Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Corruption Might Be The Dems’ Best Closing Argument + The Founding Father You’ve Never Heard Of

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Full Episode - Corruption Might Be The Dems’ Best Closing Argument + The Founding Father You’ve Never Heard Of · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
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  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
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• 0:11
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• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Hello there. Happy
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Wednesday and welcome to the Chuck Todd cast. We are
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: now under two weeks. We're getting really close. We're not
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: quite there. We're measuring it in days. So we're 13
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: days until election day. And we're not that far away
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: where we'll start measuring it in hours. If you will,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: let me give you a quick rundown of today's episode.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I've got two big stories that I think are very
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: connected that will that if this is the closing argument,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: we may be moving into something bigger than just simply
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: a wave. But we'll get to that in a second.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: My conversation, my interview today is with an author. named
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Scott Greenberger, who wrote about a founding father that has
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: gotten sort of lost in history. And I say lost.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: He's had a few biographies written about it, so he's
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: not completely lost. But it's the the other father of
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the Constitution. You may think it's just James Madison that
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: gets that title. Well, Scott Greenberger makes a case for
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Gouverneur Morris, who probably wrote more of the Constitution than
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: even Madison did. But he was a bit written out
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of history, in part because he the Virginians sort of
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: dominated the first part. Um, and in fact, that's a
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: part of our conversation that how much, how much, um,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: that there was an, almost an intentionality by the Virginians
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: to make sure history knew everything that they did. And
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: that in some ways Morris, um, didn't, didn't care enough
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: about the legacy, about his own legacy that, um, That's
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: why perhaps there's not as much written about him. So
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: we sort of take that and sort of how the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: founding fathers in different ways thought about their legacy, thought
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: about what should be saved, thought about how history would
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: see things. It's sort of a reminder about our current
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: president who's obsessed with how he'll be remembered and is
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: desperate to put his name on things, because I think
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: he thinks if his name's on things, then history has
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: no choice but to remember him. And I think they
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: it's very telling because the most likely result, and it's
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: still my thesis on this, is that he's going to
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: be more forgotten than anything else. I know Trump is
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: so all-encompassing at the moment, but I think because he
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: really doesn't, his biggest accomplishments are political, they're not policy.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: And when you don't have big accomplishments on policy, history
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: forgets you pretty quickly. And I think history will forget him, right?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Go over Cleveland is a terrific example. Here's somebody that
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: won two non-consecutive terms, you would think. So he made
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: political history, but political history is quickly forgotten. And I
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: think Donald Trump will be more forgotten than people realize.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: It is Wednesday, which means I'll give you an updated set.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: At this point, I'm just going back and forth. My
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: updated Senate rankings. Last week, you got my updated gubernatorial rankings.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And I make a few movements here and it will
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: be a top 10, not just a top five, because realistically,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: we've got probably 16 Senate races that are going to
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: be decided by single digits. This cycle could climb in
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: closer to 20. But we have 10, arguably 10 right
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: now that have a chance of flipping. And really, you
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: could you could expand that definition and say we're getting
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: close to a dozen that have a chance of flipping
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: most of them. are Republican-held seats that have a shot,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Democrats have a shot at flipping. But there are at
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: least three Democratic seats that at least are sitting in
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: single-digit territory. But I want to begin with what could
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: be the closing argument for Democrats. And if it's a
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: successful closing argument, it could be how they take a
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: good year and turn it into a generational year. wipe
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: out of the party in power. So let me explain.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I'm beginning to wonder whether corruption now is emerging as
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  Speaker 1: the closing argument of this election. And it is something
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  Speaker 1: I've been saying for a while that I thought one
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of the things that could turn what already was looking
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: like a significant democratic wave into something considerably bigger is corruption.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: This idea that everything's pay to play, right? It's the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: kind of issue that can accelerate an existing political trend.
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  Speaker 1: We've seen it in previous election cycles because it gives
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: voters who might otherwise be reluctant to vote against their
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: own party a permission slip to do so because it's
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: a temporary decision, right? And like I said, there's some
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: real history here. If you just go back 20 years
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to 2006 midterms, directionally, we knew it was going to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: be a good Democratic year. The question was, could it
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: be something bigger than what was anticipated. And they ended
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  Speaker 1: up with a big, they won a big chunk of
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  Speaker 1: House seats. They were able to take control of the Senate.
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  Speaker 1: Turned out to be a bigger, more successful year. And
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  Speaker 1: it was about this time where they got a corruption issue, right?
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  Speaker 1: Democrats were in this very strong position. The Iraq war
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: was going badly, right? Very similar. I've always said that
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: 2006 cycle and this cycle have a lot in common.
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  Speaker 1: Unpopular war in the Middle East, unpopular war in the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Middle East. An economy that wasn't working for everybody, an
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: economy that wasn't working for everybody. And, you know, there
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: was also a sense that Republicans have been in charge,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: particularly for Congress. They've been in charge for Congress for
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: over a dozen years.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: There hadn't been a flip. There had been a sort
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: of a less than two year flip in the Senate
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: thanks to a party switcher in 2001. But there hadn't
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: been the voters hadn't flipped, flipped the party in some way.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And then came the Mark Foley scandal. Now, Foley was
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: a Republican congressman from Palm Beach County, Florida. He ended
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: up resigning after revelations about some sexually explicit instant messages
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: that he had sent to teenage congressional pages. And the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: scandal quickly became about something bigger than Foley himself. What
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: did the Republican leadership know? When did they know it?
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  Speaker 1: And why hadn't they done more? And it was it
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  Speaker 1: allowed for a larger argument that, hey, this is what
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  Speaker 1: happens when a party's been in charge for too long.
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  Speaker 1: You know, they they they sort of they they. sweep
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  Speaker 1: things under the rug. And suddenly in the final weeks
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: of an election that was already moving decisively towards the Democrats,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Republicans had to deal with this scandal that reinforced every
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: single negative impression that voters had already had about the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: party in that window, in that period of time. So
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: it didn't create the wave. Essentially, it made the wave bigger, right?
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  Speaker 1: It was already there. It became one more reason for
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  Speaker 1: voters who were already unhappy with how Republicans were governing
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  Speaker 1: to conclude, hmm, Maybe it's time to clean house. It's
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  Speaker 1: time to send a message. And that's what I mean
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  Speaker 1: when I talk about corruption being an accelerant here. You
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  Speaker 1: can be unhappy with the economy and still vote for
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  Speaker 1: your party. You can disagree with your party's handling of
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  Speaker 1: a war and still vote for your party. You can
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  Speaker 1: even be disappointed with a president you supported and still
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  Speaker 1: vote for his party. But corruption, that's a different story.
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  Speaker 1: Corruption allows you to say, I'm not abandoning my principles.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not suddenly embracing the other party's ideology. I'm It's
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  Speaker 1: a permission slip, though, to vote against my party because
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  Speaker 1: it needs to be cleaned up. And for voters who
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: have spent their entire adult lives identifying with one political party,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that distinction can matter enormously, right? It's not about persuading
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: someone to change their mind. You don't have to persuade
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: this voter to change their mind. You just have to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: persuade this voter, hey, the best way for you to
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: clean up this mess inside of your party is to
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: really punish the party. and vote this person out, vote
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  Speaker 1: the party out of power for two years. You can
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: come right back and do what you want to do
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: in two years. Now, I want to be careful. I'm
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: not saying corruption has already become the dominant issue in
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: this election. It hasn't. But we're starting to see it percolate, right?
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  Speaker 1: And I think there's an opportunity here that Democrats can
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: take the frustration about costs, and lump them in with
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: sort of the kleptocracy that essentially Donald Trump has tried
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to turn the Republican Party into. And I think we're
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: beginning to see the ingredients that could make all of
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: this work. And if it does, there are enormous implications
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: for the size of this democratic wave. About a month ago,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I'd laid out three broad scenarios for the midterms, the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: blue mirage, the blue wave, and the blue tsunami. Well,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the blue mirage, of course, was the scenario where Democrats
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: did well enough to win the House. Perhaps they picked
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: up a Senate seat or two, but they couldn't quite
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: break through in the more Republican states and the more
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: red-leaning states. Blue wave is something a bit more substantial,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: a national rejection of the governing party that reached into
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: states and districts Republicans assumed were relatively safe. And then
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: my blue tsunami scenario is where the bottom just falls out,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: you know, where wait a minute, they're sending money to Wyoming? Yes,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: they're sending money to Wyoming for that open house seat.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Meaning like they can't take anything for granted in a
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: cycle like this. My goodness, the DGA is sending money
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: to Oklahoma, right? They think they have a shot at
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: winning Oklahoma government. So the political environment has become so
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: difficult for Republicans and candidates who might ordinarily survive, may
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: not survive in an environment like that. That's what a
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: tsunami could mean. It's what happened- You know, there was
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a big chunk of Democrats who lost in 94 who
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: immediately saw new Democrats win those congressional seats back in 96. Right.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: They were sort of but it was it was more
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of that was just where the momentum is. And that
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: that's what a tsunami looks like. Nineteen ninety four was
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: a was a tsunami against the Democrats. It was a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: red tsunami. And I think, you know, so I think
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: at the moment. Right. We are looking at some form
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: of a Democratic wave. There's a reason all the markets
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: prediction markets indicate that there's over a 50 percent chance
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: that Democrats take the House and the Senate. Right. The
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the path to the Senate. But for Maine and Michigan,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I'd be I'd be very bullish. I'm still
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: pretty bullish on Democratic chances to take control of the Senate.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: But I do think that that the Democratic candidates in
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Maine and Michigan are struggling. And, you know, if Democrats
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: got to win one of those two. They cannot afford
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: to lose them both if they want to win the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Senate here. But but but I digress. So, look, on
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the tsunami front, I'm still a bit skeptical this turns
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: into a 1994 style election. I do think at this
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: point we're looking at either a 2018 wave or 2006 wave.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: The 2006 wave was a bit bigger than 2018. 2018
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: allowed Democrats to win pretty much everywhere they could in
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: swing districts and in blue states, but they couldn't. They
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: couldn't really reach in into Republican territory. 2006 allowed them
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to reach into Republican territory. And that's the big distinction
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: between the two. And of course, this election cycle, because
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: there's so many Senate seats in red territory, Democrats don't
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: succeed in winning in red territory. They're not going to
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: win the Senate. That said. The idea of a blue tsunami,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I think that possibility is somewhere in the 15 to
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: 20 percent category.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: This isn't a 5 percent chance. I think about, you know,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: you run this election, you know, 100 times and I
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: think maybe in 15 to 20 of them, you get
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: some sort of tsunami. And what do I mean by that?
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: It's 30, 40, maybe more seats in the House. It's
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: something like, you know, where they end up with over
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: 250 House seats and they end up with, say, 53
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: or 54 Senate seats when all is said and done.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: But the reason I'm keeping the possibility of a tsunami
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: on the table is that I think there's still room
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: for this political environment to deteriorate further for Republicans. And
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: we've gotten a few news stories over the last couple
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: of days that indicate how that could happen, which brings
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: me back to the corruption issue. Because there's another example,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: a much more recent one that I've been thinking about
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: as well. I've brought it up with you in previous episodes,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and that's Hungary. Peter Magyar's challenge to Viktor Orban was
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: built in significant part around corruption, the idea that this
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: government and power had created a kleptocracy. I mean, that's
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: what Orban had built. That's what Donald Trump is turning
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party into, which is a full-on kleptocracy. And
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: there are more and more Republicans uncomfortable with what Trump
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: is doing. And in Hungary, what made the argument especially
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: potent for Magyar was the connection that he took with
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the corruption to everyday economic life, right? It wasn't simply
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: an argument that Orban and his political cronies had become
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: too powerful or that the system had become too corrupt.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: It was the idea that a politically connected class had
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: enriched itself while ordinary Hungarians were struggling with the cost
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of living. That's when a corruption issue becomes something more
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: than a good government issue, right? This isn't about norms anymore, right?
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: When voters believe that the people running their government are
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: making themselves and their friends richer, While everybody else is
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: paying more for groceries, paying more for energy, especially while
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: your cronies get to build data centers, more to get by,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: corruption becomes an economic issue. That's when it becomes really potent.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing well and these SOBs are making money
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: off of my back. Screw them. That's the mindset that
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: can reach voters who aren't particularly interested in debates about
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: democratic institutions or constitutional norms, right? These are voters that
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: aren't thinking that way, but instead they're like, well, if
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: they're just out for themselves, they're certainly not out for me.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: And corruption is almost an easier way to make that
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: case than trying to lay it out with, hey, look,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: they got this donation, then they did this, et cetera,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: et cetera. Now, these voters may not follow every controversy
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: involving the courts or the Justice Department. They may not
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: care about the finer points of executive authority. They understand
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the idea that people in charge are taking care of
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: themselves while everybody else gets stuck with the bill. Now,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: are we beginning to see this argument develop into a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: full-on closing argument for the Democrats? I don't know yet,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: but I think the potential is there. I think the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: latest reporting involving Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Russia, and Ukraine
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: makes the question considerably more relevant than it was even
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: a week ago. Let's dig into Musk here a little bit.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I want to return to something that I raised on
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the last podcast. Because the sequence of events involving Elon
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Musk deserves a ton of attention than it's getting. And
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I think that this needs to be louder from some
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Democrats on this. Frankly, Republicans, this shouldn't be a partisan issue.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: The wealthiest man in the world is hijacking the United
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: States foreign policy and the American government. That's a problem.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: That's a scandal. And that should be in blaring three-inch letters.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the money. Musk has become the
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: most prominent financial benefactor of the Republican Party. And in September,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: he made two enormous contributions to the Senate Leadership Fund.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: The first was a $ 75 million check, and the second
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: was an $ 83 million check. It was a total of
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: $ 158 million. And in each instance, the following day, an
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: equivalent amount was transferred to a Texas super PAC that
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: was supporting Ken Paxton. Now, I've talked a lot about Paxton.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And the fact that Senate Republicans spent a considerable amount
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: of time and money trying to keep him from becoming
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: their nominee was pretty telling. And so the idea that
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: they spent all this money to try to stop him,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that they were suddenly going to have to spend all
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: this money to rescue him, seemed a bridge too far
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: for some Senate Republicans. But once he became the nominee,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: they had a problem. They needed to help him, particularly
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: if they cared about holding control of the Senate and
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: because James Tallarico was raising enormous amounts of money. But
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: they also had to deal with an entire Senate map
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that was starting to deteriorate. And along comes Elon Musk.
• 18:32
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• 21:00
  Speaker 1: getting every discount. This is the part of this arrangement
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: that I find especially revealing, right? The Senate Republican leadership
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: isn't particularly shy about explaining that the Texas money is
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: essentially Musk's money. It's almost as though they're reassuring their
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: traditional donors that don't worry, their contributions aren't being diverted
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: away from other Senate races to rescue Ken Paxton, who
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: probably doesn't deserve to be rescued, right? This unethical sort
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: of just unworthy candidate for Senate. There are quite a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: few Republican donors who don't want to see their money
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: wasted trying to rescue this unrescuable person. And it's almost
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: like Senate Republicans, oh, don't worry, guys, your money, we're
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: not wasting your money on Ken Paxton. We got somebody
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: else that's going to pay this Ken Paxton bill. And
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: of course, that somebody is Elon Musk. It's an extraordinary arrangement, right?
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton can't find anybody else to fund his super
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: PAC other than Elon Musk. We know the Republican establishment
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: didn't want to fund Paxton. Donald Trump has made it
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: clear he does, but God forbid he ever spend his
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: own money to help somebody else. So he gets his
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: trillionaire buddy to do this. So the richest man in
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the world has effectively stepped in to finance the effort
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: to save one entire Senate campaign. And what's funny is
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: that in the last, you know, and this is where
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's connected here with our foreign policy.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: But the fact that all this is happening all at
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the same time. So Elon Musk is writing these checks
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: to rescue Paxton clearly at the behest of Trump.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Trump is desperate to help Paxton, not desperate enough to
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: write his own checks, but desperate enough to get Elon
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Musk to write checks. Why do we know he's upset?
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Because he went on Truth Social and being moaned about John,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: decided he was going to blame John Cornyn and Karl
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Rove for their handling of the Paxton. If it wasn't
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: for them, Paxton would be in better shape. How about
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: if it wasn't for Ken Paxton, the Texas Senate race
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: would be in better shape? How about if it wasn't
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: for Donald Trump supporting a loser like Ken Paxton, a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: corrupt figure like Ken Paxton, that Republicans would be better shaped? Now,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: We don't know whether any of this is a quid
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: pro quo. The Musk donations happened in September. This slowdown
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: of Starlink happened in October. You know, we're not sure
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: what's connected, but guess what? That's what Congress's job is.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: But it's all part of this same political story, right?
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: You've got the president. You got Senate Republican leadership. You
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: got a candidate they didn't want. You got a man
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: who is now providing an extraordinary amount of money being
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: used to help elect them. And he wants to have
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary amount of influence on the war between Ukraine
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and Russia. Wall Street Journal, they're the latest to report
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: that this time, according to the journal, it was Musk
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: who personally ordered the slowdown of the military grade version
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: of Starlink that Ukrainian forces were relying on to operate drones,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: including drones used to intercept Russian attacks. The restrictions began
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: on October 14th. Happened to be the day before we
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: found out he was the sole funder of Ken Paxton,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: by the way, for what it's worth. This also happened
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: after both Trump and Musk had publicly criticized Ukraine for
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: attacking Russian energy infrastructure. I missed the part where Trump
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and Musk attacked Russia for everything it's been doing to Ukraine,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: but I digress. Trump is particularly angry about Ukrainian attacks
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: on Russian refineries because he has manufactured, you know, remember,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's decisions aren't what's harming the American people. He's
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: always got to blame somebody else. His decision to be
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: talked into a war with Iran by Israel apparently is
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: not his fault and is not the reason why diesel
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: prices have skyrocketed. He wants people to believe it's the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: war between Russia and Ukraine that explains the rise in
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: diesel prices. Now, again, none of this, there's no evidence
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: that supports that. All the evidence supports that what's happened
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: in the Middle East is why energy prices have skyrocketed.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: But Trump needs a different foil. And it's very important
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: to him. He always right. He's got to self-soothe. It's
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: never his fault.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: That's you know, that's not what the narcissist believes. It
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: is clear it's the Iran war that has done this.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: But Trump continues to want to blame Ukraine. There's a
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: variety of reasons for this. Right. A week ago, he
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: complained that he told Zelensky not to attack the refineries
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: and that Zelensky had done it anyway. And Musk responded
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: saying Zelensky had gone too far. Again, Russia has invaded
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: this man's country, killed thousands, hundreds of thousands of civilians.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: And somehow it's Ukraine's fault. This blame the victim mentality
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: by Musk and Trump. It really it's borderline treasonous as
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned. It's a traitor to the it's
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: a traitor to American foreign policy. It just is. You know,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: it's it's it isn't supportive of democracy. And I know
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: these are buzzwords and this will get aggregated and all
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of that and fine.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: But this is I know we've run out of adjectives
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: to describe the damage that Donald Trump has done to
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: America's standing in the world. And if we're not going
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: to stand up for democracies and what the hell are
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: we going to do? What's the point of the American
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: experiment if we're not going to support democracies when when
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: they are threatened? By thugs like Vladimir Putin. But here
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: we are. So now we learn, according to the journal,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: that it was Musk who ordered the slowdown. Now, we
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: still don't have a clear explanation of who authorized it.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Musk publicly suggested that these decisions were technically up to
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the American military and the president. Trump said he didn't
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: know who was responsible. Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon hadn't
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: ordered any restrictions, but he acknowledged that Starlink could make
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: decisions about its own terms of service. So Hegseth was
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: kind of implying in his own way that Musk could
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: do this if he chose to do this. And the
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: journal reports the conflicting accounts about whether Trump knew about
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the decision beforehand or not. But here's the question that
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: this all introduced. Who is actually making American national security policy?
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Is it the president? Is it the Pentagon? Is it
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the National Security Council? Or can the richest man in
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the world, who also happens to be the Republican Party's
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: biggest political donor, make a decision that directly affects the
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: battlefield in Ukraine? Bottom line is Congress ought to be
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: asking some of these very specific questions about this right now.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Who talked to whom? When did those conversations take place?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: What did the president know? What did the Pentagon know?
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Why did the administration initially seem so confused about who
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: was responsible? By the way, who asked for this check
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: to Paxton? Who made the request to Musk for this money?
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: When was this request made? Did it come with strings attached?
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Did Musk say he'd give this money if he had
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: more control over Starlink? All of these are questions that
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Congress is obligated to ask on behalf of the American people,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: pure and simple. And if Congress isn't curious about this,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: then we've got a bigger problem than we realize. What
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: was asked for? What was promised? Was there any relationship
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: between the enormous financial support that Musk is providing to
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the president's party and the national security decisions being made
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: around the same time? Just because we don't have evidence
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: of a quid pro quo doesn't mean we shouldn't be
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: asking questions whether there was. And that's the problem, right?
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: The totality of of moves that Donald Trump has made
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: as president indicate that this is how he operates. We
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: know there's a pay for play on pardons. We know
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: he does this. In some ways he advertises it because
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: he wants people to know that if you want something
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: from him, you have to write a check, pure and simple.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: This is not like something he hides. because he wants
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: people to come with their check in hand before they
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: show up in the Oval. So if Congress can't do oversight,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: on something like this, then it has completely lost the plot.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: But there's another dimension to the story that may ultimately
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: become politically pretty important. Let's go back to what I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: was saying about Hungary. The most potent corruption argument isn't
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: necessarily that somebody broke a law. It's that the government
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: has become a system in which the politically connected seem
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: to have access and influence that ordinary people don't. And
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: then you connect that to the cost of living. So
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: think about the situation we have right now. Americans are
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: paying more for energy. The president is blaming Ukraine's attacks
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: on Russian refineries. His administration has been easing restrictions involving
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Russian diesel. And he's publicly pressuring Ukraine to stop attacking
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Russia's energy infrastructure. And why does Russia need its energy
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: so we can finance its war against Ukraine? Meanwhile, Donald
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Trump's most important political benefactor has made a decision that
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: restricts Ukraine's ability to use a critical communications system. All
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: of this is happening while Musk is pouring hundreds of
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars into Republican campaigns. We have no idea
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: what Musk is personally profiting from the price of diesel
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: or where Or maybe he just needs certain relationships with
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Russia because of his space issue. Maybe you have a
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: bunch of rich guys whispering into Trump's ear that they
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: want to do business with Russia again and he needs
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: to hurry up and solve this thing. Whatever it is,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: something smells here and it smells to Hayek. But the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: question I'm asking is whether voters are beginning to see
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a government that appears more responsive, to the interests and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: preferences of powerful insiders and extraordinarily wealthy individuals, rather than
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: worrying about ordinary Americans. That is where the economic argument
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and the corruption argument begin to overlap. If voters start
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: connecting those dots politically, that becomes an extraordinarily significant problem
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: for the GOP generally. You have a president who promised
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: to bring down prices. Voters are still unhappy with the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: cost of living. You have an administration filled with people
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: who have enormous financial interests in industries affected by government decisions.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: You have a political system in which one individual can
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: provide hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign financing while
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: simultaneously exercising extraordinary influence over a matter of national security.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Is that how most Americans think government ought to work?
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: And more importantly, are they beginning to see that those
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: things are connected? That's the question I keep coming back to.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Do they see the connection? I don't know that corruption
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: is going to become the closing argument of this election,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: but I can see how it could. We've been hearing
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: anecdotes all over that people keep bringing up. When you're
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: not doing well, the corruption really pisses you off. If
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: you were doing fine, you roll your eyes. So Trump
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: 1.0 corruption, people eye-rolled because they were doing okay. Trump
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: 2.0 corruption is a different story. And it could become
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: an accelerant that turns an already difficult election for Republicans
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: into something considerably more consequential.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: The economy has already created dissatisfaction. Trump's behavior has already
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: created exhaustion and fatigue. The Iran war has created questions
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: about his judgment. And there's a growing sense among voters
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that this administration hasn't delivered the stability or the lower
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: prices necessary. that Trump promised were going to take place
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: on day one. Remember, all of our economic instability is
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: caused by Donald Trump. These are not Biden policies. Biden
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: did not do Liberation Day tariffs, did not start the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: trade war with Canada, did not start a war with Iran.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: All of these things are Donald Trump decisions. And then
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: what happens if corruption becomes the explanation voters settle on?
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: for why those promises by Trump have not been kept.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: What happens if the closing argument becomes that the president
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and his wealthy friends are doing just fine while everybody
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: else is still struggling to pay the bills? And oh,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: by the way, the president wants to sell your land
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: out from under you to these tech companies as well
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: and make your energy bills go up even higher. It's
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: a different kind of argument from the usual red versus blue,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: D versus R, debate over taxes, spending, or immigration. And
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it's the one that could provide exactly the kind of
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: permission slip to voters that I've been talking about, right?
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Voters don't have to be persuaded. They can still think
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the Democrats are too close to the socialist wing of
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: their party. But a Republican voter doesn't have to decide
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: that Democrats are right about any of this. They don't
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: even have to like the Democratic Party. They just have
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to decide their own party has become too comfortable with
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the way power is being exercised, and that somebody needs
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: to be able to hold it accountable. This is part
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: of what happened in 06. The Foley scandal didn't cause
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: the wave. It reinforced the sense that the Republican Party
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: had been in power too long and didn't know how
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: to police itself anymore. And I'm wondering if we're approaching
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: a similar moment now. It is how Democrats could overperform
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: in so many of these red states because it's voters
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: who perhaps ideologically are more comfortable with the Republicans than
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the Democrats. But they may think the Republicans are, you know,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: that the Trump era is just so corrupt that they
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: have to clean house. And I think the next 10
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: days are going to tell us quite a bit about
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: whether corruption is simply one more issue in this election
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: or whether it's becoming the issue that helps voters make
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: up their mind. I'll just say this. I had somebody
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: come up to me at the airport the other day
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: and say that they had never voted for a Democrat before,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: but that they were likely going to vote Democrat on
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: a number of races this time. They said they were
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: from Texas. And it was it was the rationale was housecleaning.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: He was not becoming a Democrat. He was not becoming
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: a liberal. He was not becoming a progressive. I think
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: he believes he's not changed who he is. I think
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: he thinks that Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: in a way he doesn't like and that it's time
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to clean house. How many of those voters exist? And
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: are there enough of them that it has a significant
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: impact on the psyche of whoever is left inside the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Republican Party if this indeed is the type of election
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: we're facing? I don't know if we're there yet, but
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I say we're closer. And I think the corruption issue
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: is an interesting way I think now there's enough ways
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: to connect it to the cost of living. All right,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: speaking of character and accountability, I want to spend a
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: few minutes in Ohio because something happened in the governor's
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: race there on Tuesday that I think deserves a lot
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: of attention than just a typical campaign controversy. And it
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: deserves a lot of outrage. It's as disgusting and despicable
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: of an attack ad that I can think of any
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: candidate ever coming up with In my adult lifetime. Now, look,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: I've been pretty bullish on Democratic prospects in Ohio than
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: perhaps other people have. I was earlier on this that, hey,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think I think Vivek Ramaswamy is perhaps the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: worst Republican you could find to lead the ticket in
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Ohio in a campaign year like this. And this was
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: before his his campaign did something that is just extraordinarily disgusting.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: And we're going to get there in a minute. You know,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: but I thought for a while that Ramaswamy was exactly
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the wrong kind of Republican candidate for this moment.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Simply because of what he represents. Here's somebody whose political
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: identity was built around his success in the tech and
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: biotech world. Somebody who became enormously wealthy and then used
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: that wealth and the celebrity that came with it to
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: enter politics. Kind of a poster child of, you know,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: it's kind of the poster child of the new the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Republican Party that Donald Trump has built. Now, on the surface,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently wrong with what he did. We've had
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: plenty of successful business people enter politics. Maria Cantwell struck
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: it rich with, I think it was the real videos.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I think it was what it was back in, used
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: the money she made in stock options to finance a
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Senate race in 2000 to get back into politics. So again,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: people have done it, Democrats and Republicans. But I have
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: been struck by how much of Ramaswamy's public reputation rests
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: on the success of making money rather than on any.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: He doesn't really have a clear record of improving people's lives.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: He's made money, but he's not accomplished a lot.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: His companies haven't solved problems. They haven't saved lives. They've
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: just been vehicles to make him money. And I do
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: think that that distinction matters in this election and that
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: it was mattering even before this latest controversy. Because we're
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: living through a period when Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: of the motivations of these wealthy tech execs. They're skeptical
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: of the influence these individuals have of our government simply
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: because they can write big-back checks to super PACs. They're
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: skeptical of the data centers that are appearing in their
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: own communities, skeptical of the idea that a handful of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: people who have made fortunes in technology ought to have
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: somehow an outsized role in deciding public policy. And Ramaswamy
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: is associated with precisely this world. He's associated with Elon Musk, right?
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: He was the partner with Musk. in the Doge effort
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of Trump's second term. He's associated with
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: the idea that government ought to be run more like
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: a tech company. You think that's what Americans want? And
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: I think that has become much more, it's a very
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: difficult political identity to sell than Republicans had anticipated. And
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: if you look at Ohio polling, Right. I mean, Acton
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: hasn't trailed Ramaswamy in a single poll in the last
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: two months, to my knowledge. And she's been running further
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: ahead of Ramaswamy, Amy Acton has, than Sherrod Brown has
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: been running ahead of John Houston. And I think it's
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: that Ramaswamy is just, you know, Houston is more of
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: a known quantity in Ohio Republican circles than Ramaswamy in
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: his own right. We're talking about a Republican candidate for
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: governor who was already struggling in a state Donald Trump
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: carried comfortably three times. And in fact, I think Ramaswamy
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: is is is part of the reason why the entire
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Republican ticket is struggling in Ohio. I mean, he is
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: he is he is pretty much the worst nominee they
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: could have come up with. And that's before he did
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: this disgusting, egregious attack on Amy Act. Because I think
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: just Ramaswamy's presence, right? He's sort of a cheap version
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: of Elon Musk, right? A less successful version of Elon Musk.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: But if you don't like Elon Musk and Trump and
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the relationship with tech, you're not going to like Ramaswamy.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: He's got a likability problem, right? And now he got desperate.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: We have this extraordinary story involving Amy Acton and her mother.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: So if you haven't followed it, let me explain why.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: A video began circulating online this week featuring Acton's estranged
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: birth mother, a woman named Donna Arthur. The last time
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: that Acton saw her was in 1978 when she was
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: a child. And this woman, who is Acton's birth mother,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: is in this video, it appears to be an ad
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: paid for by Ramaswamy, accusing her daughter of lying about
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: her childhood. Now, let me tell you something about Amy
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Acton's childhood. She's spoken publicly about growing up in some
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: extremely difficult circumstances, including periods of homelessness, neglect, and abuse.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: The history here is deeply disturbing. When Acton was 12
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: years old, her stepfather was arrested and subsequently indicted on
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: charges of sexually abusing her. Acton and her brother were
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: removed from their mother's custody. Her stepfather fled prosecution and
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: her mother remained married to this evil guy. Now Acton
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: has said she hasn't seen her mother since they were
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: together in a courtroom in 1978. That's 48 years ago.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Now imagine having that history. Imagine having spent your adult
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: life dealing with what happened to you as a child,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: building a career, raising a family, serving your community, and
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: eventually deciding that you want to run for governor. And
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: then two weeks before election day, a video appears featuring
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: the mother from whom you've been estranged for nearly half
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: a century, publicly attacking your credibility and suggesting you've lied
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: about your childhood. What are we doing here? What are
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: you doing here, Vivek? The video has circulated among Ramaswami
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: supporters and Acton and her brother have accused Ramaswami of
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: being behind it. Now, as of this recording, the recording
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: is not established who produced or financed the video, but it's,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: you know, the problem is Ramaswami's morals and ethics aren't
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: exactly tip top shape, right? What do you believe? Now,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the video itself doesn't carry a sponsorship disclosure, and we
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: don't know whether Acton's mother was compensated for the video.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: But what do you think? What are you suspicious of?
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: All of those are important facts, and I don't want
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: to skip over them. But here's what we know. When
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Ramaswami's campaign was asked about the video, It didn't simply
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: say this was inappropriate or that the candidate wanted nothing
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: to do with an attack involving an opponent's childhood sexual abuse. Instead,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: the campaign continued attacking Acton's credibility. The Ramaswamy campaign made
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a choice. They made a choice to go down this
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: disgusting gutter, this horrendous gutter, vile gutter. It's a choice
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: about the kind of campaign you're willing to run. the
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: kind of political behavior you're willing to tolerate, it's quite revealing, right?
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Character reveals itself. And we now know Ramaswami is pond scum,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: pure and simple. If you green light an attack like this,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: trying to exploit the pain and hurt of somebody who
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: was abused, when they were in middle school, junior high.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: You're a piece of shit. You're a scumbag. Those words
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: are worthy here. Just absolutely gross and disgusting. And if
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: you're not denouncing this, if you're an Ohio politician and
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: you're not denouncing this, then get out of politics. Look,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: I've covered campaigns for more than three decades. There's I
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: know politics ain't beanbag. It's ugly. It's gross. It's terrible.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: We've seen candidates attack ex-wives. We've seen ex-wives exploited, ex-husbands exploited, families, finances,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: all of that. We've seen plenty of this that arguably
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: is indefensible. And I know there are political professionals who
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: will tell you that sometimes the ugliest attacks, they work.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: That voters may tell pollsters they don't like negative campaigning.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: they still absorb the information. Okay. This doesn't feel like
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: one of those. I think there are moments when the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: public's tolerance for this kind of behavior is misjudged. I
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: think this is going to be one of them. I
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: think Ramaswamy just got himself canceled from polite company. I
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't stand next to this man under any circumstance. I
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: wouldn't want to do business with somebody who goes down
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: this gutter unless he is a full, if he's going
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: to just Candidate to camera apologized for this type of
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: intolerable behavior. Because think about the calculation involved in using
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: somebody's estranged mother to question her account of a childhood
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: that included documented sexual abuse. What is the political theory here?
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: That Ohio voters are going to watch this ad and
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: decide that Amy Acton's greatest vulnerability is that her mother,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: who remained married to the man accused of sexually abusing her,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: now says she wasn't telling the truth about her childhood?
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Is that where we are? We spend a lot of
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: time in this country complaining about the quality of people
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: who run for public office. We complain that good people
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: don't want to enter politics. Well, that we don't have
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: enough public servants who are motivated by something other than ambition, money,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: or celebrity. It's moments like this that's part of the reason.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: If you know that running for office means somebody may
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: go digging through your most traumatic experiences of your childhood
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: and look for a way to weaponize them and use
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: them in political ammunition. They knew this story and they
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: went with it anyway. They wanted to go down this
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: road of trying to weaponize somebody's childhood trauma. The number
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: of people who greenlit this Whoever is involved in this,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I hope they never get hired in American politics ever again.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: The people who run campaigns decide, if we sit here,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: if we decide there are no boundaries at all anymore,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: then don't be surprised when the people most reluctant to
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: enter politics are often the people we'd like to see participate.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I wanted to see Admiral McRaven run. It's my understanding
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: that his spouse said, no way. They didn't want that
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: type of scrutiny or whatever it was. I've had people
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: ask me if I'd run for office. I won't do
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: it because I'm not going to put my family through
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: something like that. So, you know, in some ways, the
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: bad guys are winning, right? The bad guys are chasing
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: away good people from running for office. Now, look, I
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: think there is an electoral question here. Ramaswamy was already
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: dealing with a difficult race before this video surfaced or
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: before he chose to surface this. First of all, if
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: you needed more proof that the polls are accurate on
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: this one or that Ramaswamy thinks the polls are accurate,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: then the mere existence of this tactic is proof that
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the polls are accurate in Ohio. But I think this
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: thing is so gross, so disgusting, that this could drag
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: down the entire Republican ticket in Ohio. I think it's
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: that awful. And I don't think anybody wants to be
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: caught supporting this kind of garbage. This won't even just,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: this isn't going to stay in the governor's race, right?
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: It's about what kind of behavior Republicans in Ohio are
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: prepared to defend, condemn, or simply ignore. What does Mike
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: DeWine think about this? What does my friend John Kasich
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: think about this? What does John Husted think? I bring
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: up Husted specifically because he's trying to win a Senate
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: race in an environment where the Republican brand is already
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: facing significant problems. Does he want to spend the final
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: two weeks of his campaign answering questions about a video,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: about the decision of Ramaswamy to exploit child abuse that
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: took place when Amy Acton was a child and the
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: victim of child abuse? Does he want to be asked
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: whether he thinks this is an acceptable way to campaign?
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: And if he doesn't think it's acceptable, is he prepared
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: to say so? There are legitimate questions. He's running on
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the same ticket as Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy has done this to Houston.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: And I've seen the Trump people want to blame John Houston. Please,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: John Husted is 10x better of a candidate than anybody
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: else on that ticket right now. His problem is he's
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: just not Trumpy. He doesn't fit their definition of what
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: they want to see in a candidate. You want more Ramaswamis?
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Is that what this MAGA world wants? More shitbags who
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: think this is an appropriate way to conduct politics? And
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: this goes directly at what I've made this whole intro
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: about today. Corruption, character, accountability, the willingness to hold people
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: on your own side to the same standards you would
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: demand of your political opponents. So we'll see. I don't know.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong here. Maybe I'm Pollyannish and this thing
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: won't have any impact on the governor's race. We don't
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: know yet. We haven't had a lot of time. We
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: don't have the voter reaction. And obviously, social media outrage
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: does not always translate into real voter outrage. But this
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: raises a bigger question that goes beyond Ohio. Have we
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: reached a point in American politics where campaigns believe there
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: is virtually nothing they can't do, provided they think it
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: might help them win? And if that's where we are,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: what responsibility do the other people in the party have
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: to draw a line? Is anybody going to draw a line?
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: The only people that can draw a line on this
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: are the voters. Politicians are going to do whatever it takes,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: whatever they think they can get away with. The fact
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: that Ramaswamy, think about the cocoon he lives in, that
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: he and his cronies thought this was appropriate. Think about
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the information bubble he lives in that he thought, this is, yeah,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: this is a good idea. We're going to go down
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: this road. Let's traumatize a fellow human being simply because
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: we want to win a governor's race, because Because he
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: failed at everything else he'd done in his life. Right.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: He's failed to have a successful business, but he's cashed
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: in on it. Right. He's successfully made money, but he's
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: failed at actually translating that business into helping other people.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: But this is what the Trump era has brought. Donald
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Trump has done to American politics. This is what he's done.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: He's bankrupted it on the morality front completely. He's changed
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: the incentives for people who work around him. I mean,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: look what he's done to the Republican Party. There are
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: people still left in it that used to care about character.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: We've watched politicians who once claimed to care deeply about
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: personal character, honesty, and standards of public conduct, that they
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: should decide that those things should matter to voters. Donald
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Trump comes along. And half of those people said, what standards?
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Winning is everything. So now what's the result? The result
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: is behavior that might once have ended a political career
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: now gets defended, rationalized, or simply ignored. This is not
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: healthy for the system, folks. I don't care what party
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: you're in. It's not healthy for the country. And it
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: brings me back to the question of this closing argument.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: This is one of those things where the unintended consequence
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: here is that Ramaswamy and This thing blows up and
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: it helps crystallize that the Republican Party has just gone off.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Trump has driven it into a ditch. And the only
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: thing in that ditch are a couple of termites, one
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: named Elon Musk and one named Vivek Ramaswamy. And they
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: have absolutely eaten away at the core of what used
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: to make up the Republican Party. And now it's just rot.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Who knows? But that's the connection I see between Musk, Ramaswamy,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: and what we're seeing in Ohio. They're different stories. One
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: involves enormous sums of political money and a national security decision.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: The other involves an attack on a candidate's deeply painful
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: family history. But they raise a question about power, accountability,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: about what the political actors are prepared to justify in
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: pursuit of. So corruption and character, they haven't mattered in,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: they haven't really mattered in the Trump era, right? In
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: the Trump era, corruption issues haven't hit and neither is
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: character issues. But boy, are we testing the voters' patience
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: on this. Trump is testing the voters' patience. Elon Musk
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: is testing the voters' patience. Vivek Ramaswamy is testing the voters' patience.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: So I, I'm so, It's just so– it's another level
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: of gross and disgusting and awful what Ramaswami is doing. Again,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: I think it ends his political career. I mean this–
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: I think this thing is over. I think this is
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: gross and disgusting and this thing is going to boomerang
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and they're going to regret ever doing it. And the
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: after-on effect. I know in our fragmented media ecosystem, you
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: don't know what's going to break through. But the political
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: party that once cared about Jeffrey Epstein until they realized
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: there were too many people on their own side that
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: might be connected is playing games like this. If a
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Democratic campaign can't connect these dots and turn this into
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: a closing argument, then there's some competency issues on that
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: side of the aisle that we may talk about post-election.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: But for now, I think we've seen this is not
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: been a good, you know, good gets better, bad gets worse.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I think when it comes, if the fact that corruption
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: and character are creeping into the top tier of this conversation,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: that's how a wave becomes a tsunami. All right. I'll
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: sneak in a break. And when we come back, my conversation.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: with Scott Greenberger about a forgotten founder, and more importantly,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: a forgotten author of the Constitution, Gouverneur Morris. Let's do
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: the break. I'll see you on the other side, which
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: will include a top 10 list. Well, as many of
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: you know, whenever I have an opportunity, to remind people
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: of what's in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers, I
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: want to take that opportunity. And there's a terrific new
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: book out. The book is by my next guest, Scott Greenberger,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: and it's called The Forsaken Founder. It's about, he gets
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: to use the French version of Gouverneur. Governor Morris, basically
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: the person who literally wrote the Constitution and certainly is
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: accredited with making the preamble something more than just perfunctory words.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: But he was a lot more than that. He was
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: an interesting character in that he was a bit of
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: an aristocrat, not fully, you know, pro-democracy, but, you know,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: not for everybody type of thing. And had lived a
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: remarkable life, had a front row seat for the French Revolution.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: So it's a terrific book and it's going to spark,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: I hope, a great conversation with Scott, who joins me now. Scott,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: it's nice to meet you.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about Morris. You label him as forgotten.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: He's not fully forgotten, right? He's been dealt with in
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the past in history. So give me your sort of
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: thesis as to why you wanted to resurface his contributions
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: for the modern era.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't. Yeah, he hasn't been completely forgotten. And
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: I think there are some Morris fans out there, people
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: who have really done a deep dive into the Constitution
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: and the convention certainly are aware of his contributions there.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: But I think that average Americans, your average American is
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: not really aware of him. He's certainly not in the pantheon.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: of the founders. That includes probably Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: And I argue that he probably should be. At the convention,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: he spoke more than anybody else, had more motions accepted
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: than anybody else. He really was the one person who
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: stood up and spoke up against slavery, and more specifically
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: against the Three-Fifths Clause, and gave a very impassioned, eloquent
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: speech against the Three-Fifths Clause. And then, as you noted,
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: he did write the preamble and really transformed that from
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: a sort of a dry contract between or an introduction
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: to a contract between states into something much more than that,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: a blueprint that lays out our aspirations as a country.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: He also as the writer of the final draft of
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: the Constitution, in a very subtle way, managed to insert
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: some of his own views into the document, including taking
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: several steps to make sure that there was no endorsement
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: of slavery either implicitly or explicitly in the document, even
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: though it did include the Fugitive Slave Clause and it
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: did include the Three-Fifths Clause. The word slavery is not
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: mentioned in there. Let's discuss sort of Morris and Madison here, right?
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: If Madison's the father of the Constitution, you're putting him
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: as the writer of the Constitution. Who's got a bigger stake? Well,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: I would say that Morris and Madison had their differences,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: I should say, for one thing. Morris just personally was
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: kind of the polar opposite of Madison. Morris was a
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: very imposing figure, a very good-looking guy who enjoyed having
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: a good time, did quite well with the ladies. Madison
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: was probably the opposite in all of those respects. sort
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: of a shorter of stature, unassuming guy. You know, Madison
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: is often called the father of the Constitution because he
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: did the very important job of sitting at the front
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: of the room and taking notes on everything. And he,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: of course, had very particular ideas which he brought to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: the convention and to the debates. But I would argue
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: that Morris has just as much of a claim on
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: being the father of the Constitution. And you mentioned the
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: Federalist Papers earlier. In fact, Hamilton and Jay, their first
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: choice as a co-writer for the Federalist Papers was Morris.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: It was only when Morris declined that they had to
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: go with Madison, who was really their second choice.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I imagine Morris obviously had been Because the preamble
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: said said something more than just here's a list of proposals.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: Obvious. And the whole point of the Federalist Papers was
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: essentially persuasion.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: You wanted to find your best writers. Is that essentially
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: what Hamilton was looking to Morris for?
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, but Morris, he was the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: best writer. I mean, he was generally recognized in even
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: a room full of brilliant men who were who were
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: terrific and very talented writers. He was recognized as the best,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: which is something in and of itself. But he also,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: you know, he wasn't just a writer. In addition to
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: standing up and speaking against slavery. He, like Hamilton, believed
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: in a strong executive, so he pushed for that during
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: the convention. He also, like many of the men in
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: the room, recognized that it was absolutely essential for there
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: to be a balance of powers. He actually feared, in
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: thinking about our own time and what's happened over the
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: past several years, he actually was more afraid of legislative
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: tyranny than executive tyranny. But he, like the other men
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: in the room, never imagined that there would be a
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: branch of government that would willingly its power to another branch.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: The whole system was created under, you know, under the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: assumption that each of the branches would jealously guard its
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: own power. And so what we've seen recently where we
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: have a Republican dominated Congress that really is not exerting
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: its prerogatives with a Republican president would be very surprising
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: to Morris and and others. The whole system they built
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: was built on this tension between the branches. So, you know, Morris,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: all of which is to say that Morris was more
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: than just a writer. He did bring to the convention,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: you know, specific ideas of what the government should look like.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: And he also from the very beginning, made it clear
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: that we needed to have a federal government that was
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: supreme to the state governments, that the problem with the
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: Articles of Confederation was that each state could basically do
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: what it wanted, and that the only way that what
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: they were doing in that room in Philadelphia would work
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: is if they recognized right off the bat that there
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: needed to be a federal government that was supreme to
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: the state governments.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: So, I'm.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Curious.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: your theories as to why he got put up, put
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: in the back, you know, it's almost like put in
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: the back row of the, of the proverbial photo. Uh,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: he wasn't a front row person. Uh, you also paint
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: him as somebody who was a ladies man who enjoyed being,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of holding court.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: Um, the fact that he had a peg leg was
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: almost sort of like, Hey, aren't I interesting.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Attitude. He was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: It's like we gave him a shout to a bar
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Right. I'm pretty cool. Wait till I tell you the story.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: Could it be he rubbed so many people at the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: time the wrong way? Is that the issue? And it's
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: sort of like, Yeah, we're not inviting him to this
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: party or this. I mean, did he alienate folks? What's
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: your theory as to why he's essentially put into the
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: back row?
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: That's definitely part of the reason. I think his personality,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: the fact that he was such a colorful character, he
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: did rub some people the wrong way. You know, John
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Adams in particular.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: By the way, when you ever describe somebody as a
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: colorful character, it's usually they're dead, which means in their life.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: people thought they were probably a-holes, right? Isn't that what
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: we do in history sometimes?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote a biography of Morris and was
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: a big Morris admirer, referred to Morris' extreme aggressive frankness.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: So he was very... Oh, Teddy.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt acknowledged extreme direct pranking. Okay. Yeah. Hey, man, game
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: recognizes game.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: Thanks, one to no one. Right.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: So, yeah. So, I think that was certainly part of it,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: his personality, his success with the ladies. You know, some
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: people viewed him as somewhat of a libertine, though he
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: was a bachelor till late in life. So, you know,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: that needs to be said. Yeah. He enjoyed great success
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: with the ladies. And I think that some people frowned
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: on that for moral reasons and others were frankly jealous.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: And there's plenty of evidence in that in the letters
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: and memoirs of the time and in Morris's own diary
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: where he acknowledges that and recognizes that there were people
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: who were jealous of him. He was not a modest person.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: You know, we've talked about how he was a very
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: talented writer. He was extremely bright, even in a room
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: full of bright men. And he didn't hide that fact.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: He was not modest. But I think also, you know,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: I think another reason why he hasn't made the front row,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: as you put it, is that He made a lot
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: of people uncomfortable when he stood up at the convention
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: and talked about slavery in moral terms.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe everybody around there felt judged by him. I think
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: some of them did.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: There were some people there who were unabashedly pro-slavery, the
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: South Carolinians, for example, but the Virginians– All of whom
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: owned slaves were conflicted about it, and that includes Madison
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: and George Mason in Washington. I mean, they recognized on
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: some level that this wasn't right, that it wasn't compatible
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: with the principles of the country that they hoped to build.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: And I think it was embarrassing for a lot of
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: the people at the convention for this guy who was– 6'4,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: on his peg leg to stand up and give this impassioned, eloquent,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: to make the moral case against slavery, while the rest
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: of them just sort of sat there uncomfortably. Even abolitionists
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: such as Hamilton and Franklin didn't speak up during the convention.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: Franklin was president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society at the time,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: and the members of that organization said, Hey, Ben, would
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: you mind raising this during the convention? He said, you
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: know what? I'm not sure that would be such a
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: good idea. He sort of read the room. Morris did
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: not read the room or didn't care about reading the room.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: And of course, it was those Virginians in part or
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: in large part because of the three fifths clause that
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: Morris had been unable to remove from the document. They
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: dominated the presidency for many years after the convention. And
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: the victors write the history, right? They were the heroes.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: Jefferson and Madison and Monroe, they were the ones who
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: wrote the history. And so I think Morris got written
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: out of it. You know, another factor you alluded to
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: earlier is that he was a bit of an aristocrat.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I would say he was, you know, fully
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: democratic as Hamilton was. But he was an aristocrat from
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: an aristocratic family and had sort of aristocratic tastes. I
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: think that maybe also rubbed some people the wrong way.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: So for all of these reasons, and then there was
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: a later one, which we haven't gotten to. He was
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: during the War of 1812. He was still so disillusioned
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: by the inclusion of the Three-Fifths Clause. He thought that
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: that had led to the War of 1812, that the
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: Virginians were dragging the country. At that point, Madison was
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: president into a pointless war with silly fantasies of conquering Canada.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: He thought they had it in for New York and
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: New England and sort of the commercial industrial part of
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: the country. And so he was so upset about the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: course that Madison and Jefferson had set the country on
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: that he considered whether maybe it was time for New
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: York and New England to go their separate ways. So
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: he was sort of an early secessionist.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: He thought.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: This country can't be half slave and half free, which,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: of course, is what Lincoln said 50 years later. But Lincoln,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: his credit said, we're going to be all free and not,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: you know, we're going to let some states go their
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: own way.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: You know, I remember when I read the McCullough Adams book.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: And way back when. And now I'm a younger person.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: And so you're absorbing history and, you know, you got
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: taught it a certain way. And McCullough's book on Adams
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: really sort of helped reshape and rebalance the founding a
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: little bit. but i always got the impression that you
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: know you and i i know this now right more
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: so than ever that whenever you read a book on
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: the founding you've got to find out is the author
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: essentially a northerner or southerner yeah right there is this
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: right those with southern sort of um biases. I don't
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: know what else to call them. There's the rationalizations of
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: the Virginians. And there's those that write from Boston or
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: New York and look at it in a different perspective
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, if John Adams is not president, is John
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Adams a vice president? Does he get shoved into the
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: back row, too, by the Virginians?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think he was shoved to the
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: back row for a long time before that McCullough book
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: and the series with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney that
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: came out, which was so excellent. You know, I think
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: for a long time, Adams had sort of been shoved
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: to the back row, you know, also because of his personality.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: I think he rubbed plenty of people the wrong way
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: as well. And even even fellow federalists.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: He was the opposite of Morris. He was a little
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: bit of a Puritan, right? Yes, he was. The unlady's man,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: if you will.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: That's right. He was the unlady's man, but he rubbed
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: some people the wrong way. I mean, in fact, when
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: he ran for re-election, a fellow federalist, Hamilton, savaged him
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: in the press. I mean, Adams was a very unpopular
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: incumbent when he ran for re-election. So Look, I think
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: that's true. You know, the Virginians wrote the history and
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: the Southern historians. You know, we have a we have
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: a monument in Washington to Jefferson. We don't have a
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: monument to Adams.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: No, they this was and history builds on earlier historians.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: And in the you know, these early perceptions of Morris,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: both by the historians and his And the resentments of
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: his contemporaries really colored our view of him. You know,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: the other thing, which sounds kind of silly, but I
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: think it's a factor as well, is his name is
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: sort of inaccessible. You know, you pronounced it governor. Others
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: pronounce it guvenor. There's some disagreement. And, you know, the
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: problem with pronouncing it as governor and why I've feels
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: like a title. Right.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Like it feels like a title.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: And that's one of the few things he didn't do.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: So it's very confusing. It's much better to be named
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: Tom or Ben or George if you want schoolchildren to
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: remember you. And I think that's also part of the
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: problem with why he hasn't been remembered. Of course, also,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: there's no Monticello or Mount Vernon for him.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: His estate, which is now- I was just going to say,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, being an aristocrat, I assume he had some.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: He did. It was called Morsania, of course, and it
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: was in- what was then Westchester County, but is now
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: the Bronx. It was a huge piece of land. But
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: it was carved up by one of the railroads at
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: the turn of the 20th century and disappeared. So there's
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: nowhere to go remember him. I actually went to his
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: grave site, which is in the churchyard of St. Ann's
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: Church in the South Bronx. And there's just a very
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: very modest uh tablet there that was placed there in
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: 1932 i read the newspaper coverage of that event and
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: uh you know it's actually kind of sad it's just
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: it's sitting back there near the the recycling bins and
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: the garbage cans uh for the church and um you
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: know there's so there's no natural place to go remember
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: him now hopefully there's been people who showed up at
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: some of my events who from the bronx who are
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: dedicated to to changing that we'll see what happens but.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: Before I get to his time in France, because that's,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: in some ways, a whole subject change on the French Revolution,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: and I want to get to that. He ultimately looked
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: back on the Constitution and thought it was still a
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: worthy document, correct?
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: He did, but he thought that the he thought that
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: the three fifths clause was the fatal flaw in the
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: document and that it was.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: It fatal, though, in that in the in that we
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: eventually got rid of it.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, we did eventually get rid of it, but
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: it took a war that killed, you know, 800000 Americans
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: to get rid of it. So he was very prescient.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, he thought early on that. And he he
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: thought that this was going to lead to disaster, that
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: this this idea of having slavery legal in some of
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: the states and not others was going to was going
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: to lead to trouble. And he was not wrong about that. So, yeah,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, he did, though. He believed in the he
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: believed in the Constitution and he believed in the.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: He didn't believe in it because the Articles of Confederation
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: were such a failure and this was just an improvement.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: Or did he.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: Look, everybody, you know, even Franklin, you know, everybody said
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: this is not perfect. Men are not perfect. The people
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: who drew up this document are not perfect. But this is,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: you know, this they view this as an experiment. And
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: they felt like this was a good foundation for that experiment,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: that the system they had created with this balance of
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: powers and the power with three branches of government and. Ultimately,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: this compromise between the big states and the small states
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: where you would have one house, the Senate, where the
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: states would each have equal representation, another one that would
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: be based on population. They felt like, okay, let's see
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: how this goes. We've done the best we can here.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: As Franklin said to the perhaps apocryphally to the woman
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: who asked what they had done, you know, we create
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: a republic if you can keep it. So they weren't absolutely,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: you know, it's easy for us with the hindsight of
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: 250 years to say, oh, this was all, you know,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: the success was preordained, right? This was going to work out,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: but they didn't feel that way. They knew that, I mean,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: also looking across the globe, this was the first experiment
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: of its kind since, you know, the first democracy since
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: ancient times so they were i wouldn't say they were
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: overly confident but they were hopeful that they had created
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: something that would endure so.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: He was an advocate for direct election of the president.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: To the point of and how much of that was
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: just he didn't he wanted to have a weak. He
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: believed he thought the legislative branch should be weak. Right. Yeah.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: He feared it. Yeah. He feared a the tyranny of
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: the legislative branch. And I know once we talk about France,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: you know, we'll talk about the fact that he saw that.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: His worst fears play out in France where the radicals
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: in the National Assembly created the reign of terror there.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: So that's what he feared. But yeah, he did believe–
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: that's why I don't think it's fair to characterize him
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: as anti-democratic because he did believe that there should be
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: direct popular election of the president. He saw the president
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: as sort of the tribune of the people. He felt
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: like the president would be the one to– For that reason,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: to represent the people's interests, he feared that the wealthy
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: sort of ironic because he was wealthy, but he felt
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: like the wealthy would dominate the legislature.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: And yet, though, he was a believer that only landowners
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: should vote.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: True. However, to be fair, that was not that was
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: not an unusual opinion at the time. There were many
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: states where that was true into the 20th century. So,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: you know, there were you know, that was not a
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: crazy or a minority viewpoint at that point. Many people,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: including Madison, I think, stood up to say, you know,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: we do think that they're not everybody should be able
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: to vote.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Are you did he are you surprised he never sought
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: higher office or ran for anything?
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: You know, it's one of the interesting things about him.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: And I think it's another reason why he's been forgotten.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: He seemed to he was the rare person in public
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: life who sort of felt it almost felt like he
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: could take it or leave it. When his country called,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: he answered.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: But he never was he there. I mean, I guess
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: what got him there? What made him somebody that should
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: be a delegate to that? Yeah.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: Well, he, you know, he just said he impressed people
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: at every step of the way. Right. So as a
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: very young man, he started the first, um, public role
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: he had was as a member of the New York
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: Provincial Congress, and he really shined there. Also, incidentally, argued
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: against slavery there. Played a huge role in drafting the
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: New York State Constitution, and in particular, impressed people with
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: his knowledge of fiscal and financial matters. Based on that,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: he was elected by his colleagues in the Provincial Congress
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: to serve in the Continental Congress. In the Continental Congress,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: his colleagues there immediately sent him to Valley Forge to
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: help Washington reorganize the Continental Army, which he did with
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: great success. So he kept succeeding at every point. And
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: then during the Revolutionary War, he worked with Robert Morris,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: no relation to reorganize the finances of the country. And
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: he was living in Philadelphia pursuing private business interests and
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: was when he was elected by the Pennsylvania politicians to
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: be one of their delegates to the Constitutional Convention. So
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: even though he was a New Yorker, he represented Pennsylvania
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: at the convention. So but he was one of these
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: guys he had. In between all of those, he was like, OK,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: now I'm going to go make some money, pursue my
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: private business interests, socialize, which he enjoyed doing quite a bit.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: You're painting the picture of just sort of what we
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: would call today is a power broker. He wanted to
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: help those in power maybe be adjacent to it. but
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: didn't necessarily want to be the guy in charge?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he never ran for office. He wasn't a
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: politician in the traditional sense. And, you know, other biographers
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: of him have noted, Richard Brookhiser noted about 20 years
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: ago that, you know, he was one of the founders.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: He loved his private life. He liked to fish. He
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: liked to... eat and drink and socialize. When he grew
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: up with wealth, he probably had that option. Yeah, he
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: had that option. When his country called, he always answered, unfailingly.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: When he came back from France, they were best friends,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: and Hamilton urged him to.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: Run for Congress.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: And he said, yeah, no thanks. And then eventually he
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: was drafted to fill a Senate seat. And even when
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: he was in France, Washington nominated him to succeed Jefferson
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: as ambassador, but, but, uh, Morris hadn't gone over there
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: to represent his country and gone over there to make money.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: And also because he wanted to travel through Europe. So yeah, he,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, and as I mentioned, he, he
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: declined the opportunity to be one of the authors of
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: the federalist papers. I don't think he was that interested
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: in burnishing his legacy. And a lot of these other
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: guys had an eye toward history, how history would view them.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: Um, If Hamilton lives, is Morris a bigger deal?
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: That's a very interesting question. Perhaps he is, because if
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: Hamilton ends up as president, they certainly saw eye to
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: eye in terms of executive power and the importance of
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: the federal, the power of the federal government, you know,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: as opposed to.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: Hamilton's one of my favorite what ifs. I mean, it's
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: like if he lives.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: What would Hamilton have gone on to do? Yeah, I
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: think it is. It is fair to assume that if
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: he had gone on to the presidency that that Morris
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: might have ended up playing. Yeah.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Although there's always been a question of whether the the
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: issue of of who gets of who's eligible to run
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: for president was designed to prevent Hamilton that's right yeah
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: that's always that's right yeah but you know who knows
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: how that challenge would have that's right well let's get
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: to France now you say he got over he ends
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: up over there literally you know as soon as the
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: constitution is finished yeah and ratified yeah he ends up
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: in France you said he's So he didn't go as
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: a representative of the United States at first, and then
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: he becomes one?
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: That's right, yeah. He did. He and Robert Morris, who
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: I mentioned before, who had worked together to shore up
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: the finances of the country during the revolution, were pursuing
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: business deals there. They owned land in upstate New York.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: They were trying to sell. They had this scheme to perhaps–
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: purchased America's debt to France and somehow make some money
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: off that. So, he did not go there intending to
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: serve in a public capacity. But almost immediately, even before
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: Washington chose him to succeed Jefferson as our ambassador, what
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: was then called Minister to France, Washington did send him
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: on a mission to London unofficially as an emissary to
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: talk to the British about some of the unresolved issues
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: from the war, including some forts they had in the
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: Northwest Territory and money that was owed. That was yet
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: another example of where people in power kept asking him,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: tapping him to do various things. Yeah, he went over
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: there not intending to be– to serve in a public capacity.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: So he– it's there. You referred to it earlier, but
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: his skepticism of giving too much power to a legislature
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: in his mind was essentially reinforced. By what he observed
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: in the reign of terror.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. I mean, that was driven by, you know,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: radical legislatures and legislators in the National Assembly and the,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: you know, the political infighting that, you know, eventually led
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: to the most radical members kind of driving the bus there.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: He actually thought that. that given France's history and its politics,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: that the best, uh, possible outcome would be some sort
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: of a constitutional monarchy. Um, and he actually, uh, tried
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: to advise Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to pursue, uh,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: a moderate, um, course and to try to, um.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: So he was liaisoning with, with the king of, uh,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: king of France.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: He was, but it's, you know, but it's important to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: remember that, uh, You know, King Louis was an American
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: hero at that point. He had helped us really, you know,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: played a gigantic role in helping us win our revolution. And,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: you know, in the book, I quote, there's a letter
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: from George Washington to Louis XVI congratulating him on his reign,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: you know, and thanking him again for all the help
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: he had given us during the revolution. So most Americans...
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: had very fond feelings toward Louis XVI. So it wasn't
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: unusual that Morris would try to help him. And he
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: thought that it was in America's best interest for France
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: to be stable.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: It's sort of ironic. I mean, isn't the French Revolution
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: essentially inspired By the success of the American Revolution? Absolutely.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: It was. But he and many others didn't feel like that,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: you know, given France's history and it's the power of
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: the clergy there, for example, and obviously its history of slavery.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: having a monarch. They didn't think the French were ready
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: as a people for a republic. They felt like maybe
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: a constitutional monarchy was what they were best suited for,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: certainly at this point. And, you know, and again, given
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: what happened during the French Revolution, which As Americans, we
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: tend to forget because we do focus on the fact
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: that it grew out of our revolution. It ended up
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: with Napoleon and a return to the monarchy. They embraced
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: a lot of the same principles that we did, but
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: they did not have a smooth path to a republic
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: that we had. For Morris, this vindicated all of his fears.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: I want to get to the War of 1812. and
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: his criticism of it, how much of it was personal
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: with Madison, do you think?
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: That's yeah, he definitely did not like Madison. But he
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: had a much better relationship with Jefferson. And he felt
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: like really the road to that war began with Jefferson
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: and the embargo that Jefferson placed on Britain and France
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: to punish them for impressing American sailors into their Navy. So,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: it's true. He had no love for Madison. He had
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: a much better relationship with Jefferson. But no matter what
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: his personal feelings were towards those two men, he thought
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: that the embargo first and that the war were just
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: a complete disaster, which they were. They were an economic
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: disaster for New York and New England. And in terms
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: of what the the so-called war hawks in Congress wanted
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: to do, which was to conquer Canada. Well, that was
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: that was a fantasy that didn't.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: And there's a whole book to be written about all
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: the different times we thought we were going to get
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: our hands on Canada.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, you know, I write
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: a piece for Forbes. There are a lot of, you know,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: in terms of the self-inflicted economic damage of the tariffs
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: and going off to war, you know, having a president
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: who has these fantasies of adding Canada to the United
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: States and promising a victory in, you know, a few weeks,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: you know, as Jefferson said, conquering Canada would be a
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: mere matter of marching. So it didn't turn out that way.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, I just... I remember reading in Grant's biography,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: there was a group of members of Congress who wanted
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: essentially Canada as reparations from the Brits. This obsession with–
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: we've weirdly had multiple generations of Americans with ambitions to
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: grab Canada, and it's never happened.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is kind of strange. But yeah, no, he
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: saw the war of 1812 as sort of as the,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: you know, manifestation of what, you know, the original sin
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: that had been embedded in the in the Constitution, the
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: three fifths clause. Right. Here were the Virginians using their.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: disproportionate political power to drag us into this stupid war,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: which was devastating. And the embargo and the war devastating
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: the economies of New England and New York and sort
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: of the industrial commercial part of the country. And, you know,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: caring only about the slaveholding states were obviously mostly agricultural. And,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: you know, Jefferson had this vision of an agrarian republic.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: And Morris and Hamilton and other people in the North
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: had a very different view of what the country should
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: be like. And as it turns out, they were right. Nope.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, you give, you say he deserves credit
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: for essentially the seeing the vision of the Erie Canal, right?
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: That's right. That was a big part. That's right. And
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: he predicted that that would really cement New York's status
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: as the hinge of the continental economy, and that it would,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: in particular, make New York City the most important city
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: in North America, which, of course, it did.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Poor Albany. It was so close.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or Albany. It was so close.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, no, he was right about that. You know,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: and one final thing he did near the end of
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: his life, which was another incredibly important contribution when he
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: he was really the one who laid out the Manhattan
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: street grid. So he sort of plotted out the growth
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: of New York. And in that case, in a very
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: democratic way. Right.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: The green is Robert Moses. Yeah.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's sort of an early Robert Moses. So the
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: idea of the grid was it broke up the, ironically,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: because he was a landowner, but it broke up some
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: of the properties of the large landowners. It was a
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: very rational pattern. He did not want what L'Enfant did
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: with Washington, sort of the circles and the broad avenues.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: He saw that as very European and royalist. And even
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: the fact that the streets were numbered and not named
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: after famous people was a very democratic approach. So, yeah,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: he had a lot to do. you know, he and Hamilton,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: you know, as New Yorkers, they, they were, are certainly
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: the most prominent New Yorkers of that, of that period
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: and did a tremendous amount to make New York, um,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: you know, for a long time, the leading state of
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: the union and New York city, the leading city of the,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: of the country.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: I want to dabble in your professional career. Cause you're, you're,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: you're not somebody who's, uh, sitting in an Ivy League tower, writing,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: doing this for a living. And God bless those that
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: get to do that. More power to them. You're basically
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: one of us, working journalist who loves history. And we've
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: not really spent any time together, but it strikes me
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: that you have a similar obsession with history as I do,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: which is you love finding sort of hidden gems of
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: history or moments that, frankly, we weren't taught well enough
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: at the time when we were taking our history classes,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: whether in college or even high school. And so, look,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with Garfield. I'm obsessed with that decade. I'm
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: obsessed with that presidency. You wrote about my man Chet, Mr. Arthur,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: you know, who is... I think.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: Now, at least getting a little bit more attention. Because
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: of Death by Netflix. I still don't love... That series
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: could have been better. It's clear to me that the
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: Netflix executives said, don't give us eight episodes on Garfield.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: Nobody will watch it. They were wrong because everybody watched
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: the four episodes. And I'm like, you're missing all these
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: great stories. And we never got to do it. But
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: when it comes to Garfield... presidency. And obviously, Arthur tried
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: to fulfill some of it, at least on the civil
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: service front. I will argue that had Garfield lived, we
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: might have had this 1965 Civil Rights Act in 1883.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: Do you believe that? Or do you think I'm overly
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: romanticizing Garfield here a little bit?
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: Well, Garfield was an extraordinary person. I mean, just in
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: terms of he was totally self-made, you know, much like
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: sort of like sort of Lincolnian.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: He's the mythology.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: Is it like, you know, the whole like anybody could
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: be president? It's him. He's the only one that's ever
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: fulfilled that.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: Extraordinary person.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: Like, incredibly bright.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly committed to civil service reform. And so the
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: question is, you know, how– given– what had already happened
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: with Rutherford. We're really getting deep here, but Hayes, you know,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: sort of abandoned construction. You know, I wonder whether, you know,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: it seemed like things were already turning that way against,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: you know, although.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: Garfield's election felt like a no, you know, not quite yet. Right.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: It felt like reconstruction was was dying, but not dead. Yeah.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: And then he dies and then it resuscitated.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe that's really a fascinating
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: historical what if, because, of course, a lot of, you know,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: the Jim Crow stuff was after that.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: It was heading into the turn of the century and
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: all of this sort of the lost cause, you know,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: all of that mythology grew up after that. And that
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: sort of racist infrastructure hadn't really taken root yet.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: I wonder. I mean, it is one of the great
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: what ifs. I mean, because for as much as I
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: love Chet and I do give him credit for enacting
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: civil service reform, particularly given his his previous history as
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: a machine politician, he was not James Garfield in terms
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: of his intellectual capacity.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, it was.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, to be a little snarky, it was.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: It was as if Dan Quayle had become president and
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: happened to meet the moment as best he could. And
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: I guess we could say Arthur met the moment as
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: best he could, unlike Andrew Johnson. He did. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: He did.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know whether we would have had a
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: Civil Rights Act. Also, the fact is the Supreme Court
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: had already begun challenging some of those– you know, the,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: some of the laws that grew immediately out of the
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: civil war, the civil rights laws. So, um, so right.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: There was a decision in 1883, I think, right. That
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: was sort of anti-civil rights.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: So, well, that thing is, if we had had two
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: terms of Garfield, what would that have been?
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It is an interesting, because
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: he was extremely, uh, impressive person. Um, and, uh, you know,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: with a real moral core to him and that, that
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: did come through in that, uh, death by lightning, uh, series,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: No, it, it, it did. I mean, they, look, it
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: was well cast. Yeah.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: Very well cast. Yeah. And I thought Nick Hoffman was
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: great as Chad.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: He was really good.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: Over the top, but very entertaining.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was sort of, yeah, but,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: There was part of me, I wish Roscoe Conkling had
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: been a bigger character because talk about colorful and over
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: the top. Oh my God, Roscoe Conkling.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: That was the one bit of casting I wasn't sure
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: about because Roscoe was a very big, imposing guy.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought they missed it. Yeah, that was a win. Well,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: I bring this up because I often, you know, one
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: of the things I hope, you know, I'm around 50
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: years from now. I'm in my mid-50s. I figured there's
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: probably a 60%, 70% chance. My grandmother lived in 99,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: so we'll see.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: OK. So I'm hopeful. And I think about what will
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: stand out and what gets conflated together. And I think
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: about that era of the last 20 years of the
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: 19th century.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: And I often wonder, you know, Grover Cleveland, doing what
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: he did, probably thought he was going to be, and
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: people around him thought he was going to be a
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: super historical figure.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: And he ends up kind of a forgotten president, only
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: remembered for the non-consecutive terms, literally. There is nothing else
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: anybody remembers.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't have that exclusively anymore. Right.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: And he doesn't even have that exclusively. Yeah. And yet
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: he was an important figure in that period of time.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: And the whole recency bias, right. And I I often
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: look at these– I have a theory that in 50 years,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: the Bush era and the Trump era are going to
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: get conflated. And it will all be seen as sort
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: of one– sort of the first quarter of the 21st
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: century was just a political mess. It started with a
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: terrorist attack. We had a series of crises. It led
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: to a handful of presidents, you know, unusual presidents. We
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: had the first African-American president. We had the first sort
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: of basically non-resume president, right? Outsider in Trump. He won
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: non-consecutive terms. But that the period will be more famous
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: than any individual. And I throw that out there because
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: that's I'm sure in the middle of the 1880s, nobody
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: would have thought those people wouldn't be famous 50 years later.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: And yet they weren't that famous 50 years later.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: That's true. I mean, when Arthur died, Mark Twain, of
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: all people, said, boy, it would have been hard to
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: imagine a better president than Chester Arthur. I'm not sure
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: we've ever had a better one.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: So did he mean it? Was he joking or not?
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: No, I think he meant it.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: He meant it.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, we expected less of our presidents and they're
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: more like a chief magistrate than a fair. But yeah, no, look,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: that's why it's it's good to be, you know, as
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: journalists with an interest in history. It's good to take
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: the very quick books on the administration, you know, on
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: various administrations with a grain of salt. The Bob Woodward
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: books are fun and interesting. The books that, you know,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: Maggie Haberman's book about. They're interesting, but without the perspective
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: of time. I don't know.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: Aren't they the Mrs. Henry Adams letters? And I mean this.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: With respect, they're going to be very helpful in explaining
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: what was happening in the moment.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: Right, in the moment.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: So they'll be really helpful for historians to explain, but
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: they're not going to be canon on their own, I
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: don't think.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: That's right. I think that's exactly right. They will give
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: future historians a good sense of what we were thinking
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: in the moment at the time, right? They are– even
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: though they're books, they're sort of like– they're journalism. They're
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: the first draft of history, right? And they will give–
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: people in the future a sense of what we were.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: I'm glad they exist. I'm happy for the historian. They're
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: going to be incredibly helpful.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: I don't think there's no rights letters anymore. I often
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: wonder how people are. Yeah. They're the best that the
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: future historians are going to have. But yeah, that's absolutely right.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: It's impossible when you're in a period. I mean, that's
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: one of the things you get. That's what's interesting being
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: a journalist and writing about history and reading about it
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: is that it gives you that perspective. And you realize
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: when people are in these You can't see what's coming
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: around the corner. You don't know that you're even in
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: an era sometimes that's going to be supplanted by another era, right?
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, did people during the Gilded Age didn't know
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: that the progressive era would follow that, right?
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: We're in a period now.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: Where people are wringing their hands about income inequality and
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: corruption in government. But for all we know, this next
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: period that's coming is a great period of reform where
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: we're going to clean up. Right.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: Well, it's funny. It's like historical eras. You don't know
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: when they begin until after they've begun.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. And, you know, and you're talking about
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: this era that that might have began begun with 9-11, which,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: you know, we just reached the 25. It was also
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: human beings thinking black.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: Of time.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: Right. So we're just got through the first quarter of
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: this century. And we sort of I think it's only
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: now that people are starting to think about, as you
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: just did this as a unit of time. Right. That
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: began with 9-11. Right. There was definitely this post-Cold War period,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: which definitively ended. Right. we can see now on 9-11, right?
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: Yes. It's sort of like the Cold War technically ended
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: in 89, but yes, I absolutely like September 10th, 2001
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: is the last day of the Cold War era. That's right.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: It was a different world. And everything- in some sense,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: in the past 25 years since 9-11 has flowed from
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: that event.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: The new era, whatever that means.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: New era, right. And Bush's reaction to it. And if
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: Gore had been president, I'm sure you remember, people thought
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: that 2000 election, oh, what's the difference?
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: What if that a million ways? I'll tell you, there's
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: an equal chance that if 9-11 happens on Gore's watch,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: It becomes more politicized because you would have had 10
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: years of democratic administrations. And then the the miss the
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: missing intelligence would have stuck harder. Yeah. At a at
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: a former vice president who inherited the presidency from the
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: same administration.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: You know. You just don't- Would he have invaded Iraq?
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: Probably not.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: But he might not have done that, right?
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: So there's all sorts of- That led to Trump, and yeah. Right? Well,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: and one thing, well, he might not have had Obama.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: And Gore, right? And Gore probably would have elected if
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: it hadn't been for Monica Lewinsky. So one thing.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: There's always- It's what makes the butterfly effects are what
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: make me more interested in history than anything else.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: So you seem to have a nose for the- Like
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: I said, the historical figure that is more relevant than
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: maybe your history class gave them. They deserve more than
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: a page. Who are some other targets that you're looking
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: at that you'd like to write about?
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, I need to find my next target.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: The hardest thing is finding the right target.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Are you interested more in an era? A period of
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: time that you like to specialize in?
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: Now I've done two biographies, and so maybe it would
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: be fun to do something different.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: But you're right.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: I am drawn to these figures who have been overlooked.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: As a history nerd and a guy who reads a
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: lot of history and reads a lot of American history,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: It's I'm always struck when I come upon someone who
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: I really don't know about and they have some part
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: of their story or multiple parts that are fascinating. That
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: was true with both these guys for me.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: I was doing some extra work. I mean, you know,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: I've said this to others, full disclosure, me and a
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: friend who's got experience in TV writing. We had we
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: had a competing Garfield story for a while. Yeah, that
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: had gotten accepted and we'd had a production company and
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: then Netflix did with. Then, you know, we weren't the
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: Game of Thrones guys. And, you know, they are who
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: they are. But in doing our own research to try
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: to come up with some stories, I ended up coming
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: across a senator named Blanche Bruce from Mississippi, who I
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: just find to be You know, and then.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: The black senator, we see the blacks.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: He was the black plantation owning senator from Mississippi. Yeah.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Who Roscoe Conkling befriended when his own senator, when his
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: own fellow state senator didn't want to be standing next
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: to him because he was white and he didn't want
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: to show his Mississippi residents that he was doing that.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: It's just there are so many. Interesting stories that actually help.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: tell that period of time better.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: And we just, which is why I always love these stories.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: You know, you just don't know what you're going to
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: come up with.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's great. And, you know, as my brother said,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: when I was writing about Chester Arthur, he said, well,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: any schmuck can write about Lincoln.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: But, you know. That's right. There's a million Lincoln books, right?
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, I read my fair share of Lincoln books
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: and the guy deserves the attention he's gotten.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: Of course. But is it Lincoln in the English language?
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: It's a close race between Lincoln and Jesus, right? Of
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: like more books written in the English language. I think
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: it's still Jesus, but it's not. Yeah, it's close.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I think it's fun. Just personally, I
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: find that it's fun to go in a slightly different direction.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: But I don't know what I'm going to do next.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: It would be fun to find another person, but it
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: also might be interesting to do something a little different.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: As you say, maybe look at an era or a.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll be honest. I'm like trying to understand Grover
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: Cleveland better because I'm– like I said, and maybe it's–
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm revealing a wishful thinking thought in my head,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: but I'm convinced Trump's not going to be that historically significant,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: that he's just going to be a piece of something. Look,
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: he's dominating the era. Don't get me wrong. But he
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: actually is not leaving deep footprints, right? There's so many
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: things he's tried to do but can't, which may explain
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: why he wants to quickly put his name on stuff.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: I think in his own way, he does know- you know,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: as you point out with Morris, right? Morris didn't worry
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: about his legacy and he was more forgotten. Those that
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: wanted to make sure they were historical figures made sure
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: people could find all their notes.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: I think that's absolutely right. And I think it's important
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: with regard to Trump to remember there's been very little legislation, right?
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: Executive orders- It's really not going to- And be reversed
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: with a stroke of a pen. It's empty calories, right?
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: It feels like empty calories.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You're right. And I think there is something to
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: this obsession with putting his name on the Kennedy Center
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: and building arches and stuff, because I think he does
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: have a sense that there's not much of it that
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: couldn't be reversed almost immediately.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: Um, um, before I get, you have a day job
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: and tell me about it. Stateline. Yes.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: I'm executive editor of Stateline, which is sort of functions
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: as the national desk for the largest, uh, nonprofit news
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: organization in America now, which is called States newsroom. And
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: we have, uh, outlets in 39 of the 50 states
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: and partnerships with nonprofits.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: Is this Leland's old outfit?
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, no.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: Leland Schwartz? I work for Leland Schwartz. That's state's new service.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: Very different. How much money does he owe you? No,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 3: I never actually got... I never actually did.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: I worked for another low-paying outlet.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Because there are a lot of us.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: A lot of alumni around, right?
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: Everyone runs to the bank to get to cash them.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: I used to hire... basically, because States News was the
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: only one that paid less than the hotline. So I
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: used to end up getting ex-States, you know, where they
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: were like, I got to get out of here.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, we're all over the place. Yeah, if you
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: were there for longer than like a year.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: But it was weirdly his, he was weirdly a visionary. Oh,
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: he was, absolutely. He wanted to put news on menus,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: on the back of ATM receipts. He had all sorts
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: of weird- I remember one on New York.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: He had this- This actually, I think, happened. It was something-
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: Somehow on the New York DC shuttle, he had it
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: somehow on there.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he put a newsletter on that back when- God,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: I remember that when everybody wanted their newsletter on that.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: So do you- Look, the- Trying to rebuild local news,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: trying to rebuild state capital news. I grew up in Florida.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: And there was a time we had five, six really
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: good newspapers that had really good Tallahassee bureaus. Yeah, and
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: there's like one.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: That's our mission of our organization. Yeah, I mean, that
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: state line sort of covers state policy from a national perspective,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: kind of the cross-cutting, cross-state stuff. But each of these
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: state outlets is doing exactly that. And in many of
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: these places, they're the only game in town now. It's incredibly–
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: uh sad and frankly dangerous i mean i i was
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: a um statehouse reporter in austin for the american statesman
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: and boston for the globe and as you described i
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: mean there was a lot of competition in those state
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: houses you had other um you know other papers you're
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: competing against and a real presence in the state house
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: and that's just not true anymore you know.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: It's interesting with with your experience at the austin american
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: statesman it's you know i'm i go i i'm torn
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: about I love the Texas Tribune. And yet I worry
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: that a bunch of news organizations in Texas has decided
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: to just, well, the Texas Tribune does it, so we'll
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: let them do it.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: I think that is true. Look, we used to compete
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: against the, and we were the smaller one, we'd be
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: competing against the Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: and the Antonio Express News. And it's good to have
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: that competition and that tension. We were all fighting for
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: scoops during the legislative session, which in Texas, as you know,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: is only every other year. So it was really a,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: you know, exciting time. And that competition is, is great.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: And I think you're right.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: It is, it is.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: That is preferable to having one organization that sort of,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: you know, where people assume, okay, they've, they've got it covered.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: That's not really.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: I'm watching it in DC, like a lot of places.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: It's sort of, well, punch bowl covers Congress. We'll let
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: them do it. Well, you know, and they do a
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: good job. Don't get me wrong, but it's, What aren't
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: you seeing? There's only so many punch bowl reporters.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: Think about how many papers and newspaper chains used to
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: have a Washington presence. and no longer do, you know,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: and not only were they competing for the same sort
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: of top line stories, but they were writing the stories from,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: you know, the stories that matter the most to their
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: readers and sort of connecting what was going on in
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: Washington to what was going on in their states. And
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: it's just, I just think it's terrible for democracy. And
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: it goes a long way toward explaining the fix we're
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: in now, frankly, is that people don't have that anymore.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: They don't read. They're getting their news.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: From– How are you managing AI in your newsroom?
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: How do we manage that? Oh, AI. Oh, well, States Newsroom,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: at least at this point, I'm grateful that there is
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: no AI rule.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, people. What does that mean, though?
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, absolutely no, no use of AI for, you know,
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: writing stories. You know, of course, whenever you do a
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: search now, there's the AI generated.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: It's all AI, right? I mean, I don't know how
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: you can search without it.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you can't trust them. That's, you know, true
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: writing a book, too. You absolutely, okay, fine. I mean,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: that sends you in a direction, but you need to
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: find the actual sources. And I think, look, I mean,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: there's some, if you're working with data sets and that
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff, there's some, you know, there are ways
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: you can use AI to help do that. But yeah,
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: we are very, you know, we're like everybody else trying
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: to sort of feel our way through this new era.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: But as of now, I mean, the rule, the rule
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: is we're, we're really not, we're not using it and
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: we're certainly not using it, you know, for photos and
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: we're using it to, to write our stories.
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: So, well, I don't know how AI exists without people
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: continuing to contribute new information for the AI large language.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is why I'm both, I'm not as
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: worried about it taking, cause it's like, well, it's not
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: like the robots can go out and get the information.
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe cameras can, But I don't know.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: I guess maybe in Cleveland, they said that they're now
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: the reporters go out and report and then they come
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: back and feed it into the and let I write
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: the stories. But I just.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I I worry that that in 10 years,
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: nobody's going to think that's weird.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I worry about it as well. I
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: said I wasn't worried about it. I'm also worried about,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: you know, I have kids who are.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: Look, Ben Affleck is just basically greenlighting using AI for movies.
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, you see Jeffrey Katzenberg sort of having an open...
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, this feels like we're going to lose this fight.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: It scares me, and it scares me that we're sort
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: of farming out these parts of our brains that we
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: use for writing and thinking. Writing is difficult.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: You just wrote a book about a guy who got
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: his position because he was a good writer.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: That's right. Is that going to be the skill that's
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: not valued anymore? It's scary to think about that as
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: someone who's made his living writing.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: No, I– Yeah. Why do you think I talk more now?
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: I swear, you can't AI this, I think. I don't know.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: Not yet. Soon enough. Scott, like I said, I don't
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: really know you, but I think we share our interest
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: in the the lesser known historical figures that matter quite
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: a bit. And this was a terrific book with Gouverneur.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: Is it Gouverneur? How have you decided it's pronounced?
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: I pronounce it Gouverneur just to make it easier for
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: people because.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: That's the way it looks. So it's not Governor?
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: Governor, I feel like I'm just going to confuse people
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: because he wasn't a governor, but it might be. It
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: might be Governor. People, there is some dispute over how
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: it was pronounced back then. So I'll go with Gouverneur.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, being an aristocrat, it feels like,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: you know, you see the words aristocrat and I feel like, well,
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: you have to pronounce it in French.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, that was his, it was his mother's maiden name.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: It's a French and she was from French.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, well, congrats. Appreciate it. Good to do. Good
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: to have you.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It was fun.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: All right, it is, we are two weeks down as
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: I'm literally going to alternate back and forth. We did
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: governors last week. This week we'll do senators and you
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: will see I have messed around with my arrangement a
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: little bit. So we start with my top 10. Look,
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: number one is still number one. And that is North Carolina.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: It is Republicans have pulled money out of North Carolina. Apparently,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump feels sorry for Michael Whatley and his super
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: PAC threw him, I think, a little bit more than
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: a million dollars. So they're not totally dark on the air,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: but they're getting close to being dark on the air.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: I think the real question is, does Cooper's victory have
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: coattails in North Carolina?
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of House seats that Democrats think, you know,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: they're reach seats because the state's pretty gerrymandered.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 3: But.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: Does Cooper's ability to fund a bigger ground game and
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: sort of be at the top of the ticket, do
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: you see, does it have trickle-down effect on the ballot?
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: That's one thing to look for in North Carolina. Number two, Ohio.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I need to talk more about
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: what's happened in Ohio, but bottom line is The fact
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: that you have Washington operatives trying to blame the candidate
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: rather than the environment, rather than Trump, rather than Ramaswamy.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: Bottom line is John Husted has everything going against him
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: and not a lot going for him at this point,
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: other than the weird admiration of his physical looks by Trump,
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: which is just I'm I'm sure years from now, John
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: Husted is going to say, did the president of the
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: United States really objectify my ass? Yes, Mr. Husted, I
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: think the president really objectified you. But keep an eye
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: on Husted. You know, I think, you know, here's the
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: irony to John Husted. He'd been looking to run for
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: governor and he sort of got boxed into the Senate seat,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: you know, advanced the appointment, all of those things. Had
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: Husted been the Republican nominee for governor? They might have
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: dodged all things Ramaswami. But now Ramaswami could lead the
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: entire ticket to one of its worst showings in 20
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: or 30 years. Number three on the list is Texas.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's I think the I don't
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: think Elon Musk helps Paxton here. The money may help.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: But the fact that it's so public, the fact that
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: it's there, the closing Tallarico's closing argument is pretty strong.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: He's closing on corruption. It's allowed Gina Inosin, the gubernatorial race,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: to bring up Greg Abbott's connections to Elon Musk. The
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: fact that he's made himself a main character in this race, again,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: I just don't think that's good politics. Americans on both
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: sides of the aisle don't like tech execs right now,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: don't like big tech in general. Elon Musk is not
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: a very well-liked individual. There are those that love him.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying he doesn't have his fans. He does
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: have his fanboys. Don't get me wrong. But I think
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: he's becoming... politically toxic. And I don't think that I
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: don't think his his attachment to Paxton improves Paxton's image
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: that much. So Texas is number three. But I'll tell you,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: those are the three I'm most confident in for Democrats.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: And then I'm going to be honest with you that
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: I would draw a line on my list on the
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: top 10.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: So I'm pretty confident they're going to net those three.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: Everything else, my confidence wanes a little bit. Let's start
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: with Alaska. I think Democrats are the favorite here, but
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: it's a narrow margin. Polo Sullivan is going to be
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: really close. It's going to go to rank choice voting.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: If we're waiting on Alaska to find out who controls
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: the Senate, it's already been a better night for Republicans
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: than expected. That's another way to look at this list.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: But they're in my number four slot. My number five
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: slot is Maine. I've said this before. I think the
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: debates did not go well for Troy Jackson. I think
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: the debates have helped Collins. I think she certainly has
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: found her comfort zone on how to campaign in this cycle.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: It may be it doesn't matter. It may be just
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: having the R next to her name is enough for
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: her to lose. But Jackson has not run the greatest campaign.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: And this is one of those where if she wins,
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: I think you have to say, well, Democrats really just,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: you know, had a massive candidate problem, right? They went
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: through two, two nominees, neither one of them, um, probably,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know if either one of them, um, if,
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: if Collins wins in this environment, then perhaps neither one
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: of them could have won Plattner or Jackson. And then there's,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: you know, it, it could be that, that she just
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: knows this, you know, she just has a better relationship
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: with the state than Jackson does, but we'll see. I
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: think she's, um, again, we could, and here's the thing
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: about Maine, they take forever to count their vote. So, um,
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: it's possible. We know the, we know which party controls
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: the Senate before we know the result in Maine. Uh,
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: number six, Kansas. And so I, I clump Alaska, Maine, Kansas,
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: and Michigan is in my next tier, right? If I
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: put in North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Alaska, Maine, Kansas, Michigan,
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: I think these are pure toss-ups, pure, pure toss-ups. Um,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: I've already said the reason why Maine, Kansas, you know,
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: he's Roger Marshall's campaign has decided, hey, they just are
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: going to try to make this a red versus blue.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: If they can just get enough turnout out, they can
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: survive this. Marshall has not tried to pivot. He's not
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: tried to seek distance from Trump. I think that's been
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: a strategic mistake. We'll find out, right? He sort of
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: got into the rally. I don't know if I would have,
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: I certainly don't think that is necessarily good politics for him,
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: but we'll see, right? There's certainly some super red areas
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: of Kansas, but the reddest areas have been hurt the
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: most by Trump's economic policies. So, and I think it's interesting.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: Adam Hamilton has been, you know, his tone in this
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: has been, hey, Trump voters, we welcome the president and
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: you've got a home in this campaign. He is not
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: trying to necessarily run against Trump voters. other than just
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: Trump policies. So we'll see, but I definitely think that's
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: turning a pure toss-up. And then last on my pure
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: toss-up list is Michigan. Look, Abdul El-Sayed is a very
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: good campaigner, but I think he's missed a ton of
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: opportunities to do what needs to be done to outreach
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: in the African-American community and outreach in the skeptical Jewish community.
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: But I also think Mike Rogers is, could have done
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: more to distance himself from Trump. And he hasn't done that.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: So you sort of have neither campaign is doing what
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: I think the opportunity they have to do, they should
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: be doing. Maybe it's a pure environmental play. Maybe Abdul
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: El-Sayed gets dragged across by Jocelyn Benson. Maybe for every
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: vote he loses to Rogers, he gains with a bigger
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: turnout among Arab Americans that we've ever seen before. And
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: then the other wild card is the youth vote, right?
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: If youth turnout is up, if voters under 30 show
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: up in a bigger percentage than they would show up
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: in a normal midterm, well, that's the secret sauce for
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: Abdul El-Sayed, right? And that would be the difference between
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: him narrowly winning and narrowly losing. My final three in
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: the top 10, eight, nine, and 10 are Iowa, South Carolina,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: and Nebraska. All of these are close and all of
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: these right now have the Republican slightly favored, right? Ashley Hinson,
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: slightly favored over Turek. Darlene Graham, slightly favored over Annie Andrews.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: Although I do think what Donald Trump has done with
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: Putin in Ukraine and the sort of gutting of Lindsey
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: Graham's legacy and the Lindsey Graham sanction act that was
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: supposed to be the heart of the sanctions against Russia,
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: Do enough voters care about that in South Carolina? Can
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: Annie Andrews exploit that? I don't know. But you got
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: to ask. I mean, she is running on her brother's legacy,
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump is eviscerating that legacy in foreign policy.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: That's got to matter to some Charleston Republicans, right? So look,
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: there's a reason the National Republican Party is putting more
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: effort in this race. There's a reason Trump's going twice.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: doing two different rallies for her. He's got to drag
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: her across the finish line. This, after all, was his idea, right?
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: It's funny, all the places that Trump has gotten more
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: involved in the Senate race than the party wishes it had,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: that Senate races are either already done or close to it, right?
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, Georgia, you know, he personally handpicked South Carolina.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: Now that's a problem. Texas, that's a problem, right? Wherever
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: Trump has done his magic, it has cost the Republican
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: Party millions and millions of dollars that they otherwise could
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: have spent trying to play a little bit of offense.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: And then number 10, if you're keeping score at home,
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: I basically swapped South Carolina and Nebraska. I just don't
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: see the path yet for Osborne. I see the path
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: to 48. I don't see the path to 50. And
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: I do think Osborne's a bit, you know, it's tough
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: to run the trick play twice. You know, it's tough
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: to run the Philly special twice in a row and
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: think you're going to score touchdowns each time. But it
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: is remarkable that something's happening out there in Nebraska. The
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: governor's race is tight. So everything is going to be
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: tight and it's going to be a while before we
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: call it. But I the fact that he had apologized
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: for using the B word to describe Deb Fischer is
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: Not exactly the best headline in a state like Nebraska.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: And that's a question I have. There's a there's a
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: is Osborne. I know in the Trump era, you think
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: somebody is coarse and is and is undignified as Donald Trump.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: If he can do well in Nebraska, then what's the
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: big deal if Dan Osborne curses like a sailor? But
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: there's sort of a I just think that that isn't
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: I don't buy that Nebraskans want that in their elected officials.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: So I wonder if that did a little bit more
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: damage than it would have, say, to a Donald Trump, right?
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: Which we know he's sort of, in some ways, immune
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: to those things. But there you go. That's my top 10.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: Like I said, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, I think, frankly,
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: are in the lean, already lean category. Alaska, Maine, Kansas, Michigan,
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: my pure toss-ups in my top 10 at the moment, right?
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: Numbered four, five, six, and seven. And then Iowa, South Carolina,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: Nebraska's You know, very close, but right now tilting to
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: the GOP. Not sort of also receiving votes if we're
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: playing the AP poll game here. Minnesota, Mississippi, South Dakota,
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, Idaho, Montana. That is my order of likelihood
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: to flip. I think all of these could be single
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: digit races.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: You know, Michelle Tafoya is running a very good race.
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: She's keeping her distance from Trump. but this is a
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: tough national environment for her to run in. Mississippi, it's interesting.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: You're seeing individual Democrats try to help Scott Cullum. I'm
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: pretty bullish on this, but I don't have the polling
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: to prove that it belongs in the top 10 yet.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: My gut is that Mississippi flips before Nebraska, but there's
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: more data to support Nebraska flipping before Mississippi. South Dakota,
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: we've seen. I wanted to talk earlier. I left this
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: on the cutting room floor, but the Matthew McConaughey situation
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: sort of, um, pledge that, Hey, guess what? Voting for
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: an independent is not a wasted vote. As he argued,
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: what's a wasted vote vacillating between these two parties and
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: watching them both screw things up when they control Congress. Um,
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: so I still think that Mike rounds is going to, and, and, and, uh,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: Jim Risch in Idaho are going to be in some
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: seriously close reelection battles, uh, to independent candidates. And then there's, uh,
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire and Montana. Um, which I suspect will be close.
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: But in New Hampshire's case, I think Sununu is going
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: to come up short. In the Montana case, the independent just,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: there's just, there's too many guys on, too many people
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: on the ballot for the independent to overtake the Republican
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: in that one. This next question comes from somebody who
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: actually I've been friendly with. I've appeared on his show
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: at times. It's Andrew Z in Toledo. And he lets
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: me know he's from Ohio's 43rd Statehouse District. I love that, Andrew.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: He had a fun question for me and I decided
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: to share it with you. He'd actually texted it to me,
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: but he had said, I answered him and then he
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: had said, oh, I thought you were going to answer
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: this on the pod. So here it is. He goes, Chuck,
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: I know you've been a big supporter of a viable
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: third party, but let me throw a different idea at you.
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: Why do we need political parties at all? Why not
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: eliminate the parties altogether and make elections about individual candidates,
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: their ideas and their positions on issues instead of Republican
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: versus Democrat, put an idea on the table, debate its
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: merits and vote on it? No party loyalty, no red
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: team versus blue team. Instead of fighting for a third party,
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: why not fight for a no party system? Is that
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: completely unrealistic or could something like that actually work in America?
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: So as I told Andrew, I wanted to look into
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: this a little bit more. We have a few experiments
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: with what I would call less party, not quite no party.
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: You have the unicameral legislature in Nebraska, which technically is nonpartisan. Now,
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: do people know which way people lean? Yes. It's like
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: in some of these state Supreme Court races that are
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: supposed to be nonpartisan. People identify themselves as liberal or
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: conservative or this or that. But I will tell you this,
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: it is less... The unicameral legislature gets more done. They
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: get along a little bit better. There is less pressure.
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: What you eliminate, what you're describing here, Andrew, you're eliminating
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: that sort of party pressure, right? This group thing that
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: can be that party caucuses, right? The pressure you feel, well,
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: if the entire party is voting one way, I may
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: feel another. Do I want to Do I want to
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: take the incoming from the party's base when they find
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: out I'm not with where everybody else is, right? Where
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: if there isn't a formal structure, then being somebody that's
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: an outlier on one issue, but maybe is with the
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: majority on another issue, you know, that's not that distinctive.
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: So I will say that the experience in Nebraska is
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: that it's a less ideological and less partisan acting body. Um,
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: which to me, uh, gives, gives you some ammunition about
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: your idea. The other is how we elect mayors in
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: this country. Most mayors are elected in, um, in, uh,
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: nonpartisan races where there is no party label next to
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: the candidate. I've often, you know, you talk about, um,
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: I've had on here, the mayor of Oklahoma city, he
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: happens to be a Republican, but he talks about that
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: when you're on an all party ballot, all party primary ballot, um,
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: you're gonna talk to the consensus voter, which is a
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: bit more, somewhere in between, right? Where the extremes actually are.
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: And I saw it firsthand in Miami, Carlos Jimenez. You
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: tell me how your election is run and I'll tell
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: you how partisan your elected official will be. Carlos Jimenez,
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: as mayor of Miami-Dade County, was not an extraordinarily ideological
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: or partisan actor as mayor because the race itself had
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: no party label. It was technically a nonpartisan race. Did
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: Republicans know who the Republican-leaning candidate was? Yes. It's not
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: like it's a mystery. They don't pretend that they don't
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: have proclivities of being on the left or the right
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: or whatever. But once he ran for Congress, he put
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: an R next to his name, and he got elected
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: in 2020 And one of the first things he had
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: to decide was whether to vote to certify the election
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: on January 6th. And he chose not to. And I
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: remember being a bit surprised. And then somebody pointed out this,
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: you know, he carried it. He was in a district
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump carried and he won his primary thanks
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: to Trump voters and that his district was very concerned
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: about this. And if he didn't vote the way his
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: district wanted, he'd have been primaried. He probably made the
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: right political decisions. But it goes to, right, had he
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: been elected without party, the pressure to worry about what
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: the party was going to think would have lessened. But
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: because he got elected via the political party mechanism, he
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: had to worry about what the party thought, not just
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: what his constituents thought. So I've helped provide, it's, so we,
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: the bottom line is you're not wrong. So you, and
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: by the way, you're in good company, right? George Washington,
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: it's not a bad, not a bad person to share,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: to share an idea with, didn't, thought parties were terrible
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: and were only going to lead to more problems than, than, than,
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: than any good that comes with it. Look, you know,
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: The question is, can you organize a legislative body without party? Well,
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: guess what? Nebraska's figured it out. So we have, there
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: are a few models that sort of prove that if
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: we wanted to get out of the political party business,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: we could. And just had political parties, you know, I'm
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: a member of the Elks Club. I'm a member of
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party. I'm a member of the Working Families Party,
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, right? It can certainly be on your resume.
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: But as a, as a label on the ballot, it is,
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: it is sort of, it is almost like as it, we're,
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: we're trying to insert the parliamentary system when we actually
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: made a, we made a decision not to be a
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: parliamentary system. So I love the thought. I will just
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: tell you this, you know, I, this is why we
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: should have all party primaries, you know, everybody on the
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: same ballot. And Yeah, it'd be great if you didn't
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: have party labels. You'd make people have to learn more
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: about the candidates themselves. And maybe candidates would feel more
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: comfortable being more nuanced or being more honest about their
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: positions and what they support. All right, next question comes
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: from Andrew K. in Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft. Andrew
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: from Redmond, Washington's first district, long-time listener, first-time writer, avid
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: solo hiker also. Well, if you live in Northwest, that's
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: a good place to be a hiker. I play your
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: podcast out loud on Washington's backcountry trails to avoid startling
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: bears and cougars, as you've accompanied me on quite a
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: few adventures. Wow. Well, I appreciate that. I just hope
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: you don't ever have to gnaw off your arm if
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: you get stuck anywhere. When prediction markets favor Roger Marshall
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: in Kansas, but polls show a tight race with Adam Hamilton,
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: what do bettors know that pollsters don't? Also, wouldn't expanding
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court from 9 to 13 just invite Republicans
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: to expand it again when they regain power, creating an
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: endless cycle? Kind regards, Andrew Kaye in Redmond, Washington. Hey,
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: two fun questions there. Well, I think it's because the, look,
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: one of the things that many bettors, if you want
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: to call them bettors, traders, right? I think my friends
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: at Cal State would prefer if I use the word
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: trader on this than bettors. But what I would tell
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: you is, You know, a lot of times when you
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: see a candidate overperforming in a state that their political
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: party doesn't normally do well in, you see a, you know,
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: their number in the poll will be their number and
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: the undecided vote will all end up back being in
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: the incumbent party. And I think that's what folks are
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: assuming is going to happen in Kansas, that somehow while
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: you know, Hamilton sitting at 45, 46, that that'll be
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: his number. Maybe he gets to 47, 48 and all
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: of the undecided vote ends up in Marshall. So I
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: think that explains that phenomenon. I think that's more likely
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: something you might see in a Mississippi. I think Kansas is,
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: I think the worm has turned on Kansas, right? And
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: I think Kansas is genuinely swingier than frankly what the
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: prediction markets are saying. you know, if, if I were,
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: if I were making an investment, I think you have
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: an idea of where I would invest. Cause where I
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: think the thing where I think a certain stock price
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: is going on with team Hamilton there, but I could,
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: that would be my explanation as to why you're seeing
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: that distinction. Look, as for the expansion of the Supreme court,
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: I thank you for writing it that way. I I've
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: often thought the same thing. Like, you know, I don't
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: know if expanding the Supreme court, isn't going to fix
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: the Supreme court. You know, it fixes the Supreme court.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: If we, if we change the way we nominate judges
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: in this country, if we change the way the confirmation
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: process for judges works, right? If 50 plus one is
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: how we decide judges in the United States Senate, then
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: we're going to get partisan hacks in the judiciary, left
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: and right, hard stop. If you want more referee-like justices,
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: then raise the threshold of confirmation To 60, 65, 70.
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: In fact, I certainly think for Supreme Court, it ought
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: to be 75. It should be three quarters of the Senate, right?
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: You should have to get a significant chunk of the
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: other party's support in order to sit on the Supreme Court.
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: Hard stop. These are choices. Senators can make this choice.
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: You don't need a constitutional amendment. Senators can decide this.
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: They at one time had the threshold basically at 60,
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: and then they chose to get rid of it. All
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: it's done is made the judiciary less trusted and more partisan.
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: Good job. Way to go, United States Senate. Thanks for
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: ruining the judiciary for us and creating this. Look, trying
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: to just expand the Supreme Court as a workaround on
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: this fails to deal with the problem of the confirmation
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: process itself. That, if you want to reform, if you
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: want to If you want to try to de-partisanize the judiciary,
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: reform the confirmation process. It's not about expanding the Supreme Court.
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: So thank you for the question. Next question comes from
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: Mark N. Greetings from an American expat living in Austria.
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: Potential first timer here. Well, congrats and welcome. And by
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: the way, Vienna is one of my bucket list cities
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: as a classical music fan and wannabe musician, French horn player.
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: There's lots of things I'd like to visit in Vienna
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: in that realm that I would miss. So I'd love to.
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: So if you could figure out, Mr. Expat, how to
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: sort of get me hired to do something out there
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: in Vienna, count me in. Anyway, he goes, I thought
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: defense contractors were barred from making political donations considering Elon
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: Musk was contracted to provide Star Shield for the U.S. government.
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: Why has he been exempt from this? It's a great question, Mark.
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing question. Obviously, we have no rules. And
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: I guess he can, you know, he's individual citizen rather
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: than the, you know, the donation didn't technically come from Starlink.
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: It came from an individual. Look, there's all sorts of
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: ways that this Elon Musk money is dirty, is unethical.
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: And you might be able to make a case that
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: it's illegal on this front. But, you know, this is
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: this is why we we this is why the calls
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: for campaign finance reform are coming left and right now,
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: because a single individual is essentially propping up a Senate
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: candidate in a way that that that frankly isn't you
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: can't really call democracy. That's a change that we ought
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: to we ought to be startled about. So. But that's
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: a fair point. You know, and it certainly means it's like,
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: how do you trust anything Elon Musk touches?
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: Everything in his orbit is about either enriching himself or
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: his company or giving his company more access to something.
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: He is not interested in helping the greater good here.
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: He is interested in helping himself here. Melanie in Sparks, Nevada,
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: 2nd Congressional District, which, by the way, you want to
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: talk about the upset. It really looks like Nevada's lone
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: Republican congressional district might temporarily flip. because of a bad,
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: flawed nominee. Somebody with stolen valor in their background. Anyway,
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: your question, though, is not about that, I believe. If
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: it were proven that someone in the White House or
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Pentagon deliberately interfered with Starshield for Ukraine, could that constitute
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: a war crime? I know charges are unlikely, but it
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: feels like a really big deal. And I'm trying to
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: understand just how serious it would be. Also, has there
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: ever been a secretary of state less visible during a
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: war than Marco Rubio? I honestly keep forgetting he's even
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: in the cabinet. Really enjoy your long form interviews and
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: the Super Tuesday podcast. Thank you, Melanie.
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's funny. I hope I've satisfied
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: you on some of these questions with what's going on
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: with Musk. But I do think that Elon Musk being
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: the main character here You know, is that the October surprise?
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump siding with Putin. Is this the October surprise
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: that basically cements the Republican repudiation that might be coming?
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: I could just tell you if you were if if
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: you were a campaign running against Washington, running against Trump,
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: running against big money. Isn't this exactly what you would
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: want to see happen in the last few weeks of
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: the campaign? I mean, in many ways, what Musk and
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: Trump are doing are only helping to write the closing
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: argument television commercials for the party out of power. So
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 1: I'm certainly convinced this is going to backfire on them,
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: but we'll see. As for Rubio, it has been a gift, right?
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: A talent. I mean, we're involved in a war and
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't know he's involved. He is.
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: Constantly Homer Simpson backing into the bushes and disappearing. And
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: then suddenly he reappears to let you know, I don't
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: know why Starlink wasn't working, but it's working now. Right.
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: And he's in a baseball hat, too, by the way,
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: which is there. Look, Rubio made it. Made a decision.
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: He's kept his political career alive. For the rest of
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: his life, he's going to be finding out whether it's
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: worth it.
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: If he has a political career following Trump, he'll probably
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: feel like this was worth it. If he doesn't, then
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: maybe he goes back and quotes himself.
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: The infamous Marco Rubio quote that years from now, people
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: are going to have to ask themselves how they got
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: taken by this con man. Don't don't quote me. Quote Marco.
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: All right. Last question here. Chris in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Virginia's
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: seventh district. Yes. The swing district of Virginia. I really
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: enjoy your perspective and appreciate all you do. Do you
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: think voters are starting to grow tired of Trump, even
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: if his MAGA base remains loyal? I wonder if he's
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: becoming like a television series that's been on for seven
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: or eight seasons where even new storylines and cast members
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: can't stop viewers from losing interest and eventually canceling the show.
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: Could voters finally be ready to change the channel? Thanks
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: for all you do, Kristen and Frederick, Virginia. Well, I
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: can't tell you, you know, I'm going to use a
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: line that I've used so many times that it's no
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: longer funny or effective. And that is, I used to say,
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: and I've said this before, I think we're in the
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: Gary Busey stage of the Trump era. But I think
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: I've said that like so many times that, no, I
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: guess it got renewed, right? Look, one of the things
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: I've said about Trump over the years that has been
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: true is that everybody has a line on Trump, but
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 1: everybody's line is in a different spot. But over time,
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: Trump eventually alienates everyone. He's done this throughout his entire
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 1: business career. Every circle of advisors he's had has never
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: survived more than about six years. And you can go
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: all the way back to 1974. And whoever has been
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: in his circle rarely, I mean, there's a handful of
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: people that have been able to sort of come back
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: into his circle. Roger Stone is probably the most prominent
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: of those. But, you know, rarely do people go in
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: and out.
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: They just sort of in. He tires and he tires
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: in such a way that he alienates all these people.
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: They end up walking away hating the guy.
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: When people leave Trump, they seem to leave him for good. Right.
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: It's never a it's never a, you know, a breakup.
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: And then you go running back with the with the
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: exception of Michael Cohen. Right. Who probably has his own motivation.
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: Maybe he wants pardon. Maybe you want something else. Um,
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 1: who knows, but, um, for the most part, once people just,
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: you know, leave Trump, they never go back, but everybody's
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: on their own timeline. And I do think that the
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: voters are catching up to where some of us may
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: have been sooner. Um, and it's also why I try
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: to tell people don't judge people, um, Don't judge people
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: that leave Trump for when they left Trump. Judge the
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: people that don't leave Trump. Save your disdain for those
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: that don't leave. Save your disdain for people like Vivek
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: Ramaswamy who choose to take a Trump method and exploit it.
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: But those that eventually realize that this is, that's what,
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: you know, welcome them. It's better for the country. It's
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: better for the future. So I think we're going to
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: learn a lot on November 3rd about whether how many
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: people have grown tired of this. I think they have.
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: I think they were exhausted in 2020, which is why
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: they threw him out once. I think this this feels
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 1: even more acute than it did just before the 2020 election. But,
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I am self-aware that I'm in my own
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: information bubble. But boy, the anecdotes are piling up. The
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: polling numbers are piling up. The examples of people wanting
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: to being done with this are piling up. The people
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: not showing up to his rallies are, you know, there's,
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: there's certainly a ton of evidence indicating that perhaps after
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: me using this joke, probably three years ago, the first
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: time I used it, um, that we may finally be
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: at the Gary Busey portion of the Trump era where
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: it is, you know, I would think ranting about a
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: golf course two weeks before an election, you know, it
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: almost feels like the exclamation point of, hey, dad, how
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: did the Trump era end? Sit down, son. Let me
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: tell you the story. All right.
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 1: With that, I'm going to take a break for 24 hours,
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: but we will be right back here. In fact, I've
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: got a special episode for you. It will be the
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: four things that if I knew right now, I'd know
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: for sure what was going to happen in the midterms.
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: I'll be sharing that with you on Thursday's podcast. So
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: with that, until we upload again, thanks for listening. Don't
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: forget to like and subscribe, whether it's this podcast, Dynastic,
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: Super Tuesdays, the entire empire that we're building here, All
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: of it. I appreciate your support. And remember, I know
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: some of you have sent me some emails. You feel like, oh,
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: there's too many ads. Well, guess what ads allow me
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: to do? Bring you all this content for free. So look,
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: I appreciate my advertisers because I want to make sure
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: this is free. I do not want to make you
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: pay for another subscription. So thank you. Thank you for listening.
• 2:25:46
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• 2:25:49
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• 2:25:54
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• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: 24 hours.