months or when everybody went inside, which
1:29:22
Speaker 1: then created more spread. Ironically, in the cold months in
1:29:27
Speaker 1: the South, it was better, but that was tougher. And
1:29:30
Speaker 1: the point being is that we did that is that
1:29:35
Speaker 1: is easily probably the fairest critique you could come with
1:29:39
Speaker 1: the administration is that it was too much of a
1:29:43
Speaker 1: one size fits.
1:29:44
Speaker 2: All policy and the idea that there's a relief valve
1:29:48
Speaker 2: that when it's safer for people to be able to
1:29:50
Speaker 2: go out, it's.
1:29:51
Speaker 1: All about hospital bets, right, I mean that's what your
1:29:53
Speaker 1: folks were telling you all the time. It was about
1:29:55
Speaker 1: I see you bed capacity right.
1:29:57
Speaker 2: And for us, we never ran out of hospital, but
1:30:00
Speaker 2: that's because we expanded Medicaid years before, and because of that,
1:30:05
Speaker 2: we had rural hospitals that were still open. And so
1:30:08
Speaker 2: I got to see firsthand what that type of policy
1:30:11
Speaker 2: that you do during times when you are not in
1:30:14
Speaker 2: a pandemic or in a crisis can do for you later.
1:30:18
Speaker 2: And so, for instance, when I talk about how bad
1:30:22
Speaker 2: that big ugly bill is, about how it's going to
1:30:24
Speaker 2: close thirty five rural hospitals across Kentucky and decimate rural
1:30:28
Speaker 2: economies because it's the largest payroll fire twenty thousand Kentucky
1:30:32
Speaker 2: healthcare workers, I'm also thinking about that next crisis that
1:30:35
Speaker 2: we have, and it could be it could be a
1:30:39
Speaker 2: big interstate pile up where now the hospital is an
1:30:42
Speaker 2: hour and a half away when it used to be
1:30:44
Speaker 2: twenty minutes. There are just real world repercussions that we
1:30:47
Speaker 2: should know because we've lived through all this.
1:30:51
Speaker 1: I want to talk about political labels. As I wrote
1:30:55
Speaker 1: a column recently, I think moderation needs a better pr
1:30:58
Speaker 1: the word moderate, and because I will say I am.
1:31:04
Speaker 1: When I say moderate, I'm always thinking temperament more than
1:31:06
Speaker 1: anything else. But I don't think everybody else. Everybody it's
1:31:10
Speaker 1: a subjective word. So rather than me apply words to you,
1:31:15
Speaker 1: when you hear yourself described as a moderate, you accept it,
1:31:18
Speaker 1: you're not accepted. How would you push back? Did it
1:31:21
Speaker 1: with the word centrist? And do you and is there
1:31:23
Speaker 1: a distinction.
1:31:23
Speaker 2: In your mind? Well, I consider myself pragmatic, not progressive,
1:31:28
Speaker 2: not moderate, but pragmatic. My job is governors to solve
1:31:32
Speaker 2: people's problems. It's about bringing in more jobs with better wages.
1:31:36
Speaker 2: It's about building more housing than most of the rest
1:31:38
Speaker 2: of the country is doing. It's about expanding and not
1:31:42
Speaker 2: contracting healthcare, bringing it to areas like West Louisville or
1:31:45
Speaker 2: Appalachia where we just don't see enough. As governor, you
1:31:49
Speaker 2: can't sit and be ideological. You've got to find the
1:31:53
Speaker 2: way to better people's lives and do it as fast
1:31:55
Speaker 2: as possible. You know those that would.
1:31:58
Speaker 1: Call the modical incentive to be that way though, you
1:32:01
Speaker 1: couldn't get stuff done if you tried to be a
1:32:04
Speaker 1: hard progressive in Kentucky as governor.
1:32:06
Speaker 2: Correct, Well, what I'd say is those that call me
1:32:10
Speaker 2: moderate see being pro business and pro worker, strongly pro union,
1:32:14
Speaker 2: but creating all those jobs, trying to make the economy work.
1:32:18
Speaker 2: Those that consider me progressive see that I've vetoed every
1:32:21
Speaker 2: anti LGBTQ plus bill in a Trump plus thirty one state,
1:32:26
Speaker 2: every anti diversity bill. That I'm the first Kentucky governor
1:32:30
Speaker 2: and candidate for governor that ever ran a pro reproductive
1:32:34
Speaker 2: freedom ad during his election. And so again, I think
1:32:38
Speaker 2: we put people in boxes and no one fits directly
1:32:42
Speaker 2: in those. And I think that's a challenge inside the
1:32:44
Speaker 2: Democratic Party and with some of the media that we're
1:32:47
Speaker 2: often on is that there's just this battle to label
1:32:51
Speaker 2: everyone and everyone's more complicated. And I think that's one
1:32:54
Speaker 2: of the reasons I went in Kentucky is that I
1:32:56
Speaker 2: can sit down and talk to someone who might label
1:32:59
Speaker 2: themselves as a can conservative. We're going to have something
1:33:01
Speaker 2: in common.
1:33:03
Speaker 1: Why do you think that this is I mean, you look,
1:33:07
Speaker 1: you hear from the left, you talk to these progressives,
1:33:10
Speaker 1: You've got to make a decision about Wisconsin governor potentially
1:33:13
Speaker 1: where somebody who's calls themselves a socialist, maybe the Democratic nominee.
1:33:19
Speaker 1: How big should the Democratic tent be?
1:33:22
Speaker 2: Well, the Democratic tent has to be big and we
1:33:26
Speaker 2: have to try to find common ground. That does not
1:33:29
Speaker 2: mean we have to agree on everything, nor should we know.
1:33:32
Speaker 2: The Democratic Party should be a party of democracy where
1:33:35
Speaker 2: we can have hard conversations. But that's different than fighting. Now,
1:33:41
Speaker 2: some people would think that Elizabeth Warren and I are
1:33:43
Speaker 2: in different parts of the Democratic Party. Yet we've had
1:33:46
Speaker 2: multiple conversations on pre K for all four year olds
1:33:50
Speaker 2: in the United States. What that could do for everyone, Democrat,
1:33:54
Speaker 2: Republican and independent. I mean, an actual solution where we
1:33:59
Speaker 2: can work together, and whether it is in the Democratic
1:34:02
Speaker 2: Party and its differences or Democrats and Republicans. How about
1:34:05
Speaker 2: we focus eighty percent of our time on those things
1:34:08
Speaker 2: that matter to one hundred percent of the American people. Now,
1:34:11
Speaker 2: if we can actually make an aspirational investment in housing,
1:34:17
Speaker 2: tigh federal funds to having to break ground quickly and build,
1:34:20
Speaker 2: and thus push through regulation and nimbiism, we can actually
1:34:23
Speaker 2: do some things that we all agree on. And I
1:34:26
Speaker 2: bet if we had some success, we could talk about
1:34:29
Speaker 2: the things we disagree on a little bit better.
1:34:33
Speaker 1: Why do you think the activist left is so angry
1:34:36
Speaker 1: at the Democratic establishment? What do you believe are the
1:34:39
Speaker 1: sources of this. I have a theory, but I don't
1:34:41
Speaker 1: want to share it until I hear yours well.
1:34:43
Speaker 2: I think that there are folks on both ends of
1:34:47
Speaker 2: both parties that feel like the country is broken. They
1:34:51
Speaker 2: feel like the economy is broken, and they feel like
1:34:54
Speaker 2: government is broken. On the economy, it's the belief that
1:34:57
Speaker 2: the American dream is no longer possible. That people are
1:34:59
Speaker 2: working hard, planned by the rules, but they can't afford
1:35:02
Speaker 2: a house until they're forty when their parents bought it
1:35:04
Speaker 2: in their late twenties, and they can't afford to take
1:35:06
Speaker 2: their kids if they've had them on that same vacation
1:35:09
Speaker 2: they went on. That's got to make you feel like
1:35:10
Speaker 2: a failure. And when you believe something's rigged, well, maybe
1:35:14
Speaker 2: you think it needs to be burnt down or there
1:35:15
Speaker 2: need to be bigger solutions on the government side. I mean,
1:35:20
Speaker 2: just look at Mitch McConnell not showing up for six
1:35:23
Speaker 2: weeks and not even looking at a camera and saying why. So.
1:35:28
Speaker 2: I believe the Democratic Party, and I believe all parts
1:35:31
Speaker 2: of it, can be the party of making that economy
1:35:33
Speaker 2: work again, immediately pulling tariffs on groceries back, making that
1:35:38
Speaker 2: investment in housing. But let me tell you on the
1:35:40
Speaker 2: government side, I do think we should think pig. I
1:35:42
Speaker 2: think it's time for a constitutional amendment. And I know
1:35:45
Speaker 2: most people say, oh, that never happens. It does after
1:35:48
Speaker 2: times of turmoil. So I think we go big with it.
1:35:51
Speaker 2: I think we outlaw partisan jerrymanderin and put parts of
1:35:54
Speaker 2: the Voting Rights Act directly in the Constitution. I think
1:35:58
Speaker 2: that we overturn Citizens United and get corporate money out
1:36:01
Speaker 2: of politics. I think we set term limits for Congress
1:36:04
Speaker 2: and the Supreme Court so people can't game when people
1:36:07
Speaker 2: step down or not and then try to elongate terms.
1:36:11
Speaker 1: And I assume you would take age limits if you couldn't,
1:36:13
Speaker 1: if you couldn't get people to agree to term limits.
1:36:15
Speaker 1: But either way, it's sort of it's something.
1:36:17
Speaker 2: It's something i'd look at, you know. I see. I
1:36:19
Speaker 2: see a Jim Clyburn who is as sharp as he
1:36:22
Speaker 2: can be, and his leadership is needed. So I see
1:36:25
Speaker 2: term limits as a as a way to be able
1:36:28
Speaker 2: to respect people of all ages that have the capacity
1:36:32
Speaker 2: and are ready to go. And for me and I
1:36:34
Speaker 2: believe that we should directly elect the president and vice
1:36:37
Speaker 2: president because in Kentucky we never see them unless they
1:36:40
Speaker 2: come for money, and that's most of the rest of
1:36:43
Speaker 2: the country. So we've got these campaigns about who's about
1:36:46
Speaker 2: to be our next leader that understands six states because
1:36:50
Speaker 2: that's where they've got to win.
1:36:54
Speaker 1: My basic theory is that the there is a loud
1:36:58
Speaker 1: and angry Democratic electorate that essentially blames Democrats for the
1:37:04
Speaker 1: return of Trump.
1:37:06
Speaker 2: Well, Democrats are good have blaming other Democrats when Republicans
1:37:10
Speaker 2: are doing something wrong, and sometimes it's it's the you know,
1:37:14
Speaker 2: you're not blaming the bank.
1:37:15
Speaker 1: You know, this argument that basically had Biden, you know,
1:37:18
Speaker 1: had they the Biden situation, Biden handled Biden better, had
1:37:22
Speaker 1: there been sort of whatever you want to you know,
1:37:25
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe had Biden announced im immediately after
1:37:28
Speaker 1: the twenty two midterms, I'm not seeking the second term.
1:37:31
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of what ifs, and and ultimately, frankly
1:37:36
Speaker 1: I hear it from from from prends of fail It's
1:37:39
Speaker 1: like a better president and a better term would have
1:37:45
Speaker 1: sent the message, would have at least led the country
1:37:48
Speaker 1: to turn the page on Trump. Is it a fair criticism.
1:37:52
Speaker 2: Well, I think that the Democratic Party should always be
1:37:55
Speaker 2: willing to accept criticism because it makes us better. But
1:37:57
Speaker 2: living in a would have, could have, or should have
1:38:00
Speaker 2: when we're dealing with Donald Trump right now, when we're
1:38:02
Speaker 2: dealing with the Congress, that won't be a constitutional check
1:38:05
Speaker 2: when you have a Supreme Court allowing him to do
1:38:07
Speaker 2: what he is doing, is losing focus on a critical
1:38:11
Speaker 2: moment for our country. Our job right now has to
1:38:14
Speaker 2: be to win in November, and so we can either
1:38:17
Speaker 2: call out the Republicans for doing these terrible things, like
1:38:21
Speaker 2: eleven thousand Kentucky kids have lost snap benefits because of
1:38:24
Speaker 2: the big ugly bill. That's eleven thousand kids that are
1:38:27
Speaker 2: hungry today that previously weren't. We can either blame the
1:38:30
Speaker 2: people that did that, which are Congressional Republicans and Trump,
1:38:34
Speaker 2: or we can yell at each other. I certainly know
1:38:36
Speaker 2: which one to be more effective.
1:38:38
Speaker 1: Going back to Wisconsin, do you think Francisco Honk can win?
1:38:43
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a competitive primary. As
1:38:46
Speaker 2: head of the DGA, I can't get involved in those primaries,
1:38:51
Speaker 2: but I believe that we will see as it comes
1:38:54
Speaker 2: down to the wire, at least one candidate emerge who
1:39:00
Speaker 2: has a strong message and can ultimately win in November.
1:39:04
Speaker 1: You look Wisconsin's a strange state in this respect is
1:39:07
Speaker 1: that it is a swing state with no swing voters
1:39:10
Speaker 1: is how I always put it, no swing counties. It's
1:39:13
Speaker 1: an unusual state in that it's so evenly divided, but
1:39:16
Speaker 1: the bases of the two parties have almost outsized influence
1:39:21
Speaker 1: on those there. I think you're going to have. It's
1:39:24
Speaker 1: possible you have a Democratic nominee that many think it's
1:39:27
Speaker 1: outside the mainstream and a Republican nominee that many feel
1:39:30
Speaker 1: is outside the mainstream. What's the pitch if that's the case.
1:39:34
Speaker 2: Well, first, let me say that there was big worry
1:39:37
Speaker 2: in California and that worked out. There is a lot
1:39:41
Speaker 2: of worry in Michigan and that's working out. And so
1:39:44
Speaker 2: I think sometimes we don't give enough respect to Democratic
1:39:49
Speaker 2: voters that when it gets down to it, they are
1:39:52
Speaker 2: going to understand that electability is absolutely critical and choose
1:39:56
Speaker 2: the candidate that they believe is most electable. Go back
1:39:59
Speaker 2: to twenty in the p residential race and what Pete
1:40:02
Speaker 2: one Iowa though we didn't know it until days later. Yeah,
1:40:06
Speaker 2: Earnie one the second state. And then South Carolina comes
1:40:11
Speaker 2: and Joe Biden. Yeah, but then South Carolina comes and
1:40:17
Speaker 2: Joe Biden, who was left for dead by all the
1:40:19
Speaker 2: political consultants, is a presumptive Democratic nominee. I think what
1:40:24
Speaker 2: you're going to see in Wisconsin are our voters coming together.
1:40:27
Speaker 2: But I would always say that if you look at
1:40:30
Speaker 2: this country right now, one party is breaking it and
1:40:34
Speaker 2: the other party, while we might not always agree on
1:40:37
Speaker 2: the right solution, is trying to fix it. The party
1:40:39
Speaker 2: of Donald Trump told you they bring down costs. You
1:40:42
Speaker 2: hat his tariffs and his war with Iran are hitting
1:40:45
Speaker 2: every single American family hard and making it that much
1:40:49
Speaker 2: more difficult. So whichever part of the Democratic Party you
1:40:53
Speaker 2: were in, you are committed to making people's lives better.
1:40:56
Speaker 2: And we might have to talk about the avenue to
1:40:58
Speaker 2: do that, but I would always want to vote for
1:41:01
Speaker 2: that person, and I believe would get out there and
1:41:03
Speaker 2: fight for ultimately that that better life.
1:41:14
Speaker 1: I want to look at the governor's map through the
1:41:16
Speaker 1: presidential swing states. North Carolina, I believe, of the Big
1:41:19
Speaker 1: seven is the only one that doesn't have a governor's
1:41:23
Speaker 1: race that's already got a Democratic governor. She got Georgia
1:41:26
Speaker 1: open seat. Is this your most expensive state, Georgia?
1:41:31
Speaker 2: We are going to play big in Keisha Lance Bottoms
1:41:36
Speaker 2: came out of what should have been a really tough
1:41:39
Speaker 2: primary and dominated it. I like a lot of the
1:41:41
Speaker 2: other candidates that were in there too, but obviously has
1:41:45
Speaker 2: an incredible amount of talent. Polls are either close or
1:41:49
Speaker 2: have her up. I think there is a huge opportunity
1:41:52
Speaker 2: in Georgia. John Ossif is also running there and there's
1:41:57
Speaker 2: some good synergies where I believe we are going to
1:41:59
Speaker 2: flip Georgia.
1:42:00
Speaker 1: But you do have a Republican nominee, Like I will
1:42:03
Speaker 1: say this, you know, I'm sure you wish there was
1:42:05
Speaker 1: a different Republican nominee.
1:42:06
Speaker 2: Beir Well, I believe that we have a Republican nominee
1:42:09
Speaker 2: that we can beat. It's just going to be expensive
1:42:11
Speaker 2: to do. So, yeah, that is that's enormous buy he
1:42:15
Speaker 2: just announced.
1:42:16
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel sorry for any anybody running down
1:42:19
Speaker 1: the ballot. Good luck finding airtime, right, But.
1:42:22
Speaker 2: I would say that's a critical election. Look at Arizona
1:42:25
Speaker 2: where we have a sitting Democratic governor running against an
1:42:29
Speaker 2: election denier. If you want a full and fair election
1:42:33
Speaker 2: in twenty eight, Katie Hobbs has to be re elected
1:42:36
Speaker 2: and that's really ground zero for fair elections.
1:42:39
Speaker 1: Well, as much as I said you probably didn't like
1:42:41
Speaker 1: the way the Republican primary turned out in Georgia, I'm
1:42:42
Speaker 1: guessing you had no problem with how the Republican primary
1:42:45
Speaker 1: turned out in Arizona.
1:42:47
Speaker 2: I believe the situation. I believe that Katy Hobbs is
1:42:49
Speaker 2: going to win that race. She's a good governor, she's
1:42:52
Speaker 2: working hard. She's running in a tough state, but at
1:42:54
Speaker 2: a time when people are struggling. This is the only
1:42:57
Speaker 2: social worker that's been elected ovenor in the country. She
1:43:02
Speaker 2: had to drive an uber or a lift to support
1:43:06
Speaker 2: her kids during her life. She is very connected to
1:43:09
Speaker 2: the moment. But as you look at the map, though,
1:43:13
Speaker 2: the goal in the governor's racis is to expand it.
1:43:16
Speaker 2: How twenty eight looks is how we do in twenty
1:43:20
Speaker 2: twenty six. In those races, when Rob sand wins Iowa
1:43:23
Speaker 2: and he's going to and that flips, that's in play
1:43:25
Speaker 2: in twenty eight, when Amy Actin wins Ohio, and I
1:43:28
Speaker 2: believe that's very much in play. Ohio is in play
1:43:31
Speaker 2: in twenty eight.
1:43:33
Speaker 1: It's interesting, and I want to get to more of that.
1:43:34
Speaker 1: Let's go to Nevada. This was the I always say,
1:43:37
Speaker 1: the second hardest thing to do in potholtics is to
1:43:40
Speaker 1: knock off the sitting governor. It's not easy. It's I
1:43:43
Speaker 1: know it's not easy to win a second term, but
1:43:45
Speaker 1: it's also very difficult. You don't see it often on
1:43:49
Speaker 1: leaning Harder is to knock off sitting presidents. Usually voters
1:43:53
Speaker 1: have this, well, we're going to give them the second term,
1:43:56
Speaker 1: unless it's they're really upset. And obviously I always say
1:43:59
Speaker 1: with governors, luck you try running for reelection and shut
1:44:02
Speaker 1: down the UH and shut down by and shut down
1:44:05
Speaker 1: the strip. It's just you're just asking for UH. It's
1:44:09
Speaker 1: like playing baseball with no hands.
1:44:11
Speaker 2: Good luck.
1:44:14
Speaker 1: But what's your sense in that race to huge financial disparity.
1:44:18
Speaker 1: But all the polls have shown it very close.
1:44:21
Speaker 2: Oh, I think we're going to win. And I'm a
1:44:22
Speaker 2: guy who knocked off a sitting in comment governor and
1:44:26
Speaker 2: we would still have when we would still have a
1:44:28
Speaker 2: democratic governor of Nevada, just like you said, but for
1:44:32
Speaker 2: the pandemic, and the pandemic hit tourism and hit tourism hard.
1:44:37
Speaker 2: And so is Donald Trump. When you look at Las
1:44:39
Speaker 2: Vegas right now, it's down, and it's down in part
1:44:43
Speaker 2: because of Trump's attacks repeatedly on Canada and Canadians not
1:44:47
Speaker 2: coming either to Las Vegas or by the way, buying
1:44:50
Speaker 2: Kentucky bourbon. It has hit.
1:44:51
Speaker 1: By the way, they're not coming to Florida either. Okay,
1:44:54
Speaker 1: I mean we were losing the Canadians. We were in
1:44:56
Speaker 1: the Bahamas. They were all in the Bahamas, is what
1:44:59
Speaker 1: we found out over the holidays.
1:45:00
Speaker 2: So you take their economy being down, along with so
1:45:06
Speaker 2: many hardworking Latino Americans that are afraid because of ice
1:45:11
Speaker 2: to go to work, whether that's in Vegas or Reno
1:45:15
Speaker 2: or other places, and then we've got a really good candidate.
1:45:18
Speaker 2: So General Ford and I have been friends for a
1:45:21
Speaker 2: long time. I was with the Democratic Attorney General's Association
1:45:24
Speaker 2: when he won. I would never count him out. He
1:45:28
Speaker 2: is a fighter. He's somebody that the people of Nevada
1:45:32
Speaker 2: believe in. And if you look at the Colorado primary,
1:45:36
Speaker 2: Democratic ags are doing pretty well right now.
1:45:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't tell that to my friend Michael Bennett.
1:45:41
Speaker 2: He is a good man that gets to continue in.
1:45:44
Speaker 1: The seton's a pretty good message. Look, we talked about
1:45:48
Speaker 1: Wisconsin enough. You don't sound enthusiastic about the current front
1:45:52
Speaker 1: runner in that race.
1:45:54
Speaker 2: Oh, I just it's still going on, and then all
1:45:57
Speaker 2: three major candidates are reaching out, which which you know
1:46:00
Speaker 2: they all should be pushing to win. But I've always
1:46:03
Speaker 2: believed the contested primary creates a better general election candidate.
1:46:07
Speaker 2: The winner of that will be ready, will have gone
1:46:11
Speaker 2: through all of the trials and tribulations, and we'll be
1:46:14
Speaker 2: ready to take on whoever we get from the other side.
1:46:17
Speaker 1: We uh, you briefly mentioned Michigan, but that feels like
1:46:21
Speaker 1: that that literally went from sort of a constant source
1:46:26
Speaker 1: of of of of potential problems to suddenly, look, it's
1:46:31
Speaker 1: not She's not going to win in a walk. It's
1:46:32
Speaker 1: a tough race, but now she's favored.
1:46:35
Speaker 2: Jocelyn Benson is going to be a great candidate now
1:46:39
Speaker 2: she still has.
1:46:40
Speaker 1: I think she's been a very good candidate to be still,
1:46:44
Speaker 1: that's why Dougan dropped is because of her candidacy.
1:46:48
Speaker 2: And I think to his credit, Doug had been a
1:46:51
Speaker 2: great mayor, had been a good Democrat, and when he
1:46:55
Speaker 2: saw that he didn't have a lane and that he
1:46:57
Speaker 2: might be a spoiler, he did a thing very few
1:47:00
Speaker 2: in politics do. He checked as ego, he stepped out,
1:47:04
Speaker 2: and for that I think he ought to be commended
1:47:07
Speaker 2: she's working incredibly hard that primary against a really good sheriff,
1:47:11
Speaker 2: and I hope he continues in some form or fashion.
1:47:14
Speaker 2: And I believe, I believe she is the next governor
1:47:17
Speaker 2: of Michigan.
1:47:18
Speaker 1: Uh you talked about Iowa. I've I've been a sess
1:47:22
Speaker 1: with Ohio. In fact, I think there's a real scenario
1:47:24
Speaker 1: that she she can win regardless of the Senate race.
1:47:28
Speaker 1: I know some people think it's very tied. I don't know,
1:47:31
Speaker 1: if I'm just curious of your experience in these places.
1:47:35
Speaker 1: Georgia and Ohio are probably the two most interesting tests
1:47:38
Speaker 1: of this, which is correlation between governor's races and Senate races.
1:47:42
Speaker 1: What's your sense on them and in voters that split,
1:47:47
Speaker 1: where does that usually fall in your in your experience.
1:47:51
Speaker 2: I believe that people are willing to take a second
1:47:53
Speaker 2: look at a goodnatorial candidate outside of just the partisanship.
1:47:58
Speaker 1: Past Jersey color. It's like instead of just looking at
1:48:01
Speaker 1: the Jersey.
1:48:02
Speaker 2: That's right, because in many ways, if you're in the Senate,
1:48:05
Speaker 2: you are one of one hundred. When you're governor, you're
1:48:08
Speaker 2: one of one. We don't vote where it's not a
1:48:11
Speaker 2: group body where we get together. You are the leader
1:48:14
Speaker 2: of your state, and people have a direct connection with
1:48:17
Speaker 2: their governor. And Kentucky people don't call me governor. They
1:48:20
Speaker 2: call me Andy. And that's probably why I'm still in
1:48:23
Speaker 2: this job. You are on the ground every single day
1:48:27
Speaker 2: with people, and it's more likely that anyone going to
1:48:30
Speaker 2: vote may have met someone running for governor and or
1:48:33
Speaker 2: knows someone that knows them, so it's much more personal.
1:48:37
Speaker 2: I believe that Shared Brown will win. Now do I
1:48:39
Speaker 2: think Amy Acton may run two points above? Yes, I
1:48:44
Speaker 2: think she's running a great race. I have been in
1:48:46
Speaker 2: that area a bunch, especially in the Cincinnati and Cincinnati
1:48:52
Speaker 2: suburbs area, a bunch, and she is doing really well.
1:48:55
Speaker 2: Think about this. He has poured tens of millions of
1:48:58
Speaker 2: dollars in and he has not moved the needle. It's
1:49:02
Speaker 2: either tied or she's a little up and now it's
1:49:05
Speaker 2: her turn. And to me, his race feels a lot
1:49:09
Speaker 2: like Elon Musk coming in in Wisconsin and trying to
1:49:12
Speaker 2: buy it.
1:49:14
Speaker 1: So I know, if I were running for office, I'd
1:49:16
Speaker 1: love to run against somebody who was palles with Elon Musk.
1:49:19
Speaker 2: Well, and that's where my.
1:49:21
Speaker 1: Moms, that's a I think that's a and I think
1:49:24
Speaker 1: he knows I know him a little bit. He's not stupid.
1:49:28
Speaker 1: I think he knows he's got a uphill battle. Let's
1:49:31
Speaker 1: talk about two races that I bet you hear a
1:49:34
Speaker 1: lot about. But realistically they're long shots, even if even
1:49:39
Speaker 1: when they end up races that will probably be decided
1:49:42
Speaker 1: by five points or less. And that is my home
1:49:44
Speaker 1: state of Florida and the great, large, big state of Texas.
1:49:48
Speaker 1: I mean in theory, right, you've got this. You know
1:49:53
Speaker 1: Tenure incumbent and Abbott, and I think fatigue is there.
1:49:56
Speaker 1: You kind of see it.
1:49:58
Speaker 2: It's tough.
1:50:00
Speaker 1: It's a path to forty seven. The question is can
1:50:02
Speaker 1: you get to fifty. I've interviewed Byron Donald's, I've spent
1:50:06
Speaker 1: time with David Jolly, I've done the here. I think
1:50:09
Speaker 1: he's going to be a very good candidate. I think
1:50:11
Speaker 1: people underestimate him at their own peril, and we'll see
1:50:16
Speaker 1: on Jolly. I say that because arguably Florida Democrats tried
1:50:20
Speaker 1: this four years ago and it failed spectacularly. So what's
1:50:25
Speaker 1: your sense and where is DGA money going to be prioritized?
1:50:31
Speaker 2: Well, we are watching them both very closely, and there
1:50:34
Speaker 2: will be races that might not be in the top
1:50:37
Speaker 2: three or four that people talk about that open up
1:50:41
Speaker 2: that there might be a candidate on the other side
1:50:43
Speaker 2: that we learn is like Mark Robinson from North Carolina,
1:50:48
Speaker 2: and so yeah, one of those gifts. Our goal is
1:50:51
Speaker 2: to be funded enough and strong enough to play in
1:50:55
Speaker 2: anywhere we can win, especially coming down the stretch. Gina
1:50:58
Speaker 2: Hinehosa and Texas is a good candidate that's out there
1:51:03
Speaker 2: working hard trying to create her own luck. David Jolly
1:51:07
Speaker 2: is in a good position in Florida and we will
1:51:09
Speaker 2: see what that looks like again as we go down
1:51:12
Speaker 2: the stretch. So we're going to make wise decisions with
1:51:15
Speaker 2: the DGA, but we're going to make sure that we
1:51:17
Speaker 2: have the flexibility to win the maximum number of states.
1:51:21
Speaker 1: Is it hard though, with Texas and Florida, how expensive
1:51:25
Speaker 1: they are. I mean, I don't mean meaning like I
1:51:27
Speaker 1: sit here and go. If you're not in yet, I
1:51:30
Speaker 1: don't know if you come in late, whether that money
1:51:33
Speaker 1: would make Let's say you through five million dollars at
1:51:36
Speaker 1: Florida in October, I think that's I don't know if
1:51:39
Speaker 1: that does as much as throwing five million dollars at
1:51:42
Speaker 1: Aaron Ford in Nevada.
1:51:44
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to be strategic about all of it.
1:51:46
Speaker 2: But my goal is to have us strong enough to
1:51:49
Speaker 2: wear even in those big states coming down the stretch.
1:51:52
Speaker 2: If it's close that we could help hopefully move that needle.
1:51:56
Speaker 1: I want to get you out of here. On the
1:51:57
Speaker 1: presidential stuff, you've not it's something you'll think about. It's
1:52:01
Speaker 1: something you know you're not you're not doing the Please
1:52:04
Speaker 1: don't ask me about it, you know, but ask me
1:52:06
Speaker 1: about it weekend and nine, which I appreciate. I think
1:52:08
Speaker 1: that I think those days are over right in our
1:52:11
Speaker 1: political media.
1:52:12
Speaker 2: What do you think I do? And so for me,
1:52:16
Speaker 2: I'm at the same place that I've been. I've got
1:52:18
Speaker 2: a job this year and that's to win as many
1:52:21
Speaker 2: governors races as I can. And if I concentrate on that,
1:52:24
Speaker 2: I help whoever the Democratic nominee for president is to
1:52:29
Speaker 2: have more states to win. And so that's my focus.
1:52:32
Speaker 2: And then I'm going to sit down with my family
1:52:34
Speaker 2: and we'll make a decision. I'll say this, I never
1:52:37
Speaker 2: thought i'd be in the position to even consider it,
1:52:40
Speaker 2: but I just will not leave a broken country to
1:52:43
Speaker 2: my kids and being a person who can win in
1:52:46
Speaker 2: a Trump plus thirty one state. I think I offer
1:52:49
Speaker 2: something to the conversation. We need to make sure that
1:52:52
Speaker 2: we have a candidate that can relate to people, that
1:52:55
Speaker 2: can bring more people on board. And what I want
1:52:57
Speaker 2: most is for my kids and one day grandkids to
1:53:01
Speaker 2: have the same stability in this United States that I
1:53:05
Speaker 2: did growing up.
1:53:07
Speaker 1: Is this Is this a campaign that if you're going
1:53:10
Speaker 1: to do it, you need to go in early. Do
1:53:12
Speaker 1: you think this is a January February decision or is
1:53:14
Speaker 1: this a June July decision for you in twenty seven.
1:53:17
Speaker 2: I think it'll be different for everyone. Certainly, I'm not
1:53:21
Speaker 2: going to sit down and take any type of action
1:53:24
Speaker 2: until I'm done being DG chair in late December, and
1:53:28
Speaker 2: then I'm going to celebrate Christmas with my family and
1:53:31
Speaker 2: then we'll figure it out.
1:53:34
Speaker 1: This primary calendar South Carolina leading off Virginia as the
1:53:38
Speaker 1: book end.
1:53:40
Speaker 2: I say that because.
1:53:42
Speaker 1: I'm of the I think I'm of the Ricky Bobby rule.
1:53:45
Speaker 1: If you ain't first, your last, and in some ways
1:53:48
Speaker 1: it that's what I focus on in this window.
1:53:51
Speaker 2: But what do you make of the entire calendar? I
1:53:54
Speaker 2: think the calendar is going to create a candidate that
1:53:57
Speaker 2: can be competitive in the South, that can be competitive
1:54:02
Speaker 2: in the Midwest, that can ultimately create the type of
1:54:06
Speaker 2: appeal that reaches all Americans, because all Americans are struggling
1:54:10
Speaker 2: with the same general issues. I will say having two
1:54:13
Speaker 2: Southern states, I'm happy that the DNC recognizes that the
1:54:18
Speaker 2: South was left out, was underfunded, and was sometimes even
1:54:22
Speaker 2: looked down upon by our party. But look at how
1:54:25
Speaker 2: we scrap back. We have three Southern Democratic governors thanks
1:54:29
Speaker 2: to Georgia. We have two Southern Democratic US senators, and
1:54:32
Speaker 2: Roy Cooper is about to be another.
1:54:37
Speaker 1: Do you consider Kentucky a southern state or a border state?
1:54:40
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we've got different parts of Kentucky that
1:54:42
Speaker 2: consider themselves different things. I'm from Lexington, which is certainly Southern.
1:54:47
Speaker 2: I lived in Louisville for a long time, which probably
1:54:50
Speaker 2: considers itself Midwestern. Typically, I try to be whichever one
1:54:54
Speaker 2: will get us the best grant from the federal government
1:54:57
Speaker 2: or anywhere else.
1:54:58
Speaker 1: Well, considering that this administration does apparently take politics into
1:55:02
Speaker 1: consideration of every decision that they make, so I don't
1:55:05
Speaker 1: blame you there, but.
1:55:06
Speaker 2: It is it is. You know that.
1:55:08
Speaker 1: I guess that's an Agel debate. Is Kentucky a southern
1:55:11
Speaker 1: state or not.
1:55:12
Speaker 2: I will say I consider myself southern. But you know,
1:55:15
Speaker 2: different folks across our state may have different ideas. My
1:55:19
Speaker 2: job is just to represent all of them the best
1:55:21
Speaker 2: I can.
1:55:25
Speaker 1: Israel, is this an issue that is going to be
1:55:29
Speaker 1: so divisive that that it splinters the party and makes
1:55:34
Speaker 1: some elections unwinnable.
1:55:35
Speaker 2: Are you don't think of this? I don't think it
1:55:38
Speaker 2: should because I think the approach that the Democratic Party
1:55:41
Speaker 2: ought to have in Israel is what we would hope
1:55:45
Speaker 2: countries in Europe would think about US. Now, countries in
1:55:48
Speaker 2: Europe are anti Trump, and they should be, but I
1:55:50
Speaker 2: hope they're still pro America. So I believe that that
1:55:54
Speaker 2: Democratic Party candidates sitting elected officials. You can be anti
1:55:59
Speaker 2: mitt Yah. You can think he has engaged in actions
1:56:02
Speaker 2: that cause needless suffering, but you can still be pro
1:56:06
Speaker 2: Israel recognizing that there's a democratic state, a Jewish state, and
1:56:11
Speaker 2: that our security interests are tied to each other.
1:56:16
Speaker 1: I'm going to get you out of here on this.
1:56:17
Speaker 1: I did back to back interviews in the last two
1:56:20
Speaker 1: weeks with Byron Donald's and with Doug Jones, and by
1:56:24
Speaker 1: the way, I'm asking about Alabama's Doug Jones going to
1:56:26
Speaker 1: GETDGA help.
1:56:27
Speaker 2: We're watching Doug Jones race really closely. He's a friend.
1:56:31
Speaker 2: But their primary they doubled the Democratic turnout from four
1:56:35
Speaker 2: years before, and that is pretty amazing South Carol money he.
1:56:39
Speaker 1: Shared with me, and basically a math equation that anytime
1:56:42
Speaker 1: this has happened, it has led you. I'm sure you've
1:56:44
Speaker 1: seen this, he said out to me. Yeah, and that
1:56:47
Speaker 1: it is indicated that it's going to be a victory
1:56:50
Speaker 1: for that party. Do you buy it?
1:56:52
Speaker 2: Well, he is a good man and a good candidate
1:56:55
Speaker 2: that is putting the state in play, and we're going
1:56:58
Speaker 2: to be watching it very closely. Doug would be a
1:57:01
Speaker 2: fantastic governor.
1:57:02
Speaker 1: Well, I bring it up because he said this to me,
1:57:04
Speaker 1: because I said, what is the top issue you're talking about?
1:57:07
Speaker 1: He goes, well, right now, it's data centers. Everywhere I go,
1:57:09
Speaker 1: it's data centers. Data center's data center. I spent a
1:57:13
Speaker 1: lot of time on this issue over the last six months.
1:57:16
Speaker 1: I'm pretty convinced people's anger about data centers aren't about
1:57:19
Speaker 1: the data centers, meaning that this is about big tech.
1:57:24
Speaker 1: This is about something much larger. But I'll be honest
1:57:29
Speaker 1: I feel like the political answers have all been small ball.
1:57:33
Speaker 1: A lot of people are looking at this as a
1:57:35
Speaker 1: nimbi issue, and I have a feeling it's not do
1:57:40
Speaker 1: you share my view on this or do you think
1:57:43
Speaker 1: this really is one of an old tip o'neilism, that
1:57:47
Speaker 1: this is just a classic case of all politics is local.
1:57:50
Speaker 2: Now, I think this is two things. Number one, it's
1:57:53
Speaker 2: concern about AI, some of it rightful concern about AI
1:57:58
Speaker 2: and what it's going to do to our lives. On
1:58:00
Speaker 2: one end, the medical research that could be done through
1:58:03
Speaker 2: it could end every genetic disease that we know of
1:58:06
Speaker 2: combined with crisper, and that's a world I hope for.
1:58:09
Speaker 2: On another end, it could take millions of jobs. It
1:58:13
Speaker 2: could make us less safe, and right now we don't
1:58:16
Speaker 2: have a federal government that will create the type of rules,
1:58:20
Speaker 2: regulations and guidelines that are needed. So people see it
1:58:24
Speaker 2: coming and people say it'll be as big as moving
1:58:27
Speaker 2: from farms to factories, and yeah, that's going to create
1:58:31
Speaker 2: fear on the actual placing of the data centers. I
1:58:35
Speaker 2: will say this, these companies are about to invest massive
1:58:38
Speaker 2: amounts of money, maybe ten or one hundred times more
1:58:41
Speaker 2: than their headquarters. But they don't come to these communities.
1:58:44
Speaker 2: They don't talk to people and assure them if they
1:58:48
Speaker 2: are going to be that big of a part of
1:58:50
Speaker 2: the community that it's going to be a net benefit.
1:58:53
Speaker 2: And for me, three rules that you have to start
1:58:56
Speaker 2: with before you ever have the conversation. Number One, you
1:58:58
Speaker 2: pay for all your own power, not one cent on
1:59:01
Speaker 2: the backs of our people that pay too much already.
1:59:04
Speaker 2: That's transmission, that's production. Now. Number two, you got to
1:59:07
Speaker 2: pay your fair share of taxes because you're not going
1:59:10
Speaker 2: to employ that many people, but you may kick off
1:59:12
Speaker 2: enough to the school system to double its budget because
1:59:16
Speaker 2: of property taxes, pay teachers more and have the resources
1:59:20
Speaker 2: to address that displacement. But third and swhere I started,
1:59:24
Speaker 2: you've got to get in there and make the community
1:59:26
Speaker 2: want you. These facilities are not going to be successful
1:59:30
Speaker 2: in the long term unless these companies develop a little
1:59:34
Speaker 2: more of a human side, get into the community and
1:59:37
Speaker 2: talk about the real benefits, and have one on one
1:59:40
Speaker 2: conversations with those that are concerned.
1:59:43
Speaker 1: Do you think it should go as far as look,
1:59:45
Speaker 1: all these guys want to It was something Doug Jones
1:59:49
Speaker 1: brought up to me. Said one of the fears he
1:59:51
Speaker 1: came across is that is what have we all learned
1:59:55
Speaker 1: about technological advances over the last thirty years, Meaning what
2:00:00
Speaker 1: you think is on the front end of a technological
2:00:04
Speaker 1: change is suddenly obsolete within twenty four or thirty six months.
2:00:09
Speaker 1: And that you know right now, especially wherever you go,
2:00:13
Speaker 1: there's there's abandoned strip malls all over the country, well
2:00:17
Speaker 1: data centers. In ten years, when all this is moved
2:00:20
Speaker 1: into space, as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezil's dream of
2:00:24
Speaker 1: what you know, are we going to have like a
2:00:26
Speaker 1: bunch of abandoned you know, data centers that get turned
2:00:30
Speaker 1: Believe it or not. There's strip malls near me that
2:00:32
Speaker 1: here in Florida that have been turned into churches, and
2:00:35
Speaker 1: old staples down the streets is now a church. They
2:00:38
Speaker 1: even kept the sliding doors, the auto sliding doors, which
2:00:42
Speaker 1: I found interesting. But that that's a real fear that
2:00:47
Speaker 1: all these local communities are basically being asked to be
2:00:49
Speaker 1: a stop gap while these companies hurry up with this
2:00:53
Speaker 1: advancement and eventually get to the point where they don't
2:00:56
Speaker 1: need these data centers.
2:00:58
Speaker 2: I think you're pointing out the uncertainty in all of it. Now.
2:01:02
Speaker 2: People don't know if it's going to be y two
2:01:04
Speaker 2: k we know it's going to be bigger than that,
2:01:07
Speaker 2: or if it's going to be data centers on the moon,
2:01:09
Speaker 2: and that is just a huge spread for people to
2:01:12
Speaker 2: try to think about and deal with. When I think
2:01:16
Speaker 2: about those strip malls, I've actually seen them go from
2:01:20
Speaker 2: the mall to the church to now a healthcare facility
2:01:23
Speaker 2: because I've seen that.
2:01:24
Speaker 1: There's one that got turned into a high school, I
2:01:26
Speaker 1: think too, and they even kept the escalators.
2:01:29
Speaker 2: We ought to look at that. But this is a
2:01:32
Speaker 2: part of having good leaders, rational leaders, leaders that put
2:01:36
Speaker 2: the American people first. Because we don't know what step
2:01:39
Speaker 2: three of this might look like, and it's going to
2:01:42
Speaker 2: be scary for the American people, but our job will
2:01:45
Speaker 2: be to address it together in a transparent way that
2:01:49
Speaker 2: puts people first.
2:01:52
Speaker 1: This last question totally going to be out of left
2:01:56
Speaker 1: field for you, but I think you'll enjoy it.
2:01:59
Speaker 2: One of my favorite.
2:02:01
Speaker 1: Books that I've ever read is on the history of
2:02:03
Speaker 1: the ABA, and one of the great franchises in the
2:02:06
Speaker 1: ABA were the Kentucky Colonels.
2:02:07
Speaker 2: Kentucky Colonels.
2:02:10
Speaker 1: NBA wants to expand they've said they want to expand
2:02:13
Speaker 1: they've identified Seattle and Las Vegas. When I see the
2:02:18
Speaker 1: success of Oklahoma City, and I see the success of
2:02:21
Speaker 1: Indianapolis just in general and what we've seen, but particularly
2:02:24
Speaker 1: basketball crazy with the Fever and the Pacers, Louisville should
2:02:29
Speaker 1: be an NBA market, right The state of Kentucky should
2:02:32
Speaker 1: have an NBA team. If the state of Oklahoma has
2:02:34
Speaker 1: an NBA team, the state of Kentucky one of the
2:02:39
Speaker 1: you know, in some ways foundational basketball states that there
2:02:43
Speaker 1: are should have one. Is there an effort? Is there?
2:02:49
Speaker 1: You know Louisville has always been right there? Are they
2:02:52
Speaker 1: gonna take the leap to major league city? You're watching
2:02:55
Speaker 1: Nashville do this? What's your sense and does Louisville have
2:02:59
Speaker 1: the business support to pull it off?
2:03:02
Speaker 2: The Commonwealth of Kentucky is ready. Louisville is the largest
2:03:06
Speaker 2: media market in the country that doesn't have one of
2:03:08
Speaker 2: the big sports, and so we are ready. We have
2:03:12
Speaker 2: the business community to do it. We have an NBA
2:03:15
Speaker 2: ready arena right now, so that would not be an
2:03:18
Speaker 2: extra cost.
2:03:18
Speaker 1: Is basketball probably one on the list in baseball two?
2:03:22
Speaker 1: Or what would be your your sense of what's realistic?
2:03:25
Speaker 2: We have the facilities right now, for basketball, and it
2:03:28
Speaker 2: would work. I mean, the NFL will work anywhere. If
2:03:30
Speaker 2: the NFL wants to bring it.
2:03:33
Speaker 1: In Green Bay and Jacksonville, it's going to work anywhere.
2:03:35
Speaker 2: We'll get that stadium built and people can go from
2:03:38
Speaker 2: Indy to Louisville to Nashville. Well, I'm sure you'd love that. Yeah,
2:03:42
Speaker 2: But the NBA is is the one where I think
2:03:45
Speaker 2: we're Taylor made and we're ready. And whether that's a
2:03:49
Speaker 2: new team, whether that's a team that might be looking
2:03:52
Speaker 2: for a new home. I'm just looking at you, Memphis.
2:03:54
Speaker 2: Oh did I say that out loud? I'm just a
2:03:57
Speaker 2: call away and our people would support it. We would
2:04:01
Speaker 2: fill up that arena every day. I mean, I remember
2:04:04
Speaker 2: when the Titans came to Nashville. I was I was
2:04:07
Speaker 2: in school in Nashville and watched how a community that
2:04:10
Speaker 2: no one thought could support a team came together with
2:04:14
Speaker 2: one of the biggest launches that I've seen.
2:04:18
Speaker 1: No, it just feels as if Louisville's more than ready.
2:04:21
Speaker 1: And I as as somebody who doesn't love when Miami,
2:04:25
Speaker 1: my Miami Hurricanes have to play the Louisville Cardinals in Louisville.
2:04:28
Speaker 1: It's a great fan base it's a great community, and
2:04:31
Speaker 1: you guys already host one of the great events annually
2:04:35
Speaker 1: for the world.
2:04:36
Speaker 2: So count me in, you know, cheerleading for Louisville NBA.
2:04:41
Speaker 2: As we close, I guess I will make one announcement
2:04:44
Speaker 2: that that I don't know what my future in politics
2:04:46
Speaker 2: will look like. The president of Basketball Operations is a
2:04:49
Speaker 2: job I would strongly consider. Who's your NBA team? Oh
2:04:54
Speaker 2: so when you're in Kentucky, you you don't really have
2:04:57
Speaker 2: an NBA home the UK players. Is that what you so?
2:05:00
Speaker 2: Karl Anthony Towns winning that championship? What a good human being?
2:05:07
Speaker 2: Shy In Oklahoma City, we're real proud of Tyrese Maxi
2:05:12
Speaker 2: is about to play with Lebron and Ann Brown and
2:05:15
Speaker 2: a great team. So we love watching our players go.
2:05:18
Speaker 2: Anthony Davis is one of all of our favorites, so
2:05:21
Speaker 2: we follow him wherever he goes.
2:05:24
Speaker 1: Boy, it's interesting, it's all UK with you, huh.
2:05:27
Speaker 2: Oh, So when you were the governor of Kentucky you
2:05:30
Speaker 2: have two jobs to root for your in state schools
2:05:33
Speaker 2: and a root against.
2:05:34
Speaker 1: Duke all right, Governor for share, really appreciate the time.
2:05:41
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
2:05:50
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think there's any drama about Andy Forsheer
2:05:53
Speaker 1: running for president. I think the only drama that I
2:05:55
Speaker 1: have from that interview is does he announce before March first,
2:06:00
Speaker 1: essentially March Madness, which is a big deal in the
2:06:02
Speaker 1: state of Kentucky, or does he wait for later in
2:06:05
Speaker 1: the summer. My guess is you're going to have a
2:06:09
Speaker 1: chunk of candidates announced just before you know to get
2:06:14
Speaker 1: the first caller FEC filing, and you have a bunch
2:06:17
Speaker 1: of candidates are going to announce sort of the second
2:06:18
Speaker 1: or third week of March and then be able to
2:06:21
Speaker 1: essentially say, well, the first you know, whatever they've raised
2:06:24
Speaker 1: is only about eight days of that fundraising period. And
2:06:26
Speaker 1: I know that sounds crazy, but the fundraising periods will
2:06:30
Speaker 1: have an impact on when people announced. So you're going
2:06:33
Speaker 1: to see, I think a lot of announcements in say
2:06:37
Speaker 1: late January or February, and then I think you'll have
2:06:40
Speaker 1: a lot of an handful announcements in late March early April,
2:06:45
Speaker 1: both in a weird way, gaming just in a small way,
2:06:48
Speaker 1: gaming gaming fundraising opportunities, and et cetera. But since most
2:06:53
Speaker 1: of us expect the first debates in June, which they
2:06:56
Speaker 1: have been in the past. My guess is most anybody
2:06:59
Speaker 1: that wants to be the nominee will be in the
2:07:01
Speaker 1: will be announced by every one that would be my guess.
2:07:05
Speaker 2: Top five, top.
2:07:09
Speaker 1: Top jest, top five. As always, my top five list
2:07:14
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Fandled And it's a twist
2:07:16
Speaker 1: a little bit. I I have already spoken about one
2:07:20
Speaker 1: person named in this thing, and it's it's my top
2:07:23
Speaker 1: five independence or independent minded figures who could shape control
2:07:29
Speaker 1: of the US Senate in the next six months. All right,
2:07:33
Speaker 1: these are five politicians who could have an outsized impact
2:07:38
Speaker 1: on Senate control. I'm gonna start number five, tot Achilles.
2:07:43
Speaker 1: Does this become a race? It's a cheap state. Tot
2:07:47
Speaker 1: Achilles has raised significant money for an independent candidate, reasonable
2:07:51
Speaker 1: amount of money for a Democratic nominee and a red
2:07:53
Speaker 1: state if you were the Democratic nominee in a red
2:07:55
Speaker 1: state like Idaho. Tot Achilles has been on this program
2:07:59
Speaker 1: a while ago. When he first started, and when we
2:08:01
Speaker 1: talked about why is he running as an eye, he
2:08:03
Speaker 1: basically said, you know, more people will listen to him.
2:08:07
Speaker 1: He can have a conversation with more voters. And this
2:08:09
Speaker 1: sort of is a thesis test for me and I
2:08:12
Speaker 1: believe every state is a swing state. You just have
2:08:14
Speaker 1: to find where the fulcrum ats. And every state has
2:08:17
Speaker 1: a fulk crum where where you can find a way
2:08:21
Speaker 1: to fifty percent plus one. You just have to find
2:08:23
Speaker 1: that state's full crum. And that to me, and a
2:08:26
Speaker 1: lot of times in traditionally red or blue states, being
2:08:31
Speaker 1: a so called independent sometimes you'll have an easier time
2:08:35
Speaker 1: finding that ful crum than you would as that. And look,
2:08:40
Speaker 1: Jim Reisch, he's a quiet member of the Senate. He's
2:08:45
Speaker 1: not a bomb thrower. He's sort of been a very
2:08:48
Speaker 1: sort of reliable Trump Conservative, but you know, and he
2:08:51
Speaker 1: probably a bit more to the to the right than
2:08:54
Speaker 1: say others who've been the head of Foreign Relations. But
2:08:57
Speaker 1: he's pretty much more of an international less than Trump is.
2:09:02
Speaker 1: But he's tried to be a bit more Trump friendly
2:09:04
Speaker 1: than the previous chair of that. But he's not a
2:09:08
Speaker 1: huge right he's not a big voice. It's one of
2:09:12
Speaker 1: those like deb Fish or what Dan Osborne came offully
2:09:15
Speaker 1: close to knocking off Deb Fisher of Nebraska, sort of
2:09:18
Speaker 1: a lesser known US senator in Nebraska. She was kind
2:09:21
Speaker 1: of caught napping. Jim Reich is the type of candidate
2:09:24
Speaker 1: I'd keep an eye on. He's the type of could
2:09:26
Speaker 1: get caught napping type of thing. So we shall see.
2:09:31
Speaker 1: But I I have a feeling, I have a feeling
2:09:36
Speaker 1: in October we're going to see a forty seven to
2:09:38
Speaker 1: forty pole out of this race, which you'll tell me
2:09:42
Speaker 1: that Rish is going to win, probably will be favored
2:09:44
Speaker 1: to win. He's probably got an eighty five percent chance awaiting.
2:09:49
Speaker 1: But this place is going to be competitive, and I'll
2:09:52
Speaker 1: I'll be very curious if he can get a televised
2:09:55
Speaker 1: debate with Rish. And if he does, I look, I
2:09:59
Speaker 1: think it's a terrible environment to be running as an
2:10:01
Speaker 1: incumbent heart stop. So because of that, I don't rule
2:10:07
Speaker 1: anything out. So he's fit on my list. Number four
2:10:09
Speaker 1: Dan Osborne. Look, he's he's got the proof of concept.
2:10:14
Speaker 1: He came close. Democratic nominee is withdrawn. Everything has cut
2:10:18
Speaker 1: his way. I think dep. Fisher would have been a
2:10:21
Speaker 1: slightly easier opponent than Todd Ricketts. Actually mean not Tod Ricketts.
2:10:25
Speaker 1: Pete Rickets. Todd Rickets was my guest. The brother Pete
2:10:27
Speaker 1: Ricketts is the US Senator in this case, and he's
2:10:33
Speaker 1: got a ton of money. I uh, look, I think
2:10:37
Speaker 1: if Ricketts loses, it's because of Trump, not because of Ricketts. Right, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa,
2:10:42
Speaker 1: those three Senate races, the agg communities in those three
2:10:46
Speaker 1: states have been just pummeled by this administration. Right. Trump
2:10:49
Speaker 1: has made their economic lives terrible. The tariffs have been terrible.
2:10:54
Speaker 1: This is just if if this community weren't so ruby
2:10:59
Speaker 1: Red in their cultural beliefs, I think these races would
2:11:04
Speaker 1: already be trending in the other direction. But culturally this
2:11:08
Speaker 1: community is just uncomfortable in some cases supporting a Democrat.
2:11:12
Speaker 1: Now do these folks sit out right either way? There
2:11:19
Speaker 1: is no scenario in my head that if Dan Nowsbourne winning,
2:11:22
Speaker 1: that isn't basically due to Donald Trump.
2:11:24
Speaker 2: Right.
2:11:24
Speaker 1: And I don't say this to sort of excuse Pete
2:11:26
Speaker 1: Ricketts here, but that's Ricketts is defending the indefensible because
2:11:31
Speaker 1: you know who wouldn't be in favor of tariffs at
2:11:33
Speaker 1: Pete Ricketts, you know wouldn't be in favor of these
2:11:36
Speaker 1: ag of what's been going on in the beef industry, Rickett,
2:11:39
Speaker 1: But it hasn't been his decision.
2:11:41
Speaker 2: Right.
2:11:41
Speaker 1: What the Trump administration has done to the egg community,
2:11:44
Speaker 1: particularly in the Midwest, it's just been i mean, just
2:11:47
Speaker 1: political about practice. We could debate whether on the merits
2:11:53
Speaker 1: maybe long term some of these decisions, or are better
2:11:56
Speaker 1: decisions down the road, depending on your where your head
2:12:00
Speaker 1: is on the free market. But what he's been doing
2:12:02
Speaker 1: on tariffs is so haphazard, it is just you know,
2:12:06
Speaker 1: and then you throw in the aggressive deportation, which is
2:12:09
Speaker 1: just harm the labor force for these folks, right, it's
2:12:14
Speaker 1: it's if Dan Osborne wins, it's because of Donald Trump's tariffs,
2:12:18
Speaker 1: pure and so. Number three on my list of independence
2:12:21
Speaker 1: who have a huge impact on Senate control. Seth Pondner
2:12:23
Speaker 1: and Montana. We talked a little bit about it. He's
2:12:26
Speaker 1: now got a harder job. He's going to have a
2:12:28
Speaker 1: Democrat on the ballot. He's gonna have to make the
2:12:30
Speaker 1: case that, you know, if you want true independent representation
2:12:35
Speaker 1: and you want some you know, I'll be curious, can
2:12:37
Speaker 1: he make the following pitch? Hey, you know, I'm going
2:12:41
Speaker 1: to be listening to left, right and center as your
2:12:43
Speaker 1: United States Senator, I'm going to do what's right for
2:12:46
Speaker 1: Montana regardless of party. I'm going to vote with the
2:12:49
Speaker 1: party that has Montana's interests first and whichever party that
2:12:54
Speaker 1: happens to be on any given issue or in any
2:12:57
Speaker 1: given cycle. Right, Can he make that pitch credibly? Will
2:13:01
Speaker 1: voters buy it credibly? Can he convince partisan Democrats that
2:13:05
Speaker 1: he is not so independent that he's going to somehow
2:13:10
Speaker 1: be supportive of Trump right on some things? So I
2:13:12
Speaker 1: think everything's harder for him. It's not a binary choice.
2:13:17
Speaker 1: There are plenty of voters that will habitually just vote
2:13:20
Speaker 1: by party. So I do think if this has probably
2:13:25
Speaker 1: made this, I could argue that Achilles has a slightly
2:13:29
Speaker 1: better chance of winning his two way race than Bodner
2:13:33
Speaker 1: now has of winning his three way race. Not quite
2:13:35
Speaker 1: there yet, because Bonner has got a ton of money,
2:13:37
Speaker 1: he's got some Democratic infrastructure helping him, So we'll see,
2:13:41
Speaker 1: but he's certainly going to play a huge role in
2:13:44
Speaker 1: where this is headed. Number two on my list is
2:13:48
Speaker 1: Lisa Makowski. No, she's not on the ballot, but you've
2:13:52
Speaker 1: heard me with miss thesis before. If Mary Petelvi, if
2:13:55
Speaker 1: a Democrat wins the US Senate see in Alaska, if
2:13:59
Speaker 1: a majority of allow of voters have decided they want
2:14:01
Speaker 1: to send a Democrat the United States Senate, Lisa Murkowski,
2:14:05
Speaker 1: who I assume is not going to run for reelection,
2:14:08
Speaker 1: but who knows. In twenty eight she's up. In twenty eight,
2:14:13
Speaker 1: she cares more. She absolutely went in out. She goes
2:14:17
Speaker 1: where her state is. And particularly the next person I'm
2:14:23
Speaker 1: about the name on my list. If he does one thing,
2:14:28
Speaker 1: I'm prepared to watch Lisa Murkowski do another. Which leads
2:14:31
Speaker 1: me to my number one most important and impactful independent
2:14:37
Speaker 1: or independent minded politician who's going to have an impact
2:14:41
Speaker 1: on the Senate majority in the next six months. It's
2:14:44
Speaker 1: John Fetterman. I concur with my friend, my Super Tuesday partner,
2:14:49
Speaker 1: Chris Eliza, who says he doesn't believe Fetterman's going to
2:14:52
Speaker 1: switch parties.
2:14:52
Speaker 2: And go from dtah R. I agree with that, as.
2:14:55
Speaker 1: We've seen with these parties switches in the past, the
2:14:59
Speaker 1: more a recent ones have there been as many that
2:15:03
Speaker 1: go from major party to I as go from one
2:15:06
Speaker 1: major party to the other. I inspector went from one
2:15:08
Speaker 1: to the other because he wanted to serve another term.
2:15:10
Speaker 1: But Jim Draffords decided to actually go I right, and
2:15:13
Speaker 1: Joe Manchin decided to go I on that front. So
2:15:17
Speaker 1: but I've had Rick Shelby went from D to R,
2:15:20
Speaker 1: Ben Nighthors Campbell went from D to R. So it's
2:15:22
Speaker 1: not let you you won't see it. And inspector of
2:15:25
Speaker 1: course are to D. But I suspect he goes I
2:15:30
Speaker 1: and I think he's up for grabs. I do, And
2:15:35
Speaker 1: I'm really curious what kind of relationship Brian Shatz has
2:15:39
Speaker 1: with John Fetterman. Brian Shatz is who I expect to
2:15:42
Speaker 1: be Senate Democratic leader going forward, certainly the more influential
2:15:46
Speaker 1: Senate Democratic leader, even if Schumer gets to keep his
2:15:49
Speaker 1: slot for a cycle before announcing his retirement. But there's
2:15:57
Speaker 1: no doubt in my mind if look I sort of
2:16:03
Speaker 1: will I'm gonna make one more observation for before we
2:16:06
Speaker 1: get to questions.
2:16:09
Speaker 2: My hunch.
2:16:13
Speaker 1: Is that if Democrats win win four Senate seats, are
2:16:18
Speaker 1: actually probably gonna win six or seven. I'm one of
2:16:21
Speaker 1: those who believes the bottom either falls out or they
2:16:25
Speaker 1: get somewhere, or they or they're stuck at three or four,
2:16:30
Speaker 1: either it all happens or you know. And for me,
2:16:33
Speaker 1: the test is really going to be those agg states Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa.
2:16:39
Speaker 1: For my prediction of you know, if Democrats win the Senate,
2:16:42
Speaker 1: they're more likely to pick up five or six than
2:16:44
Speaker 1: they are, you know, three in a party switch or four.
2:16:47
Speaker 2: And you know that.
2:16:50
Speaker 1: All depends on whether my theory, the case about the
2:16:52
Speaker 1: tariffs comes to fruition in those three states. Democrats need
2:16:57
Speaker 1: to win two of those three, assuming Republicans that have
2:16:59
Speaker 1: to lose two of those three, since one of them
2:17:00
Speaker 1: will have an eye for that to come to pass.
2:17:04
Speaker 1: But that right now, I think it's more likely that happens.
2:17:08
Speaker 1: Like here's always what's more likely Democrats only net one
2:17:12
Speaker 1: or two Senate seats or they are they net six
2:17:16
Speaker 1: or seven, And I think the odds are greater they
2:17:19
Speaker 1: net six or seven than that they'd come up under three.
2:17:24
Speaker 2: Just some food for thought, ask Chuck.
2:17:32
Speaker 1: Let's get to some ass, Chuck. And before I begin,
2:17:35
Speaker 1: I got a small correction my buddy Billy Corbyn, who,
2:17:39
Speaker 1: of course, for those of you that don't know Billy,
2:17:42
Speaker 1: he is the filmmaker behind maybe this single best movie
2:17:46
Speaker 1: that explains the rise of Miami in the eighties as
2:17:49
Speaker 1: a cultural icon, and that is Cocaine Cowboys. And then,
2:17:53
Speaker 1: of course, if you're a college football fan and you
2:17:56
Speaker 1: have consumed a thirty for thirty about the U Billy
2:18:02
Speaker 1: Corbyn did two of those the U and then the
2:18:05
Speaker 1: sort of the part two of the U, but that
2:18:08
Speaker 1: was also Billy Corbyn. So anyway, he is also the
2:18:12
Speaker 1: unofficial historian of all things Miami politics. God bless them.
2:18:16
Speaker 1: And if you recall the question I had from someone
2:18:21
Speaker 1: about from someone about voter fraud examples of it actually happening.
2:18:25
Speaker 1: I talked about the ninety seven then seven Miami mayoral
2:18:31
Speaker 1: race featuring Francis Wise, and he goes, hey, quick clarification,
2:18:35
Speaker 1: and I just want to read this directly. He said,
2:18:37
Speaker 1: you mentioned Coroyo and Suarez resulted in a new election.
2:18:40
Speaker 1: He said, it didn't. This is my mistake. This is
2:18:43
Speaker 1: what I get for sort of not fully doing my research,
2:18:47
Speaker 1: going from memory on this one. And that's on me,
2:18:50
Speaker 1: and I apologize for doing that. But that's why we
2:18:53
Speaker 1: correct the record. The judge ultimately excluded all absentee ballots
2:18:58
Speaker 1: due to the widespread fraud from the Suarez side of things,
2:19:02
Speaker 1: and it resulted in a new count that didn't count
2:19:05
Speaker 1: even legal absentee ballot voters. So it did effectively remove
2:19:09
Speaker 1: Suarez from office he was mayor, briefly put Coroyo in
2:19:13
Speaker 1: office as mayor, but it did disenfranchise anybody who voted
2:19:17
Speaker 1: legally by mayil. Needless to say, he should have. It
2:19:22
Speaker 1: probably should have been a new election. But anyway, I got,
2:19:25
Speaker 1: I got that part of it well. But Billy also adds,
2:19:28
Speaker 1: he goes, you realize, had had Suarez stayed mayor, he'd
2:19:32
Speaker 1: have been the mayor of Miami during the Alien Gonzales mess.
2:19:35
Speaker 1: And I went, oh my god, because you know, Suarez
2:19:37
Speaker 1: is kind of a weirdo. He was kind of being
2:19:39
Speaker 1: nicknamed mayor loco at times. He was showing up at
2:19:42
Speaker 1: odd hours of the night. If constituents sent him letters
2:19:45
Speaker 1: or newspaper reporters like he was not it was not
2:19:51
Speaker 1: you know, there's a Francis Suarez and his father or
2:19:54
Speaker 1: I don't think very close because of this is I
2:19:58
Speaker 1: don't know if the if old Mansuaz, it's got all
2:20:03
Speaker 1: of the nodes connected the way they are, and most
2:20:06
Speaker 1: of the rest of us on this. But yeah, that
2:20:09
Speaker 1: would have what was already a media circus. Let's just
2:20:12
Speaker 1: say Jibersuirez or Xavier Suarez, depending on how he wanted
2:20:16
Speaker 1: to be referred to, which I would he would I
2:20:20
Speaker 1: think be fine being referred to by either. Memory serves
2:20:24
Speaker 1: but Yeah, he'd have tried to figure out how to
2:20:29
Speaker 1: be more involved than this, and God only knows what
2:20:31
Speaker 1: kind of mess extra mess that would have created. But
2:20:35
Speaker 1: I thought I wanted to give you that quick correction there.
2:20:40
Speaker 1: All right, let's tackle some questions here. Deb M in Greenville, Georgia,
2:20:45
Speaker 1: tenth congressional district. Thank you for telling me your congressional district.
2:20:48
Speaker 1: I want to continue to make that a feature here. Hey, Chuck,
2:20:51
Speaker 1: thanks for explaining politics for the rest of us. I
2:20:53
Speaker 1: listened to the podcast while walking my dog Suki. All right,
2:20:55
Speaker 1: my question is why haven't we heard much about the
2:20:57
Speaker 1: people who attempt to assassinate Donald Trump? After the tempt
2:21:00
Speaker 1: on President Reagan, the public learned a lot about the shooter,
2:21:02
Speaker 1: So why is it different. Now?
2:21:03
Speaker 2: Thanks for all you do, deb M.
2:21:05
Speaker 1: It's a I I as you, as many of you know,
2:21:08
Speaker 1: I am. I am not a huge conspiracy theorist.
2:21:13
Speaker 2: I am.
2:21:15
Speaker 1: I will go to my grave believing that the CIA
2:21:18
Speaker 1: is covering up the fact that Oswald wasn't an asset
2:21:21
Speaker 1: and they went, oh shit, he killed him. Oh we
2:21:25
Speaker 1: can't let them find out he was an asset, or
2:21:27
Speaker 1: they'll think we were behind it.
2:21:28
Speaker 2: Right. My point is is that in.
2:21:30
Speaker 1: My experience, government conspiracies are in our cover ups are
2:21:35
Speaker 1: more successful when they're cover ups, not for to actually
2:21:39
Speaker 1: execute strategies if you will, right, you know, to execute
2:21:43
Speaker 1: a coup and all those things.
2:21:44
Speaker 2: So I don't, I don't.
2:21:47
Speaker 1: I am a very I I am a skeptic when
2:21:49
Speaker 1: it comes to conspiracy theory, and it probably is due
2:21:53
Speaker 1: to the fact that, from the age of about sixteen
2:21:56
Speaker 1: to twenty five, I read every single Kennedy assassination book
2:21:59
Speaker 1: I could get my hands on, and I considered myself
2:22:03
Speaker 1: an amateur expert. And then Oliver Stone just peed all
2:22:08
Speaker 1: over it right the single worst. It's a great movie.
2:22:12
Speaker 1: JFK is one of these frustrating movies that I really enjoy,
2:22:15
Speaker 1: and he just absolutely, historically just he took every conspiracy
2:22:20
Speaker 1: theory and tried to make one grand one. It was
2:22:23
Speaker 1: he had like pieces of a million. It was just
2:22:26
Speaker 1: just garbage. It was basically I feel like Stone wrote
2:22:32
Speaker 1: it literally Stone that it was, but more than that,
2:22:37
Speaker 1: it's probably LSD. And he used the weed to just
2:22:41
Speaker 1: calm himself down long enough to write a script. That's
2:22:44
Speaker 1: how cuckoo his and I think he sort of ruined
2:22:50
Speaker 1: the investigation I think even though it led to the
2:22:53
Speaker 1: release of some more files, it led to a new
2:22:55
Speaker 1: law that was a good thing, but his actual treatment
2:22:58
Speaker 1: of it just terrible. And as somebody who read all
2:23:00
Speaker 1: these books, it was clear he just had he just decided,
2:23:04
Speaker 1: you know, he wanted to have as much fun as
2:23:06
Speaker 1: possible with the conspiracy. Now I throw all that out there.
2:23:11
Speaker 1: I find this, particularly the Butler assassination. I find everything
2:23:19
Speaker 1: you're saying here to be odd behavior by our government.
2:23:24
Speaker 1: We haven't had the big commission, we haven't had an investigation.
2:23:28
Speaker 1: We haven't that we've seen for the public. We haven't
2:23:31
Speaker 1: had the public accounting of what happened. We haven't had
2:23:35
Speaker 1: the congressional hearings been There have been some congressional hearings,
2:23:39
Speaker 1: but they've been low key operations. There has been a
2:23:42
Speaker 1: lack of and I don't you know, there has been
2:23:45
Speaker 1: a lack of interest in this from the mainstream news media.
2:23:48
Speaker 1: There's been a lack of interest in this from frankly,
2:23:50
Speaker 1: even the more conspiratorial corners of Mega. It's strange and
2:23:56
Speaker 1: this lack of what I would call of investigative closure, right,
2:24:05
Speaker 1: you know, and a better understanding of who this guy was.
2:24:10
Speaker 1: This the Butler assassin was the fact that none of
2:24:15
Speaker 1: us his name does not roll off the tongue. Right now,
2:24:18
Speaker 1: you could say, well, that part of that is we've
2:24:20
Speaker 1: all learned our lesson. We don't want to We don't
2:24:22
Speaker 1: want to elevate these folks and turn them into cult heroes.
2:24:25
Speaker 1: Right Certainly, there's certainly a real fear of that, considering
2:24:31
Speaker 1: how much the assassin, how much fame. Frankly that they
2:24:38
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to say his name, and I
2:24:39
Speaker 1: do know his name. The fact that his name is
2:24:41
Speaker 1: on the tip of my tongue but not the assassin
2:24:44
Speaker 1: that just missed Donald Trump, I think tells you you
2:24:47
Speaker 1: know what's gotten more coverage and all of that. So
2:24:50
Speaker 1: I do think that I don't want these people to
2:24:54
Speaker 1: become famous. So I think some of this we we
2:25:00
Speaker 1: should chalk up to being a bit more responsible on
2:25:03
Speaker 1: what we But I look, it's likely that we see
2:25:10
Speaker 1: what happened, which was you had a secret service that
2:25:14
Speaker 1: was overly stretched, that was trying to provide security details
2:25:20
Speaker 1: for more principles than they've ever tried before at a
2:25:23
Speaker 1: time when they were stretched with resources, and so they
2:25:27
Speaker 1: had to rely on local law enforcement. That weren't experienced
2:25:31
Speaker 1: at dealing with snipers and things like that. I mean,
2:25:35
Speaker 1: I think we know the answer of how this happened.
2:25:37
Speaker 1: It was just bad preparation, bad you.
2:25:40
Speaker 2: Know, in a stretch.
2:25:41
Speaker 1: But the fact that we haven't had that report out there,
2:25:43
Speaker 1: the fact that this isn't sort of been more front
2:25:47
Speaker 1: and center, the lack of interest from lawmakers into this,
2:25:52
Speaker 1: I will just say it actually only allows conspiracy theories
2:25:56
Speaker 1: to foment. And I think this has been a and
2:26:01
Speaker 1: that I said, you know, do you trust? I don't
2:26:04
Speaker 1: trust anything that comes out of this Justice Department right
2:26:06
Speaker 1: now with Todd Lanch in charge, the president's personal lawyer,
2:26:09
Speaker 1: I don't trust anything that Cash Petel puts his hands on.
2:26:12
Speaker 1: Right he doesn't have credibilite. It's he is not going
2:26:14
Speaker 1: to be a credible person. But I would trust a
2:26:17
Speaker 1: bipartisan commission to put together a report on this. This
2:26:21
Speaker 1: is this, you know, I look at that Butler moment,
2:26:27
Speaker 1: and we were this close to what could have been
2:26:29
Speaker 1: a hot civil wharf if things had gone the wrong
2:26:31
Speaker 1: way like that was such you know, I think we
2:26:37
Speaker 1: deserve a better understanding of the shooter's motive, what happened,
2:26:43
Speaker 1: how did this happen? And I don't feel like you're right.
2:26:47
Speaker 1: I don't feel like as a news story we have
2:26:51
Speaker 1: But this gets at our own government. Our own elected
2:26:54
Speaker 1: officials have not shown enough carry out. There's only so
2:26:57
Speaker 1: much we in the media can do. It is Congress
2:27:01
Speaker 1: that has the power to convene, the power to subpoena,
2:27:04
Speaker 1: the power to investigate like this and that lack of curiosity,
2:27:11
Speaker 1: I guess that's the way I would put it. I'm
2:27:12
Speaker 1: not gonna I share your.
2:27:17
Speaker 2: I think.
2:27:18
Speaker 1: My guess is it's one of those you know, why
2:27:22
Speaker 1: do I feel like under any other circumstance we would
2:27:25
Speaker 1: have known a hell of a lot more about this assassin?
2:27:27
Speaker 1: And the answer is you're right. And like I said,
2:27:32
Speaker 1: the lack of that sort of investigative closure, I think
2:27:35
Speaker 1: has only opened a door to more conspiracies and that's
2:27:38
Speaker 1: not healthy Wayiam W. Northampton, Mass Right, Hey, Chack, have
2:27:43
Speaker 1: a question about the luxury jet President Trump accepted from
2:27:46
Speaker 1: the Katari government. If US taxpayers are spending hundreds of
2:27:49
Speaker 1: millions to upgrade it for use as Air Force one,
2:27:51
Speaker 1: how would the president take it with them after leaving
2:27:53
Speaker 1: office instead of it remaining government property? And what happened
2:27:55
Speaker 1: to the classified systems and equipment installed a taxpayers expense. Well,
2:27:59
Speaker 1: first of all, I think I'm pretty sure he can't
2:28:04
Speaker 1: just take the plane. That Congress has to approve it.
2:28:08
Speaker 1: And I think you've you've hopefully heard about I think
2:28:11
Speaker 1: it was there's this great story that Lincoln got this
2:28:15
Speaker 1: gift that he wanted to keep it. He went to
2:28:16
Speaker 1: Congress and Congress said, no, you can't keep it, a
2:28:19
Speaker 1: gift that he got his president. I mean, even Donald
2:28:24
Speaker 1: Trump knows the rules. By the way, during the Dodgers ceremony,
2:28:28
Speaker 1: they gave him a ring and he goes, oh, man,
2:28:32
Speaker 1: I love this ring. I don't want to have to
2:28:33
Speaker 1: report it. He knows the rules, right, he doesn't get
2:28:37
Speaker 1: to keep any of this. I think either. There are
2:28:42
Speaker 1: I think, but Congress would have to so put it
2:28:46
Speaker 1: this way, I don't. I'm pretty confident this plane's never
2:28:53
Speaker 1: going to make it to his library.
2:28:57
Speaker 2: I'm also.
2:29:00
Speaker 1: I'd also put money in a prediction market that says
2:29:04
Speaker 1: his library isn't built before twenty thirty at the earliest.
2:29:06
Speaker 1: And I don't know when it gets built, but it
2:29:08
Speaker 1: ain't going to be by twenty thirty, probably not by
2:29:11
Speaker 1: twenty thirty two, probably by not twenty thirty four. Now
2:29:14
Speaker 1: you can say, well, shoot, obaba, look it took ten years.
2:29:19
Speaker 1: You know, Donald Trump, the developer. I'll be shocked if
2:29:24
Speaker 1: he's got something ready in ten years. So he's not
2:29:30
Speaker 1: going to be able to take this plane with him,
2:29:32
Speaker 1: not without an Act of Congress. And I don't think
2:29:35
Speaker 1: there's going to be apply and enough Congress that's going
2:29:37
Speaker 1: to give it to him. But it has to be
2:29:40
Speaker 1: an a Congress. You have to as president, he has
2:29:43
Speaker 1: to it is Congress gets to decide whether he gets
2:29:45
Speaker 1: to take this with him. Think about that when you're
2:29:48
Speaker 1: casting your vote for Congress. This question comes from Michael
2:29:51
Speaker 1: t Chicago, Illinois. He says, hey, where's my five timers, Cup?
2:29:54
Speaker 1: And here's a good are We are working with a
2:29:58
Speaker 1: new we are working with our first merchandising vendor, big
2:30:02
Speaker 1: news here. And we know that some of you have
2:30:05
Speaker 1: even asked for maybe personalized T shirts or hats that
2:30:09
Speaker 1: use the phrase.
2:30:10
Speaker 2: But I digress.
2:30:12
Speaker 1: So point is, Michael, we hear you, the people hear you,
2:30:17
Speaker 1: and at the Chuck toodcast LLC, we're working on it. Anyway,
2:30:22
Speaker 1: He says, dare Chuck, I really enjoyed the conversation with Erape.
2:30:25
Speaker 1: My question is about the people around President Trump. What
2:30:27
Speaker 1: motivates those closest to him, like Todd Blanche, the Press secretary,
2:30:30
Speaker 1: members of the cabinet. Do they generally believe what they're
2:30:32
Speaker 1: saying or is it simply political strategy that gets left
2:30:35
Speaker 1: behind once the cameras are off. So you are asking
2:30:40
Speaker 1: me a question that my missus toodcast will often ask me, Hey,
2:30:44
Speaker 1: is this person really that trumpy? Or do you know
2:30:47
Speaker 1: who's behind them that really believes this stuff?
2:30:49
Speaker 2: At?
2:30:49
Speaker 1: Who?
2:30:50
Speaker 2: And who does it?
2:30:54
Speaker 1: And look, all I can give you is my my
2:31:00
Speaker 1: belief right. So I look at a guy like top,
2:31:04
Speaker 1: I think there's I think most of the people around
2:31:06
Speaker 1: Trump are opportunists. I think most of the people Trump
2:31:11
Speaker 1: likes to pick our people that he knows will be
2:31:14
Speaker 1: loyal to him because he knows no other president would
2:31:17
Speaker 1: have given him that opportunity. No other president would have
2:31:19
Speaker 1: remotely considered them for attorney general. So it takes people
2:31:23
Speaker 1: who may or may not have been loyal to you.
2:31:26
Speaker 1: They become loyal to you because they also know only
2:31:29
Speaker 1: Donald Trump would have given me the opportunity to be
2:31:31
Speaker 1: attorney general. So I owe Donald Trump my opportunity to
2:31:34
Speaker 1: be attorney general. So I think the safest presumption is opportunism.
2:31:42
Speaker 1: In the first term, you had, you had a you
2:31:46
Speaker 1: had opportunism mixed with some arrogance. And this is where
2:31:52
Speaker 1: people underestimate Trump. This is where I would where I
2:31:57
Speaker 1: in the category I put John Bolton in a category
2:32:00
Speaker 1: I might put a Rex Tillerson. A gemmatis that Trump
2:32:10
Speaker 1: can be managed, that Trump can be persuaded, that I
2:32:13
Speaker 1: can manage Trump. Bolton was going to get Trump to
2:32:16
Speaker 1: do his bidding. That they all sort of view themselves
2:32:21
Speaker 1: as smarter than Trump, so they'll be able to get
2:32:23
Speaker 1: one by it. And the thing with Trump is he's
2:32:27
Speaker 1: not very book smart. He doesn't know anything about the
2:32:31
Speaker 1: history of Iran. He doesn't know anything about the history
2:32:33
Speaker 1: of the United States and Iran. He probably has been
2:32:37
Speaker 1: briefed about it once or twice in May could cherry
2:32:39
Speaker 1: pick a fact by accident once or twice and then
2:32:46
Speaker 1: he uh. But what he does sniff out are people
2:32:50
Speaker 1: that are trying to sort of play him. That's what
2:32:54
Speaker 1: he's really good at. And that's where I think that's
2:32:58
Speaker 1: why this administration probably it's a handful of more truer believers,
2:33:05
Speaker 1: Like I don't think Susie Wills is a true believer.
2:33:07
Speaker 1: I think Susie Wiles at first just wanted to stick
2:33:10
Speaker 1: it to DeSantis, and she did. And then you know, look,
2:33:16
Speaker 1: I think there are a bunch, whether it's Marko Rubio,
2:33:18
Speaker 1: Susie Willis, I think they are like, look, I'll take
2:33:21
Speaker 1: the hit because I can get this part of I
2:33:24
Speaker 1: can get this, or I can get that. So I
2:33:25
Speaker 1: do think ultimately opportunism is what drives these folks. You know,
2:33:33
Speaker 1: it's I'm very always, very curious who would actually be
2:33:36
Speaker 1: in the foxhole with him on a January sixth he
2:33:39
Speaker 1: found out how few people were willing to be in
2:33:41
Speaker 1: the foxhole with him on January six He probably has
2:33:45
Speaker 1: more in his west wing staff this time that would
2:33:50
Speaker 1: go along than the last time, but not as many
2:33:56
Speaker 1: as he thinks. Because if you join a if you
2:34:02
Speaker 1: join an administration out of opportunism, then then the second
2:34:05
Speaker 1: things go south, you usually are among the first bail.
2:34:10
Speaker 2: And so.
2:34:12
Speaker 1: That's probably how I would characterize most of these folks.
2:34:18
Speaker 1: All right, Next question David P. From North Scottsdale, Oh,
2:34:23
Speaker 1: feels like a willbonism anyway, Hey, Chuck. During your recent
2:34:26
Speaker 1: discussion about the origin of political terms origins of political terms,
2:34:30
Speaker 1: you mentioned smoke Field Room, But I'd love to hear
2:34:32
Speaker 1: you explain the history of the term lobbyist and it's
2:34:34
Speaker 1: supposed connection to Willard Hotel, even if the story has
2:34:36
Speaker 1: been embellished over the years. The glisters would be fascinating.
2:34:39
Speaker 2: Love the show.
2:34:40
Speaker 1: David P.
2:34:40
Speaker 2: In North Scottsdale.
2:34:41
Speaker 1: Yes, well, look, I appreciate the homework assignment, because, look,
2:34:47
Speaker 1: the this is one of those where the general belief
2:34:51
Speaker 1: and the actual truth. Man, let's just say they have
2:34:55
Speaker 1: less in common than you think. But you can thank
2:34:58
Speaker 1: the Willard Hotel for continuing the myth that the term
2:35:04
Speaker 1: lobbyist was born out of their lobby. After a little
2:35:08
Speaker 1: bit of research, I'll give you a quick, quick, little
2:35:15
Speaker 1: history of it that we put together. So look, the
2:35:20
Speaker 1: origin the mythology in America is that Grant like to
2:35:25
Speaker 1: go to the lobby of the Willard Hotel to smoke
2:35:27
Speaker 1: his cigars, have a brandy and while he was there,
2:35:29
Speaker 1: people would constantly come up to him asking for favors.
2:35:32
Speaker 1: And it supposedly is what made it, what invented the
2:35:36
Speaker 1: term lobbyists. But it isn't where the word itself came from,
2:35:40
Speaker 1: because the word itself was literally based on architecture. Because
2:35:44
Speaker 1: in the sixteen forties it actually already had a political
2:35:49
Speaker 1: meeting in the UK because the lobby of the House
2:35:53
Speaker 1: of Commons would be where parliament members of Parliament would
2:35:56
Speaker 1: meet constituents and petitioners. That is sort of the room,
2:36:01
Speaker 1: the lobby, and then you quickly sort of right the
2:36:05
Speaker 1: profession itself, you know, that was the original room that
2:36:08
Speaker 1: sort of gave the name lobbyist. Eventually in America, the
2:36:12
Speaker 1: first use of it wasn't in Washington. It was in Albany.
2:36:15
Speaker 1: But you learn this a lot, right there was Albany
2:36:18
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century was this was basically the number
2:36:21
Speaker 1: two center of the political universe after Washington. So this
2:36:25
Speaker 1: isn't a surprise that a lot of sort of political
2:36:27
Speaker 1: things sort of grew out of Albany and made its
2:36:31
Speaker 1: way to Washington. But in eighteen seventeen there was a
2:36:34
Speaker 1: New York newspaper that referred to William Irving as a
2:36:37
Speaker 1: lobby member of the state legislature, and that then it
2:36:40
Speaker 1: meant someone who wasn't elected but spent their time trying
2:36:44
Speaker 1: to influence those that were elected so and it was
2:36:48
Speaker 1: within a year those people started to regularly be referred
2:36:51
Speaker 1: to as actually lobbying, and in eighteen twenty you actually
2:36:56
Speaker 1: started seeing the verb used as lobbying, and by eighteen
2:36:59
Speaker 1: four the word lobbyist. All of that took place for
2:37:03
Speaker 1: Grant ever showed up to spoke a cigar in the Willard.
2:37:06
Speaker 1: But it is worth noting one of the reasons it
2:37:11
Speaker 1: became sort of lore with the Willard Hotel is that
2:37:14
Speaker 1: the Willard Hotel wanted people to think that that's where
2:37:17
Speaker 1: it was born. And I guess you could argue that
2:37:19
Speaker 1: in Washington, maybe it is the place that was where
2:37:24
Speaker 1: it was incubated the most. And of course the fact
2:37:27
Speaker 1: that it's Grant is actually a bit of a dig
2:37:30
Speaker 1: at Grant, because Grant was known as somebody at the
2:37:33
Speaker 1: time who was always willing to sort of trade for favors,
2:37:41
Speaker 1: and certainly that was the reputation that he had until
2:37:43
Speaker 1: our friend Ron Sure now rehabilitated Grant's image in his
2:37:47
Speaker 1: most recent biography. So David, I appreciate you suggesting the
2:37:52
Speaker 1: history lesson for all of us listeners here all right,
2:38:05
Speaker 1: last question, it comes from a man Adam B.
2:38:08
Speaker 2: And Davy Anywrights.
2:38:09
Speaker 1: Hey, Chuck, what do you think of the BBC model
2:38:11
Speaker 1: for news, even if it's funding model wouldn't work in
2:38:13
Speaker 1: the United States? Yeah, that's the biggest problem. Do you
2:38:15
Speaker 1: think the BBC's approach to public media offers lessons compared
2:38:19
Speaker 1: to outlets like MPR? Also, are there any English language
2:38:22
Speaker 1: international news sources you regularly rely on form policy coverage
2:38:26
Speaker 1: appreciate it? So, look, I think that, Look, anytime you
2:38:30
Speaker 1: have government funding of news and information, you're always going
2:38:33
Speaker 1: to have a deep chunk of folks who are skeptical
2:38:36
Speaker 1: or who assume that at a moment's notice, a dial
2:38:38
Speaker 1: could be turned and sometimes there'll be information. You won't
2:38:43
Speaker 1: get everything because of omission, not necessarily because of propaganda,
2:38:48
Speaker 1: and that sometimes is just as bad. If a government
2:38:52
Speaker 1: funded outlet doesn't report something because it might look bad
2:38:56
Speaker 1: and they just ignore a story, well that could be
2:38:58
Speaker 1: just as bad as spewing propaganda. So I just I
2:39:03
Speaker 1: blanche at that a little bit. I but I do
2:39:09
Speaker 1: think it might be a local news answer, right. I
2:39:13
Speaker 1: think that local news is a public good. I think
2:39:15
Speaker 1: it's a public service. I think that there needs that
2:39:19
Speaker 1: that some I think that the BBC is a better
2:39:23
Speaker 1: model locally than it is nationally. I'm not saying I
2:39:28
Speaker 1: want city halls to be running news organizations, you know,
2:39:31
Speaker 1: That's not what I'm advocating. But maybe a public private
2:39:37
Speaker 1: you know, nonprofit partnership that helps fund independent local media
2:39:43
Speaker 1: is a model.
2:39:49
Speaker 2: You know.
2:39:49
Speaker 1: The way the UK works is everybody pays, right, you
2:39:52
Speaker 1: have it's like a surcharge in order to essentially, you know,
2:39:55
Speaker 1: so that it's it's not who we are, right, We're
2:40:02
Speaker 1: just never gonna I don't think our culture is ever
2:40:06
Speaker 1: going to embrace it. And I think sometimes again, I
2:40:10
Speaker 1: think in order to get information to underserved communities and
2:40:14
Speaker 1: on local news, I think there's a public media, but
2:40:18
Speaker 1: I also would like it to be public private. I
2:40:21
Speaker 1: just think anytime you have government that can it all,
2:40:25
Speaker 1: has some sort of ability to turn the knob if
2:40:29
Speaker 1: you will, right, That's where it's it's a little troubling
2:40:32
Speaker 1: to me. You're asked about for look in the English
2:40:35
Speaker 1: language World Financial Times, the Economists, how at times of
2:40:43
Speaker 1: London time, I try to read the English language version
2:40:48
Speaker 1: of the Spa, Spain's national paper.
2:40:56
Speaker 2: I do try to of.
2:40:59
Speaker 1: English English language version, at least a weekly version their
2:41:03
Speaker 1: Spiegel in Germany. There is a couple of English language
2:41:11
Speaker 1: Asian papers out of both Japan and out of Taiwan
2:41:18
Speaker 1: that I try to keep an eye on. So, but
2:41:21
Speaker 1: if you're asking me what do I regularly read outside
2:41:26
Speaker 1: of US papers, it's Financial Times. It's probably the biggest one,
2:41:31
Speaker 1: more than any and I think it's a boy I would.
2:41:34
Speaker 1: I would highly recommend it as a as if you
2:41:37
Speaker 1: only had one international source outside of US news organization,
2:41:42
Speaker 1: I would, I would. I would endorse the Financial Times,
2:41:47
Speaker 1: All right? With that? That does it for questions. This
2:41:50
Speaker 1: week I had a whole rant about the Hall of Fame,
2:41:54
Speaker 1: and I think I touched on it briefly, but I
2:41:56
Speaker 1: have a new version of it. I've gone long, but
2:41:59
Speaker 1: needless to say, here's my short answer, right, I would
2:42:08
Speaker 1: like our friends at Baseball Reference to start a wiki
2:42:11
Speaker 1: hall of Fame for baseball, and I want to get
2:42:14
Speaker 1: rid of the writers as voters. I think baseball fans,
2:42:17
Speaker 1: the super smart, the Baseball Reference obsessed people should have
2:42:21
Speaker 1: a say and we should just you know, and and
2:42:25
Speaker 1: and it all should be out there. Roger Clement should
2:42:28
Speaker 1: be in the Hall of Fame, with all the caveats
2:42:30
Speaker 1: that go with it. Barry Bond should be in the
2:42:31
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, and how Cooperstown chooses to present the
2:42:34
Speaker 1: displays is Cooperstown's decision. But we should have as baseball
2:42:40
Speaker 1: fans of seventy five percent of us, and I think
2:42:42
Speaker 1: we had to use the same measurement a wiki thing. Right,
2:42:45
Speaker 1: If seventy five percent of us believe Barry Bond's a
2:42:47
Speaker 1: hall of fame? Are five there it is? And how
2:42:51
Speaker 1: do we become a voter? You prove some level of
2:42:53
Speaker 1: knowledge of baseball, and you open it up a little bit.
2:42:55
Speaker 1: You open up this aperture because I continue to go
2:42:58
Speaker 1: back to the following thing. The writers think the Hall
2:43:01
Speaker 1: of Fame is for them, when ultimately the only people
2:43:03
Speaker 1: that care and visit about the Hall of Fame are
2:43:05
Speaker 1: baseball fans. And yet they're the ones that don't have
2:43:07
Speaker 1: any vote or any saying this whatsoever. And I think,
2:43:11
Speaker 1: if you want, just like so many institutions have less
2:43:14
Speaker 1: and less credibility all the time, the more of the
2:43:17
Speaker 1: public you have involved, the more credibility you have. The
2:43:20
Speaker 1: less of the public you have involved, the less credibility
2:43:23
Speaker 1: you have. That applies to a lot of things. It
2:43:26
Speaker 1: also applies to the baseball Hall of Fame. It applies
2:43:28
Speaker 1: to the football Hall of Fame, it applies to the
2:43:30
Speaker 1: Basketball Hall of Fame. It applies to any institution that's
2:43:32
Speaker 1: out there that tries to create a velvet rope on
2:43:35
Speaker 1: who gets to decide who's in, when ultimately, the only
2:43:39
Speaker 1: reason these folks are viable and interesting to anybody is
2:43:42
Speaker 1: because of the fans. So anyway, I'd like to see
2:43:48
Speaker 1: the Wiki Hall of Fame again. Cooperstown can display who
2:43:50
Speaker 1: they want. But you know, like a guy like Andrew
2:43:55
Speaker 1: Jones would have been in the Hall of Fame a
2:43:56
Speaker 1: long time ago, and he only took forever to get
2:43:59
Speaker 1: in because he was overshadowed during his years at the
2:44:01
Speaker 1: Braves by those three Hall of Fame pitchers and by
2:44:05
Speaker 1: Chipper Jones. And that happens to plenty of guys who
2:44:08
Speaker 1: are sort of when you have teams that have four
2:44:10
Speaker 1: five Hall of Famers on them, like the Braves of
2:44:12
Speaker 1: the nineties dead, you sometimes have those gaps that happened
2:44:17
Speaker 1: to some Steelers. It took them a little bit too
2:44:19
Speaker 1: long to get in the Hall of Fame because you know,
2:44:22
Speaker 1: the first four or five Steelers everybody knows, and then
2:44:25
Speaker 1: then you realize, hey, wait, he was a Hall of
2:44:27
Speaker 1: Famer too, someone's else green Wood, So was it you know?
2:44:31
Speaker 1: And that, But I think we would have had a
2:44:36
Speaker 1: real argument about Jeff Kent. Is Jeff Canna hall of
2:44:39
Speaker 1: Famer because he got to bat behind Barry Bonds or
2:44:42
Speaker 1: bat in front of Barry Bonds? Or is Jeff Canna
2:44:44
Speaker 1: hall of Famer no matter where he played and how
2:44:46
Speaker 1: and when he played? Right?
2:44:47
Speaker 2: So I just think that.
2:44:51
Speaker 1: Some of it, I say selfishly, I want to say,
2:44:54
Speaker 1: and I don't think I should get to say over
2:44:56
Speaker 1: and above other baseball fans. I think all of us
2:44:58
Speaker 1: fans should have some say in that, not just the
2:45:01
Speaker 1: right if you want to make the writers they get
2:45:05
Speaker 1: ten votes to my one as a super fan, fine,
2:45:09
Speaker 1: But I think we would have a Hall of Fame
2:45:12
Speaker 1: that was more accepted. And yeah, there'd be controversial people
2:45:15
Speaker 1: in it, but you know what, they're already controversial people
2:45:18
Speaker 1: in the Hall of Fame. Ty Cobbs an asshole and
2:45:20
Speaker 1: a racist, but he also owns a whole bunch of
2:45:23
Speaker 1: records that put him in the Hall of Fame. And
2:45:26
Speaker 1: in my wiki Hall of Fame here the baseball reference
2:45:29
Speaker 1: in my dream scenario runs and administers. We'll put the
2:45:34
Speaker 1: character reminders on your wiki plaque, but your performance on
2:45:42
Speaker 1: the field will also matter to anyway just.
2:45:46
Speaker 2: A small ottle rant.
2:45:47
Speaker 1: This was an odd Hall of Fame class because it
2:45:50
Speaker 1: feels like, you know, there was no when you have
2:45:52
Speaker 1: a first or second balloder, you know you have a
2:45:54
Speaker 1: like a you know, a huge top tier. This is
2:45:58
Speaker 1: one where you have three players who all were Hall
2:46:01
Speaker 1: of Fame caliber, but they were never the number one
2:46:03
Speaker 1: star in their team. So it lacked a little star
2:46:05
Speaker 1: power this year, right, So maybe when it lacks star power,
2:46:08
Speaker 1: you're more likely to gravitate towards that. And I found
2:46:12
Speaker 1: myself gravitating there, you know, with Kent. You know, I
2:46:16
Speaker 1: think that's a debate. Beltran is a guy. I also
2:46:20
Speaker 1: think it's more of a debate. I'm glad for him
2:46:23
Speaker 1: that he got in, because they think he earned He
2:46:26
Speaker 1: was a close I think his playoff performance is that
2:46:28
Speaker 1: one year where he felt like he hit like ninety
2:46:31
Speaker 1: thousand home runs during the playoffs. That year that the
2:46:34
Speaker 1: Astros inexplicably, I think got to the World Series as
2:46:38
Speaker 1: a National League team before they made the switch to
2:46:40
Speaker 1: the other league. And so I'll never forget that run.
2:46:44
Speaker 1: It was like a Hall of Fame playoff run, right,
2:46:47
Speaker 1: So I think having a moment matters there, But the
2:46:51
Speaker 1: most worthy guy was the one in some ways that
2:46:53
Speaker 1: was the least celebrated, and it was Andrew Jones. So anyway,
2:46:58
Speaker 1: with that, enjoy your weekend. I will see you in
2:47:02
Speaker 1: about seventy two hours with the Monday episode.
2:47:05
Speaker 2: Thanks very much,