Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump’s Corruption Knows No Bounds + Decades of Anti-Tobacco Wins Are Being Reversed Under Trump

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Full Episode - Trump’s Corruption Knows No Bounds + Decades of Anti-Tobacco Wins Are Being Reversed Under Trump · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
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  Speaker 1: When I like about these Chapter folks, I've spent time
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  Speaker 1: and then call Chapter today at nine eight zero seven
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  Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Hello thereon, Welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the first August episode of the Chuck Todcast. I am
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: singling out the month of August because while, oh, a
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: decade or so ago, it would have been the beginning
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of what was supposed to be sleepy August. Well, first
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: of all, August had never been sleepy, at least in
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  Speaker 1: my professional career. But August is no longer sleepy, particularly
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in even numbered years. We have a slew of primaries,
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  Speaker 1: including a big one on Tuesday. It is Michigan, the
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  Speaker 1: start of what could be sort of the next iteration
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: of the big fight inside the Democratic Party. Obviously battle
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: for control of the House and Senate in some ways
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: might be at stake. Depending on these primary results, We will
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  Speaker 1: of course have a big live stream for you. My
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  Speaker 1: and fastest election results that are available anywhere on the Internet,
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  Speaker 1: cable TV, legacy, television, you name it. Thanks to our
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  Speaker 1: partnership with DHQ, So tune in for Soliza, Skelly, and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: myself is we will navigate Michigan, Kansas and the entire
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Tuesday calendar of events on that front. But, as I
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: always promise, welcome to the check podcast where we deal
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: with politics for the rest of us. And yes, it
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: was a monstrous weekend in some ways. If you chose
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: to pay attention to every little detail that you wanted
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to in the world of politics, if you chose to
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: try to continue a summer vacation, God bless you, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: maybe you are in better spirits for it. So then
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: you tune into me to help you let you know
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: what you may have missed this weekend. A role I am,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: a role I am happy to play, and I appreciate
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: you turning to me for that. So let's begin with
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  Speaker 1: the weekend. It was one of those weekends where everything
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  Speaker 1: happened at once. You had Iran dominating the headlines again.
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  Speaker 1: There were new revelations about cyber attacks on American water
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: systems that are quite serious. President's not taking them seriously,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: but they seem to be quite serious. Another Justice Department
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: story raising new questions about the credibility of the rule
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: of law in the United States of America. And like
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I said at the start, we're on the eve of
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  Speaker 1: one of the most consequential democratic primary days of this cycle.
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  Speaker 1: And buried underneath all of that are a couple of
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: bigger questions that I don't think we're asking enough of.
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  Speaker 1: Is Donald Trump actually getting an accurate picture of what's
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: happening in the country, And it's the Democratic Party about
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: to spend the next two weeks deciding whether it wants
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: to be a governing party or simply a movement. I'm
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: going to get to both. By the way, quick run down, right,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I've got I'm going to go through a few things. Iran, Minnesota,
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  Speaker 1: the corruption stuff, Senate Democrats producing a fascinating response to
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the corruption message, A little bit of a preview of
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Michigan in Wisconsin, my interview with Brian King, who is
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the former director at the FDA on tobacco products, and
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: let's just say he's very troubled about what we've seen here.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Industry spends money on Donald Trump. Donald Trump administration suddenly
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: creates creates some lower regulations that make the tobacco companies happy.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: A lot of this has to do with the what
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: flavors can be used for various tobacco products. I think
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: zens things like the vapes, all of that stuff. So
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: we get into all of that. It's fascinating conversation. And
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: of course it's my Monday episode, which means we have
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a little history lesson for today. Let me just tell
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  Speaker 1: you this week in history is a slew of monumental
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: things that have happened, particularly in American political history. I
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: am going d on one of them. And if you
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: think about it, and you think about the week that
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: is August third through August ninth, I think you have
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: an idea of what anniversary I'm going to be quote
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: unquote marking or celebrating, depending on your point of view.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And then of course we will go to questions on
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: that front. And finally, obviously Tuesday is another potential showdown.
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  Speaker 1: I left out one other thing, and that is the
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Todd Blanche confirmation potential confirmation committee hearing vote on Tuesday.
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  Speaker 1: It seems as if Donald Trump has made it clear
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  Speaker 1: he would rather fight to warp what happened on January
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  Speaker 1: sixth for his followers rather than do what it takes
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  Speaker 1: to get Todd Blanche confirmed, John Cornyn and Tom Tillis. Shockingly,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: somehow think Blanche has qualified for this job. The idea,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: but for this deal that he helped orchestrate for his
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: one time personal client, Donald Trump. This whole irs immunity business.
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  Speaker 1: It's the weaponization fund. Tillis and corn are implying publicly
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: they're trying to get to yes, and all Donald Trump
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  Speaker 1: has to do is agree to get rid of this
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  Speaker 1: settlement document, and he just can't bring himself to do it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: So we're going to find out how stiff is Corny's spine,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: how stiff is Tillis's spine. I do believe they're not
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the only two no votes on Blanche. I think there
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  Speaker 1: are slew of Republicans on the ballot in twenty six,
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  Speaker 1: including people like Ashley Moody, John Houstead, Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins,
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  Speaker 1: who do not want to have to vote for Todd Blanche.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe they will if it gets forced upon him. Some
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: of them may vote yes. I certainly think Collins is
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: a no. And I'm very curious what a guy like
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Houston or Sullivan does because they're very deep trouble. They're
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: not Republicans who normally want to get comfortable with the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: corrupt side of the Trump years, and this would probably
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: be a tough one. So I think Tillis and Cornyn
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  Speaker 1: are essentially shields for Senate Republicans who can't who decided
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  Speaker 1: they can't either stomach standing up to Trump on this
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  Speaker 1: publicly or politically feel like they can't. But it is
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  Speaker 1: what it is. But first, let's start with what has
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: become almost an eerie pattern. So last Thursday's episode, I
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  Speaker 1: argued that we've been looking at the Iran War in
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  Speaker 1: the wrong way. We keep calling it a small regional conflict.
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  Speaker 1: Unfortunately it is not that anymore. It's become a global conflict. Right.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: We have more than thirty countries that have been touched
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  Speaker 1: by this conflict. It's a global conflict in anything but
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  Speaker 1: name only, right, Drone shipping lanes, the oil markets, the
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: cyber attacks, the supply chains, all of it's connected here.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: And then this weekend happened. And we've all seen this
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  Speaker 1: movie before, right, it's washrints repeat every weekend. Seems almost
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  Speaker 1: to be the same script, right Trump. It begins the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: week talking up, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, there's
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  Speaker 1: this I'm gonna bomb, I'm gonna bomb, I'm gonna threaten, right,
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  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, there's some sort of
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: walk back. We got another rock back. Sometimes markets react
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and it triggers the walk back. Sometimes Saudi Arabia or
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Ue reacts and it triggers the walk back, but the
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: walk back nonetheless, And of course news outlets are stuck
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes looking like they're doing nothing but his propaganda work.
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  Speaker 1: But what choice do you have. If the president is
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  Speaker 1: saying they're going to do these things, you say, well,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: if he does, then you have to prepare everybody for
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  Speaker 1: an historic weekend of troublesome war and a lot of deaths.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: And of course it usually doesn't happen. Donald Trump usually
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: backs down. He tries to declare success or hint that
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  Speaker 1: some new success is closed, talks are coming, a deal
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  Speaker 1: is in sight. Oh, these Iranians, they really want to
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: make a deal. They can't handle this anymore. Okay, Monday
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: arrives and then we go through the whole thing all
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: over again. Right, it is groundhog Day. Welcome to Donald
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Trump's groundhog Day foreign policy when it comes to Iran war. Now,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: don't under misunderstand that I'm not minimizing any of this.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: American forces have been attacked Iranian Boxi's remained very active
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: and the cost keep stacking up. And I'll say it
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  Speaker 1: as plainly as I did last week. This war is
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: going to be remembered as one of the largest strategic
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: presidential errors of my lifetime. This this is going to
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: be up there with WMDs. This is going to be
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: up there with Vietnam. But think about it, both of them.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, what we're staring at here is a loss strategically,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: even if it's not a loss militarily. Trump is trapped
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: in a box of his own making, as I have
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: said over and over again, and every week he picks
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the option that keeps him in his own box. Right
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: by the way, just a reminder here, there were researchers
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: at Brown University have been doing a running tracker of
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: oil prices since the war began in February, and on
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the issue of gasoline, the price Americans have paid for
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: this war of choice by Donald Trump seventy four billion
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: dollars more for gasoline and diesel then we would have
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: paid had this conflict not started. It breaks down to
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: five hundred and eighty six dollars per household. The Trump
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Iran tax. Let me say it again, the Trump Iran tax.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Five hundred and sixty dollars per household. Nobody voted for
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: that tax, Nobody debated that tax. It's just showing up
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: at the pump. It is real money. Five hundred This
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: is just since February, this has cost five This is
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: not even over an entire calendar year yet essentially about
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: five months, So one hundred dollars extra every month. Wow,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: that's not anything that was in that one big beautiful bill,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: now was it. And then there's the cyber war that's expanded.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And this was incredibly disturbing over the last few days
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: because last Sunday and Monday, we had more than thirty
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Minnesota community water systems hit in a coordinated attack on
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: their operating technology. Hackers went after the controls and some
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: places water pressure dropped. Some communities had to switch to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: running their systems by hand. State of Michigan reported similar activity.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: The FBI and EPA issued an advisory on Thursday of
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: last week. SISA, which of course is the sort of
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: cybersecurity arm of the federal government that Donald Trump attacked
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: because this was the entity that said we had a
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: free and fair election in twenty twenty. SISA warned that
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: attackers are targeting what is called programmable logic controllers at
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: water utilities, and they've been changing passwords to try to
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: lock out operators out of their own systems. We now
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: think at least seven states are under investigation for some
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: sort of problem here. Now, the good news is nobody's
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: been hurt. State officials have been cleared, the drinking water
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: is safe. But understand what has actually been touched here.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Not a website or email service. This is the machinery
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: that puts waters in the taps of America intends. So,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: one thing that makes us different almost from any other
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: country on Earth is how reliable our drinking water is.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Imagine introducing unreliability to our drinking water in this day
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and age. Now, attribution in cyber attacks always takes a
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: lot of time, and nobody has formally attributed this to anyone.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: But three state officials that were briefed on the investigation
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: told The New York Times that the trade craft they're
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: observing here in these water systems and the absence of
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: any ransom demand. If this were just some sort of
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: you know, cyber hijackers based in Russia or something like that,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: there was no ransom demand on this. So because of that,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: it pointed all analysts to Iran that this essentially was
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: part of their war response to us. Now, they also
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: cautioned the assessment could change. That's how all this is
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: supposed to work right, more investigation, you get more evidence. Now,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: let's step back and look at what that is politically.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: If you're the president of the United States and your
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: argument is that Iran is a dangerous regime, so dangerous
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that it threatens Americans at home and we have to
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: go into this war, then an attack on the drinking
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: water of thirty American towns is the single most useful
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: fact that you will ever be handed to make your
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: case that you need to continue to engage in this
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: hot war with Iran. The facts themselves, in theory might
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: make the case for you. You don't even have to manufacture
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a pretext on this one. But here's the thing I
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: always try to remind you, and I do this for
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: all friends and family and reporters. Sometimes what doesn't happen
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: is a story, and sometimes what doesn't happen is the story.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Trump didn't seize on it. He didn't use it. He
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: had a free pretext to get tougher on Iran, and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: he left it sitting on the table. Strange, isn't it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Here's what he did instead. At a cabinet meeting at
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Camp David on Friday, the President was asked about it.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: He said he didn't think Iran did it. He said
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: he blamed Minnesota, that they were quote grossly incompetent. He
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: added that Iran had bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota. Now,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: let's be precise here, because this matters. He wasn't trying
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to pivot. He didn't change the subject to Minnesota. Minnesota
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: is the subject. Minnesota's where the attack was first discovered.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Minnesota is a crime scene, perhaps a war crime scene.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: He was handed the strongest available evidence for his own argument,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and had said he used it to attack the state
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: that got hit. He attacked fellow Americans. He didn't not
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the attacker the victim. He blamed the victim. Look, I
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: understand his narrative here, right. Donald Trump collects grievances, We
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: know this, and he never puts his grievances down. Minnesota
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: is where he came closest to flipping a state he'd
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: narrowly lost twice. It's also where twenty twenty. It's where
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty anchored his law and order argument that he's
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: been running on ever since. George Floyd the unrest him walls.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: But he does attribute his twenty twenty loss a little
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: bit to George Floyd a little bit to COVID. Right,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: this is why he's so angry at Faucci's why he
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: gets so angry at the entire state of Minnesota. Right,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: never mind that his entire ice campaign is so unpopular.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Why because of the out of the ordinary targeting of
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the state of Minnesota, and six years later it is
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: still live for him. He's obsessed with all things Minnesota.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: For him, he hears the word Minnesota and he immediately
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: goes into grievance point. It's like, it's why he can't
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: support Ukraine. He belames Ukraine for his first impeachment, so
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: he constantly thinks they're they're not with him, and it's
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: why he's so soft on Russia. Right. You know, some
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: people will assume he's on the payroll, but at his
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: most base instinct is well, Russia helped me in sixteen,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: so I'm going to be nice to them. So whether
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: any of that's fair unfair is in my point. But
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: doing what he did didn't help them, It actually cost them.
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  Speaker 1: revealing this weekend, and it's the reflecting pool business, right,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: much smaller stakes, and yet it was almost very similar
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: to this entire Minnesota story. So if you recall, on
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: July second, Jeanine Piro, the former Fox A host and
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: now US attorney in Washington, indicted a sixty seven year
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: old former Olympian canoeist named David Hearn, charging him with
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: felony destruction of property carried a ten year sentenced to prison.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: She told reporters the evidence showed he violently ripped up
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the pools liner well. Then after the indictment came down,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the Interior Department turned over documents It had been holding
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the entire time. Turns out those documents show the damage
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: came from a botched installation by the contractor, work that
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: fell behind almost immediately rain and wind, repeated failures on
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the seals. It was a job rushed before those America
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: two fifty events around the fourth of July, so on Friday,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Pierro had to move to dismiss her own case. Almost
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: a month later, she wrote that it was difficult to
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: attribute the damage to vandal, let alone prove it beyond
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt. She noted the damage appeared in the
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: middle of the pool, where no vandal would plausibly be
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: peeling anything, and she said in a court filing that
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Interior had not been forthcoming with her office. I don't
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: think we should wave past what any of this means.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Her filing says her office took evidence to a grand
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: jury that the damage was caused by vandals based on
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: what Interior and park police handed her. So if Interior
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: was sitting on documents saying otherwise while that was happening,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: then what the grand jury was actually told becomes a
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: live question. Hearn's lawyers are already calling it an abuse
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: of government power. A judge still us to sign off
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: on this dismissal. I promise you this is all going
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: to cost us more money because David Hearns got a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: defamation suit. He's going to sue the government and he's
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: going to win this suit and millions are going to
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: go to him our taxpayer dollars because of Donald Trump's grievances.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: But grand jury material, by the way, doesn't stay forever.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And if that transcript ever sees daylight, somebody in this
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: chain has a serious problem. We haven't asked the question.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Nobody's asked this question of Pierro. Yet somebody should. But
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: it strikes me Pierro didn't want to risk Maybe she
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to risk this grand jury transcript getting unsealed
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: because it may show her committing misdeeds that could get
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: her disbarred or sanctioned or whatever. She could be in deep,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: deep trouble. And what we have learned here, what we
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: have learned here is that there are moments where people
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: just won't go there for Trump. They're not going to
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: put themselves at risk of losing their job for Donald Trump.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: There's always a line. Pam Bondi couldn't do it. That's
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: why she was fired. She just couldn't break the law.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: She feared disbarment. Perhaps even Pierro met a line she
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't cross. But here's what I keep coming back to.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: The President responded on Saturday. He said he disagreed one
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: hundred percent with Jean Piro. He said he didn't know
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: what she was thinking. He allowed that there may have
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: been some contractor difficulty, and then said the major damage
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: was caused by vandals. So two days, two agencies, and
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: it's the same sort of Trump move right, very predictable.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: His own investigators point towards Ron on Friday, and he
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: says it's Minnesota. On Saturday, his own prosecutor says in
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a sworn filing that the contractor did it, and he says, nope,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: it's vandals. And weirdly, he doesn't deny the new information.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: So at least he admits there's some new information here.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And on Saturday he even conceded it there may have
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: been some contract or difficulty, so he doesn't let it
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: change the conclusion. Though facts get in, but this conclusion
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: never moves. So the question I've been sitting with all
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: weekend is not whether he has his fact straight. We
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: know the question is does he know that he doesn't
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: have his facts straight right? And is he seeing all
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: of this now? There are three answers of available that
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: are realistic. One he sees exactly what everybody else sees,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: and he simply dismisses it. He gets the briefing, he
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: reads the assessment, and he decides the version he prefers
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: is the one he's going to go with, regardless of
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: what the facts say. That's not a cognitive failure. It's
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: pretty much Donald Trump over the last forty years of
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: his life. The man is habitually unable to tell the truth. Two,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: he's being shielded. Okay, the staff, Remember the staff hasn't
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: evolved in how they handle Donald Trump. This staff was
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: selected right. The people who used to actually interrupt him
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: in the first term aren't gone because they just drifted away.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: They're gone because he removed them, and he hired for
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the opposite trape. He didn't want people that worried about
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: facts and reality. He wanted people that were going to
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: be loyal at whatever he thought was factual and whatever
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: he thought was reality. And so we know this information
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: gets softened before it ever even reaches him. It gets
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: delayed before reaches him, it gets wrapped inside better news
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: even if it does get reached to him, or it
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: even gets quietly dropped and never told. And again this
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: isn't I'm not blaming the staff here. The president created
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: these conditions, he got the staff he ordered. And then
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: there's a third option, and this is the one I'd
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: bet on. A principal who punishes bad news produces a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: staff that stops delivering it cleanly. And a staff that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: stops delivering it cleanly produces a principle, in this case Trump,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: who increasingly is certain he was right all along. It's
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: a terrible feedback loop. Now, I have no doubt some
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: people think you don't understand if we told Trump all
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: the truthiness, he'd be impossible to deal with. He'd be
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: a rage in the country, would be even bigger trouble.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So I have no doubt there is a rationale among
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: West wing staffers, and we'll hear about it five years
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: after this presidency ends. You have no idea how bad
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: it could have been, right, we know that's common, but
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: you know this reality is really bad for him. Right now,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: look at what look at his reality you have? We
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: can look at the economists YouTube poll that shows thirty
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: four percent approved, sixty two percent disapprove. Right among Independence,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: in that survey, only nineteen percent approve. That is a
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: mid term disaster in the making. CNN's poll in the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: same week HadAM at a minus fifty two with Independence.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Pew early in the months, thirty four sixty four was
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the approved disapprove. I mean, it doesn't matter. You know,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: some of these polls stirs I think are really good.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Some of them are kind of average. They're all finding
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the same conclusion. This president's uniquely unpopular, and he's becoming
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: more popular as the year goes on. And then and
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: then you see that the top issue is now being
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: shared with the economy. We're seeing threats to the democracy
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: start to percolate. Up Right, the more the corruption narrative
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: gets going here, the more that democracy issue starts to percolate.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: So and then, of course we see it. Even his
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: own network's polling has him a job approval rating below
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: forty percent. Now, of course, whenever he sees bad poll
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: numbers on Fox, he blames the pollster. He doesn't accept
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the reality. So it's funny. He just can't accept any
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: news that alters his narrative. Even if it comes from
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: his supposed trusted source Fox News. You know, it was interesting.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I sort of asked this question on Twitter of the weekend,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and I got a response from Stephanie Grisham and her
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: twitter feed. Former you remember her, she was a Trump
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Press secretary. Later she was Malania Trump's chief of staff
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: all in the first term, And I asked this question,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: is he getting all the information? Is he being shielded?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: How bad is this right now? And she wrote that
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: roughly eighty five percent of negative information in the first
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: term was kept from him, but anything that was favorable
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: in front of him, regardless of the source, right, whether
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: it was a reputable one or disreputable one. So look,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I can't verify her percentage, but she's a former aid
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: with a book and a well documented break with the family,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and Trump's people have spent five years attacking her credibility.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: But remember this is what she said. It was like
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one when we actually had guardrails supposedly
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: in that right there were people that were actually trying
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: to stop him from doing stupid stuff. Maggie Haberman has
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: been pointing out with her new book Regime Chains, in
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: this case, the White House was built deliberately without any
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: of people that he had in his first term that
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: would be guardrails. It was deliberately built without guardrails. Loyalty
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't a benefit of the hiring process, It was the
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: hiring process. So if that's what it looked like in
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the first term, what Stephanie's describing, can you imagine what
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it looks like now with one hundred percent stick of things.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: And we do have a data point on what happens
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to people who bring back the wrong answer. Pam Bondi
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: ran the Justice Department for fourteen months. She dismantled the
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: wall between the White House and Department of Justice that
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: had stood since Watergate. She brought ridiculous cases that the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: President publicly demanded against James Comey Letitia James, and both
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: were thrown out pretty easily. Federal judge found the acting
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: US attorney who secured those indictments had been unlawfully appointed.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: The court said known in April he fired now the
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: reporting side of the Epstein files. But we know what
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Trump saw was insufficient aggression in going after his enemies.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: The system told him the cases weren't there, and he
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: concluded the problem wasn't the system, but the person delivering
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: the message, and that's what got bought BONDI fired. Just
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: remember that it wasn't a warning that went out by accident.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It was a memo everybody in the building Reddit. So
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you ask yourself what Janein had to be weighing on Friday.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: She had no choice in her mind. The documents were
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: there showing the facts, but she knew exactly what Saturday
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: was going to look like, and she chose this path anyway.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: That's how much legal jeopardy she thought she was in.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Now here's the telling where the rest of the party
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: is on this. Watch the Republicans who have to face voters.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: They're not campaigning like people who think this is going well.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Jesus Criming. Go look at Ken Paxton's economic agenda that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: he rolled out on Friday. Ken paxed it right. Supposedly
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: the biggest ally of Trump. His first big general election
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: white paper was not a border agenda or culture war agenda.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: He put out an affordability agenda. He called it protecting
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the Texas Promise. But my got it read like a
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: shared brown white paper. Didn't read like a Donald Trump
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: won twenty five thousand dollars deduction for out of pocket
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: medical costs, fifty thousand dollars for first time home buyers,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: doubling the child tax credit to forty four hundred dollars.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I think that was an Kamala Harris idea. Obviously, nobody's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: ever confused Ken Paxton with Shared Brown or any other
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: senate Democrat out there. But hey, he sees reality. He's
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: looking at the reality. He's behind in just about every
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: poll out there in Texas. So isn't reading the electorate
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: out of intellectual curiosity. He's having to deal with an
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: electorate that's dealing in reality. Now, put that next to
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the president on the same issue. Last December, at a
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: cabinet meeting, Trump called affordability a con job by the Democrats,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: that it was a scam. Then in the spring, after
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: those November elections late twenty five went badly, Trump told
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: his aides that Republicans needed to own the affordability issue.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Then he ran an affordability tour and it was going
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to be the center of his economic agenda. And then
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: in July, just ten days ago, he told a crowd
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: that affordability was a where the Democrats that made up
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: think about what that sequence requires. To act out of finding,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: you have to have received it. He got the data,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: he ran on it. That happened until it didn't. Then
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: something unreceived it for him. The data reaches him and
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: it doesn't stick. I mean, it's just it's just insanity. Right,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: This is no way to run a country, let alone
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: a political party or anything. Now, two honest caveats before
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: I land this section. First, none of this means Democrats
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: are are are slam dunk here. We know that, right,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: We're just doing and go well. They have a massive
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: financial disparity that they're going to have to overcome, and
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: an anti incombent environment feels like is bigger than being
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: a pro Democratic party environment. Right, So we know that
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: this isn't a slam dunk for the Democrats, but it
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: becomes easier. If Donald Trump doesn't know, doesn't accept the
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: reality of the situation, then there's one more hole I
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: can't close. I don't know whether the president was briefed
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: on the preliminary Minnesota assessment before he stood up Friday
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: and totally contradicted it. We don't have that reporting yet.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: If he was briefed, then this is a story about
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: a president choosing to choosing the satisfying fight over facts.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: It's really disturbing. Right If he already knew that Iran
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: was likely behind this and he chose to attack Minnesota anyway,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: this is a much worse story, and I think it's
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the biggest thing we need answer this week. It is answerable.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: We will know whether he was briefed on whether he
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: knew in advance that Iran was behind this, any attacked
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Minnesota anyway. This here's where I come down. There's a
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: comfortable version of this argument, and I want to name
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: it so I can reject it. The comfortable version says
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the institutions have failed him, that the guard rails he
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: wrote it, that the machinery drifted and the president wound
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: up isolated. Force is beyond his control. But we know
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that's not what happened here. He built this room. Every
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: person around him was chosen for their sickafantry. The guardrails
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: didn't erode. They had been removed before January twenty of
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five deliberately, and that was a feature, not
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: a bug. So the bubble is not a malfunction. It's
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: a product design. And if that's where we are, then
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: is the problem really the room where he gets his information,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: or is it simply who he is, Because here's the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: part of this I can't get past. Somebody went after
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the water systems of thirty American towns, dropped the pressure,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: locked operators out of their own controls, forced communities to
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: run their water by hand, perhaps putting potable drinking water
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: at risk for millions of Americans. And the President of
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the United States looked at that story and his first
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: instinct was to find a Democrat to blame, not the attacker.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: He wanted to blame the governor and the state of Minnesota.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: He doesn't seem to care about the Americans that are
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: impacted by this. So let's set aside a ram for
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: a second, set aside all everything else I've talked about.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: An adversary were at warwith may have reached into this
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: country and touched the drinking water of American citizens. That
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: shouldn't rage a president, It should be the easiest outrage
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: of his entire term. And instead, this man, he is
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: so demented with polarization disease, whatever you want to call it,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: his own form of dds democrat arrangement syndrome, he had
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to reach for a political attack on the people who
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: got hit. He didn't ask what happened to them. He
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: didn't ask whether the drinking water was safe. He asked
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: what did it do to his narrative. This isn't a
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: man who's been shielded from the facts. This is a
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: man who heard them found the citizens of Minnesota. Besides
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the point, give a shit about whether they were actually
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: negatively impacted. Let that sit for a second, because the
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: room only says what he hired it to say. But
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: that instinct, that's all him. He did not care that
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: millions of Americans might not have drinking water. He instead
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: reached for a political grievance to highlight instead. The man
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: doesn't care about his fellow man. That is disturbing all
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: right now. One of the reasons why I'm increasingly convinced
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: that Democrats are probably going to win both the House
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and the Senate this fall has nothing to do with
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: the Democrats. As I pointed out, they're not in the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: best of shape, but they're not Trump right now, and
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: they're not the party of corruption. Donald Trump is almost
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: bragging about how much he has grifted off the American
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: taxpayer and American companies, and I have a feeling the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: American people are getting more exhausted by this eighteen months
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: of watching stuff that would have been a six week
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: scandal in any other presidential term. The plane from Qatar,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the crypto company where a fund backed by the UAE
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: bought a piece of the family business. Now you have
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: this FIFA thing, and right, whatever Trump touches, it just explodes.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Inpatino's going to regret the day he ever met
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Trust me, the president of FIFA right now,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: who invented a peace prize to appease Donald Trump after
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: he floated selling off a piece of the World Cup
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: where the lead investor was somebody sort of two degrees
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: from the Trump family orbit, Jared Kushner's brother. Well, let's
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: just say FIFA totally reversed. Because everything Trump touches, he
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: ruins just like this. Now, this is normally the easiest
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: thing in the world for the party out of power.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: It is the oldest, most reliable play in American political
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: playbook for midterms. You don't have to explain it, you
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: don't really have to pull test it. Trust me. It's
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: shown up in focus groups left and right. Everybody's sick
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: of this corruption business. And it lands with people who
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: don't even follow politics. They are they already have sort
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of a built in baseline believing that politicians are kind
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: of corrupt anyway, So all of this stuff is almost
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: easy to lay out. It's a golden opportunity for Democrats.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Not since six have they had a message scheme like this, right,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: And let me just tell you, Senate Democrats. They decided,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: they responded, They came up with a big anti corruption agenda.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer rolled it out last week and guess what
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: they dropped an absolute stinker. All right. Now, before we
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: get to all that, before I explain how you fumble
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: a layup this wide open, I want to lay out
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: what they're actually running against. Because the Wall Street Journal
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: published something Friday that might be the single most important
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: piece of political journalism this year. Now, one thing about
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: that journal piece before I get into it. Donald Trump
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: is currently suing Dow Jones, the parent company of the
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, over a story about that birthday letter
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: to Jeffrey Epstein. So realize this, when you are already
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: a defendant in a defamation suit brought by the subject
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: of your reporting, you do not put a comma on
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: that news story that you can't defend in a deposition.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: This is about as airtight of a story as anything
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: you're going to get right now out of the Wall
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Street Journal, and it landed hard for me. Here's why
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I want to give you four things from this piece,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: because these four are the ones that seem to matter
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: and will matter later. Number one, there's nobody in between
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: the president and the financial ask. The Journal reports that
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: almost every night, Donald Trump gets on the phone with
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: his chief fundraiser and goes down the list who paid,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: who did how much? He sets the number himself, five million,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: this one, fifty million from that one, and he gives
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: her names to call, often people who were just in
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: a meeting with him asking for some sort of something
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: from the federal government. She calls them and says, hey,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the boss wants the money. He calls her the Princess
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: of Darkness because she's a killer with donors. Now, look,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: every scandal like this in modern American history has had
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: a buffer and aid got out over his skis a fundraiser, freelance.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: The president didn't actually know the specifics. Not here, there's
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: no buffer. He's on the phone. He is the specific
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: every night. So remember the fundraiser. She's going to come
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: back in my story here. One of the great examples
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: in here is connected to my guests later in this episode.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: The tobacco sequence. In May of this year, Trump's golf
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: club in Jupiter, four tobacco executives come in. The President
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: promise them most of what they want on vaping. An
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: FDA policy, millions of dollars flow to his political comtes
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: and his fundraiser, a private citizen, not a government employee,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: is sitting in the room for this policy meeting so
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: she can translate the policy into money. Shortly after the meeting,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: the FDA magically lifts restrictions on some flavored vaping products,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: and the FDA commissioner gone money in the room, policy
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: out the other side, just days apart. The pay to
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: play is right there, wide open for everybody to see,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: and in fact Trump wants everybody to see it because
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: he wants everybody to know this is how it works,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: because he wants more people in the system doing it
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: this way. In the pay to play schame, of course,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the White House claim that the only thing guiding their
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: health policy was called gold standard science. I'll let you decide.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Here's another important number three from the story somebody is
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: keeping a ledger a million dollars ahead to have dinner
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: at the White House. The dinners are organized by industry.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: One night of we crypto, another night it's manufacture. Boy.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: I remember when Republicans were outraged about Hillary Clinton and
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: her coffee clutches in the White House for potential donors
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: and fundraisers for the nineteen ninety six campaign. Oh, how
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: quaint that was. Now here's a detail I can't get
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: out of my head. The fundraiser sits at these dinners,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: takes notes on what the president promises each donor. She's
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: quite good at this. Then she routes those notes to
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: other White House officials, again private citizen. So somewhere in
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: that building there's a running list of presidential commitments, indexed
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: by who paid for them. Just a running list. Again,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: worse than Watergate, worse than to be about done. It's
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: not even close. The single most corrupt sort of scheme
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: we've seen a president run for pay to play. That's
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: not an appearance of impropriety, it's a filing system showing
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: it off. This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought
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  Speaker 1: and rates may vary. Number four eight hundred million dollars
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and nobody has to tell you where it went. That's
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: the journal's running total since he took office. Most of
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: it is raised through vehicles that never have to disclose
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: a single donor, and they rarely report how they spend
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: their money. And then Trump at the dinner for ballroom donors,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: talking about the leftovers. We'll have money leftover, he claims,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and we'll use that for something, maybe for the arts
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: or something else. Money raised for one purpose, spendable on
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: whatever he feels like, reported to nobody. Shoot, here's Trump
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: himself last year at the same dinner, and I want
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you to hear the actual quote. A couple of you.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I was sitting here and saying, sir, would twenty five
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: million be appropriate? They said, I'll take it, and then
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: it doesn't take too many twenty fives to get it done.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Trump is fundraiser, deal maker, regulator all in one. Now
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. None of this is technically illegal. Unfortunately,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: there is no law preventing a president from raising unlimited
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: money for a library, a ballroom, a birthday party, or
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: a political committee. Most of it doesn't even have to
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: be disclosed. He didn't find a loophole and squeezed through it.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: He walked through a door. Congress never got around to
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: close it. Remember who ran on draining the swamp, Well,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: he didn't drink it. He took one look around and
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: figured out he could be the biggest alligator in the swamp.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: So obvious, ugly impossible for any Republican on the ballot
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: to defend it. Handed Democrats a huge issue on a
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: silver platter, and let me show you what they did
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: with it. On Thursday, Chuck Schumer rolled out the Anti
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Corruption Bureau Creation Act at an event hosted by Public Citizen.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: It's one hundred and thirty three page bill. They wrote
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: a model bill. Now, before I tell you what's in it,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: let me tell you who's on it. There were four
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: senators standing with Trump on this one. It was Schumer
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: on this one, Schumer, Alex Piddie of California, Jeff Merkley
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: of Oregon, Andy Kim of New Jersey. It was a
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: shockingly small number, right, four out of a caucus of
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: forty seven. Now, original co sponsor lists can grow. That's normal,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: and let's be fair about it. Maybe it will. But
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling after they realize if anybody actually
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: read this bill. I don't think any of those senators
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: read this bill. This bill is a piece of garbage.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: And I'll explain. It's amazing who didn't stand behind this bill,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: which tells me some senators did read it and they
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: didn't stand behind it. Elizabeth Bourne wasn't on it. She's
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: the ranking member on Senate Banking. She's one of the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: loudest anti corruption voices. Wonder why she didn't sign under
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: this bill, Sheldon Whitehouse, he's a loud voice. He didn't
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: sign under this bill. Osoft didn't Clobashar Booker. Why didn't
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you name it? Richard Blumenthal, Chris van Holland, Chris Murphy,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: they weren't on it. By the way, Van Holland and
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Bluementhal are actually holding their own forum on Trump's corruption in
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the same week. So you have seven Democrats in addition
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: or negotiating ethics provision in the so called Clarity Act.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Right now, Angela also brokes Guy At, Reuben Diego, Mark Warner, Rufiel, Warnock,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Catherine Cortez Masto, John Hickenlooper Booker. Again, none of them
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: signed on to this bill. And there's no House companion bill,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: not one. Now, I do think that contrast might tell
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: you something. And here's one more contrast. Well, Chuck Schumer
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: was announcing his anti corruption bill, which, by the way,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: spoiler alert, his idea is to create a new federal age.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: And see I'll get to it in a minute. Jamie Raskin,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: the ranking member on House Judiciary in the House, we're
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: remember the minority, He was actually firing off document demands
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: to FIFA visitor logs for their office and Trump Tower
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: records of They're dealings with the president basically the things
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: that Congress gives him the power to do. It's called oversight.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: A member of Congress using the powers that a member
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: of Congress already has. So one of these two men,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Jamie Raskin, is doing the job. The other one is
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: proposing to create an agency to do the job for him.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: That's what Chuck Schumer proposed. So let me tell you
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: about this bill. I actually read this one hundred and
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: thirty three page bill. If many of you know, I'm
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: obsessed about this corruption issue, all right. I think it
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: has destroying both parties. I think we are just we're
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: out of control with money. The crypto industry has completely
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: just bought off Washington in way, so it's really bad
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: out there. This is a necessary We need a Teddy Roosevelt,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: we need it bad one. So I care about this
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: issue a lot. I read a lot about it, and
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I read every bit of this bill. And let me
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: start with the part I don't think any's caught. This
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: bill wouldn't even cover the story I just told you
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: about from the Wall Street Journal right then and there.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: It's a failure. Right. So here's the mechanism. The bill
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: creates liability for certain people, so called covered persons, who
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: use their office to personally enrich themselves by more than
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars. That's the baseline of this bill. So
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: is a check to a presidential library foundation, personal enrichment
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: is a ballroom project, is a birthday party, nonprofit? A
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: dark money issue committee. Maybe there's an argument. It's very
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: difficult to nowhere close to a sure thing, and it's
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: precisely the fight a competent defense lawyer would want to have,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: because every one of those payments is legal today and
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: none of them are prohibited by anything that the Schumer
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: bill touches. Then there's the fundraiser themselves, the woman at
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: the dead center of this entire journal story, the one
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: making the call, sitting in the policy meetings, and taking
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: them the notes. She is not a government employee. She
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: does not receive taxpayer dollars. So I went through the
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: bill's list, President, Vice President, their spouses and adult children,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Cabinet secretary, senior White House staff, special government employees, senior
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Justice Department official, CIA IRS, commissioner, officers of the President's
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: re election committee, except he's termal limit. So there isn't
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: one federal contractors everything named in the bill, and this fundraiser,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: who's not a government employee, falls through every single category.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: She doesn't belong to any of them. So a bill
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: in theory written in response to this paid to play
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: operation may not actually reach the person running the operation.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: So that's failure number one here. But it doesn't even
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: begin to go through my failures on this bill. That's
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: before we get to the three ways they wrecked it. First,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: the bill they wrote is unconstitutional from the very beginning.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: And here's why they made it personal. The finding section
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: of the bill name checks Donald Trump, name checks the sons,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: name checks Elon and Peter Teel. It reaches back to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: January twentieth, twenty twenty five. They didn't create some rolling
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: ten year window that would catch anybody in either party,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: but the first day of this guy's term. They didn't include,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: for instance, mister Goldbar Senator from New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Now this isn't I'm not saying that's illegal. I'm just saying,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: if you actually want to win in court, you don't
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: hand the other side of the argument that this is
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: a vendetta bill. And that's what they did in writing
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: this bill. They made it easy to potentially throw it
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: all out because you cannot write a law that targets
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: an individual right. You can target a behavior, but not
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: an individual. And yet they wrote they wrote the findings
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: for the press release. It's pretty clear, and the press
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: release costs them the lawsuit second part of this bill.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: And this is where I ended up channeling my inner
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Tom Cruise from a few good men. So there's this
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: scene in that movie. Kathy's in his apartment and he's
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: really upset. It to me more and he finally snaps,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I keep forgetting. You were sick the day
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: they taught law at law school. Well it was on
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: page twenty four of this bill. That's the reaction I had.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: And I'm not even a freaking lawyer, all right, I
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: didn't go to law school. But at this point, after
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: thirty five years, I have given myself an amateurs certainly
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: reading of it. And in section two of one of
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: the bill, here's the actual test, actual text in this bill.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And this is where I literally could not believe it.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: There is established in the executive branch the Anti Corruption
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: Bureau let that sink in. Chuck Schumer's big idea to
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: curtail corruption of this presidency is to create a new
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: bureau inside the executive branch. It would have seven members
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: appointed by the president and chairman designated by the president.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: So the remedy for a corrupt president is a new
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: agency that the corrupt president gets to staff. All right,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking. Hey, but Schumer said it's independent.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: He can't fire them. Oh lord, let me read you
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: the removal protection in this bill, all of it. It's
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: in Section two O six. Within five days of firing somebody,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the president has to send Congress a letter explaining why
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: that's it. That's the whole thing. He can fire all
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: seven of them on Tuesday morning, as long as he
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: writes a nice note by Friday. Now here's the part
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: that is in an accident. And this is what I'm
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: like that you got? Are you? Is anybody paying attention
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: to what's actually happening in jurisprudence? Remember, on June twenty ninth,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: one month before this bill came out, the Supreme Court
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: decided Trump versus Slaughter six to three. This was about
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: the whole idea. Can he fire members of independent agencies
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: that reside in the executive branch and Justice Roberts wrote
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: that they threw out a ninety year old president, and
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: he held that the president can fire the people who
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: run independent agencies whenever he wants. The lawyers who drafted
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: this bill, you would think read that opinion, and in fact,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: they know the opinion exists because there is no job
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: production in this bill, because they knew it wouldn't survive.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: But then the press release when out calling this bureau
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: insulated from presidential interference. That's not true. They knew it
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: wasn't true. It's written into their own bill, and they
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: set it anyway. But it gets worse. There's a section
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: in there designed to stop anybody from gutting the agency. Right,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: no federal officer can cut its powers with a budget,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: except the tech says, other than the chair who gets
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: to pick the chair of this agency according to this bill,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: the president. They wrote the trap door into their own floor. Third,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: they made it easier to capture, not harder. So, for instance,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: if you want to control federal ethics enforcement, you have
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: to take three separate agencies, the Federal Election Commission, the
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Offer of Government Ethics, and the Office of special Council,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: three buildings, three bosses, three different fives. This bill decides
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: to merge all three into one. They give it exclusive authority.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Nobody else can enforce those laws, and everybody running it
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: can be fired at will. So they took three locks
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: off the door and replaced them with one, then handed
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: the key to whoever wins the next election. So let's
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: be very clear about what was proposed here. If this
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: passed tomorrow, Donald Trump appoints all seven members and picks
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: the chairman. That's not spin. That's page twenty four of
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: this bill that Schumer released. I mean no wonder he's
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: lost so much confidence among his own Democrats. Now there's
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: a simpler way you could have done this. It's called
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: doing your fricking job, and it's called reading Article one
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: of the Constitution. Every single thing this bureau would do,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Congress already can do right now, some of it without
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: even passing the law subpoenas Congress has them. As Jamie Raskin,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: what they've stopped doing is them. There used to be
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: a thing called inherent contempt where Congress could send its
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: own officer to bring you in. Well, they last used
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: it in nineteen thirty five. They could switch it back
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: just with a simple rules change, And you would think
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: that's something Democrats that they win control of Congress would
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: brag about doing. But they don't. How about the money.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: One sentence in a spending bill, No federal dollars go
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: to any entity of the president or his family if
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: they own a piece of Congress writes sentences like that
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: one hundred times a year for all sorts of things.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: One line in every appropriations bill could essentially make it
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: a federal crime for any of this to benefit the
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: president or his family. How about foreign money that's actually
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: in the Constitution Article one. Congress is the body that's
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: supposed to say yes or no to foreign payments to
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: American officials. Right, it is up the Congress to decide
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: is to get to keep the plane the cutter plane. Right. Ironically,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: in two hundred and thirty seven years since that Constitution
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: has existed, Congress has actually never defined what that means
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: by statute. They never built a reporting system on foreign
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: payments or emoluments. This is the so called emolument's clause.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: They never attached a penalty. The Constitution gives them the
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: power to do that. The power has been sitting on
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: the shelf since George Washington. How about disclosure, right, that's
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: basically the entire point of the Wall Street Journal piece.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: None of that eight hundred million dollars has to be reported,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: So let's fix that takes about six pages. Doesn't even
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: need an agency. How about conflicts of interest? There's a
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: federal conflicts of interest statute already in the books, but
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: it specifically exempts the president of the United States. Congress
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: wrote that exemption. Guess what Congress can get deleted? Something
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Democrats could run in order to get control of Congress. Then,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: of course there's confirmations and as appeachment. Right, we know
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: they're available, So why don't they Well, here's why, because
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: oversight does cost you something. It costs you floor time,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: it costs you subpoenophytes, and events. This becomes the expensive part,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: cost you having to go after a president of your
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: own party because someday it'll be your guy. Creating an
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: agency costs you a press conference, and that's the trade off.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: This is a punt by Schumer and the Senate Democrats.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: This is embarrassing if you're a Senate Democrat, running this
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: bill is embarrassing. But it's the same move that Congress,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: when both parties has made on war powers, on emergency declarations,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: on tariffs. Somehow the idea is to hand more fricking
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: power to the executive branch. As Tom Cruise said, were
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: you absent the day they taught the Constitution in the
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: history class. This is how we got here, and this
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: is being offered as the answer to how we got here. Unbelievable. Now,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I want to talk to people who look at both
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: parties on this and figure the whole thing is just
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: a racket. Frankly, you're closer to right than either party
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: wants to admit. Republicans are finished on this issue. They're done,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: They have no credibility. The party that chanted during the
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: swamp for a decade is now the party where the
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: president personally works the phones for fifty million dollar checks
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: and the FDA changes its position a few weeks after
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: a meeting that he gets to collect donors. That's no,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: there's nothing to defend, and you see nobody even tries.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: But here's what Democrats need to hear, and they're not
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: going to like it. You're barely ahead on this issue,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: and you want to meddle for it. You're just not
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: as bad, right, there's always this, but but they're worse
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: because for damn near every Trump deal there's a Democratic version.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Yes it's smaller, Yes it's less brazen, and it's usually legal,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: but it shouldn't be. But it's there. The foundation money,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: the speaking fees, the family members with impossible to explain
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: consulting arrangements. Right, the Democratic senator's child who got a
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: big crypto deal. The senator convicted of taking gold bars
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: from a foreign government, he said on check Schumer's own conference,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: And he's not mentioned one single time in the fightings
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: of this bill, not once. In fact, members of Congress
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: trading stocks and information they get in committee, which everybody
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: in America agrees is indefensible and which somehow never gets fixed.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: By the way, why did Schumer and the Democrats exempt
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: every member of Congress from their corruption bill. Look, Democrats
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: didn't build the swamp. Trump is swimming it, but they
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: sure didn't drain it when they had the chance. They
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: kept the doors open because someday they wanted to walk
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: through them too. And it's all right here in that
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: text go through who the bill covers. This Schumer bill
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: covers the President the Vice President, their families, the cabin
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: White House staff, Justice Department, CIA IRIS, every federal contract
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: in America. And you know who's not on that list
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: in this bill Congress not one member, not one spouse,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: not one adult child, not one senior staffer, no stock trading, nothing.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: One hundred and thirty three pages about public corruption written
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: by senators, and it does not cover the senators, the
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: tel folks. That's the whole thing. In a single drafting decision,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: handed a blank page, able to write anything they wanted,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and they wrote themselves out of it. One month after
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court rule that the president can fire the
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: head of any independent agency he wants, the answer from
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the opposition party is, let's build them another independent agency
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: that gut. If I had gotten this paper it meant
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: on how to fix Washington my USC class, it would
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: have got a B minus or C plus. But I
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: would have just sent it back to go rewrite it
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: because I don't like to, you know, please, today's students
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: don't like to get B minuses and C pluses. But
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: it would have been like, this is ridiculous. Look, their
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: diagnosis is excellent. The facts in the findings are accurate
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: and well sourced. And there's one genuinely smart provision that
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: is buried in here that would fix the three three
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: deadlock on the FEC that's made campaign finance law functionally
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: unenforceable for almost two decades. Five pages, and that could
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: have passed on its own tomorrow. But the remedy that
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: they chose is going to make this disease worse. It
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: hands more power to the branch that has abused it,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: It exempts the people who wrote it. It may not
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: even cover the conduct that inspired it. And it ignores
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court decision from thirty days earlier that cuts
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: the entire design in the first place. The best idea
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: in this bill is an amendment to a statute that
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: already exists, and it's buried under one hundred and twenty
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: eight pages of agency. One more thing, and this one
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: really bothers me. The good government groups who are at
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: that press conference. Public Citizen hosted it, Common Cause, Campaign,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: Legal Center, Crew Protect Democracy, the Brendan Center, all of
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: them put out statements praising it. I liked a lot
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: of these organizations. I've relied on their work for years.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: There's some really great people over there. I've had many
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: of them on this show. I hope they didn't read
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: this bill, because if they signed off to this after
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: reading it, then I question if they know what they're
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: doing anymore. But I really believe they didn't read it,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: because if they had, somebody in that room would have
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: raised a hand and said, hold on a minute. We
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: have spent eighteen months warning that this president has captured
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: the independent agencies. Why are we handing him a new one.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: Somebody would have noticed that the removal section is a
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: permission slip. Somebody would have asked why Congress isn't in
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: the bill at all. They lent their credibility to a
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: press release, and credibility is the only asset those organizations have.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: You don't spend it on something you didn't read. So
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: here's where this lands. The country is watching a president
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: run the most transactional, perhaps corrupt operation anybody's ever seen
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: out of the Whitehouse, right in the open, on the record,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: with a fundraiser taking notes on what he promises. And
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: the answer from the opposition party is a bill that
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: can't pass, wouldn't survive a court challenge if it did,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: and may not cover the woman at the center of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: the story itself. And would hand the next president one
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: stop control over every ethics cop in the federal government.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: That's not a plan. It's a press release with a
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: bill number that's never going to see the light of day.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: And if you're one of the people who's decided that
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: neither party is serious about corruption, congratulations, you just got
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: a one hundred and thirty three a long page pieces
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: of evidence that prove you were right. That's a huge shame.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: All right, before we go, let's do a quick preview.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Michigan and Wisconsin. Next two weeks are going to tell
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: us a lot more about whether this Democratic parties had
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: it than the last two years did. Tuesday, we got Michigan.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: A week from Tuesday, it's Wisconsin. Two primaries, two states
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: Trump carried in twenty four and sixteen, two versions of
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: the same fight. Now, this isn't going to be the
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: fight the fight I'm describing. It is going to be
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: the one you here described sort of in the algorithm
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: driven places that you may see stuff pop up. This
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: isn't about the moderates versus the socialist that's a very
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: lazy construction. This, I think is a fight between people
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: who want to win an election and people who want
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: to win an argument inside their own party. So one
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: theory of politics is very old and very simple. You
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: assemble a majority, you persuade people who disagree with you,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: You compromise where you have to, and you win, and
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: then you govern. The other theory reverses that order. First,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: you change the conversation, You move the party. You redefine
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: what's acceptable to say out loud, You normalize ideas that
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: today poll badly. Winning election matters, but changing the party
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: matters more, because eventually the theory goes electoral success follows
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: ideological clarity. No, those aren't two tactics. Those are two
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: definitions of success. And here's the part I'd like to
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: ask you to sit with. Both of them are coherent, right,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: Neither one is a crazy version of events, But I
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: would argue they're solving different problems. I think in Michigan
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: we ought to be reminded to listen to what they
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: say when nobody's when they think nobody's listening. Campaigns will
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: tell you exactly what they're trying to accomplish. You just
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: have to be listening at the right moment. Usually the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: moment isn't a debate, it's usually a donor call right,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: you remember the infamus forty seven percent eavesdrop for Mitt Romney. Right. Well,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: abdu AlSi ed was on a zoom with donors last
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: month when somebody asked a fair question, what do you
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: actually do with the job, given that no Democrats passing
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: legislation for the next two years. And his answer was
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: not about Michigan, was not about lowering the cost, was
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: not about any of that. His answer was about the
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. He talked about a platform a win would
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: give him. He talked about primarying sitting Democrats. He named
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: check John Fetterman. And then the line that everybody's been
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: talking about. Put one ogre on a pike, and everybody
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: else gets the message and it starts to sound a
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: lot different. Now the language got the coverage. Some Democrats
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: called it violent, got sexist real fast when people assumed
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: he met Haley Stevens, and he spent the final debate
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: clarifying they actually meant fetterment. But let's strip away the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: imagery a minute and look at what's underneath it. That
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: is a theory of political change. It's a demonstration effect.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: You beat one of them in public and the rest adjust.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: That is not a Senate campaign. That is a movement
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: campaign that happens to be running inside a Senate race. Now,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: look that's not disqualifying, right of what Jim Demitt dreamed
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: of and what he's gotten with the mega movement with
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Right, what the Tea Party was trying to do,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: that Trump have created. But it is a different job
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: description than the one that's on the ballot. And then,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: of course in Wisconsin, we're gonna get the same argument.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: One week later, Francesca home state wrecked from Madison's chef
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: bartender line cook, single mother. She's the first Asian American
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: to serve in the Wisconsin legislature, and she's been endorsed
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: by the Madison, Milwaukee and Northeast Wisconsin Democratic Socialists of
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: America chapters. She is by every public pulled the front
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: runner in a crowded field to be the Democratic nominee.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: And the field has gotten less crowded, and she looks
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: even harder to defeat. Now they have a supposed one
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: on one. We'll see, right, the sitting lieutenant govenor dropped out,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: the former lieutenant governor dropped out, The Milwaukee County executive
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: first got in. Then he's back in, got out, then
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: he's back in. There's clearly an coordination attempt here by
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: some wing factions of the Democratic Party. Party is trying
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: to consolidate to stop the Socialist, but the polling sense
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: suggests not only is it not work, it may have
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: accelerated her victory. The establishment theory of politics requires the
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: establishment to be capable of coordinating. Increasingly they can't really
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: coordinate very well. So I want to make a distinction
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: that I don't hear enough people make, and I want
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: to make it without a value judgment attached. Right now,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: there are movement politicians and there are governing politicians. A
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: movement politician measured success by whether the boundaries of the
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: debate have been shifted. Did the party say something in
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight it wouldn't say in twenty twenty six, Right,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: That's essentially what I'll do al sayet is promising. A
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: governing politicians measured success by whether they got fifty percent
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: plus one and then did something with it, passed a
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: bill persuaded, shifted the conversation a bit and the general electorate.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Movement politicians are usually right about the future, but they're
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: usually wrong about the timeline and governing politicians are usually
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: right about the current timeline, and they usually don't have
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: a huge ambition about the future. They're not looking to
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: change trajectories as much. Obviously, a successful political party needs
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: a little bit of both. Parties get in trouble when
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: they convince themselves they only need either the movement people
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: or the pragmatists. Right, So the Democrats I keep thinking
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: about this week aren't in Michigan or Wisconsin. They're the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: ones that have won in Kentucky or Kansas, places where
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: a Democrat wakes up every morning knowing a majority of
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: their neighbors disagree with the national party ideology. Those Democrats
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: don't get to assume the country will eventually come around.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Their entire existence depends on persuading somebody who voted against
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: them the last time. Andy Basheer, Lor Kelly, even Roy Cooper.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: They're not less principal. They're just solving a harder math problem.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: And notice what none of them are talking about. Look,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: the argument is older than everybody in it. Barry Goldwater
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: changed the Republican Party, Reagan won with it. Sixteen years later,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: George McGovern changed the Democratic Party, and it was a disaster,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: and it took Bill Clinton to change it back. Twenty
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: years later, the Tea Party changed the Republicans and Trump
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: finished the job. So sometimes the movement does come first,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: sometimes the coalition comes first. One could argue that today's
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: democratic internal fights started with the successful coalition Obama Bill
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: he had both. He had the movement folks and the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: government folks. And look history's littered with both. So the
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: question is whether movements matter.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: They do.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: The question is how long are you willing to wait
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: for the electorate to catch up? Brings me to the
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: thing that's been bothering me the most this weekend. I
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: know a lot of things have bothered me this weekend.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: This You know, I need a vacation anyway. The Democratic
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Socialists of America one hundred and twenty thousand members right now,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: they've become a real force in some of these primaries.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: They put up platforms. They put out a platform this
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: summer that calls for abolishing the United States Senate, also
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: the Presidency in the Supreme Court and want to replace
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: it all with a single legislative chamber. Their coachair even
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: when a che span And said the Senate exists to
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: serve only wealthy landowners, and that abolishing it is an extreme. Now,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: look to be fair, Want to be fair. Senate Democrats,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: some of them pushed back a little this week. Bernie
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Sanders said no, Mark Kelly said it's in the constitution.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Rocanna said he he's for abolishing the filibuster, not the Senate.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: Corey Booker called it farcical. Okay, but listen to how
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: they pushed back. Almost all of them said, it's impractical
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: that it would take a constitutional amendment, it's not happening,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: voters care about healthcare, move on. So basically they objected
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: that it was being brought up. Nobody defended the institution
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: of the Senate. What the heck? Booker the same breath
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: said he'd support ending equal representation for stage, which, by
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: the way, is the one thing in the entire Constitution
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: that cannot be amended without every affected state agreeing to it.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Article five. The Framers walled that off. Specifically, it's actually
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: the only thing they walled off. It's not a footnote.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: That's the founders telling you exactly how load bearing they
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: thought the wall was. So here's my question, where are
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Senate candidates on this? Nine of them on
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: ballots this year? Running to join this chamber that have
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: serious chance to win. Some of them are on the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: ballot this coming Tuesday. Which of them is going to
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: stand up and say the Senate's not a bug, it's
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: a feature. Because it is a feature. I understand the
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: argument against it. Wyoming and California get the same two votes.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: Small states are overrepresented. It's unfair by population. That's all true.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: It's actually besides the point. In fact, if we had
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: a House that was meeting the constitutional assumption that the
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: founders may, we might not hate the Senate as much.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: We would understand why they created the Senate the way
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: they created the House problem that we have right now
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: underrepresenting the entire country in America. It's too small. It
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: does not represent you know, it does not represent communities
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: of interest anymore. The House is the problem here, and
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: it's made people think it's the Senate. The whole point
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: of the Senate was so that one faction, with one
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: good election and one moment of national passion cannot run
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: rough shot over the entire government and the entire citizenry.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: It's a break on political extremism. It's slow, it's frustrating,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: it's frequently maddening and it works. We are watching right
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: now what happens when the other checks get weak. And
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: the answer to that is it fewer checks. And this
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: is the part I think Democrats need to hear here.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: For ten years, the argument against Donald Trump was that
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: he doesn't accept the rules. He loses and the election
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: was stolen. He can't get a bill, and he does
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: it by executive order. He can't get the answer he wants,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: and he goes after the referee. That's the indictment, and
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: it's a far indie. But look at the reflex on
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: the left right now. They're frustrated, they can't move their agenda,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: they can't win the Senate map. And the response is
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: at new messaging. It isn't better candidate recruitment. It isn't
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: going to going to Kansas and Kentucky and figuring out
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: why Democrats can't win there and why a national Democrat
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: can't win a Senate race there. The response has changed
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: the rules so we don't have to adjust to the
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: electorate that exists. It's the same reflex that Trump hass
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: It's the same impulse wearing a d different jersey. Win
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: the argument first, then you'll find out you don't need
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: to rewrite the rule book because you won't be losing.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Tuesday's not selling any of this, No primary ever does.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: But it will tell us which theory has the momentum
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: is success changing the party or changing the country. The
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: healthy parties figured out how to kind of do both.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: The unhealthy ones convince themselves they never needed the other
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: one in the first place. So movement, And I'll tell
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: you this, movement nominees for Senator, House, or governor are
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: easier to defeat than those that are actually just making
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: a case they want to govern. And right now Democrats
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: could still end up winning both Wisconsin governor and Michigan Senate.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: It's going to be harder, and the price of winning
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: may cost them big time in twenty eight. All right,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: let's steak it a break, and when we come back
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: by conversation on how our tobacco policy has been changed
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: by paid to play schemes that I described earlier. So
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: for most of my lifetime, fighting tobacco has been one
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: of the great bipartisan public health success stories in America.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Think about where we started in nineteen sixty five. More
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: than four and ten Americans smoke cigarettes. Today, fewer than
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: one intended. That's one of the most dramatic improvements in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: public health this country has ever seen. It didn't happen
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: because one law changed everything. It happened because of decades
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: of policy. Congress required warning labels, States raised cigarette taxes.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: Smoking disappeared from airplanes, restaurants, office buildings, Tobacco companies were sued.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, Congress gave the FDA brought
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: authority to regulate tobacco products, including how they're marketed and sold,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: and government got remarkably good at helping people quit smoking.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: If you're old enough, you remember the CDC's tips from
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Former Smoker's campaign. The commercials were not subtle. Sometimes you
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: looked away, people spoke through tracheotomies, cancer survivors talked about
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: what smoking had taken from them. They were incredibly uncomfortable
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: to watch, which was the point, and the results were extraordinary.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: Research is estimated that the campaign itself generated more than
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: two million additional calls to one eight hundred quit now
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: the eight hundred number that helped produce over one million
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: successful quits, prevented and estimated one hundred and twenty nine
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: thousand premature deaths and save roughly seven point three billion
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: dollars in health care costs. Folks, it's an astonishing return
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: on investment for a government led public health campaign. But
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: here's where the story has changed. Over the past year.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: Much of the federal tobacco control infrastructure has been quietly dismantled.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: The CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, the office that
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: coordinated much of this work that I just described, I'm
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: effectively eliminated. The national Tips campaign has largely disappeared. State
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: quit lines report dramatically fewer calls without the constant national
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: ad campaigns, and, in an irony that almost sounds made up,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: when adults smoking recently fell below ten percent, that milestone
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: was not even announced or celebrated by the CDCs tobacco experts.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: It was highlighted through outside research because many of those
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: experts were no longer in government. Now there's one more
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: side of this debate. The administration and many harm reduction
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: advocates have been arguing that the real goal should be
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: moving adult smokers away from combustible cigarettes toward products like
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: e cigarettes or nicotine pouches like zin Right, which many
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: researchers believe are substantially less harmful than smoking, they're still
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: kind of harmful. Some of the same advocates actually criticize
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: my guest today when he ran the fada's Tobacco Center,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: arguing he was too restrictive in improving these products. It's
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: an important perspective to keep in mind because here's what
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: has raised eyebrows. Tobacco companies dramatically increase their political giving
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and gained access to senior administration officials, and they also
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: won a series of significant regulatory victories from the FDA. Now,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: does one prove the other. No, correlation isn't necessarily causation.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: But hey, we've all been in this rodeo in Washington before.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: But the timeline is striking enough that it's worth examining carefully.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: And that's why I wanted to have this conversation. My
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: guest today's Brian King, until last year, directed the FDA's
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: Center for Tobacco Products, the exact office responsible regulating cigarettes,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: vaping products, and nicotine patches. For that, he was in
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: senior leadership with the CDC's offices Smoking in Health. So
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: needless to say, he's been on the front lines of this.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: What was an incredible success story that in the last
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: eighteen months is now getting called into questions, so I
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: want to get it into that. So Brian, welcome to
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: the podcast, and let me just start with I wanted
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: to frame the conversation this way. What I leave out now,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: I think you covered it nicely.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: We've made considerable progress for reducing cigarettes smoking this country,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: I think, one of the greatest public health achievements of
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: the past century. But in recent months, we've seen corporate
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: capture of key regulatory activities by the federal government and
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: also elimination of our boots on the ground doing work
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: to address what remains the nation's leading preventable cause of
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: disease and death. So highly problematic and simply unprecedented. So look,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: you've been focused on this and you're quite frustrated by it.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: I think that's why you're trying to sort of sound
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: the alarm here. So walk me through here what happened, right,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, let's get into some specifics here. We had
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: the donations, you had White House access, you had mar
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: lago meetings, FDA approvals. This is more than a circumstantial case, right, Yeah,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: when you look at ultimately what has occurred of the
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: activities started in terms of FDA actions, and response to
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: some of this industry pressure earlier this year, and so
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: in March of this year, the agency issued a guidance
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: which indicated that they were more responsive to authorizing flavoredy cigarettes.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: And so in the past, the agency followed of the
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: strict science and was only willing to authorize flavors if
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: the applicant provided the sufficient at scientific evidence to show
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: that it was better than tobacco flavor, which we know
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: tobacco flavor isn't appealing to kids, and so to document
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: that they've met the scientific bar, you have to show
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: that your product is more effective than tobacco to help
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: an adult smoke or transition completely. And so the agency
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: in March issued a guidance basically saying, wow, we're going
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: to open the door a little farther, and we're going
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: to base our decisions on maybe certain flavors are better
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: than others. And they highlighted mint and spice, and they
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: said that you know, flavors like fruit are still problematic.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: About two thirds of kids use those products. And they
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: also said that age gating technology wasn't necessarily a panacea,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: and so technology they would prevent people from accessing based
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: on age was promising, but there was inconclusive evidence. And
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: so since the release of that guidance, you then saw
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: a matter of a couple weeks later authorization of a
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: brand of e cigarettes, culed Glass, which is a California company,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: and they authorized them in fruit flavors, which is the
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: most commonly used flavor among kids, and basically said that
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: agegating was the golden ticket to get that authorization. And
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: so it was a complete pivot from what had transpired.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: But what occurred only a couple days prior was a
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: meeting at a Florida golf course between the administration, the President,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: and key executives from several tobacco companies where they basically
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: pressured the administration to do more to be responsive to
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: the tobacco industry's interest. And so only a matter of
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: days later you had the FDA Commissioner resign over this.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: You had them completely buckle and turn and authorize these products.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: And then only a couple of days is later. From there,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: you then had a new guidance that was issued that
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: basically said they're going to be more lenient to the
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: tobacco industry and if certain companies are far enough in
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: the application review process, they are not going to take
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: any enforcement action against them, and even further, they're going
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: to issue a list to the public saying these are
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: the industry players that were were willing, you know, to
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: allow to be on the market illegally while their applications
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: remain under review. So a lot has transpired, but the
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: bottom line is the dislodged after corporate capture and also
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: a series of donations that have been made by industry
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: over you know, many years, but also to the superpack
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: for the current administration, as well as a five million
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: dollar donation before that meeting that occurred at the golf
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: course in Florida with the President in May.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Look, I think the uh, it's you know, what you
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: just outlined is sort of just another day in Washington, right.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: I mean I hate to say that, but it's like
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: this is you know, I teach a class for a
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: USC in my fourth year, teaching it the next the
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: next in the spring semester, which is how Washington works.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: And you just described one way Washington works, right, But
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: that is that is you know, my joke to the
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: kids are like, Washington's always working for somebody. You know.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: My job as a reporter was to figure out for
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: who right, and your job as a citizen is to
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: try to make it work for everybody, so that you know,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: there's nothing about this story that feels like unfamiliar to
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: how the Trump administration acts. So, but let's talk about
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: that the health harm here have it feels as if
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: like we've just there's this conclusion now that it was
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: the smoke itself that was the cause that the health concern,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: and that if you imbibe tobacco and nicotine in other ways,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: it's okay, what's the actual health data on that topic.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: So when you look tobacco products, they exist on a
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: continuum of risk, with cigarettes smoking being the most deadly.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: So cigarette contains seven thousand chemicals seventy carcinogens, aargably one
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: of the most deadly consumer products known to mankind, still killing.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: Let's do this and compare why is a cigarette so
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: much more deadly than a cigar?
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: So both are combustible products, so both have risk, and
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: so anytime you inhale toxins into your lungs, which are
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: meant for clean air, there's going.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: To be risked.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: And so combustible products in general are at the highest
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: end of that continuum.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: And that includes cannabis. That includes right, whether it's.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: Any time anything exactly, the lungs are intended for for
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: clean air.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Right. What makes the cigarette worse? Though? What is it
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: the cigarette?
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: Not only is it products of combustion, but the tobacco
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: industry has put other ingredients into those products over many
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: years to make them more deadly and more addictive. And so,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: although nicotine is not the drug in these products that
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: is causing the death and disease directly, it's certainly the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: highly addictive agent that is.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: Causing people to continue to come back for more.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: And so when it comes to cigarette smoking, seven thousand
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: chemicals semi carcinogens nearly harms every organ of the body,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: including twelve types of cancer, and so the risk is
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: very well established. That said, we've seen new products enter
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: the market that are lower risks, but that doesn't mean
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: no risk, and that includes these cigarettes and nicotine pouches
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: and others. And it also doesn't mean that particularly vulnerable
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: populations like kids should be using these products. Kids should
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: not be using any tobacco products, and those who aren't
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: already using them certainly shouldn't start. And when it comes
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: to nicotine, it's a highly addictive drug. It can harm
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: the developing adolescent brain, which continues to develop until about
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: age twenty five, and it can also prime the brain
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: for addiction to other drugs.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: And so nicotine is not a completely risk free a drug.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: It's something we use in therapies like nicotine replacement patch
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: and others to get people off nicotine in the long term,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: but it's not something that we should be introducing the
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: population to unless it's for the purposes of an FDA
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: approved a therapeutic purpose or FDA authorized.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Look, when I was a kid, my parents were concerned
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: about too much caffeine consumption when I was ten or eleven,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: let alone nicotine consumption. What is the level of you know,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: you know we're worried about kids with nicotine. What would
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: you say about just caffeine.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not a direct apples to apples comparison when
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: you look at the way that both of those function
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: in the body. There's different safety profiles, there's different pharmacodynamic profiles,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: and ultimately different risk profiles in the long run, And
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: so it's not a direct apples to apples when it
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: comes to nicotine. And we know that there are inherent risks,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: particularly to kids. And we also know, you know that
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: it's you know, something that can increase cardiovascular risk as well,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: particularly in chronic exposure. So it's not just the addiction
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: and the impact on the developing less and brain, but
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: also in the long term, even for adults, there's profound
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: cardiovascul risk. And so you know, bottom line is adult smokers,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: if they transition completely from a cigarette to these products,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: it would be a benefit to that individual, but the
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: end of goal should be to get off completely, and
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: in the meantime that can't come at the expense of kids.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, and this to me seems to be
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: the conundrum, which is, if you're a chain smoker, vaping
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: and nicotine pouches are an improvement, right, you'd rather have
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: grandma or grandpa pet Can we get you off the winstons?
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: Can we get you you know, using some zen? But
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: it does seem as if we have we passed, you know,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: when smoking was more of a recent phenomenon that made sense.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: We're now arguably what do we are? We twenty five
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: years into the pouch thing and we're about fifteen years
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: of mainstreaming vapes. What would you say?
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, you said it's entered the US market around
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it is to me the concern would be
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: that it now is actually it's been so long, and
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: that it turns into a gateway back to smoking. Is
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: there any evidence of that?
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: So if you look at the preponerance of the science,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: know that doesn't mean that it's not happening. But when
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: we look at the longitudinal evidence, which is what follows
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: people over time, it does not peer based on the
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: existing literature that it's a transition to smoking. But that
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: still doesn't negate the inherent risk of using the product,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: particularly among kids, and so you know, ultimately it's important
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 3: to look at the preponderance of the evidence. But even
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: if it's not leading kids to smoke, they still shouldn't
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: be exposed to nicotine and the adverse effects of these products,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: and all the more reason why we need a well
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: regulated marketplace to make sure that only those products that
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: are actually going to help adult smokers transition completely are
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: the ones that are authorized on the market. And that's
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: why that FDA review is so critical, and enforcement is
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: also essential to get the products that aren't authorized by FDA.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Off the market. So look, I you know, I remember
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: Trump was was I think it was he was trying
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: because it had been a big sort of there had
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: been some advocates in the sort of megaspace about hey,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: the flavored vapes and the flavor, you know, please bring
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: it back, bring it back. So this has always felt
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: like there is a constituency in his political base that
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: has been agitating for this for some time, has it not?
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's certainly been pressure on FDA for for
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: many years. I think you know what's different here is
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: that you actually have the administration acting on it and
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: following you know, very flagrant political donations and pressures. And
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: you know, having served in the US government, I'll say
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: that there was always White House interest and to BACO work.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: You know, it's the leading cause of preventical disease and depth.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: You know, I would question if an administration's health insurance
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: services didn't have interest in that. But what we're seeing
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: now isn't just interest, it's interference. And I think that
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: it's also highly ironic because you have a health department
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: that's basically giding itself on being anti corporate capture and championing,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: you know, efforts to prevent chronic disease, and in this case,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: you've got both happening with corporate capture and not doing
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: anything to address the leading cause of preventable disease in
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: the country.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: So I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: Altria here or any of the tobacco companies, and you know,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to continue to grow my business. I'm just
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: like being very cynical and transactional here. As I'm thinking
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: this through, I would think it's in their interest to
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: you know, at this point they pivoted their business to
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: I assume, you know, exporting cigarettes internationally and trying to
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: essentially corner the domestic market on the on the nonsmokable
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: tobacco products, right, whether it's the pouches, the vapes, these SIGs,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: et cetera. So isn't it I could make a case
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: that it's actually in the domestic tobacco company's best interest
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: to continue the anti smoking cam pains, to continue the
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: transition of my two packa day people I want to
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: not only now, I'm fine with them quitting because I
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: can transition them to my growth business over here. So
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: again I'm being cynical, transactional business guy here. That's the
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: part that's a head scratcher to me. Why get rid
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: of this ad campaign?
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's contra productive to common sense and also
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: public health. You know, there's certainly been you know, vocal
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: attention from industry indicating that they want to transition people
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: to lower risk alternatives. But in the same breath, many
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: of them are still selling cigarettes, making massive amounts of money.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: How much of their bottom line is the actual old
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: fashioned cigarette It varies by the company, but for many
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: it's still the majority of their portfolio and in some
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: cases most. And is it more international than domestic these days?
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, to Asia you see a lot
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: of cigarettes smoking.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's certainly you see are more marketing, you know,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 3: for cigarettes, you know, internationally, but even in the US
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: you have companies that are heavily promoting. It's about a
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: million dollars an hour is still being spent to advertise
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: cigarettes in the United States alone, So it's not going away.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: And you've also seen adapting to regulations, so you know
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: now that they can't advertise on television and radio. You know,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: now you've seen shift to point of sale at convenience stores,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: You've seen electronic promotion through the Internet and social media.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 3: But all that said, you have this irony because if
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: the goal is really to transition people, you're seeing the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 3: industry fight tooth and nail at the federal level and
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: the state and local level to basically prevent policies from
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: going in place they would actually help people stop smoking,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: So graphic warning labels. The industry has been litigating that
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: for over a decade in this country, when over one
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: hundred countries have already done it. Then there's a strong
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: evidence space pushing back against the menthol role that the
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: Bidenair administration wanted implement all actions that would reduce smoking.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: And so if you really want to help people transition away,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: it's not just creating a product that will make you money,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: it's also creating an environment with policies that will actually
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: drive people to quit or transition to those lower risk alternatives.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: And that's where you have that complete conflict of actual
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 3: action when it comes to the industry.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: They clearly they wanted this end campaign to end.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: Well, we can't connect the dots precisely, but I think
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: that the tobacco industry is certainly not perturbed that the
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: campaign is off the airwaves. It was highly effective on
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: the airways for over a decade, has helped over a
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: million Americans quit smoking, and was part of CDC's Office
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: on Smoking Health. This is now has been completely eliminated.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: Those staff are not brought back, they're currently on administrative leave.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 3: They're protected by litigation by the state's attorney general. But
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: ultimately that was the office responsible for monitoring youth tobacco
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: use in this country through the National Youth Tobacco Serve,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: the responsible for the TIPS campaign. They gave grants to
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: all fifty states to do tobacco prevention and control work
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: across the country, and they also did critical work in
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: terms of just surveillance and science, and so all of
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: that is now not happening, which is certainly a detriment
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: to the public health of this country. And that's the
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: ultimately casualty of this. It's the American people, because now
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: you have the office responsible for addressing the leading cause
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: of preventtal disease and death that has now been completely
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: sidelined and eliminated.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: Given that there is an alternative to get your nicotine
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: in a variety of ways, why is the old fashioned
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: cigarette legal?
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: So it all comes back to bipartisan legislation. So if
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: you look at the two thousand and nine Tobacco Control Act,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: which was bipartisan by camera, that was the first time
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: FDA got the authority to regulate tobacco in this country.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: That law specifically prohibits the FDA from banning any product class,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: including cigarettes, and so prohibits the agency from reducing nicotine
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 3: levels to zero. It doesn't prevent the agency from reducing
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: it to minimally addictive levels, which the last administration in
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: the waning hours released a proposal for that, which the
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: current administration has now done away with. But you know,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: if you remove that highly addictive agent, that would prevent
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 3: people from coming back for more. But ultimately it comes
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: down to what is the regulatory structure in the United States.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: And based on that bipartisan legislation, there was parameters in
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: that law that prevented the agency from out white banning
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: entire product classes, including cerats.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: Well, and this is where I would come in and say,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: remember how many people in the state of how many
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: elected officials from the states of Kentucky and Virginia in
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, three very tobacco into three tobacco states who
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: have influence in Congress. So what you just outlined there,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: and it's those three states that certainly there was bipartisan people,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: including leadership like Mitch McConnell. So I could picture how
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: they say, well, you can't get we can't you know,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: totally kill our tobacco farmers and all of this. You know,
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: what would happen to tobacco farmers of cigarettes were the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: old fashioned cigarette was essentially banned.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: Well, what we've seen in other countries and also domestically
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: is over the years, as cigarette smoking has gone down,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: that you've seen transition into other types of farming. And
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: so people have been able to transition successfully, and they've
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: also transitioned into other areas. And you also continue to
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: have a need for nicotine, tobacco derived nicotine for things
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: like nicotine replacement therapy and FDA approved therapeutics with the
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: intent of getting people off.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: You still need the tobacco leaf for that.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So more recently you can produce nicotine synthetically, but
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: the vast majority of nicotine out there is extracted directly
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 3: from the tobacco plant.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: That's the cheapest way to get it.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: The price has gone down in recent years to create
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 3: synthetic in the lab. But it's still pretty I see,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: And so most people are still using the old nicotine
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: derived tobacco from the You know, I think about our history, right.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: We're both as a as a society, we're both libertarian
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: and puritan if those we sort of have these cross currents,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: and it's always been constant. Right, our puritan side showed
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: up during Prohibition, right, or libertarian side shows up in
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: all of these you know, cannabis laws that have been
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: popping up by state and stuff. But when you look,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we have decided you know, for instance, hey,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: there's a level of alcohol you're allowed to sell, right,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: you know, you can find one fifty one proof stuff
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: and all, but there is a there is we we
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: sort of set some limits here and so, which means
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: essentially we got rid of the worst versions of alcohol
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: that could prove deadly or whatever it is. Is? Is
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: that where we should head with the cigarette? Can you
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: get it down to where you even have just less
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: and less and less? You still allow the addictive product,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: but less of it?
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: Well, certainly, And that's where I think the nicotine standard
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: comes in which you know, folks talk about harm reduction,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: and I would argue that is the single most effective
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: population based harm reduction policy you could implement for tobacco.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: If you reduce the addictivation to minimally addictive or non
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 3: addictive levels, you are going to prevent the primary ingredient
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: that's bringing people back. And so that's going to prevent initiation,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: it's going to promote cessation, and it's going to reduce
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: likelihood of relapse. And so when it comes to cigarettes,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: no other country has been able to do that. The
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: US would have been the first out of the gate,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: and that would have been a consequential strategy. And you
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: can also do other things around ingredient regulation as well,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: and so prohibiting menthol would be a great example.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: That's the last flavor that was available.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 3: All other flavors were banned with that Tobacco Control Act
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine except menthol, but that's, you know,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: still being used, and it's particularly prominent among African American
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: populations where that.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: Was pressure that was applied to Biden, don't do it
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: because of that. It was part of that. I mean,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: this is where you've seen bipartisan constituency sort of fears, right,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: fears of alienating a specific constituency, whether it's the the
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: manosphere right with the flavored stuff, African American community with menthol.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about the flavor issue here minute,
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: because I know this is going to sound a little
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: almost shallow, But the fact is, adults have migrated more
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: to right sugary or fruity standards when it comes to
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: imbibing their caffeine, when it comes to imbibing their alcohol,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: imbibing the cannabis if you're you know, hemp derived drinks,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. So there's this whole movement among marketing
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: to adult to market fruit flavors and to market all
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: this So is it make it? I mean, how if
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: I'm just putting myself in the company, like, hey, there
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: is adult demand for these flavors. Is there another way
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: we can put some sort of safeguard here away from kids?
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: Is there marketing stuff that I'll embrace as a company
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: if you'll let me still market blueberry and mango because
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: I have a customer base that really wants blueberry and mango,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: and hey, they're in their thirties. Yeah.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that's where effective regulation comes in place.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: And I think Congress got it right with the Tobacco
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: Control Act, where they basically required FDA to weigh the
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: benefits and the risks of these products on the population
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 3: of as a whole and making determinations throughout authorization. And
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 3: that includes benefits of what are the products that will
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 3: most help in adult smoke or transition completely, but also
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: the risks of initiation, particularly among kids.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: And so in doing that you have to look at
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: that big picture view.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 3: And so when it comes to flavors in the past,
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: the agency said, well, you know, we'll authorize menthol because
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: we know it's lower appeal among kids and that these
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 3: applicants have shown the product actually helps adult smokers transition
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 3: completely because they don't all do that, they're not all
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 3: efficient at nicotine delivery. But on balance, they said, but
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: we know that these particular flavors are most appealing among kids,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 3: and so we've got to keep those, you know, very
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 3: stringently regulated and make sure we're not flooding the market
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 3: with those products and authorizing them.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: And so you saw a shift.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: You know, the former FDA commissioner agreed with that purview
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: in terms of, you know, make sure we're not introducing
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 3: flavors they're going to be particularly problematic to kids. And
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 3: now you've seen a reversal, and you've also seen I think,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: jumping the gun on of existing science. We don't really
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 3: know a lot about age gating technology yet, but you
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 3: had an authorization based on a single application without really understanding,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 3: you know, is this is really a panacea? Is it
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 3: really going to help prevent kids from using the products?
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 3: When you know the reality is you have kids who
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: can hack an iPhone and you know less than a minute.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: And so following the science and doing everything you can
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 3: to optimize benefit for efficient niicantine delivery products, but not
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: doing so in a way that you're opening the floodgates
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 3: to increase youth risk.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: So let me tell you about Mike's hard lemonade. How's
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: that not targeting youth kids?
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 3: Well, you certainly have promotion across a variety of risk factors,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: and I'm not going to compare one public health risk
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 3: factor to another.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: No, I understand that, But that is I mean to me,
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: you know, oh lemona right, like it is like the
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: same argument being made about these tobacco products and the flavors. Well,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: my goodness, the entire alcohol industry has gone to the
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: fruit side of things. Yeah, and kids shouldn't be using
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: those products either. We have agent sale requirements, we have laws,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: we have regulation, and when it comes you know, to
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: tobacco products, that regulation is clear and it's important that
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: we obey the law.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: You know, we follow the science and we tell the truth.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: And that's been a central tenants for FDA for many
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: years and it's critical that that continue.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: I keep hearing the phrase age gating technology. It sounds fancy.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 3: Explain, So age gaining technology is basically uh in device
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: technology that would prevent an underage person from accessing the product.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 3: And so that can be done with biometrics, it can
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: be done with you know, other entry of information such
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: as you know, scanning of license and others.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: To actually open the product, like every time I open
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: the zin canister, I've done. This is cigarettes.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 3: This is specifically okay, yeah, and so E cigarettes are
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 3: you know, electronic products, and so in order to actually
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: trigger the inhalation mechanism, you need to input information or
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 3: other biometrics that it would allow it to function.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: That's this is a relatively new thing.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 3: And this first authorization from FDA was based on you know,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 3: a single application that provided evidence of among us a
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: small sample of individuals saying, you know, it worked, but
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 3: there's not really any profound body of scientific literature demonstrating
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 3: the effectiveness of this in the context of tobacco products.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 3: But you know, we do have literature in other areas
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 3: that shows that it doesn't work, and so it's important
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 3: that we really, you know, monitor the situation carefully, particularly
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 3: ways that it could be adulterated, particularly boundar age persons
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: and negate the you know, intended purpose of preventing them
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 3: from using it.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: What kind of research has been known about essentially pouch usage,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: zin usage in middle schools and high schools. Look, I mean,
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, when I'm of the age where
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: back then you just snuck outside to have a cigarette
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: if you were you know, in high school, or maybe
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: it was after lunch, but there was you know, we
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: didn't you know, there was maybe a couple of kids
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: that chewed tobacco or had Copenhagen or something like that,
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't this. So this is you know, this
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: is obviously, you know, something I was concerned about when
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: my kids were in middle school, with the vaping and
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. What is you know, as zen as
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: a you know that's a brand name, but is Zen
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: and Zen like products have become more prominent. Do we
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: have good data on usage among those under eighteen?
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 3: So nicotine pouches were added to federal surveys around two
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 3: thousand and one when they hit the market in the
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 3: United States. There was obviously precursors of smokeless products. So
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 3: we have data for about a half decade, and what
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 3: we know from that is that use remains relatively low
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: but is slightly upticking. It's actually the only tobacco product
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 3: where we've seen an increase among our nations.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: Do we track alcohol usage among under eighteen as well?
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 3: By the way, yes, yes we do. It depends on
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: the survey. For tobacco. We typically use the NAST Youth
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: Tobacco SURVEYCES. They don't assess other things, but there are
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 3: other surveys like CDC's Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System that does.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: But when it comes to tobacco, nicotine pouches is about
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: two percent. It's upticked over the past couple of years,
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 3: but still relatively low. But I will say, you know,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 3: it's important to continue to monitor because these cigarette use
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: was relatively low on twenty eleven and then you know,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: we saw a meteoric increases from twenty seventeen to twenty
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: nineteen that led you know, the government to call it
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 3: an epidemic. Fortunately we've now decreased those levels. But you know,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: we don't want to be playing a game of public
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: health whackamhole where we've got.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: Some products going up, others going down.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: Among kids they shouldn't be using any tobacco product and
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 3: that in nicotine pouches.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: What is the when when you know we had this
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: to that to year uptick, what why do you think
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: it was so easy to stamp it out?
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think we still don't know the
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: full effect because the latest data points were before we
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: had authorization of the products by the FDA and also
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 3: the recent author isation of a modified risk claim, which
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: basically allows the company to promote that their product is
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: lower risk compared to to a cigarette, And so we
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: haven't fully experienced the full promotion of the products. But
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: I think you've had a lot of social media engagement,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: particularly among young people. These products are easily concealable, they're
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 3: available in kid friendly flavors, and so you're starting to
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: see you know, slight interest and optics some of what
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: we've seen for other products, and now more than ever,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 3: you know, we've got to make sure that doesn't increase
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: and it reverts and continues, you know, downward, like we've
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: seen for ease cigarettes. But that said, I think we're
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 3: kind of in a wait and see. We need to
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 3: see the data for the next year. But right now
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 3: the levels are certainly, you know, not meteorically high for
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 3: nicotine pouches, but they're also not going down significantly, which
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: is what we want to see when it comes to
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 3: kids usage.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: What do we know about what do we twenty six
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: years and that you just said we started, you know,
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: the basically the power these nicotine pouches. You know, chewing
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: tobacco can lead to gum disease, we know that. What
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: do we know about the pouches? And we're kind of
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: long term, I mean, I guess we're I assume we're
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: hitting our first generation of sixties and seventy year olds
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: who've been maybe using pouches for the last fifteen or
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: twenty years.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the nicotine pouches, the current version, our relatively
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: new invention. So that's the past half decade, the probably
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: closest parallel would be Swedish snooze, which is snewe so
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: I remember that stuff, yeah, which doesn't involve spinning. So
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: it's a little more a glamorous if you will, where
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: you can just you know, remove it from the gum
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 3: and the.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: Leg and my and my traveling around the world days
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: of covering, you know, having to be up twenty out
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: of twenty four hours. I may or may not have
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: been a snooze user back in the late oughts every
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: now and then. And boy did that stuff wire you
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: in ways. That was that was a little little intense,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: I'll just be honest.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think you know, we're seeing a lot
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 3: of initiation, particularly nicotine is among young males. You know,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: you're seeing flatline among kids, you know, slight uptick, but
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 3: it's been a two to threefold increase among young adults,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 3: particularly males.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: And what are have we seen any health spikes or
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: we don't know yet is it?
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: So it's too soon to see what the health spikes are.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 3: But we do know that there's inherent risks of exposing,
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 3: particularly for a nicotine naive person, and so you know,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 3: you're inoculating the body with a psychoactive substance is also
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 3: highly addictive and can cause adverse effects to the cardiovascular system.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 3: And so if you're not already you know, smoking, you
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 3: should not be starting a nicotine pouch. But what we're
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 3: seeing is a lot of new initiates, particularly young adults.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: And there's also I think a conflation of you know,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 3: understanding of the inherent benefits versus risks. You know, nicotine
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: does have a very acute stimulant effect in terms of
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 3: honed in attention, but you have to consider the long
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 3: term effects of addiction and also other risks, and so
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: you can't dismiss a potential acute benefit around attention for
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 3: you know, the very profound, you know, long risks of
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 3: exposure and addiction, and many people don't appreciate that, particularly
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 3: folks that haven't used nicotine before.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: How much of this money was how much of these
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: ad campaigns were supposed to be financed by the big
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: tobacco settlements and are they still Is that still the
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: money that's behind this In theory, so the.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: Answer is no short answer, And so for folks who
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: may not be familiar.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety eight, there was the Master Settlement Agreement,
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 3: which is what you're talking about, and that was agreement
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 3: between forty six states attorney general and the tobacco industry
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 3: which basically requires the tobacco industry, the big companies, to
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 3: pay in perpetuity to states for the health care costs
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 3: of smoke it, which you know are over two hundred
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 3: and thirty billion dollars a year in this country, you know, monumental.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 3: That said, vast majority of states are simply not allocating
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 3: those dollars for that purpose. They're filling in potholes because
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 3: it's a guaranteed revenue stream. And so when you have
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 3: guaranteed cash, states are working to divert that to other
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 3: things instead of public health and certainly not tobacco control.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: So some states are I was just going to say,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: this gets it too, and I it. You know, this
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: is exactly what happened to the lottery. Hey, we're going
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: to use this money for education. Great, we'll replace the
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: money we used to use for education and need set
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: money elsewhere. So these are all we're supposed to be
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: additive financial benefits for the states to be able to
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: do this, and instead it got turned into tax cuts. Yeah.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and in many cases, you know, there are some
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: states that have done well.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: Oklahoma is a great example of one that actually set
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 3: up a foundation to allocate the dollars coming in through
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 3: the MSA, and recently now their legislator is sue legislature
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 3: is suing to try to make expect they lost by
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: public referendum and now is working through other legislation to
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 3: try to subvert that. But you know, ultimately, you know,
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 3: the guaranteed revenue streams is a key opportunity that's you know,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 3: if they're taken advantage of.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: What does it say to Did the tobacco industry ever
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: really take a hit on this or not?
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: Ultimately, I think there was some hit. I think, you know,
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: it depends on who you ask.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 3: Some would argue that the settlement actually was favorable to
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 3: the industry because if they would allowed individual plaintiffs side,
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: they look like, yeah, they could have bankrupted industry because
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 3: they were doing massive hundred million dollar payoffs, particularly the
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 3: Angle progeny lawsuits out of Florida, and so if those
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 3: were allowed to continue, I think industry could have you know,
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 3: been potentially bankrupted. But you know, with the settlement, it's
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 3: still a knock on their cash flow, but it certainly
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 3: pales in comparison to what's coming in from product sales.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: So if you were brought back in how would you
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: you know, what would you restart? Is there is there
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: some things that are unnecessary anymore in the tobacco free campaigns.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: Now, I think there's always opportunity to identify efficiencies, and
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 3: I think that you know, coming into the current administration,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 3: that public health folks, including those that CDC and FDA,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 3: were open to that in terms of you know, identifying efficiencies,
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 3: making sure that we're tight trading.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: You know, this is a field that's been around for
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: over a half century.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 3: Other respectors are constantly looking to tobacco like, wow, they
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 3: did so great at reducing smoking.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: There's always opportunity for efficiency.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 3: But for me, the bottom line is you got to
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 3: obey the law, you've got to follow the science, and
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 3: you've got to tell the truth. And we're starting to
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 3: see that eroad on multiple fronts. And there's ways, and
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 3: we've done it in the past across multiple administrations, the
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 3: independant of the party, where you can still prioritize working
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 3: on the leading cause of provencial disease and depth without
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 3: you know, undermining the credibility of both the science and
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 3: the law. And I think that's where we really have
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 3: to be cautious in the current environment, is not allowing
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 3: the corporate capture to take over a meaningful, evidence based
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 3: public health practice.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: I want to try to land this plane here. I
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: want to go back to because you know, we're it's
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: frustrated to watch what's happened in the last fifteen months,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: but this has been a massive success story. Right when
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: you say, if you actually step back over the last
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: thirty years, right, you know, my mother was a packa
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: day smoker. Back when I was a kid, I had
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: plenty of relatives who were near packa day smokers. When
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: you look at all the things that were done, was
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: banning indoor smoking in public places, the most effective.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: Not the most effective, but certainly effective part of the toolkit.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 3: The single most effective intervention to reduce consumption of tobacco
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 3: is increasing price taxation based on the science most effective,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: but we also know from the science a comprehensive approach
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 3: is key. So increasing price smoke free policies, hard hitting
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 3: mass media campaigns like CDC's tips campaign, cessation resources, and
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 3: a well regulated marketplace. And that's not to say that
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 3: you can't have lower risk alternatives on the market, but
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 3: they have to be well regulated and they have to
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 3: be part of a broader picture where you also have
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: those policies, these that are making efforts to prevent initiation,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 3: to promote cessation, and to prevent relabs.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: Now I want to flip here a second, because look,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: most of this is about trying to prevent this, uh,
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: trying to prevent underage usage. And I think about we're
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: worried about it with alcohol, We're worried about it with cannabis,
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: or worried about it with tobacco. But this is you
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: want to talk about an efficiency. I mean, it feels
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: like there should be one office worried about childhood addictions
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: and should be making sure. Hey, let's you know what
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: is if you were to reorganize, should we be should
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: that be the north star? And like all of this
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: fall under one thing, because it I feel like now
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: we're kind of siloed on the federal level. Right alcohol
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: does it in one place, and tobacco's over here, and
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: right now cannabis is just the states that have legalized
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: and the beds are kind of just now dabbling into it.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: How much should they you know, you know, rescheduling it,
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: and and the issue with hamp and all of that stuff.
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: So it feels like, actually, we have a really bad
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: patchwork right now on the federal level. If the if
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: the goal is to you know, keep our kids as
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: healthy as possible before they turn eighteen, right, whether it's
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: you know, limiting access to you know and marketing on tobacco,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: on cannabis, on alcohol, it feels like we don't have
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: the right structure for that.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that there's definitely opportunities for streamlining and efficiency,
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 3: but I also think it's important to consider all the
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 3: things that have to occur. And so when it comes
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 3: to the federal government, we've always had what I call
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 3: the trifecta. And so CDC focuses on the people, FDA
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 3: focuses on the products, and NIH focuses on the science,
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 3: and all three of those in the context of tobacco
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 3: have a specific role. So the Office on Smoking Health
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 3: was doing boots on the ground policy and health comes,
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 3: FDA is manufacturing, is regulating manufacturing, marketing and sale, and
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 3: then NIH is funding that extra real research to continue
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 3: to move the level forward on those CDC policies. And
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 3: you know, the FDA regulation, and so you know, I
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 3: think there's opportunity for identifying efficiencies, but you also can
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 3: negate all of the things that are needed to effectively
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 3: implement public health practice.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: No, I understand that alcohol is not in the FDA, right,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: Isn't that is that bureau?
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 3: Is that atf Yes, yes, alcohols and but CDC had
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 3: you know, an alcohol program.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: Is that a mistake? That alcohol? Because I think about
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: what's coming here, right, You've got the the sort of
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: adult beverage industry. You have alcohol being regulated one way,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: what about these non alcoholic but cannabis based drinks? Like
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: I just think about all of this and it just
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: feels like we you know, the bureaucracy is it's almost
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: too siloed.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I absolutely agree.
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 3: And I think in a lot of that is just
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 3: the function of how you get regulation in this country,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 3: and that's through you know, Biden purpose and congressional action.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: And so you know, the FDA tried to.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 3: Regulate tobacco years ago, you know, before congress authority, and
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 3: they lost in the Supreme Court you know, cided against
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 3: the agency, and so they said, yeah, you got to
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 3: go back to Congress. And when you do that, there's
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 3: specific parameters that occur, and you also have to remember
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 3: the variability and how the products are regulated. And so
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 3: that's why, like you know, drugs have a safe and
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 3: effective standard, you know, tobacco can't have a safe and effectives.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: There's no safe tobacco products.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 3: So they got you know, appropriate for protection of public
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 3: health where you weigh risk benefits, but ultimately it's it's
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 3: risk factor specific when it comes to regulation, but not
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 3: in public health practice. And that's why you know CDC
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: you can see that bigger picture umbrella. So you know, alcohol,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 3: you know, tobacco, chronic disease work is all under a
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 3: single umbrella. But when it comes to regulation, that's a
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: different beast and it's largely dependent on congressional authority.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: Politically, Is the MAHA movement an ally here or an adversary?
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 3: It's kind of ironic because MAHA hasn't really done anything
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 3: prominent on tobacco, and it's you know, the irony is
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 3: palpable because they're anti corporate capture and they're pro preventing
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 3: chronic disease. And this issue is we're seeing the complete
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: opposite where you've seeing complete corporate capture and I've said
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 3: in the past. You know, attempting to combat chronic disease
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 3: without tobacco control is like attempting a triathlon without a bicycle.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 2: You are destined for failure before leaving the starting.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: Line because you don't even have the equipment.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, you have to involve tobacco in chronic disease prevention.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 3: And so I think MAHA has really dropped the ball,
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 3: and the irony is palpable that they're not addressing the
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 3: leading cause of preventable disease and death in this country.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: So ultimately, somebody's going to listen to this interview and say, well,
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: we need campaign financial re form. That's ultimately what happened
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: here is that is that at its core, you can't
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: just look away from the money aspect of this. I
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: think it's multifaceted.
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: You know, you're always going to have a corporate interests,
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 3: but you need the systems in place in the government
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 3: to effectively address the issue. And so I think, you know,
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 3: first and foremost, elimination of CDC's Office on Smoking Health
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 3: is highly problematic.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: Congress is allocated the dollars, but the administration.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: Which is going to say it's not legal. What they
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: did because Congress is the one that created the entity.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, Congress has allocated the dolls for tobacco and
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 3: right now the administration is not spending it, you know,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 3: on the FDA's front. Congress has also reinstated the user fees,
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 3: as they've continued to done since the establishment of the center.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 3: So you know, there's no problem with that cash and
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 3: the kitty, it's just the administration prioritizing the work, and
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 3: particularly with CDC, they remain eliminated now a year and
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 3: a half into the administration.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: And yet what we don't know is what that money
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: has now gone to. It's gone to other stuff. Basically,
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: it's basically not being spent.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 3: Some of the money has been dislodged to the state programs,
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 3: but it's at a trickle and in some cases they've
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 3: given the states, you know, five months to spend twelve
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 3: months worth of data, and so it's basically like setting
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 3: people up for failure. But you know, the key components,
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 3: like the tips campaign is completely off the air, and
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 3: you're losing a lot of that technical expertise, particularly state level,
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 3: on you know, key CDC activities.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: Is there better litigation that should be pursued here that
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: would sort of, uh force an unlocking of this.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 3: I think that right now the staff are protected by
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 3: the state's attorney general.
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: I think the staff are But what about the Yeah, yeah, I.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: Mean the programs. You know, that's I think it's to
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: be seen.
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe with a new CDC director in place,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 3: you know, this week, Well, we'll hear on if that
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 3: potentially occurs.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: We may see some dislodging.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 3: But you know, ultimately I think it's it's it's going
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 3: to depend on you know, the next couple months and
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 3: whether they turn things around like they've done at FDA.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 3: You know, they did reinstate staff in the tobacco program.
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 3: But in the meantime, there's also litigation that's occurring. My
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 3: organization and other public health organizations recently sued the FDA
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 3: for their enforcement guidance that we discussed earlier, And so,
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 3: you know, I think there are actions to make sure
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 3: that we are obeying the law and following the science,
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 3: and there's entities willing to do that.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: And I will fully understand if you decide you don't
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: want to weigh in on this. But I just spent
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: a good ten minutes in my previous episode about the
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: measles epidemic and the fact that we're in and it's
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: just it does feel as if we've just gutted public
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: health in the last eighteen months. And the question I
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: have is how hard is this going to be to rebuild?
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're in a public health apocalypse when it comes
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 3: to infrastructure. As a public health practitioner of nearly twenty
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 3: five years, I've never seen the level of decimation and
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 3: flagrant disregard for not only science but also evidence based
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 3: public health practice. My guest is is will take decades
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 3: to repair. And it's not just getting programs back, but
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 3: getting repairing the misinformation, the trust view of public health
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 3: to trust and the next cohort of the public health workforce,
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 3: you know, following on a pandemic and then all of
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 3: the misinformation and distrust of public health officials. You know,
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 3: I really worry about the long term ability to recruit
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 3: people to this field given the level of vitriol and
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 3: animosity that they faced.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: Oh. You know, if you're in any there's a couple
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: of entities, whether in the science arena that government provides
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: the resources for that scientific community, you know, whether it's
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: research on the oceans and the climate with Noah or
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: it is public health. And if you've got a government
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: that essentially is gutting that that is you know, as
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: somebody who has a daughter with an oceanography degree and
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: a much limited now environment of employable places in the
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: public sector. There's some private sector opportunities, but it's minimal
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: compared to what used to be available in the public sector.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: But this is going to be a loss of a
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: you know, in hindsight, you know, my daughter ten years
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: you know, ten years from now, or somebody that's ten
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: years younger than her that wants to pursue that is
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: now going to say I'm going to pursue something else.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I will say that we've lost
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of great institutional knowledge and expertise. In my
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 3: you know, two decades plus working this, I've worked in academia, advocacy,
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 3: and government, and I'll say that the civil servants were
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 3: second to none, and that level of expertise and passion
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 3: of people willing to do this work not for a paycheck,
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 3: not for the glory, but because they want to help people.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 3: That that view, that drive is something that's simply not
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 3: replaceable and not available in the public sector. In the
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 3: private sector, and so I do think, you know, the
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 3: loss of that is certainly certainly going to have a detriment,
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 3: and it's going to take us years to rebuild that.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: I'm still hopeful it's going to happen.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 3: But the sooner we can, you know, get the ship
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 3: upright and sailing into better waters, the better.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: When it comes to public and I assume that if
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: we're collapsing on public health, the rest of the world
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: is not in a better places. Yeah, no, it certainly
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: has a trickle down effect. Absolutely well, Brian, this is
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: it is in some ways this story is not surprising. Rights,
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: it's influence. It's as old as sort of Washington itself.
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: But it's it's hard to get traction, isn't it. It's
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: hard to get people fired up about this. And I
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: guess part of it is, look what we just described.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: You know, we have a public you call it apocalypse.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: Forget emergency anymore, right, it is public health apocalypse. And
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: it's like, it's understandable, where do you begin, you know,
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: what should be the siren song? Is it what's happening
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: with our vaccinations? Is it what's happening with the FDA? Right?
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: It is just it feels almost overwhelming. Yeah, no, it
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: absolutely is.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 3: And I think what we've got going in our favor, though,
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 3: is that there's dedicated people that are working to preserve
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 3: the integrity of the public health infrastructure. And it may
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 3: vary by risk factor, but you're seeing coordination on the
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 3: tobacco front. We certainly see that with public health groups.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 3: But ultimately, you know, folks have to make sure that
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 3: they're you know, leveraging assets and expertise to make sure
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 3: we're protecting public health because the casualties of this are
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 3: the American people, and if they haven't felt it already,
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 3: it's only a matter of time before we're going to
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 3: see it trickle down from Pennsylvania Avenue to main streets
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 3: across this country in terms of impact of reduced funding
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 3: from CDC and other activities.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: And this is the classic example of we're really not
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: going to realize the impact probably for a decade. Right,
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: it'll be suddenly like everything right, oh boy, that was
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: a mistake, And it's like, yeah, that was a mistake.
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there'll be a case study. But are our kids
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 3: and grandchildren of what not to do? And I think
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 3: that we're just kind of on the precipice because things
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 3: have kind of been holding on. But we're starting to
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 3: see that deterioration of infrastructure. And you know, if you
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 3: get a communical disease outbreak, we're already seeing that. But
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 3: even on the chronic disease realm, we've got thirty million
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 3: Americans still smoking cigarettes in this country. You know, we
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 3: can't pull the foot off the accelerator. Now the time
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 3: is to pound it and focus on the progress and
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 3: see more as opposed to pulling back.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: My fear is that tear down on the infrastructure to
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: some as a feature not a bug. Absolutely, Ran appreciate
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: your efforts. Where can people go help? Where can people
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: get involved?
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, then go to our website Tobacco Free Kids dot org.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 3: We actually just redid a lot of great resources on
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 3: what's happening at the federal, local, state level, but also
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 3: the global level in terms of tobacco related advocacy work.
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: Is it the UK that just got rid of right?
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: Is it starting win? You can't buy cigarettes in the UK?
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, they just implemented a generational tobacco product policy.
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 3: It's not all products, but yeah, you're seeing a lot
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 3: of good momentum internationally in a lot of areas, but
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 3: not so much.
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: At the national level on tobacco control.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: I'll see these days.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: Well, appreciate the time, and you know, keep fighting the
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: good fight. I appreciate it. All Right, it is time
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: for my time machine. Where are we going back? I
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: told you that if you looked at this week in history,
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of sort of big events whose anniversaries
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: land on this week. So which one do you think
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: I picked? We are focusing on more than just one day,
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: the five days that ended Richard Nixon kind of a
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: corruption theme to this episode. Huh So, Richard Nixon, of course,
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: resigned this week fifty two years ago. Everybody remembers the images,
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: or you've seen the images. I don't want say everybody
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: remembers the images, right, not all of you are under
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: are over the age of fifty two. And look, he
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: resigned after I was born. But I don't remember the
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: way already of that, right, I'm not going to pretend
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: that I did. But we've all seen the helicopter lifting
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: off the v for victory signs, Gerald Ford telling the
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: country that are long national nightmare results. But you know,
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: the longer I've studied Nixon and Watergate. I've always wondered
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: if we've been asking the wrong question. The question isn't
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: what Richard Nixon did. We know what Richard Nixon did.
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: The better question is why Nixon? Why is Nixon the
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: only president that has truly paid a price for his corruption.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: Grant's administration was full of scandal. Harding gave us the
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: teapot Dome scandal that I've been reminding you of. Bill
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: Clinton survived having an affair with somebody that was twenty
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: years old, and he survived impeachment. Donald Trump has survived investigations, impeachments,
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: criminal convictions, enough political controversy that historians will be sorting
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: through it for decades. So why is Richard Nixon the
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: only president in American history to resign in the face
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: of scandal? Well, I don't know if the answer is
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: simply Watergate, And I don't know if the answer is
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: simply ooh, our media environment. That's always the popular the
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: other popular one. I think the answer is five days
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: in August, right, Actually, maybe it's five days a Supreme
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: Court that moved much faster than it had to. One
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: witness answering one unexpected question, a tape recorder Richard Nixon
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: never should have installed and three Republicans who walked into
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: the Oval office carrying nothing more traumatic than a vote count.
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: One thing has always bothered me, though, about the way
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: we remember Watergate. We tell it backwards. We start with
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: the resignation. The people running Nixon's re election campaign thinking
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: about resignation. No, they just were simply thinking about winning. Actually,
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: they were thinking about winning forty nine states. Richard Nixon
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: was probably gonna win anyway going into seventy two, but
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: it wasn't enough. They wanted George McGovern. Months before Watergate,
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: there were already efforts to influence the Democratic nomination. There
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: was those dirty tricks. You've watched all the president's men,
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: you know the lineup of stuff with those dirty tricks,
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: The infamous Canuck letter, generally attributed to Nixon, Crony's hurt
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: ed Muski. The real front runner at the time in
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, Donald Sigretti, you remember the character that played
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: him in the movie. He was spreading forged campaign literature,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: fake letters. It was all about sewing confusion, right. The
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: point wasn't simply oppo research. The point was to shape
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: the Democratic nomination to be as favorable to Nixon as possible.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: Then came Watergate. And here's something that people generally forget
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: about Watergate. The June arrests weren't the beginning. It wasn't
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: the first burglary. There had already been failed attempts. Then actually,
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: in late May, an operation finally succeeded. They already had
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: installed some listening devices in the DNC headquarters at the
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: water game. They had already photographed documents. But one of
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: the bugs, you know, only one of the bugs was
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: working reliably. It was on the phone of Spencer Oliver.
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: That name probably doesn't mean much to you today. Back then,
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: it meant quite a lot. Oliver ran the Association of
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: State Democratic Chairmen. If conversations about delegate strategy, convention maneuvering,
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: or efforts to stop George McGovern were moving through the
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: state parties, his phone was a logical place to listen
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: and guess what that is Where there was plotting and
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: people trying to figure out how do you stop McGovern.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: Democrats knew McGovern was a loser. They knew it. Now
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: before anybody accuses me of wandering into one of Watergate's
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: endless rabbit holes, okay, I know there are entire books
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: built around Spencer Oliver's phone. G Gordon Lady spent years
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: promoting one theory. John Deane spent years fighting it in court.
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: Alfred Baldwin, a former FBI agent who actually sat across
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: the street in the infamous Howard Johnson that's now at
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: GW Dorm, listened to the intercepted calls. Later said much
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: of what we heard sounded personal, even gossipy. So maybe
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: that's the evidence there wasn't much there. Maybe, or maybe
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: it's evidence that a young x FBI agent had no
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: idea what seasoned political operatives were really saying when they
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: talked about sensitive subjects like stopping the eventual nominee of
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: their Democratic Party. None of us can answer that. It's
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: actually a still a remaining mystery. What did they know
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: from their buggings? Right, nobody can answer this. We don't
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: know what Nixon's operation actually learned before the arrests. Right.
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: We don't always have complete records in history. But what
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: we do know is simpler. Richard Nixon got exactly the
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: opponent his campaign wanted, and then he won forty nine states.
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: And if history had stopped on election nine in nineteen
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: seventy two, Watergate would probably be remembered as one of
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: the most successful political operations ever run, but instead history
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: kept going. Then came one of the strangest moments in
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: presidential history. On July thirteenth, nineteen seventy three, Alexander Butterfield
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: sat down with the Senate Watergate Committee staff Don Sanders,
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: a Republican Minority staff member, asked a question that changed history,
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: and three days later Fred Thompson, Yeah, the former senator
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: and actor the Committee's Republican Minority Council years before he
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: became a Senator, asked essentially the same question in public,
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: and the answer was the same. Yes, the president records
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: his conversations. One answer in American history changed forever. Now.
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: I've always liked one detail from the TV show for
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: All Mankind about this. You know, what if the Soviets
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: had beaten in the Americans to the moon Because in
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: their alternate timeline, Nixon loses reelection in seventy two, which
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: means that the taping system still exists. It means nobody
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: in public knows it exists, and it ends up becoming
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: a plot point in the nineties when they go to
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: their alternative history and all this stuff. By the way,
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: these tapes, do you know, there would have been thousands
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: of hours they had all been sitt there, nobody would
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: ever heard of them. Right. Then there's the famous eighteen
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: and a half minute gap. Rosemary Woods always maintained she'd
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: accidentally e raised about five minutes while transcribed. We never
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: fully got the answer in the other thirteen and a half.
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: Nobody has ever convincingly explained those deletions. Now, sometimes I
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: wonder whether somebody one hundred years from now invents a
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: way to hover magnetic traces from old real to real tape.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's impossible today, but you never know, right, But
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: you know, you know a lot of people would stand
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: in line to hear the infamous missing tape, right. That
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: would be awesome. But the truth is the tapes we
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: already have were enough to sink Nixon. And now we
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: get to the week that mattered. It was July twenty fourth.
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: The Supreme Court didn't simply rule against Nixon. It skip
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: the normal appellate process entirely. It hears the case in
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: early July. It effectively stays in session. Remember this is
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: the summer the Court three Court normally didn't do that
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: sixteen days later, unanimously, with Justice Rehnquist recusing himself because
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: he was a Nixon appointee, it orders Nixon to turn
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: over the tapes. That timetable wasn't inevitable. The Court itself
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: made it happen. Think about that, not because I think
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: the Court was wrong to do it, but because timing matters.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: What if they move on a more normal judicial calendar.
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: What if the decision comes after the seventy four election.
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: He hasn't always turned because somebody changes their mind. Sometimes
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: it turns because institutions move faster than anybody expected. Then
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: came August fifth, the smoking Gun tape becomes public. It
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: had been recorded just six days after the break in.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon approves using the CIA to tell the FBI
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: to back away from the investigation. Now today we shortened
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: that to obstruction. Washington heard something even more alarming. The
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: CIA handled foreign intelligence. They weren't supposed to be involved
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: in domestic surveillance. The FBI investigated crimes inside the United States.
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: Those lines were never supposed to cross. For many Republicans,
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: they just had. And then something happened that never makes
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: the movies. People simply counted votes that's it. Nixon needed
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: thirty four votes in the Senate to survive. The count
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 1: came coming back to him, according to senators, was around sixteen,
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: maybe fewer, and it was fallen. The constitutional crisis was
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: simply a math problem. On August seventh, three Reublicans walk
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: into the Oval office. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the father
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: of the modern conservative movement, the Republican nominee from sixty four,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: the man Nixon knew represented the conservative heart of the party.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: Hugh Scott, Senate Republican leader from Pennsylvania. He'd served with
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: Nixon in the House after World War II. His job
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: wasn't television. His job was knowing exactly where every Republican
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: senator stood. Then there was John Rhodes of Arizona. He
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: was the House Republican leader. He was quiet, methodical, respected,
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: a man also known for counting votes, not making headlines,
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: and in fact, Roads had already announced before the meeting
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: the day before that he would probably vote to impeach.
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: He said publicly in August sixth that the House support
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: had deteriorated to the point where impeachment was a foregone conclusion.
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: So together they represented the Republican leadership in Congress. Now,
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: contrary to the legend, they never actually told Richard Nixon
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: to resign. In fact, all three said publicly afterward they
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: never did. Al Haig had quietly encouraged exactly that approach.
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: Nobody wanted Congressional leaders creating the press that they could
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: march into the Oval office and order a president from office. Right,
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: It's a bad look. So they didn't. They just simply
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: delivered him the numbers, nothing more. Richard Nixon did the
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: rest of the math himself. One thing he did know
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: how to do was count votes. Because this is the
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: thing that I think people need to remember about Watercave.
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: This wasn't Republicans suddenly becoming saints, This wasn't a morality play.
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: Republican leaders concluded the Republican Party in a better future
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: without Richard Nixon then with them. Period. That's called politics.
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: And there's another reason that arithmetic matter. Eight months earlier,
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: Congress had already solved another problem. Spiro Agnew had resigned,
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: Gerald Ford became vice president. The Senate confirmed him ninety
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: two to three, the House confirmed him three eighty seven
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: to thirty five. The very people now counting votes had
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 1: already overwhelmingly and publicly installed an alternative to Nixon. Sit
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: with that political abandonment. It comes much easy and much
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: easier calculation when everybody already knows and trusts the person
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: waiting in line. In fact, change one variable in that
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: What if an Agnew was still vice president at the
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: time in August fifth when that tape was released? Do Goldwater,
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: Scott and Rhades make the same walk? I don't know,
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: But you always have to think about the alternative. That's
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: why I'm obsessed with the alternative history. You have to
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: think about the alternative. It matters. It always does. Most
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: Watergate stories end with Richard Nixon boarding the Army helicopter.
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: I think another story begins there. Roger Ales had become
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: convinced television would reshape politics after Nixon. He tried to
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: build a conservative television news service. It failed. Twenty years
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: later he tried again. The second attempt was Fox News.
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: Pap Buchanan kept making the populist, nationalist argument he'd been
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: making inside the Nixon White House for another half century.
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: His candidacy for presidency in nineteen ninety two sounds like
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: a more coherent version of Donald Trump from twenty fifteen
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: Roger Stone, one of the youngest Nixon campaign operatives at
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: the time, he never really stopped practicing Nixon's style politics
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: before finding himself in Donald Trump's orbit. Chuck Coulson found
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: religion before he went to prison. After prison, he built
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: Prison Fellowship into one of the country's largest prison ministries.
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: G Gordon Letty served more prison time than anyone else
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 1: involved in Watergate, never apologized for what he did, and
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: reinvented himself as a conservative radio personality. Bill Sapphire took
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: almost the opposite lesson Nixon speech writer. Then he discovered
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: his own phone had been wired tapped by the administration, sadly,
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: probably because he targeted him for his religion. He eventually
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: spent three decades at The New York Times as a
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: conservative voice. Different people, different lessons, same presidency. And while
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: all of that was unfolding, another New York lawyer named
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: Roy Kong was beginning to mentor a young real estate
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: developer named Donald Trump through his first major fight with
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: the federal government. Different story, different city, same era. So
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: I'll leave you with this one thought. If you're somebody
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: who likes alternative histories, timelines, multiverses, here's one to chew on.
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: What if the Supreme Court doesn't fast track us versus Nixon?
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: What if the smoking gun tap, smoking gun take comes
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: out after the seventy four election. What if Spiro Agne
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: was still vice president? What if Richard Nixon finishes his term?
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: Does Jerrem Ford ever become president? Does Jimmy Carter? Does
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: Renald Reagan? The immediate political winners after Watergate with the
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: Democrats d a huge seventy four and they won the
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: presidency barely in seventy six. But the longer story is
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: more complicated. Political victories and institutional victories don't always happen
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: on the same plock. History usually doesn't tell us which
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: mattered more until decades later. Richard Nixon thought his story
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: ended when the Army helicopter lifted off from the South Lawn.
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe it did, or maybe that's when another political timeline began.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: We'll never know. History only lets us watch one version
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: at a time. But you could argue that those five
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: days in August and the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal and
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: how some Republicans handled it is how we got Donald
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: Trump today. Ask Chuck. First question comes from Scott. We're
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: going to say he's from parts of known anywrits, Hey
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: love your insight. I'd love your insight on this. With
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: checks and balances seeming a weaker than they once were,
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: is the presidency becoming more powerful in a way that
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: could continue beyond Trump? Or is this approach unique? And
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: from historical perspective? Has there been another president who exercised
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: this level of influence over the government in a comparable way?
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: Thanks keep up the great work. PS. Loved your Hall
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: of Fame discussion. Maybe instead of a wiki, we need
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: a mall of Fame, complete with exhibits and a Wetzels Pretzels. Hey,
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: the Baseball Hall of Fame. That's pretty funny. Just try
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: to giant Baseball card show. Right, Look, I think the FDR.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: When you're looking for strong presidencies that pushed the envelope, right,
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: there's FDRs presidency and frankly, there's a Lincoln's presidency. I mean,
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: you could say the most consequential presidency, some of whom
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: are helped shape us in a good way, Lincoln, FDR
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: some help shape us in a bad way. Arguably you
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: could say that that's Trump, maybe Nixon, but both but
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: they I think both of them tried to really be
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: aggressive about executive power. It was less. So look, every
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: president believes they have more power than is agreed upon,
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: and every Congress thinks that the presidency has less more
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: power than it should have. So this is not a
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: new argument, but it takes to your question. I think
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: we haven't had a president this powerful in this influential
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: on culture and government and willing to push the envelope.
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, even Nixon had certain things he wasn't willing
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: to do. Probably not since FDR. Right, I mean, FDR
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: try to expand the court all this stuff, right, he was.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: He was very aggressive in trying to flex the power
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: of the presidency. And there's many that will note that
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: during particularly order to successfully fight the Civil War, it
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: was a pretty strong presidency and a strong executive that
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln carved out and created there. So it's he's
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: not the first. He's just the first whose goal was
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: there's own personal enrichment. Right. Whatever you think of FDR,
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: it was for a political and I may perhaps a
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: goal that he thought was going to better the country.
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: What Lincoln did, he was doing what he thought was
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: going to better the country. What Donald Trump's doing is
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: about self enrichment. Which should make it that much more frightening.
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: And if you've gotten to my Q and A here, Scott,
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: you know, my biggest fear is that this Democratic cong
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: is going to hit somehow hidden more power to the executive.
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: And I promise you the next Democratic president is going
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: to try to copy some of the powerful some of
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: the executive flexing that Trump has done, and they're going
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: to test it on them. So we could be in
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: a you know, we we have to somehow elect a
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: president who is willing to surrender executive power. So we
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: really need a true constitutionalist somebody, man. That's why I
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: think a retired military general is the type who somebody
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: there who truly respects checks and balances, understands the Constitution.
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I just want a president who actually reads
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: the fricking Constitution. That's what I'm looking for, period, simple,
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: That's it. Okay. Next question comes from Dennison, Connecticut, first
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: Congressional District. Big big primary fight going on with John Larson.
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: He's getting the generational primary challenge there. Hey, Chuck, you
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 1: recently answered a question about the BBC as a model
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: for news coverage and raised concerns about whether our government
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: funded out like could truly be independent. But isn't the
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: same concern true of corporate media owned media organizations that
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: have ideological agendas while presenting themselves as unbiased. Given the
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: long standing regulations of outlets like the BBC and CBC
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: and the recent debate over NPR funding, do you think
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: the US has the political maturity to support a publicly
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: funded news organization focused on honest, indevented journalism. Thank you,
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: I don't, But I also think you have to pay
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: some respect to how our culture got started. You know,
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: we haven't written into the constitution freedom of the press,
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: and in fact, there are some freedoms that we enjoy
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: here as journalists that you do not get in the UK.
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: And in fact it's kind of troubling sometimes how much
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: power the government has to over some journalists and some reporting.
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: So I take your point, and yes, I truly believe
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: that the publicly traded companies in particular are terrible custodians
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: for news organizations, as we learn, because they have to
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: answer to shareholders and all shareholders care about as they
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: have a feeder share responsibility their shareholders, which means you
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: just find value for the shareholder. There's no morals clause
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: in that right, there's no is it better for the country,
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: is it good for civics? Right, There's none of that
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: in there. So I do think that I will just
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: tell you that for most of the time I was
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: at NBC, I felt as if I did not have
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: any interference. I would say. What I've noticed is it's
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: not inter sometimes it's not interference in what you do.
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: It's what they don't want you to do. Right. It's
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: the if you starve an institution of resources, well they
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: can't do what you'd want to do, right, So that's
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: what's happened. Right, all of these media companies have stars
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: their news organization of resources, so they can't do what
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: they used to do. They can't and and so they're
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: not technically influencing coverage, but in some ways they're actually
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: influencing coverage. So I don't disagree there, but I do
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: think you have to just we're just different when it
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: comes to that. We've we've always sort of that freedom
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: of speech and freedom freedom of oppress, all of that
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: is is sort of ingrained in our constitution and is
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 1: not in the UK. And I think that's the that's
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 1: why it's hard harder for I think the entire country
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: to feel comfortable with government funded public media, but a
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: public private like I go back to this public private model,
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: I do. I think that it's government ought to create
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: make it easy for journalistic you know, news organizations to
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: be able to survive, you know, do you you know
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: that's the way government can help independent news organizations, right,
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: you know, lower the cost of doing business, frankly for
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: news organizations, so that maybe advertisers who go into independent media,
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe they pay a lot, you know, they
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: maybe they get a tax break if they support independent
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: media rather than corporate media stuff like that. I those
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: are the different ways to to I think where you
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: can have sort of government or institutional support of independent
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: media without hurting the credibility of the media organization itself.
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: That's kind of where I land on this. That kind
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 1: of that is where I land on this. Right, I'd
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: prefer independent. I'd prefer frankly, not an individual either, right.
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: Even look, Jeff Bezos Washington Post is independent. And I
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: can't say all publicly traded companies are terrible. New York
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: Times are publicly traded, but they have a north star
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: that that believes their journalism is their value. Jeff Bezos,
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: he's got business before the government and he can't be
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: an honest broker. And the way he owns the Post
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: because the government business, the business he has before the
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 1: government is matters much more to him than the Washington Post.
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: So you know, to me, it's sort of like any
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: news organization could have a troublesome ownership structure if the
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: owners have other ways they make money essentially, right, I
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 1: think at the end of the day, just give me
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 1: an owner of a news organization whose primary business is
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: that news organization. Right. When we have gotten into trouble,
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: it's when these owners have other business interests besides their
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: news organization, and that's when the comp That's when you
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: start to see news organizations get compromised. All right. Next
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: question comes from David New York's twenty fifth congressional district. Hey, Chuck,
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: do you think making voting mandatory would encourage more people
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: to engage in the political process. I've always thought of
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 1: voting as a price of citizenship. Even if someone votes
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: none of the above, they should still participate. Manatory voting
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: also create more opportunities for third parties. Well, that's interesting.
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: I think it's Australia that has this. It's always the
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: first thing I think of in my head. I think
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: they have compulsory voting. I don't know. I'm going to
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: quote Getty Lee, lead singer of Rush. If you choose
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: not to decide, you still have made a choice. Here's
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: what I've come to learn about voting turnout. Voter turnout
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: when we're worried about the future of the country, turnouts
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: higher when we're feeling actually pretty good about where we are. Yeah,
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 1: voting voting is lower. I go back to It's something
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: that John Mullaney and his terrific first term Trump stand
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: up routine about a horse in the hospital, you know,
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: and he goes in there and he says, you know,
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: with the last guy who's president, I didn't have to
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: think about it every day, And I kind of want
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: a president that makes me not want to have to
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: think about how the government's being run every day, that
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 1: sort of says, you got this, I don't have to
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: think about it. I used to think apathy was a problem.
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 1: I actually think now voter apathy can, right. Voter apathy
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: can be a signal that hey, we're doing okay, right,
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: And if you think about it, right, we we we
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 1: talk about this voter apathy movement. It was big in
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: the nineties. You know, we had a surprisingly high turnout
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 1: for par because we had more choice on the ballot.
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: Then it slowly went down, and then we kind of
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: muddled along here a little bit, and then then Obama
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: surged it, and then of course since Trump, our turnout's
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: been way up. I mean, I don't think people realize
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: we have the we have. We have the best participation
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: in a ten year period that we've had in a
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: long time, which tells me voters engage when they know
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: things aren't going well. So I'm like I said, I
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: I think I guess I'm a little bit of libertarian
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: on this right. If you shouldn't, if you not to decide,
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: you still have made a choice. But you're right compulsory voting,
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 1: I do think if we now, I think there are
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: things we could do to make voting matter more to
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: the folks who choose to set out. More choices would help.
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: We do know this. More choices means more people will vote.
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: Anytime we've had competitive third party candidates, turnout goes up.
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: Turnout it never goes down. So I do think figuring
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: out a way to open up the process to more voters,
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: more parties, and more candidates would do more to increase
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: turnout than creating compulsory voting. Next question comes from Michael
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: T Chicago, Illinois. But he told me he grew up
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: in Peoria, so he'll tell me how it's playing in Peoria.
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: Dear Jack, I enjoyed your analysis of the primary calendar
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: and agree that the process often shapes the outcome. While
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: I see the value of Iowa forcing candidates to connect
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 1: with Middle America, it's caucus system has become too slow
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: and unreliable. Yeah, I know. Do you think Illinois, with
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: its mix of urban, rural, liberal and conservative voters, would
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: make a better early primary state. Well, look, here's why
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think any large state's a good idea, because
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: you know, first of all, you make money a bigger factor. Right.
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: The bigger the media market that a state has, the
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: more expensive it's going to be to run. The beauty
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: of Iowa is that it's a semi small state and
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: it's an affordable state for the governor of Vermont to
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: run in. Right, when Howard Dean was able to go
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: for a former senator named Paul Songus in Massachusetts, although
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: he didn't really campaign in Iowa. That rika is a hearken,
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: but you get my point. These smaller states, because you know,
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire Boston market can can increase the cost late
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: in a general election. But in general, the smaller states
• 2:32:38
  Speaker 1: mean the problem with Illinois, I agree with everything, but
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: Chicago's almost too dominant and too big and essentially one
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: guy with a big check book could just overwhelm everything. Right,
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: how many downstate people win statewide primaries? How often is
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: somebody not from the Chicago area been able to win
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: a state wide election? And I think that's what makes
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: That's why all the big states I think fail that test,
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: and it's why I, you know, I'm I think I
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: worry that Michigan's a little too big, although I think
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: it's a little i because its largest media market is
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: so diverse within it. I think Michigan in theory could
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: be an interesting test. I worry about Virginia in that respect.
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: But Virginia coming at the end almost in some ways,
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be sort of as you get to
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: the large state, the first semi larger population test as
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 1: you come. But that's I get where you talk it.
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: I think you're right. Illinois has a lot of this diversity,
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 1: but Chicago's almost too big of a counterweight. I could,
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: you know, in that sense, you could get almost the
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: same thing you get from Chicago, and you just go
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: with Indiana, or you go with Missouri, or you go
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: with Kansas. It's a little less diverse in Kansas, but
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 1: not as not as white as you think. It is
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 1: a large Latino, large and growing Latino population in Kansas.
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: But I hear what you're saying in theory. I get it,
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: But I just think Chicago's too big and too overwhelming
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: financially to allow lesser funded candidates to catch fire. A
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: former mayor of South Bend, a former governor of Vermont,
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: get you get with you know, people who don't have
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: the large you know, it would really favor self funded,
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 1: rich candidates. Allah your current governor, Hey Chuck, this comes
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: from Madam b West Virginia second Congressional District. Hey Chuck,
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: you've made a compelling case questioning the legality of open primaries,
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: which got me thinking about the presidential primary calendars. Since
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: many candidates drop out early, voters in later states often
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: have little real choice by the time they vote. Why
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: not hold every state's presidential primary in the same day,
• 2:34:36
  Speaker 1: so every voter had an equal voice in choosing them
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: on many things for all you do you know, I
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: don't hate that. I've seen different scenarios. How about we
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: basically four regions. There's four votes region one you know
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: is in February region, twos in March region, threes in
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: May and region and those regions you know, four regions right, north, south,
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 1: east west. Essentially think of it like the March Madness
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: map right in different ways. I'd love that, you'd have
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: to get both parties to commit to it. I think
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: it's right. But here's the downside. It goes to what
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: my answer to the previous question, which is if you
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: go in that format, then suddenly it does favor the
• 2:35:14
  Speaker 1: highest fase. Right. The beauty of starting small one state,
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: one state, one state is is it allows for at
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: least some voters to have some one on one time
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: and frankly, you just get to find out how human
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: are these people, right right, You get more flesh to
• 2:35:32
  Speaker 1: flesh conversation, you find out who they are. It's a
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: little bit more three dimensional where if you have these
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: larger sort of primary days and then it just becomes
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: you know, who's got the best memes who went viral
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 1: at the right time? Are they? You know? So I'd
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: like the idea of one state. Now, I just think
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 1: this should rotate so that, you know, over time, over
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: a twenty year period, every region gets a crack once
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: and you know, maybe everybody feels like they get some opportunity.
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: But look, I've seen ideas like yours, and I don't
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 1: hate them, but the one knock on yours is that
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: it might make it harder for lesser known people to
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: quote unquote catch fire. Right, You're Jimmy Carter's right. We
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: still always want our presidentge. We want to have sort
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 1: of equal access to the to the process, right, whether
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: you come in you're a self funder heir to the
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: Hyatt you know, or you know the Highatt hotel world,
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: or you're somebody like Peak Boodhagic who you know served
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: in the military and and and ended up the maysot
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 1: Uh And Katie comes in with our last question. Hey, check,
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: I wanted to offer another perspective on your question about
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: the backlash to AI. I think it's driven as much
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 1: by fear as by distrust. My husband, a longtime tech
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: pro was laid off in May, and despite applying for
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: jobs every day, the market feels frozen and dominated by
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: AI driven hiring. You know, our family's experience has made
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: us question whether the American dreams still exists. And I
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: wonder if this growing sense of economic insecurity, it's a
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: much bigger part of the public's anxiety about AI than
• 2:37:08
  Speaker 1: we often acknowledge. Katie, I think you're getting at it right.
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: It's I focused on our anger at the tech industry
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: and they really have sort of you know, but you
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: get it sort of this issue too, Right, there's fear.
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: I've said this earlier and I'll say it again more
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 1: clear than and I should have, which is, I do
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: think fear of AI job displacement is going to be
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: a huge issue in twenty eight and I think, frankly,
• 2:37:34
  Speaker 1: there's not an industry that this doesn't touch unless you're
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: a plumber, right, or an electrician, And that is something
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: that I think only adds to more and more anxiety.
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: Now there'll be the techno optimists will say, well, we've
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 1: had these anxieties every time we've had one of these
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: one of these changes. That is all true, But this
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: one we're already there's just a lot of anecdotal evidence
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: like yours, or I see what my own daughters are
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 1: trying to get a job and probably going to end
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: up with two good jobs that are both part time
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: because nobody wants to hire full time at the moment.
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 1: And then there's all right, there's it's these companies are
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: almost they're behaving like they're hoping the AI does create
• 2:38:17
  Speaker 1: less heads, but they don't know when that's going to happen,
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 1: and so they're taking these babies. Oh, I guess we've
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: got to add a person here. And it is, it is,
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 1: It is frozen the job market for a lot of people,
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 1: especially in the intellectual spaces, the coding space, is the
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: technical expertise spaces. And so no, you're right, this is
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: I sort of glossed over it, and I shouldn't have
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: because I've said it earlier where I think the single
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 1: biggest issue in twenty eight is going to be fear
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: of AI job displacement. Anyway, Katie, I appreciate the question,
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: And yeah, and the and the next presidential candidates have
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 1: got to answer the American dream question. If you the
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: candidate that makes it seem possible and plausible, not just possible,
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: but plausible. It's going to be the one that gets
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: traction on us. All right, With that, I appreciate you listening.
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: Next time I come to You'll be coming back to
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: you from my Arlington studios as my summer retreat here
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: into what some would call real America type of things.
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: But I'm just not on the East Coast, which I've
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: always a helpful way to constantly know that you're not
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 1: just living in your own bubble. I try to break
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: out of my bubble as best I can, well aware
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 1: then I'm also can be in my own bubble as well.
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: With that, I think you probably expect me to run
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 1: about the Tarik school bull and the Dodgers and all
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: this stuff. Look, it is what it is. But let's
• 2:39:51
  Speaker 1: remember the Dodgers are a well run organization. Other organizations
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: could be just as well run. The Brewers could have
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 1: done this. Some teams prioritize their farm system more than
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: other teams, and some teams overpay for somebody simply to
• 2:40:07
  Speaker 1: make sure they're not available to somebody else. Now, I
• 2:40:10
  Speaker 1: do think the Dodgers in some way may have done
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: Rob Manfred of favor right. He wants to get fans
• 2:40:17
  Speaker 1: frustrated by this system. So if I want to put
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: out my conspiracy theory hat, there's no outcome. Ron Manfred
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 1: wanted more than the Dodgers getting schooble. Anyway, just sit
• 2:40:29
  Speaker 1: with that and with that, I'll see it later this
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 1: week until we upload again