Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Trump Is Setting Up A Midterm DISASTER For Republicans + America Needs To Side With Democracy In Iran

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Chuck’s Commentary - Trump Is Setting Up A Midterm DISASTER For Republicans + America Needs To Side With Democracy In Iran · The Chuck ToddCast

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1:51
Speaker 1: Happy hangover Monday, the day after the super Bowl, and
1:55
Speaker 1: don't worry. The NFL is working on the idea of
1:59
Speaker 1: another week to the season so that they officially take
2:03
Speaker 1: over President's Day weekend for the super Bowl. And you
2:07
Speaker 1: can see where it goes. Super Bowl Sunday we get
2:09
Speaker 1: President's Day off, because what's more American than that. The
2:16
Speaker 1: super Bowl itself, well, it kind of, it kind of went.
2:20
Speaker 1: It kind of went. The conventional wisdom I mean, when
2:23
Speaker 1: a sort of amateur like me is out there on
2:26
Speaker 1: the record saying I think this game's going to be
2:28
Speaker 1: like twenty to six. Well, you know, I missed a
2:30
Speaker 1: few points here or there, but it kind of went
2:32
Speaker 1: exactly how we thought that Seattle would. Just so what
2:34
Speaker 1: they've done all year. They kind of grind teams down
2:38
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, we can't catch up
2:42
Speaker 1: when you're playing them, They're just there is a relentlessness there.
2:46
Speaker 1: I'll say this, I got to give credit to the
2:48
Speaker 1: Pats defense. They Seattle could have blown this game open
2:53
Speaker 1: in the first half, and they made it. You know,
2:57
Speaker 1: Darnald missed a couple of throws by that much, a
3:00
Speaker 1: couple of great plays by the defensive backfield at Christian Gonzales.
3:04
Speaker 1: That was impressive. But at the end of the day, man,
3:09
Speaker 1: you cannot The Patriots tried to do something that no
3:13
Speaker 1: team had ever done in a Super Bowl. They try
3:15
Speaker 1: to win a Super Bowl without a left side of
3:17
Speaker 1: their offensive line. I know they were actual physical human beings.
3:22
Speaker 1: Perhaps I think they were. I wasn't live at the game,
3:25
Speaker 1: but if you told me that was just a green
3:28
Speaker 1: screen for their left tackle, because my god, poor Drake
3:31
Speaker 1: May I mean running for his life. It is what
3:37
Speaker 1: it is. That was the fear going into this game.
3:41
Speaker 1: Is that's what we'd expect, but that's what it was.
3:43
Speaker 1: But come on, for us football fans are not Patriots fans.
3:48
Speaker 1: Did we really want to see them just make it
3:50
Speaker 1: this easy to get back and win and winning super bowls?
3:52
Speaker 1: That it couldn't be this easy. They should be happy
3:55
Speaker 1: they're going to be contenders again when they get an
3:58
Speaker 1: offensive line. That's a great defense. It's a well coached team.
4:03
Speaker 1: But you got to give your hats off to the
4:05
Speaker 1: Seattle defense. Unbelievable. Kenneth Walker was unbelievable. Before those last
4:09
Speaker 1: couple of touchdown passes, Kenneth Walker was looking like the
4:13
Speaker 1: MVP in that front. But look, Sam Donald, he made
4:17
Speaker 1: a few throws that you're like, you know, when you're
4:20
Speaker 1: a Sam Donald fan, I didn't. I imagine there's a
4:23
Speaker 1: lot of no, no, no, no, no yes when it comes
4:26
Speaker 1: to Donald, but there it is. Kudos to the Seahawks,
4:32
Speaker 1: it was. This is one of those years where it
4:36
Speaker 1: felt like the NFC was just that much better and
4:39
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl produced kind of exactly how the season went.
4:45
Speaker 1: The AFC was weaker and a bit of a jumbled mess.
4:48
Speaker 1: The NFC was stronger with Seattle constantly on top, and
4:52
Speaker 1: we got the scroll. They got a few things on
4:54
Speaker 1: the non football playing side. First of all, look love
4:58
Speaker 1: Mike Turrico, consider him a friend. He had one of
5:02
Speaker 1: my favorite calls of the night when he talked about
5:05
Speaker 1: the rocket scientist jumping onto the field. I just thought
5:08
Speaker 1: that was a I love that. That's what he That's
5:11
Speaker 1: how he referred to the guy that whatever happened on
5:14
Speaker 1: the field. Obviously, those of us not there live don't
5:16
Speaker 1: know what the interruption was, but I liked the shout
5:21
Speaker 1: out to rocket scientists, bad bunny. The Super Bowl party,
5:25
Speaker 1: I was at everybody's like, well, that was interesting, and
5:29
Speaker 1: as somebody who grew up in Miami, it was very
5:30
Speaker 1: familiar to me. I enjoyed sort of the tour of
5:34
Speaker 1: Latin culture and the Puerto Rican culture, you know, going
5:39
Speaker 1: through the dominoes and the weddings and the cantinnaras and
5:42
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I thought that was a nice little touch.
5:45
Speaker 1: But I have no doubt that there'll be a lot
5:49
Speaker 1: of dumb social media takes on this. But if you're
5:54
Speaker 1: the NFL, you were there to expand your fan base,
5:58
Speaker 1: to continue this outreach to Latin America, and Bad Bunny
6:02
Speaker 1: did the job. I think that the NFL was hoping
6:04
Speaker 1: that he would do on that front. I'm sure if
6:09
Speaker 1: you're trying to find out how popular it was, my
6:11
Speaker 1: guess is, if you like Trump, you didn't like Bad Money,
6:13
Speaker 1: And if you didn't like Trump, you said, wow, that
6:14
Speaker 1: was terrific. You know, not everybody's a Bad Bunny fan,
6:20
Speaker 1: but I get what he was trying to do. I
6:23
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting, I thought it was unique, and
6:27
Speaker 1: I thought it was worth watching. On that the commercials,
6:33
Speaker 1: I'm just creeped out by the d aging. I'm sorry
6:37
Speaker 1: that weird Eccinity ad with Jurassic Park and all. I'd
6:41
Speaker 1: rather see all those actors as they are now, give
6:44
Speaker 1: them to me with all their gray hair. It might
6:46
Speaker 1: even be funnier if they did that. But all of
6:50
Speaker 1: the d aging, and it was in a few ads.
6:52
Speaker 1: It wasn't just that one. It was oh, the Goodwill Hunt,
6:56
Speaker 1: the dunkin Donuts ad with everybody looking d aged except
7:01
Speaker 1: for Brady, which I guess was the Brady was always
7:05
Speaker 1: sort of Benjamin Button. Anyway, Again, I know all these guys,
7:10
Speaker 1: have these all these great new tools to mess with
7:13
Speaker 1: thanks to AI, thanks to d aging, but eh, a
7:16
Speaker 1: little overused. I'm a little creeped out about it. I'm intrigued.
7:22
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was going to be a Once
7:23
Speaker 1: upon a Time in Hollywood sequel, so call me intrigued
7:26
Speaker 1: on that. So thank you super Bowl commercial for that.
7:30
Speaker 1: And finally, I guess this was I said it would
7:33
Speaker 1: be the year of the AI ad. There were certainly
7:35
Speaker 1: AI companies and teases and and different AI agents being advertised.
7:45
Speaker 1: It felt like, my guess is just like what we
7:47
Speaker 1: saw during the Crypto super Bowl a couple of years ago,
7:51
Speaker 1: and we had our Internet super Bowl way back when
7:55
Speaker 1: half of those AI agents that advertised in this super
7:59
Speaker 1: Bowl will not be in existence in what three years?
8:02
Speaker 1: What should we make the over under that two and
8:04
Speaker 1: a half years that some of these companies will no
8:08
Speaker 1: longer be be relevant or be ever heard of, or
8:13
Speaker 1: some of these things the only time we'll ever hear
8:15
Speaker 1: from them might actually be the Super Bowl ad you
8:18
Speaker 1: watched last night. But all in all, I'm sad that
8:24
Speaker 1: football season's over. I am a huge football fan. I
8:27
Speaker 1: love it, but hey, let's turn to basketball. We got
8:30
Speaker 1: the All Star weekend. Next weekend, we got the best
8:33
Speaker 1: part of college basketball coming up, so I know how
8:37
Speaker 1: I'm going to be spending a lot of my evenings
8:39
Speaker 1: over the next over the next few weeks. And as
8:42
Speaker 1: I told you before, I love the Olympics. So there.
8:45
Speaker 1: So look, we got through the Super Bowl without two
8:49
Speaker 1: without any political disruption, which is kind of nice. And
8:53
Speaker 1: I barely made it through the Super Bowl without one
8:56
Speaker 1: Cali disruption from my dog. All right, so let's get
8:59
Speaker 1: focused on the show ahead. Let me give you a
9:02
Speaker 1: quick little table of contents. I've got a few things
9:05
Speaker 1: to say about the about the weekend that was with
9:09
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, both the European essentially the Europeans at the
9:16
Speaker 1: Olympics expressing their expressing their opinion about Team USA and
9:22
Speaker 1: how humiliating that was for US Americans watching on TV
9:25
Speaker 1: and live. We'll get to that. We've got the Donald
9:28
Speaker 1: Trump racist meme. And what's interesting about that story is,
9:33
Speaker 1: like with a lot of things with Donald Trump, I
9:35
Speaker 1: don't know how we're surprised or shocked that he does
9:38
Speaker 1: something that's racist, that he either shares a post that's
9:42
Speaker 1: racist or implies something that is racist. And you know,
9:48
Speaker 1: there's always this question, is he you know, he always
9:51
Speaker 1: wants to say I'm the least racist person. But as
9:53
Speaker 1: there was a great debate line back in twenty eighteen,
9:56
Speaker 1: I think it's Andrew Gillham to Ronda Santis, I don't
9:58
Speaker 1: know if you're racist, but a lot of racist people
10:00
Speaker 1: think you're racist. The point is this consistency of Donald
10:06
Speaker 1: Trump that whenever sort of there's a line, he's willing
10:10
Speaker 1: to cross it and be on the side of those
10:14
Speaker 1: that would be accused of being racist. But we're going
10:16
Speaker 1: to get to that in a minute. I also have
10:18
Speaker 1: the most underreported story last week that is is a
10:22
Speaker 1: huge consequence to campaign twenty twenty six and why perhaps
10:28
Speaker 1: we can call the election right now. We can, at
10:32
Speaker 1: least on the House side, that we can call it
10:34
Speaker 1: right now. I will explain statistically why that is later
10:39
Speaker 1: in this episode, but let's get started with the fallout
10:47
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump and the racist meme attacking the Obamas,
10:51
Speaker 1: because you know, whenever we have these incidents with him,
10:56
Speaker 1: because these are very frequent, right, you can go down
10:59
Speaker 1: the litany of lists. We can go back all the
11:01
Speaker 1: way to twenty fifteen. Frankly, with Donald Trump, you can
11:04
Speaker 1: go all the way back to the eighties in the
11:05
Speaker 1: Central Park five. Actually, if you want, you can go.
11:08
Speaker 1: When it comes to race and the questions of racism,
11:11
Speaker 1: you go all the way back to the early seventies
11:12
Speaker 1: when he had to go hire a lawyer named Roy
11:14
Speaker 1: Cone because the Nixon government, the Nixon led Justice Department,
11:20
Speaker 1: was investigating his father's firm, essentially for bias in how
11:29
Speaker 1: they rented and sold houses and apartments in suburban New
11:34
Speaker 1: York City. So the point is the accusation of racism.
11:38
Speaker 1: The question about whether he was racially tolerant or not,
11:42
Speaker 1: or racially accepting or not, has been hovering over Donald
11:45
Speaker 1: Trump for his entire adult life. He leans sometimes, it
11:49
Speaker 1: seems as if he leans into racist tropes almost as
11:54
Speaker 1: a way to quote. Maybe he thinks he's owning the
11:56
Speaker 1: Libs or he's somehow giving fuel to his base. I
12:02
Speaker 1: think sometimes he insults his own base. I think he
12:04
Speaker 1: thinks that deep down that the MAGA base is all racists.
12:08
Speaker 1: So that's why he plays to it, which if you
12:12
Speaker 1: believe it is in his agenda, but you're not racist,
12:15
Speaker 1: should offend you. And I think that that was so.
12:20
Speaker 1: The what I took away from this story was not
12:23
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump did this. Of course Donald Trump did this, right,
12:27
Speaker 1: That is not the news. What was new and important
12:32
Speaker 1: to chronicle in this story was the immediate reactions of
12:36
Speaker 1: people like Tim Scott, who said, this is the most
12:39
Speaker 1: racist thing that's come out of this White House. By
12:41
Speaker 1: the way, that phrasing was fascinating, right, talk about a
12:44
Speaker 1: guy you'd like to put under a polygraph and say, huh,
12:47
Speaker 1: you're implying you've seen other racist things come out of
12:50
Speaker 1: this White House. Right by saying this is the most racist.
12:53
Speaker 1: He didn't say this was the only racist thing that
12:55
Speaker 1: came out of this White House. So that's of note.
12:58
Speaker 1: Let's just say I listened to words very carefully, and
13:01
Speaker 1: yes I part sentences too much. So assuming the other
13:07
Speaker 1: aspect of this was watching how many other Republicans decided
13:13
Speaker 1: to go in on that, and there was the weasel words.
13:15
Speaker 1: I can't imagine he did this. It must have been
13:18
Speaker 1: a staffer, right, these staffers that apparently are up as
13:21
Speaker 1: late as he is. To the President's credit, he essentially
13:26
Speaker 1: while he didn't he's essentially admitted he did it. He's now,
13:32
Speaker 1: I think, claiming he didn't see it all the way through.
13:35
Speaker 1: So we didn't see how it was ending. It's how
13:38
Speaker 1: he wants to go. But it's it's interesting that he
13:41
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, reversed the bus that that the
13:47
Speaker 1: that ran over the staffer that everybody decided, whoever this
13:51
Speaker 1: imaginary staffer was that did it. One would assume it's
13:54
Speaker 1: the caddy Dan Scavino, who supposedly runs all the social
13:58
Speaker 1: media accounts from time to time, but they never did
14:01
Speaker 1: say his name. It was sort of implied, but it
14:04
Speaker 1: was Donald Trump's way of bringing back the PUS. But
14:07
Speaker 1: the point was, and this goes back to something I
14:10
Speaker 1: wrote on Substack last fall, which was the cracks are
14:15
Speaker 1: beginning to show in the Trump coalition. Well, I don't
14:20
Speaker 1: know if a week's gone by where the cracks haven't
14:22
Speaker 1: gotten deeper, where you haven't had another Republican either decide
14:26
Speaker 1: not to seek reelection or decide to back away in
14:29
Speaker 1: some way. The comfort that more Republicans have in criticizing
14:33
Speaker 1: him publicly, in questioning him publicly. Look, I'm not going
14:37
Speaker 1: to sit here and say it's an avalanche of criticism
14:40
Speaker 1: coming from Republicans, but you are starting to see that
14:43
Speaker 1: more of them realize they're the ones that are going
14:45
Speaker 1: to be on the ballot. The future of the party
14:48
Speaker 1: is in their hands because Donald Trump doesn't care about
14:50
Speaker 1: the future of the party. And you throw in the
14:52
Speaker 1: fact that I know to say Donald Trump had ever
14:56
Speaker 1: had a filter, it might be might be an understatement.
15:01
Speaker 1: But here's what we do know. As people age, whatever
15:05
Speaker 1: filter they have goes away. So he didn't have much
15:08
Speaker 1: of a filter before. But it's but it's possible Donald
15:13
Speaker 1: Trump five years ago might have might have had some
15:17
Speaker 1: little voice in his head to say, don't retweet that
15:20
Speaker 1: Obama Obama racist meme. And this time there's no right
15:26
Speaker 1: He's that he's living in his He's living in a
15:28
Speaker 1: cocoon that seems to be even more self serving than
15:32
Speaker 1: ever before. He does not seem to appear like when
15:35
Speaker 1: he was asked about Jadie Vance getting booed at the
15:39
Speaker 1: Olympics during the opening ceremonies, he seemed to feign surprised
15:43
Speaker 1: by that. Maybe that's his way of spinning, or maybe
15:45
Speaker 1: he really is in this cocoon that he doesn't realize
15:48
Speaker 1: how unpopular his administration is, how unpopular he is, and
15:52
Speaker 1: how unpopular jd Vance is growing, but particularly in Europe.
15:55
Speaker 1: If he doesn't understand Teddy Vance has gone to Europe
15:58
Speaker 1: and attacked Europe every different way. He has attacked the
16:01
Speaker 1: culture of Western Europe. He is he essentially said, you're
16:04
Speaker 1: bringing all this on yourself, and and he has gone
16:08
Speaker 1: there to to to give aid and comfort to all
16:14
Speaker 1: of these right wing movements that are very offensive to
16:17
Speaker 1: a lot of Western Europeans, particularly the ones that go
16:20
Speaker 1: to the Olympics that can afford to travel. Let's just
16:25
Speaker 1: say this ain't a jade Van's crowd, and it's you know,
16:29
Speaker 1: it's I would caution the president to be careful attacking
16:32
Speaker 1: Americans who American athletes who speak out. This is the
16:37
Speaker 1: age we live in. And I have to say I've
16:40
Speaker 1: been impressed. The athletes are all trying to walk a line.
16:42
Speaker 1: You can see it. But it's uncomfortable. It's no fun
16:46
Speaker 1: to be an American overseas. And no, I have no
16:48
Speaker 1: doubt there are other athletes in the in the village
16:52
Speaker 1: giving American athletes grief that there is a cold shoulder.
16:57
Speaker 1: You talk to any Americans to travel overseas right now,
17:00
Speaker 1: it is uncomfortable. It's much worse than it was during
17:03
Speaker 1: the Iraq War. So it is. It wouldn't surprise me
17:11
Speaker 1: that when you sort of look at why Trump doesn't
17:14
Speaker 1: see how bad things are going for him, that because
17:17
Speaker 1: they've created this safe space in the Oval Office for
17:20
Speaker 1: him and they sort of block out any negative news,
17:23
Speaker 1: only show him like pieces of polls that give him
17:27
Speaker 1: aid and comfort, but they don't show him the big pictures.
17:30
Speaker 1: So he really doesn't know how bad things are. It
17:37
Speaker 1: only is going to lead for him to do more mistakes.
17:39
Speaker 1: I mean you want to if you want evidence by
17:41
Speaker 1: the way of the filter being totally and completely gone,
17:45
Speaker 1: just look go back and look at that performance at
17:47
Speaker 1: the National Prayer Breakfast where he was just awful and attacking,
17:51
Speaker 1: just attacking Democrats, saying democrats aren't can't be religious people.
17:56
Speaker 1: It was just it couldn't have been more American and
18:01
Speaker 1: certainly more anti First Amendment than what he did. But
18:06
Speaker 1: I do think it's important to note how much he
18:09
Speaker 1: has put his party in jeopardy just in these first
18:12
Speaker 1: six weeks of this calendar year. Right, the year began
18:16
Speaker 1: with the Madua extradition, which looked like it was going
18:18
Speaker 1: to be a good news story for him. Right, it
18:21
Speaker 1: was an impressive military operation. They extracted Madureau out and
18:26
Speaker 1: it seemed as if they made it seem relatively easy,
18:30
Speaker 1: and as a military operation, it was relatively easy. Now
18:36
Speaker 1: he is now botching the aftermath, right, he is not
18:39
Speaker 1: interested in standing up democracy. He has rejected the democratic
18:45
Speaker 1: elected leaders in Venezuela and not endorsed them. He went
18:51
Speaker 1: ahead and accepted that peace prize from MS Machado, which
18:55
Speaker 1: is still one of the most It's not surprising, but
18:59
Speaker 1: still seems so brazen and I can't believe he did it.
19:03
Speaker 1: But I say this because beginning with then, and if
19:06
Speaker 1: you think about it, there hasn't been a week that
19:07
Speaker 1: hasn't gone by, if not more, where he has said
19:11
Speaker 1: or done something that has put Republicans on the defensive.
19:15
Speaker 1: It's one thing to see, right the left get upset
19:18
Speaker 1: and the media and you can say, okay, this is
19:19
Speaker 1: partisan back and forth. But the distinction I want to
19:22
Speaker 1: make here is, like what we saw with the Obama
19:25
Speaker 1: racist me the Obviously there was plenty of outrage from
19:30
Speaker 1: people on the left and in the center, but to
19:32
Speaker 1: see elected Republicans express public outrage and the type of
19:38
Speaker 1: Republicans that did these weren't the liberal Republicans that always
19:42
Speaker 1: criticized Trump, right, like you're Lisa Murkowski's perhaps you're Don
19:46
Speaker 1: Bacons and folks like that. It was no or Tom
19:50
Speaker 1: Tillis who has become more comfortable criticizing Trump of late.
19:53
Speaker 1: It was Tim Scott, right, it was Roger Wicker. It
19:57
Speaker 1: was Pete Ricketts, who, by the way, in an increasingly
20:02
Speaker 1: more competitive US Senate race, Tim Scott, head of the NRSC,
20:07
Speaker 1: who just delivered some dire warnings to his Senate Republican
20:11
Speaker 1: conference that hey, Trump's approval ratings are a huge problem,
20:14
Speaker 1: and the Senate is really in play. And oh, by
20:16
Speaker 1: the way, it may not matter who they nominate in Texas,
20:20
Speaker 1: it's going to be a competitive race and a money suck.
20:23
Speaker 1: So look in each individual case. And by the way,
20:26
Speaker 1: Roger Wicker, I think is just speaking out because he's
20:28
Speaker 1: got an extraordinarily large African American constituency in Mississippi. But
20:33
Speaker 1: if you wanted to put it in pure political terms,
20:35
Speaker 1: there's also a potentially competitive US Senate seat there. It's
20:39
Speaker 1: not his seat, it's Sydney hind Smith, the other Senate
20:42
Speaker 1: seat there. So you could say the three of them
20:45
Speaker 1: all have their own political motivations to speak out and
20:49
Speaker 1: not wanting to be seen as silent co conspirators to
20:53
Speaker 1: Trump's racism. But that's just the latest. Right, last week,
21:00
Speaker 1: did I lead my what did I lead the show
21:02
Speaker 1: with the corruption from the corruption story from the Wall
21:07
Speaker 1: Street Journal that had a the UAE essentially as a
21:14
Speaker 1: government invest in the National Security Advisor, the UAE invest
21:20
Speaker 1: in Trump's company for Trump's kids, company's crypto company four
21:24
Speaker 1: days before the inauguration, and of course it leads to
21:27
Speaker 1: a foreign policy change. It is at least half a
21:32
Speaker 1: billion dollars in investment, one hundred and thirty million dollars
21:35
Speaker 1: in direct cash to the Trump's literally just cash. And
21:39
Speaker 1: as Andrew McCarthy, this conservative legal analyst that writes for
21:42
Speaker 1: The National Review, said, you know who was extraordinarily critical
21:46
Speaker 1: of sort of the mixing the bidens did of the professional,
21:51
Speaker 1: the personal, the political, and the family with Hunter Biden
21:56
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden. He said this, this is literally exponentially worse,
22:02
Speaker 1: uh and at a at another level of corrupt. So
22:05
Speaker 1: if you were outraged by the corruption of of of
22:08
Speaker 1: Joe Biden and thought that it may have reached in
22:11
Speaker 1: the level of impeachment, what Andrew McCarthy is arguing, and
22:14
Speaker 1: again conservatively right, This is the conservative National review legal
22:19
Speaker 1: ailis this he said, is literally he said, add a
22:24
Speaker 1: couple of zeros of worse to this. Okay, not one zero,
22:28
Speaker 1: a couple of zeros when it comes to this, because
22:31
Speaker 1: the actual financial corruption is unbelievable, and the direct policy
22:35
Speaker 1: changes that came from you know, following the actual transactions,
22:41
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't quite see it as crystal clear
22:46
Speaker 1: with the purchase of the Hunter Biden paintings and all
22:48
Speaker 1: of that. It was a little less directly related to
22:52
Speaker 1: actual policy changes with Trump. Right, there's no there's no subtlety.
22:57
Speaker 1: H And that was another point that McCarthy made. That's
23:00
Speaker 1: just that was last week, right in the week before
23:02
Speaker 1: we had this second killing of an American citizen by
23:05
Speaker 1: ICE agents in Minneapolis, right two different weekends, essentially due
23:10
Speaker 1: to that, where again Republicans were criticizing the policy and
23:14
Speaker 1: feeling uncomfortable on this Abu Dhabi investment. Many Republicans aren't
23:18
Speaker 1: saying a word, but you now have Republican legal analysts
23:20
Speaker 1: who can't look away and have to realize that, hey, this,
23:24
Speaker 1: if you thought Biden, what the Bidens did between Hunter
23:27
Speaker 1: Biden Joe Biden was corrupt, then what the Trumps are
23:29
Speaker 1: doing is historic in its level of corruption. There's the
23:35
Speaker 1: bizarre raid of Fulton County and the votes. There's the
23:39
Speaker 1: talk about federalizing elections, which the most anti small sea
23:43
Speaker 1: conservative thing you could come up with. The thing is
23:46
Speaker 1: all of this. If I brought up Greenland and the
23:50
Speaker 1: controversy that sort of Royal Davos, and essentially it's arguably
23:56
Speaker 1: it is Greenland that has helped you unite Europe against
23:59
Speaker 1: the United States, which of course triggered Canada to go
24:02
Speaker 1: do a trade deal with China that we had been
24:03
Speaker 1: hoping that they wouldn't do when it came to our
24:07
Speaker 1: concerns about sovereignty and security when it involves China. So again,
24:12
Speaker 1: everything I've just discussed has all taken place since January third.
24:17
Speaker 1: We are at this is February ninth, folks, and I
24:21
Speaker 1: say a week hasn't gone by. It seems like every
24:24
Speaker 1: there's at least two major incidents a week where Trump
24:28
Speaker 1: either says something or does something that's putting Republicans on
24:32
Speaker 1: the defensive, that is urging Republicans to have to speak out.
24:36
Speaker 1: This is a growing electoral disaster, and I don't think
24:42
Speaker 1: folks fully appreciate what's coming. This episode of the Chuck
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27:39
Speaker 1: So that brings me to what I think is the
27:43
Speaker 1: most underreported story from last week. Obviously the Obama racist beme.
27:48
Speaker 1: We have the Abu Dhabi story. You have the fear
27:50
Speaker 1: of federalizing elections. Those arguably those three stories all got
27:54
Speaker 1: more attention last week than the milestone that was reached
28:00
Speaker 1: week when we got our fiftieth and fifty first incumbent
28:05
Speaker 1: member of Congress deciding not to run for reelection in
28:09
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. This marks now we are inching ever
28:13
Speaker 1: closer to the highest ever open seat total in a
28:19
Speaker 1: midterm year basically since World War Two. Okay, in twenty eighteen,
28:25
Speaker 1: there were fifty five members of Congress who chose not
28:29
Speaker 1: to return. Either they didn't seek reelection or they decided
28:33
Speaker 1: to go seek higher office, but they did not seek reelection.
28:36
Speaker 1: We are sitting now at fifty one. There's still most
28:40
Speaker 1: of the filing deadlines have not yet passed. We haven't
28:43
Speaker 1: had the California filing deadline pass, and we know there's
28:45
Speaker 1: going to be a handful of Republicans likely that walk
28:47
Speaker 1: away because of the remap. We have the Virginia remap
28:50
Speaker 1: that's likely to happen, that's going to lead to some retirements.
28:53
Speaker 1: We've got the Florida remap that's likely to lead to
28:55
Speaker 1: some retirement. So we are well on our way. The
28:58
Speaker 1: all time record, by the way, is sixty five open
29:03
Speaker 1: seats going into an election year, and that was back
29:05
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two. That was a confluence of circumstances.
29:09
Speaker 1: It was a reapportionment year, so you had your typical
29:12
Speaker 1: you had that, but it was the first time that
29:14
Speaker 1: the Justice Department insisted on majority minority districts in certain
29:19
Speaker 1: Southern states, which even led to a more upheaval in
29:24
Speaker 1: how the maps were drawn all over the country, but
29:26
Speaker 1: particularly in the South. And you also that was the
29:31
Speaker 1: if you did not if you chose to retire that year.
29:34
Speaker 1: There was one other loophole which encouraged a lot of
29:36
Speaker 1: incumbents to leave office at nineteen ninety two and not
29:38
Speaker 1: seek reelection. If you left in nineteen ninety two, you
29:41
Speaker 1: got to keep whatever leftover campaign money you had, and
29:44
Speaker 1: you got to keep it and make it your money.
29:46
Speaker 1: You could turn it into an ioa or investment fund literally.
29:49
Speaker 1: But if you chose to stay, you no longer it
29:52
Speaker 1: was no longer legal for you to make campaign money
29:56
Speaker 1: your own money. That's right, folks. It used to be
30:00
Speaker 1: members of Congress could take their campaign treasury and when
30:04
Speaker 1: they were done running, they could pocket whatever was left.
30:08
Speaker 1: That was perfectly legal. Now if you pocket it, at
30:11
Speaker 1: least you have to come up with dummy corporations and
30:14
Speaker 1: charge your campaign account invented items for reimbursement in order
30:22
Speaker 1: to try to get that money, but before you could
30:25
Speaker 1: just pocket it. So that's why ninety two is sort
30:27
Speaker 1: of an outlier. But the real important story is for
30:30
Speaker 1: a mid term cycle. And I've gone back and studied
30:33
Speaker 1: this since nineteen fifty four at fifty one open seats.
30:37
Speaker 1: Right now, we are only four away from the modern
30:40
Speaker 1: record of fifty five, which was twenty eighteen, which led
30:43
Speaker 1: to a forty seat pickup for the out party. We're
30:46
Speaker 1: going to pass that. The question is how close to
30:47
Speaker 1: sixty five will we get? So how did we get there? All? Right?
30:53
Speaker 1: The latest two names, right, it didn't make what didn't
30:56
Speaker 1: make huge news? You didn't see it on any cable news.
30:59
Speaker 1: Chiron was Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, Mark Emmedi of Nevada.
31:04
Speaker 1: Both Republicans and Republican solid Republican seats. They're unlikely to
31:12
Speaker 1: see de You know, they were going to likely win
31:14
Speaker 1: reelection had they chosen to run. But what's interesting about
31:17
Speaker 1: both of them, and it's part of a larger trend
31:19
Speaker 1: I want to get into. Both were elected before Donald
31:21
Speaker 1: Trump took office, and both fit a growing category of
31:25
Speaker 1: Republican retirees that I call the exhaustion caucus. These are
31:29
Speaker 1: members who are no longer looking for a promotion in politics,
31:31
Speaker 1: right running for governor, running for Senate, running for some
31:33
Speaker 1: over the office. They're just looking for an exit, right.
31:36
Speaker 1: Ludermoak was elected in twenty fourteen and started serving in
31:40
Speaker 1: January twenty fifteen. In fact, in his statement announcing his retirement,
31:43
Speaker 1: he leaned into the citizen legislator idea. Representing people in Congress,
31:47
Speaker 1: he said is a service, not a career, and he
31:49
Speaker 1: talked about focusing on family, being a husband and a grandfather.
31:52
Speaker 1: He didn't come up and just try to light the
31:53
Speaker 1: place on fire. Amedi has represented that second district in Nevada.
31:57
Speaker 1: He won a twenty eleven special election. He's the lone
32:01
Speaker 1: Republican in the Nevada delegation. And he framed his decision
32:04
Speaker 1: as passing the torch after roughly fifteen years in Washington,
32:08
Speaker 1: and he said it's time he announced early because they
32:10
Speaker 1: have a later filing deadline. Want to give others time
32:13
Speaker 1: to step up. And again, this is the one congressional
32:16
Speaker 1: seat that represents basically everything in Nevada that is in
32:19
Speaker 1: the Las Vegas media market. Essentially. Now, look, they don't
32:24
Speaker 1: seem like guys that are plotting a comeback. They're just done.
32:28
Speaker 1: And I think that distinction matters, because the most revealing
32:31
Speaker 1: thing to think about in these retirements is that there's
32:34
Speaker 1: clearly two different forces operating here at once, particularly when
32:38
Speaker 1: it comes to motivating what certain Republicans try to degree do.
32:42
Speaker 1: Because you have now we're up to I believe, twenty
32:44
Speaker 1: nine Republicans who have announced that they're not seeking reelection,
32:48
Speaker 1: About half are running for another office, and about half
32:51
Speaker 1: are just walking away. Right that group that's walking away,
32:54
Speaker 1: they're tired, tired of the grind, tired of the incentives.
32:57
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't like the performative, the way
33:00
Speaker 1: political theater now is the dominant force of American politics
33:03
Speaker 1: that you don't get any credit for doing legislating. Of course,
33:07
Speaker 1: the other group is leaving because you know, they just
33:09
Speaker 1: always had viewed the House as a stepping stone, and
33:11
Speaker 1: this is going to be a bad year to be
33:13
Speaker 1: an incumbent Republican, so you might as well go up
33:15
Speaker 1: and out because maybe you can set yourself up for
33:17
Speaker 1: another office two or four years down the road. Now,
33:20
Speaker 1: it's going to create a massive experience gap at some point,
33:23
Speaker 1: right we are seeing a massive churn, and so there's
33:25
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of institutional memories that go
33:27
Speaker 1: away because the longtime members are the committee chairs that
33:30
Speaker 1: are leaving the institutional memory types when they walk out
33:33
Speaker 1: the door. You don't just lose votes, you lose people
33:36
Speaker 1: who know how to legislate, how to negotiate, frankly, how
33:39
Speaker 1: to work across the aisle, even in this dysfunctional atmosphere.
33:44
Speaker 1: And what it will mean is we're going to have
33:45
Speaker 1: a House it's likely to be more political, more partisan,
33:48
Speaker 1: more junior, more ambitious, more online, which means less functional.
33:53
Speaker 1: So it's you know, we'll wait to see what this
33:58
Speaker 1: Congress looks like in twenty twenty seven, but that's a
34:00
Speaker 1: likely problem. So fifty one, Why does fifty one open
34:05
Speaker 1: seats matter beyond being just a big number? And why
34:08
Speaker 1: am I now essentially saying, hey, you can call it now.
34:12
Speaker 1: The Democrats have one, They're gonna win the House. It
34:15
Speaker 1: would take an historical set of events that we have
34:19
Speaker 1: no idea what they would look like for this not
34:22
Speaker 1: to be the case. Because open seats always behave like
34:25
Speaker 1: a political accelerant. Right when a seat is open, the
34:27
Speaker 1: incumbent advantage disappears. National environment matters, more, money matters more,
34:31
Speaker 1: Candidate quality matters more. Historically, when open seats pile up early,
34:35
Speaker 1: it tends to mean one of two things. Either the
34:36
Speaker 1: majority party is bracing for impact or the members closest
34:40
Speaker 1: to the ground are seeing something coming that everyone else
34:42
Speaker 1: is still denying. And the other tell, of course, is
34:46
Speaker 1: that it's February. February. Retirements are the early warning system.
34:50
Speaker 1: If you're already at fifty one now, it suggests there's
34:53
Speaker 1: a lot of quiet quitting still sitting on people's desks.
34:56
Speaker 1: So let's talk about records, because this is where people
34:59
Speaker 1: can get sloppy. As I said, the modern mid mid
35:02
Speaker 1: term era benchmark, and then there's the all time benchmark.
35:07
Speaker 1: The modern benchmarks midterms since nineteen fifty four, the cycles
35:11
Speaker 1: with the huge retirement waves in the television era nineteen
35:15
Speaker 1: ninety four, twenty ten, twenty eighteen. Those are my modern
35:18
Speaker 1: reference points. And when retirement numbers start approaching that neighborhood
35:22
Speaker 1: forty plus, history usually points in one direction, trouble for
35:26
Speaker 1: the party in power, right, And if you extend the
35:29
Speaker 1: lens beyond the midterms, you have to use nineteen ninety two.
35:35
Speaker 1: Is that modern is that modern high of retirement, sixty
35:40
Speaker 1: five House members choosing not to run again. And as
35:44
Speaker 1: I told you, there was a variety of reasons why
35:47
Speaker 1: that created such a massive shake up. It was still
35:50
Speaker 1: to this day over there, I think, where there was
35:51
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten new members of Congress, and it
35:54
Speaker 1: also led to then seventy three more new members of
35:56
Speaker 1: Congress the following cycle in a four year cycle really
36:01
Speaker 1: basically cycled out. Anybody that was left from the fifties
36:04
Speaker 1: and sixties in Congress was sort of really totally cycled
36:07
Speaker 1: out by nineteen ninety four. So now I want to
36:17
Speaker 1: be mindful of the fact that nothing is statistically sound
36:20
Speaker 1: here that I'm gonna say, right, when you only have
36:23
Speaker 1: when you only have like fifteen incidentss to use, right,
36:27
Speaker 1: you can't say this is statistically sound. But I do
36:29
Speaker 1: think the patterns matter here a lot. So in the
36:33
Speaker 1: spirit of that argument, I'm gonna frame it this way.
36:37
Speaker 1: Once you see the number of open seats get over twenty,
36:42
Speaker 1: just twenty, it becomes extremely difficult for the majority party
36:46
Speaker 1: to hold the line because open seats are the proxy
36:49
Speaker 1: for vulnerability and opportunity. Well, guess what we're now over
36:52
Speaker 1: fifty with essentially too with essentially about sixty percent of
36:57
Speaker 1: them being Republican, it's about two one. Here is where
37:01
Speaker 1: we're sitting at now. Open seats aren't a cause for
37:05
Speaker 1: the wave, but they're the early warning sign that the
37:09
Speaker 1: ground is shifting and that you have some longtime incumbents
37:13
Speaker 1: reading tea leaves deciding they'd rather leave on their own
37:15
Speaker 1: terms than get swept out and humiliated. And then there's
37:19
Speaker 1: always one other piece to the puzzle. Presidential approval. Open
37:23
Speaker 1: seats are the engine. Presidential approval rating is the fuel.
37:26
Speaker 1: The president is popular, the party can sometimes blunt losses
37:29
Speaker 1: the president is unpopular, especially if they're just sitting below
37:32
Speaker 1: fifty percent approval, and Donald Trump hasn't seen forty five.
37:36
Speaker 1: It seems like in four months, let alone fifty. Midterms
37:39
Speaker 1: usually then become nationalized and become a national referendum. So
37:43
Speaker 1: you have a president's approval ratings sitting in the low forties,
37:45
Speaker 1: which look a lot like Bush going into six, Obama
37:49
Speaker 1: going into fourteen and ten, frankly, and Bill Clinton going
37:53
Speaker 1: in to nineteen ninety four. So, putting all this together,
37:58
Speaker 1: here's why this story is in face. It's accelerating we've
38:01
Speaker 1: entered the most volatile period for retirements, late winter to
38:04
Speaker 1: spring wind decision window. Members are looking at fundraising, the map,
38:08
Speaker 1: the mood, their own lives, and of course all these
38:10
Speaker 1: redistricting threats as well, and they're all deciding whether it's
38:14
Speaker 1: worth it. Do they want to get to know a
38:15
Speaker 1: new constituency for a cycle that may not go very well.
38:19
Speaker 1: I think we know the answer to that. And if
38:21
Speaker 1: you want to know where the next tranch of names
38:23
Speaker 1: is likely to come from on the retirement watch list,
38:25
Speaker 1: there's a couple of states where maps are in motion,
38:27
Speaker 1: Florida and Virginia. Right DeSantis has a special session in
38:31
Speaker 1: April where he wants to focus on redrawing the map,
38:33
Speaker 1: try to pick up four or five seats of more
38:37
Speaker 1: seats that are more Republican, seeing if he can somehow
38:40
Speaker 1: squeeze more Republican districts out of that map. I'm skeptical,
38:44
Speaker 1: but they think they can get a couple, especially if
38:46
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act essentially gets swept away by the
38:48
Speaker 1: Supreme Courts. But when you're shaking up that map, it's
38:53
Speaker 1: likely to lead to retirements. We hadn't thought about even
38:56
Speaker 1: some incumbents. If it creates an incumbent incumbent fight stuff
38:59
Speaker 1: like that. Then, of course Virginia where Democrats are pushing
39:02
Speaker 1: for a mechanism to enable new maps, right, there's going
39:06
Speaker 1: to be a special constitutional amendment election in order to
39:10
Speaker 1: get permission. And if they do that, they may eliminate
39:13
Speaker 1: four Republican incumbents and most of them likely won't try
39:17
Speaker 1: to seek re elections. So we're sitting at fifty one
39:21
Speaker 1: right now. The likelihood that this grows to over fifty five,
39:25
Speaker 1: which was the number that was hit in eighteen when
39:28
Speaker 1: Democrats then the out party, won over forty seats, then
39:31
Speaker 1: you see where this is going, right, We already see
39:33
Speaker 1: the Houses already showing signs of high volatility. Majority party
39:37
Speaker 1: is bleeding its incumbency advantage. And oh, by the way,
39:42
Speaker 1: what happened over the weekend? Two more special elections we're
39:45
Speaker 1: in very red And yes they're state legislative elections. Yes
39:49
Speaker 1: they're special elections happening on a weekend, And yes, the
39:52
Speaker 1: Democrats have more voters who pay more attention to these
39:55
Speaker 1: special elections and Republicans do. Okay, Well, that means Democrats
39:59
Speaker 1: are pay attention. It means Democrats are more fired up
40:02
Speaker 1: and you know, we're seeing another weekend of over performance
40:06
Speaker 1: by Democrats in legislative districts that Trump carried by double digits.
40:10
Speaker 1: And it seems like another you know, this is like
40:13
Speaker 1: you know, another plane land safely at national right. It's
40:16
Speaker 1: happening with such frequency it's hard to call it news.
40:18
Speaker 1: It's almost like that continuation. So you all, this is happening.
40:24
Speaker 1: You've got open seats hitting critical territory. And like I said,
40:28
Speaker 1: we've got I looked it up. There's another and this
40:32
Speaker 1: is this is intriguing here, there's another one, two, three, four, five, six,
40:38
Speaker 1: seventy eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
40:40
Speaker 1: seventy eighteen, nineteen, twenty twenty one to two, twenty three,
40:42
Speaker 1: twenty four to twenty five, twenty six, twight seven. Okay,
40:45
Speaker 1: there's another twenty seven Republican incumbents sitting in districts where
40:50
Speaker 1: Donald Trump received fifty nine percent or less into twenty
40:54
Speaker 1: twenty four presidential vote. And I've put the market fifty
40:56
Speaker 1: nine percent I think now given the over performance, given
41:00
Speaker 1: Trump's approval ratings, and frankly is just terrible leadership right
41:04
Speaker 1: now of the party on messaging anybody sitting in a
41:07
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent Trump district or less should be scared nestless. Okay,
41:12
Speaker 1: they should be feeling it a lot. Well, there's these
41:16
Speaker 1: Republicans I was just telling you about. There's a big
41:18
Speaker 1: chunk of California Republicans. That filing deadline is March six.
41:22
Speaker 1: Some Georgia Republicans sit in there. Do any more throat
41:25
Speaker 1: decide to do that. Wisconsin's filing deadline, Michigan's filing deadline,
41:31
Speaker 1: there's a New York filing deadline in May, which you
41:33
Speaker 1: could see it change a little bit. So this is
41:37
Speaker 1: a list that's likely to grow. And again I go
41:41
Speaker 1: back every single here. You could just look at this.
41:45
Speaker 1: I put together these different midterm charts. So twenty eighteen
41:48
Speaker 1: fifty five open seats the out party, the Democrats, gained
41:52
Speaker 1: forty seats, flip control. Right. In twenty twenty two, there
41:57
Speaker 1: were forty nine open seats, Republicans nine seats, and they
42:01
Speaker 1: flipped control. Nineteen ninety four, there were forty eight open seats,
42:05
Speaker 1: Republicans netted fifty two overall and flipped control. Twenty ten,
42:09
Speaker 1: thirty eight open seats, Republicans gained sixty three flipped control.
42:14
Speaker 1: Two thousand and six, thirty one open seats, Democrats gained
42:17
Speaker 1: thirty one seats and flipped control. Nineteen fifty eight, there
42:22
Speaker 1: were twenty eight open seats, Democrats gained forty eight. They
42:28
Speaker 1: already held control, they were already in charge, but they
42:30
Speaker 1: netted another forty eight. Nineteen eighty two, a similar situation.
42:33
Speaker 1: There were twenty four open seats, So I just gave
42:36
Speaker 1: you in the midterms in order there right, every single one,
42:41
Speaker 1: twenty four and above, going back to nineteen fifty four
42:44
Speaker 1: to midterms, and the out party always gained seats, and
42:50
Speaker 1: many times it flipped. Most of the time it flipped
42:54
Speaker 1: control of the House. So the point is, at this
42:57
Speaker 1: point in time, it is hard to come up with
43:02
Speaker 1: a scenario where Republicans are going to hold the House.
43:07
Speaker 1: Every historical marker says otherwise. The only two times where
43:12
Speaker 1: the party in power was able to do well is
43:14
Speaker 1: when the two when presidential approval was over sixty percent
43:17
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety eight and George W. Bush
43:21
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two. That was post nine to eleven.
43:24
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety eight was the Monica backlash, where Clinton's personal
43:29
Speaker 1: rating was in the toilet, but his professional rating was
43:32
Speaker 1: sky high. It was this weird. The voter was almost
43:35
Speaker 1: like stubborn about it. No, we don't like Clinton, and
43:37
Speaker 1: yes we love the job he's doing. It was like
43:39
Speaker 1: we were It was this fascinating split in the way
43:43
Speaker 1: polling was registering. No, people were looking for a way
43:47
Speaker 1: to express personal disgust at what Trump, at what Clinton did,
43:51
Speaker 1: but they didn't. But they wanted to make it clear
43:55
Speaker 1: they didn't want him thrown out of office over it. Right,
43:57
Speaker 1: And so you would see this dichotomy in the where
44:00
Speaker 1: his favorable rating, his personal favorable rating was upside down,
44:04
Speaker 1: but his professional rating was through the roof. The point
44:08
Speaker 1: is those are the two exceptions. Now ask yourself, what's
44:11
Speaker 1: Donald Trump going to do between now and November to
44:14
Speaker 1: somehow get a sixty percent joberating? Is it improbable? Yes,
44:21
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna say anything's impossible in the Trump earrow,
44:24
Speaker 1: that's for sure. But the point is massive unexpected outside
44:33
Speaker 1: events like you know, aliens landing, you know in the Arctic,
44:39
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, whatever it is, like, it is
44:42
Speaker 1: stuff you cannot you cannot say is a feasible likely
44:49
Speaker 1: event to happen? Right? So, and of course what's really
44:55
Speaker 1: happening right now with Donald Trump, is he is epitomizing
45:01
Speaker 1: the saying that I love to quote from Haley Barber,
45:05
Speaker 1: the long time Republican operative and governor of Mississippi, who'd
45:09
Speaker 1: love to and I think it's somebody else's expression first.
45:12
Speaker 1: But good gets better and bad gets worse. And as
45:15
Speaker 1: we're seeing with Donald Trump, that is getting worse every week. Right.
45:19
Speaker 1: It feels like every week he throws another log on
45:23
Speaker 1: the let me piss off more than half the country bonfire.
45:28
Speaker 1: And that's why you're seeing more and more Republicans figure
45:34
Speaker 1: out a way to push back. Some say it publicly,
45:36
Speaker 1: some choose not to file for reelection, and others may
45:40
Speaker 1: be contemplating doing either of those things. Because if they
45:44
Speaker 1: want to speak out but they think it'll backfire, then
45:48
Speaker 1: my guess is they walk away if they assess their
45:51
Speaker 1: political situation and decide maybe they can survive by going
45:58
Speaker 1: after Trump. Maybe he's becoming more unpopular. Maybe the Epstein
46:00
Speaker 1: files have left to Mark by the way, I didn't
46:02
Speaker 1: even get to the Epstein files. Right, That's like the
46:06
Speaker 1: other none of that has gotten any better for him either.
46:11
Speaker 1: It may be sullying the Clintons Bill Clinton a little bit.
46:14
Speaker 1: By the way, I still don't I don't under you know,
46:17
Speaker 1: other than Republicans wanting to attach Hillary Clinton to anything
46:21
Speaker 1: that they can attach her to. I do not understand
46:22
Speaker 1: why she's being asked to testify on anything Epstein. Right.
46:26
Speaker 1: There's nothing in the files in any case she was
46:28
Speaker 1: ever on the planes, ever did anything, et cetera. I
46:31
Speaker 1: guess they'll say, well, she must have had some played
46:34
Speaker 1: some part in the Clinton Foundation and the relationship with
46:37
Speaker 1: Gallaine Maxwell, even that seems beyond tenuous at best. She
46:41
Speaker 1: was a sitting senator at the time, So I don't
46:47
Speaker 1: get that one. I don't see Melinda Gates being called
46:49
Speaker 1: up to find out what she knew about about Bill
46:52
Speaker 1: Gates's relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, Right, We don't see any
46:57
Speaker 1: of that. So that seems to be a head scratcher
47:00
Speaker 1: on that one. And we'll see if that that's one
47:02
Speaker 1: of those that I would say to mister comer, be
47:06
Speaker 1: careful what you ask for, Be careful of what you're
47:10
Speaker 1: doing there. You want to talk about something that's more
47:13
Speaker 1: likely to blow up in your face than somehow create
47:17
Speaker 1: political deflection for Trump. It's playing games like this with
47:23
Speaker 1: trying to We're trying to target Hillary Clinton in particular.
47:28
Speaker 1: Just you know, I know you think she's so unpopular,
47:30
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what you do. I'd watch it. I
47:36
Speaker 1: think there's that's something I would be extraordinarily careful with.
47:45
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Speaker 1: the things that I wouldn't mind hearing from you the viewers.
51:05
Speaker 1: We love suggest booking suggestions. We get plenty of booking
51:09
Speaker 1: people throwing stuff our way. But if there are specific
51:14
Speaker 1: candidates or individuals or historians you'd like to hear on
51:20
Speaker 1: the podcast, don't be shy. Let us know. Ask Chuck
51:24
Speaker 1: at thechucktodcast dot com. Yes, the same place that you
51:28
Speaker 1: send all your brilliant pieces of email and analysis and
51:32
Speaker 1: questions to me that I'd love to read and absorb.
51:37
Speaker 1: But please use that address if you've got any other
51:41
Speaker 1: folks you'd like to see as My goal is to
51:43
Speaker 1: try to between now and the filing deadline for the
51:46
Speaker 1: Iowa Caucuses if they are indeed first in the nation
51:49
Speaker 1: come January of twenty twenty seven, I hope everybody of
51:52
Speaker 1: consequence that's running for president that I get to spend
51:55
Speaker 1: thirty to forty five minutes here with us. So with that,
52:01
Speaker 1: one quick addendum before I get to the Toddcast time
52:04
Speaker 1: Machine event for this week, and that is it's like
52:08
Speaker 1: a little we had a little coda to the Washington
52:11
Speaker 1: post event. Will Lewis the publisher in name only, I
52:16
Speaker 1: guess because he was nowhere to be found at the
52:18
Speaker 1: announcement of the layoffs. He was nowhere to be found
52:20
Speaker 1: in frankly the last nine months of the newsroom itself.
52:25
Speaker 1: A photo showed up of him at the Super Bowl
52:29
Speaker 1: at one of the pre parties on the red carpet
52:31
Speaker 1: for NFL honors. And let's say that suddenly an email
52:36
Speaker 1: resignation statement showed up and a lot of inboxes come Saturday.
52:41
Speaker 1: I believe it was Saturday morning that a very abrupt
52:44
Speaker 1: he thanked Jeff Bezos and walked away, had nothing to
52:47
Speaker 1: say about the journalists that he oversaw for a couple
52:49
Speaker 1: of years. So will lewis cementing his place as the
52:53
Speaker 1: single worst publisher in the history of the Washington Post.
52:56
Speaker 1: So congratulations mister Lewis on that. And probably you know,
53:00
Speaker 1: unhire should be seen in journalism circles. It's completely unhirable,
53:05
Speaker 1: just completely unhirable to run. To run an enterprise. He might,
53:11
Speaker 1: he might have some smart things to say about trend
53:13
Speaker 1: lines and what's happening, but a manager of people and
53:17
Speaker 1: a leader of people, he is not. Uh, And I
53:19
Speaker 1: think that that is obvious. Look, it's it's it is.
53:24
Speaker 1: It's really weird to be sort of, you know, our
53:27
Speaker 1: fourth day five without essentially without the Washington Post, because
53:31
Speaker 1: I know, yes, there's national reporter still doing good work,
53:35
Speaker 1: there's a congressional team that's still doing good work, and
53:37
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to shit on them, Okay,
53:41
Speaker 1: but you know, the Washington Post is going to slowly,
53:45
Speaker 1: essentially fade into more is relevant in Washington as Politico,
53:50
Speaker 1: which is there's nothing wrong professional professionally, political punch bowl
53:54
Speaker 1: relevant professionally, the Washington Post will be relatant as a
53:58
Speaker 1: member and a leader of the of the DMV in
54:00
Speaker 1: this community, it's over. That's what's dead, and the idea
54:06
Speaker 1: that they don't care about local sports, which is just
54:08
Speaker 1: such an important part of the community. So it's in
54:11
Speaker 1: that vein that I have a you know, sometimes sometimes
54:17
Speaker 1: I have interesting business ideas that I don't share with
54:19
Speaker 1: you because I'm working on them myself. And then sometimes
54:22
Speaker 1: there are things that are above my pay grade, you know,
54:27
Speaker 1: and instead feel like something a challenge that should be
54:30
Speaker 1: issued publicly. So here's my public challenge to the three
54:35
Speaker 1: major sports owners of the Washington, DC market, Mark Lerner,
54:38
Speaker 1: who runs the Nationals, Ted Leons's owner of both the
54:41
Speaker 1: Caps and the Wizards, and Josh Harris, owner of the
54:44
Speaker 1: Washington Commanders. You three have an enormous interest in having
54:51
Speaker 1: a local and regional news organization that is trusted, that
54:56
Speaker 1: is frankly a bit of a cheerleader to the local
55:00
Speaker 1: sports teams, even if they are will every once in
55:02
Speaker 1: a while attack all of you for doing crappy things
55:05
Speaker 1: as owners every once in a while because we fans
55:07
Speaker 1: might get upset at you because we want to spend
55:09
Speaker 1: your money in ways that you don't want to spend
55:12
Speaker 1: your money. My tongue is I'm going hard in cheek
55:15
Speaker 1: here a little bit, but you get my point. But
55:18
Speaker 1: you you know, if your teams don't get attention and
55:22
Speaker 1: people don't know what you're up to, then maybe you
55:25
Speaker 1: have a harder time selling season tickets and maybe have
55:27
Speaker 1: a harder time selling single game tickets, maybe have a
55:29
Speaker 1: harder time letting people know that Taylor Swift's coming to
55:34
Speaker 1: the new RFK or Bad Bunny's coming to the Capitol
55:40
Speaker 1: One Arena. And I say this because both Josh Harris
55:46
Speaker 1: and Ted Leones is in particular. I don't know the
55:48
Speaker 1: history of Mark Learner's investments, but both have invested in
55:52
Speaker 1: media organizations in the past. Josh Harris has been a
55:55
Speaker 1: funder and has made money off of investments on new
55:59
Speaker 1: startups and the By the way, I want to throw
56:01
Speaker 1: my uh Mark iin into this conversation. He's another sort
56:05
Speaker 1: of major player in the Washington sports market. He's one
56:08
Speaker 1: of the I think minority owners and investors and the
56:11
Speaker 1: commanders owns. I think he's very involved in the in
56:15
Speaker 1: the professional tennis league that's here, and I believe in
56:18
Speaker 1: some of the soccer franchise as well. So and he's
56:20
Speaker 1: also very much a what I'd say is a member
56:23
Speaker 1: of the Washington community and in some ways of more
56:26
Speaker 1: vocal than some of his other fellow sports investors there.
56:31
Speaker 1: So I should have included Mark iin into this, but
56:34
Speaker 1: I'm saying it publicly. You guys know how to get
56:36
Speaker 1: a hold of me, So I'm happy to help out
56:38
Speaker 1: in any way possible. But I think it's your your
56:41
Speaker 1: best interests to come help fund. Whether it's d MV today,
56:46
Speaker 1: maybe it's a sports vertical at first, sports local culture.
56:51
Speaker 1: The point is, you guys have the resources to do this.
57:00
Speaker 1: Don't hire Will Lewis to do it. That would be
57:02
Speaker 1: my number one piece of advice. But beyond that, I
57:07
Speaker 1: hope you have an open door for whether it's myself,
57:10
Speaker 1: whether it's my friend Kara Swisher. And speaking of Kara Swisher,
57:13
Speaker 1: she's my guest this week on my Newsphere program Sunday
57:16
Speaker 1: Night with Chuck Todd. And I'll just put it this way.
57:19
Speaker 1: If you enjoy hearing sentences that include Jeff Bezos in
57:23
Speaker 1: the F word, you're gonna love this Kara Swisher interview.
57:27
Speaker 1: She doesn't hold anything back. She's got a lot of
57:29
Speaker 1: strong opinions, and she knows these people better than any
57:32
Speaker 1: other person. And by the way, if you want to
57:34
Speaker 1: know for care, if it's personal, Yes, it is her
57:37
Speaker 1: first job, mailroom inside the Washington Post, so it's personal
57:43
Speaker 1: for her. But she has a lot of smart ideas here.
57:45
Speaker 1: And I think we and it's not just about the
57:49
Speaker 1: Washington Post that we spent We talk about the tech
57:51
Speaker 1: titans in general and whether there are any good guys
57:54
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley. Here's the good news. She thinks there's
57:57
Speaker 1: at least one good guy there. I'm not going to
57:59
Speaker 1: tell you is here. Go check it out on newsphere.
58:03
Speaker 1: So just wanted to do that little coda on the
58:06
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Given how much time I spent on it
58:08
Speaker 1: last week, it's still pretty painful to realize that what
58:14
Speaker 1: just happened to the Washington Post, and then to see
58:15
Speaker 1: the will Lewis thing. I mean, it was deserved, right.
58:18
Speaker 1: Whether Bezos fired him out of just a pr pr necessity,
58:24
Speaker 1: it was necessary. It gives Matt Murray a chance at
58:26
Speaker 1: maybe rallying the remaining troops there. And look, I'll say
58:31
Speaker 1: what I said last week, I feel for him on this,
58:35
Speaker 1: and you know, some of you look, he made his
58:36
Speaker 1: own bed, so you know, yes, but he's there to
58:43
Speaker 1: execute strategy. And the fact that the owner and the
58:48
Speaker 1: publisher didn't have the guts to be the face of
58:50
Speaker 1: this tells you who they are, tells you a lot
58:53
Speaker 1: about their character. And that's what I think has been
58:57
Speaker 1: the most damning thing about all of this. All Right,
59:01
Speaker 1: let's go back into time. It's time machine time. So
59:11
Speaker 1: where are we going in history? I kind of want
59:14
Speaker 1: sound effects, right, we'll get there. So where are we going?
59:17
Speaker 1: We're going to go to February eleventh, nineteen seventy nine,
59:21
Speaker 1: It's the day the Iranian monarchy collapsed. The Shaw's government fell,
59:26
Speaker 1: military declared neutrality in Iran, and a revolution that had
59:30
Speaker 1: been building for more than a century finally broke through.
59:33
Speaker 1: What followed was the creation of the Islamic Republic and
59:36
Speaker 1: authoritarian theocracy, one of the most consequential ruptures in US
59:41
Speaker 1: foreign policy, still shaping the Middle East today, global energy markets,
59:45
Speaker 1: and American politics. And as questions once again swirl about
59:50
Speaker 1: the future of Iran's regime, it's worth remembering something clearly
59:55
Speaker 1: at the outset as we go into this time machine.
59:58
Speaker 1: The Iranian Revolution did not come out of nowhere, and
1:00:00
Speaker 1: America was not a bystander in it all right. So
1:00:04
Speaker 1: to understand how we got to February nineteen seventy nine
1:00:07
Speaker 1: and the Ayatola Khamane becoming essentially a dictator of Iran,
1:00:13
Speaker 1: we have to go back a lot further. Iran didn't
1:00:16
Speaker 1: suddenly appear in the twentieth century. For thousands of years,
1:00:19
Speaker 1: of course, it was known to the outside world as Persian,
1:00:21
Speaker 1: one of the oldest continuous state traditions on Earth, and
1:00:27
Speaker 1: the monarchy in Persia was not some modern invention either.
1:00:30
Speaker 1: By the time of World War one. Iran had been
1:00:32
Speaker 1: ruled by kings for centuries, most recently under the Kajar dynasty,
1:00:38
Speaker 1: which took power in seventeen ninety four. In fact, even
1:00:41
Speaker 1: the title Sha itself matters here. It's not Islamic. It's
1:00:45
Speaker 1: a Persian word, ancient Persian, and it dates back more
1:00:48
Speaker 1: than twenty five hundred years. The fuller imperior title is Shahanshah,
1:00:54
Speaker 1: which literally means king of kings. So when Iranians overthrew
1:00:59
Speaker 1: the Shaw eighteen seventy nine, they weren't just rejecting a
1:01:02
Speaker 1: modern autocrat, and by the way, that last Shaw was
1:01:05
Speaker 1: an autocrat, I'll get to that. They were rejecting a
1:01:08
Speaker 1: pre Islamic royal tradition that stretched back to the antiquity era.
1:01:13
Speaker 1: This wasn't just political upheaval. It was a civilization break.
1:01:17
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty five, Iran's ruler asked foreign governments to
1:01:21
Speaker 1: stop using Persia and adopt the name Iran instead. It
1:01:25
Speaker 1: was a nationalist gesture meant to assert sovereignty and create
1:01:29
Speaker 1: a modern identity. It wasn't the creation of a new country,
1:01:32
Speaker 1: but it was a demand to be seen on its
1:01:34
Speaker 1: own terms. So we all need that little history lesson
1:01:39
Speaker 1: every now and then, So now we place a rain
1:01:41
Speaker 1: into its regional context and just sort of a little
1:01:44
Speaker 1: bit of the backstory here on Iran. In the early
1:01:47
Speaker 1: twentieth century, during World War One, Persia was officially neutral,
1:01:51
Speaker 1: but neutrality never did protect it as a country. Its
1:01:54
Speaker 1: territory was repeatedly violated by the Russians, the British, and
1:01:58
Speaker 1: at times even the Ottoman forces. Persia was never part
1:02:01
Speaker 1: of the Ottoman Empire. That's an important note. Historically it
1:02:04
Speaker 1: was often the chief rival to the Ottomans, particularly along
1:02:07
Speaker 1: sectarian lines. We had the Sunni Ottoman rule versus the
1:02:11
Speaker 1: Shia Persian identity right Sunni Shia, something that's been there
1:02:16
Speaker 1: from nearly the beginning of Islam. The lesson Iranians absorbed
1:02:20
Speaker 1: from World War One, though, was a harsh one. Neutrality
1:02:24
Speaker 1: does not stop great powers from using your country as
1:02:27
Speaker 1: a chessboard. So at the same time, the Ottoman Empire
1:02:31
Speaker 1: collapsed at the end of the war, and it gave
1:02:33
Speaker 1: birth largely through a European mandate system new states like Iraq, Syria,
1:02:39
Speaker 1: and Lebanon. Right. Iraq, for example, emerged as a British
1:02:43
Speaker 1: backed monarchy in the early nineteen twenties, and it gained
1:02:47
Speaker 1: full independence in nineteen thirty two. So Iran is sitting
1:02:52
Speaker 1: there watching its neighbors be invented by outside powers while
1:02:56
Speaker 1: struggling to preserve its own independence in a world dominated
1:03:00
Speaker 1: by empires. What's interesting is this Iran did not passively
1:03:06
Speaker 1: accept monarchy as destiny. In fact, just the opposite. In
1:03:10
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, Persia experienced a constitutional revolution. It produced
1:03:17
Speaker 1: a written constitution, a parliament. The majills, I hope I
1:03:22
Speaker 1: get that jealous and I have no doubt, and I
1:03:27
Speaker 1: will mess up some of these pronunciations of some of
1:03:30
Speaker 1: these Persian words. My apologies, but essentially it was a
1:03:33
Speaker 1: parliament and limits on royal authority. This was one of
1:03:36
Speaker 1: the earliest constitutional movements in the Middle East. There's a
1:03:39
Speaker 1: real small d democratic tradition inside of Iran. Iran had
1:03:44
Speaker 1: a They did this decades before many of its neighbors,
1:03:50
Speaker 1: but it was fragile. Iranian politics became defined by a
1:03:53
Speaker 1: persistent tension monarchy, secular reformers, religious authorities, and foreign powers,
1:04:00
Speaker 1: and they were all always pulling around in different direction.
1:04:04
Speaker 1: Tension has never disappeared. It simply evolves in different ways
1:04:08
Speaker 1: over times. And we're seeing it play out at the moment.
1:04:11
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen twenties you had Resa Shah pa Lavi.
1:04:15
Speaker 1: He sees power and eventually crowned himself. Shaw His project
1:04:20
Speaker 1: was modernization, centralizing the state, building infrastructure, weakening the religious authority,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: clerical authority, and enforcing secularism. But it was modernization from above,
1:04:34
Speaker 1: enforced by coercion. Parliamentary democracy was weakened, political pluralism shrank,
1:04:42
Speaker 1: the monarchy reasserted itself as the center of gravity. So
1:04:45
Speaker 1: we can look at it and say, well, great, they
1:04:47
Speaker 1: were modernized, they were westernizing, but they were essentially beating
1:04:51
Speaker 1: people into modernizing. Right. It was not a democratic move
1:04:56
Speaker 1: to modernization, and it meant that Resia sh Shaw's project
1:05:00
Speaker 1: also came across as nationalists. He was attempting to reduce
1:05:04
Speaker 1: British and Russian influence. Of course, that independence would not last.
1:05:10
Speaker 1: The most important Hinge point before in nineteen seventy nine
1:05:13
Speaker 1: comes in the early fifties. By then Iran had another Shaw,
1:05:17
Speaker 1: Riza Shaw's son, Mohammed Riza Pahlavi, and a democratic chosen
1:05:22
Speaker 1: prime minister by the name of Mohammed Mozadek. Well, Mozadek
1:05:27
Speaker 1: the prime minister moved to nationalize Iran's oil industry. At
1:05:31
Speaker 1: the time, it was an attempt to challenge the British
1:05:33
Speaker 1: dominance and over their oil economy and asserting their own sovereignty. Well,
1:05:40
Speaker 1: guess what the Brits panicked called Warfares intensified and in
1:05:44
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, the United States and the UK back
1:05:48
Speaker 1: the coup that removed the prime minister. So here's what
1:05:52
Speaker 1: happened next. The coup didn't just restore the Shaw, it
1:05:56
Speaker 1: also transformed him from a constitutional monarch into the central
1:06:02
Speaker 1: pillar of the state. And so yes, the United States
1:06:05
Speaker 1: effectively helped rip up a fragile parliamentary democracy in favor
1:06:09
Speaker 1: of a more centralized, more authoritarian and at the time,
1:06:13
Speaker 1: because this was the Cold War, a more pro Western monarchy.
1:06:18
Speaker 1: It was what was in America's national interests that mattered
1:06:21
Speaker 1: more than what was in the small d democracy interests.
1:06:26
Speaker 1: This is an important point to understand. This is why
1:06:29
Speaker 1: a lot of things we did in the fifties and
1:06:31
Speaker 1: sixties in the name of the Cold War and dealing
1:06:34
Speaker 1: with the Soviets created a lot of anti americanism around
1:06:37
Speaker 1: the world. This is one of them. So from Washington's
1:06:41
Speaker 1: perspective at the time, right, Hey, this was all about
1:06:43
Speaker 1: stability and anti communism, pure and symbol From Tehran's perspective
1:06:49
Speaker 1: and the perspective of quite a few individuals, it was
1:06:52
Speaker 1: about lost sovereignty. So from that moment on, the Shah
1:06:55
Speaker 1: in the United States became politically intertwined in the Iranian imagination.
1:07:00
Speaker 1: Opposition to the Shah increasingly meant opposition to America. And
1:07:05
Speaker 1: this is where the long fuze toward nineteen seventy nine
1:07:08
Speaker 1: is let the Shaw modernized rapidly, expanding education, advancing women's rights,
1:07:13
Speaker 1: pouring oil wealth into development. All that's good stuff. But
1:07:17
Speaker 1: the modernization was paired with repression. There was censorship, a
1:07:21
Speaker 1: powerful secret police. They crushed descent, and they were really
1:07:25
Speaker 1: tough on those that were overly religious. And it all
1:07:29
Speaker 1: came with visible American back in Regionally, Orion stood apart
1:07:33
Speaker 1: because while you had Arab states experiencing cups and military
1:07:37
Speaker 1: rule and pan Arab nationalism all over the place, Egypt
1:07:40
Speaker 1: under Nassar Syrian, Iraq under the Baptist regimes, Iran was
1:07:44
Speaker 1: actually the pillar of America's Middle East strategy in the
1:07:48
Speaker 1: Gulf region. That alignment bought power, and it also planted
1:07:54
Speaker 1: some rage. And this is the environment in which a
1:07:57
Speaker 1: man named Ayatola rulej Hala Komene. Yes that Komenee emerges
1:08:03
Speaker 1: as a symbol of the resistance. Here's an important clarification
1:08:09
Speaker 1: in history. Komene did not flee Iran. Comeni was arrested, released,
1:08:15
Speaker 1: and then banished from the country. In the early sixties,
1:08:18
Speaker 1: Comene openly denounced the Shaw's reforms and crucially attacked Iran's
1:08:22
Speaker 1: relationship with the United States, particularly laws that granted US
1:08:26
Speaker 1: personnel legal immunity inside of Iran. Remember this came up
1:08:31
Speaker 1: again during our in the attempt to build a democracy
1:08:35
Speaker 1: in Iraq that giving immunity to outside forces is never
1:08:41
Speaker 1: popular domestically wherever you are. Well. The Shaw had options
1:08:44
Speaker 1: and what to do with Komene. He could imprison him.
1:08:47
Speaker 1: He could have executed him, or he could have silenced
1:08:49
Speaker 1: him another way. Executing him risk turning him into a martyr.
1:08:53
Speaker 1: So the Shaw decided to expel. First it was to Turkey,
1:08:57
Speaker 1: then it was to Iraq, and eventually he'd end up
1:08:59
Speaker 1: in France. Well, exile was a mistake because while exile
1:09:04
Speaker 1: was meant as an attempt to neutralize komene Instead, he
1:09:07
Speaker 1: kind of professionalized his movement and gave him gave him
1:09:12
Speaker 1: more rhetorical power from Paris. In exile, Komeney gained something
1:09:17
Speaker 1: no opposition figure inside Iran could safely have had at
1:09:20
Speaker 1: the time, global media access without fear of arrest. So
1:09:25
Speaker 1: he unifies the opposition, and there was a by the
1:09:28
Speaker 1: way the opposition in Iran was dispersed. Here wasn't just
1:09:31
Speaker 1: the theocrats that were against him, right, So Coomane unifies
1:09:36
Speaker 1: the opposition and he frames it as a resistance not
1:09:39
Speaker 1: just on religious terms, but also moral terms, and he
1:09:43
Speaker 1: positioned clerical rule as authentic national liberation. So on February first,
1:09:48
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Comeni returns to Tehran to thousands of
1:09:53
Speaker 1: cheering crowds. Ten days later his February eleventh, and the
1:09:57
Speaker 1: monarchy officially collapses. The revolution that toppled the SHAW at
1:10:00
Speaker 1: the moment was broad based. There were secular liberals, there
1:10:03
Speaker 1: were leftists, students, merchants, clerics. But the revolution didn't end
1:10:10
Speaker 1: when the regimes fall. They end when power consolidates, and
1:10:14
Speaker 1: the most organized faction was the clerical one, and they won.
1:10:19
Speaker 1: So what followed was not just a change of rulers,
1:10:22
Speaker 1: but a new governing model. They called it an Islamic republic,
1:10:26
Speaker 1: a theocracy fused with state power, something the region and
1:10:30
Speaker 1: the world actually had never seen before. Now you may
1:10:36
Speaker 1: be wondering when did the hostage crisis begin. So, the
1:10:38
Speaker 1: US embassy hostage crisis actually didn't happen immediately with the
1:10:42
Speaker 1: start of the revolution in February of seventy nine. It
1:10:45
Speaker 1: came nine months later, in November of seventy nine. But
1:10:48
Speaker 1: it flowed directly from everything that came before, memories of
1:10:51
Speaker 1: fifty three, fear of American interference and the revolutionary need
1:10:56
Speaker 1: to define itself against an external enemy, and the United
1:10:58
Speaker 1: States was an easy target because of our history with
1:11:01
Speaker 1: the country, and from that moment on US Iran relations
1:11:05
Speaker 1: froze into hostility. So what lessons should we take away
1:11:09
Speaker 1: from this, Well, we're in the middle of something here
1:11:11
Speaker 1: that we may help foment another revolution in Iran. We
1:11:14
Speaker 1: may be more active on this one, as active as
1:11:17
Speaker 1: we were in nineteen fifty three. Now this time we
1:11:19
Speaker 1: may be on the side of the people. We were
1:11:21
Speaker 1: not on the side of the people in fifty three.
1:11:23
Speaker 1: We were not on the side of the people in
1:11:24
Speaker 1: seventy nine. This time we might be on the side
1:11:26
Speaker 1: of the people. That's the one thing that's different here,
1:11:28
Speaker 1: and maybe that means a different outcome, But it is
1:11:31
Speaker 1: a warning about foreign intervention, right, and modernization without legitimacy,
1:11:36
Speaker 1: and what happens when democracy is sacrificed for stability. And
1:11:40
Speaker 1: in fact, when you hear the story of the Shah
1:11:42
Speaker 1: and the fifties and sixties, I can't help but think
1:11:44
Speaker 1: of NBS in Saudi Arabia. Right, Oh, hey, there's good news,
1:11:48
Speaker 1: he's modernizing, he's given women rights. But at the same time,
1:11:51
Speaker 1: there's still censorship. Right, there's still very little, you know,
1:11:56
Speaker 1: there's still terrible human rights violations, particularly when anybody violates
1:12:01
Speaker 1: the law. So it is there's a lot of lessons
1:12:04
Speaker 1: to take away from this So America. We can't say
1:12:07
Speaker 1: it created the Iranian revolution alone, but it did help
1:12:10
Speaker 1: destroy the alternative that might have prevented it. And that's
1:12:14
Speaker 1: the hardest left in them all. When you weaken a
1:12:16
Speaker 1: democracy to protect your own interests. We actively weakened a
1:12:20
Speaker 1: democracy in nineteen fifty three. You don't eliminate the instability,
1:12:26
Speaker 1: you simply delay it. So as we decide how involved,
1:12:32
Speaker 1: we're going to get and what's happening in Iran. And
1:12:35
Speaker 1: you know, look, I look at you. I think that
1:12:38
Speaker 1: whenever we're on the side a small d democracy, that
1:12:44
Speaker 1: usually ends up at a better place than when we're
1:12:46
Speaker 1: just on the side of helping somebody who's just simply
1:12:49
Speaker 1: on our side in a larger fight against some other
1:12:53
Speaker 1: foreign power. And the Cold War created those types of relationships.
1:12:58
Speaker 1: The fear of China is creating those type transactional relationships.
1:13:01
Speaker 1: But these transactional relationships, and this is right. Donald Trump
1:13:05
Speaker 1: wants to make America. You know, when he talks about
1:13:07
Speaker 1: making America great again, he wants to go back to
1:13:09
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty style kind of imperialistic like foreign policy approach, right,
1:13:19
Speaker 1: and all of that bitness in the ass in Latin America,
1:13:22
Speaker 1: all of this is bitness in the ass in the
1:13:25
Speaker 1: Middle East. Transactional politics without some sort of small the
1:13:30
Speaker 1: democratic moral code is never going to create long term
1:13:35
Speaker 1: stability or security for us here in the United States.
1:13:40
Speaker 1: So with that, there's your time machine. All right, let's
1:13:53
Speaker 1: get to some questions. Ask Chuck, if Trump continues to
1:13:59
Speaker 1: claim you when the twenty twenty election, wouldn't that make
1:14:01
Speaker 1: the potential twenty twenty four run unconstitutional two determinants. I
1:14:05
Speaker 1: love how you're thinking. If you somehow approved he was
1:14:07
Speaker 1: the rightful winner in twenty twenty, wouldn't that undermine the
1:14:09
Speaker 1: legality of a future term and even weaken his legal
1:14:12
Speaker 1: protections side to the presidency just seems like a self
1:14:14
Speaker 1: defeating argument. You know, this reminds me of a of
1:14:19
Speaker 1: a of a rule I used to have I meet
1:14:22
Speaker 1: the press meetings with my staff, when we have these
1:14:25
Speaker 1: daily meetings about the editorial day, I'd say we've banned
1:14:29
Speaker 1: logic in the Trump era. And because what you're making,
1:14:36
Speaker 1: you're taking a news story and applying logic to it,
1:14:40
Speaker 1: and say, well, doesn't this mean this Donald Trump has
1:14:44
Speaker 1: never allowed logic to get in the way of a
1:14:48
Speaker 1: good narrative, right of a good owned the libs mean
1:14:51
Speaker 1: of a good attempt at not having to admit defeat right.
1:14:56
Speaker 1: And so everything you're saying is correct. But that isn't
1:15:03
Speaker 1: what he's up to here, right, We know what he's
1:15:06
Speaker 1: really up to here. This is just continuing to try
1:15:09
Speaker 1: to continuing to try to sort of undermine more legitimacy
1:15:17
Speaker 1: of more institutions, and the more institutions I mean, if
1:15:20
Speaker 1: he is able to fully undermine the entire election system,
1:15:24
Speaker 1: which is what he's attempting to do here with twenty twenty,
1:15:28
Speaker 1: then everything he would do to question the midterms and
1:15:33
Speaker 1: anything like that becomes then natural or normalized because of
1:15:40
Speaker 1: what he's done with twenty twenty. So this is what
1:15:42
Speaker 1: makes what he's doing so dangerous. Here. He's trying to
1:15:45
Speaker 1: sort of legitimize interfering with future elections, right, and he's
1:15:49
Speaker 1: desperate to try to find even you know, even the
1:15:54
Speaker 1: illusion of evidence to reinforce his beliefs about what happened
1:15:58
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And they look, it's clear they're manufacturing pretext here.
1:16:02
Speaker 1: They have not legitimized a single fact. I mean, you
1:16:07
Speaker 1: go to this about twenty twenty. He's only gone after Georgia.
1:16:11
Speaker 1: By the way, let's I've gone in another place. Let's
1:16:14
Speaker 1: say he magically somehow figures out that he won Georgia,
1:16:18
Speaker 1: he still doesn't have enough electoral votes to prove that
1:16:21
Speaker 1: he won in twenty twenty. There's still other states. He
1:16:23
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Arizona, he
1:16:25
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Nevada. He
1:16:27
Speaker 1: hasn't be able to find the votes in Wisconsin, he
1:16:29
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Michigan, he
1:16:30
Speaker 1: hasn't made to find the votes in Pennsylvania. So but
1:16:34
Speaker 1: again that's logic. This is not about logic, right, I mean,
1:16:37
Speaker 1: he thinks if he can somehow find anything that becomes
1:16:40
Speaker 1: believable behind his delusional followers on this, it allows him
1:16:46
Speaker 1: not to declare any victory about twenty twenty, but then
1:16:51
Speaker 1: he will use that as a way to legitimize likely
1:16:56
Speaker 1: using the government to interfere in the actual elections themselves
1:16:59
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty eight. Now I say
1:17:02
Speaker 1: that in that I still don't believe he can effectively
1:17:04
Speaker 1: do that. I think there's enough checks and balances in
1:17:07
Speaker 1: the states. I think it's not going to happen. And
1:17:09
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, I vacillate between being worried
1:17:13
Speaker 1: and laughing at these attempts that he's doing. I think
1:17:15
Speaker 1: he's making just an absolute fool of himself. And more importantly,
1:17:19
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean literally the laughing stock of the
1:17:22
Speaker 1: intelligence community is Tulsa Gabbert, Right, but she has been
1:17:26
Speaker 1: I will say that she must be beyond humiliation which
1:17:31
Speaker 1: means she has her own sort of delusions about all
1:17:34
Speaker 1: of this. But it's it's whenever you apply logic to
1:17:42
Speaker 1: anyone of Trump's arguments, they fall apart completely, which means
1:17:45
Speaker 1: it's never been about logic all right. Next question comes
1:17:49
Speaker 1: from Luke Hey. Thanks for tackling the issue of sports betting.
1:17:51
Speaker 1: I've seen it devastate families, and I refuse to work
1:17:53
Speaker 1: for gambling platforms because of the ethical concerns. My question
1:17:56
Speaker 1: is about professional ethics. It people with integrity keep quitting
1:17:59
Speaker 1: problematic institutions. Do those spaces just get worse? Is it
1:18:03
Speaker 1: better to stay and try to limit the damage from within?
1:18:05
Speaker 1: I'm torn between sticking to my moral line or trying
1:18:07
Speaker 1: to be sand in the gears from the inside. Loops, Well,
1:18:11
Speaker 1: welcome to what a lot of prosecutors, career prosecutors are
1:18:16
Speaker 1: contemplating at the Justice Department, What a lot of career
1:18:19
Speaker 1: form policy folks are thinking about at the State Department.
1:18:24
Speaker 1: What many career military particularly for one, two and three
1:18:28
Speaker 1: star generals, high ranking admirals. You know that this is
1:18:36
Speaker 1: this is this is a huge dilemma, you know, I don't.
1:18:44
Speaker 1: I think everybody's got their own line, So I'm not
1:18:46
Speaker 1: going to tell you what your line should be. I'll
1:18:49
Speaker 1: just tell you what my line is. If I feel
1:18:52
Speaker 1: like I can be effective, not just being sand in
1:18:56
Speaker 1: the gears right and doing you know, feeling like I
1:19:00
Speaker 1: have to sneakily upend things, but I feel like I
1:19:03
Speaker 1: can turn the tide, I can report what needs to
1:19:07
Speaker 1: be reported or whatever it is, then it is worth
1:19:11
Speaker 1: sticking around. If you feel like your position can prevent
1:19:16
Speaker 1: the worst things to happen, and you say to yourself, well, hey,
1:19:20
Speaker 1: you know, I just have to do it for nine
1:19:22
Speaker 1: months until we get new leadership. Right, That's why it
1:19:26
Speaker 1: to me. I would advise somebody at the Justice Department,
1:19:30
Speaker 1: in somebody the state department to stick it out right,
1:19:32
Speaker 1: believe in the democracy. You don't have to believe in
1:19:34
Speaker 1: the administration. You can believe in the democracy that there
1:19:37
Speaker 1: will be you know that bad There are good stewards
1:19:41
Speaker 1: and bad stewards, but there'll be another steward. Because I
1:19:45
Speaker 1: do think on the political side and in the public
1:19:48
Speaker 1: service sector, the more good actors that leave, they will
1:19:51
Speaker 1: only be filled with bad actors and it will only
1:19:53
Speaker 1: get worse than it might be irreparable. Right, So on
1:19:57
Speaker 1: the private sector side. I think it's a harder call, right.
1:20:07
Speaker 1: It's one thing to be stand in the gears to
1:20:09
Speaker 1: another thing. If you're literally working against the business interests
1:20:12
Speaker 1: of the company, and if they're not committing illegal acts,
1:20:17
Speaker 1: then I think it is better to quit on moral
1:20:19
Speaker 1: and ethical grounds, but do so publicly say why you're
1:20:22
Speaker 1: doing it. To do it silently, then it's ineffective. You know,
1:20:28
Speaker 1: speak out, become a whistleblower, right, become the person that
1:20:31
Speaker 1: worked for the tobacco companies to talk about all that
1:20:33
Speaker 1: you know, or the person that worked at Meta and
1:20:36
Speaker 1: saw everything that Facebook was doing to sort of weaponize
1:20:40
Speaker 1: the likes and the algorithms and stuff. You know. But
1:20:44
Speaker 1: I guess that's where I would go. I think it's
1:20:48
Speaker 1: I think if you're in the if you work for government,
1:20:52
Speaker 1: I think you're obligated to stick it out. I think
1:20:55
Speaker 1: if you work in the private sector and you have
1:20:58
Speaker 1: ethical and moral quandary, is I think then it's you know,
1:21:02
Speaker 1: I probably would be on the side of make it.
1:21:10
Speaker 1: It would be easier for me to support you walking
1:21:13
Speaker 1: than not walking, But I wouldn't do it quietly. If
1:21:15
Speaker 1: you want to, if you want to try to effect change,
1:21:18
Speaker 1: you know now if there can if you think you
1:21:25
Speaker 1: know there is a reason to stay is if you
1:21:27
Speaker 1: think they're doing something illegal and you need to gather
1:21:30
Speaker 1: evidence and and and become a whistleblower. That's that's yet
1:21:34
Speaker 1: another motivation to potentially stay if you truly believe something
1:21:39
Speaker 1: illegal is taking place. All right, appreciate the question, Luke,
1:21:47
Speaker 1: and you know there's no easy answers on those things.
1:21:51
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Tyler. Hey, I saw your video
1:21:54
Speaker 1: on the state's Democrats might put in play by twenty
1:21:56
Speaker 1: thirty two. I'm curious why Mississippi wasn't on your list.
1:21:58
Speaker 1: It's clearly it's nearly for percent African American and often
1:22:01
Speaker 1: shows more Blue counties than other Southern states. Couldn't increasing
1:22:04
Speaker 1: registration and turn out among African American voters make it competitive.
1:22:06
Speaker 1: Would love to hear your thoughts. I think I did
1:22:10
Speaker 1: mention that Mississippi's on my next round of lists. I
1:22:12
Speaker 1: think I believe it's in that and as you know,
1:22:15
Speaker 1: I keep talking about the Mississippi as Democrats search for
1:22:21
Speaker 1: more Senate seats to put in play in the twenty
1:22:23
Speaker 1: six cycle that I think Mississippi should be one of
1:22:25
Speaker 1: those states for all it's exactly the reason you lay
1:22:29
Speaker 1: out right. I think Mississippi, into a lesser extent, South
1:22:31
Speaker 1: Carolina is the other state in the South where there's
1:22:33
Speaker 1: clearly an un activated African American vote, either underregistrated in
1:22:40
Speaker 1: the rural counties in Mississippi and South Carolina or just
1:22:43
Speaker 1: under campaigned. Right, I've I've spent a lot of time
1:22:48
Speaker 1: a couple of cycles ago, we were doing some some
1:22:52
Speaker 1: of our counties to watch and before the twenty sixteen
1:22:56
Speaker 1: cycle or for the twenty twenty cycle, one of the
1:22:58
Speaker 1: counties I wanted to focus on was one of the
1:23:00
Speaker 1: African rural African American majority African American counties on the
1:23:03
Speaker 1: border of North and South Carolina. And how that the
1:23:07
Speaker 1: one time Barack Obama that Democrats carried North Carolina in
1:23:10
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. Barack Obama was on the ballot
1:23:13
Speaker 1: the first time, and he did a great job of
1:23:16
Speaker 1: activating the rural African American vote. North Carolina in twenty
1:23:18
Speaker 1: oh eight did not do as good of a job
1:23:20
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, and they didn't carry the state, but
1:23:22
Speaker 1: they did in twenty oh eight. The point is, I
1:23:25
Speaker 1: do think that one of the reasons why Democrats have
1:23:28
Speaker 1: been slow at seeing the opportunity in Mississippi is that
1:23:33
Speaker 1: they're blind on rural on rural America, right. You know,
1:23:36
Speaker 1: their inability to get support from rural whites isn't due
1:23:40
Speaker 1: to just rural whites, it's all over. It explains why
1:23:43
Speaker 1: rural Hispanics lean right in Texas, rural blacks are. While
1:23:49
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily lean right in the South, they're less
1:23:53
Speaker 1: supportive of Democrats than urban African Americans. So yes, I
1:24:00
Speaker 1: do believe Mississippi should be in that if you expanded
1:24:03
Speaker 1: it out to the top ten states they should be
1:24:04
Speaker 1: focused on. I think it's six or seven on that list,
1:24:08
Speaker 1: and they need to. But it's a multi year project
1:24:13
Speaker 1: in Mississippi because there's a lot particularly in rural America,
1:24:17
Speaker 1: rural Black America, rural Wide America, and rural Hispanic America.
1:24:20
Speaker 1: Democrats have stopped showing up over the last twenty years
1:24:23
Speaker 1: and they have to reverse that trend. Next question comes
1:24:28
Speaker 1: from Charles Davis. Great name, Charles, Love to know, Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chaz,
1:24:34
Speaker 1: Chad you what's your favorite of all of our The
1:24:39
Speaker 1: insane amount of nicknames that can come out of the
1:24:42
Speaker 1: name Charles. But I digress. It says, thanks for your
1:24:45
Speaker 1: recent podcast of the Kenny Center. It really resonated. I
1:24:47
Speaker 1: believe Trump and his allies are following authoritariing playbook, but
1:24:49
Speaker 1: they underestimated the resolve of cities like Minneapolis and the
1:24:52
Speaker 1: power of grassroots resistance. The militarization of police and the
1:24:55
Speaker 1: behavior of ICE agents are deeply concerning in tragedies like
1:24:58
Speaker 1: the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Preddie show this
1:25:00
Speaker 1: takes serve my country in many ways, and I've never
1:25:02
Speaker 1: been more worried or more hopeful that Americans are waking up.
1:25:07
Speaker 1: I voted our most of my life. Trump ended that
1:25:09
Speaker 1: no more, and I enjoy your podcast. Keep the good work. Look,
1:25:12
Speaker 1: I appreciate you writing this note, And obviously it's not
1:25:16
Speaker 1: really a question, but it's a statement that I'll want
1:25:19
Speaker 1: to refer have a lot of people refer to when
1:25:21
Speaker 1: they start to feel bleak. You know, what he's doing
1:25:27
Speaker 1: is not popular. That's sort of the point of the
1:25:30
Speaker 1: opening of this podcast. Republicans don't like what he's doing.
1:25:34
Speaker 1: In the words of John dan Forth, aren't we better
1:25:36
Speaker 1: than this? Right? Jack dan Forth thought the Republican Party
1:25:42
Speaker 1: had had more morals than than it does under Donald Trump,
1:25:46
Speaker 1: and had any sort of ethical lines that they would draw,
1:25:49
Speaker 1: and they don't. But nobody likes this, you know, and
1:25:55
Speaker 1: it goes back to, you know, the whole, the whole.
1:25:57
Speaker 1: I do think there are a lot of people who
1:25:59
Speaker 1: supported Trump who don't like being seen as racist like Trump.
1:26:04
Speaker 1: And it's you know, I always say this about Trump.
1:26:10
Speaker 1: Everybody has their own line, and Trump crosses it at
1:26:14
Speaker 1: different times. It sounds like Charles for you, he crossed
1:26:19
Speaker 1: the line a while ago, as I always say for
1:26:22
Speaker 1: Liz jad he didn't cross the line until January sixth, right,
1:26:27
Speaker 1: But when he crossed that line, man, she was out,
1:26:30
Speaker 1: and she was out loudly. John Bolton was out, probably
1:26:35
Speaker 1: sooner than most people thought he'd be out. Mike Pence, Right,
1:26:39
Speaker 1: you see where I'm going here. Everybody has their line
1:26:41
Speaker 1: at different moments. Looks like Rand Paul has a line,
1:26:46
Speaker 1: looks like Thomas Massey has a line, looks like Marjorie
1:26:48
Speaker 1: Taylor Green has a line. And three years ago, if
1:26:51
Speaker 1: I said every republic has a line, some of you
1:26:53
Speaker 1: might have said, well, Marjorie, there's no line for Marjorie
1:26:55
Speaker 1: Taylor Green. Yes, there is. Everybody has a line, and
1:27:00
Speaker 1: I think and this is what I think you're right about,
1:27:02
Speaker 1: which is, you know, not all of these stories impact
1:27:07
Speaker 1: everybody the same way, but a lot of people are
1:27:11
Speaker 1: impacted by at least one of these stories in the
1:27:13
Speaker 1: same way. And that's why he's got approval ratings that
1:27:17
Speaker 1: at best are in the low forties. That's why we're
1:27:21
Speaker 1: on the verge of having a record number of lawmakers
1:27:25
Speaker 1: say I'm out of Trump's Washington, get me out of here.
1:27:28
Speaker 1: By the way, you know, it's interesting about these retirees,
1:27:31
Speaker 1: right those that there's about thirty retirements Republican retirees so
1:27:38
Speaker 1: far this cycle, Essentially half of them are retiring to
1:27:42
Speaker 1: run for higher office, and the other half of them
1:27:44
Speaker 1: are just walking away from politics. Well, the lion's share
1:27:47
Speaker 1: of those that are just walking away from politics all
1:27:49
Speaker 1: Republicans elected before twenty sixteen. Those that are doing the
1:27:53
Speaker 1: upper out are just about all Republicans elected twenty sixteen
1:27:56
Speaker 1: or later. The old Republican Party that accommodated Trump. More
1:28:02
Speaker 1: and more of them are having trouble accommodating him. And
1:28:06
Speaker 1: like I said, every week somebody he crosses the line
1:28:10
Speaker 1: for somebody else. He is not gaining any new support.
1:28:15
Speaker 1: Every week Donald Trump loses more support. Next question comes
1:28:21
Speaker 1: from Rico from Sequoia National Forest. All right, well, here
1:28:25
Speaker 1: we are two big baseball fans gearing up for another
1:28:27
Speaker 1: on hundred and sixty two game season. But I still
1:28:29
Speaker 1: can't get over what I think is the dumbest rule
1:28:31
Speaker 1: in sports, the intentional walk of teams want to pitch
1:28:33
Speaker 1: around guys like Otanni. Fine, but make it cost two
1:28:36
Speaker 1: bases instead of one. I like where you're going there.
1:28:39
Speaker 1: MLBE keeps talking about speeding up the game. So why
1:28:41
Speaker 1: not fix this? What say you keep the cowardice or
1:28:44
Speaker 1: change the rule? Wow? Two bases for intentional walks? You
1:28:49
Speaker 1: know I could see I could buy into that. You know,
1:28:56
Speaker 1: maybe it's something like you get it. You can't you
1:29:02
Speaker 1: can only intentionally walk a player once again, and and
1:29:09
Speaker 1: you know you can so because I think what's first
1:29:12
Speaker 1: of all, it's bad for the fans, right, we want
1:29:14
Speaker 1: to see Otani hit. So let's just you know, I
1:29:16
Speaker 1: remember this with Bonds too, but let's just say it
1:29:17
Speaker 1: with Otani. You know, you know, Tani is like, you know,
1:29:21
Speaker 1: a version of the NBA on the road, right, you know,
1:29:24
Speaker 1: NBA in the regular season and Lakers come to town.
1:29:27
Speaker 1: All right, I want to see Lebron. Oh, Lebron's resting tonight,
1:29:30
Speaker 1: you know, you know, with the with the with the
1:29:32
Speaker 1: with the minute. So it's not very fan friendly. And
1:29:34
Speaker 1: you spend all this money, you think take your kid
1:29:36
Speaker 1: to see Lebron the one time a year that Lebron
1:29:38
Speaker 1: shows up, particularly if you're in the Eastern Conference. Right,
1:29:41
Speaker 1: So nobody wants to go to a game all excited
1:29:44
Speaker 1: to see Otani play for the first time, only to
1:29:46
Speaker 1: see him intentionally walk three times. So I think an
1:29:51
Speaker 1: addendum I would make to your rule is I think
1:29:53
Speaker 1: it's one that you can't intentionally walk any player more
1:29:57
Speaker 1: than once a game. And if you do I want
1:30:00
Speaker 1: to intentionally walk, it's it's it's two. It's two bases,
1:30:07
Speaker 1: I think. I guess I look at it this way.
1:30:11
Speaker 1: Rico and my dog here has a very strong opinion
1:30:14
Speaker 1: about this too. Speaking of intentional walks, she would like
1:30:17
Speaker 1: to be intentionally walked. Right after I finished taping this episode.
1:30:21
Speaker 1: But I think I don't think you will get support
1:30:24
Speaker 1: for just doing all intentional walks two bases. But I
1:30:27
Speaker 1: do think if you make it one per game per player,
1:30:32
Speaker 1: that might be a better way to do things, all right,
1:30:34
Speaker 1: last question, Like I said, I gotta intentionally walk Cali
1:30:40
Speaker 1: just wanted to toss out a new name that scandal
1:30:42
Speaker 1: headlines Okay, here it is, the Abu Dhabi crypto affair,
1:30:47
Speaker 1: all right, the Maga coin con okay, the shake Steak
1:30:52
Speaker 1: scandal kind of sizzling, right if the words sizzle in there, right,
1:30:58
Speaker 1: hope one of these sticks best. Chase from Little Rock, Arkansas.
1:31:02
Speaker 1: He claims it's he keeps saying the five Timers Club, Chase.
1:31:05
Speaker 1: I think we're up to six or seven Timers Club
1:31:07
Speaker 1: on this. So well, there it is. That's a good
1:31:10
Speaker 1: way to end this, end this episode. Let's see what
1:31:13
Speaker 1: you guys come up with. He's trying Abu Dhabi crypto affair,
1:31:17
Speaker 1: the Maga coin con, and the Shakesteak scandal and Chase.
1:31:25
Speaker 1: I would probably say, let's go back to the drawing boarder.
1:31:29
Speaker 1: Let's get some more nominees out there. That's all I'm saying.
1:31:31
Speaker 1: Let's get some Let's get some more nominees out there.
1:31:35
Speaker 1: So with that, hey, listen, I I'm going to be
1:31:40
Speaker 1: a cheerleader for one thing, and that's Team USA. I
1:31:43
Speaker 1: love you know, I give my old, my old, my
1:31:49
Speaker 1: old workplace, a lot of grief on what they've done
1:31:51
Speaker 1: to the new side of things. I'm not gonna walk,
1:31:54
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna relitigate what's happened on that front. I
1:31:59
Speaker 1: just want to give a lot of kudos and credit
1:32:02
Speaker 1: to the coverage of the Olympics by my old employer.
1:32:04
Speaker 1: I think IBC Sports do a terrific job. They have finally,
1:32:07
Speaker 1: I think, and you saw it with the last you
1:32:10
Speaker 1: really saw it in twenty twenty four, with the gold
1:32:14
Speaker 1: Zone and everything they've done. But they have really figured
1:32:17
Speaker 1: out I mean the Olympics and this streaming moment, right like,
1:32:22
Speaker 1: if you talk about a sporting event that was built
1:32:24
Speaker 1: for this moment that we live in where you can
1:32:26
Speaker 1: just go find your sport, find your stream, the gold Zone.
1:32:30
Speaker 1: If you actually want to watch the Olympics for competition,
1:32:34
Speaker 1: you can just watch a stream that does that. You know.
1:32:37
Speaker 1: If you do want the stories and sort of the
1:32:40
Speaker 1: soap opera part of the Olympics that the network always
1:32:42
Speaker 1: gives you, you can do that too. But I just
1:32:46
Speaker 1: will say that I am there's no qualification here, guys.
1:32:51
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I love what's being done. I love the coverage.
1:32:57
Speaker 1: It breaks my heart that Team USA and Team Israel
1:33:02
Speaker 1: gets booed as hard as they are right now in Europe.
1:33:05
Speaker 1: That that hurts, right, I wish I but I also
1:33:08
Speaker 1: understand it. And the only word of warning I'd give
1:33:11
Speaker 1: to my friends at NBC Sports is, you know, I
1:33:14
Speaker 1: get you want to try to make the games about
1:33:17
Speaker 1: the games. There's there's there's avoiding politics, but then they're
1:33:24
Speaker 1: censoring it. Be careful of walking that line. I'm all
1:33:27
Speaker 1: for avoiding it. You want to showcase the games, but
1:33:31
Speaker 1: be careful censoring. I think it's important for the audience
1:33:35
Speaker 1: to know how unpopular an American official is. If there
1:33:40
Speaker 1: is a moment that that happens, all right with that,
1:33:43
Speaker 1: I'll see in forty eight nine,