Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Trump’s Decline Is Obvious…But Republicans Refuse To Acknowledge It + The 60 Minutes Story Isn’t About Scott Pelley… It’s About The Ellisons

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - Trump’s Decline Is Obvious…But Republicans Refuse To Acknowledge It + The 60 Minutes Story Isn’t About Scott Pelley… It’s About The Ellisons · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: rates may vary. Hello, They're happy Monday, and welcome to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: another episode of the Chuck Podcast.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: It has been a.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Busy seventy two hours since we've last chatted. I got
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a lot to get to in this episode, including what
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I think is an increase what is going to be
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: increasing scrutiny and increasing concern about the President's ability to
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: do the job. His temperament. The most recent set of
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: meltdowns with his Wisconsin trip, he impulse control is one
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: of those things that you lose as you get older, right,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: your filter goes away. This was already a gentleman that
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: didn't have much of a filter to begin with. So
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I know it's very hard to see, but I think
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: it's increasingly clear that Republicans now know what it was
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: like for elected Democrats in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: when they would avert their eyes anytime Joe Biden had
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a public event. We are in that stage with Donald
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Trump on and to dig into that for a little bit,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Senate Republicans basically choked on an attempt to check the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: president's power and the weaponization fund that I think is
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a huge political mistake. I don't think they fully realize
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: how disastrous it is that they had a proactive chance
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: todentually kill it and do a favor for a whole
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: bunch of Republicans who maybe didn't have the guts to
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: vote against the president. But we're going to get to
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: that as well. We had huge primaries on Tuesday. Tuesday
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: is turning into as I said in a text back
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and forth with my friend Chris Eliza will have our
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: live stream of course on Tuesday night. Tuesday is going
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: to be lit. The Graham Platner primary is suddenly fascinating.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: We know he's going to win, but what is the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Janet Mills number going to be? I gave you a
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: sort of a formula of what what should qualify as
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: as yellow flag or red flag and the Janet Mills
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: percentages there. But clearly there's something going on there. Clearly
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: there's something happening in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham hitting the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: panic button over a primary challenger that could force him
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: into a runoff, which leads to a larger trend that
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I think is happening before our very eyes. Right, we
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: already knew, we've known for some time that there's an
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: anti establishment streak in both parties, but it is as
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: strong as ever inside the Republican Party. I think there's
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: still a debate inside the Democratic Party about how anti
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: establishment to get. Rhetorically, you can sound loud, but you
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: don't see the same results. But given what we've seen
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: sitting members of Congress being rejected as gubernatorial candidates in
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: South Dakota, Iowa, are we about to see that next
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: week in Alabama Senate on that runoff, We're going to
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: see it on this Tuesday. There's something happening out there,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and unlike my friend my friends at Buffalo Springfield, I
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: think what it is is exactly.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Clear in this case. So we will get to that.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And then finally, I think quite a few people ask
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: me my two cents of the sixty minute situation, Scott Pelley,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: what would I do in that situation given my own
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: experience having a run in with network bosses more worried
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: about a political agenda rather than journalism. It's very very
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: difficult spot to be in. And I know from experience
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: how many people are backseat driving at the moment he
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: should have would have cut all these different things, whether
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: or Leslie Stall or Bill Whittaker, and as anything, you know,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: they're everything is complicated. Everything isn't an easy answer, and
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I just want to sort of dive into there. I
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: also have my podcast Time Machine to give you a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: little hint of what's coming in the time Machine. I
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: quoted I use the most famous quote that I'm building
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: the time Machine off of in my monologue on Thursday.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: That is the one hint I'm going to give you,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: but I'm going to start with what the Germans would
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: called schodenfreud, I guess, and that is what elected Republicans
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: are now having to experience with their president and the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: fact that he is now we are, as of this writing,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: less than a week away from when he turns eighty.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: He is creating a celebration to himself, as we know,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: for his eightieth birthday with the whole UFC business, something
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: that apparently like the Eiffel Tower, would like to keep
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the uf C claw as the apparently it is called,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: which I guess encompasses the steel cage as a permanent
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: structure on the south lawn. I'm sure Andrew Jackson would
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: smile about that. That's probably the only president that would
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: smile about something like that. So it is I say
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: all this because, look, let's not kid ourselves.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: He's not.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: He's not doing well, and you kind of know it
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: because of how we're watching Republicans behave almost identically to
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: how Democrats behave when it was painfully obvious what was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: happening with Joe Biden. Because there's a particular kind of
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: quiet that settles over a political party when it has
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: decided collectively and without ever voting on it, to essentially
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: stop seeing what's in front of him. Democrats lived onside
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: that quiet for just about all of twenty twenty three
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and into twenty twenty four. Everyone knew Staffer's new donors,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: new members of Congress, knew the reporters covering them new
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: We all knew this. We reporters were struggling to convey
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: it because of all the chicken hits in the party
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't go public with it. What no one had
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: was a reason to be the first to say it
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: on the record, right, and so the thing that everyone
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: could see became the thing that no one would describe,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: right up until that debate stage in Atlanta made a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: description unnecessary. Everybody saw it, and it was almost like, Okay,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: we can all now admit what we've been thinking for
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: months when it comes to Joe Biden. Well it's pretty
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: clear now. Republicans are now living inside the same quiet,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: and they are doing it with less self awareness than
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the Democrats managed, which is frankly saying something. The evidence
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: is no longer subtle. Just consider this. Three years ago,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: twenty eight percent of Americans told pollsters at the Washington
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Post that the president wasn't healthy enough to serve effectively.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: That was back when Joe Biden was president. This bring
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the same pole, asked the same question, and the number
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: was up to fifty five percent.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: It was about a different president.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: By the way, Reuters and Ipsos have found that sixty
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: one percent of the country, including nearly thirty percent of Republicans,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: believe Donald Trump has become more erratic with age. Now,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: these aren't numbers of a fringe concern anymore, right, they
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: are the numbers of consensus that has not yet been
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: granted permission to speak.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Right, We were sort of.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Dealing with the same thing during the Biden presidency. Large
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: majorities thought he was too old to serve, and yet
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: none of that was beyond Dean Phillips, right, convincing many
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Democrats to speak out publicly. You had plenty of reporters
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: that were even speaking out about this, but you didn't
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: have a lot of that. You know, you had certain coverage,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and I will always defend some of the you know,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: I think everybody, you know, somehow wants to blame the media,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: not the Democratic Party or not the Bidens for everything
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that happened there, that somehow the media was supposed to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: make them speak, make the sources say things that we
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: couldn't make sources to say. So all you could do
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: was show things in public. Right, Hey, guess who's using
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the short staircase on Air Force one. Now look at
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: how few public events they're doing, right you sort of
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: we were treating viewers and voters with a lot more
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: intelligence than Frankly, the Democratic Party was. Well, we're sort
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: of seeing the same thing now with Donald Trump, and
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I think frankly, there is some new some coverage that
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: we haven't seen, that we actually did see during the
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Biden presidency that we haven't seen during the Trump presidency
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: that I think is quite necessary. I'd start with something simple.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I've done a cursory a bit of research on this,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: but I don't have the archive of video that a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: TV network has because they archive, and I know of this,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I know we did at NBC. All the networks, you know,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: want to keep everything right. You don't want to lose
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: anything anymore after that small period of time in the
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: sixties when networks throw everything away. But that's a whole
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: long story. All you have to do is see that
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the president won't do any events where he has to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: stand for a long period of time anymore. Right, all
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: events are designed for sitting. Right, All of the things
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: at the White House, more and more are now taking
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: place in the Oval office.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: He sits right.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: There's very few standing events anymore, right, fewer rose garden events.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: The weather's been terrific in Washington. There's not been bad weather,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: but they which normally during previous White Houses, anytime you
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: could do an event outside, you did an event outside,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: it was just better, better TV, better everything, better coverage.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: You know, you ask any White House press shop veteran,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: then they'll tell you, oh, yeah, good old fashioned rose
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: garden events much better than an Oval office event because
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: events are crowded and all this stuff, but they have
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: to do so many of them. Then look at that
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin event. You know, he's not standing for twenty minutes,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: and I'm very curious he's going to give a rally
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: speech at some point during this birthday celebration sometime at
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the end of June. Will he stand for it or
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: will will they figure out how to sit? If you
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: notice again this Wisconsin situation, he's sitting. He's clearly you know,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: it's not it's something it's either hurts for him to walk,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: it's uncomfortable for him to walk. Whatever it is, he
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: clearly there is something going on here. And again they
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: don't have to acknowledge anything. You can show the visuals,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: just like with Biden. The reason the country figured it
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: out is because the media did show the visuals. The
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: media did show, Hey, this is what he was, this
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: is what's going on now. He seems to be using
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a shorter staircase. He seems to be using a shorter staircase.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: He seems to not have a lot of big events
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: with a lot of people coming in into the office, right,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and so you're starting to see a little bit. And frankly,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: there's been some reporting in January seeing and reported the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Trumpet personally directed his team to start patting his public
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: schedule to start listing quote closed door meeting that had
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: previously gone unmentioned. Many presidents don't put all the meetings
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: that they have there. But it was specifically intended to
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: push back on this idea that he was having stamina
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: issues that basically he couldn't really have more than a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: six to eight hour day. What it appears to be
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: he doesn't really have six to eight hour day, although
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: he can't sleep at night, and he post untruth social
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: so it does sort of allow people to think, well,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: he's always on. Well, just because somebody's always on doesn't
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: mean they're always on top of things, right, So it
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: is so there are little things that you're starting to
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: see on this. So the irony to all of this
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: obviously is almost too neat to dwell on. So I'm
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: not going to dwell on it. But let's not forget
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that Trump built his entire campaign on the premise that
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the other guy was too old, and he will mark
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: his eightieth birthday this month, having just completed his third
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: annual physical in less than two years in office.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, fine, we'll note it. We'll move on.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: You know, the interesting question was never about whether there's
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: the symmetry exists. We've always be seen that the symmetry
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: exists here. The interesting question is why one party silence
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: broke in ninety minutes of a TV news debate and
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: why the others hasn't broken at all yet. Now, part
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: of it is Joe Biden didn't have a hold on
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: a piece of the electorate that Donald Trump has, right,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of that. But in some
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: cases the reason why. You know, the Biden team had
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: effectively threatened Democrats from speaking out against him by saying,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: the more you speak out about his health, questioning Biden
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: and his health and his stamina, you're only helping Donald Trump.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: So the basically it was this idea, if you speak out, right,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and that's sort of essentially what the what the Republicans
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: or what the Trump White House is going to try
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: to do. Speak out about this, you know, it's your
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: own peril, and you know, look, when we decide to
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: come after you, it's terrible, it's uncomfortable, and most of
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the people we come after lose.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Ask the Indiana state senators who are not going to
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: be in office next year. Ask Thomas Matthew Massey's not
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: going to be an office next year. Ask anybody who's
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: worked for Brian Camp, asked Brad Raethensberger. Right, So they
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: certainly have, you know, proof positive this list. Right, That's
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: what always made what the Democrats did head scratching, because
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Biden had no kind of hold on the party like that, right,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: there was death Nobody could somehow claim that they wouldn't
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: be in politics without Joe Biden. Outside the state of Delaware,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: and I'm not saying this to be dismissive of Joe Biden.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: It's just that is not that is not the type
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: of poll he had inside his own party. Donald Trump
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: has influence and poll inside his party. They're just stronger,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: And in some ways it at least explains the behavior.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: It certainly explains the fear. But my goodness, these Republicans
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: are going to look really sad, right, and the basic
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: questions local reporters are going to ask them about the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: president's obvious slowing down, obvious health issues, obvious like he
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: can't seem to stamina questions, the falling asleep, the nodding
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: off again.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: He's.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Acting like a typical eighty year old, right, This is
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: not unusual behavior for an eighty year old. It's just
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: unusual behavior for a president of the United States. And
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: obviously the amount of hey, the Republicans made about this
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: with Joe Biden and the Democrats, all this is doing,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you know, And of course this is where you know,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: by Republicans ignoring what's right in front of them and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: not sort of being honest about what's right in front
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of them, they're doing enormous damage to everybody's credibility left
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and right right, they're essentially rev So we're seeing this
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: notion that everybody's a freaking liar in politics. Both parties
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: just say whatever it takes to get elected. This is
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the majority view because it's true. I somehow sometimes want
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: to sit here and explain to you why politicians behave
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: certain ways. Yeah, they make some compromises to do this
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: in order to do that. Look at A and e's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: being an elective office, because you have to make compromises
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: and the public never wants you to make any compromises.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, I saw some silly progressive get all angry
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: at the Amy Acting campaign in Ohio. She's running in
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: a state that Donald Trump carried by nearly double digits,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: and she pledged that if she gets elected governor, she's
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: going to appoint Republicans to her cabinet. And this progressive
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Democrat was like, why do Democrats always do this? And
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: it's the sort of like, you know, criticizing a Democrat
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: for attempting to actually rise above partisanship is exactly what's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: wrong with the of both of these parties. Right, the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: base of both parties do not want our system to function.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: They want the other side, defeated, humiliated, and ostracized. They're
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: not interested in accepting the premise that in a country
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: of three hundred and fifty million people, not everybody's singing
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: from the same song sheet. And if you want to
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: govern this country incrementally, you better govern incrementally, all right.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: And it is it is very difficult to bring sixty
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: percent of people along, let alone one hundred percent. It's
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: really easy to get thirty to forty percent of people
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: to be on your side. But you're never going to
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: get anything done. And all you're going to do is
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: make the country worse by being divisive. Even if you
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: think you're right, even if your policies look great on
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a spreadsheet, if you don't have the will of the majority,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: you don't have a good idea. So you better work
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: harder at persuading for a will of the major. And
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: if you're going to criticize, right, I mean just ridiculous.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: If you're going to criticize a Democrat running in a
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: red leaning state for pledging to have a bipartisan cabinet,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: then you don't want pluralism. And this country thrives when
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: we embrace pluralism. But when we try to unilaterally govern
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: with a forty percent mandate, which is what the Republicans
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: have been trying to do. They don't have a majority mandate,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: let alone barely over forty percent that want them to
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: go in the direction they're going. Democrats didn't have a
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: fifty percent mandate let alone. They were also sitting in
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: about a forty to forty five percent when they went
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: for what they went for and didn't get it, and
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: then they had to default to what was actually a
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: majority mandate, and then it looked like they lost something
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: rather than the fact they actually won something. But it's
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: all about prioritizing, right, It's all about expectations, It's all
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: about how.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: You sell it.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: But I think this is increasingly for the short term
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: going just more credibility problems for the Republican Party.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: One of their effective knocks on the Democrats is is
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: that they were you know, they couldn't tell the truth
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: about what was staring them in the face. Can Republicans
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: tell the truth about what's staring all of us in
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the face. This episode of the check Toodcast is brought
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• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Which leads me to a I think colossal political mistake
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: that Senate Republicans made. They had an opportunity to kill
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: this weaponization fund once and for all, codifying the death
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of this weaponization fund with an Act of with an
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: amendment to the bill for this homeland security thing. The
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: votes initially were there, and John Thune and the Senate
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Republican leadership decided not to allow it to happen. And
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: they twisted enough arms and they clearly made some promise
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: that maybe it was coming. Whatever it is that they
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: did to sort of get the Yolo Caucus to basically,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's no longer you only live once
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: apparently only dream of living ones right, it's just the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: dreaming Yolo Caucus since they didn't act not doing this,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: You've just opened up every Republican running for reelection to
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the easiest attack ad there is. They're so not looking
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: out for you. They're trying to pay off people that
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: beat up cops. Whose side are you on and who's
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: on your side? Who wants to protect you? Who's trying
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: to hire more cops? Who's trying to pay off people
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: that attack cops?
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Right? What are you doing? Guys?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: This seems like a really massive You had an opportunity,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a small minority of you had an opportunity to essentially
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: take one for the team. This is terrible politics. John
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Houstead is not going to be able to answer this
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: very well. He's going to fumble and mumble, and these
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: are going to be the debate questions per se. Are
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: just going to be horrible moments for these guys. That's
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: if these debates take place. I hope they do. But
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: my goodness, the Senate Republican leadership and you began the
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: week asserting your leadership and seeing, you know, calling Bill
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Poulti's acting appointment for what it was a bunch of bs.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: You're not going to put a weaponizer in charge of
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: our intel, By the way, I think it's I think
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: it's illegal for him to be the acting DNI. While
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: while the President of the United States can certainly declassify
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: information for anybody he chooses to declassify it, for there
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: is a specific written set of credentials you have to
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: have to be the DNI, I cannot imagine that an
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: acting DNI is not supposed to have those same credentials.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Bill POULTI does not have those credentials. Therefore, I do
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: not believe, even though that there is there that because
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Congress wrote into the law this specific you that the
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: executive branch come out can can overdo this even temporarily.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: So I actually don't think Pulty can legally do the job. Now.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that the president can't declassify things and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: allow Poulty to pull his weapon hiss as in garbage
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: like he's been doing with them, digging into people's mortgage
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: mortgages like he was doing with elected and political enemies.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Of the president.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: But it does mean it's probably illegal for him to
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: hold the acting title at all under any circumstance, because
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: it's written through Now that you know the problem is
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: with any of these fights with the judiciary. In order
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to have standing, the Act has to take place. Well,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the Act has taken place, and now you've got to sue.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And it does mean he can operate, and he's going
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: to have operated in the job for maybe as long
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: as a week two weeks before the courts. I do
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: think we'll ultimately say he is ineligible to serve as
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: the acting dn I because he does not meet the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: credential that Congress wrote into the law. Again, it is
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: written into the law. It is very specific. Mitch McConnell
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: pointed this out. Use Senate conferbable positions come with a
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: statutory set of qualifications, and there are deliberate reasons DNI
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: is one of them. This is what the statute says,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a dn I quote shall have extensive national security experience
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and management expertise. And then it says specifies that the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Principal Deputy DNI director, currently a gentleman by the name
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of Aaron Lucas, shall act for and exercise the powers
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of DNI during a vacancy. So it is all spelled
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: out in this On other things, at who the acting
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: or the should be is not spelled out. This one does.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: So this creates two legal questions on this vacancy, whether
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the extensive National security bar essentially constrains acting service or
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: any of only formal nominees, and whether the DNI specific
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: succession provision overrides the Federal Vacancy's Reform Act, which is
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the general law that otherwise lets the President install any acting,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: any official as acting for a two hundred and day window.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm very curious to see. I think this is
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: something that somebody should file suit on and question, because
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: we've got to find out whether Congress writing these specific
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: qualifications into the law matters. One thing about j judiciary
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: when it comes to these political disputes between branches usually,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and it hasn't meant whether judiciary is leaning left or
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: right usually on these things. They when there's a dispute
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: between the legislative and the executive, usually the legislative gets
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the nod here. And I can't imagine that it wouldn't write,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: even with the tariffs right, the legislative branch an article
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: one got the nod, So I would assume that that
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: will be the case. But we shall see. And by
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the way, just a simple thing that David French and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I talked about later in the interview. Have you ever
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: made a list one two, and three and made the
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: most important thing to just stew on that. When you
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: hear people pus about article one, article two, and article
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: three of the Constitution, again ask yourself, what list have
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: you made of one, two, and three where number two
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: was more important than number one? Right, I'm not saying
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying, all right, I want to pivot to Tuesday.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: So it seems as if there's sort of multiple things
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: worth watching on Tuesday, which is why our livestream, I think,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: is going to be lit. First of all, you got
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the South Carolina. How many runoffs are we going to get?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: We know we're going to get a run off in
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the South Carolina Republican primary for governor. Does Nancy Mace
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: make it into that runoff or not? The President has
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: endorsed the lieutenant governor. It does not appear as endorsement
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: has had the impact he hoped it would. This would
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: be Can you imagine if second time in our second
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: state in a row where the endorsed Trump candidate, Actually
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: this would be the third time we're endorsed Trump candidate
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: finishes second, not getting in the runoff. Even Cornant, I
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: guess corn and Paxton were unindorsed at the time, So
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: that's a I won't I won't use that example. But
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: we saw it with Fienstra, where the last minute Trump
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: endorsement did not have the impact that they thought that
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Trump endorsement was going to happen. We're going to find
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: out a Lieutenant governor Everet whether she gets the benefit
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: from this endorsement. Who knows, but you have that. The
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: other more interesting situation going on is with Lindsay Graham.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: And look, Lindsay Graham, You're there's always been a thirty
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: percent of the Republican Party who has never thought Lindsay
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: gram was conservative enough. This goes back to when he
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: was hanging out with John McCain. This goes back what
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: wing of the party. The South Carolina Republican Party has
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: always actually been, in some ways a bit more ideologically diverse.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: You've had your business community, you've had your more culturally conservative,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you've had more religious. But it's been a it's a
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: tapestry and there's different facets. It's why South Carolina makes
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: for such an interesting, uh interesting sort of battleground during
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the Republican presidential primary process because there are different facets
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: of a military community, retiree community in South Carolina that's
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: not nearly as religious but certainly is right leaning. Then
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: you have this more religious So anyway, the point is
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: is that there's there's different flavors of the conservative movement
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: all over South Carolina, and Lindsey Graham has has always
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: been seen with a with a skeptical eye by members
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: of the of the certainly of the Christian Conservative more
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: the Christian conservative wing of the party. And now you
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: would throw in the populace Maga, the sort of libertarian right. Certainly,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: the anti war right is no fan of Lindsay Graham
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: and has never been a fan of Lindsay Graham. And
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: in this and that's what I think we're going to
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: find out here is this combination of whether the two
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: things right. So if if the sort of anti war
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: right and the sort of more culturally conservative animated wing
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: of the party down there, if the combo of the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: two is enough to keep Lindsay below fifty because there's
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: other people on the ballot, and then of course on
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a runoff, all bets are off. And that's the thing
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: we're are we starting to see a pattern here, right,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: So in Iowa you had an outsider and you had
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: a sitting member of Congress basically as the two leading
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: candidates and the outsider got it. You had a sitting
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: US Senator in Texas, you had the outsider running sort
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of the anti establishment campaign in Paxton. Paxton wins the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: runoff going away. How about South Dakota where the runoff
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: is going to be between the sitting governor and the
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: outsider populist and the person left that finished in third
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: place was the sitting member.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Of course, Dusty Jones.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not ready to declare that this is definitely going
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: to be across the board. But if you're very more
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: in Alabama, in that runoff, you're the sitting member of Congress,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: You're facing somebody that is suddenly getting to run as
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the outsider. Hey I'm not my hands aren't dirty from
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: how Washington has been working. Right, you have a similar
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: situation perhaps playing out in the Georgia Senate runoff. Right is,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: can Derek Duley take advantage of this over Mike Collins? Right,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Mike Collins the sitting member of Congress, if indeed we
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: do see Lindsey Graham forced him too a runoff. So
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the point is there's clearly a trend here, right, and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: it you know, and you could argue that that we've
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: seen this go off and on since the rise of
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the Tea Party, that when Republican primary voters are presented
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: with an option to defeat somebody that's it that is
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: more establishmenty. Maybe they're a sitting member of Congress trying
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: to jump up to statewide office, maybe they're the sitting
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: lieutenant governor, maybe they're whatever it is, maybe they're the
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: sitting US Senator. When presented with that option and it's viable,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: they do it now. They will enthusiastically support the nominee,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: even if it's somebody that may not be their preferred
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: flavor of conservative. And we've seen this, right, these folks
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: have certainly won and gotten the votes of some of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: these people when they've just.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Chosen to turn out.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: But there certainly is plenty of evidence that we're here,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and the question is are we now? Are we in
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that tumultuous of a moment here where you do and
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: you know, we're pretty fractured in both parties right now.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: You have a real fracture inside the Republican Party still
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: between sort of the business wing that the what people
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: in the Maga world would say, the real populace and
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: then sort of the way Donald Trump's behaving, right, He's
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: basically trying to be all things to all of these wings,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and he's done nothing to try to settle him down.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: If anything, he's only made life more miserable for the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: establishment by pushing this war with Iran, and by the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: way that you want to talk about sitting with you
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: know him just trying to deny that he ran on
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: no more wars, and then he did this like he
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: didn't even attempt like there was a better way to
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: defend it. If he was going to defend I didn't
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: start this war. If he really wanted to go down
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: that front, he could say, the Iranians started this war
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: forty seven years ago, I'm just trying to finish it,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: and I'm trying to end it. But he, frankly is
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: not nimble enough to make that argument, and I don't
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: think it would be seen as as an honest argument,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: because he himself didn't say that about Iran when he
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: was campaign. In fact, just the opposite. He said, if
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you elect Kamala Harris, she's going to start a war
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: with Iran. So while he could come up with spin
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: that would be completely dishonest and completely throw himself and
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: make him look like a liar from the campaign trail.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: He still wants to look like a liar from the
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: campaign trail and not even have an honest way to
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: answer this question on Iran. But the point is what
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: he's done on Iran has actually put some of his
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: own allies and has made his endorsement. The question is
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: is it made his endorsement sort of less definitive?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: If you're still angry about this war, Trump endorsing the
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: person you're not happy with isn't going to make you
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: more inclined to support that person. So I don't think
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: it'll be as helpful as one thinks. But let's be
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: honest here on Lindsay Graham. Isn't this the way the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: movie should end for Lindsey Graham's political career. Here's a
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: guy who has just been so blatantly finger in the
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: wind of wherever the Republican Party is going.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Oh I'm going to go here. Oh I want to
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: go here, or I want to go here.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know what Lindsey Graham believes in anymore, And
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: I understand if many of you don't either he seems
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: to be a conservative of convenience and wherever it's convenient
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: to be conservative, he's gung ho about it, and the
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: minute and if he is and as long as it's
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: good for him politically. Look, I'll give him this, he
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: understands his state very well. When he did the flip
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: on Trump, he actually did it a lot earlier than
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: some of the other establishment critics of Trump. Flipped because
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: he realized he was a fish out of water in
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: his own state, and he quickly realized how much potential
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: political trouble he'd be in, so he fought. He flipped fast.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: So as somebody who understand I will say this, I
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: think the man is very in tune to his own
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: state and very in tune to understanding where his state
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: goes on some of the stuff, and understands the power
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: of Trump. But you know, when you look at the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: totality of his career, right, he's just been to the
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: things that he has been righteous, self righteous about. When
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a Democrat has done it, he looks the other way
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: when Donald Trump does it right again, it's all explained
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: away in his desire to do whatever it takes to
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: keep that senency. So a guy who's been has done
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: everything he can to keep that Trump endorsement, has kept
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: that Trump endorsement, and eventually it doesn't work. I believe
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: some some would argue that that is that is probably
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: the rightful way that this would end.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: If it does end this way.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: That somehow, because I'll tell you this, if he gets
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: forced into a runoff, that's usually it is not It
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: is not a good history for incumbents forced into a
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: runoff surviving those it happens, it does in this political environment.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Does this feel like the political environment where an incumbent
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: can survival runoff?
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Anyway?
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: That's just the South Carolina portion of our Election Night
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: livestream on Tuesday, folks. Then you got Maine and Graham Plattner,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: And I'd set that bar earlier. I will say this,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: I think on the on Thursday's podcast, I said fifteen
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: to twenty five, we're entering red flag territory. I would
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: raise the bar a little bit to twenty plus now,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: simply because she's a kind of she's home, she's on
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the verge of actively campaigning. Okay, Janet Mills, she's not
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: actively campaigning, but she reminds, she's continuously reminding people. She's
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: on the ballot, so I might raise the bar that anything,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: you know, you need to hit twenty before you to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: truly if you're in Platiner will start to panic. But
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: it's look, it's interesting that the new defensive Platner is, Yeah,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: these wars messed them up, and this is and he
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: should be you know, and this this is why. And
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: this gets back to do you have the temperament to
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: do this job?
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Do you have the ability to do this job? Is
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: your life in a position where you have the you
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: have the ability to be a public servant at this moment?
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And I and I and that's why I've constantly said
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: empathy is required here, all right. I don't know if
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: anybody is going to come out with their with one
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: hundred percent their head on straight after multiple tours of
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: And I think that we all have to be a
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: bit uh.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I have to show empathy on that. At the same time,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: that doesn't make one more you know, I think that
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: that means he somebody that I would like to see
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: testify in Congress and make sure people understand though the
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: fact of this, and people need to understand and he
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: would be a powerful surrogate supporting somebody else running for
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the Senate against the decision Susan Collins made to send
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: people to war. So this is not dismissing that as concerned.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: If anything, it's it's reinforcing it. But the damage that that,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: you know, But to try to say that everything he's
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: done is that number one puts it all onto that
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: And you're does that mean you're supposed to if you're
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable with the way he treated women, you're just
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: supposed to just chalk it up PTSD. That doesn't mean
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: that just because you can explain somebody's behavior doesn't mean
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: that you that that behavior somehow gets excused. It can
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: be explained, you know, but it doesn't get excused. So anyway,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: it's I get look where Platner's in save his campaign mode.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: The way they're going about to save this campaign, I
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: think is I'm dubious. But ultimately it's going to be
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: in the hands of the voters, and let's see where
• 40:14
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• 41:17
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• 41:19
  Speaker 1: appears to be three and a half points. These days,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: they're favorite by two and a half. The money line
• 41:23
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• 41:28
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• 41:32
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• 41:37
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• 41:43
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• 41:45
  Speaker 1: game four, you know, depending on the level of desperation,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: but I think you will see it here. I you know,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: shots just haven't fallen for these guys, but if they
• 41:55
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• 42:00
  Speaker 1: And I suspect that Wimby gets a little extra juice
• 42:04
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• 42:08
  Speaker 1: has risen to the occasion every time they need him
• 42:11
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• 42:14
  Speaker 1: or nothing and over or nothing. But I'll be honest,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I don't love getting in front of the next freight
• 42:21
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• 42:24
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• 42:26
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• 42:28
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• 42:31
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• 42:34
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• 42:37
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• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Slash predicts, Slash Bonus hyphen offer hyphen terms. I did
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: not four weeks ago think South Carolina, Maine, Nevada, and
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: North Dakota election night was going to be the best
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: election night of June. But it's going to be the
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: best election night in June. And hey, the good news
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: is we'll also be counting California ballots also on Tuesday,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: so you know, we'll be able to sort of bring
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: you up to date. Hey, what's going on in California?
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Still counting ballots here. And this is where, by the way,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: our political debate world is terrible about this, right, which
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: is everything is you know, if you're on the right
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: and you're just assuming theft on this election, because California
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: has a very thorough way that they that they approve
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: you know that they make sure they certify that a
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: voter is the voter, They do the signature match right,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: do everything. They've certainly built in plenty of protocols to
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: for security purposes, and I think they're quite good. But
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: they've got it is on them. Their inability to do
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: this faster is on the administrators. It is on the state,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: all right. At the end of the day, there are
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: always going to be bad actors that try to exploit
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: slow government responses and try to create conspiracy theories around it.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: This is not a new phenomenon. This has been happening
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: for centuries. So it is incumbent and bound government.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: To mitigate that. Get your act together.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: It is a really bad sign that we are going
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: to probably have all the votes counted in Maine in
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: South Carolina before we have all the votes counted in California,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: and Maine in South Carolina will have done their primaries
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: a week after California began its counting last Tuesday. That's
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I know, it's.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: A big state.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of people to verify. If
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: this is how you want to do it, spend because
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: part of an election process is being able to have
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: a process where a large majority of people have faith
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: in it, and the longer this takes you lose that.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: So this, this needs to be addressed with a lot
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: more urgency than the Democratic leaders are addressing it in California.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's been they just sort of they was
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: just the just wave it off. Oh this is just reporters,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: you know, upset that they have to wait longer for results. No,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: it's fricking voters that are upset. And if every other
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: state can get it done faster, come on, California, get
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: your shit together. It is ridiculous that we're going to
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: have another a primary, a set of primaries a week
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: later that all but Nevada will probably be counted completely.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Three entire other states. And yes they're smaller than California combined,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: but come on, if you're too big to do this,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: then cut the state up into or something. But admit,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: in all seriousness, I you know it is. I'm not
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: blaming the leaders of California for the lying that takes
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: place by people like Donald Trump, but you have a
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: duty to do whatever it takes to make your citizens
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: confident in the system, and the longer it takes the
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: easier it is for confidence to be weakened in the system.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Do your part and speed things up. It's too late
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: now to have credibility with it with this cycle. But
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: you when you see some crazy rants like Megan Kelly
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: declaring that if somehow Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton are
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: found to have not qualified for the runoff, that somehow
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: that means things were nefarious.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: It means they didn't get they didn't finish in the
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: top two when all the votes were counted. But it
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: is allowing this gap. We've done our job in the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: honest press, right and I know what is honest press anymore.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get to that in a minute. But
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: we've done our job. We explained the red mirage at
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: the beginning. I certainly did. I kicked off our coverage
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: with it. We've explained how this works, and we've even
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: explained it in this unique primary that people held their
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: ballots to the very end. And yes, ballots sort of
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: get counted as they come in in a lot of
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: these counties, not every county. Every county kind of does
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: it a little bit differently, but you were more likely
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: to see a surge of Democratic leaning ballots towards the end,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: more so than before because of all the tumult that
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: was taking place in that governor's race. And it is
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: playing out exactly how we told you it was going
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: to play out, right, Spencer Pratt might even have a lead,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Steve Hilt might even have a lead. And Pratt's lead
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: melt pretty quickly. Hilton's took a few days for it
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: to melt, but it all happened just the same. But
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: come on, California, spend more money to get this stuff
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: counted quicker. If you care about the integrity of the
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: democracy and the citizens belief in it, you're going to
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: get this done, all right. I've had a lot of questions,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: and I've not said much about what's happening at sixty minutes,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: what's happening at CBS, and what's happening with Scott Pelly.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Given my own experience dealing with network management who made
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: a decision, who let politics sort of get in the
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: way of journalism, I certainly understand the situation that the
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: folks at sixty minutes Pelly in particular, find themselves in.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: I think there's been a lot there's almost too much
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: focus on Scott Pelly and not enough focus on the Ellisons,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: because we got to focus the main thing is the
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: main thing. The fact is, all of these media companies
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: have proven to be horrific stewards of media, of journalistic
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: of news organizations. Disney, Comcast, Paramount and before that.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Viacom and Warner Brothers.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: They do not when when the chips were down at
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: all of those entities, all of those publicly traded companies,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: when the chips were down, they folded whatever it did
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: to appease Donald Trump, to appease the administration in some
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: form or another, regardless of whether the facts matched the complaints.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: They all went for appeasement, whether it was paying off
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: these settlements which sort of looked like bribes that didn't work,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: by the way, because one payoff, you know, he keeps
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: coming back for more.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Have you noticed that?
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Or the you know, the well timed spin off of
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: MSNBC by Comcast right when you know they get I
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: give Comcast a little more elegance about it than both
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Disney and Paramount. And then of course there's this you know,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: no man's land that CNN is operating in where they
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: basically have two owners, no owners and they're just waiting
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: for shoes to fall, and they're probably sitting there watching
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: CBS wondering. Okay, so this is how it works. So
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I think there are two things you could do, and
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: I think Scott Pelly's interview sort of got at a
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: couple of things that I'm always heads it in. I
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: don't want to backseat drive too much in this situeituation
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: because I've, like I said, I've I during the the
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: issue when when the news organization attempted to hire Rona
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Romney without sort of going through any sort of public
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: vetting or sort of accountability interview, nothing right before before
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: signing her, uh and not and not explaining what it
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: is that they were signing her, somebody who had literally
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: questioned the integrity of the entire news division multiple times
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: through her stewardship at the R and C. But NBC
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: wanted a debate, right, they wanted an RNC debate. So
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know what happened, but somehow they got one.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: And look, I understand why these media companies did what
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: they did. I've said this before. They have a feudishal
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: responsibility to their shareholders, not to the public. And so
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: if that is going to be your north star. Don't
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: own a news organization because you're going to always compromise
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the integrity of the news organization. I think it is
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: hard a heart's Bob Eiger didn't think he was compromising
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: the integrity of ABC News when he settled the frivolous
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: lawsuit against short Stepnopolis, but that's what he ended up doing.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: I'd like to think he will one day publicly express
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: regret for that decision. He's in the middle of a transition,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: he's in the middle. He may be tired of talking
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: about these things, of which I understand. But it was
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: a big It was a big mistake.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: But I under.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: The decision was rational, even if I disagreed with it,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and I think it did enormous damage because it was
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: the first one, and then it just put pressure on
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: everybody else. Now, the question is why is Trump obsessed
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: with sixty minutes? Sixty minutes is a symbol, and if
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: he can make sixty minutes heal, then he's making all
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: of all of sort of mainstream news heal.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: You know, this is the most popular, most well known
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: news brand in America, and so if he can just
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of somehow claim that he was able
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: to topple sixty minutes. Whatever that means to him, that's
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: a that's a that's an accomplishment, And it doesn't matter
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: what happens in any other news organization, right, it's that
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: symbolism that he wants there. Right, you sort of you
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: take out sixty minutes, and in some ways it it
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: decaps the entire and but the point is is it's
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: all over right the second that I don't know what
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the politics of the Ellisons are. I know some of
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: you think you know what the politics of the Ellisons are.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: We don't know for sure. Here's what we do know.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: They want to take advantage of a situation. They want
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: to own this big media conglomerate. They want to be
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: able to try to put together the biggest media conglomerate
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: they can possibly imagine with this Paramount Warner Brothers thing.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: And they know it is a questionable decision by government
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: to approve the merger. So what's the easiest way to
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: do it. Give them to the president's shiny metal objects,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: right and turn it into just remember, sixty minutes is
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: probably not even not five percent of Paramounts bottom line,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: but probably point of five percent of.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Paramount the bottom line.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: But the Allisons know that Donald Trump is erratic, and
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: if literally one piece shows up in sixty minutes that
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: he doesn't like, he could just blow up the whole
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: thing and the merger's off and the Ellisons, more importantly,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Larry Ellison, the father, is left holding a really really
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: expensive back that he is already personally essentially used his
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: own wealth as collateral to guarantee. So it would be
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: a huge blow. So if you're the Allisons, you're gonna
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: do whatever it takes to appease this president and get
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: through this regulatory merger. They don't care about the long
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: term interest of the news division for one simple reason.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: The second this merger gets approved, the combination of CBS
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and CNN will likely be put up for sale, and
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the second Trump leaves office, they're going to put it
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: up for sale. They're not interested in the long term.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: So I do think that that's if I were sitting
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: at sixty minutes, That's how I'd be approaching this. Okay,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: we know what the motivation is. We know there's nothing
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: we can do currently internally. You blow up Barry Weiss,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: the Allisons will find another Berry Weiss, you know, and
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: this isn't you know. My only question for her is
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: is she comfortable being used this way she's being used?
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe she doesn't think she's being used. Maybe it aligns
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: with what she wants to do or what she believes,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: and that's fine. But she's being used here. And I
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: assume she knows it because she seems like she's got
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of common sense to her.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: But I don't know.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: But she's being used here. But just remember the main
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: thing is the main thing, which is and this is
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: the calculation that I think that I would be thinking
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: about at sixty minutes, which is, can sixty minutes be
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: repaired if it has a new owner. I think it
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: is reasonable to conclude that CBS and CNN will have
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: new owners sometime in the next thirty six months. It's
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: not a guarantee, but it's pretty reasonable to conclude that
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: that's going to happen. There's massive debt that this new
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: merger has taken on. They're going to have to start
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: trying to whittle down that debt. The thing that is
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: the biggest headache, least impactful to their bottom line is
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: anything news. So and you know, and then and then
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: if you're CNN's last sixty minutes sas CBS, right, and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: you're there and you're deciding do I put the raincoat on?
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: See if I can get through this storm and see
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: if the next owner isn't crazy, especially if you don't
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: have the financial savings to sort of have the few money. Right,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Scott Pelly had some few money, and he took it
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: was sort of like, you know, I understand the situation
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: he was in, right. He he could take hits that
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: others couldn't. And that was that was I think, as
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: much of anything as why he chose to concentrate your
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: ara was on me seeing if he can speak and
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: protect those behind him and blow him. But I think
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: that's the calculation I'd be making, do I. And I
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: think that's what Whitaker Install and those folks decided and
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: why they said, look, we're going to stick and see
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: if essentially we can if the franchise cannot get so
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: damaged between now and the eventual soon sale of the
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: combination of whatever cn NCBs looks like. Is that, you know,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: is that better than everybody quitting simultaneously and starting something
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: that looks awfully similar to sixty Minutes down the road.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: There is a lat you know, so it's a it's
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: a fifty one to forty nine call far I'm concerned,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna That's why I don't know enough
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: internally for sure, But I do think that's the calculation
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: I'd be making. But ultimately I think there's a lot
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: there's been too much focus on sort of how Pelly's
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: gone about this, and not enough focus on the larger
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: issue here, which is what the Ellisons are using Barry
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Weiss to do. And the goal is to make the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: President think they have changed the ideology of sixty minutes.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they do it or not doesn't mean it's all
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: about convincing him that they've done this. So high profile
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: firings and you know, bringing in unusual people to run
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: it and things like that are all designed for an
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: audience of one. No serious journalists would have made these decisions.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: No serious person about the future thinking digital first would
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: have made these decisions. You wouldn't take something that has
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: such incredible brand equity and positive a positive view from
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: the public and got it like this if there wasn't
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: a larger financial incentive to do it. And you know what,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the larger financial incentive. Is the only way the Ellisons
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: get this monstrosity combination of Paramount and Warner Brothers is
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: if they sacrifice sixty minutes on the altar of Donald Trump,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: and it is the symbol. It's not you know, it
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The rest of CBS doesn't matter, right for Trump,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: he just sees sixty And that's all this is about,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: which is why they're thankfully other shows she's not messed
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: with over there, other shows that I think do a
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: terrific job. And they've basically been living, you know, they've
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: been just avoiding the war, if you will, God bless them,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: hopefully the war doesn't come to them. I'm not even
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: gonna mention to you the names of the people I'm
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: talking about or their shows, because I do not want
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: to make sure that those targets are not tarnished by me.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: You know, It's like, do you what's better for you
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: to my friends over there and endorse or criticize, Right,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: But let's not take our eye off the main All
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: my media reporter friends, this is not a Scott Kelly's story.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: This is always about the Elessons allowing sixty minutes to
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: be used as the chip to get a questionable merger
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: approved by Donald Trump's government. That is and has always
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: been the north star of all of this. Don't confuse
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: anything else from what that is. And it doesn't matter
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: whether you like the direction of sixty minutes or not.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: When that is the motivation, it should upset even those
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: that at the moment consider themselves allies at this administration,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: because government influencing the media is that it is the
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: step one in eroding the democracy. Just asked them, no
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: longer free citizens of Turkey.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: Is all right?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: It is toodcast time machine time. So where are we going? Well,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: we're going to go back to the mid nineteen fifties.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: We're actually going to go to June ninth, nineteen fifty four.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: I just it's actually a phrase I repeated as I
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: told you earlier in this broadcast on the podcast on Thursday,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: have you no sense of decency? I think I just
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: said have you no decency?
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: Sir?
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: When it came across to the President's treatment of women
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: reporters in particular, but Caitlin Collins specifically. But it's that phrase,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: have you no sense of decency? When Americans think about
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Joseph McCarthy, they usually remember that one sentence.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: That's the sentence, right, have.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: You no sense of decency? Sir? At long last? Have
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: you left no sense of decency? It's one of the
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: most famous lines in American political history, and it's certainly
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the most famous line ever uttered in congressional testimony, probably
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: right up there along with you have a cancer. There's
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: a cancer on the presidency. The no sense of decency, sir,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: came during the Army McCarthy hearings on June ninth, nineteen
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: fifty four, when Army Attorney Joseph Welch finally confronted the
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin senator after one accusation too many. Now, the way
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: we remember this story today is a bit simple. McCarthy
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: was a bully, Welch stood up to him. America watched
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: McCarthy fell the end. It's a good story. The problem
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: is it's not quite how it all happened. In fact,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: I think we remember the Army McCarthy hearings backward. The
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: famous line didn't end McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy wasn't brought down
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: because Americans suddenly stopped fearing communism. And the real story
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: isn't primarily about ideology. It's about media. I think it's
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: an undertold part of the McCarthy story. It's about attention,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: and it's about how one politician tell me where you've
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: heard this one before. It's about how one politician learned
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: to manipulate the fastest news cycle America had ever seen,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: and how eventually millions of Americans got a long enough
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: look at McCarthy to then make up their own minds.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: And that's the.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Part of the story worth revisiting seventy years later, because
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: to understand McCarthy, you have to start with the myth itself.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: The myth is that McCarthy created the Red scare.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: He did not.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: By the time McCarthy emerged as a national figure in
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, Americans had already plenty of reasons to be
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: worried about the Reds. The Soviet Union had exploded its
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: own atomic bomb right the nuclear arms race was on.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: China had fallen to Maus communists. It's one big giant
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: country going communists. The alger His case dominated the headlines.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: The Rosenberg investigation was underway. The Korean War was about
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: to erupt. The Cold War was not some distant geopolitical abstraction.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Millions of Americans in nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: genuinely believed this country faced a growing threat and we
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: had just had two wars in thirty years, so the
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: likelihood of war seemed high, not low. And that's all
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: very important because it helps explain why McCarthy was so effective,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: as in his fear mongery, the soil was fertile and
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: inventing the fear he was writing it. He wasn't creating
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: a wave, he was surfing it, and he did it
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: with a skill that was surprisingly modern and very innovative
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: at the time. Today we talked constantly about social media
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: and cable news, podcasts, the attention economy. But every era
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: has its own version of a fast moving information environment.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: And in nineteen fifties, especially after the war, we you know,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: think about this, if you have any memory of nine
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: to eleven in the post nine to eleven, remember it
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: basically created the always on news channel, right the newstickers
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Suddenly we didn't have newstickers until then, and we have
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: these newstickers constantly going all the time. And I know
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: we used to have newstickers like in the Times Square
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: in like the forties and fifties, but the point was
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: being right. After World War Two, we became news junkies,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: and so yes, there was there was a faster news
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: cycle than ever. Now us looking back on it, it looks
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: like a slow news cycle, but to Americans living then,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: this was speeding up. This was speed. So that's why
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: it's important to understand that every era has its own
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: version of what is a fast moving information environment, and
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: in nineteen fifties, in nineteen fifty this was speeding up
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: dramatically for that era. There were morning papers, afternoon papers,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: national wire services, hourly updates on radio, a growing television audience. Okay,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: all of this was new, and it was speeding up
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: the information wars. Politicians themselves, for the first time had
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: multiple chances every day to shape the conversation, and most
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: of McCarthy's colleagues were still operating in a much older
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: political news cycle. But McCarthy wasn't. He understood headlines and
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: he rode these afternoon to morning to afternoon to morning
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: cycles so cynically and well. He understood the deadlines that
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: those wire reporters were on, and most importantly, he understood
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: creating anticipation. You won't believe the names, you won't believe
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: it right. A favorite tactic was a hint that a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: major revelation was coming tomorrow or next week or soon.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Reporters would rush to father stories. Wire services would move
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: the news nationally. Hey we're just covering. Editors would splash
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: it across front pages.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: It was urgent. People would buy papers.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: Then the promised bombshell would arrive and often failed to
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: match the build up. The names would change, the numbers
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: would change, the evidence would be a lot.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: Thinner than advertised.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Sound familiar, But McCarthy always had an explanation. His investigation
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: had frightened people. The guilty parties went underground, the bureaucracy
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: was hiding the information. Fear those bureaucrats. And now there
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: was another day's worth of headlines. And he understood something
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: that remains true in politics today. The accusation usually gets
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: more attention than the repubbal The promise of a revelation
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: often gets more attention than the revelation itself. I'm going
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: to go find the real killers. Joseph McCarthy didn't invent
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: the politics of attention, but he may have been one
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: of the first modern politicians to truly master it. And yes,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: it's amazing that Joseph McCarthy had Roy Cone working for him,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: and roy Cone ended up the single most important mentor
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: to Donald John Trump.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: But I digress.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: So what you also need to understand is the nineteen
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: to fifty election cycle ended up becoming a very important one,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: probably the one of the five most important midterms in
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: American political history. Because today we tend to remember McCarthy
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: as the loan figure of the Red Scare Senators, but
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: he was part of something much larger. The nineteen fifty
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: cycle became, in many ways a national referendum on anti communism.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon sentate race against Helen Kagen Douglass in California,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: Claude Pepper's defeat, and the Democratic primary in Florida to
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: George Smathers. So it didn't matter if it was general
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: elections like the one in California or primaries like the
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: one in Florida. The communism was the wedge, and it
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: wasn't are you a communist? Are you going to be
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: tough enough on the communists? Right races across the country
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: where candidates discovered that accusing an opponent of being soft
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: on communism could be devastating, and that is you know,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: it was important that the charge was always they were
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: soft on Communism, not that they were a communist, because
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: more often it was that they didn't they couldn't be
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: trusted to confront the Communism, that they were naive, that
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: they were weak, insufficiently vigilant. McCarthy didn't create that atmosphere.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: He just became its most recognizable spokesperson, right, and that's
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: why it became his era. It's the celebrity, he's the
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: headline masche, he's the pied piper. But it brings me
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: to the second myth, and it's the myth that McCarthyism
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: sometow ended in June of nineteen fifty four at those
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: hearings where mister McCarthy was asked to be at any
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: decency because it didn't. Anti Communism, in fact, remained one
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: of the most dominant forces in American politics for decades
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: after McCarthy. The Soviet Union didn't disappear, the Cold War
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: didn't end. Containment remained American policy. Defense spending remained high
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: and went higher. Both parties remained fiercely anti Communists would
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: purge itself of any time anybody at all dabbled closely
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: to it. So what change wasn't the fear. What changed
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: was McCarthy's credibility. The public gradually stopped believing that Joseph
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: McCarthy was the best interpreter of this fear. So, if
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: you ask Americans what brought down McCarthy, ELO's usually hear
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: one of two answers, Edward R. Murrow or Joseph Walch
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: now Murrow's famous see It Now broadcast in March nineteen
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: fifty four and Welch's famous confirmation confrontation in June. They
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: both mattered, but neither was sufficient. The country's verdict wasn't
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: delivered in a single evening or a single sentence. It accumulated,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: and the Army McCarthy hearings became the place where that
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: accumulation became visible. And what's fascinating isn't that Television wasn't
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: really responsible for McCarthy's rise. McCarthy was primarily a creature
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: of these post World War two expansion and seriousness of newspapers,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: wire services, and radio. Television served a different purpose. Then
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: television exposed him. For years, Americans mostly encountered McCarthy through excerpts, headlines,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: quote summaries. The Army hearings for something that we had
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: never seen before. Now people could watch the entire performance,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: hear the detail, and here's a detail that often gets forgotten.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: The major networks weren't exactly eager to carry these hearings.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: CBS and NBC largely protected their daytime schedules, But there
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: was one network that embraced the hearings more aggressively. It
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: was ABC. Then they were the struggling third place network.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: The upstart network carried extensive coverage called There was a
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: Dumont network that also carried coverage. But one of the
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: most consequential political broadcasts in American history wasn't the result
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: of some grand civic decision by television executives. It sort
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: of happened partly as an accident of economics. The smaller
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: networks had less to lose, so they aired more of it.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: And what Americans saw did matter, because the public wasn't
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: just hearing accusations anymore. They watched the whole process. They'd
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: see McCarthy's interruptions, they'd see his insinuations, they'd see his bullying,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: the constant search for advantage. McCarthy may have mastered the
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: headline in a press scrum that most Americans didn't see.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: The raw footage of the army hearings forced Americans to
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: actually watch the whole movie and the process take place.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: Why was McCarthy, by the way, fighting the army in
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: the first place. This is a fun little side story.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: The dispute centered on guests who Roy Cone, McCarthy's then
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: chief council, and David Shine, a wealthy friend and aid.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: When Shine was drafted into the army, McCarthy's team allegedly
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: sought special treatment on his behalf. The Army pushed back.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Accusations followed. The Army accused McCarthy. McCarthy accused the army.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: So it started as a personnel dispute over somebody. Roy
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Cone cared a lot about and mister Shine exploded into
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: a national confrontation. And politically, McCarthy had made a huge
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: mistake because for years he had targeted institutions and individuals
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: that struggled to defend themselves. He was really good at
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: picking his targets. Career bureaucrats who didn't quite know how
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: to defend themselves, state department officials, academics, diplomats. Now he
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: was fighting the United States Army an institution that was
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: trusted by millions of Americans. We had just successfully won
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: a world war. It was a prestigious institution of many Americans, resources, credibility,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: and so McCarthy, for the first time, picked the fight
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: with somebody who could fight back. Even President Eisenhower played
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: a role privately. Eisenhower despised McCarthy, but he rarely attacked
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: him directly, and it frustrated actually many critics at the
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: time that Eisenhower wasn't more vocal. Eisenhower believed confronting McCarthy
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: head on would have strength, only strengthened him. This sort
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: of was This was Obama's view of Trump back in
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: the day, and why he didn't go after Trump very often. Instead,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower worked quietly, allowing institutions to isolate McCarthy, supporting the army,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: letting the Senate gradually move against him. It's one reason
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: the story doesn't fit neatly into the popular version. There
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't one hero, there wasn't one decisive moment. There were
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: multiple institutions moving at different speeds, gradually reaching the same conclusion.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: So that brings us to June ninth, nineteen fifty four,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: the moment everyone remembers.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: They're in the hearings.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: McCarthy turned his attention to a young lawyer named Fred Fisher.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: Fisher had briefly belonged to the National Lawyer's Guild while
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: in law school. McCarthy raised it as another point of suspicion,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: another insinuation, another attempt to create guilt by association. Joseph
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: Welch had finally had enough. He looked at McCarthy, and
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: he defended Fisher, and then he delivered the line that
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: entered American history. Have you no decency?
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: Sir? Excuse me? Have you no sense of decency? Sir?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: A long last, have you left no sense of decency?
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: The room fell silent, the audience applauded, and the moment
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: became legendary. But the line's power wasn't that it revealed
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: something new. It didn't expose a hidden fact. It didn't
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: suddenly change public opinion. Its power came from perhaps something else.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: It gave words to a conclusion, and millions of Americans
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: were already reaching on their own. Welch wasn't creating the verdict.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: He was simply articulating it. History is a way of
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: compressing these stories one sentence one hearing, one hero and one.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: Turning point right.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: It's easy to understand it that way, and these Joseph
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Welch was incredibly important, and it was a huge moment, right,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: But you need moments to create momentum that get institutions
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: to do what they should have done in the first place.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: The verdict on Joseph McCarthy is one of those that
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: accumulated millions of Americans watched. Eventually, parts of the press
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: that had helped amplify McCarthy began challenging him. So the
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: Army pushed back, Then the Senate pushed back. Then even
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: members of McCarthy's own party began to push back. The
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: line became a symbol. And that might be the real
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: lesson of these hearings, not that one person defeated McCarthy,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: but that eventually an entire system I had to stop
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: accommodating him. What defeated McCarthy wasn't simply exposure. It was
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: shared exposure. It was millions of Americans watching the same man,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: the same hearings, the same behavior, day after day after day.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: I wonder if we'd just had cameras up twenty four
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: to seven in the Oval Office and let all Americans
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: observe the behavior on their own, without a filter, for
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: the conclusion that people would take it. That said, back then,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: there was still a common audience. We had a common experience,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: and there was a common narrator essentially narrator. That didn't
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: mean everyone agreed, but they were watching the same thing,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: and that made a national verdict possible. The harder question
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: is whether the conditions that made that possible still exist today.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: The shared audience, the common set of facts, the institutions
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: willing to absorb the political cost of pushing back. I
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: just told you about media companies that refuse to do that.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: None of those things are guaranteed. As we we in
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: the that either had worked in the legacy media space
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: or do work in the ladies legacy media space are
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: finding out in real time. It wasn't the end of
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: anti communism, but it wasn't the end of fear. It
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: was the end of one man's ability to monopolize both.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: History remembers the moment, but the moment only mattered because
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: of everything that came before it and the collective.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: Reaction we all had after it. So there's your history
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: lesson for the week.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: Ask Chuck All right, let's do a little ask Chuck.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: I know we're this this thing's getting long, so I'll
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: just do four questions today.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: You know, four questions. That's something that.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: We have a dinner once a year where four questions
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: matter in my house.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: But I digress.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: First question comes with Kevin B. In Nashville, and he writes, Hey,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: thanks for the podcast. Always appreciate your perspective. Two part
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: question here, when do you think Congress will more actively
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: hold cabinet officials accountable? And what mechanisms actually exists to
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: enforce that? Looking ahead, is there any realistic way to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: establish clearer qualification standards for cabinet and other political appointees?
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: Kevin B. Nashal, Tennessee.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: Look, I mean, this is why I brought up the
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: bill POULTI attempt to appoint him acting and that's actually
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: a very important This is why you just gave me
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: another reason why we need to get the courts to
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: litigate this, because Congress did write in a very specific
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: set of qualifications for dn I. Normally there is not
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: the same set, but it was a very specific set
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: of qualifications. If the courts say that that supersedes the
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: president's authority to just appoint anybody, you know, as far
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: as acting, then I would say, well, actually, Congress then
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: can if they write it into the job description of
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: how they will And I do think Congress because they
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: have the power of the purse, and they can connect
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: the job essentially the job itself, to their decision to
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: fund it, right, they can say funding is only you know,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: funding automatically ceases to go to this agency if the
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: person does not meet you know, these minimum standards. So
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: I think the answer is yes. Now, I'd like to
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: see clarification with this pulty, and this Poulty moment actually
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: provides an opportunity to test that. But I'm pretty confident
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: that as long as you tied it to funding and
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: the funding was only triggered based on qualifications, and there's
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: and again clear power of the purse does belong to Congress,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: I think that yes.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: You could do that. Now as for.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: As for holding the you know, as for for holding
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: the cabinet officials, I mean, I think that you're going
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: to see, you know, these are the subpoenas that I
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: would do. Look, I think that I think it's important
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: to put everything Trump did on the record, and I
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: think it's important for future administrations. It's important because I
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: think there's two ways to look at.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: The Trump presidency, right.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: And I think that this is where there is a
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: divide inside the Democrats, and certainly a divide in amongst
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: the group of people that are trying to resist Trump,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: those that believe there's an emergency at the moment that
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: has to be dealt with at the moment, and you
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: kind of have to throw away some guardrails if you're
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: going to deal with the emergency at the moment, right,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: And that's how people rationalize their way to support people
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: that probably are unqualified for office, and why you end
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: up supporting gerrymandering, even though you spent ten years being
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: against jerrymandering. But if you believe the threat is so
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: existential and so urgent that the Republic, you know, it's
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: sort of it's literally a Sophie's choice type of situation.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: I at least understand that behavior. That doesn't mean I
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: agree with it, and doesn't mean I believe the situation
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: wherein is quite the same. I look at the situation
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: where Donald Trump has provided he has been an MRI
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: to every loophole that could destroy this republic via the
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: executive branch, and we've got a lot of work to
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: fix it. And in order to understand what you need
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: to do to fix it, you need to chronicle everything,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: and you need to do it sort of and so
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: particularly the pay to play and the transactional nature of
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: how so many of these departments basically we're in the
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: pay to play functionary position that to me would be
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: what I would be from center on. I mean, what's
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: happening here, I think is the is the grift and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: plane sight. This is the straight up stuff that needs
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: to be dealt with asap. And look, cabinet secretaries may
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: somehow hide behind executive privilege, and the White House may
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: do their best to sort of prevent the testimony of
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: its own aids. Obviously, the cabinet secretaries are going to
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: have to show up for budget hearings and things like this.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: But I think anybody, any private entity that benefited from
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: participating in these transactions are probably going to get subpoenaed
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: by Congress. It's certainly what I think is the you know,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like gather your evidence before you try
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: to get an indictment. I think that the mistake Democrats
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: could make here they get control of the House and
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: the Senate is to basically write the indictment and then
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: search for the evidence to support it. And you may
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: think you've got everything that you know has happened. I think,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: go go gather. I think the evidence is work is
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: more is more powerful.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: Than you would imagine.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, just focusing on these pardons. I mean, we
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: just got another one over the weekend, Steve Buyer, Right,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, my goodness. You know, talk about a White
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: House that doesn't care about the Republican Party. Right, there's
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: this huge debate about whether that whether Congress should be
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: banned from buying and selling stock, right, And what does
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump do in the middle of this debate, pardon
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: somebody who was a member, a former member of Congress
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: who was convicted of insider trading. I just have to
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: present you the headline. Forget the details of the story
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: he tells slightly different than it, but it doesn't matter. Right,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: optics are everything here. I think, just focusing on how
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: he has perverted the pardon process, how he's undermined the
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: rule of law. You know all of these, but you've
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: got to gather your evidence, and you got to go
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: in there and put it all on the record, not
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: just relying on other media accounts of this stuff. You
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: got to get it, put it on the record, pressure
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: test it, and you know that's what I'd be doing
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: because I think ultimately, again, you can treat the Trump
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: era like a catastrophe or you can also say, what
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: are we going to learn from it? And he's providing
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: an MRI for every loophole that exists, Norms that need
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: to be codified and made into laws, right, guardrails that
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: need to be erected in places we didn't normally know
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: we needed guardrails, all of those things. His presidency has
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: been an incredible help in exposing. Right, It's like a
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: black light and suddenly showing you, oh my god, look
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: at that loophole. Look at that loophole. Look at that loophole.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: My goodness. You know that's what to me, irresponsible political
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: party would would take as their mandate if they did
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: indeed win.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: Control the center. All right.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Katie and Winston Salemould Rights, Hey,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: love the podcast or appreciate your straightforward balance takes. Curious
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: about reports that DHS may poll CPB from certain Blue
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: state city airports. Does that seem feasible or would it
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: create major logistical and economic issues. It's not a serious proposal.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: What do you think the is? Thanks a lot, Katie
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: Winston Salem Pas fully support your and Sarah Esker's idea
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: for a top five political songs list. Perfect overlap of
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: music and political nerds. I love it, you know, I
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: have a whole I have an election day playlist. The
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: two songs that anchor it are the Ramones I want
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: to be sedated, you know, twenty twenty twenty four hours
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: to go, So that to me is my election day
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: song because usually we're twenty four hours ago and we're
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: going to finally get the answer and then one day
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: more from lay miss right, if you were so, and
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: that if I could sum up my music taste with
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: the Ramones, meet lay Miz that musical.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: That, I'd be okay with that.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: If you said that, try to try to draw conclusions
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: of him based on that, I'd be okay because I
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: think it paints eclectic picture. So on election Day, November
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: I will post my playlist again.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: I may have even mosted it on Spotify a few
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: If you wanted to go seek it out and search
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: for it. But it's a pretty lengthly playlist. It's just
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: some of my favorite songs that I that.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: I can that.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: I think at least have some campaign or election type
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: homageries too. Ask for your specific question, I just I
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: don't think that. I just don't think that's legal. I
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: don't think that's constitutional. You know, this is this is
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: you know, there is such thing as a tenth amendment
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: in States rights. So I just don't think this is
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: even constitutional what they're threatening. If you're wondering why he
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: says it, I think it's just it's just bas rhetoric.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: It's not serious. There's no serious way to do it.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: And if you did it, I mean you would just
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: all right, I know this is going to sound hyperbolic,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: but it's it's almost like an act of war. Right,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: if you essentially say we're going to cut off Blue
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: States from air travel, I mean it's kind of an
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't again, I don't want to come
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: across hyperbolic, but what else would you call it? It's
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: a trade embargo, right, It's a it's a you know,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's an embargo on air travel. So anyway, I
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: don't it's beyond illegal, beyond unconstitutional. I believe with with
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: with states' rights in here. I don't think there's this
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: superseding law in this and I think they would have
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: to specifically write into the law in order to make
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: this even legal for them to do it, and they
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: don't have that kind of statutory authority number one, So
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: it just, I'll be honest, I don't take it seriously.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: I chalk it up to just red meat that's being
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: fed to the to the to the to the part
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: of the base that just obsesses over a problem that
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: is a bit overheated in this country. And I think
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: now most people, if you work in an agricultural economy,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: if you work in the service industry, you realize how
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: self defeating and how terrible for the economy this entire
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: process has been, and you will understand how defeat us
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: this all is.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: But forget that.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: I just that's why I don't take it very seriously,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: because some of the president's biggest supporters would be put
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: out of business by a decision like this. Next question
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: comes from Ken. He says, Ken from Maine again, then
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: political analyst here. I was struck by your point on Mills'
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: support in the second district, But wouldn't her share in
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: the more progressive first stuctory be just as telling you
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: if not more? Yeah, you know, you're right. Also, how
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: do you think about the tension between voting for cannate
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: versus voting against one? Thanks, Ken, Look, you know what
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: you're in some ways, if the more sport she gets
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: from the first you know, even you know, I think,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: but look, there's no good explanation for her getting twenty
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: percent or more anyway, right, Like, it's all bad for
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: Blattner at this point, right, So, but it's a it's
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: a fair point that it's one would actually show, Hey,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: this is rank and file Democrats, people that will vote
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: Blue the entire.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: Time and are uncomfortable with this.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: But I guess the point I was making there is
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: that you're probably gonna have an easier time convincing Mills
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: voters in the that are first district voters who are
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: probably more regular Democrats to hold their nose and take
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: one for the team and vote for Team Blue over
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: you know, if despite your character questions, then you will.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: And the second district, it's a little more independent voter
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: might have a little more you know, sort of independent
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: street to it. I think so that, But anyway, it's
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: a it's a fair point. Look, I think Senate races
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: are often votes for Jersey. You know you do you
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: want to Republican Senate or a Democratic Senate. I think
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: I've shared with you a story that is just I
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: just will share you my father's final vote before he died,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: And any of you that have been listening to me
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: a long time in public forums, I've used this before.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: I remember vividly my father couldn't speak at that time.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: He was on a breathing tube, but he could write.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: And he died on November fourteenth, about a week after
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: election day. But he wanted to vote absentee, and the
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: time that getting an absentee ballot was a big was
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: much harder in nineteen eighty eight than it is today.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: And I remember helping him vote. He couldn't quite, you know,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: do all the bubbles and all that stuff. So I
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: was reading him and he would read it, and I'll
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: never forget the back and forth he had with himself.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: To the Senate race. It was a very competitive center race,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: open seat. Lawton Childs was retiring at the time. He'd
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: retired because he'd become the first sort of the most
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: public one of the early people to go on prozac,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: and at the time that was considered a stigma. Oh
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: my god, he's on an antidepress and he can't seek reelection.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: Believe it or not.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: That's how stigmatized depression was back in this as the
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: late eighties, right, it was considered politically impossible to run
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: for reelection with that going on. Obviously, it turns out
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: talk about underestimating the voter. Laton Child's two years later
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: would be elected governor of Florida for two terms. But
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: I digress. The two candidates were Connie Mack and Buddy McKay.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: And my father was a political junkie. I think many
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: of you know in many ways. You know, my father's
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: love of politics got passed down to me. You know,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: my politics was a bit less formed when I was sixteen.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: When he died, then his politics were very much a
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: he would he would have called himself a one time
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: Reagan Democrat who was now a conservative Republican.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: That's how he would have described himself in nineteen eighty eight.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: But he really liked Buddy McKay, and he didn't know
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: much about Connie Mack and wasn't that impressed with him
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: at the time and is in Congress, and whether that
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: you know, and thought Buddy McKay was the type of
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: Democrat he could support, a more conservative Democrat, and he
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: was going back and forth, and he decided to vote
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: for Mac And I remember asking him, so, why'd you
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: vote for Mac? I thought you liked McKay better, And
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: he goes control the Senate matters more right that he said,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: And in fact, he said, if I'm going to die,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: I want to die knowing I voted for a Republican
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: Senate and that that was what he believed in. So
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: my point is is that now he was a pretty
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: he was a voter. He's strategic voted all the time.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: He was a registered Democrat his whole life because at
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: the time in the South, the only way you can
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: participate in primaries, absolutely in his mind, would be you'd say,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: as a strategic voter. Look, I don't want to let
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: one person's experience color what I think is everything. But
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: you asked about this idea of voting for or against
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: a candidate. I just think in senate races generally, it
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: is a lot easier to get people to think party,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: you know, who should control, right, It's why you're more
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: likely to get unusual, why a minority party can get
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: get their candidate elect and governor more often than they
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: can get their candidate elected Senate because most people, I
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: think it's not about voting for or against. I think
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. Certainly we know with the double
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: negatives of Clinton and Trump that people voted, you know,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: they were voting on negative, they were negative voting. And
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: we know that negative partisanship in some ways drives our politics.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: But I think in Senate races in particular, and I
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: think that this is going to be and at this point,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: and if Platner survives all this and gets through it,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: I think if he wins, it'll be because he made
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: the case that Democrats need to control the Senate heartstop,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: and that is you may like Susan, you may think
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins is better than most Republicans, but ultimately she's
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: a vote for a Republican Senate which supports Trump's agenda.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: YadA, YadA, YadA.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: That's my guess of the best possible messaging that Democrats
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: can come up with that can at least nod to
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: the character discomfort that voters have and at least have
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: the conversation with those voters who are who are not
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: sure whether they should let the character issues impact them
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: or not. But I do think Jersey Color, I think
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: control the Senate does have more of an impact on voters.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: Today than ever before.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: All right, last question, This one comes from Donatello, who
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: writes another regiciary taking question here, do you think it
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: would be effective for Democrats to adopt a pledge to
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: ban jerrymanding nationally, similar to how Republicans once to use
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: pledges on taxes. Curious if that kind of a which
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: actually could actually work, well, what could argue they've kind
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: of been the party that was against jerry mandering until
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: they decided to go. I mean, you could be pledge,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: you could pledge it all you want, but if you
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: don't act upon it when you have an opportunity to
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: do it, does the pledge mean anything?
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: And I think Republicans have a bunch of pledges where
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: they've not when push came to shove. They didn't support
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: the pledge when it was necessary, So then there's a
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: sense that they didn't care about the pledge in the
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: first place. So I you know, I ultimately think that
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: the better answer on this, and I know I'm going
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: to go back, but I feel like I've said I
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: want to do two things with this podcast. One is
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: cover politics as it is, but the other is to
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: cover politics as it could be or should be. And
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: I just think that the right answer on this is
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: to advocate from for a larger Congress. If you want
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: more representation, more people represented and feeling like they're represented
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: in Congress, then you need to expand the size of Congress.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: That needs to be it. It improves everything else below it.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: It makes jerrymandering less necessary. It does give people more
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: a more direct feeling like they have a little more
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: direct link. Ultimately, you should be pro democracy, and the
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: pro democracy stance here is not about jerrymandering. The pro
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: democracy stance is, I think two things. More voters involved
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: in the selection of members of Congress and more members
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: of Congress so that the country can be accurately and
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: correctly represented the way the founders intended for Congress to
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: represent the people. And with that, that's going to do it.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: For my quick ask, Chuck of the day, I've gone on.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: This is a big, long episode.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: I gave you a little sports with the French interview.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: I will admit.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: That there are two rants that I haven't gone on
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: in the sports world that I'd like to go on.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: Rant one is where's the love for James Wood? You
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: know It's funny is somehow the Nationals become the team
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: that gets guys Compared to Ted Williams. I remember Soda
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: in his first couple of years was doing things that
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: Ted Williams was the only other hitter that had ever done.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: And now Wood is doing things that only Ted Williams
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: and one Soda or the only two other hitters are
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: ever done number one and number two. You know, the
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: hard part is what do you do with show?
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: Hey?
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: Because the easy way to say, you know, there's no
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: doubt Wood is in a conventional year would be the
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: be the at least a co favorite or.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: A co front runner for MVP.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: The numbers are just I mean, he is easily the
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: best hitter in baseball right now, and that could change.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: We know that, But I mean you just look across
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: the board, right he just dominates in so many of
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: these factors. But you know what James Wood hasn't done,
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: isn't he doesn't have an er below one?
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: Like that's the killer aspect of show. Hey here, but
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: I want to recommend what my son did was he
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: voted for Schwarber for DH, not Otani because he says
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: Otani should be the starting pitcher for the National League.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: So and who's been the better DH this year? Then
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: I guess you would give it to Schwarber right on
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: that front. But anyway, there's a long rant there. And
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: the other is, of course, how the SEC and the
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: Big ten twenty four playoff teams is ridiculous idea, and
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: the SEC and the Big Ten tired of them not
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: wanting to grow college football. All they want to do
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: is freeze college football so that only the SEC and
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: the Big Ten. They want to essentially lock any other
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: entities out from participating in the spoils of college football.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: I say, screw you guys, enough of this. It's obvious
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: what you're doing, and all you're doing is creating a
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: situation that baseball finds it's right. It was greedy ass
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: owners for one hundred years that refuse to share their
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: local revenue that put them in the situation that they're
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: in today. And it's the greedy SEC and the big
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: Big Ten that are trying to so desperately lock out
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: any other schools or conferences from ever expanding and touching
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: college football, that they're going to destroy the sport. In
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: the meantime, how about this sport is more popular, expand
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: it more access, my god, better scheduling. You're just trying
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: to essentially hoard an advantage and create more velvet ropes
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: and make it impossible for the sport to grow. That's
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: what irritates me the most about Sankie and the Big
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: Ten is that their interests are just self serving. They
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: just want to make their two conferences stronger and more influential.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: Neither one of them gives two shits about the future
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: of college football. So those are the two rents that
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: I've been saving. So I will postpone them and save
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: them for another time. And with that, I'll see out
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: of the election nights stream on Tuesday and Wednesday in
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: this same pod channel, talk to you them