Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Bruce Mehlman - Debt, AI, & An Economy That Isn't Working for Everyone

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Interview Only w/ Bruce Mehlman - Debt, AI, & An Economy That Isn't Working for Everyone · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
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• 0:11
  Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be.
• 0:13
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• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
• 0:17
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• 0:21
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• 0:25
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• 0:28
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• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
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  Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
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  Speaker 1: you've done this. So look, I get it. I think
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of space. You see a lot of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space. What I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: like about these chapter folks, I've spent time with them.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare and
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  Speaker 1: all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing. The
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: whole point of this is to make this easier and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: less confusing. Okay, so look, take the skepticism you already
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: have in all of this, point it at your own
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: plan for 20 minutes.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: It's free. There's no pressure. And then call chapter today
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: at 980-734-4255. Three, nine, eight, five.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Well, joining me now for one of my I guess
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: we're doing this about quarterly. It's my longtime pal, Bruce Melman. Hopefully,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: you know him from what is always a terrific Sunday
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: morning read the six church Sundays that he puts out.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: It's a free sub stack. Age of Disruption is what
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: it's called. He's got a day job. He works on
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the part of politics that I think every American would
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: claim they hate, government relations. But it's actually one of
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the things that, frankly, our founders knew would exist and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: should exist. It's a government relations firm, and we all
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: need to relate with the government every now and then.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: So we will talk a little bit about that. But mostly,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: what Bruce and I usually like to talk about is
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: trying to help explain, I think what we... And Bruce,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like this is
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: ultimately your motive too, which is just simply trying to
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: explain Washington to America. And sometimes, as I used to
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: say in my other job, explain America to Washington.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty much what I do for a living.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: I've been mostly in the technology space. So I always
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: say it is explain Silicon Valley to Washington and Washington
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: to Silicon Valley. But we speak different languages, but we
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: need each other. And so you need the translators, the middleware,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: whether they're in journalism or government relations.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Look, obviously, we're going to talk about all things data centers,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: big tech here. You've done a lot of charts on it.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I've written a lot about it. But I actually want
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to kick things off on a topic that I dealt
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: with on my last podcast and you dealt with in
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: your last Six Shirts Sunday, which is this sort of
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: You know, this sort of bifurcation of this economy, right?
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It is literally a tale of two cities, right? You
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: can use that metaphor. You can grind it into the ground.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It's the best of times. It's the worst of times.
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  Speaker 1: If you are in a certain sector, if you're a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: certain level of investor, things are going great. You do
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: see these investments kicking in. But what's not happening is
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: it's not getting to the masses, right? And we see
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: things are flat, if not falling behind, if you look
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: at what inflation has done. So what is your assessment
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  Speaker 1: of this economy? Is this a good economy? Is this
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: a bad economy? Or does it really depend on where
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: you sit?
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  Speaker 3: Well, everything depends on where you sit. Although I start,
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  Speaker 3: I don't say it's the best of times, worst of times.
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  Speaker 3: It's the best of times and most stressed of times.
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  Speaker 3: And there is the biggest dichotomy between lots of hopeful
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: economic indicators and the vibe and how people feel.
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  Speaker 2: And the fact that, you know, even.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: If your 401k is at record levels, millennials at this point,
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: at this age, on average, are wealthier adjusted for inflation
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: than my Gen X or than the boomers were. But
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  Speaker 3: they feel so much more stressed, so much more worried
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: about the future, so much less confident about economic opportunity.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: I tend to think, you know, many Americans own 401ks.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: It's true there's a much greater wealth concentration at the top, but.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: The.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Extraordinary AI-driven tailwind is benefiting anybody who has S &
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: P 500, who's in the 401k. House prices are at
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: record highs. Now, that's bad news if you're trying to
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: buy your first home, for sure. But for so many Americans,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: so much of their familial wealth is tied up in
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: their homes. I wish we built enough so that some
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: of the price here wasn't inflated by the lack of
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: supply to meet the need and meet the demand. I
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: tend to think there are a whole lot of positive opportunities.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: What I worry about, what I know we're going to
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: talk about, And when I did my last Substack, it
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: was called Tailwinds. Tailwinds are real. Will they continue? And
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: I had a picture of Wile E.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Coyote. Because to me, Wile.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: E. would usually have a rocket strapped to his back,
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: and he would go tearing off, and then it would
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: often explode.
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  Speaker 2: And what I don't know, and what I think.
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  Speaker 3: The race is, is will we see the AI investments
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  Speaker 3: pay off through economy-wide productivity?
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  Speaker 2: Pay off.
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  Speaker 3: in job enablement, payoff and entrepreneurship opportunities before the music
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  Speaker 3: stops and the debt obligations and the off balance sheet
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  Speaker 3: obligations exceed their ability, their cashflow to pay it back.
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  Speaker 3: And we have to kind of go through the sort
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: of bust we saw with the railroads.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and that's the question I have, right? You know,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: so we have sort of a couple of different examples
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: during technological transformations where we've seen The investments paid off
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and there was a bust. You just brought up one
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  Speaker 1: of them, the railroads. You could argue that the great
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: pets.com recession, right? I don't know how else to call it,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: but that's in some ways, right? When you just say
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the pets.com bubble, right? Everybody knows what you're referring to
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  Speaker 1: of a certain age. you know, that was one of
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: those moments where it almost was simultaneous. We saw the
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  Speaker 1: productivity gains and the bubble burst at the same time,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: which is why it had minimal impact. It had impact,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: but it was not, you know, that also happened literally
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: within months of 9-11. And there was just, there was
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the air that sort of.
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  Speaker 2: I don't want to.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Say it mitigated the bubble burst. And so maybe our
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: pain thresholds we forget, but it's certainly, I think it is, uh,
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  Speaker 1: We don't remember how potentially fearful people were about the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: dot-com bubble.
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  Speaker 2: In that moment.
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  Speaker 1: The railroads is a bigger one, right? Because the bust
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  Speaker 1: happened before any of the upside was experienced. And in fact,
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  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people lost their shirts. But then
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  Speaker 1: we got it back about 15 years later. So where
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  Speaker 1: are we in AI right now? Is this the railroads
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  Speaker 1: or is this dot-com?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's not just the railroads, which were boom and bust,
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  Speaker 3: but that was true of electricity and electrification and the
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  Speaker 3: utilities back in the day. You know, pets.com, another way
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  Speaker 3: to say it would be the fiber build out and
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  Speaker 3: global crossing. And if anything, I think the- lack of
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  Speaker 3: a bust might be the exception. The rule seems to
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: be irrational exuberance, a ton of investment, things that get
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  Speaker 3: built and deployed, ultimately getting a little over their skis
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  Speaker 3: and ahead of their ability to get paid out. But
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  Speaker 3: it's always been in the interest of the United States.
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  Speaker 3: The phrase you use, Chuck, that I love the most,
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  Speaker 3: and I know you write about this a ton, this
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  Speaker 3: more than any other theme animates what I write, is
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  Speaker 3: Recency bias and the need to read history because it
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  Speaker 3: doesn't feel like the dot-com bubble was such a big
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  Speaker 3: deal now to you and to me. I worked at
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  Speaker 3: Cisco Systems when the dot-com bubble happened. It felt like
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  Speaker 3: a really big deal. And for a lot of folks
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: who had ridden the NASDAQ up, it took like 15
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: years for the NASDAQ to reach its top again. The
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: reason it doesn't feel– nobody on this call remembers the railroad,
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  Speaker 3: so it feels like, eh, boom and bust– These things
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  Speaker 3: feel real and really stressful when you're living through them.
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  Speaker 3: And one of the great lessons of life and of
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  Speaker 3: history is we make it through and we get on
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  Speaker 3: with our business and all of their lives. And the
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  Speaker 3: future at least always has been meaningfully better than the past.
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  Speaker 2: It is true.
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  Speaker 1: Now, look, I think the added concern is this debt
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  Speaker 1: situation that we have. And it's not just our debt, right?
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  Speaker 1: This is And the question is, if the timing of
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  Speaker 1: the AI bust happens at the wrong time and we
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: just don't have the levers, I mean, you look at
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: interest rates right now, he's got to raise them. He's
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: likely to raise them. It'll be fascinating to see, when
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: I refer to Kevin Warsh, how Trump's going to handle that.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: But he has to raise them. And yet, my God,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: we're going to increase the cost of our debt.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Like it's not good for the fiscal bottom line of
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the country, but if we don't do it, we're never
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: going to tame inflation. And yet at the same time,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I had somebody make an argument to me that says, well, actually,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: if this is the situation we're in, then we should
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: be dropping interest rates. We need to get back near
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: to zero. And I'm like, we're going to be paying
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: $ 30 for hamburgers if we do that. So I do
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: feel like while I'm with you, I think we're, you know,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I'm I used to say I quote Churchill when Churchill says,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Americans always do the right thing after they've
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: exhausted every other path. Turns out he never said that.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: But it was somebody that none of us have ever
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: heard of that said it. But it sounds better if
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: we could claim Churchill said it. And I do feel
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: this way. But I worry here that we don't have–
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of room here. We don't
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: have a lot of room to maneuver. And the bus
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: could come at a time where the government really doesn't
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: have the capacity to bail some people out that probably
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: think they're going to get bailed out.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: So while I both feel the way you do, I
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: also take some comfort, Chuck. in the fact that people
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: felt like America's debt was raising to historically high levels.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: We were running large annual deficits, and then the GFC happened.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: And prior to the GFC, people said, we don't have
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: any room. They went bonkers with the debt, of course.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: And there was also QE and expansion of the money supply.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: When you do GFC, you're referring to the financial crisis.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Correct. In 2007, 2008, 2009.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Well, that binge of debt, followed by zero interest rate policy,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: as it turned out, didn't create inflation. People didn't realize
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: the effect of globalization, especially China.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: And it was disinflationary.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: So while debt kept going up, we didn't have the
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: inflation that everybody knew would happen if we tried to
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: do things like we did then.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Then what happens?
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Then you have COVID. And COVID, they go completely insane
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: in dropping interest rates to zero and ladling on debt.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: In 10 years, we've more than doubled from $ 20 to
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: $ 40 trillion, which is not for me to suggest debt
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: or even deficits don't matter.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: It's only that people like you and I who say
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: we can no longer handle it. The next one's going
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: to break us have been consistently wrong for years.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: But we now have a treasury secretary manipulating the bond market.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: And well, because he has to. I'm not going to
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: sit here. I, you know, I I wish Besson is
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: wish he would follow the advice of just do and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: don't speak. I don't think, you know, when he speaks,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: he doesn't add the value that sometimes Treasury Secretary could.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: But I'll just set that aside a second.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And the fact that he's feeling the need to do
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: that is a little bit scary. And look, I don't
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: this is, you know, I'm getting I'm getting really past
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: my skis when it comes to my expertise on bond market.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: You probably understand this better than I do, but we
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: should be quite concerned about this.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: No, I think there are a lot of reasons to
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: be concerned, although you could look back and you could
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: say bonds have been suffering since at least twenty twenty two.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: which was a worse year for long bonds than this
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: year has been. I still don't quite understand the Besant
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: maneuver because he didn't manipulate the markets.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: He briefly attempted to intervene. He tried to, and it
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: didn't work. But it's not like it was even secret.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: And the market just said, yeah, we're going to let
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: market forces drive these things.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: I have been and remain really concerned.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: As you know, politicians know that if they raise taxes
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: or cut spending, they'll get fired. And if they cut
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: taxes or raise spending, they'll keep getting hired. But leadership
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: is sometimes doing the hard and the difficult thing before
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: the crisis comes. There is seemingly no political willingness or
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: courage to put their necks out on either party and
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: to say, we need to take the punch bowl away.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: We need to solve these things. I do note, and
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: one of my sub stacks coming up, Chuck, is going
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: to be called the next president. And hopefully you'll have
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: me on next quarter to talk about it. But the
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: next president is going to find the Social Security Trust
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Fund runs out in 2032. The Medicare Trust Fund runs
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: out roughly about the same time. Reagan found a way
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: to extend the life of Social Security, but the politics
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: in the next administration is going to require a grand
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: bipartisan bargain, and the current environment is nothing grand and
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: no bargains. That has me more concerned in that medium term.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I don't believe we have the politics to handle this moment.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: The two parties, this is, look, I'm not going to
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: go off on my tangent about four parties, but This
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: is the problem, right? We've so nationalized our politics that
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: there is– I mean just look at what happened to
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp Perez. They just simply wanted
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: to put a bill on the floor, but it happened
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to help out putting some other bill that the Republicans
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: wanted and the Democrats lost their– you know what? You're like–
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: The House isn't supposed to be a competition to who
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: can screw the other side the most. At some point,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: it is about who's passing legislation or who's trying to
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: do it. And if you don't allow your Jared Goldens
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: or your Don Bacons to cross the aisle every once
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: in a while, but you want to punish them if
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: they do it, we're never going to get anything done.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: No, you're right.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: We've seen that for a while now with the Freedom
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Caucus and on the Republican side.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: I think we're going to get.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: A Freedom Caucus of the left. The herbal tea party. Yeah,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I think Jeffries is going to suddenly feel for Kevin
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: McCarthy in like calling him up for therapy sessions the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: first couple of months that he's speaker.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: Maybe, although the challenge for the Republican Freedom Caucus is
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: they want nothing. So blocking is a winning strategy for them.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: At least historically, the left wing of the left wing
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: was unhappy because you only would spend a billion and
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: not seven billion.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: They want something.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll want a billion more than zero, even if
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: they don't get everything that they want.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: That's fair. That's fair.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: But let's go back to this. You know, it's funny
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you say this about the debt.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: There's no secret plan that nobody's come up with to
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: how to do this, right? I look at it, it's
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: like our immigration issue. We've got like 16 different solutions
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: on a shelf.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Just pick one.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: You know, the simplest one is sort of the 3%, 3%, 3%
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: tax hike, 3% spending cut, right? Like, you know, there
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: are some very sort of, rational ways to do this.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And by the way, the public will support it because
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: if you tell them, well, if they don't do this,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: then we're going to cut because you and I are
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: going to be the first Social Security recipients that's likely
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to get the first mandatory haircut where we're going to
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: get 80% of what we're doing. And I'm going to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: guess a lot of voters aren't going to like that.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Well, you're right, although the idea that the either easy
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: or rational thing is just 3% tax cut, 3% tax hike, 3%
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: spending cut. Nobody would run their business saying all spending
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: is the same and all prices are the same. So
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: it's a little bit like what we saw with the
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: sequestration across the board. You know, dieting by amputation loses
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: the weight, but it's not the way you want to
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: get these things done. There are a lot of solutions.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: People like the Committee for a Responsible Budget spend their lives.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Maya McGinnis, you know, it just goes from dinner to
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: dinner saying the debt, the debt, the debt. She's going
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: to be right at some point. Maybe she's right already.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: And you're right.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: We kind of lack the political courage, the AI angle,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: what Besson said today.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: The hope that And this is hope.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: We're talking on September 2nd here. Anyway, you did it today.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And I just always want to.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: Were that to happen, that might allow growth to grow
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: faster than debt. If your growth is growing faster than
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: your debt, you are, in fact, growing your way out
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: of it, even with annual deficits. The problem we've got
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: right now is that the debt is growing faster than
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: the economy and that interest payments are now the biggest spend, larger,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: in fact, than the national defense. That is not a
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: formula for a competitive nation and a secure nation.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought
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• 20:34
  Speaker 1: of 2026. Let's pivot a little bit to a little
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: bit on your day job and which is how's the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: business community preparing for a Democratic Congress, particularly a house
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that will have subpoena power?
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Well, to say business community is probably overbroad, but overwhelmingly,
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: the presumption is that the house flips. I know that
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: your prediction predicted and the Kalshi markets, the predictive markets
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: are at 85%.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: History suggests that would be likely.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: And they don't need, I mean, what we don't know
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: is the size, but it's like they only need, what,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: four technically or something like that. I mean, it's hard
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: to imagine they're not going to pick up four or five.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: The question is, can they get a governing majority? That's
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: a whole different story. But I think that's what we're
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Look, I built a bipartisan firm starting 24 years ago.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: And part of the recognition is the pendulum always swings back. So-
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: When I launched my firm, George W. Bush gets reelected.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: The Republicans have 55 senators. Karl Rove calls it a durable,
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: not permanent, durable majority. He'll correct you if you say
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: the otherwise. And they had a big margin in the House.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Two years later, the Senate and the House flip. Two
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: years after that, Obama's there and he's got 60 senators.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Two years after that, the House flips back to the Republicans.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Four years after that, the Senate flips. And in 2016,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: you get Trump with a full red board. The business
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: community understands the pendulum always swings back. So number one,
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: they're bipartisan. Number two, business community recognizes that the 120th
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Congress coming up, just like every Congress preceding it, they
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: need to go tell their story. We're in a trust recession.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Nobody is trusted unless and until they show up. in
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: real life, in person, and explain why what they're doing
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: is good for the state, is good for the district,
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: is good for the communities and the stakeholders that the
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: member of Congress ran saying they would help. And all
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: trust is local. So if you can't explain why helping
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: you helps the stakeholders and that you are a stakeholder
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: of the elected officials, you're screwed. Number three, there is
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: a recognition that there's going to be an epic amount
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: of oversight And that unlike in 2019, when the oversight
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: tried to get documents and tried to get information through
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: the executive branch and generally got blocked, this time they're
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: going to follow the money from the outside in and
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: they're going to subpoena business.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Did you make donations to the ballroom? Great.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: Let's find, let's look at the documents. Did you hire
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: people who call themselves top fixers in the wall street
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: journal and then get a merger through the experts think
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: was difficult.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Let's see if we can find as much information. in
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: the background through subpoenas, through oversight, through document requests. In
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: the private sector, you can't claim executive privilege.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: And no business.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Did you read this crazy OLC memo? Are you aware
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: of this?
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: That the White House thinks they can claim executive privilege
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: on things they don't possess.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: So the OLC has put out a memo that So
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: it was clearly one that the White House Counsel's Office
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: urged them to write and examine. That claims that executive
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: privilege extends to people who speak to the president privately
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: in the Oval Office or who have any– if their
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: communications with the president, even as private citizens, are somehow
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: covered by executive privilege. Now, I think I know what
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the White House is up to here, which is, look, one,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: maybe they'll actually get a court to agree. I don't
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: think the courts will agree to that. I'm going to
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: be very careful to try to predict anymore. This judiciary
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: is what it is. But at a minimum, it will
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: delay the subpoenas, right? It'll delay the appearances before Congress.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Subpoena comes, first thing they'll do is test out this
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: LLC memo, see if their communications qualify for executive privilege.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: That will take, work it straight through the court. I
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: think at a minimum, what the administration has done is
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: gum up the potential subpoenas here for a while.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Now, you know, we'll see.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I think Jamie Raskin is a pretty smart dude, so
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: he'll be he'll be pretty tenacious on this. But I
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know how that's one of those stories.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: You know how the way our ether works, right?
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: It it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: It sort of it got a little bit of attention
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: for about three hours. And then, of course, something else happened.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Trump renamed a lake or something. I don't quite know
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: what it was, but that could slow things down. I'll
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: be curious to see how many companies try to take
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: advantage of it, because it's a bad I would argue
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: it might be a bad look to take advantage of it.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: Well, look, there's a company taking advantage of it seemingly opportunistically.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: And then what we don't yet know is what will
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: the Department of Justice or the FBI say to companies
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: about potential risk they face if they don't honor an
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: asserted executive privilege.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: As we're in the environment, we've been in the environment.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: It was certainly true in the Biden administration with things
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: like student debt relief where everything now gets litigated and
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: it goes up in the Supreme Court. Right. I still
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: don't believe companies will be willing to be held in
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: contempt of Congress. And so that could become a very
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: interesting if the House can hold ranks and to say,
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: you know, if you don't turn over these documents to us,
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: we're going to hold you in contempt, fill in the
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: blank company. I don't know any general counsel that is
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: willing or wants to be held in contempt. The question
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: is whether they get threatened from both directions legally. But
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: you asked what businesses are doing to prepare. And my
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: comment is they've tried to have friends on both sides.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: They are continuing to try to make sure that they
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: are seen and heard and understood and aligned with both
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: the administration's priorities, the Republicans' priorities and Democrats' priorities. And
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: at this point now. A lot of they've already gotten
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: pretty careful about what do we put in writing? How
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: do we what do we decide to fund or not fund?
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: How do we want to phrase it? The the Democrats,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: my firm, half Democrats, half Republicans. Then 2025, our Dem
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: colleagues were kind of the Maytag repairman.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: They just not have their phones ringing. So nobody was calling.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Right. Everybody is calling them. They are unbelievably busy people.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Being asked for advice. How do you think we present
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: to these folks? How can we tell our story? How
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: can we make sure we're cooperative and understood without being
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: right there under the Klieg lights in the middle of a,
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: you know, Malachi crunch between two sides coming at us
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: with lawyers?
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Do you. It seems as if.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Trump put the business community in a weird spot. And
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I say this, and it's easy to bash these guys
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: for writing these checks. But at the same time, they've
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: got a fiduciary. Some of them have a fiduciary responsibility
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: to shareholders. And if you have an opportunity, it's sort
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: of like, look, plenty of people may say, well, they
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: should have the moral check on themselves, an ethics check,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. Welcome to the world of business.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to set that aside. had they not
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: played by the Trump rules, could they have been punished?
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So was this a feeling that if you don't donate
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to the ballroom, if you don't donate to the asks
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that are made, and we all read that story, that
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: amazing Wall Street Journal story about how the chief fundraiser
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: sort of hangs you know, is in the room when
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: these meetings happen and then literally follows up with, so
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: how much are you thinking? You know, maybe a million,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: maybe 5 million. It was just sort of, what was
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: amazing is how out in the open it was. And
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: then I realized, oh, that was a feature. Trump wants
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: it out in the open. He wants people to know
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: this is how it works. How did you advise clients
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: on this?
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, so happily, I've not been in the room
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: when when any direct ask has been made. I've generally
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: suggested the clients the safest thing to do is if
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: you gave money to the Obama or to the Biden inauguration,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: giving money to the Trump inauguration is consistent with past practices.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: That's an easy call. Yeah, right.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Other things, say a ballroom, then, you know, well,
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't. Number one, rule number one is don't do
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: anything that is illegal and don't do anything that if
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: disclosed in the cover, in the front page of The
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Washington Post, we would be ashamed of, embarrassed by or
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: would hurt our business. That's our fiduciary obligation. then trying
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: to find what can we support, what can we align with.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Each administration has the things that they care about. Businesses
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: across all have consistently tried to, how do we support?
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's things, maybe it's a climate initiative, or maybe
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: it's a DEI initiative, or maybe you know, in the
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: case of George W. Bush, the administration I work for,
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: it's rebuilding Iraq. Certainly, this administration seems to have more opportunities,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: more asks, more projects that are that are more often
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: either personal or less traditional projects. than prior administrations, but
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: as a rule, don't do anything that you wouldn't want
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: the whole world to know about. And if, you know,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: if you're, if thinking about it, boy, the whole world's
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: going to find out about this, don't do it. There
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: are also other things you can do. So if they
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: ask you to do X, you might say, you know what,
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: there's something let's do. Why let's, you know, things like those,
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: you know, the, the, the new Trump accounts, they call them,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: but the accounts for children to help them save for
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: the future. It, it, Yeah, it's named after Trump. So
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: that creates some fight. But that's a pretty positive. All
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: Americans ought to be able to rally behind. It doesn't
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: only go to children in red states. It doesn't only
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: go to Republican children. It's to American kids. If you're
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: being asked about doing something you don't want to do,
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: there may be something that you can do that you
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: are proud of, that you'll stand behind. Maybe it's supporting veterans.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: There's usually been under all presidents, Democrat and Republican candidates.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Paths to demonstrate an alignment with the priorities of the
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: administration without selling your soul or without breaking the law.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Have you picked up on something that I've had in
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: sort of my community of sort of bipartisan sounding board folks,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: which is I've detected quite a few Republican elected officials
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and former elected officials who think, you know, maybe we
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: do need some campaign finance reform. That, you know, it's
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: become what used to be sort of more on the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: left than it was on the right.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: I'm starting to hear, you know, especially.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: From those that that that worry about being primaried right
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: from their from their right. That's where I hear it
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: the most of, you know, you know, when I hear
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: somebody like this club for growth. I mean, you know,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: why can't I do something? I sort of smirk about
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: it because I'm like, you know. A lot of your
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: friends on the Democratic side have been complaining about this
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: for some time. Maybe you guys ought to team up.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: But I've always wondered, why isn't the business community in
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: favor of campaign finance reform? Because I say this because
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: it would save them money. I think they would– wouldn't
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: they love to not feel like they had to give?
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: Well– In part, the way the campaign finance system works
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: right now, you might argue for many in the business community,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: especially not the treasury of a Fortune 500 company, but
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: a very wealthy individual, they can punch with greater punching power.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: If anything, Post Citizens United, it benefits those who have
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: a whole lot of money that they are willing and
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: able to spend. I don't know that I would say
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: that's the business community writ large, but it certainly are.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: There are numbers of people with enough money who want
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: to make a big investment. But Chuck, you know, I've
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: written about for now a decade. I think we're in
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: a new Gilded Age. And as with the last Gilded Age,
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: we're going to need a series of reforms, economic reforms,
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: political reforms, social reforms to get through where we are.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: We have a political system that was designed and operates
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: for a world before the Internet existed.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: We're going to need to change how we draw districts,
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: how we run primaries, and I think how campaigns are financed,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: how spending happens. It's an eerie parallel to what you
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: were seeing at the end of the 1800s and the
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: early 1900s. That led to a lot of corporate contributions
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: were banned, union contributions were banned. A lot of reforms
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: happened then. I think it's not a question of if,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: it's a question of when. We're going to start seeing
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: a recognition that the system we've got is not– does
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: not empower the small D democracy to solve problems like
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: we were talking about, like the debt.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: This is how I leave people with optimism.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: It's like, look– and I don't think the two parties
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: are going to do this voluntarily.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to have to come.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Which, by the way, when you actually look at the
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: history of whether it's direct election of senators, women to
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: write the vote, the income tax, which were all part
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: of the constitutional amendments that we were responsive of to
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: that era, all of those constitutional amendments emanated from outside
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the two parties, outside the system, sort of thrusted upon
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the system a little bit and And I think that's
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: where I'm always thinking, yeah, I think we're a cycle
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: or two away from this. Like we're getting closer, you know,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: but I think it's 1896, you know?
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: And the history lesson is that these things sometimes take decades.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: So it feels like they were easy reforms, but they
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: were actually very complicated.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: The story of the 19th Amendment, right? 72 years from
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Seneca Falls. And one woman who was at the first meeting,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: made it to 1920 and the right to vote. All right,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: let's talk about, there's a bunch of companies that have
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: all the money in the world, Bruce, and I have
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: a feeling if they spent all the money in the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: world trying to convince people that data centers are a
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: good thing, it would be money. They might as well
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: just light it on fire at this point. I'm not
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: sure the public's ready to hear anything from tech on
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: this data center issue. And yet we're going to need
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: these data centers. So what should big tech be doing
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: right now? Yeah, you know, you're right.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: I think this was somewhat avoidable and somewhat unavoidable, but
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: tech is behind the eight ball. I mean, first- Obviously,
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: we're talking about this because the scale of investment is
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: larger than the Manhattan Project, larger than highways. It's an
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: epic scale of investment. And you know and I know,
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: look at the history of investments. Look at the railroads.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: Look at highways. Look at electrification. There have always been opposition,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: including local opposition. We're actually not seeing nearly the kind
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: of backlash yet that the highways saw, given how much
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: land they gobbled up.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: So first....
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And we love the interstates now. Well, most of the interstates.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: We don't love what they did to some cities, but
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: that's enough.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: We're glad they're there now.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: We wish we had cheaper electricity, but we don't want
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: to have any wires in our backyard. So first, all
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: of us need to take the deep breath of perspective of,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: of course, there is a backlash. This isn't because big
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: tech's bad. It's because it's an epic scale of investment,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: number one. Number two, the costs are typically concentrated locally,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: and the benefits feel kind of diffuse. Golf courses will
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: use seven to 10 times more land than the projected
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: massive number of data centers and 20 times more water
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: than the projected data centers.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Local communities take golf courses, but anyway, I digress.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: I think, I mean, maybe I'm a, maybe I speak
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: for the minority, but plenty of people like having golf
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: courses in the community.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: No, that right. But they, They do.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: There's always people fighting them for that very reason. I
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: don't want it in my backyard.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: So when the benefits are more visible, great. When I'm
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: worried about it, that's not great. But to me, the
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: political interesting lesson here is nobody really made the case.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: A lot of the data centers are companies that I
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: bet you 400 to 435 members of the House can't
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: name companies that build and operate data centers.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Nobody's ever heard of them.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: They lease to a lot of the tech companies.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: So that's one.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: They're being used for AI. And what do we hear
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: from the LLM lords? We hear that AI is too
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: dangerous for them to release. We hear that we might
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: all lose our jobs. So hard to believe they don't
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: have a social license to put something in their backyard.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: You're saying the public doesn't like AI?
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the AI inventors are the ones saying, oh,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: my God, this.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Is a terrible idea.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. What's interesting to me, the Echelon Insight guys have
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: done some wonderful polling. And what they find is the
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: average person asked about a data center anywhere near them says,
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: I don't like it. And then they say, how about
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: if they agree that basically they won't screw with the
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: water table? that it'll be self-contained or otherwise it'll not
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: have an impact, local water support, opposition diminishes. Then how
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: about if they're going to make sure that your electricity
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: bills don't go up as a result of their activity?
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: For many of the voters, it moves to modestly positive.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: If you ask about a data center for streaming, people
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: are generally okay. So to me- Nobody has made the
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: case locally, but locally is where the action happens. And
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: you see some areas like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish country. And
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: in Amish country, there was what's called a CBA, a
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: community benefit agreement. where the data center developers sat down
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: with the local community and they agreed on a bunch
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: of thou shalt nots and thou shalls. I think you're
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: going to see in the future fewer of these operators
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: nobody's ever heard of just buying a bunch of land
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: and boom, there's a data center and suck it, neighbors.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: And we're going to see procedural hurdles put in place
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: that makes local people feel like they have a voice,
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: but we're going to continue to build them.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: This gets into a larger issue that I think the
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: tech companies have and the industry has, which is, you know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I think in this case, they thought capturing, frankly, capturing
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the politicians was enough. And, you know, I think right
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: before we started recording, I caught another headline of somebody
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: that got recalled twice, beat back a recall, then got
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: recalled again over voting for a data center. Like the
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: voters were just decided to punish somebody. some county commissioner,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: whatever it was. I can't even remember the area of
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: the country, but frankly, it doesn't matter if I'm talking about,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: I've seen this opposition in Pensacola Beach during blues weekend
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: where sometimes they're flying airplane banners that say, we've got
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: sex on the beach drinks.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: For $ 5.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: And then the next airplane is telling you about the
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: danger of data centers and the horrible noise. You think
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the blue angels make noise? You don't know anything yet.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: And it is shocking how local and fired up the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: opposition is. And it just, this is not about data
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: centers to me. And this is not about AI. This
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: is a generation- I think, and this is where I
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: think the tech industry just frankly doesn't get it. Although
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I'll give some credit to Mark Zuckerberg, who I think
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: it started in that manifesto he wrote, at least was
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: using the correct words.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: And that is, I think the public doesn't think tech
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: has been great for society. Maybe they like what they
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: like about tech, right? I like my phone or I
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: like this or I like that. But they look at
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the overall picture and think, huh, was social media a
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: good thing or a bad thing? And we're jumping into
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: this AI business and we're not quite sure what it is.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: And then it's this, like, I think the tech industry
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: needs a whole come to, you know what here and
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: needs to figure out how to become Americans again. They
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: really have come across like they're these, Bond villains, and
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: some of them actually look like Bond villains and even
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: have names that you'd be like, you wouldn't even bother
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: changing the name to make a good Bond villain. They
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: don't feel like they're a part of our society. And
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: I wonder how much that is playing a role here.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I wrote a piece in July called Bonfire
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: of the Data Centers, and I tried to go deep
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: into a lot of these issues.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: For example- By the way, for those of a certain age,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: they're not going to know the Bonfire reference.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: This is you channeling old Tom Wolfe.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: And to anybody under the age of 40, if you've
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: never gotten into a Tom Wolfe phase, please do. You'll
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: be glad you did. Bonfire of the Vanity is being argued.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Tom Wolfe, people will say it's not his best, but
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: it is certainly his most famous.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and don't watch the movie. As much as I
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: love Tom Hanks, the book is way better.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: Bonfire of the Data Centers is a ripoff of Tom
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Two thoughts about that.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: First, one chart I included in that was a favorable,
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: unfavorable poll. And social media, big time underwater. AI, big
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: time underwater. Data centers, big time underwater. The most favorable,
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: net favorable sector, technology. So what's interesting to me is
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: that people have a huge, when they hear tech, we
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: love American tech. We love the tech sector. We don't love,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: as it turns out, they're kind of, uh, marquee products and,
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: and the things that they're doing.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: That's interesting to me.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: It means, I think Tim Cook remains one of the
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: most admired people in the country. Michael Dell is a,
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: is a national hero and treasure. He's extraordinarily admired. Um,
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: So thought number one is there is this interesting– I
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: work with the tech industry, even though a lot of
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: their products, say social media, don't have a lot of
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: social approval. It hasn't dented– 20 years of social media
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: making people more worried about things hasn't dented the overall
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: favorability of the tech industry broadly is number one. But
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: number two, I included one of my charts– which I
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: use chat GPT to help me draw, the anti-data center
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: backlash is where Bannon meets Bernie. It's a populist thing.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: And I think this is what you were getting at.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: The broad dynamic driving people to keep voting for change
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: and to throw in the bums out, whether it's voting
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: Mom Donnie in New York City or voting Donald Trump
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: in Washington, is the idea that the establishment, the institution,
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: the system is rigged against people like me, and I
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: need somebody to stand up against the big global elite.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: Tech has always been at high risk because they are big,
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: they are global, they are elite. To date, people have
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: generally felt like tech broadly brings more benefit, even if
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: some of the products narrowly are products that people get
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: worried about. Even data centers, Apple's not a data center
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: company per se, but if you don't have data centers,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: good luck getting what you.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Want to get on your iPhone.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: One of the things Besant just this week took a
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: lot of the tech sector to task for is you
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: guys need to be much more vocal about And defending
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: these things and owning these things and helping people understand
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: the benefits of these things. Because right now, people are
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: worried about the water bill. People are worried about the
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: electric bill. And AI generally just seems to benefit billionaires
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: or people who hold a couple of chip stocks.
• 44:17
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• 46:02
  Speaker 2: You know what they really need? They need a Lee Iacocca.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: And this segues into the last topic I wanted to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: talk with you about. We sort of previewed it. Lee
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Iacocca was an incredible communicator for an auto executive. And
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: for those that don't know, he's basically the guy that
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: invented the Mustang. That was his claim to fame at Ford.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: And then he's eventually hired over at Chrysler. And he's
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the man that's Chrysler's had to be saved a few times.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: The first time they were saved, they were saved by
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Iacocca going to Ronald Reagan. But they obviously had to
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: be saved a second time some 30 years later. But
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: Lee Iacocca was a terrific spokesperson for the industry as
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: a whole, right? And it was at a moment that
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: the auto industry needed somebody to, you know, bucket up
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: a little bit. They were under siege by foreign competitors.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: The Germans and the Japanese were just running laps around that.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: And I look at the tech industry, and it's interesting
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: the names you brought up and the names you didn't
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: bring up. I agree with you about Tim Cook. Tim Cookson,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: now former CEO of Apple. I agree with you about
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Michael Dell, and Michael Dell is not necessarily the forefront.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: But when you look at the current crop, whether it's
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: the CEO of Google, the CEO of Meadow, Mr. Zuckerberg,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: you put him on a fave-unfave, and you're going to
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: be underwater. Elon Musk, you're probably going to see him underwater.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: They could use a better communicator, and this is the
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: This is sort of, I think it's now the most
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: important thing, the most important skill a CEO has to
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: have these days. When back in the day, it didn't
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: matter if you were a good communicator, you could find one.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: But who, am I missing something? Who, is there somebody
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: out there I don't know that could be this generation's
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Lee Iacocca for Silicon Valley that could sort of put
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: this stuff in English and essentially make the case?
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so first- When Iacocca was the spokesperson, remember, it
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: was the big three.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Yep. Tech is not a monolith.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Tech is an unbelievably broad and diverse set of companies.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Well, we have the magnificent seven.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, you do have six or seven companies that
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: are sort of the tip of the spear.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the Google CEO is actually a terrific communicator,
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: albeit not an everyday regular guy. You invent the Mustang,
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: you're speaking to every American. You CEO of Google, he's brilliant,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: he's thoughtful, same with Microsoft, but it has less of
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: a feel of, Musk may have been there.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: You know what they come across to me as technocrats,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: which of course I love and so do you. I mean,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: I think the country would be better off if we
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: had 435 technocrats, but it would be boring.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the other thing that's interesting about Iacocca is he
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: wasn't the richest guy in the world. In fact, part
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: of his visibility in Washington, he came hat in hand.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: He needed a bailout. Obviously, tech is not there right now.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: I don't disagree with the fundamental premise of, given the internet,
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: communication and communication skills have never been more critical. The
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: ability to have a narrative that people can embrace and
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: understand has never been more critical as maybe the number
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: one prerequisite for an effective leader. But I don't know
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: that I would say to be an effective, you know,
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: Jensen Huang, to be the effective leader of NVIDIA. You've
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: got to be so smooth on national television that everybody
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: embraces you.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: That's I don't know.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying that, but I don't think Alex
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Karp's a very good spokesperson.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to fight you on carp. He's awkward.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: But, you know, AMD CEO Lisa Su is brilliant. She's
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: been incredibly effective. She communicates like a brilliant engineer. She's
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: not running for anything. She's running a great company competing
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: against NVIDIA and a bunch of other folks. She's doing
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: exactly what she's supposed to be doing. You know, the
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: interesting question to me, Chuck, is maybe it's they need
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: a Jack Valenti. Maybe they need a spokesperson who represents
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: the industry, but who is- Jack.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Mulaney, Bruce and I are going old guy here. Jack Mulaney,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: he was actually an old LBJ staffer, if I'm not mistaken,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: became the head of the motion, basically the people that
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: rate movies for you, the Motion Picture Association.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Of America, MPAA.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: I think that they technically changed what those initials mean
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: these days. I'm not going to get into it. But
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: there was a time where- where he was probably the
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: most famous lobbyist in Washington, right?
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: He was, and he was broader than lobbyist. But at
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: the time, the Hollywood moguls were under attack. A lot
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: of folks in Washington were shocked, shocked to find what
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: they would think of as smut or violence. And so
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Washington was going to need to step in and going
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: to need to regulate. And Valenti, who was a charismatic,
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: unbelievably effective communicator, got the proxy from all the Hollywood
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: moguls and negotiated very much in public the self-regulatory RX
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: PG-13 rating system and got the major players to agree
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: that they would adhere to it and they would follow it.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: Feels to me in the same way your average Hollywood
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: mogul who, you know, they're brilliant in Hollywood, but they
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: may not be the face and the voice in Washington.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: But they found somebody who knew how to be effective
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: in this environment. My instincts are that tech would benefit
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: more from that. than from having one CEO who would
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: attempt to speak for all of the tech sector, which
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: is just never going to happen, not least because a
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: software sector guy has a whole bunch of different equities
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: than a hardware sector guy.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: And hardware can be.
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: Business to business, a chip that goes into a system,
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: and it can be what you and I have on
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: our desktop. So I just don't see a single voice
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: as the voice of tech.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: I hear you on that.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: It is interesting to me, and I'm... And I'm curious
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: how much you've tracked this. You know, the fastest growing C-suite,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the addition to the C-suite over the last 15 years
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: has been a chief comms officer.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: You know, in 2005.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: No Fortune 500 company had somebody with a communications title
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: in the C-suite, right? It usually was under, in a
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: lot of places, it would be under the general counsel.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: You know, they were the supervisor of the communications shop.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: And now it's become such a bigger, every company has decided,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I can't even trust a trade press anymore. We've got
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: to tell our own story. Have you seen this phenomenon
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: sort of bleed into speaking to Washington? Are we in
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: one of those moments, are associations in or out, right?
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Do more of these companies want to take control of
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: their storytelling and narratives in Washington now in the same
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: way they appear to be when it comes to the C-suites?
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I certainly run into a lot more CMOs. I've
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: spoken to groups of CMOs at conferences. To me, first
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: and foremost, the recognition is what you say to Wall Street,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: what you say to stakeholders, what you say to customers
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: and to the market is what you're saying to Washington.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: There are no divisions and there are no separations anymore.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: So if you get your messaging outside of Washington wrong,
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: you have a Washington problem. In the same way that
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: if you get your messaging to Washington in a way
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: that you think kisses the butt of the people you're
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: talking to, you may have a consumer problem or a
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: market problem. The narrative, the message is so critical for
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: your ability to attract and retain employees, for your ability
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: to have customers embrace you and not boycott you or
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: not protest you, for your ability to be heard by
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: stakeholders in government and beyond. You need to have somebody
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: who is really good at it and who thinks about
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: it all the time. The best companies, the Walmarts of
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: the world, the chief... A marketing officer is working with
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: the chief legal officer who's working with him.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: And they've got Dan Bartlett, who kind of is the
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: one ring to rule them all. Well, I was just
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: going to say, Dan Bartlett, and you're so right about Walmart. Walmart,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: there's a handful of companies that are just better at
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: this than most. Walmart's one, Marriott's another. And a lot
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: of times you find out, oh, yeah, they hired a
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: bunch of people who used to work on the– used
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to work on the politics side of things and Dan
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Bartlett being a perfect one being– And.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Walmart didn't used to be better at this, Chuck. No,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: they were terrible at it, right? Right. They were getting kicked–
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: They were meta, right? Meta is getting kicked around all
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: They've been a client for 20 years and there's almost
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: no engagement I'm prouder of, both because we've lasted as
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: long as we have, but I feel like working with them,
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: we've helped them do a far better job of telling
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: their story. They weren't just saying, hey, we're not regulated,
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: we're retail, leave us alone. They leaned into we want
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: friends on both sides. We need to tell our own story.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: We need to emphasize all the great things we're doing
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: for local communities. And they benefited not least from the
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: rise of Amazon, where all of a sudden there was
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: a new Darth Vader out there.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: Look, I'm such a fan of what's happened in Northwest Arkansas,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: and that's due to Walmart and Tyson's.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: It is unbelievable. Let me get you out of here
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: on this.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: You gave us a little bit of a tease here
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: when you said your Democratic partners are suddenly getting– their
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: phones are ringing off the hook, which tells you where
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: corporate America thinks things are moving. You probably, more than
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: anybody else– Made the phrase always bet on change at
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: this point, sort of the mantra of politics in the
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: Trump era. So, look, as I say, we know Democrats
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: are going to gain seats. You think we're underestimating or
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: overestimating where things stand right now?
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Well, I tend to think the House will flip and
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: I think the Dems will have a high single, low
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: double digit margin. Although the Republicans have been doing everything
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: that one can do in terms of raising as much
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: money as they can in the mid-decade redistricting wars. But
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: the president's approval rating is the best single predictive factor.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: And so that suggests to me the House flips. I
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: think the Senate ends 50-50. Um, it's a whole, you have.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: To have me back.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: You and I can go. I love the piece you wrote,
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: but I don't necessarily agree. I think, I think Alaska
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: is going to hold, and I don't think you can
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: beat Susan Collins. Um, even though I know all of
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: the numbers and you've explained eloquently.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: No, I, I hear you.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, I, I, I went out there a little
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: bit on a limb with, with Collins. I, you know,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine put together a fun little chart about,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: you know, this was the conversation many people were having
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: at this time in no six. Um, Democrats are going
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: to win the House. Boy, the Senate, I don't know, right?
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: And then, oh, a Chafee actually lost. It was sort
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: of because there were things we had never seen before.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Hadn't seen Democrats win a Senate seat in Virginia in
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: a long time. Hadn't seen the Democrats be able to
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: defeat the Chafee seat, right? It was father and son
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: that kept holding that seat. And he noted, Susan Collins,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: are we seeing this? But I take your point there. Alaska,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what sold me why I'm bullish on
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Peltola and down on Dan Sullivan, although I just think
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: he's a good senator. I feel like it'll– I'm sorry
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: this is all happening the way it is as far
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: as Dan Sullivan is concerned. But boy, when you look
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: at that primary number, I mean– Boy, the Democratic enthusiasm
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: is way up. She did really well in that first
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: round of voting, better than I expected.
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: She did, although at some point with rank choice, the
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: imposter Dan Sullivan goes away and maybe people voting will
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: make their second choice. The other Dan Sullivan, just not
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: sure which is which. But look, it's a toss up.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: But to your point, Sullivan is a good senator. He's
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: made no mistakes. He's been effective for the state.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: It's a Trump double digit margin state. So I tend
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: to think House flips, Senate holds a 50-50.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: It could be a blue tsunami. But things have gotten
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: a lot more sorted and a lot more sorted. Maybe
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: sorted also. And a lot more partisan since 06.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: The 50-50 result is fascinating to me. And I think
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: Alaska is everything. And here's why. Let me throw a
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: scenario at you. If it's 50-50 and Alaska is one
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: of the flips, what do you think Lisa Murkowski does?
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: If her state decided to elect Peltola, what do you
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: think she does?
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Nothing different.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: I think Lisa is a far greater chance of a
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: Fetterman flip in Pennsylvania than a Murkowski flip. Murkowski's dad
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: was the governor and the congressman. Oh, I know.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: He's been through it. She was here before the president.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: She's going to be here after the president. I don't
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: see any change. in Lisa Murkowski would be my best guess.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: She'll continue to represent the kind of the more moderate,
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: old school George H.W. Bush era wing of the Republican
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: Party that I also tend to come from. But I
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: don't see her deciding that she's going to go free
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: agent and put things in play, not least, Chuck, because
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: so say she did. OK, what's that really change? It's
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: not like if she were a decided vote for.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: A conviction, she gets the energy. She might want the
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: energy committee. Yeah.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: I don't, I just, it feels off brand for her.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: You know, you follow everyone super close.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: She's look, she's, I think she's the hardest person to
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: read sometimes. So, you know, she does keep some of
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: these things.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: I look, let me get.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: Your take though, Chuck, because I think the most critical race,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: the most interesting race is Michigan.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: I think Michigan and Texas are the Senate. I think
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: they decide the Senate.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: Texas has its own issue going on. For me, though,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: Michigan has two factors that make it super interesting. One,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: if the Dems can't hold Michigan, they can't win the
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: Senate no matter what. But two- If they lose Michigan
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: with El-Sayed, that means the 28 nominee is far more
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: likely to be the Bill Clinton, Andy Beshear wing and
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: less likely to come from the left. But if they
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: hold Michigan and the DSA energy doesn't seem to hurt
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: them anywhere, DSA is going to be saying we should
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: choose the nominee and AOC goes front runner.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: You're stealing analysis that I'll be doing in about two months.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with that. I think that Michigan is
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: such a weird trap for the Dem establishment. I was
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: joking with somebody yesterday. recently, I said, I wonder if
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Schumer and Thune would come to an agreement and Thune
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: would say, we'll walk from Paxton if you walk from
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Abdul El-Sayed. We'll just trade. You don't want him to win.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: We don't want Paxton in this caucus. We'll do the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: one for one there and get out of it. If
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: that was a deal that could be had, why do
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: I think both Thune and Schumer would take it?
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Uh, well, I can't speak for either of them.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: I don't think Schumer would take the deal though, but, uh, it's,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: it's El Sayed is left of center and there'll be
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: a bit of a pain in their ass, but the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: Texas is a whole different kettle of fish.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: I have to say I'm, I am, um, and it's, I, I,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: I was a skeptic of Tallarico being able to win
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: that thing. Um, I think the, the, uh, I hadn't
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: properly dove into watching the Texas erosion. If Abbott can't
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: get over 52, I don't know how Paxton wins. And
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: I was not there. And Abbott's going to win re-election.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: But Abbott's going to have to spend a lot of
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: money to help Abbott. And there was a time six
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: months ago I thought, oh, Abbott is going to be
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: the get-out-of-jail-free card for Paxton.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: And I don't believe that anymore. I think the bull
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: case for Tallarico is Roy Moore.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and Paxton's been turned– and it looks– look,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Thune wants out. Now, I think he's having a staring
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: contest with Trump, and we'll see if the MAGA money
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: comes in, but– But Thune made it clear. And by
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: the way, I think Thune's making the right strategic choice.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: If you try to save Texas, you don't have the
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: money for Michigan, Ohio, at least those two. To me,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: those are the most expensive left on the board that
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: are winnable.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: That Texas would be taking money from.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: And the president's got $ 400 million. He can do this.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: If spending can save Pax, then the president.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: Can afford it. That's true. You're right. It's interesting the
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: way you just put it. If spending can save Paxton.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure. Paxton doesn't seem to want to win.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: He doesn't seem like a candidate that's working as hard
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: as he should, but that's a whole other story.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: What's coming next? You know, it's going to be a
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: real busy fall. Like you, I go around doing a
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: whole lot of speaking. In fact, I think this October,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: I now have 30 on the books.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: It's going to be a.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: Whirlwind.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: But it's interesting. It's fascinating.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: I love getting out on the hustings. I learn a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: lot from people who aren't inside the beltway. I hear
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: real normal perspectives. It was in 2016 when I first
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: started realizing that President Trump could win because none of
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: us in the beltway, we all knew there was no
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: chance this guy was going to win. And I kept
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: talking to normal people and business leaders and others. And
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, I am snarkily making assumptions. And I
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: can learn a lot when I talk to people who
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: are outside the beltway. So I actually look forward to
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: doing a lot of that, even though the travel is
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: a bit of a grind. And the other thing that's
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: fun about all the speaking is I've got my free
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: sub stack. I love putting it out. But I now
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: include the QR code for every audience. Now, again, it's free.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: So it's worth every penny. But getting in front of
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: several thousand people will hopefully gain a couple more readers
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: who will find it interesting.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: It's funny.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: I made a QR code. My team made me one
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: to try to do the same thing. This is the
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: world we live in, Bruce. Sadly, Chuck, that's kind of
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: low tech at this point. But yes, you and I
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: are impressed. Well, you know, this has been lit for
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of– Middle-aged guys, at least we can impress ourselves.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: Bruce, I always learn something from you, man. It's great
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: to see it. Check, please.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: My guess is a lot of my folks do subscribe
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: to you already. Six Charts Sunday, always something smart, always
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: makes you think, which is terrific.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on, Chuck.