Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - AI’s “Break Glass” Moment + We Gave Up Freedoms After 9/11… It’s Time To Get Them Back

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - AI’s “Break Glass” Moment + We Gave Up Freedoms After 9/11… It’s Time To Get Them Back · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, you know those pieces in your closet that you
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: find yourself wearing on repeat? Boy, is that me. I
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: wear the same three or four things, right? The sweater
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: that goes with everything, that perfect pair of pants, the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: T-shirt you somehow always reach for first. Those are the
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: pieces that make getting dressed easy, right? And that's what
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Quince does best. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples. Made
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: with premium materials, the styles are timeless, versatile, designed to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: become those dependable pieces you reach for day after day. 100%
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Mongolian cashmere sweaters that start at just $ 60, and it
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't feel like you bought some discounted stuff here. It's
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: like good stuff. gives you the softness and quality you'd
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: expect from a luxury brand without that luxury price tag.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Quince also makes premium pants, fitted tees and polos, breathable activewear,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the quality basics designed to work across your wardrobe and
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: hold up to everyday wear. Everything at Quince is priced 50%
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: to 80% less than similar brands that make similar products.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: They work directly with ethical factories, and cut out the middlemen.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So you're paying for high quality. You're not paying for
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: brand markup. And look, you've heard me sing the praises
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of Quince before because I enjoy wearing Quince even before
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: they paid to sponsor my podcast. But I appreciate that
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: they're a sponsor as well. You want sponsors you believe in.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I believe in Quince. I wear Quince. Look, and it's
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: not just clothing. By the way, Quince brings that same
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: approach to everything they make. They got hotel quality bedding,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: bath to kitchen essentials, and thoughtfully designed furniture. They make
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: well-designed pieces for everyday living, sort of the same philosophy, right?
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: So find your next fall favorite to Quince. Download the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com slash chuck.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Get free shipping on your order, 365-day returns. It's now
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: available in Canada and the UK as well. That's q-u-i-n-c-e
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: dot com slash chuck. Hello there, and welcome to the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Thursday episode of the Chuck Toddcast. I'll just be honest,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I feel overloaded with information, overloaded with a few things
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about. 25th anniversary of 9-11 is
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: this weekend. I have a few things to say about that,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and a few ways that I think we need to
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: be thinking about a few things there. We got this
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: midterm convention. that I know some of you are looking
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: forward to dunk on, but I kind of want to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: give you a little bit of humility there and explain
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: how it could be incredibly effective for Trump. It is
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: still likely to backfire, but at least explaining the rationale
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit more behind it there. And then a
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: disconcerting set of poll numbers out. But speaking of alarmism,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: We have suddenly, you never know when you hit a
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: break glass moment, a hockey stick moment, the aha, the
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: light bulb goes off. But in the last 48 hours,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: it's as if a bunch of people have collectively suddenly
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: heard the warnings that many people in Silicon Valley have
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: been screaming for the rooftops for the last six months.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: We don't have enough guardrails around the development of AI.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That's basically, and you've heard different versions of it. There's
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: a 10% chance AI could destroy humanity. And you're like, huh,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: if there's a 10% chance of that, how come we're
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: not more alarmed about this? Where are the leaders on this?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: And look, We haven't danced around this issue. You know,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: there's always been, I'll be honest, there's always been a
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: part of me that has compartmentalized the doom and gloom
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: of these AI companies, right? Well, you know, they've come
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: up with different rationales for why government needs to leave
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: them alone or why they need to do regulation the
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: way they want to do regulation. Because if we don't,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: China will beat us. But as the dark joke on
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the internet, So it's a race to see which country
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: is gonna destroy humanity first on that front. But the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: viral tweet from the employee of Anthropic who said he
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: resigned and essentially said, hey, all of this concern about
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the future of AI is shared by the entire ecosystem there.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And this is what is a concern. And he shared
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: this concern. And then all of a sudden you've got,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: you know, people that work at Anthropic going, yeah, he's right.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: You know, there is a concern here that as we
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: develop AI, we're going to lose control of it. And,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you know, for what it's worth, this isn't the first
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: time we've heard this. And like I said, part of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: me thought it was a pretty dark and cynical way
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: to market the various chat models. Oh, man. It is
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: so powerful, we can't release it yet. It's almost like
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the Viagra warning, be careful of an erection that lasts
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: more than four hours. That wasn't designed to dissuade you
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: from getting Viagra, right? It was a side effect that
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: clearly was an attempt to market the drug. And so
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: there's been a part of me that has assumed that
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: some of this fear of, we don't know, boy, we
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: lost control of this model. It's so incredible at what
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: it does that it had the whiff of marketing to it.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And so, and that's part of the problem with the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: tech community. You don't know what to believe. You know,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the credibility of the tech industry is about as, it's
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: probably one step below the credibility of media these days.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And of course you can thank the tech industry for
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the distrust in media. and Congress and politicians. But when we,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: you know, look, the fact of the matter is this
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: is an issue, the general issue of concern about tech,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: about AI, about social media, all of this has been
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: coming from the public. None of this has been led
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: by politicians. And none of our leaders in government have
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: done anything remotely responsible when it comes to the country's
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: concerns about what This massive transformation that is taking place
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: in our economy, in the way we interact with each other,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: in the way we're going to consume information, in the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: way we're going to learn information. And the public is begging, right?
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Why did this go viral? The public is begging for
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: somebody to rein in big tech. We already, you know,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: this anger at the data centers, this concern about what
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: AI is going to do with us. It's all because
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: these tech guys screwed up a generation of us. With
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the social media disaster, right? Social media has been a
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: terrible thing for society. Hard stop. There are certainly examples
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: of where social media has been a positive individually for
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: people's lives. And there's certainly been attempts to connect. But
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the general impact on us has been more negative than positive, right?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: We trust each other less, not more, thanks to big tech.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: We have growing armies of people who are sort of
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: finding each other to go after other parts of society,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: thanks to big tech. And so maybe that the fact
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that this went viral, that more politicians are gonna realize
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: we need to get our arms around this ASAP and
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: you need to show some leadership, right? you know, if
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: we had real presidential leadership, and I know we don't,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the problem, right? We have literally
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the worst president we could have at a moment when
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: we need somebody who's got a little bit of empathy
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and a little bit of intelligence, right? We've got somebody
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: with zero intelligence and zero empathy leading at a moment
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: when the country is desperate for both, right? It is
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: obvious we need a better sort of coordinated game plan
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: on how to develop AI, how to deal with guardrails, right?
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: A functioning government would have essentially a president that could
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: convene a bipartisan team of governors, public sector, private sector.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We would come together and actually think about all of
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the various ways that we're concerned about, you know, if
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: we've got this 10% chance we could lose control of AI, well,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: let's do something about it, right? You know, when we
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: had this fear of nuclear weapons, we decided, well, we
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: better build some sort of diplomatic connection with the other
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: superpower who's got nuclear weapons since we both now have
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: enough destroy the planet. Well, I guess that's what AI
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: is becoming, that if you let it go on its own,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it could be enough to essentially consume us or consume
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: humanity in some sort. Some of this feels very science fiction-y,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: so it's hard to wrap our arms around. This is
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: why we need some leadership that knows how to lead
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: with both intelligence and empathy, and we don't have it.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: You know, there should be emergency hearings on Capitol Hill
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: right at this moment. I want to see these people
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: in front of Congress, under oath, on a live stream,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: whether it's regular television, you know, legacy television, online. But
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: we need to hear from these people individually. Right. This
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: is one of those where we need to convene the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: country and we need to all understand this. And nobody
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: seems to want to meet this moment. And I think
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: part of it, frankly, is that our elected officials have
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: been bought off. Right. And either they've been bought off
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: or they fear the power of the money dropped on
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: them if they at all show any hesitation. And yet,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: you know, this is what's so frustrating about these tech
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: companies on one hand. They're the ones that are telling
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: us we should be very nervous and very concerned. On
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the other hand, they do that with like their right brain.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And with their left brain, they're writing these giant checks
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: to various politicians and the Trump administration and other people
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: trying to griff off of tech to basically get a
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: promise that they can, I don't wanna say have no regulation,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: but they basically get to design the regulation themselves, right?
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: They want to have regulatory capture is the phrase that's used.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: But we need, I mean, look, the fact is we
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: may need these data centers. Well, if you have some
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: presidential leadership, you bring everybody at the table and say, okay,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: we've got to find, here's the best ways we're going
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: to deal with this. And just the way you would
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: have military installations, you know, all around the country, well,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: everybody would share some form of this if indeed we
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: decide as a society that And we decide as a
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: government that we need these data centers and we're not
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: going to concentrate it in one area. We're going to
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: do it various ways, just like we did with military bases, right?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Just like what we did with when we designed the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: interstate highway system. And that's the kind of leadership that's missing.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: And that's just like, this is, you know, I'm calling
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: for something that on one hand is incredibly logical and obvious.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And on the other hand, with this administration and this president,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: it's impossible to do, right? He just does. I do
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: think a President Vance actually would be able to, would
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: actually have a, might behave a bit more normally here
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: and might at least accept the premise that, hey, you're
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: going to have to convene stakeholders from a variety of
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: society in order to get us on the same page here.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: On this front, Trump doesn't think that way. And he's
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: surrounded by people who are allowing him to essentially go
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: down this fantasy path that he goes down. But, you know,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: if this is a moment. And we know I know individually,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I talk to these elected officials individually, they know they
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: know that the public is demanding something. None of them
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: know exactly what to do. Look, step one is let's
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: get these people in front of a fricking camera, in public,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: under oath for all of us to hear. Explain to me,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: an American, how the development of AI could destroy humanity.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Tell us how it works, right? Explain it out. And
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: we have this weird, it's like it's, and this is
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the part that I'm both nervous that maybe they're right
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: and I'm a part of me that feels as if
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: that it's this black box, right? Just trust us. It's bad. Okay.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Why should I trust anything that comes out of this industry, right?
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: This industry has had one mindset, increased shareholder value. That's it.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: That's the only mindset left in this community. I think
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that the original generation of tech entrepreneurs, wanted to make
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: money and improve society. Now it just feels like whatever
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: it takes to increase valuation, whatever it takes to hurry
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: up and get their IPOs, right? This is what, on
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: one hand, an anthropic and open AI, are very public
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: about the dangers and the concerns they may have as
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: we develop AI. And at the same time, what are
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: they doing? They're prepping for one of the largest IPOs
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: in history because all of them can't wait to get
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily wealthy. Maybe we ought to put a pause on
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: worrying about the IPO and let's, if this is truly,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: if we're literally at the precipice where if we advance
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: too much further, it's out of our control. then shouldn't
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: we be pausing almost anything that we're working on right
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: now and just focusing on this problem? Well, the answer
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: is obvious. Do we have a politics that can deal
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: with this? Do we have the leaders that know how
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: to convene both intelligently and empathetically? And that's what's missing here.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I think the reason why there's a little bit of
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: extra panic here is because we're dealing with AI without
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: a net, right? It used to be that government was
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a net. You may not have loved the decisions government
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: would make, but at the end of the day, you thought, well,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: they still have the resources to prevent the most catastrophic things,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: or they still have the resources to rescue us from
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the most catastrophic events, right? But when you have a
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: government that you can't rely on for anything, You can't
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: trust any of the information that comes out of it.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: How do we hope that they can lead us into
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: a place that would make us feel more comfortable and
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: more reassured that as this technology advances, it isn't going
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: to destroy humanity as we go, right? Now, I don't
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: know whether these folks are being super alarmist or they're
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: onto something. But, you know, at some point, you know,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: they've yelled the sky is falling a lot. Let, you know,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the worst thing to do would be to ignore the warning, right?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: The infamous, I'm gonna, I have a lot to say
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: about the anniversary of 9-11, right? You know, the famous
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: intelligence briefing, you know, bin Laden determined to, you know,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to strike America on its soil, you know, a month before. And,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: you know, it is, So the mistake of 9-11 was
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: failure of imagination. The mistake of all of us when
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: it came to our politics and the entry of Donald
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Trump into mainstream politics was failure of imagination. Dealing with
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has been failure of imagination. Well, dealing with
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the tech community has been failure of imagination. So we
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: need to take this threat seriously and the public's begging
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: for it. The politicians have never been further behind on
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: an issue like they are on tech, right? They think
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: it's about data centers. It's not about data centers. It's
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: about the fact that somehow tech has more control of
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: our lives than we do. We don't feel like we
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: have control of our own lives. It feels like tech
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: tells us what to read. Tech tells us what our
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: worldview is, whether we ask for it or not, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the whole algorithm business. And that's what this is. This
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: is almost like a primal scream, the fact that this
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: thing went viral. And so, look, right now, politicians are.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: because we're two months from an election, they see the polls,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: they see the Angar data center. So they're sort of
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: responding reflexively like you would if you were checking your
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: reflexes and they hit your knee and you just kick
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the doctor, right? You know, data center's bad. Okay, data
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: center's bad. You know, I'm the governor of Texas. I'll
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: now say data centers were bad. Nevermind all the money
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I just raised from the tech community that gave them
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the green light to use this land. And maybe it
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: will be a good thing in the long run. But
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: he's running for cover because he read a poll. But
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the bigger issue is what the public's really screaming about
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: is somehow a private industry has more influence over our
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: lives and apparently over our future. And the government is
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a passive actor in all of this. At the end
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: of the day, the whole point of government is to
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: sort of be this collective That helps us do things
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: we can't individually do. And if government doesn't work, anarchy
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: will ensue. It sounds a little bit extreme in putting
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: it in those terms, but that's a huge test here.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: It's just a giant test. This episode of the Chuck
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Todd cast is brought to you by Chapter. Now, almost
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: everything you hear about Medicare is somebody quietly trying to
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: steer you somewhere. And you're skeptical of that, as you
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: should be. I get it. I mean, there's a federal
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: lawsuit going on right now over exactly this. Companies that
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing people toward whatever
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: would pay them the most as some sort of broker.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: So if your default is to distrust everyone in this space, honestly,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I get it. I'm a bit distrustful these days myself.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: That's the whole reason I want to tell you about Chapter.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: They're independent Medicare advisors whose entire medical model is that
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: their advisors are not paid to push any one plan.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: They're just trying to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: with it, but it's across the board is what they're
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: trying to do. At the end of the day, they're
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: advocating for you. They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: an actual person who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: your needs, and then compares them to every single plan
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: available to find the best one that will work for
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: you and hopefully save you a couple of dollars too.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And here's the part that sets chapter apart. They don't
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: disappear once you've been in They will keep advocating for you.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: They're kind of like almost like a concierge service. You're
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: just there. I need help. You're like customer service. You know,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the plan, you know, help me navigate this again. So
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: you ever get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: help you fight it. They want to stay an advocate
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: for you even after you've done this. So look, I
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: get it. I think there's all sorts of space. You
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: see a lot of people are throwing themselves in this
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: healthcare space. What I like about these chapter folks, I've
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: spent time with them. This is a very transparent organization.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: It is Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: be very confusing. The whole point of this is to
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: make this easier and less confusing. Okay, so look, take
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the skepticism you already have in all of this, point
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: There's no pressure. And then call chapter today at 980-734-4255.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: So keep that backdrop in mind, right? Here we are,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: massive concern and distrust about what's happening in AI, right? Now,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: imagine trying to run a midterm election when a majority
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of the country either believes the election won't be conducted
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: fairly or isn't sure that it will be. Because that's
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: where we are. And in fact, it's all, it's this,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: we're in an era of distrust and we're in a
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: moment of distrust where it couldn't be the worst possible
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: time to have this. So a new poll finds that
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: only 45% of Americans believe the 2026 midterms are going
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to be conducted fairly. 45%. And this isn't simply one
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: side preparing to scream fraud if it loses or whatever.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: This is not one-sided. Only 48% of Democrats say they
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: think the election will be conducted fairly. And only 48%
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of Republicans say the same thing. Among independents, just 37%.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: So think about that. We have managed to achieve bipartisan
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: consensus on something in American politics. Well, frankly, we're seeing
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the one place we have consensus is on the doomer
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: part of our existence, right? We don't trust big tech
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: with the development of AI for a variety of reasons,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: but there's bipartisan consensus on that. And we don't trust
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: either party to conduct free and fair elections anymore. Oh, boy.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: it's a republic if we could keep it, right? So
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: here we are. I've been hoping we could get some
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: bipartisan consensus on repairs that we need. I guess a
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: good way to start is bipartisan consensus on what's wrong.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: But then again, should we be surprised that the public
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: thinks this is going to be unfair, right? We're less
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: than eight weeks from election day. And parts of the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: election itself are still being litigated, right? If you listen
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to Wednesday's podcast, you know all about the Missouri story.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So we still have fights over congressional maps. Less than
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: 60 days away, people in Missouri don't even know which
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: congressional district they're going to be voting in. We have
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: fights over mail voting, right? The Trump administration is still
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: hoping that somehow they can get your mailman to decide
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: whether you get a ballot or not. Just an absurd
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: premise on its face that we're involving the Postal Service,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: which by the way, at its founding, at its founding, right?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: We use the Postal Service as a way to distribute
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: cheap newspapers, right? We were giving a discount to newspapers, right?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: We didn't create a political test for it. We basically
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: just said, hey, you know, you're a newspaper, no matter your,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: you know, we just wanted, we wanted that. And now
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is so un-American, he wants to weaponize the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Postal Service. The one thing that at its creation, we said, no, no, no, no,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: we're not going to do that. We're having fights over,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you know, purging of voting records and things like this.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: And of course, we have a president who has spent
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the better part of six years convincing his supporters, that
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: every election he's lost was by definition suspicious. It actually
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: began with the Iowa caucuses in 2016 that he still
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't accept. I mean, Ted Cruz, it's funny to him,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: funny to me to see Ted Cruz still be a
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: surrogate for Donald Trump, all the different ways that Donald
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Trump character assassinated Ted Cruz. And it was like, thank you, sir.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: May I have another? But I digress because it all
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: goes back. I mean, You know, if anybody should understand
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump is a serial liar, it's the winner
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz. But I digress. Meanwhile,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: there's something else I want a few other things I
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: want to talk about. Because I told you, imagine holding
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a midterm that half the country doesn't believe is going
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to be free and fair. Well, imagine trying to convince
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: your own voters to come out for a midterm election
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: while the price of oil is hitting record highs, which
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: means the price of gasoline is only going to go higher.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: And if you're trying to run a campaign around affordability,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Republican Party's problem and Donald Trump's problem, right?
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: This has been a strange– there's been this strange vacillation
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: inside Trump world over the economy and you're seeing it
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: play out at this midterm convention. First, remember he said there–
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: what affordability a problem? This is a made-up word. Then,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: all right, there's an affordability problem, but it's temporary. It's this.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's an affordability problem, but it's all Joe Biden's fault, right?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: You're hearing different versions of this as we speak, right? Obviously,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: at some point, the voters are going to decide that
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: you own the presidency. And I think we're well past
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the point where Donald Trump can plausibly argue that every
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: bad economic development belongs to the guy who had the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: job before him. Right. The major price pressures that Americans
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: are feeling right now are all directly connected to choices
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump made. The tariffs being the most obvious, the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: immigration crackdown, which tightens the labor supply and raises labor costs.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: That's been something. And of course, his war of choice
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: with Iran. Right. All of those were Trump specific policies.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Hard stop. Somebody wants to show me a current Biden
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: policy that is that is somehow in effect that is
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: currently creating these price pressures. Show it to me. I'd
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: like to see the evidence. You know, I know I
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: know the one thing Trump likes to say as well,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: because of Biden, Russia invaded Ukraine and that had impacted
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: our economy. OK, as if the biggest myth going is
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: this idea that Putin wasn't going to invade. Somehow wouldn't
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: have invaded Ukraine had Trump been president. Give me a
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: frickin break. Right. This the idea that Donald Trump was
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: going to stand in the way of this decades long
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: obsession that Putin has had about restoring Ukraine. A form
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union is myopic at best. But still,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I get why Trump would like to sell the idea
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: that he inherited some economic catastrophe and he's now heroically
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: digging us out of it. Obviously, that's not what happened.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: He has literally taken a recovery and said, screw it,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make it harder. But I also understand
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: why Trump's obsessed with trying to do it this way,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: because Barack Obama got away with it. Now, Barack Obama
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: told a version of that story very successfully. Why? Because
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: there was an economic crisis, right? For years, Obama could
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: point backward to George W. Bush and say, I inherited
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: a mess. And politically, it mostly worked. It's why he
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: won reelection. But there's a reason it worked. It's called facts, right? Right.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: There actually was a financial crash. The economy literally crashed.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: It was an emergency, literally 60 days. We delayed the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: start of a presidential debate between McCain and Obama so
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the two of them could meet with the president during
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: this crisis. By the way, if AI is going to
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: destroy humanity, how come we're not having a moment like
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: that right now, right? We had a financial crisis that
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: we thought was going to bring down the economy. And
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush said, I better bring the two presidential
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: nominees in here right now because this is a mess
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: they have to deal with, right? It's called responsible leadership,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: of which we have none at the moment. But the
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: point is, the public knew pretty clearly that the economy
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: crashed before Obama took office, right? We all watched it happen.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: We all watched this stuff, the stock market clash. So
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the economy Obama inherited was objectively in crisis. So whatever
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: you thought about Obama's remedies, you could not seriously argue
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: that he had caused the financial crisis before he became president.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty important distinction because the economy Donald Trump
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: inherited in 2025 was not an economy in free fall.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Inflation had come substantially down from its peak. The country
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: had largely worked its way through economic distortions created by COVID.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: The border was getting more secure because finally there was
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: a chief of staff in the White House that let
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Ali Mayorkas do his job at DHS. And now Trump
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: has implemented a series of policies that has put upward
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: pressure on prices. Now, it doesn't mean every single price
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: increase is Donald Trump's fault. You know, I mean, we
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: all know this. Presidents don't have a little dial in
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the office that says eggs, gas over here, turn it up,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: turn it down. But the policy matters. And when you
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: deliberately raise the price of imported goods through tariffs, restrict
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the supply of labor, and then get yourself involved in
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: a war that disrupts energy markets, you don't get to
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: act shocked when things cost more. Now, there is one
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: area where Trump gets to claim the good news that
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: began before he took office, and that's crime. Violent crime
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: continues to fall. And I think we're now seeing that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the COVID explanation for the spike in crime was the
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: likely explanation for the spike in crime, right? We had
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: this extraordinary social disruption. People were shut in, schools closed,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: communities disrupted, crime spiked, society reopened, life normalized, finally crime
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: started falling again. Not in one city, not because one
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: mayor suddenly discovered the secret formula. It's remarkably widespread, which
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: is only more proof that this was all connected to COVID.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: And that's okay. Trump gets to preside over that decline.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: That has happened. Many a president has gotten credit for
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: policy that was implemented from the previous president that suddenly
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: started to work. So presidents get credit for things they
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: didn't entirely cause all the time. And they also get
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: blamed for things they didn't entirely cause. Welcome to politics.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: But here's where I think the midterm campaign is getting interesting.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: While there is a temptation among Trump opponents to to
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: look at the economy, look at the price of gas,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: look at the tariffs, look at the war and say, well,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: this thing is over. I'll say, I do want to say,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: let's be careful out there. We live in an extraordinarily
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: fragmented information environment. There are probably people listening to this
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: podcast who barely know there is a Republican political convention
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: happening right now because your information ecosystem may simply not
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: feed it to you because maybe you're just like, I
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: don't want anything Trump. I don't want anything MAGA, right?
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: But if your algorithm is filled with Trump content, mega influencers,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: meme coins, owning the libs, all the rest of it,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: you know exactly what's happening. And you're getting a very
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: different presentation of the state of the country. And that
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: does matter. Because whatever else you think about Donald Trump's
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: political operation, they do know how to communicate to their
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: own voters. They're not persuasive at all. That they're no
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: good at. Both parties are really good at repelling independence
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to the other party. Meaning once when they, you know,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: independence are the ones that are sort of swinging this
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: thing back and forth. And it's more out of disgust, right?
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: And they sort of go back and forth. But the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: one thing about this Trump operation is they know where
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: their voters are. They know which media those voters consume.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: They know what makes those voters angry. And they also
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: know what makes them laugh. And they've been better at
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: this than their opponents. So if somebody else had figured
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: out how to communicate with these voters more effectively, perhaps
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump wouldn't have the political movement he has. So
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I would do think everybody that folks on the left
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: need to show a little humility before declaring that this
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: midterm convention is a total disaster. Look, I'm 75% with it.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's a mistake. I think nationalizing this election
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: only makes it harder for Republicans that went over independent voters.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: All that's true. But if this is only about one thing,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: turning out the MAGA base, this is where I think
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: people ought to just not assume this doesn't work. It
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: may not work, but we'll see. Because this convention is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: not intended for swing voters. This is all about motivation.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: This is all about trying to get the people inside
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the tribe to care enough about this election to show
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: up and vote. And it really does. You know, one
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: of the you know, one of the reminders, one of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the one of the things that I'm reminded of by
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: seeing in some ways, this midterm is still competitive. And
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: if this were truly if all voters truly voted via pocketbook,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: nothing would seem competitive at the moment. Right. This would
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: be a route. Now, there are some people that vote pocketbook.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I think there's there's enough that they help swing elections.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: But huge numbers of Americans don't vote their pocketbook. Politics
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: is more identity than ever before. It's culture and community.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It's entertainment. It's resentment. It's victimhood. It's belonging. And if
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: you're a strong partisan and you're unhappy with your party,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: you don't necessarily vote for the other party. Sometimes you
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: simply don't vote. And that's what MAGA and the Republicans
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: are nervous about. And that's why you're seeing Republicans who
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: you think, what the hell are you doing staying with MAGA?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Standing with MAGA at this moment, Mike Rogers. or at
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: this moment, John Husted, well, it's because they can't win
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: without the base, right? And the question isn't necessarily whether
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: a MAGA voter paying more for gasoline suddenly becomes a Democrat.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: That ain't gonna happen. The question is whether that voter
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: decides the whole thing isn't worth showing up for, that
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: they had a little bit of faith. Maybe this guy,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Trump guy is different. Maybe he can manage the economy.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, this guy's an idiot. I'm out
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: of politics. Because remember, a big chunk of Trump's mega
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: supporters were people that had kind of given up on
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: politics and then saw him as sort of, all right,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: let me try this crazy outsider. So when they realize
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: what a total and complete failure this guy has been,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I fear these voters are just going to be out.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: They're just going to check out again and not get involved.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: That's not healthy, by the way. Right. Just because, you know,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: if you may be thinking, well, that'll that'll benefit my
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: guys or that'll be my team. It's bad. It's unhealthy
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: if a chunk of voters are totally going to give
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: up on the system. And that's obviously the whole point
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: of this convention. And Trump has another instinct whenever he
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: gets into political trouble as well. Right. Which is to
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: throw money at a problem. And it's always somebody else's money.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: It's obviously never his. We've seen this repeatedly. Right. He's
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: always in this way. This is why real conservatives get
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: so frustrated. They're like Donald Trump is no conservative and
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: he's never been a conservative. He's just a big government. Populist. Right.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Who has hijacked the Republican Party and convinced a lot
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: of a lot of people that somehow this is a
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: that winning because he won, it makes him conservative. Right. But.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: One thing Trump is pretty good at as a populist
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: is realizing he needs a gimmick. No tax on tips
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: was a good example, right? Trump was desperate for a
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: new economic idea. He didn't really have one for his
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: 24 campaign. And he just sort of stumbled upon it.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Who knows if somebody whispered into his ear that he
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: tells a story that it was a server that said
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: this to him. Maybe. Can you believe anything? Remember, according
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: to Donald Trump, he was pulling people out of the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: 9-11 rubble or people were pulling him out of the rubble.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: I could tell you what's true. He wasn't anywhere near
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: that part of Manhattan when it happened. And in fact,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: there's plenty of videotape and evidence to prove that. But
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: the point is, is this no tax on tips, right? Whatever,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: however you stumbled upon it, it caught fire. In fact, remember,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Democrats didn't quite know what to do with it. And
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: eventually many of them essentially embraced the concept. Now I
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: can be the... the sourpuss here and say, I'd prefer
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: a tax code that treated income more consistently, whether it
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: comes from wages, tips, capital gains, dividends, interest, whatever else.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: But I'll save that for another rant. I mean, another podcast.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: What interests me is the newest idea being floated in
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Trump world. Paying mothers to stay home and have children.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Welfare for stay-at-home moms. The leader of the Republican Party
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: is advocating for welfare. Just, you know, imagine going back
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: in time and telling Newt Gingrich in 1996 that his
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: North Star, the leader of his party, will eventually be
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: advocating for more welfare. Right? I think Newt would say,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: you know, you better stop smoking whatever you're smoking. But
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: that's what's happening. Right. Obviously, the right that are advocating,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: those on the right that are advocating for this are desperate.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Don't call it welfare. It's not welfare. No, it's a
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: family benefit. It's natalist incentive, whatever the hell you want
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: to call it. The government is paying you to engage
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: in a particular lifestyle because the government wants more people
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: to choose that lifestyle. What I find fascinating about this
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: idea is what it tells you about what has happened
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: to what is left of the conservative movement. Donald Trump
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: has essentially eviscerated the limited government wing of the conservative movement.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: They exist, but they can't be part of the Republican
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: coalition anymore. And those that claim they still are, are
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: lying to themselves because they're apparently just, you know, either
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: that caught up in their own cult or just refuse
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: to see reality. Right? I mean, if you genuinely believe
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: that government should be smaller, less intrusive, less interested in
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: engineering how citizens live their lives, there is not much
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: about the modern Republican party that Donald Trump leads that
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: reflects that philosophy. God bless George Will. He saw it
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a lot sooner than most people, which is why he
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: left the party completely and is registered as an independent.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Because this is not a party that cares about limited
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: government anymore. In many ways, it's the exact opposite. This
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: is a big government Republican party. It is increasingly comfortable
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: wanting to use the power of government to encourage and
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: sometimes coerce a particular social behavior. And that's what makes
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: this proposal, I mean, in some ways, so... So whiplashy
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: to me. This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: brought to you by Soul. So if you love that
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: end of the day unwind but hate the hangover, Soul's
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Out of Office is for you. These sparkling THC drinks
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and gummies give you the same relaxed social feeling without
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the alcohol, without the calories, and without the crash. Soul
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious hemp-derived THC and
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Their best-selling out-of-office gummies were designed to provide a mild,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: relaxing buzz, boost your mood, and enhance creativity and relaxation.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: fit your vibe. So also has a variety of products
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: specifically designed to help you get a better night's rest,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: including their top-selling Sleepy Gummies, a fan favorite for deep,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: restless sleep. Look, I have made no secret. I am
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: a believer in this stuff, in cannabis and hemp-derived. I
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: do not partake in alcohol for the most part. I
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: think this stuff is a lot safer than alcohol, a
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: lot less addictive than alcohol. And yes, I have to say,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I love these drinks. It is the glass of wine.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: And you know, after work, that's what this is. So
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: no hangover and no excess calories like this. I'm a
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: big fan. So bring on the good vibes and treat
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: yourself to soul today. Right now, soul is offering my
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: audience 30% off your entire order. Go to get soul.com
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: and use the word Todd cast. That's get soul.com promo
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: code Todd cast for 30% off. And yes, I too
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: am a customer. Now I look at it this way.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: What problem, you know, this is, this is sometimes, you know,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: what problem are you trying to solve? Right? If the
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: problem is the birth rate. Okay. Okay. That is a
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: real issue. If the problem is an aging population, okay,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: that's a real issue. If the problem is the long-term
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: solvency of programs like social security, then yes, demographics matter
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: enormously if you wanna continue to have this flywheel work,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: if you will, okay? But if you need more young
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: people and more workers, why would your solution simultaneously be
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: to cut immigration and pay existing workers to leave the workforce?
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Those things are working against each other. If America needs
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: more Americans, there are multiple ways to get there. Immigration
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: is one. And it's one that has powered this country
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: to have the greatest economy it has had for as
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: long as it's had. We're an economic superpower because of
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: our immigration policies. I know people don't like it. And
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: I know we're a nation of immigrants. I say this
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: these days. We're a nation of immigrants reluctantly. Right. We've
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: never wanted immigrants. And yet we've constantly benefited from immigrants. Right.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: It's this weird we say we're once we've been here
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: a generation or two, we're proud to be here. And
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: when we don't want anybody else to be here. Right.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Like it's this weird cycle we get into a little bit. So,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: like I said, if we need more Americans, immigration is
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: one making it easier for people who want children to
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: afford children as another. Keeping people who want to work
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: attached to the workforce is yet another. We should probably
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: be doing some version of all of the above. Instead,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: we keep turning family policy into a culture war argument.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: And this is where I think Democrats made one of
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: their biggest strategic mistakes of the last several years. When
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the temporary expanded child care tax credit expired, they made
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a little bit of hay out of it, but then
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: they sort of just let it go. This should have
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: been the defining fight of the party. And that's it.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: They should have fought for this like they fought for Obamacare.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: They should have fought for this like FDR fought for
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Social Security. If you genuinely want to encourage people to
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: have families, help them with the cost of having a family.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Child care is expensive. Housing is expensive. Health care is expensive. Everything.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: associated with raising a healthy child is expensive. Meet people
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: where they are. Don't try to construct some fantasy about
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: returning America to a world where everybody lives in some
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: multi-generational household. Grandma is upstairs, the oldest kids watch the
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: youngest kid. One parent is always home. We don't live
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: in an agrarian economy anymore. This isn't how most Americans live.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Good policy in this country starts where you actually, where
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: you help the country that exists, not the country you
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: wish existed. And when government starts designing policy to change
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the way people live, rather than helping people live the
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: lives they choose, guess what? People tend to resent it,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: which is why this is, there's such extraordinary irony here. Right.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: For the last decade, the populist right has accused liberals
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: of trying to reengineer American society. And now here they
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: are proposing to use your tax dollars and my tax
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: dollars to reengineer American society. Maybe a different cultural destination.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: But it's it's the same impulse they are accusing the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: left of. And this is actually a useful bridge to
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: something much larger that has been on my mind this week.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Friday marks the 25th anniversary since the September 11 attacks.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I'm 54 years old, so you can do the math, right?
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: This was a very searing experience for me. I was
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: running a newsroom. I was running the hotline. It is,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: you know, to this day, it was my first year
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: as editor-in-chief. And You know, our offices were across the
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: street from the Saudi embassy. I will always and I
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: think I've shared it before. I will always I I
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: have this vision. I don't know if my friend is
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: still listening these days anymore, but my old colleague, Court Ruddy,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I'll never forget watching him staring at the window looking
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: for the smoke at the Pentagon. Right. And I look,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: we I thought the best thing for everybody to do
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: was two things. Call your loved ones to let them
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: know you're OK. And let's continue to produce a product
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: because what else are we going to do? And let's
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: help people with all the information we were gathering about
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: everything we had heard and try to put it all
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: in one place. So it is, I say this because
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, going through it as an adult,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I think allows for the perspective I'm about to share.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And before I get to the larger argument I want
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: to make about 9-11, I want to talk about one
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: other thing that has really bothered me as we've gotten
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: to the anticipation of some of the ceremonies on 9-11 itself,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: both in New York and in Washington. This blatant Islamophobia
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: surrounding the mayor of New York City, Zohan Mamdani. Look,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: I've criticized Mamdani. I think when he did his address
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: to the city and Bibi Netanyahu, it was a little
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: bit too much theater and a little bit like, oh,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: what are you up to there, right? You're Did you
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: run to make a better city or did you run
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: looking for a platform? But the point is, you don't
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: have to agree with Mamdani. You don't have to like
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: his politics and you don't have to pretend some of
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: the things he says aren't provocative. And you can challenge
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: him and criticize him because we live in a free country, folks.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: And you can try to form organizations and run against him.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: You can try to defeat everything he wants to do.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: It's called democracy. But the voters of New York City
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: elected him mayor. And he represents the voters of New
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: York City. And when elected officials go out of their
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: way to snub him because of who he is or
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: imply that there is something inherently suspect about a Muslim
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: American participating in a 9-11 commemoration, what exactly are we
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: even doing here? You're not simply insulting Mamdani when you
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: do this. You're insulting the voters who elected him. If
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: you believe it was wrong, And I do. When Hillary
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Clinton dismissed Trump's supporters as a basket full of deplorables,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: then it is wrong to dismiss Mamdani and his supporters
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: as somehow less American simply because they chose to elect
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: a Muslim mayor that you don't like. I find it
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: outrageous that you have these clowns like Laura Loomer who
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: are somehow warning J.D. Vance, you better not shake his hand.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: I have to tell you, any politician that snubs anybody
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: like that, Look, I think if you don't agree with
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, but he's the elected president, sit down with
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: him and work with him because the country asked you to,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: they voted for him. Respect the voter, fight the politician.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: It's called pluralism. And you know, I'm on my hobby
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: horse on that. Pluralism doesn't mean I agree with you.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: It means I accept that you belong here too, even
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: if I disagree with everything you believe vehemently. And if
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: you want to win somebody over, open your hand. Don't
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: close your fist. You know, one reason Mamdani has a 70%
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: job approval rating and has been politically successful for the
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: most part is that he actually understands this better than
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: many of his opponents. He opens his hand. You may
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: not agree with his rationale, but he opens his hand.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: And his opponents too often begin with the fist. And
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: when they do that, they lose. And on this 25th
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: anniversary of 9-11, I find myself on this issue of
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: two minds. On one hand, I look at Muslim American
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: participation in American life today compared with 2001. And it's
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: actually a good story. Not a great story, but it's
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: a good story. Meaning we do have more Muslim members
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: of Congress. Voters are more open to that. Not everywhere,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: but in more places. There are Muslim mayors. There are
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Muslim Americans serving throughout government, business, medicine, law, academia, journalism,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: the military. It's everywhere. Muslim American life is actually far
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: more integrated into the American mainstream than it was 25
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: years ago. So that is real progress. And yet Islamophobia
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: clearly is still here. By the way, as we know,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: as I know all too well, so is anti-Semitism. And
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: as many of my friends of color know, so is racism.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: And that is the frustrating part about progress. We can
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: take two steps forward and one step backward at the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: same time. And I'm sorry that some Americans apparently believe
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: Islamophobia is somehow an expression of patriotism. And somehow on
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: the anniversary of 9-11, being suspicious of Muslim Americans demonstrates
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that you remember the people who were killed. No, no, no.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: And if that were if that really is your standard,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: then I assume you're equally outraged by the American government's
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and this president's relationship with Saudi Arabia. I assume you're
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: equally outraged by the deal Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Remember,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: the Taliban is who protected Osama bin Laden. I assume
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: you're equally outraged by the deal he cut handing Afghanistan
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: back to the Taliban. Yes, Joe Biden executed the disastrous withdrawal.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: He owns the execution of the withdrawal. But never forget
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: the bad deal Donald Trump negotiated. That handed Afghanistan and
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: its backwards policies and all of the security advancements that
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: we'd made there back to the Taliban. The point is,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: you don't get to selectively decide which relationships offend your
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: memory of September 11 based on the party identification of
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the person responsible. And all of this brings me to
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: the bargain, to one other bargain about 9-11. Because I've
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: been thinking about this bargain a lot, and it actually
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: dovetails right back to the top with my opening rant
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: about the development of AI. 25 years after 9-11, apparently
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: we have finally figured out how to make an airport
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: safe enough that you can go meet somebody at the
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: gate again, sort of. On the 25th anniversary, TSA has
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: launched a program called Gateside by TSA PreCheck. So at
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: a small number of airports, people who aren't flying can
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: apply ahead of time for permission to go through security
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: without a boarding pass. If you're old enough to remember
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: flying before September 11th, and I am, this was once
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: completely unremarkable, okay? You walk somebody to the plane, you
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: met them at the gate. It was kind of a
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. You hugged and embraced your loved ones,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: your mom, your dad, your kids, whatever. It was pretty cool.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: And by the way, you used to do it all
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: without registering your identity with the federal government. But there
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: is something wonderfully revealing about the way we're getting this
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: particular freedom back. You have to already be inside the
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: trusted traveler system. You have to enroll. You provide identifying information.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: You go through vetting. You pay for the privilege. So
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: 25 years after September 11th, you can now finally, once again,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: walk to an airport gate without having being a ticketed passenger.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: But of course, you've had to register yourself with the
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: security state. I guess that's progress, sort of. Look, it's
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a tiny thing, but it's a terrific metaphor. Because the
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: more I think about this anniversary, the more I started
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: to think about this specific issue, right? The airport gate.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty good metaphor for what happened to this
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: country after September 11th. Because we decided to give up
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: a lot. Some of it, we needed to give up.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: And it absolutely made us safer. Some changes were embarrassingly
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: overdue in the intelligence community. And some things we did realize,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: that's too much, we should give some of it back.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: But there's always been this fundamental problem with government powers
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: created during an emergency, right? I've always felt the creation
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: of DHS was a gigantic mistake because it was created
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: during an emergency. Because it is much easier to give
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: government a new power than it is to convince government
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: to give that power back after the emergency passes, right?
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: It's taken us 25 years to just figure out how
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: to go meet a loved one at the gate at
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: the airport. Isn't that kind of absurd? Now, 25 years, though,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: also feels like a pretty reasonable time to ask what
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: we still need and what we shouldn't be doing anymore. Now, look,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to say this casually. I remember how
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Washington felt after 9-11. I remember wondering whether Washington and
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: New York were now going to become cities like Tel
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Aviv and Beirut, where you simply had to learn to
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: live with your head on a swivel, where terrorism became
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: part of everyday life. And look, I'll be honest, since then,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: I've had my own version of a go back. You know,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: I've always got a plan. If you live in Washington
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: or New York and you live through 9-11, I know
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not alone with like thinking about my exit strategy.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: And by the way, there's a very strong argument against
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: everything I've been saying about us giving up too much.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: We haven't suffered another foreign terrorist attack on anything remotely
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: approaching the scale of 9-11. And that does matter. So
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: it means that many of the things we did worked, right?
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Hardening the cockpit doors, changing airport security, having our intelligence
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: agencies get better at sharing information. Look, the counterintelligence that
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: we do at the FBI now versus what was done
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: pre 9-11 is like night and day. We've disrupted all
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: sorts of plots, right? We've had thousands of people who've
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: just spent their entire working professional careers doing very invisible work.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: of making sure that another 9-11 never happens. And so far,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: another 9-11 hasn't happened. And that matters. So I don't
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: think it's intellectually honest to look back at everything we
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: did after September 11th and say it was unnecessary simply
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: because the thing we feared most did not happen again.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Maybe it didn't happen again in part because of what
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: we did. That has to be part of the accounting.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: But here's the other part. 25 years is enough time.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: to distinguish between an emergency measure and a permanent feature
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: of American government. And I know we've not done enough
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: of this. You know, one of the great lessons of
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: September 11th was that our government had information and didn't
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: know how to connect it. Okay, so the 9-11 Commission
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: came back again and again to this problem. Different agencies
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: had different pieces of the plot, right? But they couldn't,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: we didn't have a process that helped connect the dots. So,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: We had misaligned incentives. The culture was need to know
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: instead of need to share. So we responded by building
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: an enormous information sharing architecture. Some of that was unquestionably necessary.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: But the commission itself, and this was what is important.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: I spent some time going back to the famous 9-11
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: commission to find out how many of their recommendations we
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: really abided by. And the commission itself warned us about
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: the other side of the equation of improving our security state.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: If you're going to give government substantially more power to
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: collect information and share information, you also have to strengthen
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: the mechanisms that protect privacy and civil liberties. Hey, this
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: by Ethos. Look, let me tell you about life insurance.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: As you know, Ethos is an incredible portal for helping
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: you find the right life insurance policy. I'm a huge
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: believer in life insurance. I wouldn't have gotten to college
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: in Washington, D.C. without life insurance. My father had a
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: policy buried somewhere that we discovered, and it wasn't a
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: lot of money, but it was an important bucket of
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: money at a time that my mother, newly widowed, single mom, me,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: I'm 16. It was of enormous importance. enormous help at
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: that time. And this is why I believe in life insurance.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: You don't know what could happen to you on any
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: given day. This is literally an insurance policy for that.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: So let me tell you a little bit about Ethos.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. It's 100% online.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: You get a quote in seconds. You apply in minutes
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: and you can get coverage the same day you begin
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: this process. There's no medical exam. You just answer a
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: few simple health questions. You can get up to $ 3
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $ 30
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: a month. And you'll get your lowest rate from their
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: network of trusted carriers. Ethos has gotten 4.9 out of
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: 5 stars on Trustpilot with over 5,500 reviews. So take
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: 10 minutes to get covered today. Life insurance through Ethos.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Get your free quote at ethos.com slash chuck. That is
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: E-T-H-O-S dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary. The
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: rates may vary. That Trustpilot rating was as of August
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: of 2026. This wasn't some ACLU footnote to the 9-11
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Commission report. This was part of the Commission's recommendation. The part.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: our idiot lawmakers ignored. More government requires more oversight. Pretty
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: sensible bargain. And this is where I think we have
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: fallen massively short. The government's appetite for information expanded much
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: faster than our appetite for overseeing what government does with
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: that information. Think about the basic structural changes. We created
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: the TSA within weeks of the attack. We created DHS,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: folding 22 agencies. We did that in like 18 months.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: We created a director of national intelligence, a national counterterrorism center.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: We did all sorts of things. We changed what the
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: government can ask private companies to turn over. We gave
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: more power to the government to get information about us
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: from the private sector. We built an entirely new homeland
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: security state. Some of it was necessary. But bureaucracies have
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: a funny characteristic, right? They rarely volunteer to shrink. Government
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: programs do not wake up one morning and say, you
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: know what? Mission accomplished. Presidents sometimes do that. We probably
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: don't need all of this anymore. Every government power acquires defenders.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: They get a constituency and they get a bunch of lobbyists.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: And the burden gradually shifts, right? Instead of government having
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: to prove it still needs the power, citizens have to
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: prove why government should give it back. Man, is that
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: completely backwards. Everything should have an expiration date. All right.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: And it's not because every idea is bad or every
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: emergency power is bad. Maybe they are justified. What's ironic
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: here is that Congress actually understood that at least some
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: of this, because they partially, when they wrote it, they
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: did write some sunset provisions into some of the surveillance
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: authorities adopted after 9-11. And it is because of that
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: that we gave back some of those things. Thank goodness
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: they put some sunset clauses in there. I kind of
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: think everything Congress passes ought to have a sunset clause
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: that is no lengthier than 25 years. Because the broader
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: security architecture never did sunset. It became normalized. And I'm
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: not sure most Americans realize how much of it that
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: we've all absorbed as normal. Taking off your shoes at
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the airport became normal. Taking liquids out of a bag
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: became normal. Showing ID everywhere, getting wanded all the time,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: having your face scanned. Government databases talking to one another
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: became normal. Private companies handed enormous amounts of information to government.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: And there's a really disturbing asymmetry here. Every new technology
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: makes surveillance cheaper. Every new database makes information easier to combine, right?
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Every new artificial intelligence tool makes it easier to search
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: and analyze enormous amounts of data. So the power of
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: the security state increases automatically with technology, even if Congress
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: never passes another law. This is why oversight should become
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: more important with time, not less. And yet, look, do
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: you know that one of the recommendations of the 9-11
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Commission was to create a privacy and civil liberties oversight board? okay,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: so Congress created it. Let me tell you about this institution.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: It was created because the 9-11 Commission worried about essentially
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: government overreach here. And the whole point of the board
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: was to ask whether the government's counterterrorism programs are striking
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: the right balance between security and liberty. And guess what?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: This won't shock you. This board has repeatedly operated without
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: enough members to even function, right? Just like our SEC,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: just like all the all these supposed independent agencies that
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Congress created because they're too fucking lazy to do the
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: job themselves. But I digress. As of this year, this
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: board has been operating below quorum. They have exactly one
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: member of its five-person board. They put out a 2026
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: report on one of the surveillance programs, and it had
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: to be issued as a staff report because there wasn't
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: a fully functioning board to approve it, right? So we
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: built this enormous surveillance state after 9-11. We created a
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: watchdog to oversee the capabilities. And 25 years later, the
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: surveillance programs are still here and the watchdog board doesn't
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: even have enough members of it to have a meeting,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: to have a formal meeting. Look, no, I'm not saying
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: we got to dismantle all of these things. But my God, look,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't have needed a separate board to oversee this.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: The constitution wrote a provision in it to have an
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: entity look out for our civil liberties. It was called Congress.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: They need to get better at this. Because if you
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: want Americans to trust the government with extraordinary powers, You
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: need extraordinary oversight of those powers. Otherwise, eventually people stop
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: trusting the entire system. And maybe that's another lesson we
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: can take away, sadly, from these 25 years. I've thought
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: about this. One of the scary aspects now of when
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: you look back 25 years and now forget the government
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: surveillance state. We get nervous about government having too much information.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: How about Amazon? How about OpenAI? How about Google? We
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: got so used to trading our privacy, trading away some
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: of our privacy in exchange for security, that as the
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: tech revolution was developing pretty much simultaneously, 9-11 commission report
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: comes out in 04, Facebook is getting invented in a
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Harvard dorm room. We became so used to this of
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: giving up our privacy and our data in exchange for
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: security That we just gave up our privacy and data
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: in exchange for apps. It's really screwed up, right? It's
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: really screwed up. Now, look, maybe, you know, I get it.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: September 11th was an enormous shock to all of us
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: because it was suddenly like, oh, we can be attacked here.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: But our response trained Americans to live in a permanent
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: state of suspicion as well. And I think some of
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: this Islamophobia is due to our constant concern about being suspicious, right?
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: We're actually actively told to be suspicious at the airport.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Be suspicious on the subway. If you see something, say something.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Watch the unintended bag. Watch the person that acts strangely.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Watch your neighbor. Watch each other. Some of this awareness,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: of course, is reasonable. But you know what happens is
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: you start to absorb this as a habit. That's what
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: societies do. And suspicion became one of ours, right? And
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: then after Iraq, the financial crisis, the rise of social media, COVID,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: January 6th, all this election denial, we've now reached a
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: point where distrust itself might actually be the dominant fact
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: of American political life, right? What is the one thing
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: that connects to every single story I've talked about today?
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Our collective distrust of either a specific system, person, or technology, right?
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: We don't trust the government to run our elections. We
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: don't trust the corporations to build AI. We don't trust
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: the media to tell us what's happening. We don't trust
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: the universities to teach our kids now. And now we
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: don't trust our elections. We barely trust each other. It's
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty dangerous place for a pluralistic society to be in.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: A successful democracy requires trust in something larger than just
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: supporting your own side. You don't have to trust the
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: politician or the party, but you have to trust the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: process enough to accept that this person's going to get elected,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: whether his name is Mamdani or Trump, because you trust
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: that there'll be another election. You trust that the rules
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: will apply when your team doesn't win. You have to
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: trust that your opponent isn't a and not an enemy
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: who must be destroyed. And that takes us all the
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: way back to the beginning here. 45% of Americans say
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: they believe the upcoming midterm election will be conducted fairly.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: That number scares the hell out of me. Because I
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: don't think this election is going to be unfair. I don't.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: There's going to be some anomalies, and you're going to
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: hear a conversation about where we would be vulnerable. Okay?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here. I'm not in full
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: denial on this. There is real vulnerabilities. This tells us
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: something perhaps more troubling. A majority of Americans are approaching
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: an election without confidence in the process before the process
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: has even happened. Is half the country going to accept
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: the result of this election? It's an incredibly dangerous incentive
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: for bad political actors, because if your voters already believe
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: the system is rigged, every attempt to change the rules
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: can be sold as self-defense, right? We're not manipulating the map. There,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: they manipulated it first. We're not restricting voting. We're trying
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: to protect election integrity. We're not tilting the playing field.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: We're trying to stop them from tilting the playing field.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: And that's the fear here. If both parties can justify
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: every escalation by pointing to something the other side did first,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: there's no natural stopping point. That's how the democratic norms
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: really erode, right? It's never all at once. It's one
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: exception at a time, one emergency, one temporary measure. Then
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: the extraordinary thing becomes precedent, like we happened with, you know,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: giving away all of our privacy in exchange for security.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Then somebody else just simply inherits the precedent and they
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: push it a little bit further. And pretty soon everybody
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: has forgotten where the original line was. We've seen versions
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: of this with executive power, right? The War Powers Act.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: We've seen it with redistricting. We've seen it with the courts.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: We've seen it with the filibuster. So look, this conversation
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: about whether or not you have to be concerned about
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: the fairness of this election is This is not about
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: whether someone can walk into a county election office and
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: start stuffing ballots into a box, all right? That is
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: not how this works. The modern question is a bit
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: more sophisticated. What happens if somebody uses legal authority aggressively,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: decides to certify an election before the ballots are all counted,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: or decides not to certify an election so that it
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: isn't recognized or seated? These are the type of conversations
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: and questions I'm getting into in here because that's the
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: gray area. Of all this. And that's the stuff that
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: I think. That I get it. Why we should be concerned.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: But look. I do want to see. This 9-11 anniversary.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: I'm fearful of. How comfortable. Too many people are. With
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Islamophobia right now. You watch it play out. Through how
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: people interact. With the mayor of New York City. And
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: you know we just. We don't know how to disagree
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: with each other without demonizing each other. And, you know,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about losing 9-11, losing here, that's losing.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: The terrorists win if we fight each other, right? That
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: was always, it was always like, you know, ultimately America's
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: enemies have always known that the best way to weaken
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: America is to turn us against ourselves, right? And that's
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: what many of our enemies have been using social media
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: to do. It's what Osama bin Laden thought he could
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: pull off. On one hand, there are times where I
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: think we proved him wrong. And then there are times
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: that I fear that our enemies know us better than
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: we know ourselves. So look, I look at this anniversary.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's time, you know, let's not weaponize criticism.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: I also think we need to not relitigate decisions that
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: were made at the time. What we need to do
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: is deal with the country we live in at the moment.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: If we've got an emergency, if people are worried about AI,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: let's hold these hearings. Let's do something about it. Let's
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: actually be responsive to where the public is. Let's look
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: at what we've done over the last 25 years. and
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: decide what should we keep and what shouldn't we. Let's
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: realize that what we did in the name of security
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: ended up creating a more compliant society to hand over
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: all of our identity and privacy to a private sector
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: that is just weaponizing it to make money off of us.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: I hope we can have a group of elected officials
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: that understand the damage that we've done here and actually
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: stands up and tries to do something about it. And
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: it can't be one party. It has to be people
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: from a variety of factions. Because the one thing we
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: should have in common is to want to have pluralism,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: to live in a country where we will disagree and
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: we will never agree with each other, but we accept
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: that there's a process by which we can all live
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: and govern safely together. Well, Joanne from Minnesota's 6th Congressional
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: District chimes in. Used to be a swing district for
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: a long time. And she writes, hey, thanks for including
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: interviews that take us outside politics once in a while.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: It's nice hearing about your other interests, too. I grew
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: up playing cello and clarinet. And your conversation about experiencing
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: classical music live reminded me how powerful certain venues and
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: performances can be. So I guess I do have a question.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: Where have you heard a performance or personally performed that
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: left a lasting impression on you? Wow. That is interesting.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: So I will give you two. And, um, it is it.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: And I, um, I hesitate because it's look, it, it,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: it's one of those velvet rope moments, right? That you're like, okay,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: I've got allowed behind the velvet rope. So, and in fact, one, it, it,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: it dovetails with nine 11 after nine 11, um, the
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Arab American Institute. I had a bunch of friends that
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: were involved in there. And after 9-11, you know, they
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: were concerned, I think, about how people would perceive Arab Americans.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: And I remember, you know, I thought it was pretty
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: important for people from a wide variety of backgrounds, you know,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: show up and be there for a big dinner event.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: the Arab American Institute and my old, my good friends, um,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: Jim and Joe Zogby. Um, I worked with Joe Zogby
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: at the hotline back in the day. Um, and we've always, and,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: and he invited me to their dinner and my wife
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: and I went and, uh, we didn't know this. And
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden we got a, uh, uh, a
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: impromptu concert by sting. And it was just sort of
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden it was like, and here's a,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: thought it was going to be a video of Sting.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden you look over and there's
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: Sting at a keyboard and he just starts giving it,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: you know, played a few songs. And it was just,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: it was, you were just mesmerized. And, you know, this was,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: you're in a room with a community that feels, that
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: had felt marginalized in that moment. And it was just,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: it was a very, just the whole, the whole thing
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: was uplifting to, The whole thing was– it was just
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: a powerful moment. And my wife and I had just started–
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: we were– I think I shared this with you. We
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: hadn't been dating that long. And then 9-11 happens and
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: she lives on Capitol Hill. And I was like, you
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: got to just stay with me. I lived in the suburbs.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: I don't want you near Capitol Hill because, again, that
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: was the mindset that you knew what the targets would
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: be for terrorists. Yeah. so, uh, I brought her to that. Um, I,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know that that's what cemented, um, us getting married, but, uh,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: you know, the fact that, uh, hanging with me got her, uh,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: an impromptu concert, we were like literally within like 10
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: feet of sting. And it was, it was just, it
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: was just a, it's one of those where it's like,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: that was powerful. Cause it just, you didn't expect it.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: You didn't expect it to happen. And then one other
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: one for me was, um, At GW, I think I've
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: shared with you, I was a double music major for
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: a brief period of time, and I still kept up
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: my French horn. And at the time, my professor, my
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: French horn teacher in college was one of the French
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: horn players in the National Symphony. And they were hosting
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: one summer, basically the most famous French horn player alive
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: at the time, a guy named Barry Tuckwell. And if
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: you're a French horn player, you know who it is.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: But he was basically, you know, he had, there was,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: there's always like one guy that owns the instrument and, and,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: and meaning like that sort of all the best solos that, that, that,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: that is, that is associated with said instrument is by that,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: you know, their recording is that person. And, you know,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: I think I owned every Barry Tuckwell record. For him,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: there was a gentleman named Dennis Brain who died tragically
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: in a car accident, but he was at a time
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: considered the greatest French horn player in the world. And
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: Barry Tuckwell had owned that mantle. And again, this is a,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: you know, if you live in this world, you know
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: exactly who it is. And it was pretty cool to
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: meet him and hang out with him backstage. It was just,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: you know, again, it's when it's your thing. So thanks
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: for the question and letting me geek out a little
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: bit on Sting and Barry Tuckwell. Next question, I love this,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: comes from Eric from Seattle-ish, First Congressional District. I know
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: what you mean by that. It's Seattle adjacent. Your recent
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: Time Machine episode on Ford's pardon of Nixon got me
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: thinking about the opposite scenario. Politicians who made deeply unpopular
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: decisions in the short term that ultimately benefited the country.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: George H.W. Bush breaking the no new taxes pledge comes
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: to mind. But what other examples would make your top five?
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: And why is that kind of leadership so rarely rewarded today? P.S.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: If Western Michigan was on offense, I doubt the officials
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: would have found that extra fraction of a second. You
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: are so right. Yeah. With the replay, officials worked diligently. Hey,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: there's six tenths of one second left here. If we
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: were showing here, we've got to put a second on
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: the clock. So that's a good one. No new taxes
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: on that. I'm just trying to think of. So there
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: are you could there's a woman named Marjorie Margolis-Mesvinsky. We
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: just at the hotline shortened her to Triple M. She
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: was a congresswoman in a swing district in Pennsylvania, and
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: she cast famously cast the deciding vote on Clinton's economic plan.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: That turned out like six years later to be seen
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: as sort of the cornerstone of what got us to
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: a balanced budget for a brief period of time and
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: what was an unpopular. And at the time, the Clinton
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: economic plan in 93 was very much seen as a
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: mixed bag. And, you know, basically they they she knew
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: she was going to lose reelection because it wasn't coming.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: And it turned out to be it turned out to be.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: a really good piece of legislation and it turned out
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: to be the right piece of legislation. You know, it's interesting. I,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: I want to almost spend more time on that. Um,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: because I think, I think that those are, I think
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: there are more instances that I'm thinking of. They're more
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: likely to be on the, I think at the gubernatorial level, um,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: than they are necessarily on the, um, presidential level. Um,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could argue that going into World War
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: I was unpopular, right? And it was probably the right
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: thing to do with Wilson stuff. But then again, some
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: of those presidential level decisions, I think we didn't have
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: polling like we do today, essentially before World War II.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: So I think we all assume that there were more...
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: It was easier to make a decision that you knew
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: would benefit folks 10 years 10 to 20 years in
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: advance rather than in the moment. I think now it's,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: it's harder than ever, um, to go down that road. So, um,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: it's a, it, I want to, I want to sit
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: with this. Um, uh, I, I, I, I want to
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: come up with, um, some better answers than that. The,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: the no new taxes. And like I said, the, the,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: the one I connected would be the triple M I
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: guess you could say, um, Those that lost due to
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: Obamacare might feel semi-vindicated a little bit. But you're right.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: You know, the thing that, but this is what we do, right?
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: We remember the negative. We don't always remember some of
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: those positives. And in fact, you know, history can be
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: kind to certain people, even if they weren't kind in
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: the moment, right? So I need a better one, and
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: I owe you a top five on that. I like that,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to work on that as a top five.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: That's my pledge to you, Eric. I'm writing it down
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: so I don't forget. Top five unpopular good decisions, I guess,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: is the way to do it. All right, next question.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: It comes from a first-time emailer here, but I couldn't
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: resist after hearing Senator John Kennedy tell Kristen Welker, I
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: like you better than Chuck Todd on Sunday. Love to
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: hear your reaction to that one. Hey, you know, I
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: get it. You know, this is just a politician trying
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: to butter up Kristen. This happened to me when I
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: was at Meet the Press. Oh, I like you better
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: than the previous person. I like you better than... Please.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: You know how... Kennedy, listen, you know how you know
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: a politician is full of shit? They're talking. So I
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: would sort of put it, I would put it there.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: But more importantly, you're right. Who needs to sell their
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: MLB team first? The Lerner family with the Nationals or
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: the Poland family with the Twins? As a Twins fan,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: I can make a strong case for the Polads. But
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: maybe this is really part of a larger problem when
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: so many ML teams seem stuck in the same cycle.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: Ethan in Minnesota 5. Well, look, I do think right
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: now the biggest disparity with the sports ownership is family,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: sort of the second, third, fourth generation owners versus the
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: new money owners, right? You know, it's sort of like
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: the super rich guy owners who came in with maybe
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: a little private equity help, maybe with a whole band
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: of investors, you know, like the people behind the Warriors
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: or the Mark Walter and that crew behind the Dodgers
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: or even– what we've seen with, what we've seen with,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: with the guy who just bought the angels. I'm blanking
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: on that name. He owns the avalanche, the nuggets. I
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: think he owns more sports franchises than anybody else. Stan
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: Kroenke as my producer just chimed in, in my ear.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Lauren on that front. So, but I, I
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: just think that that's, look, I think when you look at,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: When you look at the teams and the fan bases
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: that are frustrated, a lot of times it's because the
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: ownership group still is relying on the team for income.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: Whether that's fair or not, or they're more concerned about
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: the income that's coming in for themselves rather than the
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: longer-term investment. You know, I don't know, right? You know,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: I guess the Twins have been languishing here for a
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: long time. And I have a friend of mine who
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: worked as a scout for the Twins, and I think
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: he could express his own level of frustration of how
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: that operation worked. And you hear, so you're not wrong.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: I do think the Nationals seem to have at least
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: improved some of their spending in the minor league level,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: some of their spending on technology. But I think both
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: the Twins and the Nationals were seen as sort of
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: on the lower end of the modernization process of whether
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: it's scouting, analytics, et cetera. But I think that, like
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: I said, I think the larger problem, and it's not
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: just baseball, but look at football, right? Like, you know,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: ask a Bears fan what it's like dealing with the
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: third generation of Hallis kids in charge of this thing, right? Now, look,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: it was third generation of the Ford family that finally
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: got us got decent ownership for the lion. So, you know,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: maybe eventually it it can trickle down to better ownership.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: But I do think. The family. Ownership mindset, like we are,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: you know, where you're running the team, like you're running
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: a country store, which is which is, I think, is
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: the distinction. Now, do I wish. Everybody did it as
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: the country store. Maybe I do, but that ain't the
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: world we live in, right? And I just got done
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: ranting about, we got to stop hoping for a return
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: to the way things used to be. And instead, it's
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: time to keep up with the Joneses. And you can't
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: run a competitive franchise if you don't have more investors,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: more access to cash and spending more money on helping
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: your players be better at their profession. Anyway. Let's see here.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Doug S. in Ohio's 11th, Shaker Heights.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: You and others have convinced me that one of the
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: biggest concerns with this administration is what's happening in the
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: military under Pete Hegseth. I know Trump's strategy often floods
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: the zone with news, but is there more Democrats could
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: do to keep sustained attention on a single issue, coordinating governors,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: members of Congress and former military officials around one consistent message,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: the lack of concerted strategy to counter what's happening in
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: the military? is a major source of frustration for voters
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: like me, Doug S., in Ohio. Look, I think, where
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: are my hearings, right? I think I called it, there
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: are a slew of people that Hegseth is forced into
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: retirement or straight up fired. Each one of those, folks
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: should be subpoenaed to testify in front of Congress. Right.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: That's what it's done. But this obviously when when when
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: the legislative branch is run under a philosophy that if
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: the party in the White House is the same party
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: in charge of Congress, don't do any oversight. Well, then
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get the situation that we have. Do I
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: think that Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: is alarmed by all this? I do. Is he hesitant
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: about issuing joint subpoenas with Jack Reed and others who
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: are equally concerned, if not more so? He is, right?
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: The politics of oversight of this Pentagon is apparently for
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: many Republicans too much of a hurdle to clear. So
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: you're asking for a concerted, like, look, I think this
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: is a five alarm fire. And the only way to
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: sort of galvanize the public on this is, again, it
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: goes back to my AI. So like, if Congress could
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: just bring these people, we need to know what the
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: hell is going on into that five-sided building. And we
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: don't have enough insight there, right? He has intentionally pushed
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: all media out, including his friendly media, that really allowed
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: that much access in there, right? They do not want
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: to see what they're doing. And if this is, you know,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: Congress is the one that funds that thing. They need
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: to demand more. Look, This is a massive failure. This war,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: the fact that we have a munitions problem is a
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: massive failure of the entire military industrial complex. That alone
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: should be cause for bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill. But
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: you're asking what can they do? Subpoena every single one
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: of these generals. Get them under oath. What the hell
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: is happening? What the hell is going on? Why were
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: you forced into retirement? Most of them are not going
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: to talk on their own. They don't want to be
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: political figures. And I understand that. Congress's job is to
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this shit. And they have
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: the subpoena power to do it. You just have to
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: have the political will to do it. Right now, the
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: Republican Party doesn't have the political will to hold Pete
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: Hegseth accountable. I'm sorry it's going to end up looking
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: more partisan because if Democrats get in charge, they're going
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: to do this. but it's necessary. And if you care
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: about the military, I don't care what your politics are.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: If you care about the military, you should want this oversight.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: We don't know what this guy is doing. And what
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: we do know is alarming. Hello from Missouri's 4th or
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: maybe the 5th district. And the news Tuesday has me
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: confused about what comes next for my community. I live
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: in a part of Kansas City that has been fairly
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: loyal to Emanuel Cleaver. And when the new map was released,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: I felt like my vote was being taken out from
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: under me. After the Supreme Court declined to hear the case,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: is there still any path for the question of which
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: map will be used to come back before the court?
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: Love the show. Thank you for all you do, Andrew. Well,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: I hope you got, here's what I think is going
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: to happen. And I think the remedy is right there.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: We've used it before. But it's going to take– I
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: think the circuit– when this goes to the– is it
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: the Eighth Circuit, I believe? When this goes to the
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: Eighth Circuit, the remedy is– to me, it's obvious, which is–
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: and a federal judge can do this. There's precedent for it.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: It was done in Texas. Six congressional districts were completely
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: changed by this map. Two were not touched. So two,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: you could still use those nominees and have a– and
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: just have a regular general election for those two congressional districts.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: But for the other six, you've got to basically have
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: a new party, new primary, new filing deadline, open it up.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: There has to be new. And then because I think
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: it's going to be done under the I mean, there
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: is no legal alternative map. That's what the state Supreme
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: Court has said. So that it is you can't use
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: that one map until after you've had this referendum and
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: you see what happens going into the next cycle. But
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: in order to have legal sort of a legal set
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: of congressional elections and congressional districts, you're going to have
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: to have this sort of weird remedy that they did
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: in Texas in 96 when they had unconstitutional districts. The
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: districts that were affected held all party primaries in November
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: during the regular general election. And then the top two
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: met in a runoff if nobody got 50%. So it's
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: sort of a hybrid of the old top two system
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: that Louisiana kind of uses, but decided not to use
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: it for one instance with Bill Cassidy in order to
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: punish Bill Cassidy for for voting to convict Donald Trump
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: during that impeachment. But the Louisiana system is essentially this,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: where the November election was the primary, at least they
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: used to run it this way. And then if you
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: needed a runoff, you held it in December. We had
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: a famous Senate runoff with David Vitter and Mary Landrieu
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: back in the day, where nobody got 50 in November
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: and they had to top two meet. Not quite how
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: Georgia does it, but it's a similar exercise, if you will.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: I think that's the only way to abide by the
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: state constitution here and abide by the federal statutes as well.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: So I think that's the obvious remedy. But when you
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: have an absolute buffoon as Secretary of State, and I'm sorry,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: when you intentionally try to ignore the law, ignore what
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: the referendum petitioners were going to do, Because you thought
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: you could just jam the courts? I'm sorry. Get out
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: of public service. I am just so personally offended by this.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: This is so anti-democracy and anti-voter. And I just, you know,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: I hope some of my Missouri Republican friends are just
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: ashamed by the behavior of the Secretary of State. It's
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: not that he's a partisan. It's that he doesn't believe
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: in the democracy. He doesn't want to follow the... If
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: you don't want to follow the Constitution, get out of
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: public service. That is the one thing you swore to
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: do when you took the oath. And in Missouri, you
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: take the oath to abide by both the U.S. Constitution
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: and the Missouri Constitution. All right, let's talk a little
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: bit about college football this weekend. Obviously, my team, they've
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: got a Thursday. We went from a Friday game to
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: a Thursday game. Poor Florida A & M. They actually
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: played at Hard Rock last weekend. They lost. It was
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: more competitive than the experts thought it would be, but
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: they lost to Prairie View. And now have to turn
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: around and play Miami on the same field. So they're
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: familiar with the field on this one. But look, the
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: best part of playing Florida A & M, and I've
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: learned that Miami's Florida A & M has always been
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: one of the early a regular scheduled team that you
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: think is going to be a quote-unquote easy win. But
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: the other reason to invite Florida A & M to play,
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: to pay them to come to your stadium to play
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: them in one of these games, is they bring their
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: band and they just steal the halftime show and they
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: provide an incredible halftime show. The Miami Florida A &
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: M games are the few games that I've attended that
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: where people don't get up at halftime to go get
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: something to eat. They want to stick around. So I
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be sweating Miami this weekend. Look, the game of
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: the weekend, obviously, is Texas-Ohio State. And in some ways, though,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: because of the college football playoff, barring a blowout from
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: either side, it's kind of a– other than, I guess,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: bragging rights, right? If Ohio State can win on the road,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: that says something. Obviously, there's more pressure on Arch Manning
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: and Texas to win this thing and Sark. It is
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: one of those things that fair or unfair, if somehow
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: Texas loses this game and they go nine and three
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: again and whether they make the playoff or not, you're
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: going to start to hear cranky Texas fans about Sark. Like,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: how come you can't win more of these games? You know,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: somehow Georgia avoids nine and three. Why can't you avoid
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: nine and three? Right. You know, is it fair? No, please.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: College football and politics are the same. And they're never fair.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: But that's the game. The other game that I'm obsessed
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: with is Oklahoma-Michigan. And it's not because we want to
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: find out. My favorite meme from that is that when
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: you enter the state of Michigan, you have to set
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: your clocks back one second. I think that was my
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: favorite of all the different various memes that were out there.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: But I'm intrigued by the Oklahoma-Michigan game because I think
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma is the best team in the SEC. I think
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: they're the most complete team. I think if Mateer stays healthy,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: that defense is unbelievable. I will just tell you this.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: I look at who I think is standing in the
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: way of Miami winning this national title. I'm a little
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: nervous about the defense, a little nervous about the run blocking,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: but I think all of that comes. It's a very
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: young offensive line. And I think they will get a
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: lot better as the season went on. It's one thing
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: I have enormous confidence in with coach crystal ball is,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: is always having a, a, a very good offensive line
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: and coming up with ways to repair. If, if an offensive,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: if one thing isn't working right and all this stuff
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: and Mensah is just, my gosh, you know, I, I,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: it's a revelation. I mean, I'm trying to think of–
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: I might have to go all the way back to
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: Bernie and Vinny, where you just– you had such confidence
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: that your quarterback was always going to make the right call. And, look,
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: it's one game, and, you know, I'm prepared for anything.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: But this is something special. Look, Ken Dorsey was a
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: great quarterback. This guy's special. Mensah's on another level. I
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: think Carson Beck was– I believe– that Carson back wasn't 100%,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: that his arm strength, you could see it. Look, I
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: could see it, and any Miami fan will tell you this.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: It was clear that they were still protecting Carson back
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: throughout the early part of the season last year. Trust me,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: if we'd played Notre Dame again, we'd have beat them again,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: but we'd have beat them in a different way. We'd
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: have been able to go down the field, but we
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: sort of beat them up physically in that game. because
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: we were a little nervous about Beck's arm strength. And
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: he had that weird, remember, he basically had a Tommy
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: John surgery. And you don't hear about Tommy Johns for
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: quarterbacks very often. We obviously know about it. But it
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: was in his elbow. And I remember seeing an interview,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, you know, he goes, it feels different,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: is what he said. He goes, I can make all
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: the throws, but it feels different. Well, that was like
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: a yellow flag for me. And look, we got through
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: the season, but by the time the playoffs started, all
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, Carson Beck was throwing darts. And it was,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: guess what? Remember, he got hurt in an early December game.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: You know, we, all of us have this. We think that, oh,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: when somebody tells you it takes, yeah, eight months to
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: a year to rehab. Every athlete thinks I can do
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: it in six months, right? Or I can do it,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, they think they could do it sooner.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: There's a reason doctors give you this range because it's
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: always falls within this range, right? And guess what? Tommy
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: John takes a year. And so while he could technically
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: do everything, it's not shocking to me that literally the
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: SEC championship game takes place in early December. By the
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: time we get to the one year mark, we're now
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: in the playoff. And suddenly Carson Beck's arm strength is 100%.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: And now you look at him in those early preseason games.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, I now look back at Miami's
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: 10-2 season and we were doing it with a quarterback
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: that wasn't confident in his arm until we got to
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: the playoff. And by the way, once we got to
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: the playoff with a confident quarterback, we were one of
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: the two best teams in the country. We were basically
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: one blocking mistake away from winning that game. It's the
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: block punt for those of you that are wondering what
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: I'm referring to, but the miss, just the, the whiff, the,
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: and it happens to anybody, right? Anybody can have a
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: bad moment, right? We can have, I can have a
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: bad moment right here and forget the next word I'm
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: going to say. And suddenly somebody can miss a block
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: that you'd think, how the hell did you miss that block?
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: That was the difference in the game, pure and simple.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: One mistake. That's how good Indiana was. You couldn't make
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: that many mistakes and hope to beat them on that. So,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: That was my long way of saying, I see Oklahoma
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: as a hurdle for Miami. I think they're the most
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: complete team if Mateer is healthy because of just how
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: good that defense is. And the more you see the
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: downfall of Clemson, the more you realize Brent Venables is
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: clearly the guy that kept Clemson afloat. Because you can
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: look at the trajectory of Clemson's program when Venables was
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: there and when Venables left. And I used to make
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: fun of Herbstreet all the time because it was every
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: time you watched it, Clemson's going, the Brent Venables defense, da, da, da.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not, you know, I used to, we used to
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: joke in our house up, drink every time Herbstreet says Venables.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is Brent Venables is
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: clearly was important, so much more important to that program,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: I think, than anybody realized. And, you know, Dabo hasn't
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: been the same, hasn't been the same since. A few
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: other games I'm intrigued by, Tennessee Georgia Tech. It's at
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech looked terrible in that game against Colorado.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: I don't, but I have a lot of respect for
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: that coach. I'm very curious. I think he's, you know,
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: I want to know whether, if he could pull a
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: rabbit out of his hat, this would be the game
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: you'd see him find the rabbit. So I'm just curious. Because, hey,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: I know we don't play Georgia Tech this year, but
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: they're sort of like a– for some reason Miami screws
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: up against Georgia Tech. So I'm always looking out for
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: them on that front. And then as a– as somebody
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: who I always said– I wasn't born and raised in Iowa.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: I wasn't born in Iowa, but I was raised in Iowa.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: The Cy Hawk game matters to me a lot. You know,
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: I have a– both of my grandparents went to Iowa State. Um,
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: the other half of my, of the Todd clan are
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: a bunch of Hawkeye fans. One of my best friends
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: is a Hawkeye fan. Um, and, uh, so I care
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: a lot about Iowa, Iowa state. Um, I, I love
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: the game. Um, and I assume Iowa blows out Iowa state.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: And yet somehow I have a feeling Iowa state will
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: make this close because this game is always, no matter
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: how bad the team one side is versus how good
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: another one is. Um, I, uh, uh, it's always a game.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: So I, I, it is the other part of the
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: early September games. You get a fun little matchup every
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: now and then. Um, but the, but the best part are,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: are some of these, some of these, uh, inter these,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: these rivalry games, um, that probably should be at the
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: end of the year, but, um, but aren't, um, let
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: me think one other, one other thing I wanted to,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: I'm obsessed over this weekend. Oh, the other game that
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: I care about because, um, I have feared that they're
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: a sleeper team in the ACC as Cal. I want
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: to see how they handle going cross country to play
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: at Syracuse after losing to UCLA. And UCLA, I'm doing
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: my first ever fantasy college football team. My son and
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: I co-own a team. I joined Thor Nystrom's league. Those
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: of you that may follow him on Twitter, he's a
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: big Vikings fan. fan and sports reporter, a whole bunch
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: of sports reporters. And I'm like, Nico and Wayne Knight
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: are the anchors of my team. So I have a
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: little extra incentive to follow UCLA a little bit. But Cal,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: I'm very intrigued by to see just how much of
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: a dark horse they could be in the ACC. How
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: well will they recover from a loss that stung? I
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: expected that game to be closer than it wasn't. Maybe
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: UCLA is going to be much better than we think.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: We shall see. All right, with that, Enjoy the weekend.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: Be thinking about 9-11 in a variety of ways. If
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: you don't remember it or you weren't old enough to
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: experience it, there's a variety of documentaries that are worth
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: watching and understanding and looking at. But I think the
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: more important thing we need to do is just be
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: thinking about, hey, it's 25 years later. Life's a lot
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: different now than it was then. What should we be
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: doing differently? And let's be thinking about the next thing.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: Let's not have a failure of imagination again about the
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: next thing that we are concerned about, which apparently is AI.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: The public is screaming. So come on, Congress, get your
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: act together. With that, I'll see you in about 72 hours.