Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - War With Iran Is Devouring Trump’s Presidency + Bringing Local News Back From The Brink

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Full Episode - War With Iran Is Devouring Trump’s Presidency + Bringing Local News Back From The Brink · The Chuck ToddCast

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1:50
Speaker 1: They're happy Wednesday, and welcome to another episode of the
1:54
Speaker 1: check podcast. It is a Wednesday in an even numbered year,
1:58
Speaker 1: which means we're the day after a Tuesday, which means
2:01
Speaker 1: if it's Tuesday, somebody was voting somewhere the somewheres that
2:03
Speaker 1: I that we should be paying attention to special election
2:07
Speaker 1: to replace Marjorie Taylor Green, that it was an all
2:11
Speaker 1: candidate jungle primary. That's why you see the Democratic candidate
2:17
Speaker 1: looking like they did really well. There was a whole
2:19
Speaker 1: bunch of Republicans. This now goes to a runoff. I
2:23
Speaker 1: wouldn't hold my breath about Democrats there. They you know,
2:26
Speaker 1: if they lose by single digits, it's a big deal.
2:29
Speaker 1: This is still a very conservative district. And in fact,
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Speaker 1: I think I read one stat that even in those
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Speaker 1: big Public Service Commission races in November of twenty twenty five,
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Speaker 1: I believe the Democratic candidate's still underperformed by some thirteen
2:42
Speaker 1: points in this district. So it's a it is a
2:46
Speaker 1: very conservative district, and it is it is going to be.
2:51
Speaker 1: It is going to go to the Trump endorsed candidate.
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Speaker 1: But you know it again, to me, single bidgets would
3:01
Speaker 1: be a big deal come the runoff, and it will
3:03
Speaker 1: be a low turnout situation, So the likelihood of it
3:08
Speaker 1: being closer than it should be is higher. There in Mississippi,
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Speaker 1: we had no really major primaries. Bennie Thompson, the longtime
3:18
Speaker 1: Democratic member of Congress there was challenged by someone younger
3:22
Speaker 1: that was not its competitive, but not that close. He survives.
3:28
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a little bit more to say about
3:29
Speaker 1: the battle for the Senate because we had a big
3:32
Speaker 1: a big change with the Montana News over the weekend,
3:35
Speaker 1: and in fact, my guest today as somebody I was
3:38
Speaker 1: conducting an interview about an hour before the big Steve
3:43
Speaker 1: Danes announcement. My guest today is John Adams. No, not
3:47
Speaker 1: that John Adams. That John Adams has been dead a
3:49
Speaker 1: very long time. This is not the second president of
3:53
Speaker 1: the United States or the son of the second President
3:56
Speaker 1: of the United States. Now, John Adams is the founder
3:59
Speaker 1: and editor of the Ontana Free Press. More importantly, he
4:03
Speaker 1: is the brainchild of something I've mentioned a few times
4:06
Speaker 1: here and I'm going to continue to mention it between
4:08
Speaker 1: now and April ninth. It is he is the ringleader
4:12
Speaker 1: here to create Local News Awareness Day, and we have
4:17
Speaker 1: scheduled it for April ninth. It's a Thursday, and between
4:22
Speaker 1: now and then as a basically a partner, sponsor, whatever
4:26
Speaker 1: you want to call me here, as you knows, I
4:29
Speaker 1: believe until rebuild local news, we will not rebuild trust
4:33
Speaker 1: in all media period. I don't care who you are.
4:37
Speaker 1: Our trust is built from the bottom up, which is
4:39
Speaker 1: why I think we've got to rebuild local news. So
4:42
Speaker 1: I am all in on Local News Awareness Day because
4:44
Speaker 1: we know there are actually a lot of great entrepreneurs
4:47
Speaker 1: out there. We've got one here in Arlington County Arlington.
4:50
Speaker 1: Now he's basically a one person operation, but there's a
4:55
Speaker 1: ton of folks around the country that are trying to
4:59
Speaker 1: fill in the app thanks to news deserts or terrible
5:02
Speaker 1: ownership like Jeff Bezos who decided Washington didn't need local news.
5:07
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of different ways that we got to
5:10
Speaker 1: the situation that we got, But the point is is
5:15
Speaker 1: that we're trying to raise awareness. There's a lot of
5:17
Speaker 1: local news startups out there, a lot of really good
5:19
Speaker 1: journalistic entrepreneurs out there. So April ninth is a day
5:23
Speaker 1: that we're hoping everybody pays a little bit more attention,
5:26
Speaker 1: finds out whether it's in their original hometown, their current hometown,
5:31
Speaker 1: where they've spent time, where they went to college, go
5:34
Speaker 1: look and help surface and help promote the good local
5:38
Speaker 1: news that we know is taking place. We just don't
5:42
Speaker 1: have the resources to bring the attention to it that
5:45
Speaker 1: we know that we should. So he's my feature and interview.
5:48
Speaker 1: We talk about the state of local journalism, the business
5:51
Speaker 1: of local journalism, the different models, and I'm going to
5:53
Speaker 1: be featuring a different local news entrepreneur between now and
5:58
Speaker 1: April ninth, at least once a week on this fee.
6:00
Speaker 1: So it is I think we all can learn something
6:04
Speaker 1: from each other about what works what doesn't. Is a
6:07
Speaker 1: for profit model possible? Is that I'm a bit skeptical
6:14
Speaker 1: of a long term nonprofit model. I think this has
6:17
Speaker 1: to become a for profit model in some form or another.
6:22
Speaker 1: But let's start with getting more attention and more focus
6:27
Speaker 1: on the local new startups that exists. So again, I
6:31
Speaker 1: guess it is John Adams. Anyway, the point is was Montana.
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Speaker 1: So at the end, and I just thought i'd share
6:36
Speaker 1: this little editing nugget. We had to drop the last
6:40
Speaker 1: three or four minutes of the interview because the day
6:42
Speaker 1: I interviewed him was the day it was the last
6:45
Speaker 1: day of the filing deadline in Montana. Now we didn't
6:48
Speaker 1: think anything was changing beyond that day was the announcement
6:51
Speaker 1: by former University of Montana president Seth Bodner that he
6:53
Speaker 1: was going to run as an independent. And it's a
6:55
Speaker 1: big deal. John Tester, former Democratic Senator, is endorsing the
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Speaker 1: independent over and above the Democrats that are running in
7:01
Speaker 1: this race. And then at the last minute and he
7:04
Speaker 1: was basically a few questions, how vulnerable could Steve Danes be?
7:07
Speaker 1: And you know all of this, and then Danes pulls
7:11
Speaker 1: that last second switcherou and it now puts Montana in place. Look,
7:16
Speaker 1: our conversation was irrelevant. That's why we edited it out,
7:19
Speaker 1: but I wanted you to know that I edited part
7:21
Speaker 1: of a conversation. That's part of the transparency that I
7:24
Speaker 1: believe in in what we're doing. And it will also
7:30
Speaker 1: serve as like, how come you didn't talk Montana politics. Well,
7:33
Speaker 1: that's why we didn't talk Montana politics. So after the interview,
7:37
Speaker 1: I actually have a little bit of an update on
7:39
Speaker 1: where I think Montana stands in the battle for the Senate.
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Speaker 1: Needless to say, it is in play. The question is
7:44
Speaker 1: how in play is it. This is going to be
7:47
Speaker 1: a complicated issue for the National Democratic Party because of
7:51
Speaker 1: the of the strength potential strength of this independent candidate
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Speaker 1: in the former University of Montana military veteran Seth Bodner.
8:00
Speaker 1: Also because it's Mississippi primary day, I decided. I told
8:04
Speaker 1: you I've been sitting on some book research for years
8:09
Speaker 1: that is about featuring and showcasing the all time greatest
8:13
Speaker 1: campaigns in every state. Well, it's Mississippi Week, so I
8:18
Speaker 1: thought I would reveal my top five all time campaigns
8:22
Speaker 1: in Mississippi history. And it's got a bit of a twist.
8:26
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of a history lesson and a
8:28
Speaker 1: little bit of a showcase. And I think it shows
8:33
Speaker 1: you how far where Mississippi was, where it has been,
8:38
Speaker 1: where it's headed, and where it is now. But if
8:42
Speaker 1: you're a political junkie, I think you'll enjoy it. And
8:44
Speaker 1: as always, if you disagree with my order, let me
8:49
Speaker 1: know what I missed. I'd love to this to me
8:51
Speaker 1: is open source history lesson here on that stuff, then
8:55
Speaker 1: of course I'll take some questions. But let's begin with
9:00
Speaker 1: what is now consuming this presidency and what may devour
9:04
Speaker 1: this presidency, and that is the war of choice. And
9:07
Speaker 1: that's what this is, and this is what makes it
9:09
Speaker 1: so precarious politically for Donald Trump, his war of choice
9:14
Speaker 1: in Iran. We're more than a week into it, and
9:17
Speaker 1: depending on which part of the administration you listen to,
9:19
Speaker 1: this war is either going to end very quickly, extend
9:24
Speaker 1: for quite some time, or evolve into something else entirely.
9:28
Speaker 1: And that uncertainty alone would be enough to rattle markets
9:31
Speaker 1: and policymakers. But boy, the first two days of this
9:35
Speaker 1: week revealed something else that may be even more destabilizing,
9:40
Speaker 1: a massive credibility problem, not just with allies, not just
9:43
Speaker 1: with Congress, but with financial markets. We've now had two
9:47
Speaker 1: days of trading since this war started this week right,
9:53
Speaker 1: and both days the administration appeared to want to manage
9:57
Speaker 1: or manipulate the markets. So on Monday, right, we had
10:00
Speaker 1: this interesting glimpse of how this presidency is operating during
10:03
Speaker 1: this crisis. Financial markets open the day already rattled by
10:07
Speaker 1: the war. Oil prices surged amid fears that the conflict
10:10
Speaker 1: was going to disrupt global supply. The White House quickly
10:13
Speaker 1: moved to calm those fears. President Trump suggested, I called
10:18
Speaker 1: up the CBS News correspondent, and he suggested to her
10:22
Speaker 1: that the war might end sooner than expected. Remarks that did.
10:25
Speaker 1: What By the way, he did this interview before the
10:28
Speaker 1: markets closed at four pm Eastern time, and those remarks
10:30
Speaker 1: helped ease market anxiety, pushed oil prices lower, pushed the
10:34
Speaker 1: markets higher, And then hours later he speaks in front
10:38
Speaker 1: of House Republicans, and what, by the way, what a
10:40
Speaker 1: disastrous speech that was. If he's trying to rally the
10:43
Speaker 1: troops or the midterms. I don't know if the troops
10:46
Speaker 1: are going to go through a paper mache wall, let
10:48
Speaker 1: alone one that is going to have bricks in it.
10:50
Speaker 1: But I digress. By the evening, the President was warning
10:53
Speaker 1: that the United States was prepared to escalate the conflict
10:56
Speaker 1: and continue fighting until Iran was, in his words, totally
10:59
Speaker 1: in decide defeated. Now it's possible he was reading from
11:02
Speaker 1: an old speech script. Maybe his mind he was trying
11:06
Speaker 1: to speed up the end of this thing, and then
11:07
Speaker 1: he had prepared remarks for the House Republican retreat. Maybe
11:12
Speaker 1: that's the thing with this administration, right, Can you trust
11:16
Speaker 1: anything they do? Can you at all trust what's coming
11:19
Speaker 1: out of their mouth means something for more than an hour.
11:24
Speaker 1: So in the same day on Monday, we got both
11:27
Speaker 1: reassurance and ended with escalation. So markets in the morning,
11:34
Speaker 1: military messaging in the evening. Is that what we're supposed
11:36
Speaker 1: to take away from this? Not one hundred percent sure
11:38
Speaker 1: it was really anything other than do whatever it took
11:42
Speaker 1: to calm the markets down, and we'll worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow.
11:45
Speaker 1: This feels like they are managing this by the day,
11:48
Speaker 1: by the hour right, and we know the only guardrail
11:53
Speaker 1: that moves Trump at all is the markets. He's been
11:56
Speaker 1: unusually sensitive to market reactions, you know, care of day.
12:01
Speaker 1: If he could pull undo the start of this war,
12:04
Speaker 1: I think he already would have, just like he did
12:06
Speaker 1: with his tariff on Liberation Day. But you can't unbomb
12:09
Speaker 1: the country Kenya. So now it appears the presidency is
12:14
Speaker 1: now chasing the markets. And this kind of rapid shift
12:18
Speaker 1: suggests something important about how this administration is covering right now.
12:23
Speaker 1: It looks a lot less like a carefully sequenced strategy
12:27
Speaker 1: and more like a presidency that is operating by the
12:30
Speaker 1: seat of their pants reaction instead of direction. It's just
12:33
Speaker 1: what I said on Monday, Welcome to quicksand. This presidency
12:37
Speaker 1: is getting devoured, ever so slowly by the quicksand of
12:40
Speaker 1: this war in Iran. Every attempt to stabilize one part
12:43
Speaker 1: of the situation creates risking instability somewhere else. That was Monday.
12:49
Speaker 1: Then Tuesday, a social media post from the Secretary of
12:53
Speaker 1: Energy briefly suggested that the US naval forces had successfully
12:57
Speaker 1: escorted oil tankers through the Straight of Moves. Well, guess
13:02
Speaker 1: what markets loved it. They reacted instantly. Oil prices plunged
13:07
Speaker 1: in just a few minutes. In exchange traded fund tied
13:10
Speaker 1: to oil futures lost roughly eighty four million dollars in
13:15
Speaker 1: market value. Little manipulation of the markets. Huh. And then
13:20
Speaker 1: the post was suddenly deleted. The explanation, all the caption
13:25
Speaker 1: was wrong. A staffer may have done it. They want
13:27
Speaker 1: to check that staffer's investment brokers account. By the way,
13:31
Speaker 1: maybe that's true. Do you trust them? Credibility matters big
13:37
Speaker 1: time at a time of war, and this administration has
13:40
Speaker 1: burned through so much of its credibility with the average
13:42
Speaker 1: American that you are going to see a lot of
13:45
Speaker 1: questions about everything they do or say, because what they
13:48
Speaker 1: say is not what they do, and what they do
13:50
Speaker 1: is not what they say. This administration has spent years
13:57
Speaker 1: eroding trust with institutions proactively. They go out of their
14:01
Speaker 1: way to make sure you don't trust certain institutions. Look
14:04
Speaker 1: what they've done to the FBI. They want the FBI
14:07
Speaker 1: distrust it, they want the irs distrust it, and they've
14:11
Speaker 1: done it. They've made allies question what we do? And
14:15
Speaker 1: now the markets, what are they supposed to believe? So
14:20
Speaker 1: when something like that happens, whether it was intentional accidental,
14:24
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt is gone. This is two
14:26
Speaker 1: days in a row. Look, we always had the rule
14:29
Speaker 1: of three for deciding something's a trend, so we've had two.
14:33
Speaker 1: But let's just say we're all watching on Wednesday to
14:37
Speaker 1: see are they going to play this game again? And
14:41
Speaker 1: markets do assume the government is trying to move prices.
14:43
Speaker 1: And it's a dangerous place when the global energy system
14:46
Speaker 1: is already under pressure for more because eventually markets will
14:50
Speaker 1: stop reacting to government reassurance. They will only react to reality,
14:57
Speaker 1: and that's a scarier place to be. I've noticed Secretary
15:01
Speaker 1: Treasury has been quite quiet. He normally loves to jump
15:04
Speaker 1: in and play the game himself. Meanwhile, the reality of
15:08
Speaker 1: the war is already becoming clear. This was amazing. During
15:11
Speaker 1: their brief into Congress, we learned we had already heard
15:14
Speaker 1: that the first week of the war was costing at
15:17
Speaker 1: least six billion dollars worth of munitions. Well, apparently they
15:20
Speaker 1: told Congress they burned through five point six billion dollars
15:23
Speaker 1: worth of munitions in the first two days of fighting alone.
15:27
Speaker 1: Two days. That's not a cost of the war, that's
15:32
Speaker 1: just the cost of the ammunition. That doesn't count the
15:35
Speaker 1: fighter jets that were lost to friendly fire, right, we
15:38
Speaker 1: know that's millions and millions of dollars just the ammunition.
15:44
Speaker 1: And now the Pentagon's reporting roughly one hundred and forty
15:46
Speaker 1: American service members have been wounded, most with minor injuries.
15:51
Speaker 1: But it is pretty clear what a RAN's up to.
15:53
Speaker 1: Iran is borrowing a playbook that overmatched countries have used
15:58
Speaker 1: with success in the past, whether it was what we
16:01
Speaker 1: had to face in Vietnam, what Russia had to face
16:04
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, what the Taliban did to us in Afghanistan,
16:08
Speaker 1: the insurgency that we dealt with in Iraq. This is
16:12
Speaker 1: the asymmetrical part, the uncoordinated part of the Iranian Republican Guard.
16:21
Speaker 1: This is why we are dealing now with an asymmetrical
16:26
Speaker 1: fighting enemy, and that is a scary place to be.
16:30
Speaker 1: Recent history tells us why. So meanwhile, the economy, So
16:36
Speaker 1: you have rising oil prices which will impact inflation, a
16:41
Speaker 1: potentially shrinking jobs market. Right, that was also happened last week,
16:46
Speaker 1: and it has made the S word start to appear
16:49
Speaker 1: stagflation fear because you've got oil prices, surging, shipping routes
16:54
Speaker 1: to the golfer under pressure. That's going to screw with
16:56
Speaker 1: the supply chain. We saw what that did during COVID.
16:58
Speaker 1: You're going to have the same supply chain issues going
17:00
Speaker 1: through the strait of home moves. Energy infrastructure across the
17:04
Speaker 1: region has become a target. Even Pete Haig said that
17:06
Speaker 1: the Pentagon was trying to push back on what the
17:09
Speaker 1: Israelis have been doing and bombing too much of the
17:11
Speaker 1: energy infrastructure. Aron's targeting energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Ua
17:16
Speaker 1: and Katar. They want to make this as painful as
17:20
Speaker 1: possible in order to have our allies pressure the United
17:25
Speaker 1: States and Israel to back off because of what they're
17:28
Speaker 1: going to do to the global economy and if we
17:32
Speaker 1: end up with stagflation rising prices combined with slowing economic growth.
17:36
Speaker 1: As Austin Goulsby, he was president of Chicago FED one
17:38
Speaker 1: time Obama economic advisor, he warned recently that when rising
17:42
Speaker 1: unemployment collides with an oil shock, it creates the exact
17:47
Speaker 1: kind of environment central banks fear the most. It's hard
17:50
Speaker 1: to deal with. This is what life was like in
17:52
Speaker 1: the seventies, and it sucked. Okay, my memories are sitting
17:57
Speaker 1: in gas lines every other day, depending on if you're
18:00
Speaker 1: an even number an odd number in your license plate,
18:02
Speaker 1: and you had a weight in line to get if
18:04
Speaker 1: it was your day for gas, and guess what, there
18:06
Speaker 1: was always a line on that front. Yet the administrations
18:12
Speaker 1: reporting exploring ways to bring gas prices down as they should. Right,
18:17
Speaker 1: you've got to try to do something. Now, what they
18:19
Speaker 1: may try to do may risk unintended consequences. They want
18:25
Speaker 1: to intervene. Somebody has thrown out this is such a
18:27
Speaker 1: classic Trump move. I know Trump hasn't put his fingerprints
18:31
Speaker 1: on it yet, but this feels like him. He wants
18:33
Speaker 1: to intervene in the oil futures markets, basically use US
18:37
Speaker 1: treasuries to mess around with the futures markets to try
18:40
Speaker 1: to drive down the price of oil. Let's just say
18:42
Speaker 1: economists reacted with alarm. One. Analysts warned it could trigger
18:45
Speaker 1: the mother of all short squeezes because the truth is simple.
18:49
Speaker 1: The Federal Reserve can print reserves. They can print money, right,
18:53
Speaker 1: and the Treasury can print money. Neither one of them
18:56
Speaker 1: can print oil. And if they try to use that
18:58
Speaker 1: money to manipulate the markets, oh my, this episode of
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20:57
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21:00
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21:36
Speaker 1: Slash the Chuck todcast use that code. Now. Democrats better
21:47
Speaker 1: be careful of something here right now because of the
21:49
Speaker 1: current shutdown involving TSA agents, right, especially as the war
21:54
Speaker 1: sort of consumes Remember the underlying issue that was driving
21:59
Speaker 1: the initial shutdown of the partial shutdown of DHS in
22:02
Speaker 1: the first place. Right, So, while we have all these
22:06
Speaker 1: unfolding events overseas and in global markets, we are still
22:10
Speaker 1: sitting with this partial shutdown of DHS. TSA agents are
22:14
Speaker 1: now facing the possibility of missing their second paycheck this week.
22:17
Speaker 1: I have flown this week. TSA agents are getting kind
22:21
Speaker 1: of grumpy. All of fellow travelers couldn't have been, you
22:25
Speaker 1: could hear it. Everybody's been extra nice, hanging there. Thanks
22:28
Speaker 1: for coming to work, That's what I said. That's what
22:30
Speaker 1: a lot of people said. But they're not getting paid.
22:34
Speaker 1: We've got spring break. Travel is just starting to kick in.
22:39
Speaker 1: This is going to be one of those things where
22:42
Speaker 1: public inconvenience is not going to care about the political
22:46
Speaker 1: reasons why we're in the situation that we're in. So
22:53
Speaker 1: Democrats have had leverage in this fight, right the unpopularity
22:56
Speaker 1: of immigration enforcement of DHS. But Christi Numb's been fired.
23:01
Speaker 1: There's kind of a focus on a whole bunch of
23:03
Speaker 1: other stuff. So in some ways, when do Democrats declare
23:08
Speaker 1: victory on this, they got Numb fired, They're going to
23:10
Speaker 1: get some changes. They're probably going to get mull into
23:12
Speaker 1: at least agree to some things. That is confirmation here.
23:16
Speaker 1: This is just like that last shutdown. They've made their point,
23:21
Speaker 1: they got some action. They certainly have the public confirmation
23:26
Speaker 1: by the administration to the American public that all was
23:29
Speaker 1: not right with the HS. They better be careful here
23:34
Speaker 1: right right now. They don't want to do it. You know,
23:35
Speaker 1: this is one of those classic cases when you're just
23:38
Speaker 1: just look at the politics of the situation. The party
23:41
Speaker 1: you're running against is just imploding on itself. This war
23:47
Speaker 1: with Iran is going to be a weight around the
23:51
Speaker 1: ankle of every Republican running in twenty twenty six. So
23:56
Speaker 1: this is a classic case where get out of the way,
23:58
Speaker 1: don't offer up your opponent a life flying and sticking
24:02
Speaker 1: to their guns too long on this partial shutdown, which
24:07
Speaker 1: is doesn't deal directly with the part of DHS they
24:11
Speaker 1: want to be dealing with that's already been funded. You're
24:15
Speaker 1: punishing the flying public, you're punishing college kits, you're punishing
24:20
Speaker 1: families wanting to go visit Grandma and grandpa or Easter
24:24
Speaker 1: in passover. So I think their calculation needs to shift
24:29
Speaker 1: here sooner rather than later, because this is one of
24:34
Speaker 1: those again, when the public is inconvenience, politics doesn't become
24:39
Speaker 1: very clean anymore. And if airline airport lines starts stretching
24:43
Speaker 1: two or three hours during the spring break travel season,
24:46
Speaker 1: people who normally ignore the Washington mess start paying attention.
24:52
Speaker 1: So it's this is a Democrat forced shutdown of DHS.
25:00
Speaker 1: And you know there can point finger point all this
25:02
Speaker 1: and back and forth, but they ought to be a
25:06
Speaker 1: bit aware of this and ask themselves do they want
25:09
Speaker 1: to get in the way of right now is a
25:14
Speaker 1: never ending set of negative headlines impacting elected Republicans. But
25:18
Speaker 1: let's go back to Iran a minute, because the bigger challenges.
25:22
Speaker 1: I do think if he could undo this, see what
25:25
Speaker 1: this is not going well? And there's because the problem
25:29
Speaker 1: is the enemy always gets to say and Iran is not.
25:33
Speaker 1: This idea that he was going to pull a Venezuela
25:36
Speaker 1: is clearly what he thought and now that ain't gonna happen.
25:40
Speaker 1: By the way, this commane son. Are we going to
25:43
Speaker 1: see him? Is he alive? Is he in the hospital?
25:49
Speaker 1: Was he is? He just sort of up up front
25:53
Speaker 1: for the Republican guard here? What's going on? Do we
25:59
Speaker 1: need this? Is there? Think if the Iranian regime wants
26:04
Speaker 1: some credibility still, they probably need to have some proof
26:06
Speaker 1: of life here on the Kamani Sun. It is interesting
26:10
Speaker 1: that he's been named the third leader of Iran since
26:14
Speaker 1: the Islamic Revolution in seventy nine. Well we've not seen
26:19
Speaker 1: or heard from him. Just something to keep in mind.
26:23
Speaker 1: But that gets us back to how does this end?
26:27
Speaker 1: What does victory look like? President has offered several versions.
26:31
Speaker 1: Oran must surrender. I don't think they're going to do
26:34
Speaker 1: that anytime soon. Ran must be rendered militarily useless. Well,
26:39
Speaker 1: how much do you bomb Tehran? How much infrastructure do
26:42
Speaker 1: you get rid of. The more infrastructure you get rid of,
26:45
Speaker 1: the more we're going to have to pay to rebuild.
26:47
Speaker 1: And this idea that we're not going to pay to
26:48
Speaker 1: rebuild a country we've bombed, it's pretty un American of us.
26:52
Speaker 1: We rebuilt Japan, we rebuilt Germany. This is what we do.
26:56
Speaker 1: This is how we keep credibility in the world as
26:59
Speaker 1: leader of the free world. Maybe this is not the
27:02
Speaker 1: way Donald Trump thinks, but it will be a stain
27:05
Speaker 1: on America if we're not involved in this. Now. He's
27:09
Speaker 1: also said Iran must be totally defeated. What does that
27:11
Speaker 1: look like? They're powerful phrases, but they're not strategies. Regional
27:16
Speaker 1: officials people in Turkey are warning that Iran and its
27:19
Speaker 1: allies have enough drones and missiles to sustain months of fighting.
27:24
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. The Iranians have a lower level
27:30
Speaker 1: of what victory looks like for them. The regime surviving
27:34
Speaker 1: is victory, so we could pummel them to death. This
27:39
Speaker 1: is like a bad version of ropodope, right. If they're
27:43
Speaker 1: still in power despite Holy hell terror that has been
27:50
Speaker 1: dropped upon them by the US military, in the Israeli military,
27:54
Speaker 1: and the regime is still in power. That becomes a
27:58
Speaker 1: symbolic victory against in a way that that that that
28:03
Speaker 1: is hard. I don't think we fully appreciate. It's like
28:07
Speaker 1: what happened with US in Vietnam and with the Russians
28:12
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, is Donald Trump can he handle months
28:18
Speaker 1: of this? Even the Iranians just surviving months will do
28:24
Speaker 1: huge We'll have a huge negative impact on the global economy,
28:28
Speaker 1: gigantic impact on the global economy which will hit us.
28:33
Speaker 1: Does it cause a recession? Right? If we're in this
28:36
Speaker 1: four months. The problem he's got is he doesn't want
28:42
Speaker 1: to send in any ground troops and the and the
28:44
Speaker 1: reality is if you talk to military leaders, are going
28:46
Speaker 1: to tell you you're not gonna be able to resolve this
28:48
Speaker 1: situation in the way he wants to resolve it, probably
28:51
Speaker 1: without putting in troops on the ground. And yet you
28:54
Speaker 1: want to talk about a catastrup probably the point where
28:56
Speaker 1: he would lose many Republicans on the that are elected
29:01
Speaker 1: office against something like that. So they don't want to
29:04
Speaker 1: risk that. But that's the problem when you start a
29:07
Speaker 1: war where you automatically box yourself in on things you
29:09
Speaker 1: won't do well, then you limit your ability to actually
29:12
Speaker 1: win the thing. This is why there were so many
29:16
Speaker 1: people trying to pull him back, including the Chairman of
29:20
Speaker 1: the Joint Chiefs. Let's not forget he was doing everything
29:24
Speaker 1: he could to make sure they were. Are you sure
29:27
Speaker 1: you want to do this, because it wasn't going to
29:32
Speaker 1: be clear how this was going to end, especially since
29:34
Speaker 1: we worked did not work. There was no coordination with,
29:38
Speaker 1: there was no opposition to coordinate with, and what opposition
29:42
Speaker 1: there was might have been killed by the regime during
29:46
Speaker 1: the protests. So this fantasy that Trump had that this
29:52
Speaker 1: was going to be he could find his Delci Rodriguez
29:54
Speaker 1: is Iatola Rodriguez, is just that fantasy. Do you want
30:01
Speaker 1: to point out a few other things, probably the surreal
30:05
Speaker 1: moment of the week, the old Russians and Witkoff and
30:08
Speaker 1: this sort of clown show that is, these negotiators that
30:11
Speaker 1: all are doing business with these Middle Eastern countries and
30:15
Speaker 1: then magically are somehow the negotiators here right. Well, President
30:20
Speaker 1: Trump had a phone call with Vladimir Putin this week,
30:24
Speaker 1: and according to the Kremlin, Putin offered several proposals to
30:28
Speaker 1: help end the war with Iran, and at the same time,
30:31
Speaker 1: apparently one of Trump's envoys, this is Steve Whitcoff. He
30:33
Speaker 1: was asked on television whether Russia might be sharing intelligence
30:36
Speaker 1: with Iran and he said, well, they reassured us, and
30:42
Speaker 1: Putin reassured him in the call with Trump that they weren't.
30:45
Speaker 1: And Witkoff said, with a straight faced to a CNBC anchor,
30:49
Speaker 1: we can take them at their word. So again, this
30:52
Speaker 1: is the same guy would not take the Iranians at
30:54
Speaker 1: their word, but we'll take the Russians at their word.
31:00
Speaker 1: If your strategy depends on taking Vladimir Putin at his word,
31:04
Speaker 1: you may not have much of a strategy. So, yes,
31:07
Speaker 1: the Iranians may be getting intelligence helped from the Russians.
31:11
Speaker 1: There's no doubt the Russians want. The best thing to
31:14
Speaker 1: happen to Russian this war with Ukraine is for the
31:16
Speaker 1: United States to be using up munitions that we're going
31:20
Speaker 1: to get rerouted to Ukraine and instead we're using them
31:23
Speaker 1: up and it starves Ukraine of resources. So of course
31:30
Speaker 1: Putin's going to play all sides of this thing. Of
31:32
Speaker 1: course He's going to do what he can to help
31:35
Speaker 1: Iran extend this war and keep the United States distracted
31:39
Speaker 1: from helping Ukraine, even though he already has a presidential
31:42
Speaker 1: leader who has little interest in helping Ukraine. But you
31:45
Speaker 1: do have a majority of the US government that actually
31:48
Speaker 1: does want to help Ukraine. Finally, there was a story
31:54
Speaker 1: this week that's getting a little bit overshadowed, but it
31:58
Speaker 1: really erose whatever credit. You know, Donald Trump was trying
32:02
Speaker 1: to always be this idea that he was going to
32:04
Speaker 1: get big government and big tech and big business and
32:07
Speaker 1: he was going to be pretty tough on them, and
32:10
Speaker 1: he was going to have a strong antitrust regime, and
32:12
Speaker 1: certainly JD. Vance whose credibility right, This was the guy
32:16
Speaker 1: that said no, there will be no new wars under
32:18
Speaker 1: a Donald Trump. And then he was the one that
32:20
Speaker 1: said he loved Lena Khan and there was going to
32:22
Speaker 1: be some really tough anti trust investigations of certain companies. Well,
32:30
Speaker 1: guess what. The Justice Department abruptly reaches a settlement with
32:34
Speaker 1: Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, in the middle
32:38
Speaker 1: of its anti trust trial. Just a year ago, the
32:41
Speaker 1: government was trying to break up the company for what
32:43
Speaker 1: for operating and what many believe was an illegal monopoly
32:46
Speaker 1: when it came to live events and concerts, and then
32:48
Speaker 1: suddenly a deal. There's no breakup, just a handful of
32:52
Speaker 1: modest restrictions. Even the federal judge overseeing the case expressed
32:56
Speaker 1: anger at how this settlement appeared without warning. He didn't
33:00
Speaker 1: know they were still in talks. Well, guess what happened.
33:04
Speaker 1: We know you the fact that we have reporting confirming this.
33:08
Speaker 1: You didn't even know that you knew exactly what happened.
33:12
Speaker 1: Live Nation lobbyists went directly to senior Trump officials. They
33:16
Speaker 1: bypassed Justice Department lawyers because in this case it doesn't
33:20
Speaker 1: look like the Justice Department was interested in settling. Nope,
33:26
Speaker 1: they went ahead and did a deal behind the back
33:30
Speaker 1: of the Justice Department. They stepped in to protect a
33:33
Speaker 1: ticketing monopoly that millions of Americans complain about every time
33:37
Speaker 1: they try to buy a concert ticket. This is another
33:40
Speaker 1: one of these things, just like he did to the
33:42
Speaker 1: MAHA people, right and signing that pesticide executive order allowing
33:46
Speaker 1: that pesticide in. He talks a big game unpopulism, and
33:55
Speaker 1: when push comes to shove, if a lobbyist gets his
33:58
Speaker 1: ear and more than just his ear and it comes
34:03
Speaker 1: with some sort of financial contribution attached and whatever slush
34:08
Speaker 1: fund he wants it contributed to. But we see that
34:11
Speaker 1: this is a absolute pattern. Right, Monsanto had never given money.
34:16
Speaker 1: They gave a million dollars. They get this executive order. Right.
34:19
Speaker 1: We've seen it with the crypto guys. We've seen it
34:22
Speaker 1: with the Pardons. Now you've got this live nation thing.
34:28
Speaker 1: I think it under mines. You know, we have some
34:31
Speaker 1: interesting new polling from my friends at NBC News and
34:35
Speaker 1: they mostly it was mostly on the on the Iraq
34:37
Speaker 1: war and Iraq war oops, Iran war. I don't know
34:41
Speaker 1: how many times I'm gonna Freudian slip that one. But
34:46
Speaker 1: what's interesting in some of the studies they've done is
34:49
Speaker 1: there is this group of hard independence. It's about thirteen
34:54
Speaker 1: to fifteen percent of the electorate. They're mostly young men,
34:57
Speaker 1: not college educated, pretty diverse group of men. This is
35:02
Speaker 1: not white men. I mean there's a chunk of white
35:04
Speaker 1: men in it, but it's pretty diverse between white men,
35:06
Speaker 1: black men, and Hispanic men, mostly younger, sort of under fifty.
35:14
Speaker 1: And these were the deciders, right, they went with Trump
35:19
Speaker 1: in twenty four and it's these policies that they don't like. Right,
35:25
Speaker 1: they're skeptical of corporations, but they're skeptical of the cultural
35:30
Speaker 1: progressivism of the left too. But Trump continues to sort
35:35
Speaker 1: of let them down, or at least remind them that
35:40
Speaker 1: he's not on their side. He may say things that
35:42
Speaker 1: sound like he's on their side, but his actions always
35:45
Speaker 1: put him on the side of the biggest donor or
35:48
Speaker 1: the wealthiest person that gets into the room. A few
35:52
Speaker 1: notes on the polling about Iran, and I thought i'd
35:55
Speaker 1: leave that and then I'm gonna we'll get to my
35:56
Speaker 1: interview with John Adams. What's interesting here in this new
36:01
Speaker 1: NBC News poll is that the numbers no matter how
36:07
Speaker 1: you ask the question whether you do you think the
36:08
Speaker 1: United States should have or should not have taken military
36:11
Speaker 1: action against Iran, forty one percent say the US should have,
36:15
Speaker 1: fifty two percent they should not. Then, when you ask
36:17
Speaker 1: the question do you approve or disapprove of President Trump's
36:20
Speaker 1: handling of the situation Iran, forty one percent approve, fifty
36:24
Speaker 1: four percent disapproved. So basically you're looking at identical numbers.
36:27
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be worthy to note which groups is
36:30
Speaker 1: it is the is the should have versus should not.
36:34
Speaker 1: If they should have ahead of the should not have.
36:37
Speaker 1: Here's where should have bombed Iran is ahead of the
36:41
Speaker 1: should not have bond Iran among voters fifty to sixty four.
36:45
Speaker 1: That's Gen X, that is in young baby boomers, that
36:49
Speaker 1: continues to always be the strongest supporting group of Donald
36:52
Speaker 1: Trump and MAGA. Yes it is. I'm self aware that
36:56
Speaker 1: this is my generation White voters narrowly forty seven forty six,
37:05
Speaker 1: and of course self describe Republicans seventy seven fifteen. But
37:08
Speaker 1: it's under eighty. As I told you, you know, eighty
37:12
Speaker 1: is a big deal. What is interesting This goes to
37:15
Speaker 1: the same thing I think I told you I hinted
37:17
Speaker 1: about this. Those that say they're a part of MAGA
37:21
Speaker 1: more than they are the GOP. They are more supportive
37:23
Speaker 1: of these strikes. Right, MAGA influencers are pretty against this
37:29
Speaker 1: decision to strike Iran. But the rank and file, if
37:32
Speaker 1: Trump says this is what should be those that say
37:36
Speaker 1: there are more of a MAGA supporter than Republican are
37:39
Speaker 1: right there with Trump on whatever he says. What's interesting
37:42
Speaker 1: And according to the NBC News data, and frankly, this
37:44
Speaker 1: is the other polling I've seen Republicans who do not
37:47
Speaker 1: call themselves supporters of the MAGA movement are much more
37:51
Speaker 1: skeptical about this Iran decision. Just fifty four percent support
37:55
Speaker 1: say the United States should have bombed Run. It's still
37:57
Speaker 1: a majority, but it's ninety percent among those that call
38:01
Speaker 1: themselves MAGA Republicans, and it's only fifty four percent among
38:04
Speaker 1: those that don't. So it is, as you can see,
38:11
Speaker 1: it's barely It's basically the core parts of the MAGA
38:18
Speaker 1: Trump coalition are the only ones that even have a
38:21
Speaker 1: bare majority supporting what he's doing. I mean it is that.
38:27
Speaker 1: That's what you learn from this polling. And that's on
38:30
Speaker 1: the again. This poll was done after the best news
38:33
Speaker 1: of this war had hit the voters, which was the
38:38
Speaker 1: death of the Ayatola. What new information is going to
38:42
Speaker 1: make this better? I said, ask that question on Monday.
38:46
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask that question again, all right, So
38:52
Speaker 1: there you go. We will watch all day when I say,
38:56
Speaker 1: and find out what does the administration try to do
39:01
Speaker 1: to mess with the markets, to try to calm the markets,
39:03
Speaker 1: and how are they going to get themselves so entangled
39:07
Speaker 1: in this that they end up erasing whatever credibility they
39:12
Speaker 1: still had with the financial industry. We shall see, all right,
39:16
Speaker 1: let's sneak at a break when we come back, a
39:18
Speaker 1: great conversation about the future of local news with my friend,
39:22
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Speaker 1: a day to think about you know, your your role
43:10
Speaker 1: in the environment and things like that. Well, with Local
43:12
Speaker 1: News Day, this is look our information ecosystem, You've heard
43:15
Speaker 1: me talk about it. Why am I even here as
43:17
Speaker 1: an independent operator these days? Right? The information ecosystem as
43:21
Speaker 1: fragmented in a in a huge way. The revenue streams
43:27
Speaker 1: for news organizations have dramatically shrunk and changed. As I
43:34
Speaker 1: often joke, a man named Craig decided Classified Z ought
43:37
Speaker 1: to be free, YadA, YadA, YadA. We ended up with
43:40
Speaker 1: suddenly no local news organizations in half the country. But
43:44
Speaker 1: the but as much as that seems like there's been
43:47
Speaker 1: bad news, there's been an incredible right. You know, I
43:50
Speaker 1: always say politics of worts a vacuum. Well, the information
43:54
Speaker 1: ecosystem of whores of vacuum, and where people live, people
44:00
Speaker 1: want to know what the hell's going on. As I
44:01
Speaker 1: always say, look at you, look at social media. How
44:05
Speaker 1: do you know that we all like local news because
44:07
Speaker 1: we think whatever's happening around us is important enough to
44:09
Speaker 1: share with the world. Well, hey, that's local news. Well
44:14
Speaker 1: that's the purpose of Local News Day in April ninth,
44:17
Speaker 1: get people more aware of people working in their own communities.
44:23
Speaker 1: Already trying to rebuild what was an important part of
44:29
Speaker 1: frankly civic life for so many Americans over the last
44:34
Speaker 1: two hundred years. If you want to go and read
44:36
Speaker 1: Democracy in America by Detokeful, one of the things that
44:39
Speaker 1: he will he remarked upon when he toured America to
44:42
Speaker 1: try to understand what made this democracy work, he was
44:47
Speaker 1: incredibly blown away by how engaged Americans were locally. Well
44:53
Speaker 1: that was thanks to what was an incredible local media
44:56
Speaker 1: that we had in the nineteenth century. Well, we're all
45:00
Speaker 1: trying to rebuild the information ecosystem, and we know trust
45:04
Speaker 1: is built from the bottom up. Well, somebody had to
45:07
Speaker 1: come up with the idea of doing this, and that's
45:09
Speaker 1: who my next guest is. It's the founder an editor
45:13
Speaker 1: of the Montana Free Press. It's John Adams and those
45:17
Speaker 1: of us that cover the issue of campaign finance. I
45:21
Speaker 1: was involved in the Meet the Press film festival back
45:24
Speaker 1: in the day and one of the films we featured
45:26
Speaker 1: had a starring role for John Adams, and it's how
45:29
Speaker 1: I first got to know him. So, John Adams, welcome
45:32
Speaker 1: to the podcast.
45:34
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks so much, Chuck, and thanks for being a
45:36
Speaker 2: part of this effort, and thanks for having me on
45:38
Speaker 2: the show.
45:38
Speaker 1: Well let me start with look I put it in
45:42
Speaker 1: my words, how'd I do fill in the gaps? Tell
45:45
Speaker 1: me what? Tell me what your elevator pitch is when
45:50
Speaker 1: you tell people about local News Day on April ninth,
45:52
Speaker 1: Mark R. Kelliler.
45:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well my hope, Chuck is in one of
45:56
Speaker 2: these days I can get you to, you know, say,
45:58
Speaker 2: if it's April ninth, it's local news Day.
46:01
Speaker 1: There it is. I love it. If it's April ninth,
46:03
Speaker 1: it's local Newsday, absolutely, but in all seriousness, I mean
46:08
Speaker 1: it is it is. I know what you expressed it
46:14
Speaker 1: was sort of when I think we last saw each
46:16
Speaker 1: other at the Texas Tribute Festival, and you know, it's
46:19
Speaker 1: all about how how can we take what is There
46:22
Speaker 1: are a ton of incredible entrepreneurs around the country. There's
46:25
Speaker 1: a lot of incredible people attempting to try to fill
46:30
Speaker 1: the void in places like Montana or frankly now where
46:35
Speaker 1: I live here in Washington, d C. Where we've become
46:37
Speaker 1: a local news desert. And I wish I were being facetious.
46:40
Speaker 1: I'm not. It's a it's a serious issue. And this
46:46
Speaker 1: was one way you thought, well, how do you begin
46:48
Speaker 1: to build a network of local news entrepreneurs. Let's start
46:52
Speaker 1: with a shared day of awareness.
46:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I think it's you talked about
46:56
Speaker 2: the fact that there's been this crisis in local news
46:59
Speaker 2: and obviously anybody who's paid attention in the last ten
47:02
Speaker 2: or fifteen years, that's that's that's an old narrative, right,
47:04
Speaker 2: we know that that's been the case for a really
47:06
Speaker 2: long time. That's not news. But I think you know,
47:10
Speaker 2: the idea for Local News Day is that there's actually
47:13
Speaker 2: so much going on on sort of the revival of
47:17
Speaker 2: this you know, critically important civic institution, which is your
47:21
Speaker 2: local news organizations. And you know, this Local News Day
47:26
Speaker 2: is really about helping Americans know where they can find
47:30
Speaker 2: that those sources of information where they live. You know,
47:33
Speaker 2: we are as we've lost sources of local news, our
47:38
Speaker 2: attention goes elsewhere. People are curious, people want to stay informed,
47:42
Speaker 2: people want to be you know, in the know on things.
47:45
Speaker 2: And we all carry around these incredibly powerful supercomputers in
47:48
Speaker 2: our pockets that are that are radically connected to the
47:51
Speaker 2: entire world, and so we can find out what's happening
47:54
Speaker 2: in in you know, Israel or Iran within minutes of
47:59
Speaker 2: it happening. But in terms of you know, what happened
48:02
Speaker 2: to you know, why is that street closed three blocks
48:05
Speaker 2: from my house? You may wait days to find the
48:08
Speaker 2: answer to that, and you might have to find it
48:10
Speaker 2: out on social media. You might have to find it
48:12
Speaker 2: out by asking your neighbors. And you know, in a
48:15
Speaker 2: lot of communities, they kind.
48:16
Speaker 1: Of left.
48:18
Speaker 2: Their attention which was you know, often started their day
48:23
Speaker 2: on their doorstep, right a paper delivered to their door.
48:27
Speaker 2: You wake up, you drink the coffee, you unroll the paper,
48:29
Speaker 2: you read the headlines, you you swear at the opinion
48:32
Speaker 2: page then you check the local sports box scores for
48:36
Speaker 2: the basketball game that happened the night before, what have you.
48:38
Speaker 2: And then you end your day watching the evening newscast
48:42
Speaker 2: and knowing what's going on. Sure that you might tune
48:44
Speaker 2: in for the national news, but then you stick around
48:46
Speaker 2: to find out about what's going on with the weather,
48:47
Speaker 2: what's going on in your community. And you know, a
48:51
Speaker 2: lot of those traditional sources of information didn't adapt very
48:56
Speaker 2: efficiently to the information environment that we're currently in. But
49:01
Speaker 2: there's a lot of us who understood, you know, saw
49:04
Speaker 2: that that that reality kind of taking shape and kind
49:08
Speaker 2: of hit the ground trying to figure out what the
49:10
Speaker 2: next phase of this was. The need for local news
49:13
Speaker 2: has never gone away. The appetite for local news has
49:17
Speaker 2: never dissipated. It's just that, you know, the business model
49:21
Speaker 2: that had supported it for so long had kind of
49:23
Speaker 2: failed in our current information environment. And so what this
49:28
Speaker 2: is all about is saying, like, look, people are reinventing
49:31
Speaker 2: the business model. There are successful local news organizations all
49:34
Speaker 2: over the country, for profit, nonprofit, independence creators, you know,
49:39
Speaker 2: people who are committed to finding out the facts about
49:41
Speaker 2: what's going on in their community and sharing it with
49:45
Speaker 2: with as broad of an audience of local folks as
49:48
Speaker 2: they can, and there this campaign Local News Day is
49:52
Speaker 2: really about highlighting, uplifting, celebrating, and connecting the public with
49:57
Speaker 2: those sources of local news that they may not even
49:59
Speaker 2: know exist.
50:01
Speaker 1: You know, it's I think we've I feel like we
50:06
Speaker 1: kind of sort of joked about this in one of
50:08
Speaker 1: the steering committees, but you know it, you know, local
50:14
Speaker 1: news now kind of feels like theft the craft beer,
50:18
Speaker 1: you know, boom, and I hope that and I think
50:22
Speaker 1: what we all figured out is, huh, we don't want
50:25
Speaker 1: three national beers Cores, Miller, and Budweiser. Right as soon
50:31
Speaker 1: as it became that, people suddenly said, wait a minute,
50:34
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, I know it seems like
50:36
Speaker 1: a weird but but now there's truth to this. Right,
50:38
Speaker 1: every town you go to now has their own beer.
50:41
Speaker 1: And we see this as, oh, isn't that great. You know,
50:44
Speaker 1: there's a local flavor, or there's a local this, and
50:46
Speaker 1: there's a local that. But in some ways it was
50:48
Speaker 1: because we didn't like the whole commoditized aspect of this.
50:52
Speaker 1: Right yet, the big companies scale was everything right there,
50:56
Speaker 1: There's less money to be made if you somehow made
50:59
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty different kinds of of of of recipes
51:03
Speaker 1: of beer. And I think that's what hurt local news
51:07
Speaker 1: is it tried to sort of participate in the scale
51:09
Speaker 1: economy when actually it was just antithetical to scale and
51:13
Speaker 1: then ended up being a mistake. But I sort of
51:16
Speaker 1: now I look at it and it's like, yeah, local
51:19
Speaker 1: news looks different. Craft beer is different. Sometimes, Oh you
51:23
Speaker 1: put a lot of fruit in yours, or oh your
51:26
Speaker 1: local news is based on just this one neighborhood association,
51:32
Speaker 1: you know, and yet different. You know it, if you're
51:37
Speaker 1: serving a community, then then you're doing a good version
51:40
Speaker 1: of local news, right, And maybe I'm butchering it a
51:42
Speaker 1: little bit, but the craft beer boomlet tells me that,
51:48
Speaker 1: you know, actually people do care about their local identities.
51:53
Speaker 1: You know.
51:53
Speaker 2: I think I think you're really onto something there, and
51:55
Speaker 2: I could take that a lot further actually, because you know,
52:00
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know this, Chuck, but I
52:01
Speaker 2: was also for a period of time the correspondent for
52:03
Speaker 2: the Rocky Mountain Brewing News, So you know, I.
52:06
Speaker 1: Did not know that one that was not a that
52:08
Speaker 1: was not a feeder question.
52:10
Speaker 2: You know, it's not on my resume, I should put
52:12
Speaker 2: it on there. But you know, it's really that's a
52:15
Speaker 2: great metaphor because you know what local breweries are, you know,
52:19
Speaker 2: I'll take Montana for example, which I know well, you know,
52:22
Speaker 2: they're public houses. It's not just that people go there
52:26
Speaker 2: for the unique flavor, right they also go there for community.
52:29
Speaker 2: They go there for connection. And I think that's one
52:32
Speaker 2: of those things that local news really has the power
52:34
Speaker 2: to do, which is connect people like you can have
52:36
Speaker 2: disagreements and whatnot, but you're disagreeing at least around the
52:40
Speaker 2: same set of facts about what you read in your
52:42
Speaker 2: your local paper, heard on your local newscasts, or saw
52:44
Speaker 2: on your local you know, your local evening newscasts, and
52:48
Speaker 2: so you know, and like those those local beers, you know.
52:52
Speaker 2: I think what we have found it has been so
52:54
Speaker 2: successful in you know, particularly what I've experienced mostly in
52:58
Speaker 2: the last ten years in the nonprofit news space, is
53:01
Speaker 2: there isn't a one size fits all business model or
53:05
Speaker 2: editorial strategy or solution to the local news challenge. The
53:12
Speaker 2: organizations that we're seeing that are having so much success
53:16
Speaker 2: are you know, entities that really know their community. They
53:19
Speaker 2: know what their community, you know, is looking for what's
53:22
Speaker 2: the gap, you know, what what is the information that
53:24
Speaker 2: people most need or most want, And so you know,
53:29
Speaker 2: they're they're so tied in with what is happening. They're
53:33
Speaker 2: part of the community that they build trust, They're reflecting
53:37
Speaker 2: the flavor of the community in many ways, like you
53:40
Speaker 2: you can sense the familiarity because you recognize the people,
53:46
Speaker 2: you recognize the voices, you you recognize, you know, the
53:49
Speaker 2: issues that are happening around you, and you know, like
53:52
Speaker 2: you know, you know, a lot of craft breweries will
53:55
Speaker 2: you know, the water that they have access to is
53:59
Speaker 2: part of what makes their beer special. You know, the
54:02
Speaker 2: makeup of the water is a big deal. You know,
54:04
Speaker 2: people use local barley, local malt, local hops. You know,
54:10
Speaker 2: maybe if you're in certain parts of the country like Montana,
54:13
Speaker 2: you might add a huckleberry beer to your mix during
54:16
Speaker 2: huckleberry season. And you know, these are all things that
54:18
Speaker 2: people see kind of reflected. They see their lived experience,
54:23
Speaker 2: their world reflected in this thing, and that's something that
54:25
Speaker 2: they feel an attachment to. And I think that is
54:28
Speaker 2: what we're trying to do with Local News Day is
54:31
Speaker 2: sort of recreate that same kind of connection, that same
54:34
Speaker 2: kind of attachment with the information about what's happening around
54:38
Speaker 2: them and empowering people.
54:41
Speaker 1: I like, look, let's talk about your origin story a
54:43
Speaker 1: little bit with the Montana Free Press. I mean when
54:46
Speaker 1: you were telling me pieces of it because we have
54:49
Speaker 1: a mutual friend, Phil Kent, who was a longtime executive
54:53
Speaker 1: at the in the early days with Ted Turner at CNN,
54:55
Speaker 1: and I serve with Phil Kent on a board at
54:57
Speaker 1: GW for the School of Media and Public of Faith.
55:00
Speaker 1: And you tell this great story where he saw the
55:04
Speaker 1: documentary that you were in. Let's talk about the documentary
55:07
Speaker 1: is a documentary about dark money and Montana's you know,
55:10
Speaker 1: sort of the and this was a story about how
55:12
Speaker 1: there was a bipartisan effort to try to you know,
55:15
Speaker 1: Montana is different, right, the whole fight against the copper,
55:20
Speaker 1: against the longtime copper barons. I guess you might call
55:24
Speaker 1: them really sort of create you know, there really is
55:28
Speaker 1: a legacy of you know, skepticism of outside money, skepticism
55:33
Speaker 1: of outsideer, whether you're left or right. You know, it
55:35
Speaker 1: sort of explains why Montana politicians in general are not
55:39
Speaker 1: cookie cutter, right, no matter which side of the ise
55:42
Speaker 1: they send. You're like, now, a Montana Republican is not
55:46
Speaker 1: like a regular Republican, and a Montana Democrat is not
55:48
Speaker 1: like a national Democrat. They're just there. And because there
55:52
Speaker 1: is a Montana identity that is distinctive, that goes all
55:56
Speaker 1: the way back, frankly to it to its sort of
55:58
Speaker 1: early days as a state. And you were sort of
56:03
Speaker 1: the featured reporter in this documentary. But but but tell
56:06
Speaker 1: me about the dock and then what happened to your
56:09
Speaker 1: career in the middle of the dock.
56:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it's one of those situations that
56:16
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't really have any idea what I
56:19
Speaker 2: was getting into when Kimberly read the documentary, filmmaker reached
56:23
Speaker 2: out to me. Kimberlys a helen and native born and
56:27
Speaker 2: raised here in Montana. And you know, interestingly Dark Money
56:32
Speaker 2: is you know, it was a national documentary. It publish,
56:35
Speaker 2: you know, it was it was It aired on PBS
56:37
Speaker 2: stations all over the country at a big, natural, national
56:40
Speaker 2: theatrical release, and certainly the audience for it is a
56:43
Speaker 2: national audience, but it really is local reporting in a
56:46
Speaker 2: large part. It's it's it's one of those stories. It's
56:48
Speaker 2: sort of kind of drives home, how you know, the
56:53
Speaker 2: powers and the influence of uh, you know, at the
56:57
Speaker 2: national level can really impact you know, low communities and
57:01
Speaker 2: local public policy. And that's what dark money was about.
57:04
Speaker 2: And I was a reporter for the Great False Tribune.
57:06
Speaker 2: I was the Capital bureau chief for the Great False Tribune,
57:10
Speaker 2: which was you know, at the time, if not the most,
57:13
Speaker 2: definitely one of the most prominent and widely read newspapers
57:18
Speaker 2: that was Gannett. It was the only Gannett owned property
57:21
Speaker 2: in Montana still is Lee Newspapers. Leave sort of famously
57:27
Speaker 2: liberated five of the largest state dailies from the Copper Collar,
57:33
Speaker 2: which was ownership by the Anacona Company, which you know,
57:36
Speaker 2: alludes back to that history you talked about with the
57:39
Speaker 2: copper barons, and you know, that one hundred year old
57:41
Speaker 2: history of corruption and big money interest trying to buy
57:45
Speaker 2: our politics at the local, you know, the legislative level
57:50
Speaker 2: and on up. Is a fight that we've been just
57:54
Speaker 2: steeped in here in Montana forever. And in nineteen seventy two,
57:58
Speaker 2: Montana's got together and called a constitutional convention. We just
58:02
Speaker 2: celebrated the fiftieth anniversary a couple of years ago. The
58:06
Speaker 2: passage of the of the New constitution. But that new
58:11
Speaker 2: constitution was really aimed at limiting the role of outside
58:18
Speaker 2: corporate influence in our politics. It had strict limits on
58:21
Speaker 2: campaign finance. And what we saw in twenty thirteen, twenty
58:26
Speaker 2: fifteen and beyond was, you know, we had my reporting
58:30
Speaker 2: had started to reveal like how this dark money was
58:33
Speaker 2: really infiltrating these these local legislative elections, primarily super local.
58:37
Speaker 1: It was a stunning discoveries. You're just like, wait a minute,
58:41
Speaker 1: this company's doing what in what little state praise? You know?
58:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean candidates were coming out of nowhere and
58:48
Speaker 2: just getting enormous support through you know, mostly through postcards. Right,
58:54
Speaker 2: so people's inboxes just filling up with these campaign mailers
58:57
Speaker 2: with some really heinous message and allegation, sometimes just a
59:01
Speaker 2: week before the election, right just a few days before
59:03
Speaker 2: the election. So the person on the other side of
59:05
Speaker 2: that attack didn't even have a chance to respond. You
59:10
Speaker 2: didn't know who the attacks were coming from, and you
59:12
Speaker 2: didn't have an opportunity to respond. And it turned out,
59:16
Speaker 2: and the documentary kind of really spells all this out,
59:19
Speaker 2: but it turned out that there was a kind of
59:21
Speaker 2: a group that was orchestrating all of this on behalf
59:26
Speaker 2: of candidates and in some cases illegally coordinating with those
59:30
Speaker 2: candidates campaign. So they weren't disclosing they were providing very
59:34
Speaker 2: valuable political resources to a campaign, very valuable you know,
59:41
Speaker 2: attacks and other services. But there was weren't being disclosed.
59:46
Speaker 2: And so we, you know, those of us who like
59:48
Speaker 2: to spend time digging around in files in the basement
59:50
Speaker 2: of the Commission of Political Practices office, we couldn't see
59:54
Speaker 2: who Like this was totally undisclosed money. We didn't know
59:57
Speaker 2: how much they were spending. We didn't know who was
59:59
Speaker 2: sp I mean it, We didn't know, you know, whether
1:00:02
Speaker 2: or not these candidates were, you know, directly involved with it.
1:00:06
Speaker 2: Fast forward a few years, there was a series of
1:00:11
Speaker 2: trials that aimed to bring some of these elected officials
1:00:17
Speaker 2: to account for this illegal coordination. And during that period
1:00:20
Speaker 2: of time, I had also been laid off at the
1:00:22
Speaker 2: Great False Tribune, and so I followed this story as
1:00:25
Speaker 2: a political reporter for the state, one of the state's
1:00:27
Speaker 2: largest dailies. And then I found myself without a job
1:00:30
Speaker 2: in the middle of the twenty fifteen legislative session, and
1:00:35
Speaker 2: that was what sort of gave birth to the idea
1:00:38
Speaker 2: of Montana Free Press because I looked around the state
1:00:41
Speaker 2: at you know, where could I continue to do this
1:00:44
Speaker 2: kind of brand of journalism, And I didn't really see
1:00:46
Speaker 2: any viable options. You know, I saw a continued decline
1:00:52
Speaker 2: of the print newspapers that were still you know active
1:00:56
Speaker 2: in the state.
1:00:56
Speaker 1: How many how many quote reporters were you can be
1:01:00
Speaker 1: against in the Capitol Press corps.
1:01:02
Speaker 2: Well at the time, you know what, by the time
1:01:05
Speaker 2: I left, it was, I know, there was you know,
1:01:07
Speaker 2: a handful of TV reporters that would kind of cycle through.
1:01:10
Speaker 2: Usually they weren't there for more than just a session
1:01:13
Speaker 2: or two. Yeah, and then Montana's a very small media market,
1:01:17
Speaker 2: so any of the good TV reporters immediate as soon
1:01:20
Speaker 2: as their contract was up, went to a bigger market.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: So you didn't have a lot of except for our
1:01:25
Speaker 1: friend Mariza.
1:01:26
Speaker 2: Except for our friend Mariza exactly. She's she's one of
1:01:29
Speaker 2: the exceptions for sure. So you know, there was two
1:01:34
Speaker 2: sort of legendary longtime state state House reporters, Chuck Johnson
1:01:38
Speaker 2: and Mike Dennison, who were anchored the lead newspapers bureau.
1:01:41
Speaker 2: And those are the guys who I really kind of
1:01:43
Speaker 2: looked at as my competition. Chuck had been doing it
1:01:45
Speaker 2: for at that point, you know, probably close to forty years.
1:01:49
Speaker 2: I'd followed a Mike and Chuck's footsteps in both the
1:01:52
Speaker 2: Great Falls Tribune and then they went on to the
1:01:54
Speaker 2: lead Bureau. And so we were friendly competitors, you know,
1:02:00
Speaker 2: much as I'm sure you kind of experience, you know
1:02:02
Speaker 2: in DC. You know, you want to beat them on
1:02:04
Speaker 2: a scoop, but you also, you know, have fun conversations
1:02:08
Speaker 2: in the basement.
1:02:08
Speaker 1: Of the team press score against those those partisan you
1:02:12
Speaker 1: know guys left and right trying to keep the press out.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: You know, we all band together on that stuff.
1:02:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then a few months after I, after I
1:02:21
Speaker 2: was let go from the Tribune, Mike and Chuck were
1:02:26
Speaker 2: basically forcing a retirement from Lee. And so within just
1:02:29
Speaker 2: a matter of months, the you know, three of the
1:02:32
Speaker 2: most experienced state House reporters in the Capitol were out
1:02:37
Speaker 2: on the street, so to speak, and and there was
1:02:40
Speaker 2: just a lot of concern about who was going to
1:02:43
Speaker 2: cover what's going on. And we were still in the
1:02:45
Speaker 2: midst of all this dark money stuff, and you know,
1:02:47
Speaker 2: the need for legislative coverage certainly hadn't gone away, and
1:02:53
Speaker 2: that you know, and That's what I really understood. You know,
1:02:56
Speaker 2: Montana Free Press was founded on the belief that this
1:02:59
Speaker 2: journalist has value, whether or not it is uh, you know, clickbait,
1:03:04
Speaker 2: whether or not it is the kind of you know,
1:03:07
Speaker 2: as as news models had really kind of focused on
1:03:10
Speaker 2: on views over news. It's sort of like the the
1:03:13
Speaker 2: main value proposition to advertisers. I still believe that there
1:03:20
Speaker 2: were people. There might not be as many advertisers who
1:03:23
Speaker 2: are interested in it, but the individuals still cared about
1:03:26
Speaker 2: that kind of reporting. So I found in Montana Free
1:03:28
Speaker 2: Press is a nonprofit kind of focused on state house
1:03:31
Speaker 2: coverage with the with the idea that those who understood
1:03:34
Speaker 2: how important that coverage is would support it through their
1:03:38
Speaker 2: you know, charitable giving their philanthropic support.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: You know, I was talking with somebody the other day
1:03:51
Speaker 1: about this issue on news and it was just sort
1:03:54
Speaker 1: of this person made a point of how particularly the
1:03:58
Speaker 1: larger local needs operations didn't didn't ever bring the readers
1:04:07
Speaker 1: into the challenge that frankly, local news was facing for
1:04:11
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years. Right this issue, you know,
1:04:15
Speaker 1: the concern about shrinking newspaper coverage of state capitals was
1:04:20
Speaker 1: a huge issue in the nineties and then it became
1:04:24
Speaker 1: a really problematic in the early odds. And it was
1:04:27
Speaker 1: the sort of the first round of consolidation, you know,
1:04:30
Speaker 1: the initial ganetification of local news, right when Gannett gobbled
1:04:35
Speaker 1: up all these dailies back in the late eighties early nineties.
1:04:40
Speaker 2: Kindly the one my hometown daily that my mom worked for.
1:04:43
Speaker 1: And then you had night Rider was doing it, McClatchy
1:04:46
Speaker 1: was doing it. The night Ritter swallowed McClatchy or McLatchy
1:04:50
Speaker 1: swallowed Nightrider, I can't remember which. And but this person
1:04:56
Speaker 1: pointed out they never brought the reader in to explain,
1:05:02
Speaker 1: you know, how the economics were changing, and hey, this
1:05:04
Speaker 1: is why the Sunday paper is now seven dollars instead
1:05:09
Speaker 1: of a dollar fifty. This is why you can't just
1:05:13
Speaker 1: use pocket change to go to a newspaper vending machine
1:05:16
Speaker 1: and get a copy of the paper. Right it was,
1:05:18
Speaker 1: we were getting up to two dollars a paper, three
1:05:20
Speaker 1: dollars of paper, which is still a bargain considering everything
1:05:23
Speaker 1: you got in in. But it was necessary in order
1:05:26
Speaker 1: to do that. What I think is interesting, it's sort
1:05:30
Speaker 1: of like local news didn't bring the community along with
1:05:33
Speaker 1: its problems in the eighties and nineties and nineties and odds.
1:05:37
Speaker 1: But now as we're re as local was reinventing itself,
1:05:41
Speaker 1: you do get the sense that people understand. And I
1:05:43
Speaker 1: guess part of it is social media has taught us
1:05:46
Speaker 1: the power of community, right, And it's like, well, you
1:05:49
Speaker 1: can create You don't have to create a community, this
1:05:52
Speaker 1: one already exists, just just just tap into it. But
1:05:58
Speaker 1: if you let readers know which you're up to, then
1:06:01
Speaker 1: you'll find out what readers want, right.
1:06:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, support, And I think that, you know, I I
1:06:07
Speaker 2: really kind of cringe and roll my eyes. You'll hear
1:06:11
Speaker 2: some folks talk about, you know, the need for media literacy,
1:06:14
Speaker 2: and I don't disagree that they're you know that that
1:06:17
Speaker 2: that that's a real challenge, but I think it also
1:06:20
Speaker 2: really sort of under sells the general public's like desire
1:06:23
Speaker 2: to be informed. And I don't think it's just that,
1:06:27
Speaker 2: and I don't suggest that that's what you're saying, Chuck,
1:06:29
Speaker 2: But it's not just that the news industry did didn't
1:06:32
Speaker 2: do a good enough job bringing readers along on the
1:06:34
Speaker 2: on the problem. You know, part of it is I
1:06:36
Speaker 2: think audiences were distracted. You know, we had these new,
1:06:41
Speaker 2: shiny very attractive objects in smartphones that were uh in
1:06:47
Speaker 2: social media. I mean these things. I mean, in my
1:06:52
Speaker 2: personal opinion, we let this genie out of the bottle
1:06:55
Speaker 2: without really thinking it through when it comes to, you know,
1:06:58
Speaker 2: putting super connected super computer is in everybody's pocket and
1:07:01
Speaker 2: then unleashing social media and algorithms on the population without
1:07:06
Speaker 2: any real like thought about what that would do and
1:07:09
Speaker 2: how those those motivation.
1:07:11
Speaker 1: Good news for you, John, is that we're you know,
1:07:13
Speaker 1: this time, as we're rolling out artificial intelligence and AI
1:07:17
Speaker 1: for everybody innybody's hands, we're we're we're we're doing such
1:07:21
Speaker 1: a better Oh wait right, yeah, we're literally the tech
1:07:25
Speaker 1: companies who already completely broke the information ecosystem, totally distorted it,
1:07:31
Speaker 1: totally ruined it. And we're trusting these people that come
1:07:35
Speaker 1: up with sort of permanent facts on behalf of society,
1:07:39
Speaker 1: which is essentially what AI is going to. They're going
1:07:41
Speaker 1: to normative, as somebody put it to me, you know,
1:07:45
Speaker 1: AI is sort of what becomes normalized. Yeah, eighty percent
1:07:50
Speaker 1: of what's normalized is actually true, but twenty percent of
1:07:53
Speaker 1: what normal is normalized over time is not. You know,
1:07:57
Speaker 1: you know, take the take the myth about I mean
1:08:00
Speaker 1: this just came up recently. We were watching a new
1:08:04
Speaker 1: documentary in Catherine the Great, and of course there's this
1:08:07
Speaker 1: infamous rumor about Catherine the Great and her and her
1:08:10
Speaker 1: sexcapades with a supposed horse. Okay, well, this is a
1:08:14
Speaker 1: piece of misinformation that has actually survived hundreds of years
1:08:19
Speaker 1: and there are still people who factually believe it. And
1:08:23
Speaker 1: now we're going to take AI and essentially take what
1:08:26
Speaker 1: normalized rumors that become factualized. And you know, I have
1:08:31
Speaker 1: people that are in the world of worrying about, you know,
1:08:34
Speaker 1: the rise of anti Semitism and the history of Israel
1:08:37
Speaker 1: getting sort of distorted by AI chatbots. This is these
1:08:43
Speaker 1: are the same people that have algorithmed us to death,
1:08:46
Speaker 1: and now we're doing this. So it's anyway, I don't
1:08:49
Speaker 1: mean to digress there, but is this is why we
1:08:53
Speaker 1: need new sources of information to continue to feed these
1:08:58
Speaker 1: language models who are gobbling up in potentially spitting out garbage.
1:09:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I mean, you're making a really strong case.
1:09:04
Speaker 2: And I think that is one of the reasons why
1:09:06
Speaker 2: people are so excited about local news day. And you
1:09:09
Speaker 2: know where I think we have this incredible moment right
1:09:12
Speaker 2: now where you know, I think the public. You know,
1:09:16
Speaker 2: there's studies out there that show that a lot of
1:09:18
Speaker 2: younger people are a lot savvier. They're a lot hipper
1:09:21
Speaker 2: to these things than we give them credit for. And
1:09:25
Speaker 2: it truly is my parents generation that it is, you
1:09:27
Speaker 2: know that love local news currently, who are the ones
1:09:30
Speaker 2: that like struggle the most to sort of like draw
1:09:34
Speaker 2: the distinction between what's real and what's fake online? And
1:09:36
Speaker 2: you know, my parents can't tell what's AI and what's not.
1:09:39
Speaker 1: I'm John, I can't. I you know, I sit there
1:09:44
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, You'll see on social media and
1:09:46
Speaker 1: I'll see people say, well, this is obvious a I slop.
1:09:48
Speaker 1: And I'm always like, how do you know? Yeah, and
1:09:51
Speaker 1: how do you I want to know how you know this?
1:09:53
Speaker 1: Because I want to see it. I want to know
1:09:55
Speaker 1: what it's obvious a slop? I now just assume it's
1:09:57
Speaker 1: all a I slop.
1:09:59
Speaker 2: Well, and that's why the you go to the source, right,
1:10:01
Speaker 2: I Mean that's the first thing that we do when
1:10:02
Speaker 2: we see something. When I see something that I don't
1:10:05
Speaker 2: know if it's real or not, I go, well, what's
1:10:06
Speaker 2: the source? Where did this come from? And you know,
1:10:09
Speaker 2: if I can't find a person behind it, like an
1:10:11
Speaker 2: actual human being. Right, If I can't trace it back
1:10:14
Speaker 2: to a real person, then I just assume that it's
1:10:16
Speaker 2: probably not worth trusting. And I think that's how a
1:10:18
Speaker 2: lot of people are getting right. I mean, it's you
1:10:21
Speaker 2: use the brewery analogy. One that's really kind of feels
1:10:25
Speaker 2: relevant to me is just the dramatic increase in vinyl
1:10:29
Speaker 2: record sales in recent years. And now you're seeing, you know,
1:10:33
Speaker 2: magazine sales are starting to pick up, and you're starting
1:10:35
Speaker 2: to see or some places are even going back to
1:10:39
Speaker 2: print or increasing print because more people are kind of
1:10:43
Speaker 2: seeking the tangible nature, the more permanency of an analog product.
1:10:48
Speaker 2: And so I'm not suggesting that we all go analog overnight,
1:10:51
Speaker 2: but I do think that local news is something that
1:10:56
Speaker 2: you can It's tangible, right, You can go to an
1:10:58
Speaker 2: event and meet the people who are p u seing it.
1:11:00
Speaker 2: You can you know, you can go to a website
1:11:03
Speaker 2: and see that they have the same you know, zip
1:11:06
Speaker 2: code or area code is you and and you know,
1:11:10
Speaker 2: as people are looking for what's real and what's not,
1:11:13
Speaker 2: connecting with local news sources who you know and you
1:11:15
Speaker 2: know they're real because they're they're in front of you.
1:11:18
Speaker 2: They're they're participating there in your community. I think there's
1:11:21
Speaker 2: going to be a strong demand for the authenticity of
1:11:24
Speaker 2: local news over the uncertainty of everything else.
1:11:27
Speaker 1: John, I think one thing that we haven't talked about this,
1:11:30
Speaker 1: but I imagine you feel this because I can sort
1:11:33
Speaker 1: of say because I feel the same way as I'm not.
1:11:35
Speaker 1: I've never been comfortable trying to cheerlead doing this job,
1:11:41
Speaker 1: and reporters in general are uncomfortable cheerleading. And social media
1:11:46
Speaker 1: change this right it said, no, no, no, no. If you
1:11:49
Speaker 1: don't cheerlead your information, no one's going to see it,
1:11:52
Speaker 1: No one's going to read it. And I'm trying to
1:11:57
Speaker 1: get religion on this, and you know, every day I
1:11:59
Speaker 1: get a look a little more comfortable realizing, yeah, you
1:12:01
Speaker 1: gotta you got to sing for your supper. You know,
1:12:04
Speaker 1: as an old saying goes, just how hard is it?
1:12:11
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't. You don't strike me as somebody
1:12:13
Speaker 1: who you know wants, hey, look look at me, put
1:12:15
Speaker 1: the spotlight on me. And yet in order to drive relevancy,
1:12:21
Speaker 1: in order to make sure people are looking at her
1:12:24
Speaker 1: stuff that should be looking at her stuff, you kind
1:12:26
Speaker 1: of have to do that so how did how did
1:12:28
Speaker 1: you sort of how have you broken through whatever whatever discomfort?
1:12:34
Speaker 1: And I always say as journalists, we were sort of like, hey,
1:12:37
Speaker 1: let the facts speak for themselves, right. That always is
1:12:39
Speaker 1: sort of a phrase that like rolled in my head
1:12:43
Speaker 1: the early days of early editors that I work for.
1:12:46
Speaker 1: And yet it turns out that's not it's it's that's
1:12:49
Speaker 1: not a way to build a successful UH local news startup.
1:12:55
Speaker 2: You know, I think we can. It's an interesting question,
1:13:00
Speaker 2: And again I don't know that there's necessarily one size
1:13:02
Speaker 2: fits all answer to that either, because again I think
1:13:05
Speaker 2: it really kind of depends on the community you serve,
1:13:07
Speaker 2: and and you know, we're a statewide organization. We we
1:13:10
Speaker 2: still consider Montana Free Press local. We do have local
1:13:15
Speaker 2: reporters in three communities in the state, and we're looking
1:13:17
Speaker 2: to expand in a fourth and billions this year. So
1:13:20
Speaker 2: we do have local reporters on the ground covering local
1:13:23
Speaker 2: issues and UH and we send our reporters to the
1:13:26
Speaker 2: two local communities to report on for and about those communities.
1:13:31
Speaker 2: But I think showing up first and foremost. I think,
1:13:34
Speaker 2: you know, being present and showing up is really important.
1:13:37
Speaker 2: I think showing your work is another one. I think
1:13:40
Speaker 2: there's you know, a lot of people just don't understand,
1:13:43
Speaker 2: you know, they've got a conception of what reporters are
1:13:45
Speaker 2: from the media, the popular media where usually you know,
1:13:48
Speaker 2: it's a it's a jerk, you know, with a camera
1:13:51
Speaker 2: or microphone, you know, you know, trying to catch somebody
1:13:54
Speaker 2: in a in a in a hard spot or you know,
1:13:57
Speaker 2: a tragedy or what have you. And like, sure, that's
1:13:59
Speaker 2: part of it too, but a lot of us, most
1:14:02
Speaker 2: of us, really it's it's about you know, showing up,
1:14:04
Speaker 2: being there to represent the interest of audience, Like what
1:14:08
Speaker 2: what what's the audience going to care about?
1:14:10
Speaker 1: What?
1:14:10
Speaker 2: What are my readers? And as a as a print reporter,
1:14:13
Speaker 2: what are the people who read Montana Free Press? What
1:14:16
Speaker 2: do they want to know? And what information do I
1:14:20
Speaker 2: need to get because I want to you know, interpret
1:14:22
Speaker 2: their their questions even before they ask them. And and
1:14:28
Speaker 2: this really came clear to me even before I lost
1:14:31
Speaker 2: my job at the trip where I had written I
1:14:35
Speaker 2: was one of the first reporters in the state the blog,
1:14:38
Speaker 2: not the first, but one of the first. And I
1:14:41
Speaker 2: had a blog and in my blog I had taken
1:14:43
Speaker 2: the Attorney General to task over what I thought was
1:14:45
Speaker 2: an inappropriate attack on the Associated Press, which had you know,
1:14:50
Speaker 2: very reasonably asked for public information, and instead of producing
1:14:54
Speaker 2: that public information or denying it and you know, going
1:14:57
Speaker 2: through the necessary you know channels, you know, sometimes they
1:15:00
Speaker 2: deny it and then we sue them and then the
1:15:02
Speaker 2: courts decide whether we have access to that information or not.
1:15:06
Speaker 2: Rather than kind of go that traditional route, the Attorney General,
1:15:09
Speaker 2: you know, issued a press release denying it and saying
1:15:11
Speaker 2: that he was protecting gun owners' rights from the prying
1:15:15
Speaker 2: eyes of you know, the news media that you know,
1:15:18
Speaker 2: was asking for information about concealed carry permits. You know,
1:15:24
Speaker 2: which communities have the most concealed carry permit This is
1:15:26
Speaker 2: information they've been asking for for years and publishing stories
1:15:29
Speaker 2: that would say, you know, they would report on the trends,
1:15:32
Speaker 2: you know, never like listing who has concealed carry permits.
1:15:36
Speaker 2: But that's sort of like that attack on that a
1:15:39
Speaker 2: P reporter led to a doxing incident, one of the
1:15:43
Speaker 2: early docing incidents, where that AP reporter his his name address,
1:15:48
Speaker 2: Google images of his house were posted on an extreme
1:15:51
Speaker 2: far right you know, extremist network. And I took issue
1:15:56
Speaker 2: with that and I called I made my my attitude.
1:16:00
Speaker 2: It's known, and that very quickly led to an invitation
1:16:03
Speaker 2: for the Montana Tea Party Association to come basically answer
1:16:08
Speaker 2: for my attacks on the Second Amendment. So I took
1:16:12
Speaker 2: that invitation. I went to an evangelical church out in
1:16:15
Speaker 2: the out in the helen and of our valley, and
1:16:18
Speaker 2: they wanted to know, like why I wrote what I wrote,
1:16:21
Speaker 2: and why I think journalists should have access to that information.
1:16:25
Speaker 2: And we had a really interesting conversation where we heard
1:16:30
Speaker 2: each other right, like, I heard what their concerns were,
1:16:33
Speaker 2: and then I said, let me tell you how we
1:16:36
Speaker 2: do our job, why we do our job, why this
1:16:38
Speaker 2: information is important, why the Montana Constitution has a right
1:16:41
Speaker 2: to know. And I kind of explained just sort of
1:16:44
Speaker 2: like the whole process and how the role that journalism
1:16:47
Speaker 2: plays in representing the public in holding their government officials accountable.
1:16:53
Speaker 2: And it didn't take long for them to make those
1:16:56
Speaker 2: connections and see that this was a more complex story
1:16:59
Speaker 2: than the soundbites might have you believe, and that takes work, right.
1:17:03
Speaker 2: Not every journalist doesn't have time to go out there
1:17:05
Speaker 2: and have individual conversations about every single story, but we do.
1:17:10
Speaker 2: We do through the technology and the platforms that we
1:17:12
Speaker 2: have access to now, like what we're doing right here,
1:17:15
Speaker 2: we can show our work to a broader base of people.
1:17:18
Speaker 2: We can talk more about not just what we do,
1:17:21
Speaker 2: but how we do it, why it's important, and it
1:17:25
Speaker 2: doesn't all have to be negativity, and it doesn't all
1:17:29
Speaker 2: have to be accountability. Some of it is, you know,
1:17:33
Speaker 2: we provide a public service that isn't always just you know,
1:17:37
Speaker 2: getting people in trouble or you know, quote unquote holding
1:17:41
Speaker 2: public officials accountable. A lot of what we do is
1:17:43
Speaker 2: just informing people.
1:17:52
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things that I've come to,
1:17:56
Speaker 1: you know what the biggest difference between local and national
1:17:59
Speaker 1: and I used to say and sort of why national
1:18:01
Speaker 1: media trust you know what, guy, What has gotten me
1:18:05
Speaker 1: into the local space is my conclusion that the loss
1:18:11
Speaker 1: of trusted local character references or national news media. You
1:18:17
Speaker 1: know that that in some ways, if you trusted your
1:18:20
Speaker 1: local news outlet, then you were more likely to trust
1:18:24
Speaker 1: the national news outlet that local news outlet was affiliated with.
1:18:27
Speaker 1: And now we've gone the other way, which is, you know,
1:18:30
Speaker 1: it's like Fox News viewers nationally only trust the local
1:18:33
Speaker 1: Fox right, And it used to be the other way around.
1:18:37
Speaker 1: If you trusted your local, then then that worked its
1:18:39
Speaker 1: way up. And so and the conclusion that I drew
1:18:44
Speaker 1: as to why that was, well, one is, you fact
1:18:47
Speaker 1: check local every day, right, you find out what the
1:18:50
Speaker 1: weather is, you know, or little things like that. And
1:18:53
Speaker 1: if they're misinforming you on the weather and traffic as
1:18:56
Speaker 1: you're getting ready to work or whatever it is, well
1:18:58
Speaker 1: you're not going to trust them for anything else. Right,
1:19:00
Speaker 1: if they take at they take at the weather. Right
1:19:02
Speaker 1: that I got to get the other stuff. But local
1:19:05
Speaker 1: also served a different purpose than national. Right, National told
1:19:10
Speaker 1: you things that you should know as a citizen. Local
1:19:15
Speaker 1: was informing you of things that you both needed to
1:19:19
Speaker 1: know to live your life. But sometimes stuff that you
1:19:21
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of cool to know, right, Right.
1:19:24
Speaker 1: That might be local sports. That might be you know,
1:19:27
Speaker 1: the local play that's coming to town. So it's it's
1:19:32
Speaker 1: finding out what's happening in the neighborhood. It might be
1:19:36
Speaker 1: where do I find cheaper groceries I'm I'm a little
1:19:40
Speaker 1: you know, or or hey, what grocery stores accept snap
1:19:44
Speaker 1: benefits in which grocery stores don't write, or things like that,
1:19:47
Speaker 1: And it was just sort of the the consumer. It
1:19:52
Speaker 1: was the consumer aspect of of of helping the helping
1:19:59
Speaker 1: your read who's also a consumer, right, be helpful. And
1:20:05
Speaker 1: I will say this, my biggest concern with the rise
1:20:09
Speaker 1: of a lot of local news outlets right now is
1:20:12
Speaker 1: that I think we all want to you know, as
1:20:15
Speaker 1: my my friend Richard Gingris, who was at the Google
1:20:19
Speaker 1: News Initiative for a very long time and he's now
1:20:21
Speaker 1: working with a company in Canada that's doing some interesting
1:20:26
Speaker 1: local news work called Village Media, by the way, But
1:20:32
Speaker 1: Richard said the worst thing to happen to journalism was
1:20:34
Speaker 1: all the presidents men, because it's a whole generation of
1:20:38
Speaker 1: us all wanted to be Bob Boarder, right, and it
1:20:39
Speaker 1: was all about accountability when there's a service part to
1:20:43
Speaker 1: journalism right where we're just sort of a public servant.
1:20:46
Speaker 1: Right we're letting you know, hey, there's going to be
1:20:49
Speaker 1: a rise in electric bills this way, but we're also
1:20:52
Speaker 1: going to let you know that, hey, there's a sale.
1:20:56
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you saw the sale via an advertiser,
1:20:59
Speaker 1: or sometimes you found out, hey, if you you know,
1:21:02
Speaker 1: there's there's cheaper chicken at the Eldies this week versus
1:21:06
Speaker 1: the Trader Joe's this week, or wherever it is. And
1:21:11
Speaker 1: I think sometimes with some of our journalism colleagues it's
1:21:14
Speaker 1: hard to tell them and hey, you know, you got
1:21:17
Speaker 1: to just help people live their life too, And you
1:21:20
Speaker 1: may not see that as journalism, but that's how you build.
1:21:22
Speaker 2: Trust one hundred percent. And I mean we do that.
1:21:27
Speaker 2: You know at Montana Free Press. That became really obvious
1:21:31
Speaker 2: to us in the pandemic, right like, there were just
1:21:33
Speaker 2: a handful there were three of us.
1:21:35
Speaker 1: Useful items, right like, how do I do this? Where
1:21:37
Speaker 1: do I find this? Yeah?
1:21:38
Speaker 2: And you know, the beautiful thing is we have such
1:21:41
Speaker 2: incredibly powerful to us some of the technologies and some
1:21:43
Speaker 2: of the platforms and some of the things that you know,
1:21:46
Speaker 2: we could point to that said, you know, these are
1:21:48
Speaker 2: part of the problem.
1:21:49
Speaker 1: They're also saying there's other things. You're right, there's other
1:21:52
Speaker 1: things they do for the solutions.
1:21:53
Speaker 2: And you know one of the things that we did
1:21:56
Speaker 2: that I that was you know, it didn't seem all
1:21:58
Speaker 2: that novel at the time, but I think think in
1:22:00
Speaker 2: Montana in that moment, it was a degree of a
1:22:04
Speaker 2: novel approach to journalism. Was you know, there were three
1:22:07
Speaker 2: of us publishing in the newsroom at the time. We
1:22:09
Speaker 2: had just hired a business person, you know, our first
1:22:12
Speaker 2: business person. So we were a team of four, I
1:22:14
Speaker 2: believe when the pandemic hit and we had the shutdown,
1:22:17
Speaker 2: and I had a weekly podcast at the time called
1:22:22
Speaker 2: The Lowdown, which is now the Montana Lowdown, which is
1:22:25
Speaker 2: now the name of our weekly newsletter. And I went
1:22:30
Speaker 2: from a weekly podcast to a daily podcast, and it
1:22:33
Speaker 2: went from being sort of like a big you know,
1:22:36
Speaker 2: something along akin to what you and I are doing now,
1:22:39
Speaker 2: to something a little bit more like, hey, here the
1:22:41
Speaker 2: here are the ten things you need to know today
1:22:44
Speaker 2: or the three things that you need to know today.
1:22:45
Speaker 1: So you're almost like the morning drive time radio guy.
1:22:48
Speaker 2: I was just trying, you know, it was my.
1:22:50
Speaker 1: Job helping with the local news, helping with the local
1:22:53
Speaker 1: like good morning, of your cup of coffee, A better
1:22:56
Speaker 1: be careful of this today.
1:22:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. One of the I remember one of
1:22:59
Speaker 2: the episodes was talking to the heads of you know,
1:23:05
Speaker 2: shelters that house domestic violence victims, you know, and like
1:23:11
Speaker 2: that suddenly in Montana in March, when the temperatures are
1:23:14
Speaker 2: in the teens are below is a real serious problem. Right,
1:23:17
Speaker 2: So like kind of just shifting what we did to
1:23:20
Speaker 2: sort of like meet the moment and then you know,
1:23:22
Speaker 2: doing things like looking at Google Search console and seeing
1:23:26
Speaker 2: what what are people in Montana asking Google about the pandemic.
1:23:30
Speaker 2: And then now we know the questions that the public
1:23:32
Speaker 2: has on their mind, let's go out and get those answers.
1:23:34
Speaker 2: And so we went from a weekly newsletter to a
1:23:37
Speaker 2: daily newsletter, and we had a COVID tracker that you know,
1:23:40
Speaker 2: just provided just a running you know, latest, this is
1:23:44
Speaker 2: what we know, this is what's happening. And what we
1:23:46
Speaker 2: saw was just a massive, you know, increase in audience overnight.
1:23:51
Speaker 2: And what that told us was if you're giving people
1:23:54
Speaker 2: information that they can use, If if you're doing things
1:23:57
Speaker 2: that can help them understand the thing that they care
1:24:01
Speaker 2: most about right now in a way that they feel
1:24:04
Speaker 2: gives them some sense of comfort, some sense of agency,
1:24:09
Speaker 2: then they're going to reward you. They're going to reward
1:24:11
Speaker 2: you maybe becoming a reader, they're going to reward you.
1:24:13
Speaker 2: If you're a for profit model, maybe they're going to subscribe.
1:24:16
Speaker 2: If you're a nonprofit model, maybe they're going to donate.
1:24:19
Speaker 2: And you know, that's what we saw is you know,
1:24:22
Speaker 2: and then that became kind of just sort of a
1:24:24
Speaker 2: big part of the ethos is like, give people things
1:24:26
Speaker 2: that they want. Yes, we're going to also give them
1:24:28
Speaker 2: things that they we think they need, but we want
1:24:31
Speaker 2: to make sure that we're not ignoring what it is
1:24:33
Speaker 2: that they want because it's not a supply side problem.
1:24:36
Speaker 2: Is we need to be meeting the demand, right, That
1:24:39
Speaker 2: is the issue is, you.
1:24:41
Speaker 1: Know, it's this fine line of look, what the algorithms do,
1:24:44
Speaker 1: only seem to give people what they want, versus if
1:24:49
Speaker 1: you know your own readers, you've got to figure out
1:24:51
Speaker 1: how to walk that line, right, which is, yeah, you know,
1:24:54
Speaker 1: we know what you want, and but you know, here's
1:24:58
Speaker 1: something you need to know. You know, And I always say,
1:25:01
Speaker 1: if they trust you with helping you live their lives,
1:25:03
Speaker 1: then they'll trust you when you tell them that their
1:25:06
Speaker 1: city councilman's corrupt.
1:25:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And again that kind of goes back
1:25:11
Speaker 2: to showing up too. I mean, we do a lot
1:25:13
Speaker 2: of live events.
1:25:14
Speaker 1: We do.
1:25:15
Speaker 2: We create a lot of opportunities for public engagement, and
1:25:19
Speaker 2: our reporters get on the ground in communities and build relationships,
1:25:23
Speaker 2: and you know, showing up, building relationships, being authentic, that's
1:25:29
Speaker 2: what local news does, you know, and that local news
1:25:32
Speaker 2: that it's best is reflecting what the community cares about,
1:25:36
Speaker 2: what the community's identity is about, what you know, it's
1:25:40
Speaker 2: it's warts and all. But when people see themselves, their community,
1:25:45
Speaker 2: the things they cared about reflected in a news source,
1:25:49
Speaker 2: then they develop loyalty. And again, you know, our goal
1:25:52
Speaker 2: with Local News Day is to really highlight those folks
1:25:54
Speaker 2: who are doing that, to get people who didn't maybe
1:25:57
Speaker 2: know that they had local news in their right.
1:26:01
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot I realize that there's a lot.
1:26:03
Speaker 2: Of people in this in this state who don't know
1:26:06
Speaker 2: who they've never heard of Montana Free Press. There's a
1:26:08
Speaker 2: lot of people in Helena, where we're based, where we
1:26:11
Speaker 2: have a local newsletter, who've never heard of it, right,
1:26:13
Speaker 2: And that's just because there's so much information out there. Right,
1:26:15
Speaker 2: people are inundated with information, and so Local News Day
1:26:19
Speaker 2: our goal is to flood the zone right that on
1:26:22
Speaker 2: April ninth, people all over the country are talking about
1:26:25
Speaker 2: local news and if they go to Localnewsday dot org,
1:26:29
Speaker 2: there will be a very user friendly tool there for
1:26:33
Speaker 2: them to locate local news entities in their area or
1:26:37
Speaker 2: an area they care about. And our hope is that
1:26:40
Speaker 2: on this day we can you know, significantly grow audiences
1:26:43
Speaker 2: for local news and strengthen the local news ecosystem and
1:26:48
Speaker 2: in doing so, you know, make more connections, bring more
1:26:51
Speaker 2: people together. Lord knows, there are plenty of platforms and
1:26:56
Speaker 2: and and uh, you know, profits seeking entity that really
1:27:00
Speaker 2: kind of thrive off of division. And this is one
1:27:03
Speaker 2: of those, I think, really unique opportunities to you know,
1:27:08
Speaker 2: rise all boats with connection.
1:27:11
Speaker 1: And there's really you know, you know, basically there's no
1:27:16
Speaker 1: there's no litmus test for being a member of this
1:27:20
Speaker 1: of this community at this point, right to be a
1:27:24
Speaker 1: part of the local news, I mean, other than being
1:27:27
Speaker 1: a legitimate you know, a legitimate local proprietor.
1:27:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I mean it's like Giving Tuesday or you know,
1:27:35
Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid Earth Day, you know,
1:27:37
Speaker 2: my third grade class going out and planting the tree,
1:27:40
Speaker 2: a tree that was a little sapling when I planted
1:27:42
Speaker 2: it back in third grade. And when I drive by
1:27:44
Speaker 2: my hometown, it's now a giant maple tree. Right, you know,
1:27:48
Speaker 2: these it's whatever, whatever is meaningful to you. I mean,
1:27:52
Speaker 2: if you're already somebody who really cares about local news,
1:27:57
Speaker 2: help spread the word, you know, share it on your
1:27:58
Speaker 2: social media. Forward emails from your local news providers to
1:28:02
Speaker 2: the people in your world who you think would would
1:28:04
Speaker 2: would be interested in it. If you're a business or
1:28:08
Speaker 2: an institution who understands the the just the critical public
1:28:12
Speaker 2: service that that local news provides, celebrate it. Put a
1:28:16
Speaker 2: banner in your lobby, uh, you know, put a put
1:28:19
Speaker 2: a logo on your website.
1:28:22
Speaker 1: Look, the better local news does, the better local businesses
1:28:26
Speaker 1: can target future customers. I mean, I just, I really,
1:28:30
Speaker 1: I really believe that because I've learned from a lot
1:28:32
Speaker 1: of local businesses and doing what I was trying to
1:28:34
Speaker 1: do and trying to scale local news, which is not easy.
1:28:38
Speaker 1: Scaling local news is in some ways, Uh maybe it's impossible, right,
1:28:45
Speaker 1: just like Gennet proved is. It is tough to scale.
1:28:48
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean you can't network it. It doesn't
1:28:50
Speaker 1: mean there aren't old ways like UPI and stuff like
1:28:52
Speaker 1: that where you can sort of recreate systems that actually enhance,
1:28:57
Speaker 1: help scale certain parts of the operations process while still
1:29:02
Speaker 1: allowing local proprietores to have their identities. How many participating
1:29:07
Speaker 1: organizations do we have already?
1:29:09
Speaker 2: I know it's a bunch, you know, we're a yeah,
1:29:11
Speaker 2: I think we're approaching seven hundred newsrooms.
1:29:14
Speaker 1: The goal was five hundred, right, the goal in year one.
1:29:16
Speaker 2: Was five hundred. We wanted newsrooms and all fifty states. Yeah,
1:29:19
Speaker 2: I think we're yeah, we're approaching seven hundred newsrooms somewhere
1:29:22
Speaker 2: in there. I might be a little it's between six
1:29:25
Speaker 2: and seven hundred. And then we've got we've got more
1:29:28
Speaker 2: than one hundred partner organizations. We're looking to grow that.
1:29:33
Speaker 2: So if there are institutions organizations out there that are
1:29:38
Speaker 2: interested in being a part of this, we'd love to
1:29:40
Speaker 2: hear from you. Visit Local Newsday dot org and and
1:29:45
Speaker 2: click on the you know, the join us button, And
1:29:49
Speaker 2: what it means to be a partner is basically saying, yeah,
1:29:52
Speaker 2: I really love this idea, I want to support Local
1:29:55
Speaker 2: news Day and we're going to amplify the message on
1:29:58
Speaker 2: April ninth. And then we've got a little about a
1:30:03
Speaker 2: dozen sponsors that are that are supporting this cause with
1:30:07
Speaker 2: with direct financial contribution. So, you know, our goal here
1:30:12
Speaker 2: is not to you know, to raise a bunch of
1:30:13
Speaker 2: money and spend a bunch of money. Our goal here
1:30:15
Speaker 2: is really to get the word out and really energize
1:30:19
Speaker 2: people all over the country to on one day come
1:30:22
Speaker 2: together and really express how much they value local news
1:30:26
Speaker 2: and how much local news elevates their community.
1:30:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's as simple as subscribe, find out.
1:30:33
Speaker 1: You know, in my I live in Arlington, Virginia, and
1:30:37
Speaker 1: we have Arlington Now. It is mostly a digital feed
1:30:40
Speaker 1: that's mostly a Twitter feed, but it is the only
1:30:43
Speaker 1: entity we have that covers arlingkedin government and what's happening
1:30:46
Speaker 1: in the Arlington community. It's like that, and you know,
1:30:49
Speaker 1: various list serves in different communities, at little sub communities
1:30:53
Speaker 1: within Arlington, and it's you know it, I'm thankful for
1:30:58
Speaker 1: the gentleman that's behind Arlington Now. He's like a one
1:31:00
Speaker 1: man operation, you know, and he's been he's been plugging
1:31:03
Speaker 1: away at it for some time. And it is. You know,
1:31:07
Speaker 1: the Washington Post ceased covering local news a long time ago.
1:31:10
Speaker 1: A bunch of us noticed, but they used to at
1:31:12
Speaker 1: least cover the city of Washington, and they just sort
1:31:16
Speaker 1: of pulled up stakes there. It is, so you know,
1:31:22
Speaker 1: if people just to simply subscribe right, sign up for
1:31:26
Speaker 1: the email alert, if there's an email alert, sign up
1:31:28
Speaker 1: for the feed, if there's a feed, you know, most
1:31:32
Speaker 1: of these local proprietors are not going to beg you
1:31:34
Speaker 1: for money. They'll let you sign up and then you know, yes,
1:31:37
Speaker 1: we'd like you to if you're if you're getting something
1:31:40
Speaker 1: out of it, we hope you will give something back
1:31:43
Speaker 1: or in something that used to call a subscription.
1:31:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, for profit or nonprofit really the
1:31:51
Speaker 2: you know, my view an old.
1:31:53
Speaker 1: Fool that we have a for profit model that is
1:31:55
Speaker 1: sustainable over time, because I do worry the nonprofit is
1:31:59
Speaker 1: sort of know you want you want to you want
1:32:02
Speaker 1: a self sustaining ecosystem, you know, whether it's Look, I
1:32:05
Speaker 1: think that there's a case to be made that classified
1:32:08
Speaker 1: could make a comeback. You know, people do care about obituaries.
1:32:12
Speaker 1: And there are different ways and events you talk about
1:32:15
Speaker 1: being in person events or another way you can create
1:32:19
Speaker 1: revenue and and things. And look, you you are going
1:32:22
Speaker 1: to have to be ah, you know, you gotta gotta
1:32:28
Speaker 1: be experimental.
1:32:29
Speaker 2: One hundred and you know the what I our friend
1:32:33
Speaker 2: Evan Smith always like to say that, you know, one
1:32:37
Speaker 2: of the founders of the Texas Tributne like to say
1:32:39
Speaker 2: that your your tax status is not a business model, right,
1:32:43
Speaker 2: I mean, uh, and that's really true. But at the
1:32:46
Speaker 2: end of the day, local news matters Uh, only if
1:32:52
Speaker 2: it's reaching an audience that it can have an impact. Right,
1:32:55
Speaker 2: if you're doing great journalism but nobody knows about it,
1:32:59
Speaker 2: that isn't doing any good. And if you're doing great
1:33:01
Speaker 2: journalism and not enough people are reading it, then you
1:33:06
Speaker 2: don't have a long term path to sustainability. So audiences
1:33:10
Speaker 2: are critically important for local news from the business model standpoint.
1:33:13
Speaker 2: Both from an impact this is how our journalism matters
1:33:16
Speaker 2: by reaching enough people that that that a critical mass
1:33:19
Speaker 2: of uh informed public can can take you know, appropriate
1:33:25
Speaker 2: action when need be. And also it's about the sustainability.
1:33:30
Speaker 2: You know, whether your for profit and your your your
1:33:32
Speaker 2: money is coming from you know, advertising revenue. Those advertisers
1:33:36
Speaker 2: care about your audience. And if your nonprofit, your audience
1:33:41
Speaker 2: is a significant source of revenue in the forms of
1:33:43
Speaker 2: individual donations and and also earned revenue. So it's really
1:33:47
Speaker 2: about growing audience across the country for local news for
1:33:50
Speaker 2: sustainability and impact.
1:33:52
Speaker 1: John, Local News Day, I'm I'm fired up, and every week, uh,
1:33:56
Speaker 1: you're kicking it off, But every week I'm gonna be
1:34:00
Speaker 1: talking to a different local news entrepreneur and just talk
1:34:04
Speaker 1: about the different business models used. As a nonprofit, there
1:34:07
Speaker 1: are not for profits. There are ones that are subscription based,
1:34:11
Speaker 1: ones that are ads supported, you know. So there's all
1:34:15
Speaker 1: different models and we frankly want to showcase all of them,
1:34:20
Speaker 1: you know. And sometimes there's different there's ethic based local
1:34:22
Speaker 1: media that's doing tremendous jobs for different first gen communities.
1:34:27
Speaker 1: So we're going to feature at least one different type
1:34:30
Speaker 1: of local news outlet between now and April ninth. I'm
1:34:33
Speaker 1: looking forward to it.
1:34:34
Speaker 2: Well, Chuck, we really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure
1:34:36
Speaker 2: having you on the team. We're excited to have you
1:34:38
Speaker 2: be a part of this movement, and we appreciate the
1:34:42
Speaker 2: support of you and all of your viewers and listeners.
1:34:45
Speaker 1: And look, I'm just glad you picked April Night because
1:34:47
Speaker 1: April lates my birthday, so you know, and my birthday
1:34:50
Speaker 1: wishes to participate in Local News Day and April Night.
1:34:52
Speaker 2: All right, Well let's do it, all right, brother, Thanks, Thanks, Seck,
1:34:56
Speaker 2: appreciated it.
1:35:05
Speaker 1: All right, Local News Day, April ninth, mark your calendar.
1:35:09
Speaker 1: All I'm asking for you to do is to sign
1:35:12
Speaker 1: up for an email alert, subscribe to a local news
1:35:14
Speaker 1: outlet that's doing something, take a trial subscription, Go go
1:35:19
Speaker 1: do something to support local news. American Express advertise a
1:35:23
Speaker 1: small business Day. I'm advertising Local News Day. Mark your calendars.
1:35:29
Speaker 1: April ninth. All right, this is normally this is a
1:35:32
Speaker 1: Wednesday episode, which means I have a new top five list,
1:35:35
Speaker 1: And in honor of the Mississippi primaries, I thought I
1:35:40
Speaker 1: would give you a little bit on my top As
1:35:45
Speaker 1: I told you for years, I was working on a
1:35:49
Speaker 1: book about the you know, tales from the trail craziest
1:35:52
Speaker 1: campaigns in American history. Every state has that way to
1:35:56
Speaker 1: hear the story about this one. So last week I
1:35:59
Speaker 1: gave you the five my all time five greatest statewide
1:36:02
Speaker 1: campaigns in Texas history. Today I decided, with Mississippi on
1:36:06
Speaker 1: the ballot on Tuesday, I'd do the top five.
1:36:09
Speaker 2: Top five top.
1:36:16
Speaker 1: And by the way, who knows if this Senate race
1:36:20
Speaker 1: in the general election. Sidney Hyde Smith the Republican incumbent
1:36:23
Speaker 1: District Attorney Scott Colem, who Sydney Hyde Smith blocked from
1:36:26
Speaker 1: becoming a federal judge. So he decided, scirt, now I'm
1:36:29
Speaker 1: gonna run against her. Who knows? Right, if he somehow
1:36:34
Speaker 1: pulls off a victory, this race will suddenly break into
1:36:38
Speaker 1: a top five because it would be one of the
1:36:39
Speaker 1: greatest upsets in Mississippi history. But I do expect this
1:36:45
Speaker 1: race Sidney hight Smith that you know, in a special
1:36:47
Speaker 1: election back in twenty eighteen against Mike esp didn't break
1:36:51
Speaker 1: fifty five percent. You know, Mississippi is one of those
1:36:55
Speaker 1: where Democrats can get to forty six forty seven actually
1:36:58
Speaker 1: fairly easily, not all this, but fairly easily. The problem
1:37:02
Speaker 1: they got is at last three or four. Do you
1:37:04
Speaker 1: think it's hard to break the barrier in Texas? It's
1:37:07
Speaker 1: really hard to break the bary in Mississippi, although it
1:37:09
Speaker 1: would cost less to do the groundwork in Mississippi that
1:37:13
Speaker 1: the state Party and the National Party have paid lip
1:37:16
Speaker 1: service to over the years but have never actually done so.
1:37:20
Speaker 1: With that though, it was interesting in putting together this
1:37:25
Speaker 1: top five list, there was there's sort of one election
1:37:30
Speaker 1: cycle in Mississippi history that sort of you can't really categorize.
1:37:34
Speaker 1: And this is so before we get to my top five,
1:37:39
Speaker 1: I do want to talk about the eighteen seventy five
1:37:42
Speaker 1: Mississippi elections because it did essentially end reconstruction. Eighteen seventy five,
1:37:50
Speaker 1: it was called what historians have called this the Redemption elections.
1:37:54
Speaker 1: In Mississippi. At the time, the state was being governed
1:37:57
Speaker 1: by a Republican coalition built during reconstruction, supported heavily by
1:38:02
Speaker 1: newly enfranchised black voters. The governor was Adelbert Ames, a
1:38:06
Speaker 1: former Union general who had moved south after the Civil War,
1:38:10
Speaker 1: one of the so called carpetbaggers, as Southerners would call
1:38:13
Speaker 1: these guys, and he became one of the most powerful
1:38:15
Speaker 1: reconstruction politicians in the state of Mississippi. White Democrats, though,
1:38:22
Speaker 1: organized a coordinated campaign known as the Mississippi Plan in
1:38:25
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy five. This wasn't just about politics, it was
1:38:27
Speaker 1: about intimidation. Armed rifle clubs appeared at Republican rallies. Black
1:38:32
Speaker 1: voters were threatened, beaten, and sometimes killed. Polling places were surrounded.
1:38:37
Speaker 1: Ames asked Washington for federal troops to protect the vote,
1:38:41
Speaker 1: but the troops never came. Democrats captured the legislature and
1:38:45
Speaker 1: soon forced Aims to resign. Reconstruction in Mississippi effectively ended
1:38:50
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy five, but the consequences didn't stop at
1:38:53
Speaker 1: the state line. The strategy used in Mississippi in eighteen
1:38:56
Speaker 1: seventy five became the blueprint for southern Democrats across the
1:38:59
Speaker 1: South in eighteen seventy six. A year later, the country
1:39:02
Speaker 1: faced the first of what would become a handful of
1:39:06
Speaker 1: disputed presidential elections in our history, This one in eighteen
1:39:09
Speaker 1: seventy six between Samuel Tilden, the Democratic governor of New York,
1:39:12
Speaker 1: and RUTHERD. B. Hayes, the Republican governor of Ohio. That
1:39:16
Speaker 1: crisis was resolved by the Uncomfortable Compromise of eighteen seventy seven,
1:39:19
Speaker 1: which ended federal enforcement of reconstruction across the South. In
1:39:24
Speaker 1: some ways, Mississippi had already ended reconstruction two years before
1:39:27
Speaker 1: the rest of the country admitted it. For the next
1:39:30
Speaker 1: ninety years, Mississippi functioned as a one party democratic state,
1:39:35
Speaker 1: the political system known as in the Solid South. Everything
1:39:39
Speaker 1: on our list today happens inside a political structure that
1:39:44
Speaker 1: was created in that moment in eighteen seventy five. So
1:39:47
Speaker 1: it's hard to deal with the rest of campaign history
1:39:50
Speaker 1: in Mississippi without dealing with the eighteen seventy five elections
1:39:53
Speaker 1: that basically ended reconstruction. So with that being said, the
1:39:58
Speaker 1: top five most conscious, and it's a combination. Look what
1:40:04
Speaker 1: you decide is you know these are these are consequential elections,
1:40:11
Speaker 1: and that's why they made the top five plus. Number
1:40:13
Speaker 1: one on my list is the nineteen to fifty nine
1:40:15
Speaker 1: race for Governor Ross Barnett and the politics of defiance.
1:40:21
Speaker 1: This is the first campaign that takes us to the
1:40:23
Speaker 1: height of the civil rights era. The candidate was Ross Barnett.
1:40:26
Speaker 1: He was a Jackson trial lawyer who'd already run for
1:40:28
Speaker 1: governor twice and lost. Barnett was also a proud member
1:40:31
Speaker 1: of what was a successor to the Klan called Citizen Councils,
1:40:35
Speaker 1: This segregationist organization that emerged after the Supreme Court under
1:40:40
Speaker 1: Chief Justice or a War ordered school desegregation in Brown
1:40:43
Speaker 1: versus Board of Education. Barnett's campaign message was blunt. He
1:40:46
Speaker 1: told crowds the good Lord was the original segregationist. Barnett
1:40:51
Speaker 1: finished first in the Democratic primary, then won the runoff
1:40:53
Speaker 1: against the Lieutenant Governor, Carol Garden. Barnett won the runoff
1:40:57
Speaker 1: with about fifty five percent of the vote. No, it
1:40:59
Speaker 1: was no Republican. This is the old Democratic primary decided
1:41:02
Speaker 1: who was governor in the South in a lot of places.
1:41:05
Speaker 1: So Barnett was basically unopposed, even at a campaign song
1:41:09
Speaker 1: that became the song of the state of Mississippi. It
1:41:13
Speaker 1: was called Roll with Ross. Supporters would sing it at
1:41:16
Speaker 1: rallies across Mississippi, and after Barnett won, the melody eventually
1:41:19
Speaker 1: became the official state song, Go Mississippi. But this campaign
1:41:25
Speaker 1: promising to enforce segregation wasn't just theater. Barnett was governor
1:41:30
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two when a black Air Force veteran
1:41:32
Speaker 1: named James Merrith excuse me applied to the University of Mississippi.
1:41:37
Speaker 1: Barnett personally tried to block Meredith from enrolling. Riots erupted
1:41:41
Speaker 1: on campus. Two people were killed, hundreds were injured. Eventually,
1:41:44
Speaker 1: the President John F. Kennedy sent federal troops to enforce
1:41:47
Speaker 1: the court order. Barnett's nineteen fifty nine campaign was the
1:41:50
Speaker 1: political mandate behind that confrontation. Mississippi voters didn't stumble into definance,
1:41:56
Speaker 1: they elected it. He basically promised that he was never
1:42:00
Speaker 1: going to desegregate Mississippi schools, and that fifty nine campaign
1:42:05
Speaker 1: gave us the showdown at Ole, miss in nineteen sixty two.
1:42:09
Speaker 1: Second campaign on my list is the nineteen seventy eight
1:42:11
Speaker 1: Senate race. This had some drama in it. It's the
1:42:14
Speaker 1: first Republican to break to crack the solid South, and
1:42:19
Speaker 1: it reshaped Mississippi's party. It basically created a two party system.
1:42:24
Speaker 1: In seventy eight, longtime Democratic Senator James Eastland decided to
1:42:27
Speaker 1: retire after nearly four decades in office. The Democratic nominee
1:42:31
Speaker 1: was Maurice Danton. The Republican nominee was Dad Cochrane. He
1:42:35
Speaker 1: was a Congressman from Jackson, But the race had a
1:42:38
Speaker 1: third candidate, Eddie McBride, an independent that was supported by
1:42:42
Speaker 1: Charles Evers, the mayor of Fayette. Charles Evers was also
1:42:46
Speaker 1: the brother of Medgar Evers, the NAACP Field Secretary of
1:42:49
Speaker 1: Mississippi who was assassinated outside as Jackson Home in nineteen
1:42:53
Speaker 1: sixty three. McBride siphoned off enough Democratic votes to fracture
1:42:59
Speaker 1: that old koali Dad Cochrane won the Senate's seat. There
1:43:03
Speaker 1: were no runoffs for a general election back then. Dad
1:43:06
Speaker 1: cochrane won with forty five percent, Maurice Danton got forty
1:43:09
Speaker 1: three percent, and Eddie McBride, with the support of Charles Evers,
1:43:12
Speaker 1: got eleven percent. And that's how the first Republican was
1:43:16
Speaker 1: elected to the US Senate in Mississippi. Since reconstruction. Cochrane
1:43:21
Speaker 1: would serve forty years in the Senate, eventually chairing the
1:43:24
Speaker 1: Appropriations Committee. But Mississippi's political realignment began with a race
1:43:29
Speaker 1: that at the time nobody expected Republicans to win. Forty
1:43:32
Speaker 1: five percent was about their ceiling back then, but when
1:43:36
Speaker 1: you throw a third party into the race, forty five
1:43:38
Speaker 1: percent became a winning number. Third campaign on my List,
1:43:42
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine Governor. This is one of these positive
1:43:48
Speaker 1: reform story. William Winter. He was a moderate Democrat from Granada, Mississippi.
1:43:54
Speaker 1: He ran for governor in sixty seven and lost. He
1:43:57
Speaker 1: ran again in seventy five, and he lost again. In
1:44:00
Speaker 1: seventy nine, he finally won, and he won big, sixty
1:44:03
Speaker 1: one percent. The Republican nomen he got thirty nine percent
1:44:05
Speaker 1: Democratic primary, of course, was the whole thing. But the
1:44:08
Speaker 1: significance wasn't just the victory. It was what Winter did afterward,
1:44:12
Speaker 1: and it's a big deal in Mississippi. At the time,
1:44:14
Speaker 1: Mississippi had no statewide kindergarten system and no compulsory school
1:44:18
Speaker 1: attendance law. Believe it or not, Winter pushed through a
1:44:21
Speaker 1: sweeping education reform package. After months of campaigning for the
1:44:26
Speaker 1: plant across the state. The Education Reform Act of nineteen
1:44:29
Speaker 1: eighty two passed the legislature by just one vote, but
1:44:32
Speaker 1: that one vote created public kindergarten dramatically expanded Mississippi school system.
1:44:38
Speaker 1: Clarion Ledger called it the Mississippi Miracle, and it has been.
1:44:42
Speaker 1: You know, look it is Mississippi trailed for a long time,
1:44:46
Speaker 1: but most recently you heard here from Maramamanuel how the
1:44:49
Speaker 1: continued investment in their public education system now has thanks
1:44:54
Speaker 1: to new funding and a new reading program by Jim Barksdale,
1:45:00
Speaker 1: founder of Netscape, they're in the top five in the
1:45:06
Speaker 1: country when it comes to third grade reading. Fourth campaign
1:45:10
Speaker 1: on My List, nineteen ninety nine, Governor. This was a
1:45:14
Speaker 1: weird election. Mississippi once had one of the strangest gubernatorial
1:45:17
Speaker 1: election systems in America. It was kind of their own
1:45:21
Speaker 1: version of the electoral college. To win the governorship, a
1:45:23
Speaker 1: candidate had to win a majority of the statewide vote
1:45:26
Speaker 1: and a majority of the House districts state house districts,
1:45:29
Speaker 1: and if nobody achieved both, the election went to the
1:45:31
Speaker 1: Mississippi House of Representatives. The rule dated back to the
1:45:35
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety constitution, written during the Jim Crow era. It
1:45:39
Speaker 1: was all about making sure no Republican or black candidate
1:45:43
Speaker 1: could win. That's what member every runoff rule, all the
1:45:47
Speaker 1: runoff rules in the South were all about denying black
1:45:52
Speaker 1: candidates an opportunity to win statewide and win in pluralities.
1:45:56
Speaker 1: So this was one of these weird things they put
1:45:58
Speaker 1: into their constitution. And again when they did, it tells
1:46:01
Speaker 1: you everything you need to know. Eighteen ninety right and
1:46:04
Speaker 1: smack dab and Jim Crow. But it never actually came
1:46:08
Speaker 1: into play until the nineteen ninety nine governor's race. It
1:46:12
Speaker 1: would come into play one more time, and I'll get
1:46:14
Speaker 1: to it in a minute. The candidates were Ronnie Musgrove,
1:46:17
Speaker 1: Democratic Lieutenant governor and a Republican congressman named Mike Parker.
1:46:21
Speaker 1: Musgrove wins forty nine point six percent of the vote.
1:46:24
Speaker 1: Mike Parker got forty eight point five percent of the vote.
1:46:27
Speaker 1: Two percent went to others. Musgrove won the popular vote,
1:46:31
Speaker 1: but the House district count ended sixty one districts for Musgrove,
1:46:35
Speaker 1: sixty one districts for Parker. It was a time and
1:46:38
Speaker 1: under the state constitution, the election went to the Mississippi House. Well,
1:46:43
Speaker 1: this was nineteen ninety nine, but believe it or not,
1:46:45
Speaker 1: the Democrats still controlled that chamber. There were a few
1:46:48
Speaker 1: chambers they controlled into the early odts. Mississippi was one
1:46:51
Speaker 1: of them. Oklahoma was one of them. Anyway, they narrowly
1:46:55
Speaker 1: elected Musgrove governor, but it remains the only time in
1:46:58
Speaker 1: modern Mississippi history that the legislature chose the governor instead
1:47:02
Speaker 1: of the voters. And in twenty twenty, Mississippi voters themselves
1:47:06
Speaker 1: finally abolished that system. Number five on my list is
1:47:11
Speaker 1: a pretty important race because I think it was a
1:47:13
Speaker 1: preview of something that the Republican Party was about to do.
1:47:17
Speaker 1: It was the twenty fourteen Senate Republican primary. It was
1:47:21
Speaker 1: the final campaign for Thad Cochrane. He'd been in the
1:47:24
Speaker 1: Senate thirty six years. The challenger was a Tea Party
1:47:29
Speaker 1: supporting state senator named Chris McDaniel. First prime first round
1:47:34
Speaker 1: of the primary vote shocked people. McDaniel just missed avoiding
1:47:38
Speaker 1: a runoff. He got forty nine point five percent of
1:47:40
Speaker 1: the vote. Thad Cochran got forty nine point zero percent
1:47:43
Speaker 1: of the vote, so no candidate got fifty percent a
1:47:46
Speaker 1: runoff was required. This looked like Cochrane was a dead duck.
1:47:51
Speaker 1: Right runoffs, fewer voters show up, the more conservative candidate
1:47:57
Speaker 1: usually wins. In this case, it was McDaniel, and yet
1:48:02
Speaker 1: cochran won the runoff narrowly fifty point eight percent. McDaniel
1:48:06
Speaker 1: got forty nine point two percent he wanted, by about
1:48:08
Speaker 1: seventy six hundred votes. Cochrane survived by mobilizing a bunch
1:48:11
Speaker 1: of crossover voters, black voters in the Mississippi Delta who
1:48:15
Speaker 1: had not participated in the Democratic primary. Remember this was
1:48:18
Speaker 1: the same this is the same issue I've been bringing
1:48:20
Speaker 1: up about what John Cornan faces in Texas. A whole
1:48:24
Speaker 1: bunch of voters who voted early in the Democratic primary
1:48:26
Speaker 1: now and are not available to Cornyn, the more moderate
1:48:30
Speaker 1: of the two candidates against Paxton, for him to potentially
1:48:33
Speaker 1: message to and get them to vote. Well, this is
1:48:35
Speaker 1: what they advantaged Cochrane had. So the Democratic primary was
1:48:40
Speaker 1: not really that well contested, so there wasn't a huge
1:48:44
Speaker 1: turnout of Democrats for that primary. So there was a
1:48:46
Speaker 1: whole bunch of voters who hadn't voted, so in theory
1:48:49
Speaker 1: they could vote in the Republican runoff. It was an
1:48:54
Speaker 1: ugly race. The race produced one of the strangest scandals
1:48:58
Speaker 1: in modern politics, and McDaniel supporter broke into the nursing
1:49:01
Speaker 1: home to photograph Cochrane's bedridden wife in an attempt to
1:49:05
Speaker 1: embarrass the senator because he was living with another woman
1:49:09
Speaker 1: while his wife for years was dealing with this health issue.
1:49:12
Speaker 1: Four people ended up arrested. But the bigger deal of
1:49:16
Speaker 1: this race is that this is think about it. It's
1:49:18
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Tea Party was on the move. That wing
1:49:22
Speaker 1: of the party was on the move. Cochrane beat it
1:49:25
Speaker 1: back barely having to use Democrats. Twenty sixteen, Donald Trump
1:49:31
Speaker 1: would get elected president. Looking back, here was one of
1:49:36
Speaker 1: your canaries in the coal mine in twenty fourteen. Now
1:49:40
Speaker 1: I will there were a few honorable mentions campaigns that
1:49:42
Speaker 1: didn't make my top five. I do want to mention
1:49:46
Speaker 1: Blanche Bruce. He was elected to the Senate by the
1:49:48
Speaker 1: Mississippi Legislature in eighteen seventy four, year before the eighteen
1:49:51
Speaker 1: seventy five those eighteen seventy five reset elections. He was
1:49:55
Speaker 1: the first African American elector to do a full Senate term,
1:50:00
Speaker 1: and he was the first Black American to preside over
1:50:02
Speaker 1: the United States Senate kirk Fordyce elected governor nineteen ninety one.
1:50:06
Speaker 1: He became the Mississippi's first Republican governor since reconstruction. He
1:50:11
Speaker 1: won with fifty point eight percent of the vote in
1:50:13
Speaker 1: ninety one. By the way, twenty eighteen centate runoff was
1:50:17
Speaker 1: a fascinating one because he had Sidney Hyde Smith and
1:50:19
Speaker 1: Mike esb. The race was, you know, not a blowout,
1:50:23
Speaker 1: fifty four to forty six, but whoever was going to
1:50:26
Speaker 1: win was going to make history. Mike sb if he
1:50:28
Speaker 1: had won, would have been the first black Senator since
1:50:32
Speaker 1: Blanche Bruce in Reconstruction, and Sydney Hyde Smith would turn
1:50:35
Speaker 1: out to be the first woman ever elected to Congress
1:50:37
Speaker 1: in the state of Mississippi. And then, of course, there
1:50:40
Speaker 1: were there were two controversial flag referendums that really divided
1:50:46
Speaker 1: the state. Two thousand and one, voters kept a Confederate
1:50:49
Speaker 1: era flag by a landslide sixty four to thirty six,
1:50:53
Speaker 1: and yet in twenty twenty, voters adopted a new magnolia
1:50:56
Speaker 1: flag in a bigger landslide seventy three twenty seven. The
1:51:00
Speaker 1: same issue, but it was two very different Mississippis. And
1:51:03
Speaker 1: I think it's a good way to end there. Two
1:51:05
Speaker 1: thousand and one told you that Mississippi wasn't ready to
1:51:08
Speaker 1: move on from its past. By twenty twenty, Mississippi was
1:51:13
Speaker 1: ready to move on. So look, Mississippi's political history is
1:51:17
Speaker 1: pretty clear. The elections of eighteen seventy five created a
1:51:19
Speaker 1: system that lasted nearly a century. But the campaigns we
1:51:24
Speaker 1: walked through show how that system slowly cracked, shifted, and
1:51:27
Speaker 1: eventually transformed from segregation to realignment to modern populism. It
1:51:34
Speaker 1: is worth noting Mississippi's election often foreshadow changes that later
1:51:37
Speaker 1: appear across the country. Anyway, So there's my top five list.
1:51:43
Speaker 1: Let me go back through them one more time for
1:51:47
Speaker 1: the campaign geeks out there like me. Number one for
1:51:50
Speaker 1: May fifty nine governor, the election of an avowed segregationist
1:51:55
Speaker 1: that ends up giving us the showdown at Ole, missy
1:52:00
Speaker 1: eight Senate Pad Cochrane's shock election thanks to a third
1:52:05
Speaker 1: party candidate that siphon votes away from the Democrat seventy
1:52:08
Speaker 1: nine governor, which gave elected a Democrat who would transform
1:52:13
Speaker 1: mississippis education system that is still paying dividends today, nineteen
1:52:18
Speaker 1: ninety nine Governor. They're a weird electoral college system produces
1:52:23
Speaker 1: ends up being used by the legislature, and I think
1:52:26
Speaker 1: people were so grossed out by it that it was
1:52:29
Speaker 1: like there was always it was the beginning of the
1:52:32
Speaker 1: end of that system. It took two decades later for
1:52:35
Speaker 1: it to be gone, but it was it would be gone.
1:52:38
Speaker 1: And then, of course number five on my list the
1:52:40
Speaker 1: Senate Republican primary from twenty fourteen. If you don't lack
1:52:43
Speaker 1: my list, send me your thoughts, ask Chuck. All right,
1:52:57
Speaker 1: it is time for questions. A little ass check. In
1:52:59
Speaker 1: the first one, it's perfect. It's almost a derivative. It says, hey,
1:53:03
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the five most consequential Texas elections. Do you
1:53:07
Speaker 1: have a list for New Jersey by any chance? And
1:53:09
Speaker 1: I do. I'm not going to give you the full
1:53:11
Speaker 1: list now, but needless to say, two that will definitely
1:53:15
Speaker 1: be on this list are Bill Bradley's first race in
1:53:18
Speaker 1: seventy six. He knocked off an incumbent senator. It is
1:53:22
Speaker 1: worth noting Harrison Williams, so that is one, the first
1:53:26
Speaker 1: Tom Caine victory probably is going to get in there,
1:53:30
Speaker 1: and the crazy Torrisselly replacement race right all the crazy
1:53:35
Speaker 1: Turrisselly in Lautenberg and all of that business. So that's
1:53:39
Speaker 1: just a taste. There's a couple others that we get there.
1:53:44
Speaker 1: I think the first Christie Race is probably going to
1:53:48
Speaker 1: make my list.
1:53:49
Speaker 2: But.
1:53:50
Speaker 1: It is you start. You know, Bill Bradley, by the way,
1:53:53
Speaker 1: I have and I have another book that I've I
1:53:55
Speaker 1: have a lot of books I've never written, but I'll
1:53:58
Speaker 1: tell you that this one is I can't believe they
1:54:00
Speaker 1: didn't become President book. And there'd be like, I think
1:54:03
Speaker 1: there's eight or ten people that are I can't believe
1:54:06
Speaker 1: they never became president. Bill Bradley is one of them.
1:54:10
Speaker 1: John Glenn is another one of them. We may put
1:54:13
Speaker 1: Romney on that list someday, right, we may put in
1:54:17
Speaker 1: Let me think, who else that I can't believe they
1:54:21
Speaker 1: didn't become president? List? Right? Hillary Clinton one hundred years
1:54:24
Speaker 1: from now, people may say she should be on that
1:54:27
Speaker 1: list as well. But Bill Bradley. I think what we
1:54:32
Speaker 1: found out is Bill Bradley's resume was more charismatic than
1:54:35
Speaker 1: Bill Bradley himself. And I say that with love. I
1:54:39
Speaker 1: know Senator Bradley a little bit. He was always couldn't
1:54:42
Speaker 1: have been more charming, more nice, but he was a
1:54:45
Speaker 1: guy that didn't didn't command a room in the way
1:54:49
Speaker 1: that you would, and you just can't put your finger
1:54:52
Speaker 1: on it. In some ways he was too cerebral, I think.
1:54:56
Speaker 1: But when you look at that resume, Princeton Rhodes Scholar,
1:55:00
Speaker 1: our all time great New York Nick, all of that business, right,
1:55:03
Speaker 1: he should have had all the markings of somebody that
1:55:08
Speaker 1: the country would want to be as the representative of
1:55:10
Speaker 1: America for the world. Right. John Glenn's same thing. But
1:55:14
Speaker 1: he also was a bit charismatically challenged at times. His
1:55:18
Speaker 1: presidential hopes I've had some people say came to an
1:55:22
Speaker 1: end even before he ever ran in eighty four when
1:55:24
Speaker 1: he gave a lackluster keynote speech at a DNC convention.
1:55:28
Speaker 1: I believe it was in seventy six, So anyway, but yes,
1:55:32
Speaker 1: I'll have more on New Jersey as we get closer,
1:55:35
Speaker 1: But you got to let me roll these out a
1:55:37
Speaker 1: week at a time, so give you a little taste. Obviously,
1:55:40
Speaker 1: tors Elly, right, all things ports are going to be there,
1:55:43
Speaker 1: the Torch Song trilogy as we used to call it
1:55:45
Speaker 1: back in the Hotline days, the crazy Lotenberg stuff, all
1:55:48
Speaker 1: of that. But in fairness to Jersey, I would argue
1:55:56
Speaker 1: it's great characters have all been in the last forty years,
1:56:00
Speaker 1: fewer great characters in the first fifty years. But I
1:56:03
Speaker 1: know my friend Bill Baroni will have a lot of
1:56:04
Speaker 1: thoughts on this, and I have to finish consulting with him.
1:56:08
Speaker 1: And I know you're listening, Bill, and so get your
1:56:11
Speaker 1: I know you're gonna have a lot of opinions about this.
1:56:14
Speaker 1: So we'll get that going, all right, And I promise
1:56:16
Speaker 1: that's coming soon. Next question comes from Don L. Saganaw Texas. Hey,
1:56:19
Speaker 1: check appreciate listening to the podcast on Monday mornings while
1:56:22
Speaker 1: I try to reconnect with the brain cells necessary to
1:56:25
Speaker 1: serve my bride coffee in bed. Well, good for you,
1:56:28
Speaker 1: coffee in bed. You're a better husband than me. As
1:56:30
Speaker 1: I recall from my Texas public school education background, the
1:56:33
Speaker 1: last time the US declared war was in nineteen forty one.
1:56:36
Speaker 1: One could argue that America has gone to war multiple
1:56:38
Speaker 1: times since that time without declaring it. Since only Congress
1:56:41
Speaker 1: is the power to declare war, could you explain how
1:56:43
Speaker 1: this continues to happen? Well, you've got this idea that
1:56:46
Speaker 1: in these you know that these are I guess you
1:56:50
Speaker 1: could say that they are abusing the part of the
1:56:53
Speaker 1: Constitution about a president having a certain amount of authority
1:56:59
Speaker 1: to quote, defend the interests in the United States without
1:57:02
Speaker 1: having to go to Congress. Were we ever fighting Vietnam
1:57:07
Speaker 1: or were we fighting the Russians and the Chinese who
1:57:10
Speaker 1: were helping the North Vietnamese. So there's that situation. Now,
1:57:15
Speaker 1: Congress did authorize the use of force in Iraq both times,
1:57:21
Speaker 1: So no, we never declared war on those countries, but
1:57:25
Speaker 1: at least there was an authorization of use of force there.
1:57:30
Speaker 1: But look, your larger point is the more important one,
1:57:33
Speaker 1: which is the inability of Congress to do its job,
1:57:37
Speaker 1: to assert its authority. And I think in some ways
1:57:44
Speaker 1: I choose to be I choose to look at the
1:57:47
Speaker 1: Trump presidency as a necessary MRI. I think it has
1:57:51
Speaker 1: been an incredible MRI. Right. We have learned about a
1:57:55
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of entities, a lot of institutions,
1:57:59
Speaker 1: right when tested by Trump, which one of them who
1:58:03
Speaker 1: could stand tall and who would fold like a cheap suit?
1:58:08
Speaker 1: And I do think you have Rand Paul and a
1:58:11
Speaker 1: handful of other Republicans wanting to reassert congressional authority. I
1:58:16
Speaker 1: there's this could be the silver lining of this you know,
1:58:21
Speaker 1: him stumbling into this Iran conflict, which may not have
1:58:26
Speaker 1: a clean ending anytime soon. Right, we may pull back
1:58:30
Speaker 1: on how much we bomb the country, but it doesn't
1:58:32
Speaker 1: feel like what's been started is going to easily be stopped.
1:58:37
Speaker 1: That you will have a different type of Congress and
1:58:40
Speaker 1: members of Congress who decide that they will read the
1:58:43
Speaker 1: Constitution and understand what Article one of powers mean for them.
1:58:49
Speaker 1: That's the that is my hope of what is the
1:58:52
Speaker 1: silver lining of what has been this? We now understand
1:58:56
Speaker 1: why why did the founders want these constraints around a
1:59:00
Speaker 1: run potential for a runaway executive? Just that to stop
1:59:05
Speaker 1: the potential of a runaway executive, Right, the whole point
1:59:08
Speaker 1: was to prevent a rogue monarch. Shall we say, we
1:59:14
Speaker 1: have all the tools to prevent this, we just have
1:59:17
Speaker 1: let our ability to use those tools atrophy. Maybe maybe
1:59:24
Speaker 1: this decision to do what he's doing in Iran will
1:59:29
Speaker 1: finally be the line that's crossed that gets more members
1:59:34
Speaker 1: of Congress realizing they have a large responsibility here and
1:59:39
Speaker 1: they need to get their act together. But it starts
1:59:42
Speaker 1: with a speaker. You've got right now, you got a
1:59:43
Speaker 1: speaker in Mike Johnson, who has no idea what he's doing.
1:59:45
Speaker 1: He's a spino right speaker name only Donald Trump. Essentially,
1:59:50
Speaker 1: you know, he's at the whims of whatever Trump wants.
1:59:53
Speaker 1: So he's a week speaker. We've had a series of
1:59:57
Speaker 1: week Pelosi was a strong speaker, but she was a
1:59:59
Speaker 1: bit too different democratic presidents. You know, this is only
2:00:03
Speaker 1: going to work is if the next speaker, when their
2:00:07
Speaker 1: party is in the White House, if they assert congressional
2:00:12
Speaker 1: authority over partisan concerns. And we haven't had a speaker
2:00:17
Speaker 1: do that in my lifetime. All right, Next question comes
2:00:22
Speaker 1: from Donovan, PG County, Maryland. Go Army beat Navy. Woo?
2:00:25
Speaker 1: Can you say that in Maryland? I feel like we're Maryland,
2:00:29
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of I treat Navy as semi
2:00:32
Speaker 1: home home time root form and all the conference stuff,
2:00:36
Speaker 1: you know, is kind of a local ish team, right,
2:00:39
Speaker 1: Annapolis is local enough for me. But anyway, anyway, good
2:00:44
Speaker 1: for you, Donovan. I think I know, I think I
2:00:46
Speaker 1: know which Donovan this is, but I'll I'll be careful,
2:00:50
Speaker 1: so I'll say go Army in this one, he says, Chuck.
2:00:54
Speaker 1: Given the significant erosion of America standing on the world
2:00:57
Speaker 1: stage in recent years, what do you think it will
2:00:59
Speaker 1: realistic take both from our next president and from US
2:01:02
Speaker 1: as a country to rebuild the trust and credibility needed
2:01:04
Speaker 1: to reclaim our role as global leader that kind of
2:01:06
Speaker 1: restoration even possible anymore, or as the window for America
2:01:09
Speaker 1: to be seen as the anchor of the international order
2:01:11
Speaker 1: permanently closed. In also seriousness, Donovan, I don't think anything's
2:01:15
Speaker 1: permanently closed. But I think it's going to be years
2:01:18
Speaker 1: before we're seen as the credible leader here. It's going
2:01:23
Speaker 1: to take presidents of let's just take our relationship with
2:01:29
Speaker 1: Europe before Europe fully trusts America again to be its
2:01:33
Speaker 1: sort of security umbrella and be willing to sort of
2:01:40
Speaker 1: restore the sort of Cold War order of sorts. They're
2:01:46
Speaker 1: going to have to see us have a succession of
2:01:50
Speaker 1: presidents regardless of whether they're Democrats are Republicans, but basically
2:01:54
Speaker 1: two presidents in a row from both parties that treat
2:01:59
Speaker 1: Europe or the respect, treat our allies with respect, don't
2:02:03
Speaker 1: want to empire, build, don't want to do I mean,
2:02:06
Speaker 1: and so, so I think this is you know, we're
2:02:10
Speaker 1: at least a couple of decades away. Look, a crisis
2:02:12
Speaker 1: can change things overnight. Right, America still has resources that
2:02:15
Speaker 1: many other countries don't, but it's going to take us.
2:02:19
Speaker 1: We're going to have to do more to win back
2:02:22
Speaker 1: the hearts and minds of the world. Right when there's
2:02:24
Speaker 1: a natural disaster, we better always be the first boats
2:02:27
Speaker 1: there and the first you know, it's going to take
2:02:30
Speaker 1: a lot more international largess, the restoration of USAID, the
2:02:36
Speaker 1: restoration of soft power, but none of that happens overnight,
2:02:41
Speaker 1: so we're sadly probably a generation away from that. The
2:02:46
Speaker 1: next president can begin the healing. The president after that
2:02:49
Speaker 1: can do it, but you know, it's it's sort of
2:02:52
Speaker 1: you know it, I don't know. Let you know, you can.
2:02:59
Speaker 1: You can flip the switch on the treatment of African
2:03:03
Speaker 1: American voters in nineteen sixty four, but it really took
2:03:08
Speaker 1: another thirty or forty years before there was full trust
2:03:13
Speaker 1: full So it just takes time. And on this one,
2:03:18
Speaker 1: it's going to take the American public electing presidents of
2:03:23
Speaker 1: both parties in successive elections who behave essentially the same
2:03:28
Speaker 1: way internationally, not necessarily with the same philosophies, but that
2:03:32
Speaker 1: we treat our allies with respect, that we just the
2:03:34
Speaker 1: basic things that Trump has thrown away. Look, I kind
2:03:41
Speaker 1: of think we're going to need it by necessity to
2:03:43
Speaker 1: try to restore these things. It's going to it's better
2:03:45
Speaker 1: for our security and it's better for our economy. But
2:03:50
Speaker 1: thanks for asking pretty much the hardest question somebody has asked.
2:03:54
Speaker 1: But like I said, I think I know who this
2:03:56
Speaker 1: is and I appreciate the curveball. Next question comes from
2:04:04
Speaker 1: Roger and Farmington, Minnesota. Chuck, will abortion emerges a national
2:04:07
Speaker 1: issue in the twenty twenty six midterms or his jobs
2:04:08
Speaker 1: effectively taking it off the table and made it a
2:04:10
Speaker 1: state by state issue for the next generation. I don't think.
2:04:16
Speaker 1: I still think that I'm gonna stand by a prediction
2:04:20
Speaker 1: I made five years ago that I think but by
2:04:23
Speaker 1: the end of the decade, Congress will cad afiro and
2:04:28
Speaker 1: I think if Democrats get the majority in both the
2:04:31
Speaker 1: Senate and the House, they'll do this. And if they don't,
2:04:44
Speaker 1: and if they don't try, I think they could pay
2:04:46
Speaker 1: a political price on that front. But I think with
2:04:54
Speaker 1: so many other issues, you know, abortion will come back
2:04:56
Speaker 1: to being an issue when the you know cultural issues,
2:05:01
Speaker 1: and abortion is it's a healthcare issue, but it's also
2:05:05
Speaker 1: a cultural issue, and it's Also, you know, those issues
2:05:10
Speaker 1: rise up when the economy is healthy, those issues get
2:05:13
Speaker 1: pushed down when the economy is unhealthy. And this is
2:05:17
Speaker 1: an unhealthy economy, and there's a lot of fear out
2:05:19
Speaker 1: there about economic well being, job displacement. So while I
2:05:25
Speaker 1: expect abortion to be used in a handful of campaigns,
2:05:32
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a big issue in these midterms.
2:05:35
Speaker 1: Across the board, We're not seeing as many referendums and
2:05:40
Speaker 1: things like that. But I think this becomes an interest
2:05:45
Speaker 1: if Democrats win both the House and the Senate. How
2:05:48
Speaker 1: aggressive do they get and trying to codify Row? And
2:05:53
Speaker 1: is there a version of codifying ROW that can get
2:05:58
Speaker 1: whatever number of republic consenators they need. Let's say they
2:06:02
Speaker 1: let's say they have a majority by two seats, Let's
2:06:04
Speaker 1: say it's the fifty two forty eight. Can they find
2:06:06
Speaker 1: eight Republicans to go along with them on a version
2:06:09
Speaker 1: that codifies Row that says has a you know that
2:06:11
Speaker 1: gets Lisa Murkowskian board, because she'll be there. Do you
2:06:15
Speaker 1: get do you get something that gets a hand a
2:06:18
Speaker 1: handful of some of the I don't know, or do
2:06:25
Speaker 1: we see the filibuster gone? And I think it's very
2:06:29
Speaker 1: possible that if you have a younger set of Senate leaders,
2:06:33
Speaker 1: we may see the legislative philibuster go. Regardless of whether
2:06:36
Speaker 1: it's a deer or in our administration, it does feel
2:06:38
Speaker 1: as if right the momentum Republicans had to almost get
2:06:42
Speaker 1: rid of it, the momentum Democrats had to almost get
2:06:45
Speaker 1: rid of it. It feels like that sooner rather than later,
2:06:49
Speaker 1: we're going to have a change in the filibuster rule
2:06:52
Speaker 1: that gives Democrats a shot at codifying Row, which is again,
2:06:59
Speaker 1: what would I think think the simplest, most straightforward way
2:07:03
Speaker 1: they could go codifies Row into law. I think they
2:07:07
Speaker 1: could find eight Republican senators on that. Next question comes
2:07:12
Speaker 1: from a mirror from Denver, and he writes, hey really
2:07:15
Speaker 1: appreciate the new format and especially enjoyed your two twenty
2:07:18
Speaker 1: three episode Your time Machine. Segment of how how Hitler
2:07:20
Speaker 1: used legal processes to consolidate power was compelling, but it
2:07:23
Speaker 1: left me wondering how you square that with your critique
2:07:26
Speaker 1: of democratic legislatures pushing back against red state redistrict efforts.
2:07:29
Speaker 1: If a party sees authoritarianism coming, is it wrong to
2:07:31
Speaker 1: use every tool available, even if it bends norms to
2:07:34
Speaker 1: try to stop it. How should we think about the
2:07:36
Speaker 1: leaders today who use power aggressively to prevent something worse
2:07:38
Speaker 1: down the line? Best a Mire from Denver. You know,
2:07:41
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this a lot. I've got to
2:07:43
Speaker 1: vote in this election in April. They're trying to redo
2:07:47
Speaker 1: the constitution here in Virginia to allow them to re
2:07:49
Speaker 1: redistrict in the middle and not use the fair district
2:07:53
Speaker 1: the fair district parameters that were passed into the state's constitution,
2:07:59
Speaker 1: and I thought I'd use this. I've actually been this
2:08:02
Speaker 1: is something I meant to say earlier in the podcast,
2:08:04
Speaker 1: and this is actually a good way for me to
2:08:06
Speaker 1: bring them to close the podcast with it, because I
2:08:09
Speaker 1: do think I I want to talk about the so
2:08:14
Speaker 1: called Save Election Bill that Republicans are trying to pass.
2:08:19
Speaker 1: As I've said to you before, it is an unserious
2:08:21
Speaker 1: attempt at election reform, a serious If Republicans cared just
2:08:26
Speaker 1: about voter ID, they could get voter ID passed if
2:08:30
Speaker 1: they just made it standalone. Voter I D not voter
2:08:32
Speaker 1: ID that says every married woman has to get their
2:08:34
Speaker 1: name changed in order for their voter registration roles to match.
2:08:37
Speaker 1: Right where you have to go back to the DMV
2:08:39
Speaker 1: and all, I mean, the ridiculous parts of the bill
2:08:43
Speaker 1: that some are pushing with birth certificates and citizenship checks
2:08:47
Speaker 1: and all of this nonsense, you know, is not a
2:08:52
Speaker 1: serious It shows you that this is not a serious issue.
2:08:56
Speaker 1: That if anything, my great fear is that Donald Trump,
2:09:00
Speaker 1: he is advocating for an unrealistic election bill, which he
2:09:05
Speaker 1: himself has said if they pass it, Democrats will never
2:09:09
Speaker 1: he hopes it means Democrats will never win an election
2:09:11
Speaker 1: for another fifty years, which you know kind of says
2:09:16
Speaker 1: the quiet part out loud, right, they think they've not
2:09:20
Speaker 1: put together a bill that makes elections fair for the country,
2:09:24
Speaker 1: that they're trying to put together a bill that they think,
2:09:26
Speaker 1: in their minds creates an uneven playing field advantage to
2:09:32
Speaker 1: the Republicans. Now, the irony to this is one I
2:09:35
Speaker 1: do think if they pass this restrictive measures, Democrats would
2:09:39
Speaker 1: more likely follow all get all their paperwork in order
2:09:42
Speaker 1: before a lot of Trump's voters would On this front,
2:09:46
Speaker 1: We've seen this, right, Democrats pay more attention to win
2:09:50
Speaker 1: special elections are these days, and all of that. So
2:09:53
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at sort of conforming to
2:09:55
Speaker 1: the rules and all that. I think that the irony
2:09:58
Speaker 1: is that the save AC pass. I think it would
2:10:01
Speaker 1: hurt Republican turnout more than it would hurt Democratic turnout.
2:10:07
Speaker 1: But you know, in the same way that Democrats weren't
2:10:09
Speaker 1: serious about their election reform bill at HR one because
2:10:12
Speaker 1: they threw in stuff like publicly funding congressional elections and
2:10:16
Speaker 1: some things that just don't have majority support in the country,
2:10:20
Speaker 1: let alone majority support in the Senate. You know, it
2:10:24
Speaker 1: was a messaging bill, right it was. They wanted a
2:10:26
Speaker 1: talking point, and it's clearly Republicans this is a messaging bill.
2:10:30
Speaker 1: He wants a talking point. And I fear what Trump
2:10:32
Speaker 1: really wants is a rationale not to accept the results
2:10:35
Speaker 1: of the midterms. Even when I say not accept the
2:10:40
Speaker 1: results of the midterms, there's nothing he can do to
2:10:42
Speaker 1: prevent the swearing in of the new Congress. And there
2:10:47
Speaker 1: is one scenario I fear that a Speaker of the
2:10:50
Speaker 1: House couldn't outgoing speaker of their House could insert themselves
2:10:53
Speaker 1: in a situation, but only if the House majorities were
2:10:56
Speaker 1: really narrow. I doubt I think if Democrat that's right now,
2:11:01
Speaker 1: if the electional health to day, they'd win the House
2:11:03
Speaker 1: by a big enough margin that Mike Johnson couldn't do
2:11:06
Speaker 1: anything to mess with it. But if Donald Trump wants
2:11:10
Speaker 1: to soothe himself by maybe he'll blame his own party
2:11:13
Speaker 1: for not passing the bill and say, you know, and
2:11:16
Speaker 1: you know, everything is usually about deflecting blame for himself.
2:11:22
Speaker 1: So I think he sees this save act as a
2:11:26
Speaker 1: way to have a built in excuse for why his
2:11:30
Speaker 1: party's not going to do well in the midterms, And
2:11:34
Speaker 1: I do think he may use it as a way
2:11:35
Speaker 1: not to accept the results in his own mind. Again,
2:11:39
Speaker 1: isn't going to stop people from getting sworn in. It
2:11:41
Speaker 1: isn't going to stop Democrats if they end up winning
2:11:44
Speaker 1: control the House in the Senate, from getting control the
2:11:46
Speaker 1: House in the Senate. But as we know, it's important
2:11:50
Speaker 1: to him for him to create a fantasy world, you know,
2:11:54
Speaker 1: this fantasy world that he is that he won somehow
2:11:56
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty because he doesn't want to count mail
2:11:59
Speaker 1: in ballots during a pandemic, and that he you know,
2:12:02
Speaker 1: so he likes to build these mythologies in order for
2:12:06
Speaker 1: him to Maybe it's a self soothing mechanism. Maybe this
2:12:09
Speaker 1: is what he does instead of therapy. I don't know.
2:12:12
Speaker 1: What goes inside his head, but he can never he
2:12:15
Speaker 1: is so obsessed with this idea never admit defeat and
2:12:17
Speaker 1: never admit you've lost, and never admit you've made a mistake,
2:12:21
Speaker 1: and never apologize, all of that sort of dumb advice
2:12:26
Speaker 1: that salespeople used to get back in the fifties. Right,
2:12:28
Speaker 1: These are like, you know, never take no for an
2:12:30
Speaker 1: answer type of mindset. And that's fine if you're trying
2:12:36
Speaker 1: to sell property. It becomes gas lighting when you're trying
2:12:41
Speaker 1: to sell it politically on this front. Now, as for
2:12:48
Speaker 1: your specific question about the Democrats, here's this look. I
2:12:53
Speaker 1: just think this re redistricting decision by the Democrats to
2:12:56
Speaker 1: fight fire with fire. It's going to help them in
2:12:58
Speaker 1: the short term, but I don't think they ever would
2:13:00
Speaker 1: have needed it. They could have kept their high ground
2:13:02
Speaker 1: and probably still won't control the House. They could have
2:13:05
Speaker 1: kept their high ground and probably still watched Texas do
2:13:08
Speaker 1: a dummy mander. But now Democrats have given up whatever
2:13:12
Speaker 1: reform credentials they had been developing over the last fifteen
2:13:15
Speaker 1: years by being the party in favor of quote fair districts.
2:13:18
Speaker 1: They're no longer a party that's in favor of this
2:13:21
Speaker 1: and I don't accept the premise of what when you
2:13:23
Speaker 1: have to suspend a constitutional rule in order to do
2:13:27
Speaker 1: that is a slippery slope. And that's the issue I
2:13:30
Speaker 1: have with this. It's a slippery slope. But let me
2:13:31
Speaker 1: make another point. Fair districts means you have the opera,
2:13:39
Speaker 1: you will see a different type of person elected. Maybe
2:13:44
Speaker 1: someone who's center right might win in a closely contested
2:13:49
Speaker 1: Republican leaning seat, and maybe that member of Congress is
2:13:52
Speaker 1: a Don Bacon type and stands up to the Republican
2:13:55
Speaker 1: Party in a moment that it's necessary to have bipartisan pushback.
2:14:01
Speaker 1: And now what you're going to do is you're going
2:14:04
Speaker 1: to create a situation where the only Republicans that get
2:14:07
Speaker 1: elected in Virginia are going to be somebody who's pretty
2:14:12
Speaker 1: out of the mainstream. And you know, I fear what
2:14:16
Speaker 1: we're happening here is across the board, we're going to
2:14:19
Speaker 1: get fewer sort of incrementalists, you know, the pragmatists in Congress,
2:14:24
Speaker 1: and more ideologues. So I don't think it's I mean,
2:14:28
Speaker 1: the whole point of fair districts is to try to
2:14:32
Speaker 1: have districts that are more representative of the larger pragmatic
2:14:36
Speaker 1: majority that is in America, and so I can't I
2:14:43
Speaker 1: understand the reaction. I understand, and if you're a hardcore partisan,
2:14:50
Speaker 1: then yes, this feels like the right thing to do.
2:14:54
Speaker 1: But this feels like the law of unattended consequences is
2:14:57
Speaker 1: going to bite the party in the ass here on this,
2:15:00
Speaker 1: and I think they are going to regret losing the
2:15:03
Speaker 1: high ground on the reform issue. This is why I
2:15:06
Speaker 1: think I think very highly of these independent candidacies in Nebraska,
2:15:11
Speaker 1: in Montana, the new one in California with Kevin Kyleie,
2:15:15
Speaker 1: a former Republican congressman, dropping the party label. I just
2:15:20
Speaker 1: I think all you're doing is giving more credibility to
2:15:24
Speaker 1: those that rip on both parties. Democrats had higher ground
2:15:29
Speaker 1: on the reform issue when it came to elections. Doing
2:15:33
Speaker 1: all of this fighting fire with fire just partisanizes it all.
2:15:38
Speaker 1: And I think, you know this idea that, oh, it's
2:15:41
Speaker 1: temporary and we'll come back and do it. Well, politicians
2:15:44
Speaker 1: don't have the trust of the public, and how often
2:15:47
Speaker 1: do they come back and do something. I'm not saying
2:15:49
Speaker 1: they won't, I'm no, you know, but I have to
2:15:52
Speaker 1: tell you recent history tells me that once parties see
2:15:58
Speaker 1: no penalty for give up something They're not going to
2:16:02
Speaker 1: somehow voluntarily, right. Do we really think Virginia Democrats, if
2:16:09
Speaker 1: they have a nine to two or ten to one advantage,
2:16:12
Speaker 1: are going to want to voluntarily give back that advantage.
2:16:18
Speaker 1: Prove me wrong. I hope to be proven wrong. I'll
2:16:23
Speaker 1: eat whatever crow a Democrat wants to feed me on this.
2:16:28
Speaker 1: But I think that I just I don't. I think
2:16:31
Speaker 1: this is a huge mistake. And I think this is
2:16:34
Speaker 1: why there's so much energy with more and more voters
2:16:38
Speaker 1: looking for an alternative to both parties these days, and
2:16:43
Speaker 1: in this case, this is Democrats help accelerate. Donald Trump
2:16:46
Speaker 1: has been an accelerant on the right, fighting this fighting
2:16:50
Speaker 1: fire with fire business might end up being an unintended
2:16:54
Speaker 1: consequence ancelerant of this movement of center left voters as well.
2:17:01
Speaker 1: All right with that, but I'd love to I'm still
2:17:05
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I'm closing being shell shocked by the
2:17:07
Speaker 1: bam out of bio eighty three point of all the
2:17:14
Speaker 1: NBA players, where would bam out of bio have been
2:17:19
Speaker 1: on your list of NBA players most likely to score
2:17:24
Speaker 1: more points in a game than Kobe Bryant's eighty one.
2:17:27
Speaker 1: I don't know if we're ever going to get to
2:17:28
Speaker 1: the damn Wilt Chamberlain one hundred moment, but tell me
2:17:32
Speaker 1: there is no chance shoot. Even on the Heat, Tyler
2:17:35
Speaker 1: Hero would probably be considered more likely to get to
2:17:39
Speaker 1: top eighty one points. Then Bam out of Baio, who,
2:17:42
Speaker 1: by the way, got seven three pointers according to the
2:17:43
Speaker 1: box score, but he sort of did it the Wilt
2:17:47
Speaker 1: Chamberlain way right. Sure, twenty one of his eighty three
2:17:51
Speaker 1: came from the three point line, but sixty two sixty
2:17:57
Speaker 1: two from two points. Now, imagine Bam out of Bio
2:18:05
Speaker 1: next to Jannis. Sorry. You know, the Heat is a
2:18:08
Speaker 1: team that I you know, I jump on the Heat's
2:18:10
Speaker 1: bandwagon when they're good as a as a Miami native,
2:18:13
Speaker 1: even though they really, they really weren't much of a
2:18:16
Speaker 1: franchise when I you know, they'd only been born about
2:18:19
Speaker 1: a year before I graduated high school, or two years
2:18:22
Speaker 1: before I graduated. But you know, I want the Heat
2:18:25
Speaker 1: to succeed. I love Spoe, so anyway, I'm happy for
2:18:30
Speaker 1: Bam the sneaky Heat man. They can be. They're going
2:18:35
Speaker 1: to be a joyous pain in the ass to the
2:18:39
Speaker 1: rest of the eavestring conference in the playoffs, and that's
2:18:42
Speaker 1: when I enjoy rooting for the Heat the most. All
2:18:44
Speaker 1: right with that, I'll see in twenty four hours. Thanks
2:18:47
Speaker 1: for listening.