Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Hegseth’s Purges At The Pentagon Are A Five-Alarm Fire + Will The Progressives Or The Center-Left Define The Democrats?

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Full Episode - Hegseth’s Purges At The Pentagon Are A Five-Alarm Fire + Will The Progressives Or The Center-Left Define The Democrats? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: so use that code. Hello there, welcome to another episode
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  Speaker 1: whether it's Chuck todcast, new sphere, dynastic, that just having
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  Speaker 1: one extra day just to essentially ingest is always helpful.
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  Speaker 1: In summer is a wonderful time to do that. LUs
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  Speaker 1: you know, a little confession. It gives me a little
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  Speaker 1: extra time with the fam. But look, it's not like
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  Speaker 1: things are going to be that slow this summer. One
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  Speaker 1: thing we've all learned in the Trump era, you never know,
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  Speaker 1: there's never really a slow news month, news week, or
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  Speaker 1: news day. It is all about not scheduling your life
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  Speaker 1: around the news, but essentially just scheduling this in a
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  Speaker 1: in an easier to digest format. So with that said,
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  Speaker 1: I know why you're here. You're here to understand what
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  Speaker 1: the hell is going on politically? Where are we going?
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  Speaker 1: We've had about forty eight hours to digest what is
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  Speaker 1: a what I'm going to call a mild earthquake political earthquake.
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  Speaker 1: I say mild political earthquake because it's not clear how
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  Speaker 1: big this is going to be Mom Donnie's success. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I've been sitting on this, obviously for twenty
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  Speaker 1: four hours, and I think a lot of political commentators,
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  Speaker 1: you know, have a bad habit. And I tried to
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  Speaker 1: say this last night, let's is this the beginning of
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  Speaker 1: a left wing tea party or is what happens in
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  Speaker 1: New York going to stay in New York? And look
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  Speaker 1: the extra twenty four hours, I have accumulated more evidence
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  Speaker 1: that says this stays in New York. And I've accumulated
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  Speaker 1: more evidence that indicates there's certainly going to be a
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  Speaker 1: pretty a pretty big fight in the Democratic Party essentially
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  Speaker 1: for the soul of the party in twenty seven and
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  Speaker 1: twenty eight, between at least two factions and possibly three factions.
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  Speaker 1: And we'll get to that also a little bit. And
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  Speaker 1: I want to talk specifically first about the evidence that
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  Speaker 1: indicates this this is every chance of being a very
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  Speaker 1: New York City phenomenon and it may not go anywhere else.
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  Speaker 1: And why do I say that, Well, there's been some
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  Speaker 1: digging in, particularly the the the race with Esplot and
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  Speaker 1: Chevrolet Chevalier, who is quickly going to become I think,
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  Speaker 1: the the face of the mam Danni congressional movement, if
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  Speaker 1: you will. What was interesting is Espaalot seemed to do
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  Speaker 1: better in precincts that had more African American and Latino voters,
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  Speaker 1: and Chevalier did better in the precincts that had that
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  Speaker 1: were less diverse, that had the younger, whiter voters. So
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  Speaker 1: it is a very frankly similar thing that we saw
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  Speaker 1: that we've seen in previous primaries, where the progressive where
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  Speaker 1: sort of the stereotype of who's the Democratic Party, The
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  Speaker 1: more diverse parts of the electorate are more moderate or
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  Speaker 1: more sort of sticking with the establishment wing of the party,
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  Speaker 1: and it is younger and whiter progressives that are powering
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  Speaker 1: this movement, particularly in New York City. One other thing
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  Speaker 1: that's worth noting there's been some analysis that sort of
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  Speaker 1: overlaid Mamdani versus Cuomo's performance on last night and essentially
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  Speaker 1: the three congressional districts. I mean, Mamdani was very smart
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  Speaker 1: about where he spent his political capital and where he didn't. Right,
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  Speaker 1: you know, he didn't endorse in every congressional race that
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  Speaker 1: was taking place in New York City, but the three
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  Speaker 1: he picked were parts of the parts of New York
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  Speaker 1: City he did best. So it was It's an important
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  Speaker 1: point to note because it's not as if Mom Donnie
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  Speaker 1: has expanded his base or that the Democratic Socialists have
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  Speaker 1: expanded their influence in New York City. It's you know,
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  Speaker 1: they've it's it's sort of they've concentrated on where they're already,
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  Speaker 1: where they already had the numbers, and they already have
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  Speaker 1: the ability to win. So in that sense, he's being
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  Speaker 1: very shrewd obviously about what he's picking. He's not over
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  Speaker 1: extending himself. He's not wish casting there there there, He's
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  Speaker 1: he's being very strategic but where he's going. And so look, look,
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  Speaker 1: winning begets momentum and you can go from there. But
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  Speaker 1: it is important to note there isn't. This is because
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  Speaker 1: the question is are there more people that are suddenly
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  Speaker 1: open to socialism? And I don't think that's the case
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  Speaker 1: at least that's I think a second day reading of
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  Speaker 1: this indicates that. But so I think that that's one
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  Speaker 1: big sort of piece of information that I've absorbed over
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  Speaker 1: the last twenty four hours that at least puts me
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  Speaker 1: in the look this is going to be a faction
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  Speaker 1: of the party. The question is is it going to spread?
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  Speaker 1: Is it going to go beyond here? Now, when you
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  Speaker 1: go back to circa twenty ten, twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
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  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, sort of when the Tea Party movement was
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  Speaker 1: getting more and more traction inside the Republican Party, there
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  Speaker 1: were plenty of establishment Republicans who were saying, ah, this
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  Speaker 1: is just a small faction of the party. Yes, there
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  Speaker 1: are certain places that you're going to see that faction
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  Speaker 1: overperform in Idaho and Wyoming and parts of Texas, but
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  Speaker 1: this isn't going to spread more than that. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: that turned out to be. It turned out to me
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  Speaker 1: not true. And you know, the Maga coalition that began
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  Speaker 1: with the Tea Party movement, it's still in some ways
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  Speaker 1: a minority faction even of the Republican Party, but it
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  Speaker 1: is in charge of the Republican Party. And I think
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  Speaker 1: that that's the open question here and my guest today
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Matt Bennett of Third Way, who sort of you could say,
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  Speaker 1: is the in this, in this particular conversation that I
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  Speaker 1: have with him, essentially the spokesperson for the establishment wing
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  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. And you know, this is where
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  Speaker 1: I think that you know, we we get animated about this.
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  Speaker 1: You know, is this left wing tea party? Are you
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  Speaker 1: whistling past graveguard? Because one of the arguments he makes is, oh,
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  Speaker 1: I think this, I think this can be contained. Well,
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  Speaker 1: you know, John Bayner thought that the Freedom Caucus could
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  Speaker 1: be contained, and you know, let's see what happens when
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  Speaker 1: you start governing. But still, I do want to also
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  Speaker 1: make one more point that I kind of made yesterday,
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  Speaker 1: but I want to reinforce it, and that is sort
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  Speaker 1: of got traction. In twenty twenty five, in Mamdani's victory,
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  Speaker 1: it was clear it was his focus on affordability that
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  Speaker 1: truly was galvanizing. It did allow him to build a
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  Speaker 1: very large coalition and it is why he won. As
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  Speaker 1: much as it continues to be he wants to always
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  Speaker 1: be seen that he has focused on these issues. He
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  Speaker 1: certainly tries to lead with him. That was not the
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  Speaker 1: case with these congressional races. Okay, this was not about affordability.
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  Speaker 1: These weren't campaigns that were run on affordability, because affordability
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  Speaker 1: doesn't explain how the actions of a small country halfway
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  Speaker 1: around the world became one of the defining organizing principles
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  Speaker 1: for a political movement here at home. And it doesn't
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  Speaker 1: explain why Israel has become, for some on the American left,
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  Speaker 1: a litmus test of belonging. And that's where I want
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to get to here for a few minutes, because that's
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  Speaker 1: something I've been personally wrestling with, something bigger than just
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  Speaker 1: one set of results from a primary net. As you
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: know you've been following this. This week, I had a
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: terrific conversation with the Mary of Oklahoma City, David Hold
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: on pluralism. I've been spending a lot of time over
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the last few months talking about pluralism because frankly, I
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: think I think essentially the Mega movement has no idea
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: what it means and doesn't care about it. And I'm
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: increasingly believing that the progressive left does not accept the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: premise of pluralism either, which is going to just have
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: me talking more and more about it, right because Pluralism
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: isn't about agreement. It's the exact opposite. It's about accepting
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: that people with different histories, religions, identities, and worldviews all
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: belong in the same democracy. This is the fucking American experiment, people, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: this is what makes us different. It's this all right, America,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and the American democracy hasn't lasted for two hundred and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: fifty years because we agreed. America's worked because generation after
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  Speaker 1: generation accepted the premise that we had to figure out
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  Speaker 1: how to live with people that we profoundly disagreed with.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: It's been the genius of this experiment. And it's also
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: why absolutism, whether it's on the left or the right,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: has made a lot of folks nervous, including myself, because
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: once every issue becomes a morality based litmus test, disagreement
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: stops being something to debate and it becomes something to punish.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: As you know, I don't spend I've never been comfortable
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: publicly saying, you know, here is my religious identity, but
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: because I don't think, you know, because it you know,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: for a long time in this in this world of
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: political analysis, I traded really hard to be as opaque
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: as possible about some of my personal politics, my identities,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: the political identity identities of my parents and of my
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: spouse and all this stuff, because all of that can
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: color analysis, and I didn't want it to. I wanted
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: my analysis to speak for itself. I wanted as as
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: few filters as possible. Look, this is not the world
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: we live in, and there's no doubt there is, you know,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: every there are political hacks, left wing political hacks, and
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: right wing political hacks that have consistently wanted to politicize
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: members of the press, politicize those people like myself dinner
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: in this space. And so they've they've you know, wanted
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: to force this and you're like, okay, and I'm happy
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: to discuss it. Right. So I'm Jewish and I've you know,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: not hidden from it, but it's not something I've intended
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: to wear on my sleeve because I you know, as
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I've I've shared this with others. I was raised a
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: quiet Jew. I was in a mixed family, and one
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: side of my family was Jewish and another side of
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: my family was not. And there were many members of
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: my non Jewish side of the family. They didn't know
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: a lot about Judaism, or Jews, and my mother might
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: have been among the first Jews they had ever met,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: so there was always a little bit of eggshell walking,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: you know. And my I was basically raised to, hey,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: walk around eggshells on religion a little bit. Be careful,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: don't you know. It's not something to be done in public.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I joke all the time. I was raised with that
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: advice that parents gave a lot in the fifties, sixties
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: and seventies that said, hey, you know, the two things
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: you don't talk about in public are politics and religion.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: That is, shall we say, that's a very a Methodist
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: way of thinking sometimes on that front. My father was
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: raised a Methodist, which his joke was it just meant
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: we agreed we believed in God when you want to
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: talk about anything else, the type of thing. But I'm
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: saying this because I'm not going to sit here and
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: pretend I experienced Tuesday simply watching through the through the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: lens of a political analyst. It was hard not to
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: experience it personally. And over the last twenty four hours,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I've heard from enough family and friends who are Jewish
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to know that I'm not alone and feeling just unsettled
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and It's not because anti Semitism suddenly appeared on Tuesday. Please,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I know it's existed for a long time. But it's
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: that many Jews woke up asking themselves a different question,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: particularly many Jews in New York City. How much larger
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: is this? And is this much larger than I thought?
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: And that's a differ. It's the feeling that many Americans
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: have had at different moments over the last decade. In particular,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the moment when you realize an idea you considered to
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: be on the fringe may have more political support than
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: you believe, and you start to like, you know, it's
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: like you move your eyes, you shift your right, start
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: looking around wondering, You look at people differently. I know
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: there's some you know, I know Gay Americans have had
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: moments like this over the last decade. Latino Americans have
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: had moments like this. African Americans. You know, I'm not
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: going to sit here and pretend the Jews are the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: only marginalized group. Trust me. In some ways, I feel
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: like we're the only the Jews are the only marginalized
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: group that is not fully embraced sometimes on the victim
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: side of things. But whether you're right or wrong about
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the magnitude. The feeling itself does change how you see
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: your country, and that's why I don't think Democrats should
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: dismiss what happened in New York as just another primary
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that just took place in one city. You know, Republicans
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: spent fifteen years watching a faction become the center of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: gravity inside their party, and at first each election looked
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: like an isolated event, and eventually it became clear that
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: it wasn't. And I'm not saying that's what's happening to
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the Democrats just yet. I think there's a few things,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and Matt Bennett and I get into it sort of,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: there's a few ways this could be different for the
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Democrats than it was for the Republicans as they dealt
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: with Trump and Mega. I'm just simply saying it's a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: question Democrats have to ask themselves. Is this one city's
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: moment or is this the beginning of a broader ideological realignment,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: because at the future of either political party depends less
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: on persuading people and accepting the premise of pluralism that
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: you're just looking to build a coalition of people that
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: you agree with sixty percent of the time. Right, then
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: on deciding who no longer gets to belong in your party,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: then we're moving away from pluralism. We're moving away from
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: something that exists everywhere else on this earth, but not
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: here in America. And once pluralism starts to disappear in
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: this country, democracy will be incredibly hard to sustain here.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And that's you know, there is a sense that the
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: DSA right, they want to take over the Democratic Party
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and they're going to decide who gets to belong and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: if you disagree on the issue of Israel, you don't belong. Right.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: It's like Donald Trump if you cannot look at what
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: he did to Derek Dooley, right, if you don't accept
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: his reality about twenty twenty versus the actual reality about
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty, you don't belong in that movement. You get
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: purged from that movement. And if you really look carefully
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: with him, right, that's that's who he reserves his harshest
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: treatment for. Are the people that will not humor him
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: on the big lie of twenty twenty. And that's what's
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: dangerous here is that you have two factions now who
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: are are not only interested in taking over parties right
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Mega on the Republican side the DSA. He essentially wented
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: to infiltrate the Democratic Party and take it, take it over.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: But they're you know, political, the two political parties you know,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: used to be looking for more people to join. And
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: in this case, you've got two factions that are on
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the march, that are filled with litmus tests and purity tests,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and anybody that doesn't fit a certain that doesn't check
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  Speaker 1: zero seven eight six seven if you're in Louisiana. This
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: is I think especially problematic for the Democrats, but it's
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: potentially problematic for the Republicans. And you could argue over
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: the last one hundred years both parties have traded places
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: of when you know, one party's had the bigger base
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and needed fewer swing voters and the other party has
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: had the small you know, smaller base, and this goes
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: back and forth. Right, Republicans didn't have a big enough
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: base to sustain majorities in Congress, so they were the
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: party that tried to tack towards the center over the
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: last twenty five is basically since since the debacle of
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: seventy two, the McGovern revolution inside the party where they
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: went through this essentially a near twenty year drought of
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: political power. Yes they had some legislative power, but that
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: was it starting. So then you had the Democrats start
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: to attack to the center. And I do think at
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the moment what many I think in the progressive left
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: don't appreciate is that the success the Democrats have had
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: is because they've been able to appeal to those voters
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: sort of in the mushy middle that don't like the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Trump led Republican Party. And now the DSA is potentially
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: going to essentially create a similar discomfort for that same
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: set of voters about the Democratic Party. And then there's
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a sense of this either party even want the support
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: these mushy voters in the middle. Now they need it
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: in order to attain power, But how much do they
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: want this support? How much does that compromise worth? So, look,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: I think that's the question you got to sit with here.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Do we now have two political parties who are moving
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: away from pluralism, moving away from the core premise of
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: what the American experiment was supposed to be. And I
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: know I sound like you know, old guy political science y,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: you know, historian type trying to you. It's like, you know,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's frustrating to watch something you know that
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: isn't going to work. And then when it's when it ends,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: it's going to end, it's going to be as spectacular
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and I don't say that as a positive word disaster.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: And the question is what pieces are going to be
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: left to pick up? How many people have to get
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: hurt in the process before you know, basically the two
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: parties sober up, And I'm I'm not sure of that.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: But I want to touch on a couple other things
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: on this one is I think the real test of
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: whether the progressive left does have you know, is on
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the march, does have the momentum here is going to
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: The next big test is Michigan. And I'll do I'll
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: say yet, right, if he wins that primary and not
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: just wins the primary, but wins the general election, I
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: think you know those that are I sort of did
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: it myself right a little bit last night. But I
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: think when you look at what the Democratic presidential primary,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: you know where the sort of energy of the presidential
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: primary would be. The left is going to feel very
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: emboldened and you will see a lot of presidential candidates
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: attack further to the left. If Platner and all Duel
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Sayet are part are both win and it leads to
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: a Democratic majority, because if that happens, it erases the
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: best talking point the establishment has over the progressives, which is, hey,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: you can't win in swing states and you're gonna have
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: a hard time knocking off incumbents. Now, the progressive movement
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: also has a lot on the line with Graham Platner
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: and Abduel Sayet. If Democrats come up short and don't
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: win the Senate like the Tea Party did to the
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Republicans in twenty ten and in twenty twelve, two times
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: where they had the numbers were on the Republican side
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to be able to pick up the Senate and they
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: came up short. It was Tea Party nominees that were
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: simply too extreme for those voters, and it cost them
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: some Senate seats that it never should have cost the Republicans.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: That's the risk that the progress have here without abdulah
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Siat and Gham Plattner, right, if they both lose, well,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: then that becomes sort of a different way things are absorbed.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: So I put all that out there to just remind
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: folks we've got a lot, We've got a lot of
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: elections we haven't held yet in this midterm. That will,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I think paint the fuller picture. And as Matt Bennett
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: may point he made to me, he said, Hey, early
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, there was the same AOC defeats Joe Crawley. Hey,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: look this is a rise at the left. By the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: time you get to November, the story is about, Hey,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: look at all these center left candidates that won in
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: red districts. Right, you're Abigail Spamberger Slotkins, you're Mikey Sheryl's.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: So that is probably the best advice here if you're
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what does Tuesday mean. In short,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Mamdani is smart and is an incredibly impressive leader of
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Socialist movement. He's careful about he knows how
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: to pick his spots. He went all in in three
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: congressional races where he knew his political capital was already
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: worth the most. He didn't test his political capital, for instance,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: in the Upper West slash East Side seat there that
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: last year one the one that became all about AI,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the race that that was that many Washington d C.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Folks wanted to make about George Conway and Jack Slashburg.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: The voters themselves, of course, weren't that interested in that.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: It says a lot that Mom Donnie chose not to
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: get involved in that one and didn't try to recruit
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and find a candidate there.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: So.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: You know it is I will say this, I think
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: that I've been I was extremely disappointed in how he
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: reacted to what happened to Dan Goldman and at the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: coffee shop, and I do think how he handles this
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: growing anti Semitic rhetoric that is happening with some of
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: his supporters. Right This is the uncomfortable question that I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: remember Andrew Gillen once asked Ron De Santis. But I
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: think the same question can be asked to both parties.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying you're a racist, was the famous Andrew
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Gillim debate quote to R. I'm just saying racists think
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: you're a racist. That you know. And I don't think
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: every Democratic Socialist is an anti semi, but they seem
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: to be comfortable if there are anti Semites in their
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: mist just like the MAGA movement seems to be not
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: interested in purging itself of racist elements inside the movement.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: And that's where this is where I get back to pluralism.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: The Republican Party, he chose not to fight MEGA, they
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: tried to co opt it, and instead MEGA co opted it.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: The Democratic Party's instinct is not going to be to
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: fight the socialists. It is going to be to try
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to bring them in and co opt them. You sort
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of heard Corey book. All I would say is good
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: luck that didn't work out well there. It doesn't usually
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: because I will I think that the DSA is more organized,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: at least in New York they are, and I think
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: you'll see in the same way. You know, MAGA was
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: powered by the Ron Paul movement from twenty twelve because
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Ron Paul was sort of the DSA of the right,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: meaning Ron Paul was the organized one. Ron Paul's forces
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: are the ones that took over the State Party, and
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: they basically got absorbed by the MEGA movement and they
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: quickly left the Paul's and went to Trump. I've had
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: this conversation with Rand Paul and he, I mean he
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: saw it himself. He had a big chunk of support.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Trump comes in literally first one that to lose all
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: of his support in that Republican primary in twenty fifteen
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: was ran Paul. And the thing about that is the establishment, didn't.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I remember Ben Ginsberg telling me this back in twenty
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: twelve how alarmed he was after Romney had basically already
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: won the nomination, they had to make sure they elected
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Romney delegates and all of these different state parties, and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: he was telling me these stories about these Paul folks
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: were basically had out organized the establishment wings of these
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: state Republican parties and had basically orchestrated where they ran
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: as Romney delegates, and the Romney folks were trying to
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: prevent them from being delegates, but basically they were trying
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: to embed themselves into the inner workings of the Republican parties,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: onto the state central committees and things like this. And
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: so by the time Trump comes along in fifteen and sixteen,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: he already he already has an infrastructure within the establishment
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: in sort of the the grassroots mechanics of the Republican Party. Well,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: that's what Bernie's been doing. And in some ways between
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the DSA, which had its own organization on the outside,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and what Bernie had been doing he's got the sort
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: of grassroots mechanics on the left. So and if you
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: have a movement that really doesn't embrace pluralism, you can
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: see how quickly this becomes a purification test what we've
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: seen on the right. You either get co opted, you know,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: you either acquiesce or you become Liz Cheney and John
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: You sort of end up where Liz Cheney, John Kasik,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Bob Gorker are Jeff Flake. And perhaps that turns into
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: a fledgling third party and independent movement. We'll see, and
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: we're going to get to that in a few minutes,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: but I think that's right now. This is we're in
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the middle of the chapter on twenty twenty six, and
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: at the moment it looks like the less on the March.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Let's finish the chapter. Let's see what happens in Michigan.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Let's see what happens in November in both Michigan in Maine,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and then we can finish this story. Quick little note
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: on Donald Trump in his meeting with Senate Republicans, talk
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: about a wasted political opportunity for Donald Trump and the
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Republican Party. Here's a party that has just had an
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: near impossible time, even though they have the majorities in
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: both the House and the Senate, they don't seem to
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: get anything done beyond their tax cuts. Right. That was
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: sort of the hallmark of the first term, and it
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: was looking like the hallmark of this one. And lo
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and behold there's this bipartisan housing bill, and you know
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: it is. It is a bill that frankly, probably should
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: have been a past five years ago, ten years ago,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: but it finally is. It's sort of like that infrastructure
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: bill that Biden finally got passed. You know, it was
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: a bill that should have been passed ten years earlier.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: But we know Trump just completely failed at sort of
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: politicking there in that first term, and that's why we
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: didn't get it. So here we are, and the opportunity
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and the Republican Party had on Wednesday morning
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to be able to show them caring about affordability signing
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: this housing bill, Republicans were getting ready to take credit.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: He could have done a little bit of dancing on
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the socialist you know victory, you know, dancing on the
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Democrats grave by promoting the socialist victories in New York.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of Republicans at Capitol Hill
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: woke up on Wednesday morning thinking, hey, this is going
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: to be a good day for them politically, and what
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: does Trump do. He shows up to their lunch and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: he turned it into a Festivus meeting. I got a
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: lot of problems with you people, and he does the
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: airing of grievances. I mean, I had to check the calendar.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: It's June twenty fourth. It's not December twenty third that
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: he chose to air his grievances. So I guess we will.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: We will call June twenty fourth Trump Festivus Day because
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: he decided to go into that meeting and just talk
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: about all of his problems. And then Bill Cassidy admitted
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: he got his own Irish up and the two of
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: them apparently had a screaming match about the Iran MoU.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: But apparently this lunch did nothing right. There was no
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: meaningful back and forth according to Thune, about the filipbuster
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: about the Save of It was just Trump ranting, and
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: he decided not to do the signing ceremony in the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: housing bill, saying until he gets the Save America Act.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: The irony to this housing bill is it's got a
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: veto proof majorities, meaning if he vetos it, it could
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: get overridden, or if he doesn't do anything, it will
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: just become law in ten days. And maybe that's what
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: he's going to do. But what a just dumb political
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: move for his own party, right, And this tells you
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: it sort of almost reinforces this point that I'm trying
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: to make here is the leading movement inside the Republican
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Party is not interested in pluralism and is not interested
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: in setting up the Republican Party for success if it
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: is not a Trump success. And this is not what
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Trump wants. He thinks that's all a failure. He is
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: not a party leader. He is just out for himself politically.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: We know, financially, I mean, you know, I don't know.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you need me to tell you
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump's out for himself. I think he makes
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: it pretty obvious, and sometimes he says it out loud.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: But if you're a Republican who cares about the Republican
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Party having a future beyond Donald Trump, just like he
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: did in his twenty twenty temper tantrum that essentially handed
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: control of the United States Senate to the Democrats because
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: of those Georgia runoffs where he does a rally for them,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and he essentially says, I don't care if they lose.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: He's now doing the same thing right now. I mean
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: he is trying. He essentially did it. Looks it's it's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: one day and Donald Trump's stepping on his own. You
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: know what on a given day politically is It's not news.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It's just a Wednesday. But my word, just a total
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: debacle for congressional Republicans. And it's like, you know, I
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: don't if the Democrats only get narrow, you know, narrow
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: majorities here, that's it's they may end up having the
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: same governing challenges and problems that the Republicans had. But
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: my word, does Trump make it almost possible for the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: congressional Republican majorities to do anything that is at all
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: remotely what the public wants? Or is it all politically
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: in tune with where the public is? It just isn't there?
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: So uh it is if you're if you're the Democrats today,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: you're kind of released in Washington. You're kind of relieved
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: that you know, Trump essentially said no, no, no, no, look
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: at me, look at me. I'm gonna I'm going to prove,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: you know, instead of letting the Democrats look like they're
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: dysfunctional and can't and is the gang that can't get along,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: can't shoot straight, and all this stuff. Donald Trump wants
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: to basically say, hold my non alcoholic beer, let me
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: show you how it's really done. And that's what he
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: pulled off. I have to tell you. I you know,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: John Cornyn said it last week. It's going to be
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: a miserable couple of years for Donald Trump. And he
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: only has him self deployed. He has created all that.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: He went in there to air his grievances at people
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: that weren't loyal to him. Again, he does not see
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the party as a collection of people who may agree
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: sixty to seventy percent of the time but don't agree
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: on some stuff. But you know, for decades they accepted
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the premise. Donald Trump doesn't accept the premise. Donald Trump
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: does not believe in the American experiment. Donald Trump does
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: not believe in pluralism. And of course my fear is
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know if the progressive left believes and any.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Of that either.
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  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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  Speaker 1: all right, left center, mainstream liberal, wherever you fit, I
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: do think you're going to be intrigued by the conversation.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: I want to highlight one other important story that happened
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: this week, and it's it's about what's happening inside the
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Pentagon and what's happening to our military and what Pete
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: hag Seth is attempting to do to the military and
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the overt politicization of the military. I think it's one
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: of the harder stories that we in the press have
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: to convey. Without giving away any any of my sources,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I can tell you there's quite a few soldiers that
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: would be loving to speak out, but it is just,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: you know, these are people who are trained in not
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: going outside the chain of command by following protocol, and
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: that many of these soldiers don't want to behave like
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump or Pete hag Seth and do something and
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: sort of gain them an excuse to essentially shame them
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: for trying to speak out. And so they've had a
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: hard time and they've you know, I've talked to quite
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: a few members of the military who have given me
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of troubling and foe off the record, but
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: it's been hard to verify. And it's also been it's
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: you know, it's tough to ask them to go public.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: And that's a you know, that's a that's a that's
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: what hag Seth is taking advantage of here. He's taking
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: advantage of the fact that these soldiers are loyal to
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the military, and he's almost using it against them, But
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I like to I'm obsessed with these folks he's purging
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: because I'm convinced that one of these generals that he
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: is forced into retirement or fired, however you want to
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: characterize it, might be our next president the United States.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I think we are in a moment like that, right.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: I think we are in a moment where there's going
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: to be a desire for But I think the most
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: effective anti you know, the most effective person to sell
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: uralism and the American democracy could very well be a
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: retired three or four star. So let me tell you
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: this latest story, because the person that he forced out
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: here has is quite the backstory. There's a photograph from
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: just before midnight August thirtieth, twenty twenty one, the night
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: that Americans were withdrawing from Afghanistan. Not a great night.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: And this photograph is a bit grainy. It's green, it's
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: shot through a night vision lens, and it's a soldier
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: in full uniform walking up the ramp of the last
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: C seventeen on the tarmac at Kubble Airport. He is
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: literally the last American boot to leave Afghanistan twenty years
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: of war. And he was the man who essentially turned
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: out the lights eleven fifty nine pm, one minute before
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the deadline that Donald Trump agreed to that Joe Biden executed.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: The soldier is Chris done Hill c d to the
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: people who served under him, and if you wanted, if
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: you wanted a design in a lab the kind of
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: officer Pete Hegseth says he wants. Donahue is the prototype
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: west Point, Pennsylvania kid career Army ranger Delta Force. He
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: led Delta Commandos commandos against Isis, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, two
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: decades of some of the hardest counter terrorism fighting that
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: the military asked our soldiers to do. He commanded the
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: eighty second Airborne and most recently, he was in charge
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: of US Army forces in Europe and Africa. At the
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Exaust moment that that job mattered, turning the lessons of
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Ukraine into how the Army plans to fight the next war.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: He was seen as a rising star. People inside the
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: building had penciled him as a future Chairman of the
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Joint Chiefs, certainly a future Army Chief of Staff. Well,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Donahue was back in the news because he submitted his
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: retirement papers basically at gunpoint at the Pentagon's request. Yeah,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I'm being dramatic here. Nobody actually put it gun to
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: his head. But he was forced into retirement. He's going
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: to relinquish a four star command at a ceremony in Germany.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: His tour cut short in the middle of his assignment,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: and his old job is being downgraded four stars, knocked
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: down to three. The warrior, the warrior ethos guy should
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: have wanted to keep. He decides to push out. And
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: here's the thing, Donahue's not the story. Dona Hue is
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the latest story. So I'm going to be fair here
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: for a minute before I get extra critical of hag Seth,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: who I think is just right. The single biggest black
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: eye on Tom Tillis's Senate record is going to be
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: this into his credit. I think he knows it. Every
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Defense secretary reshuffles brass. Okay, that's not new, that's part
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: of the job. A new administration is entitled to having
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: their own commanders. Presidents fire generals. Truman fired MacArthur, Obama
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: fired Stanley McCrystal. Firing an officer for cause is not
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: a scandal. It's a Tuesday, and the General Officer Corps
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: is a bit bloated. You can make an honest case
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: for thinning it, which hag Seth has been making less
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: generals more gis it's not insane. And if this were
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: a norm trimming, I wouldn't be doing this segment. But
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: this isn't. And this is how you can tell and
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the way to understand this, This purge that hag set
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: this conducting of the Pentagon isn't chronologically. It's by category
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: because these officers weren't removed for one reason. They were
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: removed for a multiple reasons. And it's the third reason
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: is the one that it should worry you the most.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: So reason one that some of these officers were removed
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: was for simply for who they are. Right. The first
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: big night was February twenty first, twenty twenty five. Folks
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: at the Pentagon call it the Friday Night Massacre. In
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: a single evening, the Chairman of the Joint then Chairman
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: of the Joint Chiefs C. Q. Brown, first African American
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, fired, pushed out, replaced by
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: a retired three star named Dan Kine, who had to
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: be rushed back to four stars to take the job.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Same night, you had Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of Naval Operations,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: first woman ever to run the Navy, pushed out, gone,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: same night, General Jim Slife, the Air Force Vice Chief gone.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Then Admiral Linda Fagan coming down to the Coast Guard,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: first woman to lead any branch of the US military,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: relieved right after the inauguration. The reason all given was
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: leadership deficiencies. Well, obviously there's kind of a pattern here,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: and who keeps getting picked off? The Senate noticed there's
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: a pattern Jack Reid, who is not a partisan guy.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Jack reads a Democrat, don't get me wrong, but he's
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: not a partisan A hole okay. He pointed out that
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: nearly sixty percent of the senior officers haig Seth has
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: fired are either women or black, in a corps where
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: women and minorities are about twenty percent of all the
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: generals and admirals. That it it's clear none of those
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: people were fired for costs. They were fired simply because
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: of who they were. Reason two, he's been firing people
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: for either what they knew or what they'd take General
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Timothy Haw, he ran the National Security Agency and Cyber Command.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant General Jeffrey Cruz the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: He also was pushed out after his agency's early assessment
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: of the Iran nuclear strikes leaked out and became politically inconvenient.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: He's the one that said and hadn't been totally destroyed.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Vice Admiral Shoshanna Chatfield, the US rep to NATO's Military Committee,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: removed for quote loss of confidence again, both of them
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: serving and perhaps just not sharing a set of beliefs
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: that Haig said has. And then, of course there's the
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: third reason for how he purses people out, and it's
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: this is the one that should really alarm you. It's
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: for when officers push back on an order. On the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: same February night that c Q. Brown and Franchetti, Haigseth
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: also fired the top uniformed lawyers of the Army and
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the Air Force, the people that give the council to
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: the generals about whether orders are illegal or not. The
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: judge advocates general right the JAG Corps. Their entire job
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: is to interpret whether an order is legal. Now, Haig
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: sth did an allege misconduct. He just said on the
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: record that he didn't want lawyers to become roadblocks. That
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: pesky constitution. We don't want that to get in the way.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: A roadblock. Think about that. A roadblock is a thing
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: in the way of where you were already going. And
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: then there's the cleanest case of all, and it's the
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: one I'd build the whole segment around if I had
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: to pick one. Dadmirll Alvin Halsey and I've talked. I've
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: talked about him before. He was the head of the
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: US Southern Command Southcomb and that's the command that's been
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: running the boat strikes in the Caribbean. Well Holsey raised
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: concerns about whether these strikes were legal. He went to
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: his jag officer to ask. There were some questions strikes
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: that many war of law experts say may amount to
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: war crimes. Well haig Seth, according to reporting, thought he
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't being aggressive enough. The relationship came apart in a
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Pentagon meeting late last year. Two months later, Holsey retired
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: two plus years. Early combatant commanders normally served three years.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: He got one. Holsey didn't fail. Holsey objected, and that
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: was his firing offense. He questioned in order that his
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: own lawyer jag officer wasn't sure could pass legal muster.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: And that's The biggest category that scare you here, not
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: the culture war firings, the conscious firings. A military where
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: the price of saying I'm not sure that's legal is
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: your career. Is a military that will eventually stop worrying
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: about whether something is legal and will simply follow orders
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: whatever order is given. And then, of course you've had
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: a wartime wave of officers relieved of duty this past spring.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Country's at warwith Iran. And what does haig Seth do?
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: He fires the Army stop officer General Randy George. George
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: apparently had balked at an order to strike four officers,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: two black men, and two women, off of a promotion list.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Same day, he took out General David Hodney, running the
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Army's Modernization Command, and the Army's Chief of Chaplain's Major
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: General William Green. Hegsas has some weird religious beliefs, and
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: he's trying to force those beliefs on an entire military.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: George's deputy, General James Mingus, had already taken a sudden retirement.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: It sounds like I'm describing the Kremlin, isn't it. One
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: officials reaction to firing a four star during a shooting
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: war was one word insane and to keep the tally running.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: While I say all this because the number is the
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: argument by the guardians count it's roughly two dozen generals
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and senior commanders that have been fired or forced out
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: since January of twenty twenty five. A retired four star,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: the kind of person who'd normally never say a word,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: put it like this, This isn't a war on woke,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: it's a war on warriors. So I've been digging in
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: to see have we ever had a comparable moment like
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: this as the Secretary of Defense ever rearranged the top
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: of the US military? This dramatically, Well, Haig sith they
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: answered it himself under oath right in April, in front
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: of the House Armed Services Committee, he got pressed on
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: exactly this question, and he had a comeback ready. He said,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: under Barack Obama, one hundred ninety seven general officers were removed.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: So this is nothing new. One hundred ninety seven specific number.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: It sounds authoritative, right, It's fake. It's been traced. The
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: number comes from a twenty eighteen newspaper editorial which got
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: it from a Facebook page. There's no real list. He
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: made the case for precedent by inventing a precedent. By
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: the way, the Pentagon would have had the facts if
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: he chose to actually use Pentagon resources. Instead, he did
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: some Google search looking for some bullshit crap ass editorial
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: who didn't do any fact check, which tells you something,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: because if there were a real example the Secretary of
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Defense under Oath, with that huge research staff Pentagon, they
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: would have used it. They didn't have it. So in
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: my own research here the closest thing history offers is
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, The Revolt of the Admirals. Truman's Defense
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: secretary cancels the navy new supercarrier to fund the Air
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Force's bombers. The admirals go to war public in front
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: of Congress, and the chief of Naval Operations, an Admiral
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Lewis Denfield, got up and testified against his own civilian bosses.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: For that, Denfield was removed as the chief Naval officer.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: The report applies what was plain and simple. Congress said
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: so in writing called it a challenge to representative government.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: And that's the great precedent. That's the one the history
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: books will we'd reach for and look at how small
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: it is next to what hag Seth has done. What
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: hag Seth has done spanned every single service it is.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: It has no single issue, its identity, in some cases intelligence,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: in some cases lawyers who might stand in his way
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: of illegal orders, and commanders who might have raised their
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: hand because they actually care about the constitution. Two dozen.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: It's been done quietly on Friday nights by social media post.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: No explanation offered, no hearing held. That's why they got
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: rid of a corps at the Pentagon. Right, they don't
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: want any reporters nosing around on this. They don't want
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: staff at the Pentagon talking to the press. So instead, right,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: they've they've got their sort of propaganda. Propaganda's that they've
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: that they call their press corp. This is, this is.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: This should be as big of a scandal as any
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: that has happened in this administration. This should be extraordinarily alarming.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: And I'm really interested in meeting ced Donahue. I think
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: one of these twenty four people, I don't know who,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know which one it is, one, two, three,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: but I think I know all I know when you
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: have spent multiple decades and you've worked your way up
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: for these promotions you love this country, and you love
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: public service, and you certainly believe in the Constitution. If
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I were looking for the next leaders of America, I'd
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: be looking at the folks that whoever Pete Hegseth has
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: decided shouldn't be in his Pentagon is who I'd be
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: interested in seeing elected the public office in my country.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: All Right.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: I just I really get frustrated with what we're seeing
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: at the Pentagon because I think this is a this
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: is a five alarm fire, and this is a case
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: where the systematic purging of the press, systematic purging of
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the of the officer corps, everything that has been done
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: inside the Pentagon could leave us imagine two terms of this,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: and the military could get turned into some sort of
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: political force that should scare the Jesus out of every
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: single American. Our military is the best, it's the least
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: political of any major military in the world. And what
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth is doing is right out of the authoritarian playbook,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: trying to purge the military of anybody that puts the
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: country ahead of politics and replacing those folks with the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: most partisan or the most pliant people that he can find.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: This dish between what's happening at the Pentagon and what's
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: happening at the Justice Department are the two biggest things
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: that have that are that that Trump is damaged that
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: will not get fixed in one term, and the after
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: action report in both places is going to be necessary
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: if we're going to get them both back on track.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: All right, with that, let's sneak in a break when
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: we come back. My fascinating conversation about the future of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party with Matt Bennett, who represents arguably represents
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the establishment wing of the party these days. Enjoyed them,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: so joining me now for more on this, frankly, fight
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: for the soul of the Democratic Party and where it's headed.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Matt Bennett of Third Way. And look, I'll let Matt
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: correct me when I say this, but I think the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: way I have viewed the Third Way Democrats, this is
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: sort of remnants of the old DLC wing of the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. This sort of you might call it the
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: pro business wing, you might call it the pragmatic wing.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: It depends on how you want to brand it, but
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: it is definitely more on the center left versus if
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: we're we've've got the three buckets right now. Democratic Primary voters,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: your center left, your progressive capitalists, I guess we'll call them.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: But this is a conversation I want to continue to have.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: And then the socialist wing. Let's just say I think
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: the third way wing feels on the run, and Matt
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Bennett joins me. Now, so, Matt, do you accept my description.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: Mostly? Yeah, I mean we are some corrections in there. Yeah.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, look, we definitely are. We called it
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: solose third way, which was a term that Bill Clinton
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: and Tony Blair used back from the nineties. The DLC
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: kind of came up with that, So we accept that,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: and we're certainly center left, we're moderates, and we believe
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: that mainstream pragmatism is still the way to govern and
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: the way to win in competitive places and nationally.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I would I'll take that, Moniker.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: So need let's just say we're talking on Wednesday, the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: day after the Mom Donnie primary night, which I think
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: June twenty third will be known as it was an
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: impressive showing for Mom Donnie and his political machine in
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: New York City. And obviously the question is whether is
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: this the start of is this the Ted Cruz defeat
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: of David Dewhurst, David Bratt's defeat of Eric Canter, what
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: was it Richard Murdock's defeat of Dick Lueger, which would
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: turn out to be more significant at the time inside
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: the right and what was happening in the Republican Party.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Is that the moment we're looking at, or is what
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: happens in New York City stay in New York City?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: I really hope not.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, if this is a Tea Party moment, that
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: is very scary for my party.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think it is, as I'll get.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: To in a second, but to your point, that's it
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: could be a real problem. I mean the Tea Party
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: cost Republicans at least half a dozen Senate seats by
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: nominating total twenty.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Ten and twenty eighteen. I think, yeah, yeah, probably, I
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: mean you could come up with six. I mean I
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: have a consultant friend of mine was still sort of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: whines about Nevada in twenty ten and and Mike Castle
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: in Delaware. I think also was a twenty ten race. Yeah,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: with the with the you know, Chris Coons, the accidental
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: senator you know back exactly.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, who could forget the greatest out of all
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: time I'm not a witch.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: I'm new so right, I mean, and and.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Look by the way that ad would have worked today,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: totally yes and either party right, sorry.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: But like I mean, that was in a competitive race
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: in a Delaware used to be kind of a purple place.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: And these are not all the districts that you just
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: the three districts were mum and he had big wins
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: last night, have a combined average of D plus thirty
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: six partisan voter indeck. So these are very very very
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: blue places. We're not gonna win. We're not going to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: lose any of these seats obviously. So at the moment,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: the kind of tea party moment for Democrats is not
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: really threatening to fumble away winnable places, with a couple
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: of exceptions. So for example, we're really worried about the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: Michigan Center primary. If abdill say Ed wins that three
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: way primary, I think he loses to Mike Rogers in
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: a you know, basically purple Michigan. Alissa Slakan, who ran
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: a brilliant campaign last night, barely beat Rogers. And I've
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: will said it's way too far left. So we're worried
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: about losing winnable races, but the races last night were
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: not that. Those were examples where very very radical people
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: like a village Chavier is I don't know if I'm
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: pronouncing her name, right is the farthest left person elected
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: in my lifetime to Congress by far. And we're just
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: worried that those ideas can be really weaponized against Democrats elsewhere.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting, you know, I characterized Tuesday night in
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: New York City is a really bad night from King Jefferies,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: meaning that if he is the next Speaker of the House,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: he is going to be dealing with his own version
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: of a Freedom Caucus.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: And it does feel as if that the progressive left
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: here the DSA has learned a thing or two from
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: the right in sort of how do you extract concessions
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: when you're in the minority right, you're in the minority
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: of the majority right. And this is was the brilliance
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: of the Freedom Caucus, but it's been terrible for governing. Right,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: like the Trump era is not known for big policy
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: wins because they can't really govern. They've had some control
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: role a couple of times, but this faction inside their
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: own party essentially, I mean Chip Roy has done more
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: to prevent republic and legislation from passing than any Democrat has.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: That's what strikes me is more plausible of how this
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: becomes a disruptive force inside the party.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right now. There's a couple of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: things keep in mind. One is the Freedom Caucus, as
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: a percentage of the House republic Conference was larger than
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: I think the DSA faction will be. The Progressive Caucus
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: is quite large, but you know, the those folks Promila,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: Jaya Paul and Mark Pocan who run the Progressive Caucus,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: they're not out to disrupt the way that the Freedom
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: Caucus has been with Mike Johnson.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: The other thing is, I'm.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: Hoping we don't have as narrow a majority as Johnson
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: had because that you know.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Three votes, right, but you know King Jefferies needs to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: do it in thirty five House seats. You get to five,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: then you can you can overcome. Look, this is what
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: the fact is. There was no Freedom Caucus problems for
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: the George W. Bush era because they usually had somewhere
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: between two hundred and thirty five and two hundred and
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: forty five House members on the Republican majority. You know
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: that that seems to be the sweet spot of keeping
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: your your factional politics at back exactly.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: And look, so make no mistakes, these people really don't
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: like KAKEM. Jeffreys at the militia the victory party lest
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: they were chanting your next at the TV when Hakim
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: came on. This is the first presumably the first black
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: speaker of the House, and they're trying to get.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Rid of them. Well, they just ousted the first undocumented
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: immigrant to make his way to Congress. True enough, Yeah, okay,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: I mean this is and it's really all over, you know,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: in him the I you know, I was told the
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: fireable offense for Espalot was supporting CMO.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and and I think and I.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: Love, I understand and is and of course, well Cuomo
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: was sort of it is sometimes a good word. It
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: can be the same thing for that. And so let's
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit. Because I accept the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: premise that mom Donnie won on affordability in twenty twenty five, right,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: And I think that is a fact, okay. And I
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: think he won because he made a great point about
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: the price of falaffel on the street vendors. Okay, I
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: genuinely believe that this is a he was talented in
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: connecting those dots right. That is, this was not an
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: affordability primary sweep in New York.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: City, wasn't it?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: There? Though it wasn't falafel, it was halal chicken. Quite
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: different politically.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Well, he was also talking about falaffel, but he made
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: the falafel bender. But yes, he also had Look, they
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: were both brilliant. Those things went viral. I mean, you know,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: you and I both have seen them. And I'm not
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: exactly a purveyor of street food in New York City.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: But.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night there was these were one This was a
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: one issue litmus test, and it's I have never felt
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: more outherized as a Jewish American than I do this morning.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: Same.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: And it is a bizarre feeling because this is stuff
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: my mother told me about and I didn't, you know, Yeah, yeah,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: that's the fifties, mom, And this feels like a different situation.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: And what's frustrating is, you know, I'm old enough to
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: remember when there was people on the left were criticizing
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump for otherizing people. I don't see how to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: you know, this is the goal to chase Jewish Democrats
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: out of the party.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: It appears to be for some of these people, and
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: it's pretty effective.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I heard by this morning.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: I don't I believe just the same way I don't
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: believe every MEGA supporter is a racist. I don't believe
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: every is an anti semi right. But they seem to
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: be make common cause with some of these folks.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, look, the President had dinner with Nick
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: foint Is. He's a Nazi. You know that's bad.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: So there's they are making common cause on that side.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: But on our side things are getting pretty ugly. And
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: the stuff that was happening to Dan Goldman, I'm sure
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: you read about that New York coffee shop. That was,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, just the grossest anti semitism.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I imagine if somebody did that to somebody who was
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: wearing a hit job, there'd be a lot more outrage
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: from the.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: From space.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that Mom, Donnie said something, but it was
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty. It was sort of like, you know, you
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have gotten caught doing it. It felt exactly rather
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: than a it was wrong, and it's wrong.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: But truly yeah.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, you and I both grew up in in America,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: where antisemitism basically didn't exist for a long time. It
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: was like the only period in human history since Abraham
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: in the West that there has been none, and we
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: got used to it. And it's very hard to see
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: this and look to your point. There's a lot of
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: people on the left who are a lot of Jews
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: who are deeply and genuinely of the view that Israel
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: has been acting horribly, and I am among them. But
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: the way that gets expressed by the farthest left reaches
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: of the of the party and of the DSA really
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: does move into anti Semitism, and it's causing an enormous rupture.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: The number of Jews this morning who were texting me
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: saying the same thing you said, You know.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: It's a lot.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: I believe ultimately that we can contain this. I don't
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: think that anti Semitism is going to kind of eat
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party the way they meet the Labor Party
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: for many years under Jeremy Corbyn in Britain. But I
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: think we have to address aggressively.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: John Bayner said the same thing. Mitch McConnell said the
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: same thing. True when you see I want to unpack
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: this in three different buckets. First, let's unpack why is
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: there an appetite for this. Well, there's an appetite because
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of fed up Democrats that think the
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party has been feckless. Yes, they're not wrong, Matt.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: So it is the reason the DSA is getting traction
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: is because the establishment wing of the Democratic Party has
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: really screwed this up, right, And it goes back arguably
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: to the decision to rally around Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: And I say this in that I think a faction
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party thought that the Obama victory meant
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: that Clinton wing was dormant and dead, and then he
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: came in and went quote unquote establishment. It opened the
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: door for Ernie and of course the way Ron Paul
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: remade the Republican Party before people realized it, and then
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Mega came in and essentially took it to another level.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: That's what's been happening at state central committees, right. And
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: this is the thing I'm hearing what you're saying. I
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: think we can contain it. I heard this before, but
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: guess what, by the time you realize this has taken place,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: it was Ron Paul forces who became MAGA that were
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: already in charge of the state parties, and so Donald
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: Trump already had a network, and the same thing's been
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: happening with the DSA and the progressive left. They have
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: done the hard work of getting onto local party committees,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: getting onto the state central committee. I'm not sure this
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: is as easy to contain as you say.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't think it's easy at all. I just
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: want to be clear about this.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: This is a real problem, and there have been efforts
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: the local level in cities all over the country, in
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: Pittsburgh and Chicago and New York and San Francisco to
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: kind of combat the rise of the DSA. I think
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: a few things are different than what happened with Paul
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: and the Tea Party and ultimately with Trump. First of all,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: in places where the far left is governing, they become
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: deeply unpopular really fast. So this happened in San Francisco,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: where they elected a very far left mayor and DJA
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: they basically decriminalized shoplifting. Not surprisingly, the city kind of
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: fell apart, and then both of them were recalled, along
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: with a bunch of crazy school board members that were
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: trying to rename Abraham Lincoln Elementary School. And now the
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: city's doing much better and what you saw this cycle
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: in San Francisco was a very far left guy Chalker
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: Party lost pretty big in a congressional race to replace
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: Nancy Pelosi to much more mainstream Democrats. So there has
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: been a reaction even in a place like San Francisco
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: to their bad governance. That's happening in Chicago, where the
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: mayor who's very far left is like a twenty percent
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: approval rating.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: And so I think Chicago.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Is an interesting example because you know, Lauri Lightfoot was
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: elected as a left wing alternative to Ram and then
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: the left said, no, you're too mainstream, and.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: Wait for even further right.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: And you know, I remember Rom saying to me, he goes,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: I think they'll miss me eventually. And the irony is,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: I think he's right, you know, totally. But it is
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: one of those I believe. And this is why I
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: think we're headed for probably two or three more one
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: term presidents. Is I think the progressive left looks at
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: the maga ighte and says, God damn it, they got
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: a chance to govern. We want our chance to govern.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: And rather than just being part of a winning coalition
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: like they were with Obama right, they were part of
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: the coalition, but they weren't the governing force of the coalition,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: and I think they look at what Mega happened and said,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: you know, why compromise.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: I'm sure they do. But let me give you two
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: other reasons why I think they're not going to achieve that.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: One is, our electorate is different than theirs.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: At the national level.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: Obviously, in places like you know, New York City, the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: electorate gets pretty far left. But if you look at
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: the people that we have nominated for presidence is nineteen
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: ninety two. I mean every single one of them. You
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: can quibble about John Kerry, but every one of them
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: have been mainstream, very kind of moderate center left candidates.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: So and our electorate always is looking to see, like
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: we're very pundent oriented voters. When it comes to nomination,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: it's like, which of these guys beats the Republicans?
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: I want that.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: I know. I've always said Democrats care about electability, but
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: they don't know. I always say, well, what's electability? Well,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: whatever whoever I think can win. But it is sort
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: of very subjective. There is no objective.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: In fact, I once watched a focus group in Iowa
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: where guys like, well, I think the average voter thinks
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: this way. I was like, dude, you're in a focus
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: group in Iowa, like you are it.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: You're supposed to be the telly, you're average voter. Right.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: And then the other difference, and this is technical but important,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: is the way that we nominate people is very different
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: than the way the Republicans do. They've got winner take
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: all primaries, and so this is actually what could screw
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: us in Michigan and Michigan Senate race, which is obviously
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: a winner take all.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: Forty right, thirty eight to forty percent can win.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a plurality, and that's what Trump did, he wrote
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: a thirty five percent plurality to victory. In our presidential
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: primaries doesn't work that way. It's it's proportional, and you've
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: got to win fifteen percent of a given speed to
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: get any delegates. And that matters a lot. And now
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: that we've gotten rid of all of our caucuses. And
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: by the way, Bernie when he ran both times, he
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: won all the caucuses and lost most of the primaries
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: because caucuses are good for activist candidates who people come
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: out and vote for four hours. But with our primary
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: system and the proportional delegate allocation. You've got to be
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: much broader, and it's the imperative is to appeal to
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: a much broader set of voters. And so I think
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: it's just really hard to hijack the Democratic collector the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: way that Trump did.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: I think I agree with you here, and I say
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: I think because I go back to the other aspect
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: of this, and that is that the insider you know,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: the insider lane of the Democratic Party I think has
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: gotten a lot more progressive. And I think that you
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: have a lot You're going to have people on central
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: committees that are much further to the left than what
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: we've seen over the last twenty five thirty years. We'll see,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, look, I go back, You and
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: I are both too young for this. But the last
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: time the Democratic Party at a moment like this was
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: the McGovern sort of revolution, if you will. And I
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: can make an argument, right, and the McGovern revolution takes
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: over the party in seventy two, and essentially the Democrats
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: are flailing from seventy two to ninety two. Right, They
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: win one national election, Yeah, they hold on to the
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: House that entire time, but it was watching, you know,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: essentially the Southern Caucus become basically Reagan Democrats. You know,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: it essentially took a generation before the party recovered from
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: this sort of liberal revolution, the McGovern liberal revolution. You know,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I I accept the premise that eventually governing
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: will get in, that will probably be the thing that
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: eventually stops this moment. But it took twenty years the
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: last time this happened for the Democrats to recover.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: And look, as you know, much depends on whether a
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: charismatic leader comes along or doesn't. So in those twenty years,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: we had no charismatic leaders. I mean, Jimmy Carter had
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: a certain weirdo charisma in seventy six, but then it
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: was gone. And then we had Mondale and Decaucus where
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: my first boss in politics.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I think we all wonder what a Gary
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: Hart would have been like in eighty four exactly. I mean,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: it would have probably been certainly more competitive.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: Totally, and parties are forged in the image of their nominees.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: At the moment, we have no leader, and we're not
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: going to have a leader for a long time. But
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: just think about what happened to the Republicans after twenty
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: twelve Ronnie loses. They do their autopsy. They're like, we
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: need to be nicer to immigrants. Steve Bannon's like, no,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: we need to go to the exact opposite direction he got.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: Trump comes along, and then the party goes one hundred
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: and eighty degrees the opposite way. And now no one
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: has ever forged a party in their images as dramatically
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: as he has, at least not modern times. But every
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: party is defined by their nominee, and ours will be too.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: And if we nominate the right person and they have
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: a degree of charisma that you know, we really need,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: then I really don't think the mcgovernment thing is going
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: to happen to us. But if we don't and nominate
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: somebody without it, then it could.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: Why is this getting so much traction in New York City?
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: In New York City, yeah, why is this anti Israel
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: litmus test? Which clearly is the most animating issue? You know,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: when AOC won't beat Joe Crawley the Green New Deal,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: it was a climate focus then, yes, affordability, but it
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: was really climate right driven. You know, I don't hear
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: climate anymore. Right. It is one issue that seems to
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: unite the progressive left in New York, which is bashing Israel,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: which quickly bashing Israel quickly becomes to bashing Jews pretty fast.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: Does Yeah, I mean to your point, the Sunrise movement
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: now only cares about Israel like that is their only thing,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: and they're like a climate change group. But I think
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: the reason, there's two big reasons. One is the people
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: that voted for these candidates are tend to be And
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: the data on this from exepols yesterday was very clear.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: Like in the Cheblier race, she won young white, more
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: educated and higher income people, and she lost black and
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: Hispanic folks without college degrees and with lower incomes. So
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: the young white people are kind of animated by this
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: unicause which is gaza uh, and that has become a
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: virtue signaling device. If you are in favor of Israel,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: you are bad, and if you are in favor of
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: the Palestinian.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Why isn't this Why isn't the leaguers the cause?
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: Celeb That's a great question. There are a million.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Why isn't it the right? Why isn't it in Africa?
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: Why is it just this cause? I don't you know
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: where where I'm I would love a better explanation.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, what they say, is because they are
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: a US ally. We give them three billion dollars a
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: year in military aid. They are our closest ally in
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: the region, and there we should expect that they act
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: in ways that are consistent with our values. And China
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: is not an ally, and now there is you know,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: Burma or down or at these other places. Uh, it's
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: not an insane argument. And I would I would positive
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: that is is acting really really badly, but and she
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: would agree with this. I loathe the current US government,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: but I do not do not load the United States.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: I love the United States. I load the net and
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: Yahoo government, but I do not load Israel. I think
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: the problem is a lot of these young people tend
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: not to be able to see that distinction.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Well, and this gets and I don't want to sound
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: like an old guy ranting at cloud, but I you know,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: it's interesting. I had an interview that's on my podcast
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: right now with the mayor of Oklahoma City, David Hole.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: And he's a friend, and he he is a big
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: advocate of non partisan primaries. And you know, obviously, you
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: know a mayor. Most mayors get elected in non partisan primaries,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: and those that do get elected in non partisan primaries
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: tend to get more shit done. That's just, you know,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: because they have a larger constent. I mean, I've always
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: said I saw it in my own carloson Meenez is
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: a congressman from from Miami, was the mayor of the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: county before he was a member of Congress. And he
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: was a mayor of the county, I knew he was Republican,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: but he didn't. He didn't govern his politics didn't govern him.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Let he knew what his constituency was pretty purple, and
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: he governed that way. When he became a member of Congress,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: he was He didn't certify that the twenty twenty election,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: and it shocked me because I was like, wow, that
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: that isn't the way he governed as mayor. But he
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: had run in a very partisan Republican primary, right, So
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: I do think sometimes you govern towards the constituents that
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: elect you and how you get elected. Which is why
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: I think open primaries, you know, if we want to
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: get rid of polarization, I think primaries are start. But
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: here's the issue that I was speaking with Mayor Holt about.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: He did an entire speech about pluralism, and it struck
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: me that here's a word that I'm guessing a lot
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: of people under the age of forty a half have
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: to look up. Yep. And it's because we have allowed
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: we do not you know, when we talk about yelling,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: you know, And again I know this is going to
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: it's not that we don't teach civics. We don't teach
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: the American political system, yes, and the history of it.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: And and it's I think there's two reasons for it.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: One is I accept I think that to graduate high
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: school or to get into college, we have said there's
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: only two skills that matter are English and math. And
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: so if you're and then in fact you get funding
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: at local schools based on how well your kids perform
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: on a test that's mostly about English and math. There
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: is no requirement you know, on civics to either get
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: into college or to graduate high school. So what do
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: you think ends up happening? Right, Your incentive structure is
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: your best teachers. You're if you're a principal, If your
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: best teacher is a government teacher, you're like, man, I'm
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: wasting that teacher because my funding is based on how
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: well these students do on this test. So should we
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: be surprised that the first generation where we stopped teaching
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: civics and prioritizing it in our schools, which was essentially
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: the kids that started going to grade school from nineteen
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: ninety two forward, is powering this revolution and doesn't fully
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: understand democratic pluralism and that the American system is different
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: for a reason.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, one hundred percent. And obviously this is the generation
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: that's been raised on social media, where you live in
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 3: your own epistemic bubble. All you're hearing are people that
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: agree with you absolutely start doing anything at all about news.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: And it's all absolutees.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: It's one hundred percent, and if you are outside of that,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: you are bad. Last week I did Brett bear Shaw
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: and Fox, and just before us was Fred Ryan from
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: the Reagan Center and he was talking about this new thing.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: They have the Civility Handbook, which is how to talk
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: to people with whom you disagree, and I actually ordered
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: a bunch of them for us because we have got
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: to figure out how to do this again, and it
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: has to become a bipartisan effort to figure out how
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: to talk to people with whom we disagree.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: No, you can't, and it sounds you know the problem
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: is every time someone and you know, you got both
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: of us are now in we're middle aged, so we
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: just sound like cranky old people, and you know it is.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: But we did let this lapse, right, you know, and
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: with it again, it was with good intentions, right, well, like,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: look the thing you the most important skills you need
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: to get a good job and get into college or this.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: You know, every other country around the world teaches their
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: political system in a more mandatory way than we do. Yeah,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: and you know, I feel like when we had you know,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: it's funny again, you and I grew up at the
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: late stage Cold War, so there was an ideological fight
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: we were having. So that's why there was an emphasis
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: on democracy and pluralism in this country. When we won
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: the fight, we kind of said, all right, we don't
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: need to do this anymore. And I wonder if that
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: is why we have that, and it looked I think
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: it explains why Latino voters are for the most part,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: are not going down this socialism path. And we've seen
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: it because of what socialism is represented in Latin America.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: In fact, to that point, one of the groups that
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: I was talking about earlier, the local groups, is a
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: group in Pittsburgh called the Beacon Coalition and they are
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: a group of Jews that are fighting back against what
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: the citizen anti semitism on the city council there in
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: the mayor and they got rid of a couple of
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: those folks and they have a great line. They said,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: when you think about the DSA and socialism of that type,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: don't think Norway, think Cuba, you know, like that is
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: what they are are. The Norwegian kind of type of
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: Nordic socialism is basically high tax is they get you good.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: Serve public.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: So it's European liberalism. It's not socialism, right because it
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: is still capitalism, totally capitalism.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: Rather, what these guys are saying is seize the means
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: of production. And more importantly, to your point, be illiberal.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: Do not but I liberal in the classical sense, do
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: not allow debate. If you cannot come into their space
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: and say we should have a discussion about Israel, if
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: you are not wholly on their page, you are excluded
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: from the debate. And that is deeply a liberal point
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: of view.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: So let me go back to why the Democratic Party
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: is so vulnerable to this movement. It has been the leader,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: it has been a failure since twenty sixteen. Right, it
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: is not successfully stood up to Trump. And you know,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: I you know, I'm gonna try to put my head
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: in where the progresses are. We accepted the premise that
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: Biden was the best idea, So we accepted the premise
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: we compromise. Right, It's the same thing I heard from
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: the right about John McCain and m Romney and you lost.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: And now it's like, you know, so, you know, do
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: you really think this is all about an inability to
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: have a good messenger?
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: Look, there is real truth to the idea that we
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: have failed as a party, and I think there's a
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: lot of blame to go around, including I mean Senator
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: Luck Donald.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: The fact that the voters decided a second term of
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump was preferable is to me the most damning
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: aspect of the legacy of Joe Biden. Right. For me,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's leg see will forever be defined by his
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: inability to help the country a better president turns the page.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: We don't go backwards in this country unless you're a
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: total and complete failure as a president. And I'm sorry
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: the country chose to go backward. We never go backward
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: to a president we fired and the fact that we did.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: How is this not an indictment of the establishment wing
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: of the party.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: Well, it's an indictment of Bidenism. But let's talk about
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: what that means.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 3: I think two big things to keep in mind about
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: what Americans were rejecting three around Bidenism. One will I
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: will accept the establishment wing's failure around his age. Obviously
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: you've talked about that animlessly.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: That's obvious.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: There's two others. One is Joe Biden bragged and Bernie
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: Sanders touted the idea that he was the most progressive
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: president since FDR.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: Now, the joke was, Biden beat Elizabeth Warren for the
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: nomination and she won the staff one.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: Hundred percent, and she did, and that meant she was
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: Dave the one he signed an EO on the first
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: day that said we are not going to enforce the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: immigration laws inside the country, and it took two and
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: a half years to control the border. And he did
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: a bunch of things like student loan forgiveness that were
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: driven by the left and were terrible politics. And so
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: that's number one. That they rejected his kind of progressivism,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: that they didn't that voters didn't like and number two
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: is this kind of woke caricature. I'm not blaming this
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: entirely on Joe Biden himself, but the party shifted so
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: sharply in that direction on culture issues after twenty twenty
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: that rather than you know, Tim Wallace trying to make
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: the case that they were the weird ones, they thought
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: we were the weird ones. I mean, the exit polls
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: showed that more people thought that Harris was an extremist
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: than they thought Donald Trump was an extremist. And that
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: was in part because a broader brand problem with the
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 3: dumb crack Party, but it was also a bunch of
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: things that she didn't said when she ran for president
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: Obviously, the well.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: That was Look, I've always you know, it's so funny
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: about you know, the Democratic Party, you know, was sort
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: of high on its own supply starting at that June debate,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: right it is, it is the nightmare debate. I hated it.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: I had to moderate, you know, two days back. I mean,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: the dumbest formats we could have come up with, and
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: it was the best version of the dumb format. But
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I had a few other I had a
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: few other better ideas to try to create bite sized formats,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: but you couldn't get the candidates to agree. Logistically, I
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: wanted to do a little like fifteen minute for candidate
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: you know buckets essentially, so that you had an opportunity
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: to get to know everybody in a smaller setting. But
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: you know that that was too cifix minded, right, not
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: for television, right, But either way, that six month period
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: and you can actually extend it right, June of nineteen
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: through June of twenty twenty five to twenty twenty, the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party went really far left in its way. He
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: left in its in its rhetoric, not necessarily in its
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: actual you know actions. The platform wasn't super lefty and
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: all of that, but rhetorically the party did go pretty left.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: I mean the famous hand raising that was, I mean,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: I think criminalized.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: The border and the irony is I don't. I actually
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: think Joe Biden didn't hear the question, which is the
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: only reason why he didn't raise his hand.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: But maybe it worked out for him.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: But yeah, there was all this performative crap and all
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: of it was very left coded, and that mattered and
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: it changed the way people thought about the party. Biden
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: obercame it for the general election, and he basically was like,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: do you think I'm a lefty? And that worked in
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty, but then he immediately became a lefty and
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: so all this doctor original question. I mean, I just
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: don't think that Harris's loss can be attributed to the
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 3: kind of center left. She did try to modify her
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: moderate herself when she ran for those one hundred and
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: seven days. And look, I liked her speech at convention.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: I think she did a pretty good job, or she
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 3: did the best she could, but she was carrying a
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 3: lot of baggage from the administration and from her own run.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: Look, Hubert Humphrey was one of the more talented politicians
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: in the history of the Democratic Party. But you know
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: he lost for the same reason Kamala Harra law. Kamala
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: Harris lost. The president that he served was unpopular. The
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: president that she served was unpopular. You know what we
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: don't do in this country elect vice presidents of unpopular
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: president That we've never doalet to my knowledge.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, I worked for al Gore. He was a
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: vice president to a popular president.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: Right, but he got punished. He got punished for the
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: character issues. You know, like, sure, there's no doubt that
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty eight votes, we're get a hold votes. Yeah.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: But yeah, but for Lewinsky, you know, you know, so
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: it is it is really hard to win as a
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: sitting vice president if your president doesn't have an approval
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: rating over sixty percent.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, So she probably had like nine fatal wounds going
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: into that election, but one of them was that she
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: went too far left herself in twenty nineteen. So all
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: this is to say, we've got to make sure that
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: our field does not impete that mistake.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, but you know, it's funny now, and I guess
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: that's the question. Michigan Senate primary is a great example
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, so it's funny how this primary has
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: sort of already been a roller coaster and we still
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: got about six weeks before voting. Yes, So it first
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: starts in Hailey Stevens looks like she's going to be
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: you know, she starts out as the heavy favorite. It's
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: Alyssa's slock and two points. Oh okay, we think we
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: know where this is going. And Mallory McMorrow had her
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: viral moment and all this stuff, So at first it
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: looked like Hailey Stevens. Then you saw the sort of
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: you know, the pylon on her, the establishment anger, the
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: apac anger, and it's like, okay, you saw and then
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: it became this interesting three way race, and you had
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: three candidates that perhaps we're representing three distinct factions of
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: the party at the moment. You had your progressive Bernie
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: Sanders wing. You had your establishment call it the Chuck
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: Schumer leadership wing, and then you had what Mallory McMorrow
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: was trying to do, which is straddle the two sides.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: And for a bit of time it looked like the
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: establishing was going you know what, Stevens can't win, screw it,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: Let's go with McMorrow. And there was a little bit
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: of flirtation with her. She had her own I think
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: my guess is some APO people dropped some of that
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: stuff and from the Stephens world and McMorrow, right, McMorrow
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: suddenly became looked less attractive to that wing of the party.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: So now you see McMorrow, the person trying to straddle
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: the two wings is the one that's shrinking and the
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: two that are growing. Really Bill say it is growing
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: more is that if you're a changed candidate, here's Staley
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: Stephens problem. She's on the wrong side of change, perhaps
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: a duel site. She's running to be Gary Peters heir
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: apparent right, it is not a change, and I think
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: that's what makes this extraordinarily difficult where at least, and
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: that's why for a while I thought McMorrow frankly was
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: the best. If you were concerned about Abdul al Sayeed,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: I would have been like, you're better off supporting McMorrow
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: because she might be able to win some progressives. But
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: what is going to be you know, Kamala Harris is
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: going to look twenty nineteen is going to look moderate
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: compared to what the democract and Cratic electorate may be
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: demanding come twenty twenty seven and twenty twenty eight.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: Depends on what you mean by the Democratic electorate.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 3: So first of all, much will depend on the map
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 3: that we don't know yet, but presumably it'll be some
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 3: version of New Hampshire.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: Michigan goes first. Do you think you want that? Now?
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think it will go first, but yeah, you
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: want Michigan in the early window. You think this is
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: a good idea for the Democratic It's a good question.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: And look, what's happening there is scary. I will say
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: the three way nature of the race is helping. I'll
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: they'll say buy a you know, a lot, and there's
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: still a lot undersided. So I don't if one of
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: them drops out, and I think, by the way, if
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: by July first one of them is seriously trailing that
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: they have an obligation to do what Pete and Amy
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: did in twenty twenty, which is to bet.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: I'm I have.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: It's interesting you bring that up because like three weeks ago,
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: the pressure looked like it was going to be on Stevens,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: and now it looks like the pressure is going to be.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 3: On my flipt Yeah, and look, I'd be fine with
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: either room. But the polling does show that Stevens is
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 3: doing better now, so and that may be driven by money,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 3: but that's how politics works, you know, and you just
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 3: I think we have to be pretty bloodless about this.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 3: So I don't know what's going to happen in that race.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: I don't think they'll say it's lead at the moment,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: which is a plurality, is an indication that the Michigan
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 3: Democratic elector.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: Has gone completely mad. I don't think that that's necessarily
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: the case.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: No, I think he represents change though, and I don't
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: know if Hailey Stevens does. It's I mean, I understand
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: why his message. Look, I had him on the pod.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: He's a very charismatic oh candidate, he's you know, we
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: had a very thoughtful debate about the use of the
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: word genocide. I just find it just like, this is
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: not it, you know, as I said to him, the
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: minute you say it, I no longer hear anything else
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: you're saying. Right, it doesn't feel like a rational debate.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like screaming Nazi at somebody, right, Like
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: you know, it's the Godwin's law. Right. The minute you
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: start comparing somebody to Hitler, you know, everybody gets their
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: defense mechanisms up and you no longer have a You're
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: no longer having reasonable debate. The minute you drop the left,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: drops the G word, it is not to me a
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: serious accusation. It is more of a a siren song
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: to you know, go after the Jews. And I know
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: I don't believe that is what Abdul sai Ed believes.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: I really don't, Okay, I don't, but that is what
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: happens when you virtue signal with that word. But the
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: point is he's you know, I I I think he
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: can win it to a race possibly.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 3: Look, you know, he's very good, obviously a very charasmatic
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: guy like Mamdani was was dominant figure.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: Being charismatic matters in politics. We'll see.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know, however, I think all of this is
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: quite different than presidential races, where first of all, you've
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: got to get through South Carolina, which is the wall
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: that Bernie ran into headfirst in twenty twenty. And South
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: Carolina voters are predominantly African American and they are very,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: very moderate. And by the way, after South Carolina, as
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 3: you know, they went on a Super Tuesday and then
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 3: they went to Massachusetts and elsewhere and Joe Biden crushed
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: Sanders and.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: Then I don't I mean, Matt, I know what the data.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: I take your point. In the data, I think there
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: is nothing to learn from twenty twenty primary season because
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: I don't accept the premise that Biden wins that nomination
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: without COVID and COVID total nomination or the general the nomination,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: and I believe that in the general, but the nomination,
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: you know, it is COVID was in the ether. It
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: was at that point when Amy and Pete dropped out,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: and it was this sense of, oh my god, South
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: Carolina is going to probably be the whole ballgame. What
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: if this is the last primary? And so it became
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: this and so look, I think in Earth too, with
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: no COVID, Bernie doesn't get out. Bernie got out out
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: of because COVID was happening. If there's no COVID, Bernie
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't get out, and that's a that's a knife fight convention,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: and it might be at a you know, look, I
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: believe that without COVID it's Pete and Bernie all the
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: way to the convention, not.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 3: Probably be no way of knowing. The point is, presidential
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 3: primaries are completely suey generous every time. This kind of
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: confirms your point, like who the hell knows? Like the
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 3: data set is small, it's very unique, the moment is
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: unique every time. My deep belief is that there will
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 3: be so many probably a charismatic person in the super
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 3: far left lane. The question is can the person in
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: the more mainstream lane. And I don't think that means
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 3: they're going to be a self identified moderate. They're not
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 3: going to have moderate on their yard side, just a
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: mainstream candidate. Will that person be able to run as
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: a change candidate, because I think you're totally right. If
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: you're running as like status qua, you're dead. Which is
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: why I think it's going to be super hard for
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 3: you know, senators in particular to do this. But if
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 3: you're a governor, you know, and if you're Jos Shapiro,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: at leave aside the Israel thing for a second.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: But if you're Josh Biyhill, I leave that aside.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, but just for a second.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 3: I just kicked ass and the most important general elections
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 3: state in the nation, I get shipped done. I fixed
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 3: ninety five and you know, six minutes that and I'm
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: going to come into Washington and do what I did
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: in the ninety five thing, which is you know, they
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 3: told me it was going to take three months, and
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: I said, you have three days. That's going to be
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: a pretty powerful message. Now, Shapiro himself, UH does have
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: to grapple with the Israel question, and we don't know
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: what that will look like. But I will say this,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 3: remember that God willing men, Yahoo will be gone by
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 3: that UH, and that could change the dynamic.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: That is an important point I agree with that I think. Look,
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: I've always said, you know, the reason the Democratic parties
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: divided on Israel is because bb net now who hated
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama, and he played politics and he essentially destroyed
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: the bipartisan goodwill that Israel had engendered in this country
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: utterly by deciding to become a partisan hack. Right, Bibie
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: became a partisan hack because he got convinced by one
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: major donor that it was the right move and you know,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: the Agelsn's, and it was. It has been. What they
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: have what they have done is successfully isolated Israel around
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: the world. It is been the biggest political strategic mistake
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: in the history of Israel was BB's decision to become
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: a partisan warrior on behalf of the Republican Party back
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: and during the Obama And I think it for a
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: generation of Democrats of a certain age. This is why
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: it is not lost on me that essentially you look
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: among Democratic primary voters under the age of forty five
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: and frankly it's all voters under the age of thirty
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: five these days, and their views of Israel. It is
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: I you know, I absolutely believe BB uniquely has polarized
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: this issue in this country. By playing the politics that
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: he played and doing the bitty of his major donors.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: So I do think if he goes, it might be
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: the relief valve that is necessary.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not for the octopus base. Now for I am worried.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: I am worried that frankly, Donald Trump has actually become
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: so unpopular that Bbe might be able to do what
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: he does best, which is play the fear card to survive. Well,
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: nobody else will be tough enough to take on the Iranians.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm the crazy SOB that will bomb the Iranians,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: and you you know the next prime minister won't. And
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: I worry now that Trump's actually made that political messaging
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: more potentially more successful for b become the fall.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if you think our political system is
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: a mess.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: So I know, I joke. I don't know whether we've
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: exported Israel's political medal, we exported it to them, or
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: they we've imported. I mean, you know, they are hopelessly divided.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about their system. Here's a guy who's
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: got what thirty five percent job approval right right, who's
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: been able to have a stranglehold. Sounds familiar, right.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: Very familiar.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 3: And by the way, in addition to all the things
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: you just mentioned, which I very much agree with, I
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 3: traveled in nineteen ninety eight with the Vice President Gore
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 3: to Israel where we met the Prime minister and it
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 3: was BB Net and Yahoo in nineteen ninety eight, like
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: the guy has just been there to goddamn long and
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 3: by kids, they yeah.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: The already is. Every American president gets to the point
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: where they tell BB to f off, and it is
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: exactly like clockwork, w Bush, Bill Clinton, w Obama, if
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: Trump right by like the If there is one thing
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: that all of these presidents have in common is they
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: think BB's an SOB they do.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. It's the only thing that unites them.
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 3: But and now even Trump, uh so, Look, I think
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 3: if the Israelis can get their act together and get
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 3: rid of him, even Look, the next Prime Minister is
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 3: not going to be a liberal. It'll be somebody like
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 3: Taly Bennett or no, and somebody I thought was pretty
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 3: far right, like you know, not long ago. But if
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 3: it's not Yahoo, I do think to use the relief
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 3: oult could be significant for Democrats.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: What can you learn from the DSA? What should the
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: democratic establishment learn from the DSA.
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 3: I think you've made this point already, which is they
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 3: are right that the status quo is deeply broken. If
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 3: you are running to preserve a restore of status quo
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 3: ante before Trump, you're insane. This country is not working
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 3: for working people at all. They've been screwed and we
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 3: all own a piece of this, and we have got
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: to figure out a way to offer ideas that are
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 3: to scale and that feel like they can make a
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 3: difference in people's lives.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: You know, what does it say about the brand of
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party that Dan Osborne thinks he has a
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: better chance to win as an independent.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: That it's really crappy in places are in this century.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: Nebraska had two US senators at the beginning of the center.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 3: Rosca South Dakota and North Dakota, Louisiana, Arkansas. I mean,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 3: we have had senators and places that are now unthinkable
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 3: to have senators within like recent memory. So we have
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 3: We're in bad shape. Our party has become much too small.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 3: I will say, I want to give it one glimmer
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 3: of hope, and that's Iowa. Iowa could be turning around.
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 3: Rob sand is going to win the governor's race.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: There.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 3: We have a shot at winning the Senate race. We
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 3: have a shot at winning three of the House races. Iowa,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 3: which went very sharply towards Trump, is coming back.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: No. I it's interesting and I'm curious that there's a
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: there's an interesting experiment that I'm comparing in Texas and
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: Florida because I think ultimately, if the Democratic Party doesn't
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: figure out it, but one of those two Sun Belt
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: states in play, they're going to have a mass problems
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: for a long time. You know, it's always going to
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: have to be these inside straights in order to pull this. Uh,
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: it's interesting me that the Democratic ticket in Texas is
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: decidedly progressive and the Democratic ticket in Florida is decidedly
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: third way. Yes, right, you know, is that a fair
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: barometer to test which which is the better direction for
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: the party to go?
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean the problem is the very different states,
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 3: and they both have, you know, obviously trended pretty far
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 3: to the right recently. But I don't think and look,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 3: candidate quality matters. James tal Rico is a very good candidate.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: And although Tim Wallas was a good candidate and quickly
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: got turned into weird, and I do think tall Rico
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: has a real challenge on his hands on on sort
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: of being turned into that that he's not the mainstream guy.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, and they're they're doing their damndest with AI
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 3: videos and all this other crap. But and look, I
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 3: think he's still got a very very uphill battle in Texas.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 3: But he's a good candidate. You know, our candidates in
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 3: Florida are pretty good. But so comparing them as apples apples,
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 3: I think is very hard.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: Well, it is interesting that you know, tall Rico and
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: to a lesser extent, though, I've spent some time with Geenae.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: You know, she's very compelling and I think she's going
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: to be have I think, you know, she's my surprise
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: showing of the Night on November, Like I don't buy,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: but I think, you know, voters, voters rarely enjoy electing
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: a governor to a fourth term, and so there's always
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: a lot more she's going to get in the high forties.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty convinced. The question is is it forty six
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: or is it forty eight or forty nine? And then
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: David Jolly at Florida and in some ways to a
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: lesser extent, Vindman are both going basically running as generic moderates,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: and they're kind of saying, hey, we're not We're not
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: the charismatic team. Yes, right, I don't know if boring works.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 3: No, boring doesn't work. I mean Bill Clinton wasn't boring.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 3: Bill Clinton was interesting and exciting and also moderate. You
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 3: can be both things, and it's important that you do.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: And we've got.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 3: Interesting, compelling, exciting people running as moderates in page cognity,
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: running for the house in Pennsylvania. We've got a whole
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 3: bunch of them, Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey. There are plenty,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 3: but they don't get as much attention as these kind
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 3: of loons in New York are getting. And that's too bad.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 3: And I'm hoping this is what happened twenty eighteen. Twenty eighteen,
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 3: the initial storyline was like, oh my god, look at
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 3: AOC and the squad and holy and then it was
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 3: like wait, no, thirty four.
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: House Stamburger and yeah right, and you got no, no, no, no,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: and then you know, the lion's share of these new
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: I hear you. But you know, the moderates are never
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: in leadership. I mean, like that's the issue in both
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: parties these days. You know, I think you want to
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: talk about my frustration and why I think that we Frankly,
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: both parties need a scare from a third party or
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: an independent in order to sober up. And that is
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: the swing voters are only cared about for elections. They're
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: not cared about for governing. And the first entity that
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: figures out how to make that connection is suddenly going
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: to have a constituency of swing voters that can become
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: a base. And I just think both parties are flirting
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: with disaster here if they're not careful.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more, which is why your thing about Warren.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 3: You know, ultimately winning the staffing was a catastrophe for Democrats.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 3: And by the way, on the other side, I will
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 3: never forget Trump and Trump won. Like in the third
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 3: week he was in the White House, he held a
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 3: meeting in the Roosevelt Room with all the labor leaders
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 3: and I thought.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, we are screwed, Like if he's got.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's going to co opt our higher coalition.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 3: And then he just you know, spun out.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: But if he had, if he had been more disciplined,
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: we would have been in real trouble.
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: No, it's a it's a but for you know, discipline.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: But then again there's thankfully there's a lot of authoritarians
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: where their narcissism got in the way for sure to succeed.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: So it is with there, So let me try to
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: land this plane. Okay, what does success look like for
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: your wing of the Democratic Party come November?
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 3: Very similar to twenty eighteen, which is, we can't stop
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 3: the storyline about look at the exciting lefties. But what
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 3: we can do is say the majority was made by
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 3: the moderates, the check on Trump was provided by moderates,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 3: and that is where our party needs to go in
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty eight.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: And if Graham, Plattner and Abdul say Ed are part
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: of a Democratic Senate majority, that it's hard. Does that
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: mean you've lost?
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it means it's harder.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 3: First of all, I am deeply skeptical that I'll say
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: I could beat Mike Rogers, but you know, we'll see Trump's.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: Pretty unpopular, you know, you know what I mean? Like
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: this is how you know, It's sort of like how
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: did Matt you know the Tea Party won in twenty
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: fourteen and twenty ten because the Democrats were unpopular in
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: that moment, right, you know, so a lot of people
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: who normally couldn't win generals did so it's true.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: That so look, it's if those guys both win, I
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 3: will stipulate that our job has gotten harder, there is
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 3: no doubt. But there's going to be a whole bunch
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: more moderates who have won that have made the House
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 3: majority that may be making the Senate majority.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, Josh Turuk is not grand Platiner.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 3: And so if Mary Poltola and Turuk and some of
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 3: these people are able to win, that's going to be
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 3: a countervailing storyline. And both sides are going to have
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 3: cases to make going into twenty eight.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: And what would you do if you were Chuck Schumer
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: right now?
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: Oh man, I would make clear that I'm not running
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 3: in twenty eight and that I would make sure.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: Would you do it now? Would you?
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: Would you do it like before November?
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 3: Probably I would. I mean, Brian Shotts is waiting in
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 3: the wings. He's in the position Chuck was in with
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 3: Red where he's very lug.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: But Brian, but he's got to be careful here. If
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: he looks too close to Schumer, I know, it becomes
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: a litman, he becomes a litmus test and a negative
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: right right.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 3: But you know, Elizabeth Warren should not be the majority
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 3: leader or the leader of the Democrats.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: On said what about Chris Murphy.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think both of them are too far left,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: a too left code of First of all, Warren's too old,
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 3: like you know, we're not going to replace a seventy
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 3: eight year old with a seventy six year old or
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 3: whatever she is. And Murphy has thrown in his lot
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 3: with the left in a fairly aggressive way in ways
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 3: that Shots, who has credibility on the left, has not.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 3: And I think you need somebody that can manage the
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 3: Senate coalition is broad, and we just discussed the only
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 3: way to win majorities is to win in tough places.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we want Chris Murphy being the
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 3: face of the Democrats on the set.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, I I am a I am A.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: I think Shots is I sort of see him as
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: sort of what John Thune is for the Republicans. He's
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: kind of this guy that that that is everybody likes,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: nobody dislikes, right, It's sort of it is a Goldilocks thing.
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it's easy to govern, right show,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: that's pretty hard.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: It's super hard for everybody.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well, Matt, it's a uh is the mom
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: Donnie Tuesday? Is it an earthquake or we don't know
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: yet a minor one.
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's a I don't think it's a
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: split the earth earthquake. But it's a it's it should
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: shake us up for sure.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: Well, this was a fascinating conversation. Appreciate the time.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: Great talk here.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: Well as you can say, I thought it would be
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: important to hear from sort of stage center, if you will,
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: on the center left wing of the of the Democratic Party.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: What are they thinking after Mom Donnie. I think Matt
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: Bennett in many ways is sort of speaks for that. Again,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: some will call it mainstream, but I understand those that
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: find that offensive by calling that mainstream versus something else.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: But the essentially I probably would call it the more
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: business friendly wing of the Democratic Party. I think they
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: would call themselves mainstream, they would call themselves the pragmatist,
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: but really, you know, the broad sort of Clinton Obama
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: wing of the party, which I would have said was
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: there was a distinction between the Clinton wing and the
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: opening fifteen years ago. I think there's less of that
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: distinction today as the party has shifted a bit to
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: the left. But as you can hear, it's interesting. I
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: will say this. I think if Matt Bennett is speaking
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: for the establishment wing of the party, they seemed to
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: be willing to fight this growing base inside their party
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: harder than for instance, the Thune, McConnell, Bush, whatever you
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: want to call it. The Bush Romney wing seemed to
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: have less fight in them, you know, to a point.
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: You know, there was a real fight in twenty sixteen,
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: but they they didn't, you know, they sort of they
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: didn't go all the way at the convention right ted
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: Cruise wanted to, and nobody followed. And I think part
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: of that problem is the mainstream wing of the party
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: didn't trust Cruise. They didn't trust Cruise is their vehicle.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: I think if Cruise had been more trusted by the
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: McConnell wing and the McConnell Bush Romney world broadly, perhaps
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: they get more enthusiastically behind Cruise. So that's going to
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: be what's intriguing to me about watching where of these
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: three buckets of Democrats, socialist progressives, the sort of mainstream
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: progressives and you know, sort of the progressive capitalists and
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: then this sort of Obama Clinton wing, which one of
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: them has to capitulate? Right? Where does the coalition leader
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: come from? Which wing of that party? And that's why
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: I'm I think you can see the energy at the
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: moment feels like it's coming more from the left than
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: it will be coming from the Obama Clinton wing. But
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: as he said, a charismatic candidate can change a lot
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: of things. But right now, chrismas all on the progressive left.
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: All right, let's do some questions ask Chuck. Matt from
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: Florida writes, Hey, I really enjoyed a recent episode on
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: the baby fee boomer generation. My dad, a boomer, watches
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: Fox News every night and often acknowledges Trump's flaws but
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: still see them as less significant than those of the Democrats.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: How much do you think outlets like Fox News have
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: shaped political attitudes among boomers versus broader generational or cultural factors.
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks Matt and Florida. Well, look, I think that honestly.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: You know, I've got family members who you know, sort
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: of over index on MS, and I've got family members
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: that over index on Fox. And I can tell that
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: they both over index you know, over indexing on political
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: content is what I would argue in them and and
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: what it is, it's it's you know, this gets it
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: to this the larger point I was making about how
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: OJ created the conditions for Donald Trump, and I think
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: we will say for Zoon, Mom, Donnie and Donald Trump
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: in that it you know it it sort of made
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: the algorithm. You know, the algorithms of today were sort
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: of created by cable news in the nineties in the
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: serialization of the news business. Way do you come back tomorrow?
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: We're going to see what happens tomorrow on the Lewinsky scandal,
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: what happens tomorrow on the Florida vote, Watch what happens
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: tomorrow on the war in Iraq? Right when as we
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: took this sort of taking what was the daytime soap
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: opera mindset and layering it over the information consumption world,
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: I guess you know, it's like first it was just
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: what keeps you interested, you know, and then you know what,
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: what what the Internet was able to do was refine
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: it even further than cable news did.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: It took what cable news was doing and refined it further.
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: So then you got sort of political agreement, but you
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: also got other cultural agreement. You had these different sort
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: of silos, right, some of the silos overlap. But but
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: we we see this and so look, I think both
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: MS and Fox and CNN, frankly, I think it is
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: certainly they both have this habit of but let me
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: tell you how bad the other side is. You know,
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: there's always an acknowledgement that the that that the side
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: that they may have more sympathy for is flawed. Right,
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: Foxes regularly, you know, Brett Behar will be get real
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: defensive about this, and he's not wrong. Brett Behar will
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, do the to be sure paragraph.
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: But then it'll also, you know, spend five minutes on
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: the Save America Act claiming it's just a voter ID
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: bill when it's not a voter ide bill. Right, it's
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: something much more dramatic, drastic than that. It's essentially make
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: make it nearly impossible for married women to vote bill,
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: you know, with with sort of it's not a voter id, it'
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: says a it goes to another level that that frankly,
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: is intentionally disruptive to the voting system. And and it's
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: sort of the point being is that it's it's not
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: it's not an nobody's you know, the right's not selling
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: this honestly, and and you know Fox isn't going to
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: portray that honestly. But then they'll acknowledge, yes, there is
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: some support, for instance, for regular actual voter ID right
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: if this were, for instance, voter idea, it would it
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: would pass. But it's not a voter id bill, you know,
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: even though it's being portrayed as that, it is not
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: that and so, but that's how you know this is.
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: And then you'll have an they'll you know, acknowledge the flaws,
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe of a Biden or something like this,
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: but then say, but look at how awful and outrageousness
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: is on the other side, which is why you get
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: the conversation that you get with your father. And it's
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: a conversation I get with whether it's I'm talking with
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: my MS relatives or my Fox relatives, which they will
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: and some of this I always feel like, and you,
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: I would ask you to ask yourself this question. Maybe
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: your father understands where your politics is and certainly doesn't
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: want who alienates you, and so is a bit more
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: accommodating and you're being a bit more accommodating I am,
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: and vice versa. I think you know, some of my
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: loved ones you know where, know where I come down
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: on this, because I'm they see it all the time,
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: and I certainly don't want to be alienated from any
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: wing of my family. I love my left winger relatives
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: and my right wing relatives. And so the good news
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: is we've all figured out how to talk about the
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: things that we have in common, about what we don't
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: like about politics, like, yeah, this is you know, and
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: you know what I'll get from a Fox relative watching
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: relative will say, look, I'm no fan of Trump's behavior.
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: I think that guy's got terrible character, but my god,
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: look at what they're doing over here. And then I'll hear,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: you know, on the mside, I know the Democrats aren't
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: very good at this, but my god, you've got to
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: stand up to this crazy man in the Oval office.
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: And so I just think it's the way, it's the
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: way the incentive structure works in media that has created
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: this formula for broadcasting, because it's all about just keeping
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: your core viewer coming back. Right. If this were a
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: political campaign, It's like all they're doing is tending to
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: the base voter, and if they can get the base
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: voter to come back, then there's always money in the
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: banana stan, right, there's enough money to be made. And
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: I do fear that what cable news figured out, what
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: OJ taught cable news in the nineties got sort of
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: perfected by the Internet algorithms of the early aughts and
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: then social media, and then this is how we've got
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: this broken information ecosystem where where even though there really
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: is individually and we see it all the time, we
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: have a lot of agreement that, yeah, characters should be
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: you know, emphasized again in politics, and you know, we
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: have these agreements, but we don't really have a shared
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: information eco where we can acknowledge you know, I mean
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: trust me is i'd like to and you know, some
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: of you may disagree with this. I'd like to think.
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: I did my best to try to like point out
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: the flaws left and right, and I got simultaneously accused
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: of both ciderisms and for being either a closet liberal
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: or a closet conservative. And because that but now that
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: was an intentional attack. Because what the Wings don't with
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: these professional sort of activist media people, they don't want
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: to screw up their audience, right, and so anybody that
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: is telling them, hey, those businesses are misleading you the voter, well,
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: you know, people like me and anybody else that's sort
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: of in this sort of rational I don't like even
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: calling it the middle. It's just sort of the rational.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: But where most of us live, we're a threat to
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: that business model a little bit. And certainly, you know
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: it is it is not you know, this style of
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: political content is not something the algorithms have been programmed
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: to celebrate. And I think that that's that's sort of
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: It's a bit chicken and egg here that I did there,
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: And I know I went off a bit on a
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: tangent there, but I think some of this is you know,
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: we want to simply say, oh, this is Murdoch, or
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: this is MS, or you know, this is the Comcast.
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: This is a business model that was learned from OJ
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: that was not done through a political lens. It is
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: ended up doing serious damage to our politics, but it
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: didn't begin intentionally as a way to polarize this politically,
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: but it has all Right, Ben right Spend from Colorado's
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: fourth district, Thank you for giving me your fourth district
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: tells me generally where you are, which I believe means Greeley, Colorado,
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. Appreciate all the work you put
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: into the podcast. I'm curious, do you think there's a
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: future where large pack spending could burn itself out due
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: to voter backlash? Could outside spending from big groups eventually
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: become a negative for candidates, reducing the incentive to invest.
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: So heavily appreciate the show. Thanks, Ben Boy. I was
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: very curious if that would happen on Tuesday, And in fact,
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: I have a friend in New York who told.
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: Me that the more.
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: The AI folks were doing attack ads on Boris, the
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: ores the candidate that came in second in in the
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: Upper west Side Upper east Side Congressional district, the west Side,
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: I guess we call it now just the west Side,
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: the Upper Upper Manhattan Congressional district. That's both Upper West
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: and Upper East the old Gerry Nabler district. She told
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: me that's what drove her into voting for the guy
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: that was being attacked, which I thought was was interesting.
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: I do think there's a point where you're too associated,
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: and this is where you know I I We're not
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: there yet. As I've said multiple times, it's hard to
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: find a campaign where the issue of money was what
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: was used to defeat somebody. But there's now a growing
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: mountain of evidence this cycle that candidates with the most
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: financial backing aren't automatic.
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: It's making some voters ask more questions. Whether it's Tom
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: Steyer trying to buy a place and he couldn't buy
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: a place in that fractured gubernatorial feel no matter how
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: much money he threw at it, And it almost was
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: like the more money he threw at it, there was
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: a point where it became actually a nons you know,
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: that became more of a non starter for people. I
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: think locally in DC, we had a congressional race with
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: the founder of Total Beverage, David Tron and he just
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: threw an enormous amount of money at trying to win
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: his old congressional seatback and he gets rejected. So I
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: think that there is a growing, at least in primaries,
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: a voter skepticism. I think it's more likely to show
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: up in a primary than it is a general. Right general,
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: you have more casual voters who are not paying attention
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: to who's funding one primary voters, you have a better
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: shot at having an elector that's paying a slightly bit
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: more attention and might be a little bit more. But
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think we're quite there. But like I said,
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: there's there's some green shoots of evidence that say this
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: that that, you know, as we become more skeptical of
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: the wealthy in this country collectively as a as a
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: political electorate, that will translate itself into anybody that's financially
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: associating with them in politics. So I think this is
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: the cycle where we're seeing, put it this way, APAC
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: is learning to diversify its investments and not put it
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: all in one super pac. And I think that the
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: smarter entities that are trying to certainly use their ability
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: to influence on pieces of legislation are going to be
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: more are going to be smarter to diversify their investments
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: in political persuasion rather than pilot into one big super pac.
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: It is, you know, the super pacification of paigns has
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: really sort of warped. You know, if you wonder why,
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: you know what, why Take the conversation I had with
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: David Holt about how he said that the gubernatorial race.
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: He said the actual issues that face the next Oklahoma
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: governor were not discussed once in the Republican primary for governor. Instead,
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: they were arguing over things that are not really part
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: of the job, whether it's trans that Oklahoma governor is
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: not really going to have anything about, and so it was.
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I do think you see these super PACs
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: can hijack the conversation in a campaign, which then can
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: steer it in directions that that are pretty anti voter.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: But I don't think we're fully at the backlash there.
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: But I think you're starting to see in certain places
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: and it's where you have the most you know, sort
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: of attentive electorate. Hey Eric from Austin, Right, I hope
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: you're having a good week. Could you talk a bit
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: about Kere Starmer and Labour's recent struggles. Are they more
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: of a result of his decisions or broader global conditions
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: and are there any lessons here for the Democratic Party?
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: Thanks for your work. Well, that's interesting. I mean, look,
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: I view what's been happening in the UK is less
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: about one party or the other, although right, like you know,
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: I then what you have is a frustration with the
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: larger political establishment. Well in the UK, the political establishment
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: were both the Tories and Labor right, both Tony Blair
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: and David Cameron. You know, to be to just pick
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: two former prime ministers as avatars here, right, one a
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: Tory one of them, or Gordon Brown, you know, another
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: Labor prime minister. But the fact is that Tony Blair
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: wing of the Labor which also produced Gordon Brown and
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: arguably Kure Starmer is more probably is more and more
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: more in line with a Tony Blair than say Jeremy Corbyn,
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: who could not win by the way right when he
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: was the standard bearer for Labor. Is Jeremy Corbyn the
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders of the UK labor movement. You can there's
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: certainly some parallels there. And then you see what's happening
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: with the Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, which is
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: essentially on the verge of replacing the Tories as the
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: Conservative party, uh or the right wing party of the UK.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: So I look, I've been obsessed with this because I
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: I you know, it feels like the UK has been
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: slightly ahead of where but you know, is Starmer Biden
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: and unlike and and and unlike Biden because there actually
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: was a special election for the person and for Burnham,
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: who actually ended up replacing him, you know, but he
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: actually had to win a seat in parliament first, So
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: there was some at some vetting that happened. It was
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: almost like they had a bit of a you know,
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: a primary and one one district. But you know, and
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: so you know, I think that's a that's an open question.
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: But I do think what is similar. I think there
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: are more things that we have in common with what's
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: been happening in the UK. They just have a political
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: system that can express it the outrage easier. Right, We've
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: had two impeachments, They've had seven prime ministers. Right, They've
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: had these these essentially no confidence votes within their party.
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: You could argue we've kind of have the same thing.
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: We just didn't have the system to allow for the
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: easy replacement of the party leaders, right, be it Trump,
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: be it Pelosi, be it McCarthy, be it you know.
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: But look, I mean we had we've had multiple speakers.
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: It took all the you know, so in our system,
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: we've had the same level of disrupt that their system
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: just simply allows for more. Now, you could argue that
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: our system is designed in such a way that it
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: actually prevents total disruption from like paralyzing the government versus
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: the UK has these paralysis moments from their disruption. But
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt this is the same large forces are
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: sort of creating this. You know, they had massive migration,
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: We had massive migration. This is fear of globalization. They've
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: had fear of globalization. So in that sense, the larger
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, identity crisis that both political parties
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: in this country have had. So of the two major
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: parties of the UK who are no longer argued might
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: not be the two major parties a year from now
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: after their next election. So I think there's a ton
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: to learn here. You know, David Cameron, I was recently
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: with him and we had this discussion and he thinks
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: that the number one thing Democrats, and you know, he's
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: sort of politically is probably closer to being Bill Clinton,
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: a Bill Clinton Democrat, than he essay a Mett Romney Republican.
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: That's kind of the politics of the UK, you know,
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: I think Cameron was definitely Cameron and Obama were really tight,
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: and I think their politics are actually pretty similar, even
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: though one was from the Conservative Party of their country
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: and one was from the Liberal party of the other country.
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: But Cameron, you know, the one thing he will say is,
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: you know, tighten up your borders. Just tighten up your borders.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: This is universal. Do that first, and then everything else
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: is persuadable after that. But that, the migration, the fear
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: of the other ring and all of that is really
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: that's what he would say, has been the sort of
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: the tipping point of this. And so he's been a
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: advity of getting Democrats to be a bit more conscious
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: of the border, a bit tougher on the border, and
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: you've seen there are more Democrats opening open to having
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: a you know, the saying no, no, no, no, we
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: got to have a we got to have a functioning
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: border here, and we've got to manage immigration better. It
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean you don't have to be an anti immigrant party,
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: but you've got to be a sort of you got
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: to be a law and order party, reasonable law and
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: order mindset on that. So but look, you then there's
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: then there's the charisma part, right. You know, Corbin was
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: kind of meely mouth. Starmer wasn't great at this. You know,
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: would Labor have been in better? I mean, they won
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: this huge victory, right, it's very similar to Starmer feels
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: like Biden. Right, Biden has this huge victory, most votes
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: that any Democratic president ever got. You know, it starts
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: out and even swings this which nobody expected and so
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: he had a huge opportunity in it. But it was
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: a reminder that Biden won because of who he was
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: it not because of who he was, And Labor Party
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: won because of who they weren't, not because of who
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: they were, and Labor's discovering that the hard way right now,
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: and it's likely. I think if you see a UK
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: election that has Reform and Green as the top two
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: vote getters over the Tories and Labor, I would read
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: that as a tea leaf that says take a third
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: party or independent candidacy in this country more seriously than
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: folks want to take it, because I do think in
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: that sense the frustration is similar and we don't have
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: another part right. I think that's why some on the
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: left are gravitating towards this DSA. Well, they're fighting, they're
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: doing something, and that's why I think the establishment wings
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: of both parties I think they need to get pressure
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: from the outside before they sort of get religion on this.
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: But we'll say I'm thinking, Look, David Hole is the
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: official mayor of the Check podcast. You know you went
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: to GW Big Revolutionaries guy, so you know we're gonna
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: I will give him that title. But the next is
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: probably the official mayor of ASCHUK. It's our friend John
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: IPII Ali. Here Harvey Seedars, the mayor of Harvey Seedars,
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: New Jersey. He has his third question that he has
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: asked me. So's he's getting closer to the five timers club.
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: And here's his question. I enjoyed your take on presidential blunders,
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 1: but I'm more curious about the opposite. What would you
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: consider the top five presidential actions? It simply worked moments
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: where leadership decisions paid off in a big way, and
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: so you know it's a This is not I spent
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit of research time on this. So the
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: first things that came to mind, you know, I was
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: thinking of decisions that weren't easy for their own political party.
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton and NAFTA. Now we can debate whether that
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: was a success or not. Right, I think NAFTA financially
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: was an enormous success. What it did for Mexico's economy
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: was incredible, and it really did financially benefit a lot
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: of Americans, but it really blew up our politics and
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: arguably is still blown up our politics. So I don't
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: know if I will, but you know, there is a
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: case for NAFTA in Bill Clinton. I'll give you another one,
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: George HW. Bush's decision to back the nineteen ninety budget
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: agreement that essentially was the beginning of the sort of
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: the Bush Clinton era of getting our fiscal house in order.
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: We got to a balanced budget by the late nineties
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: thanks to a decision by a Republican president to accept
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: raising taxes with a Democratic congres. Then a Democratic president
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: with a Republican Congress did a bit more tightening, a
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: little bit on spending and a little bit more in taxes,
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: and lo and behold, we had a budget surplus going
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: into the turn of the century. So, you know, I
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: think that whether it was Bill Clinton's decision to back
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: another tax hike in nineteen ninety three, George H. W. Bushes,
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: so both of those turned out to be really good
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: for the American economy and really supercharged the economy arguably
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: going in and certainly put us on a path. Now
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: those were positive decisions that some of the decisions on
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: China less. So I'll give you another one in the
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: Reagan era, Reagan's decision to sign the amnesty for the
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants that were in this country in eighty six.
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: That also was not the easiest bill for a Republican
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: to sign, and it worked.
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 3: It was.
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: Now there will be some on the right that say
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: it is why the next wave of immigrants still kept
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: coming because they knew that we had a history of
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: amnesty in this country. Yes, we're a nation of immigrants.
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: Every immigrant knows that eventually there is room for them here.
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: That just may take a generation. But that at the
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: time was a brave decision and it certainly helped solve
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: an immigration problem that sort of was created in the sixties,
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: and we can I'm not going to go deep into that,
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: but that was trying to right or wrong there. I
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: think Harry Truman recognizing Israel wasn't an easy call that
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: he was getting a lot of pushback to, saying, if
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 1: you do this, it could be a permanent split with
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 1: the Arab world, have a huge impact. We were at
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: the time really relying on Middle East oil in the
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 1: late forties, and it wasn't an easy political decision. It
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: turned out that those fears were wrong on that in
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: the air world was going to learn to live with
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: a Jewish state in their neighborhood, and that turned out
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: the Cuban missile crisis. It's a huge test for Kennedy.
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: It was a huge gamble and it paid off. You know,
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: you could argue that we were able to you know,
• 2:27:25
  Speaker 1: basically from there we create the Red Phone and.
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 2: We start.
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: Some arms negotiations that essentially, over time allows us to
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: win the spending fight of the Cold War and sort
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: of sucker the Soviets into bankrupting themselves. But I think
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: Kennedy's decision to sort of call the bluff of the
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: Soviets there in Cuba and doing the quarantine or the blockade,
• 2:27:59
  Speaker 1: however you want to discribe, was a big one too.
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: So it is right Nixon to China. Was that good
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: or bad. It was a good strategy at the time.
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: It made a lot of sense. It was risky, probably
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: has been a net benefit for the globe, even if
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: it hasn't been a net you know, and even arguably
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: for the financial power of the United States. But that
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: was so that's how I defined it. So, mister Mayor,
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: I'm curious whether you see those, so that that's how
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: I was trying to defind it what I would call
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: political close calls that aged really well. But I love
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: the question and I want to keep I want to
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: keep diving in on that. I think there's more more
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: to do there, and who knows, we may It's possible
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: the Iran nuclear deal will suddenly age really well for
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama, and we may someday put that on the list.
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: All right. Bill s in Newberg, Oregon, a frequent emailer.
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: I wonder, Bill, if you've made it to five yet.
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: I've heard you to refer to some voters as being trumpy.
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 1: What characteristics to find a Trumpet voter? In your view?
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: It's not what I mean. Trumpy is basically being supportive
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: of not just Donald Trump because he's the Republican nominee,
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: but supportive of the cause, Supportive of the you know,
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: sort of the isolationists policy, supportive of a little bit
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: of it. Is supporting the culture of maga sort of almost.
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: It's my shorthand for being this person isn't just a
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: Trump supporter. They're culturally mega, you know, this is where
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: they're comfortable type of thing, you know, And I think
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: of trumpy. Right, I think of Eric Schmidt, the senator
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: from Missouri, or I think of of Jim b of Indiana,
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: Bernie Marino, Right, I think that they Rick Scott. I
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: don't think they got into politics being but they have
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: become comfortably. I think they're more comfortable there. Mike Lee, right,
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: based I guess you would say based Mike Lee, not
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen Mike Lee, which I guess he himself by
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: creating an account that says based Mike Lee sort of
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: admits that he's was politically bipolar there for a time.
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 2: So.
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: But that's what I mean, right, that it's that uh
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: that you know, sort of a true believer versus where
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: i'd put your John Thunees, your David McCormick's, which are Look,
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: he's the president, he's the leader. That they're not comfortable
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 1: in that wing of the party, but they're not going
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: to fight it, right. I wouldn't refer McCormick as trumpy,
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: but I would refer to like an archmid ap. I
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: hope that helps in telling you sort of how I
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: distinct how the shorthand I've created here, but that that's
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: that's the that's how I'm defining that short. My last
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 1: question for the Hey Scott from p A ten again.
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: All right again, man, I got two of you. Keep
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: them coming. Tell me your congressional district. Right, this is
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: how how we how we all want to learn where
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: everybody's coming from. I love this Pennsylvania ten h. I
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 1: love uh York County. Had a good uh good friend
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 1: from college from York and it always blew me away
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: that that they said it was closer to flat out
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: of Baltimore than it was the flat to Philadelphia. I'm
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: curious how often you choose Baltimore versus Philadelphia. I guess
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 1: if you're on the Harrisburg side of things, that may
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: that may be the case. But anyway, Scott, let me
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: get your question. You said after your recent discussion Democratic
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 1: party divisions, I'm wondering, do you think there's a simple
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: messaging strategy establishment Democrats could use to align more closely
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: with the left without fully embracing the label. Is framing
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: it around shared policy goals an effective way to walk
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: that line? Thanks as always, Scott. I don't know anymore.
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: I think that has been what has worked. I do
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: think the credibility of the establishment is in tatters because
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 1: of Joe Biden and the return of Donald Trump. I
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: go back to the conversation you just heard me have
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: with that Bennett, where I've got a bit animated about.
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I think why Joe Biden's presidency to me
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: will always be a failed presidency is he had one job.
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: His job wasn't just to defeat Donald Trump. It was
• 2:32:44
  Speaker 1: to lead the country away from Donald Trump his presidency.
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 1: A better leader would have made the lot the idea
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: of returning to Donald Trump napathy thought. Sorry.
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 3: The and.
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 1: That for me is you know that I that that's
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: the prison with which I judge. I think his his
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: the campaign promise he was essentially making to the skeptical
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: voter that may have decided to vote for Biden because
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: they saw Trumps you know, a health threat because of
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: COVID or whatever. I think the deal the voter thought
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: they were getting is this guy is a transitional guy.
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: He's just going to manage us out of this Trump
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: mess so we can get to the next generation of
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: politicians to lead this country. And he failed that. Okay,
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: so so you're the and the establishment let him fail, right,
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: They didn't fight him hard enough. They sort of let
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 1: it be, because again it was always turned into a look,
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 1: you you know, you're you're only helping Trump if you
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: somehow push back at what Biden was up to. And
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: of course Biden made this what I think was a
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: bad attempt at co opting the left, allowing the left
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: to sort of give them a little power, and it
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: really shifted him to the left. So I guess what
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: I would say is, I think that strategy was the
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty strategy and the twenty twenty four strategy, and
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: I think it's I don't think the left's going to
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 1: accept the strategy. If if I were advising a more
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 1: you know, the Corey Bookers of the world, I think
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: I would take on you know, I would sort of
• 2:34:36
  Speaker 1: borrow what Chris Murphy's been saying without becoming a progressive
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: like Chris Murphy has been speaking. Hey, the Democratic Party
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: failed at the job it said it was going to do,
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 1: which was to turn the page on the Trump err
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: I think until the establishment accepts that they failed here,
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 1: I think it it's been a mistake that it's the
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: left that's leading the charge to get rid of Schumer,
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: that it hasn't come from the center left. When Ultimately,
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: you know, they should be acknowledging the failure and want
• 2:35:14
  Speaker 1: new leadership. And yet it's the left that is the
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: one that has more credibility on this. So I feel
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: like that's the issue, is that the establishment had its
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: chance to co opt the left with that kind of messaging.
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: It worked in twenty it didn't work in twenty four.
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: And I certainly don't think the left is going to
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: allow capitulate to the quote electable ability wing of the
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: party again because they view it as it's sort of
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: not dissimilar to what turned into the Maga movement. How
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: they're like, we're not compromising again like we did with
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: Mett Romney. We're not looking for the most election the conservative,
• 2:36:00
  Speaker 1: We're just looking for the craziest so bit. And I
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: think the left is going we're not looking for the
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: most electable Democrat. We're looking for the most activist movement left, lefty, progressive.
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: And so, I I don't know if just if this
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: is a messaging thing. I know if I were Corey Booker,
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't I wouldn't be just trying to can't we
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: all just get along messaging? You know, I'd be fighting
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: a bit harder here for the main the quote unquote mainstream,
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: and I'd fight harder for it, and I'd be angrier
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: about it. I'd become the angry moderate. If you know,
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: I'm mad as Helen. I'm not going to take it anymore.
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 1: Get these I'm tired of these MF snakes on this
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: MF plane. And you don't see that coming from that
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: wing of the party. You see the emotion and anger
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: coming from the base. And I think sometimes the temperament
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: the moderate in temperament, which is something that a person
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: like me is looking for. But I'm not here to
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: move people right that in some ways that's the wrong
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: You know, you need to make a better case for
• 2:37:26
  Speaker 1: why this is the right way, and a proactive case
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: for what democratic pluralism is without having to use the
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 1: political sciences science e term like that, why this is.
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: You know, essentially the Democratic Party is a coalition, right,
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: It is not a litmus test party. And yet the
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 1: irony is that the rise of the left is turning
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: it into a litmus test party. And somehow Donald Trump
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: became the non litmus test even though there's a huge
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: litmus test in the on the Republican side too. Just
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 1: ask John corn or Bill Passick. I'm waiting. I'm waiting
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 1: for the for the angry, the angry pragmatist to show
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: up on the center left. You kind of see it
• 2:38:17
  Speaker 1: showing up on the center right, but it's in the
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: form of Tom Tillis, right or John Kasik? Who have
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: who have you know? Who have bowed out or who
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 1: sort of lost the battle? I think somebody needs to
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 1: get caught fighting before a battle has been lost. All right,
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited for a j Deboonson. This is going
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: to be interesting. I am hopeful on the tray Young signing.
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: I am willing to let's see, you know, if a
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 1: more mature Tray Young surrounded by more talent than he's
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: ever been surrounded by in Atlanta, if it's a healthy
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: Anthony Davis aj DEBONTSA, you got an interesting young team there.
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: The best thing I heard, you know, the Siico and
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 1: me after our election night live stream. You know what
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 1: I did, I went back to watch this is the
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: best ESPN sort of. I watched a replay of the draft,
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: at least the first thirty minutes, because I wanted to
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: get my fill of Wizards conversations here. It's rare that
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 1: the Wizards ever get national attention, and since they the
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: number one pick there, we're going to get some. And
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: one of the experts on the ESPN panel said something
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: that I think was quite fair, which is, the Wizards
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 1: have all this talent, do they know how to win?
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 1: And that's the hardest thing for a team that's been
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 1: loser team for a long time, right when you're in
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 1: when you it's and I remember feeling that with the
• 2:39:52
  Speaker 1: Wizards in twenty eighteen when they forced a game seven
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 1: on Boston and then they just got blown out? It
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: was like, do they know how to win? And it's
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: funny how a culture there's never been a winning culture
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 1: in two generations of basketball here in d C. Who's
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: going to be that culture changer? You know, for a
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 1: brief period at Gilbert Arenas was that guy. For a
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 1: brief period, we thought John Wall was that guy. For
• 2:40:17
  Speaker 1: a brief period, there was hope that Michael Jordan's owner
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 1: could be that guy. Really hasn't been there since west
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 1: Unsel and most of you are going, who's west Unsell,
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: And that's part of the problem. But there hasn't been
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: this much. I mean, this is the amount of hopium
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: that DC sports fans are smoking right now. Right there's
• 2:40:41
  Speaker 1: hopium about the Commanders, there's hopium about the Wizards. There's
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 1: hopingum always about the Caps, but they've actually been the
• 2:40:48
  Speaker 1: best performer of the major sports franchises over the last decade.
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 1: And boys, there is some hopium right now with the Nats.
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: You know. It's a I'm very nervous that the Nats
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 1: are not going to be buyers at the trade to
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 1: I understand. I hope they just aren't heavy sellers. I'd
• 2:41:13
  Speaker 1: rather see more youth be brought up. Don't get me wrong,
• 2:41:18
  Speaker 1: but hey, let's get a little play you know. So what,
• 2:41:21
  Speaker 1: let's make the run. A young team needs to get
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 1: some playoff experience before it has a chance to actually win.
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: You don't want to, you kind of, you know, if
• 2:41:32
  Speaker 1: you've got a shot at getting a little bit of
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 1: experience for a bunch of these twenty two and twenty
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 1: three year olds, it's worth the effort just to get
• 2:41:40
  Speaker 1: there so they get a taste and they again learn
• 2:41:43
  Speaker 1: how to win. To my friends at the Wizards, go
• 2:41:46
  Speaker 1: make the winning the NBA Cup your priority next year,
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: early on. Get this young team, get them to win something.
• 2:41:55
  Speaker 1: I think it mattered for the Knicks. I know, it's
• 2:41:58
  Speaker 1: a silly little the NBA Cup.
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's sort of like it gave them confidence
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: and it gave them something and it made them helped
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: form that team. I hope the Wizards take the NBA
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: Cup stuff. Seriously. I think it's a chance for a
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: young team with a couple of veterans to sort of
• 2:42:17
  Speaker 1: clamp down and do those Tuesday Friday games and build
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: something here. But man, I have to tell you the
• 2:42:24
  Speaker 1: hope me I've Three years ago, the sports world in
• 2:42:29
  Speaker 1: DC was just the Dumps, the Wizards, the Dumps, the Commanders,
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: Dan Schneyder's Commanders, the Dumps. The Nats were continuing to
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: sell off and sell off and sell off, and we
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: were waiting to see if James Wood was going to
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: be worth it.
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 2: All.
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: How things have changed in about eighteen months, which is
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 1: the beauty of sports, right. It's also the same thing
• 2:42:53
  Speaker 1: why we love and hate politics, right. A lot can
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 1: change in a short period of time. But it's fun
• 2:43:02
  Speaker 1: to smoke the sports opium of the d MB these days.
• 2:43:07
  Speaker 1: So with that, I hope you enjoy your weekend. Please
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 1: check out what I got. I'm got fascinating interview on
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: Newsphere this week, so be sure to check it out
• 2:43:17
  Speaker 1: on Sunday. Susan delban the head of the D Triple C.
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 1: We have seen. How hard will the D Triple C
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: fight the left in these primaries or are they going
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: to try to co opt the lefts. This is a
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 1: taste of how leadership plans to respond to the rise
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 1: of the mom Donnie lefts. And with that, I'll see
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: in seventy two hours