Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Trump Is The Biggest Wildcard Of The 2026 Midterms + RFK Jr. Is Making Measles Great Again

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Chuck’s Commentary - Trump Is The Biggest Wildcard Of The 2026 Midterms + RFK Jr. Is Making Measles Great Again · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Hello there, Happy Thursday,
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  Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: am the namesake of the show, Chuck Todd, where I
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: like to say, I try to present politics for the
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  Speaker 1: rest of us. Give you the quick rundown of the day.
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  Speaker 1: This weekend we will hit the one hundred days to
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  Speaker 1: election day marker. And what does that mean? Well, you're
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  Speaker 1: going to see a whole bunch of network polls. We've
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  Speaker 1: already seen a bunch of those. You're gonna see a
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  Speaker 1: whole bunch of write ups where things stand. So why
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  Speaker 1: not beat folks to the writing crutch punch? And I'll
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  Speaker 1: do sort of my lay of the land with one
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  Speaker 1: hundred days to go, just sort of more from sixty
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: thousand feet because I think what's interesting is what hasn't changed.
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  Speaker 1: It's fascinating all the minutia we've been living with. And
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about the minutia, of course, but
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  Speaker 1: I think what's been remarkable is actually how incredibly stable
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: things have been over the last eighteen months. And we
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  Speaker 1: will get into that. Other topics I'm going to hit
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: on in this episode the Congress's attempt to try to
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: fix college sports. That bill is going to come to
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a head. I might pass the Senate. I'm skeptical that
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: it does, but I want to explain why it is
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: a useless piece of legislation because they have left out
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: one giant issue that they have just not dealt with,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and if anything, they're actually trying to punish one entity
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: more than any other. Plus we'll deal with the latest
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: sec Greg Santi, Greg Sanky temper tantrum on that and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: three other notes, a little bit on Mondani's speech to
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  Speaker 1: the city about bb Net Yahoo. There's also a fascinating
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: new lawsuit about closed primaries in Oregon that it's a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: bit of a follow up of the interview we did
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: with the head of Open Primaries. They're essentially pursuing the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: legal strategy that I believe is going to permanently open
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: up primaries in every state in this country. So we
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  Speaker 1: will have that and a very very disturbing update on Measles.
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  Speaker 1: I'll have my top five lists. I'm tackling governor's races.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Seems like all my friends have been doing that this week,
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  Speaker 1: but it's about time my top five governor's races that
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  Speaker 1: are most likely to flip parties. And speaking of that,
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  Speaker 1: I want to start off, and of course I'll take
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  Speaker 1: some questions. I want to start off though, I spent
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  Speaker 1: my day on Wednesday. As you know, I am my
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: summer home base has been here in northwest Florida. It's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: given me an opportunity to spend a little bit of
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: time both covering Florida politics and Alabama politics. So last
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: week for my Newsphere show, and if you haven't checked
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: out Newsphere, go download the news Fare app sign up
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: for a free trial. Please check it out. Really quality
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: journalism from around the world is a special emphasis on
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: war zones from around the world, so you really I
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: think we'll get allowed out of it, but I do
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: this weekly show for them. Last week it was Byron
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  Speaker 1: Donald's front runner for governor on the Republican side of
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  Speaker 1: the aisle. This week it's Doug Jones. You may remember
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  Speaker 1: Doug Jones, Democratic senator who defeated Roy Moore in Alabama,
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  Speaker 1: the last Democrat to win a statewide race in Alabama.
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  Speaker 1: He is running in a rematch against Tommy Tupperville. He
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  Speaker 1: lost to Tommy Tupperville on that Senate race in twenty twenty.
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  Speaker 1: They are facing off again for an open race for governor.
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  Speaker 1: I caught up with him in Dothan, Alabama, which is
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  Speaker 1: basically just over the Florida Alabama line, probably about forty
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  Speaker 1: five minutes north of Tallahassee if you're trying to picture
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  Speaker 1: it in your map as you're listening to this, and
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  Speaker 1: you know, Doug Jones has the challenge that many a
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  Speaker 1: Democrat in a deep red state has that wants to
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  Speaker 1: be competitive, which is the Democratic brand is not the
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  Speaker 1: easiest thing to run on in places like Alabama. We've
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  Speaker 1: discussed this before, places like Nebraska, places like Kansas, places
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  Speaker 1: like Montana, where we're already seeing some eye names. And
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  Speaker 1: I think what was interesting, And I'll let you wait
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  Speaker 1: until the interview comes out this weekend on the Newsphere app.
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  Speaker 1: But I asked him why he was running as a
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  Speaker 1: d and not as an independent and he gave and
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  Speaker 1: incredibly I think, thoughtful, sober and intellectually honest answer that
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  Speaker 1: I found quite refreshing. But and oh, by this time
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  Speaker 1: in twenty four hours, I hopefully will have also seen
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the odyssey. We will see if missus toddcast and I
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  Speaker 1: can pull that off before the weekend comes. But let's
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  Speaker 1: begin with like I said, this weekend, we will hit
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  Speaker 1: the official one hundred days until election day, where all
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  Speaker 1: of a sudden you're like, oh boy, it's getting late
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: early to beat up a yogi beasm And look, I'm
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: getting this a lot right now in summer as people
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: sort of check in in my own circles that are
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: not huge political day to day followers, but are starting
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to check in wondering, hey, what's going on. Where do
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  Speaker 1: things stand? So hundred day's out, what's changed? And my
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  Speaker 1: honest answer is it's much less than you think. Right
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: if you've actually been watching politics over the last fifteen months,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: we've look at it through sort of that aerial view
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: that I use this metaphor all the time, you know,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: look at it from you know, sixty thousand feet rather
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  Speaker 1: than doom scrolling the minutia every day, and the battle
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  Speaker 1: for control of Congress looks quite stable. Frankly, nothing is
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  Speaker 1: really moved in the last four months, even though there's
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  Speaker 1: a lot of action. It's like watching a duck underneath.
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  Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of paddling going on, but
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: it doesn't look like there's a lot of movement. There's motion,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: not movement. Because you could argue that Donald Trump's approval
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: rating went underwater permanently about fifteen months ago. Specifically, I
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  Speaker 1: believe April ninth, twenty twenty five, if you want to
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: put a date to it, that was so called Liberation Day.
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  Speaker 1: Ever since that tariff announcement disaster, he has been underwater,
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  Speaker 1: and it's been this sort of graduate for him. I
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  Speaker 1: said it at the time, I said this may come back,
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  Speaker 1: and we may say this is Trump's Afghanistan moment. It
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: is now crystal that that was Trump's Afghanistan moment. In
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  Speaker 1: the same way with Joe Biden, the Afghanistan withdrawal went poorly,
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  Speaker 1: his numbers went down, and he never recovered. His entire
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: presidency was bogged down. Well, we don't know if the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: entire second term of Trump's presidency is going to be
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: He's going to be underwater like this, but certainly it
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: appears he's going to be underwater. And it's been this
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: sort of gradual This has not been a sharp drop, right.
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  Speaker 1: You know, he started out, you know, I never he's
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: never gotten over fifty, but he was in the mid
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: to high forties at the very beginning. That's his version
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: of a honeymoon, sort of a honeymoon period. If you will.
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  Speaker 1: Liberation Day hits he drops below forty five. It's been
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  Speaker 1: a gradual sort of erosion of his job rating. Right,
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  Speaker 1: Liberation Day drops him below forty five, right, and then
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  Speaker 1: you started to see it that declines. You know. By
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  Speaker 1: a year later he's in the low forties. By May
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  Speaker 1: he's getting down even more. And now in July he's
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: now in the low thirties. And it's just in this
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: gradual descent, not huge spikes, if you will, but a
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: gradual descent on this and it's you know, look, everything
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: is accumulated. That's what happened to Biden. Right, It's sort
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  Speaker 1: of well, terriffs were a bad idea. Then it made
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  Speaker 1: it so that he owned the economy. Then as prices
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  Speaker 1: went up and his inflation remained stubborn, then what does
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  Speaker 1: he go and do? He keeps this tariff business going.
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  Speaker 1: Then he launches the Iran War, which only reinforces the
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: inflation problem. Then he loses the court fight and tariffs,
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  Speaker 1: and rather than essentially accept the Supreme Court rescuing him
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  Speaker 1: from a disastrous economic policy, he says no, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 1: And he then decides, no, I want to bring them
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: all back, and in fact, over the next thirty days,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: he's going to We're going to hear more and more
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: headlines of Donald Trump announcing new tax increases on American
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: consumers as he reimposes these tariffs, which may or may
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: not even be constitutional. He's now going back, I think,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: to a law that was first passed in nineteen thirty
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: eight in order to justify this latest tariff regime. And
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: part of the problem they've got to keep this tariffs
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: up is that the federal government is suddenly relying on
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the money that's been coming in on these tariffs. So
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: this has been a this is why it's sort of
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: like a lot's happened. Republicans this summer starting to feel better,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and yet you sit here and go, BOYD has much
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: changed And in fact, not only has the fundamentals not
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: changed here, in some ways they've hardened. So let's break
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: this down in sort of each of the big chambers.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the House. I think obviously the House
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: is I think the easier chamber to handicap. Here, Democrats
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: were the favorite this year when basically the day that
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump took the oath of office, they were favored
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: to pick up the I mean they only need a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: handful of seats. I think we're down to three that
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: they have to pick up in order to take control.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: The joke has been they might get control before election
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: day given what we've seen. And I think the Democrats
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: are still the favor because the fundamentals have it changed. Right,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: The overall political environment is bad for the party in
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: power right now, and which should accrue to the benefit
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of the party out of powers. Not as if Democrats
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: very popular right now, but what's more unpopular and what
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the pattern of our elections have been over the last decade,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: which is we have been voting against We've gotten necessarily
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: voting four Now, if you look at it race by race,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Republicans certainly have gotten a lot of favorable court rulings
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: over the last three months, right, and the redistricting wars
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: clearly ended up favoring the Republicans after the Democrats lost
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: their opportunity to redistrict in Virginia. Then you throw in
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the voting based the near scrapping of the Voting Rights Act,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: which allowed for the elimination of some majority African American
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: seats in the South, and so the floor for Republicans
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: is much higher. It's about probably eight to ten seats
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: higher than it was when this campaign cycle began. So
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: instead of looking at a oh, a mini waveyear that
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: could go from anywhere from twenty to thirty five seats,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: I think realistically the ranges ten to twenty five, right,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and probably ten, you know, probably something in the teens.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Anything north of twenty I think we would call a
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: true wave environment because I think twenty is the new
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: forty seats, if you will, right, Democrats basically picked up
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: about forty seats in twenty eighteen, the first Trump midterm,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: picking up twenty to twenty five is the equivalent of
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: what forty would have looked like back then. So in
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: that sense, I think Republicans believe they have a puncher's
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: chance here, right that these court rulings have gone their
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: way a few of these sort of the overall messaging
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: climate with the Democratic brand has certainly at least given
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Republicans something to run on. But I'll tell you my
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: confidence level in Democrats winning the House. I'll compare it
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to this year's favorite to win the World Series, which
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: of course is the Dodgers. I am probably more comfortable
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: betting on the Democrats winning control of the House than
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I am on the Dodgers winning the World Series do
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I think actually, I'd probably put it this way. Just
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the Dodgers being in the World Series, Right, there is
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: enough randomness in the baseball playoffs that I actually think
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: it means the safer bet if you had to pick
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: between those betting on the Dodgers to get to the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: World Series versus betting on Democrats to pick up the house,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I actually think the safer bets is Democrats picking up
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the house. On the Senate side, I think this is
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: where the Democrats have had the better year than the Republicans. Right,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: You've seen some poor nominations go their way. Right, Texas
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Georgia are probably two that are are front and center
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: on that front. Meanwhile, Democrats keep expanding the map. They
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: may have put Kansas in play, Nebraska's clearly in play,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Iowa was now clearly in play. Yes, things in Michigan
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: look shakier now for Democrats than they did six months ago.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But six months ago we were still wondering if Georgia
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: was going to be a toss up race. Now that
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: looks like that is not going to be a toss
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: up race. That said, it's still a tough map for Democrats.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: But I put it this way. Nine months ago, Republicans
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: were the clear favorites to hold the Senate. I think
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: now they're a just a very small favorite, right, And
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: we've seen it in some of the betting markets, and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: you've seen some of my little social posts on sort
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of the prediction markets on this. The odds have certainly
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: have certainly narrowed, and I think you basically we're somewhere
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: in about a fifty five to forty five split here,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Democrats being considered of about a forty percent chance of
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: winning the Senate, Republicans having it about a fifty five
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: percent chance. But you know, this has been pretty volatile.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Right two weeks ago the Grand Platinir debacle coupled with
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: what we were watching with the DSA and Michigan, and
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: there was suddenly, I think Republicans got bullish there for
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: a few days. Oh, things are going to go well,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins may survive, perhaps Michigan goes the other way.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly the path to four seas Democrats need
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: four seats to gain control. And I'll talk about the
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Fetterman situation here in a second. And if you'd taken
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Maine off the board. It really just meant that they
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: had to sweep those red leaning states, right, the Nebraska's,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the Iowa, was, the Alaskas, the Ohios. That if they
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: were going to pull that off, if they're going to
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: both not be able to win Maine and potentially lose Michigan.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: But if you look at the last ten days, I mean,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: this is where Donald Trump has been such an important
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: ally to the Senate Democrats here, right, I mean, if
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: you're Susan Collins, things looked great three weeks ago. Now
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: not only are Democrats united around a good enough nominee,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and he may end up proving to be a better
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: challenger against her because he's not as polarizing and it
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: becomes more of a referendum on her. Number two, you
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: have the ice killing that took place in Maine, in
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Susan Collins' backyard. That is essentially turned the page locally
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: on all the Grand Platiner stuff rather than the entire
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: sort of focus on what were the Democrats going to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: do to place Plattner? Is this going to upset the party?
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Is there going to be all these divides? Ice goes
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and pulls their nonsense somebody gets killed, and that is
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: honestly about the only story that people are dying. And
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: then the icing on the cake, if you'rre Susan Collins
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: is Donald Trump announces massive tariffs, threatens massive tariffs on Canada,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: which actually supposedly don't take effect for about another twenty
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: eight days. I'm sure in twenty eight days, taco that
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: probably will end up being a Taco Tuesday. But still
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: it put her in a bind because Maine does a lot.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Maine's economy is very reliant on Canadian trade. This episode
• 18:58
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• 20:37
  Speaker 1: times may vary and rates may vary. I think when
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: you now look at the last you know, six months,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: it is the battle for the Senate has taken a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: decided turn towards the Democrats. Republics are so favorite because
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of this map. But Maine is in better shit today
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: than it was six weeks ago. Alaska for Democrats better
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: shape today than it was six weeks ago. Kansas, now
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: that primary is coming up, but it looks like the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: candidate they recruited, the pastor Hamilton, He's going to be
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: a formidable opponent. And as you know, I think Kansas, Iowa,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: and Nebraska, those three races in particular, all three states
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: are ag states. All three states have been hammered by
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Trump's tariffs. I think if this is a semi wave year,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Democrats pick up two of those three seats, and it's
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: all on the backs of the economy in tariffs. At
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a minimum, they got to win one of those three
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: in order to make their math work to get the four.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And I'll get to that in a minute. But That's
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: my point. Kansas has gotten better for Democrats than it
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: was six months ago. Nebraska has gotten better than it
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: was six months ago. Ohio's gotten better than it was
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: six months ago. Texas Texas is Look, I've been skeptical
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: not just of tall Rico, but Republicans quote unquote coming home.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: We're seeing more evidence of that in the polling. I
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: still think this is a reach state. But the amount
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: of money and effort and resources that it's going to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: take to essentially salvage this race for Ken Paxton may
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: cost Republicans the ability to hold Ohio may cost Republicans
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the ability to put Georgia or North Carolina back in place.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: So even if they survived Texas, it has done damage
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: to the Senate Republican campaign strategy. And obviously I said
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: with Iowa there we saw that. So the Senate picture
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: in general, and then right Republicans sort of shot the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: bed on Georgia North Carolina is just looking like a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: harder and harder hill for Michael Wattley the Republican nominita climb.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Had it been a better national environment for Republicans, I
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: might be slightly more bullish on Republican chances in New
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Hampshire and in Minnesota, where I think in both cases
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Republicans have quality candidates for the general election Michelle Tafoya
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: and Minnesota Johnsonunu, brother of Chris Sununu, former senator himself.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: But frankly, I don't think Scott Brown would be a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: disastrous candidate. The other this is our primary with two
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: former senators running against each other in New Hampshire. But
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Chris Pappis is run a pretty solid campaign up there,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: and because he's from that swing district in New Hampshire,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: he's been through so many of these races, so I
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: think he is prepared for this. And again you start
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: attacking Canada, that hurts a lot of the economy in
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: New England in general. So the same issues that Susan
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Collins has with Trump's policies on tariffs harming the main economy. Honestly,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: it's the same concerns that folks in New Hampshire have.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: There a few historical nuggets here to understand the battle
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: for the Senate. Whenever the out party gains Senate seats
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: in a midterm, the average gain in the modern era
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: has been four seats, so Democrats need four to get control.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: That is the average pickup when the out party picks
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: up seats in the midterm. So now I happen to
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: think if the Democrats win the Senate, they're more likely
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to net six seats than they are to be right
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: at the number four. And obviously if they're right at four,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: then you have the Fetterman thing you've got to worry about.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Right could he caucus, you know, go become an independent
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: caucus with the Republicans. But I wouldn't rule out Leasta
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Murkowski potentially doing the same thing, So you know, I
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: happen to think Fetterman and Murkowski may end up canceling
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: each other out if this is where this is headed
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: in twenty eight. Obviously, I think the better idea would
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: be a Feederman in Murkowski with held their support from
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: either of the conferences, and those independent candidates could actually
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: negotiate from a position to strength. But I don't think
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: we have enough truly independent thinking senators yet ready to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: go down that road. So I do think it's important
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: though that you know, Democrats don't need an historic wave
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: in order to pick up the Senate. They just need
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: like a category two right now, they do have to
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: knock off a lot of incumbents, and knocking off incumbents
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: is much harder than winning open seats. Right, They've got
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: to knock off an incumbent in Ohio, but that's an
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: appointed senator and they're kind of running their own incumbent.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: And Shared Brown they've got to knockoff of coment in Alaska.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Knocking off incumbents in Alaska are quite difficult there. But
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: because Mary Patello was the statewide elected member of the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: US House, you can say, and similar to Shared Brown,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: that it's sort of and are on par situation there.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Kansas Nebraska are both challenges to an incumbent, so you
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: know that can but you know, look, Democrats won six
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: netted six Senate seats in two thousand and six, and
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: in every case they're challengers knocked off sitting incumbents. So
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: it isn't as much of a necessity to flip a
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: seat that it has to be open in Senate races
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: than it is, say, in House races or more likely
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: in gubernatorial races. Now, I do want to sort of
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: point out to why the arguments that many Republicans I'm
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: talking to are making to me about why they're a
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: bit more bullish than they were four months ago. They
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: can see Trump's not stronger. If anything, he's weaker. But
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the reason why the Republican strategist I'm talking to feel
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: at least like it's they're not read, they're not in
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: a fetal position, is because they feel like Democrats have
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: gave them something to run against. Right, the DSSA, the socialists,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Socialists of America, This rise of the DSA
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: or the DSA adjacent progresses, Mom, Donnie, socialism, all of
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: that stuff. It is something Republicans are comfortable doing. Right.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: It's a messaging that they've kind of been They've already
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: been sort of seating, you know, fertilizing the fields here
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: on this front. So it's something they know how to do.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, right they've been sort of crying,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: they've been kind of chicken little when it comes to
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the S word with socialism, and lo and behold, suddenly
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: quite a few Democrats are publicly embracing it. So suddenly
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: their attacks on Democrats for embracing socialism has more credibility
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: this summer than it did that summer. But there was
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: another important news update on the Republican side of things
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: that told me both that was a bit of a
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: tea leaf that I took to mean that the White
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: House political team is at least conceding they're behind and
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: they're more likely to have a bad midterm than a
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: good midterm. Tony Fabrizio Chris Lasovita basically the president's you know,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: chief political campaign architects for Brezio has been the president's
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: bolster now going back to twenty sixteen. Chris Lasovita was
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: brought on starting in starting in late twenty nineteen and
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and has been an important strategist to the president.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: They did a briefing in DC earlier this week that
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: some of it leaked out where they made the pitch
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to those in their audience. It was some donors, House
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: and Senate staffers and lobbyists, essentially some of their friendly allies,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: but those that are some decision makers, and their basic
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: pitch was Republicans have to create a contrast, right, don't
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: allow yourself to become the issue. Make the Democrat unacceptable
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: in some way. It's exactly what the party in power
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: usually does when a midterm starts moving the other way.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: They want to try to disqualify the challengers. Right, it's
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: what Democrats did with some success in twenty twenty two. Right,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Biden didn't have as bad of a midterm as most
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: presidents have of this century in their first midterm. Still
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: had a bad midterm, but he didn't have as bad
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: of a midterm on that front. So it's what Democrats
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: did in twenty ten, and they were able at least
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: to save the Senate even if they lost the House.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: And in twenty eighteen, Republicans were able to save the
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Senate on their end even as they lost the House.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: This strategy does will work in a handful of races
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: where Republican a Republican incumbent somewhere, a handful of them
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: in the House one or two in state white races
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: will survive not because of anything they're running for, but
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: because they were successfully able to disqualify for their Democratic opponent. Right,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: that's obviously what what Republicans think would be a gift
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: if they got it in Abdul lsied in Michigan. And
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: it's what they think, for instance, the gift that they
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: might get if the socialist ins at the Democratic nominee
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: for governor in Wisconsin. Right there, But what's the what
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: was left unsaid by that briefing by las Avita, Uh
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and Fabrizio to the sort of the Washington smart set,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: they weren't trying to defend their record, and they weren't
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: trying to run on anything. They can run on some
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: of the tax cuts and no tax on tip. But
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: you know the real problem they have is they don't
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: have a messenger in the White House that knows how
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: to stand message right. Donald Trump doesn't follow campaign strategy.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: He just follows his own whims and his own perceived instinct.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: My old friend David Winston, a longtime Republican polster, and
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I worked together way back when when we invented news
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: coverage on the internet for politics. Now, in his role
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: call column, he had this great line, and I just
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: want to repeat it here, but I think he was
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: speaking for a lot of not yet depressed Republican strategists,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: but they're getting close to feeling depressed. And here's what
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: he wrote. He goes, with all due respect, my advice
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: to the president is to make the voter's number one issue,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: the economy, his number one issue. Right, essentially wents and saying, hey, buddy,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the issue the voters care about the economy. Maybe you
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: ought to pretend to care about the economy. And then
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: he continues, the base alone won't win the election for
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you this year any more than it did in twenty
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: eighteen or even twenty twenty. More to the point, he writes,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the base is already with you. You, and then he continues,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: women in independence are not the president. Now, Winston believes
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the president has a positive economic story to tell if
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: he would just tell it. And then he closes his
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: column with a great line, the bully pulpit is a
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: terrible thing to waste. My friend David Winston is always
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: he always tries to have a smile on his face. Now,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: some of fellow Republicans will say he's always mister doom
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: and gloom about his side of things. But I do
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: think what he was saying brings up the sort of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the it's not even really a wild card, right. It
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: is probably the one thing that Republicans desperately need, which
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: is a president that's on message, and it's one thing
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: that they're not going to have, and every candidate has
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: to realize that that's not going to happen. Look, Winston
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't advocating that he should change policy. He was just saying,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: change your emphasis, right. He's like, the problem that the
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: President doesn't seem to understand is that the persuadable voters
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: aren't interested in election denialism. The persuadable voters hate this
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: war with Iran, the persuadable voters hate what he's done
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: with the economy, and yet what is Trump spent his
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: week talking about election denialism, terrifis with Canada and restarting
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: and re threatening, sort of all sort of saber rattling
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: with the run. Let me just tell you this, those
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: are all stories that make Republican Senate candidates lives that
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: much harder. As I told you, right, I mean, can
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: it get any worse for Susan Collins as she's trying
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: to seek reelection to what Trump has done to her
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: on this front between ice and these tariffs, as I
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: said earlier, So this is and ultimately one thing you
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: have to remember here. As much as candidates matter in
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: a midterm election, the most important lesson I took away
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: with working with my friends at the NBC News Poll,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Bill mcinturf from the Republican side, Jeff Horwitt and Peter
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: hard on the Democratic side over the last nearly twenty
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: years is that they drilled one lesson into my head.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: During midterms. There is no better predictor of a midterm
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: than presidential job approval, and that you know essentially, and
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I think now we know forty five percent is the
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: new fifty. President's job approval under forty five guarantees his
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: party is going to lose seats. Doesn't mean they'll lose chambers,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: but they definitely lose seats. A president under forty means
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: they're going to lose chambers. The question is how bad
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: is it? How big is the wave going to be? Now,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: there's another way, So we already know, I've already, we've already,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: we already know where the president's job reready. Two things
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: need to happen for a wave. For a political wave
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to hit in a mid term. One is, you need
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: one party to be unpopular the party empower to be unpopular. Okay,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: that's check. But what turns a one sided election into
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a wave like election is when one party is can't
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: wait to vote and the other party is willing to
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: skip the election. And probably the best way to measure
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: that issue is also in presidential job approval. But it's
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: not the overall rating. It is what is the sitting
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: president's job approval rating with members of his own party.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: And so I went through and I just used Gallup
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: so that there would just be one set of apples,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: if you will, and sort of polster speak, one set
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: of apples to look at. So I just used Gallup,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: going all the way back to nineteen ninety four. And
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the reason I went all the way back to nineteen
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: ninety four is that I think it the Bill in
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: that sense these questions, you know, that hasn't even though
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: our politics have changed a lot between nineteen ninety four
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: and today, in some ways, the impact of a presidential
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: job rating on the midterms hasn't changed. So let me
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: run through some stuff. When I went through what because
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton is such a great example, he had one
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: disastrous midterm and he had one incredible midterm. So Bill
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Clinton's jobrating in nineteen ninety four among Democrats in July
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four, so I did July for all
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: of this, so we were staying in our current president
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: was just sixty eight percent among Democrats. And guess what
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: happened that November huge wave benefiting the Republicans nineteen ninety eight,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: his jobrating among Democrats was eighty nine percent. That was
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the impeachment election, if you will. And what happened Democrats
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: had an historically they didn't lose seats, right, that was
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: what made it incredible. I think I think they I
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: think the Senate was dead even and I think maybe
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Democrats netted four or five seats. It was something like
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: that historic over performance. George W. Bush sort of the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: mirror image in two thousand and two. His job rating
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: among Republicans in July of two thousand and two eighty
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: eight percent. Fast forward to November of two thousand and two,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Republicans had a banner year. They win the Senate, get
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: clean control of Congress. That was sort of the post
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: nine to eleven hangover by two thousand and six. George W.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Bush's approval rating among Republicans going into that in July
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: two thousand and six unpopular war in the Middle East
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: sixty nine percent. Democrats do something nobody thought they could do.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Not just pick up the House, but they knocked off
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: six incumbent Republican senators six incumbent Republican senators and took
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: control of the Senate. Barack Obama was at eighty percent
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: among Democrats with job approval July twenty ten, and he
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: was a seventy six percent among Democrats in July twenty fourteen.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Now what's interesting is in twenty ten, Democrats, while they
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: lost seats in both the House and the Senate, they
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: hung on to the Senate. They lost the House. In
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen they lost seats in both chambers, and by
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: that time they indeed also lost the Senate, so kind
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: of a mixed back. Donald Trump. Donald Trump's approval rating
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: among Republicans in twenty eighteen was actually eighty eight percent,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: and most recently it is now seventy eight percent. Was
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: one of the most recent that I looked at with Gallup.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: I don't want to sit here and say that there
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: is a that you see. I think there is certainly
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: correlation here. It is not necessarily definitive, but I think
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: it's fair to say the following, which is anything below
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: seventy wave, anything above above eighty, certainly above eighty five
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: into the eighties, the party in power is going to
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: do well when you're sitting in the seventies with your
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: own party, right, and we've seen Trump is now dipping
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: below eighty among his own party for the first time.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: We saw that with Obama twenty fourteen, and so I
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: think it's because what that does is that it's sort
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: of an enthusiasm measurement. And I think this is what
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I would remind my friends on the Blue Team, of
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: which is Republicans do have a fairly high floor here.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Right The President's popularity among his base is holding up
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: better than you might think given everything he's been doing
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: with this economy. Now, look, it's possible the bottom falls
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: out here if this war with a run just has
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: no end in sight. I think that the direction of
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: this war could creator And that is something that you
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: saw this And there was a big sort of a
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: bunch of anonymous quotes and playbook earlier this week about
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: that very issue, this sort of fear if you will,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: that Democrats that excuse me, fear if you will, that
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: this Iran war will get so unpopular. You're already seeing it,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: right that even even among the self described Maga folks
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: who actually stuck by him at the start of the
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Iran war, despite Mega influencers questioning this decision, now MAGA
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: voters are looking a little almost very similar to mega
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: influencers on that front. So look, ultimately, like I said,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: over the last eighteen months, in some ways the picture
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: hasn't changed, and if you look gets sort of the
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: long developments that have taken place, Democrats have made a
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: lot more progress in putting themselves in a position to
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: win control of both the House and the Senate than
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Republicans have of putting themselves in a position to defend
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: both the House and the Senate. That said, I think
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: on the House side, certainly Republicans have made it have
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: gotten some court rulings that are going to make it
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit harder for Democrats to get to get
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: the big House majority they were hoping for. So we're
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: going to probably be looking at a very narrow or
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: somewhat narrow House majority, and the Senate is clearly in play.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: But there are two wild cards that are going to
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: impact this election over the next hundred days. Wild Card
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: one is, of course Donald Trump. He's a grievance machine.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: He does more speeches like he did last Thursday, with
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: this absurd election denihilism. It does nothing to motivate his
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: base and it only seems to you send public incumbents
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: fleeing for the ills, right, none of them want to
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: be seen next to him when he's talking about any
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: of that stuff. If he's going to have more, if
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: he's going to continue to have these daily, if not weekly,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: announcements on tariffs, which are only essentially tax increases on
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: the American consumer in an electioneer seems like bad headlines
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: to be generating out of the White House on a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: near daily basis. And now the Iran war looks like
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: we're nowhere near getting towards an end. And if anything,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: you have Donald Trump out there saying, well, we don't
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: need the straight ufor moves. We could just walk away.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: I think he said at some point on Wednesday that
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: you know, between the United States and and and then control,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: the United States currently has over Venezuela's oil, that that
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: that combination means that the United States it doesn't matter,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: they don't care. But the problem is the rest of
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the world needs some oil out of the straight and foremos. Right.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: And guess what. Our economy is not disconnected from the
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: rest of the world. And if the rest of the
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: world struggles with the global economy, trust me so well.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Our economy there is no moat. There's no economic moat
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: that can be built here. I know Donald Trump thinks
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: you can build this moat that will somehow make create
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: this golden age of economic growth for the United States
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: at the expense of the rest of the world. Well,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: let's just say that is not how the American how
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the economy in general works. The second wild card, though,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: is Democrats, because one could argue Trump has done everything
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: he can to put the Democrats in a position to
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: win both the House and the Senate. Can the party
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: stay united enough to find electable candidates in these places
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: and not shoot themselves in the foot and not have
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: these intra party right, you know. The only things standing
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: in the way I think of Democrats winning the Senate
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: majority versus losing the Senate majority are as if they
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: nominate the wrong people in a handful of the Senate
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: races that are left and they end up coming up short.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: So one hundred days out, big picture, Democrats still the favorite.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: If anything, I kind of think I kind of think
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: that it's been a little bit of a mirage, this
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: sort of Republican optimism that we've seen this summer. I
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: understand where it comes from, right, all those court rulings
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: and what we've seen, but when you look at it
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: sort of from sixty thousand feet, this feels like it's
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: only headed in one direction. Right now, many of you
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: know I'm a college football fanatic, which means I've been
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: following this negotiations on Capitol Hill over It's one of
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the few things that are bipartisan because it's remember here,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: this is not a case of Democrats versus Republicans. This
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: is really the SEC and the Big Ten versus everybody else.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: So there aren't partisan lines. There are different kinds of lines.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: But look, in the next three weeks before the Senate
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: leaves for its August resets, I do expect Congress to
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: try to pass what could be the most consequential piece
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: of sports legislation that Congress has passed in a generation.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: It's called the Protect College Sports Act. The White House
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: is behind it, the NCAA is behind it, the NFL, NBA,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Major League Baseball, twenty four conferences, and more than two
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty schools are all in favor of this.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: There's two conferences that are against it, the SEC and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: the Big Ten. Now all that set I happen to
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: think it doesn't matter what happens to this bill because
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: I think it is headed for a courtroom shredder because
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: everybody to go siating this bill, and I mean everybody
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: has ignored the one group of people. The entire enterprise
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: in college sports runs up the players. So let me
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: start with what this bill actually will do, because it
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: is sweeping. It would give the NCAA and the conferences
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: and antitrust exemption, essentially legal immunity to do things courts
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: keep telling them they can't do right, like put a
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: cap on what an athlete gets paid, or limit how
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: often or when they can transfer schools, or setting eligibility
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: rules five years, six years, medical red shirts, things like that.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: It would let schools pool their metia ites, it would
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: ban coaches from bailing mid season. It's everything, and it
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: would be federalized. Well, think about who's in the room
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: writing this bill. They are three Senators Ted Cruz, Maria Cantwell,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Eric Schmidt. Those are states that are represented where their
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: schools are in mostly the SEC and the Big Ten,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: and those two conferences keep sending over their revision demands
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: before they'll sign out on it. By the way, advising
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: the White House effort on this is a New York
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Yankees executive by the name of Randy Levine. And then
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: of course there's Cody Campbell, who if you follow college
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: football very closely, he is basically the biggest donor to
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Texas Tech Athletics there in West Texas. But you know
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: who's not in the room. There is not one of
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: the five hundred thousand athletes this bill governs. There are
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: former athletes that have been consulted, but not current ones.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And it's not because they were excluded from the meeting.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: But there's no one to invite, right College athletes have
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: no union, there's no bargaining agent, there's no institution with
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the legal authority to say yes or no on their behalf.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: They are the object of this legislation, but they are
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: not a party to it. And this is why I
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: am convinced this legislation is going nowhere until there's collective parking.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: And here's how you know the money conversation is happening
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: without the players, because the revisions being negotiated right now
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: that have been reported out of various league meetings we
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: keep hearing about in various places. They're all about the
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: size of the cap. Right, how much can they cap
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: spending if you will. The bill locks in a twenty
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: one point three million dollar revenue share per school, tough
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: new rules shutting down these booster collective collectives that also
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: give extra money to these players. But here's the problem.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: The actual market right now is actually forty to fifty
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: million at the top schools, So this bill has written
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: will end up being a pay cut roughly half at
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: the top end. The conferences know this, so they're negotiating
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: a fix. They want a separate retention pool twenty to
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: thirty million more per school. Maybe put a luxury tax
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: on the big spenders, so you've got cap levels, retention money,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: luxury taxes. Huh. Kind of sounds like a collective bargaining agreement, right.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: That is literally the agenda of every collective bargaining agreement
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: negotiation and the history of professional sports. Right. Randy Levine,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: when he's in baseball, bargains those exact items with the
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: players union in baseball. That's his day job. And here
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: he and others are trying to build a college version,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: except there's nobody across the table. They are drafting the
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: management half of the agreement of a labor deal with
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: no agreement from the labor side. And they're going to
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: somehow get federal immunity to do this. But look, in
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: every professional sports league in this country, the salary cap
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: exists for one reason, and one reason only the players
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: agreed to it. The NFL cap, the NBA cap, and
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the NHL cap. We'll see if MLB does it. Every
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: one of them was collectively bargained, and that agreement is
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: precisely what makes them legal. It's called the labor exemption.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: You can restrain a labor market in America if labor
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: consents through its union. Baseball, for instance, has an antitrust exemption.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: They've had one for essentially one hundred years, and it
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: coexists with the strongest union in sports. There is no league, none, zero,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: that operates a cap on work or pay without a
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: union's signature on it until this bill. This bill takes
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: the restraint and skips the consent of the players. It's
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: a take it or leave it labor law. The schools
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: and the conferences want to decide what the athletes deserve,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: and the athlete's role is simply to just say, thank you,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: may I have another And I'm going to tell you
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: what the courts have done with this arrangement every single
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: time they've seen it. In nineteen ninety eight, the NCUBA
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: capped assistant coaches' salaries, and guess what federal appeals court
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: struck it down, cost the NCAA fifty four and a
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: half million dollars. Then, of course you had the famous
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Obeanon case. Then in twenty twenty one, the Alston case,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: where the Supreme Court ruled nine to nothing, not five
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: to four, nine to nothing, that the NCAA compensation limits
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: get full antitrust scrutiny. Just as Kavanaugh wrote separately, and
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I'm going to paraphrase this, price fixing labor is flatly
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: illegal everywhere else in America, and the nc DOUBLEA is
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: not above the law. And yet they're trying to get
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Congress to pass something that looks just like this. Now,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: can Congress override that with an exemption? Technically they can,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: But look at the track record on exemptions. The courts
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: hate them. They call baseball's exemption and aberration. They refuse
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: to extend it one inch, not even to football. Every
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: ambiguity in this statue will be litigated, and seventy years
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: of precedent, say courts resolve ambiguity against the cartel, and
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: in this case, the cartel is the universities, the boosters,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: and the conferences, and parts of this bill aren't just narrow,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: they're constitutionally exposed. The provision reportedly capping specific named conferences
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: at nineteen members Congress writing commercial rules for private organizations
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: by name. That's begging for a bill of attainder challenge.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: And I didn't even go to law school. Meanwhile, the
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: lead lawyer from the House Settlement, that's the settlement that
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: made decision that all these athletes get paid. It's called
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: the House Settlement. Anyway, the lead lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler, is
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: already on the record saying Congress cannot rewrite terms of
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: a court supervised settlement guaranteed. So this bill was sold
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: at the end of the lawsuits. It is a full
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: employment act for sports litigators. That's all it is. And
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: by the way, the bill's answer to this representation problem, well,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: they'll give athletes a seat on some governing boards. Section
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: one sixteen creates a commission to quote study whether collective
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: bargaining might be a good idea anybody a board seat,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: and a blue ribbon panel to decide whether labor should
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: have a say in what its compensation looks like in
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: exchange for essentially a wage cap that's imposed immediately in
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: any other industry. We have a name for that arrangement.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: It's called a company union and it was outlawed in
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five. So where the uh where does all
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: this leave us? Well? It pains me to say this,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: but anyways, scratch that, I want you to do this
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: and edit. I don't want to say it this way.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: So where does that lead us? Three tow them? So
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: where does that leave us? Well, honestly, I think Tommy Tupperville, right,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: who's an outgoing center he's running for governor. I was
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: telling you about earlier in the podcast, he might have
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the most defensible position in the Senate right now. His
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: alternative is very narrow. He just simply thinks Congress ought
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: to deal with two things, eligibility and the transfer issue.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Five years of eligibility, lock it in one free transfer,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: and then kill everything else. And essentially what Tupperville is
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: being what's left unset is let the unionizing happen organically,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: and then everybody will get back to the table. Now,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: the bill itself has a similar blind spot. It's still rule.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: It's still rules imposed on athletes without their consent Theupperville Bill,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: but it's a stop gap that is probably you can
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: probably navigate around the courts, and it would stabilize a
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: couple of things that have been causing the most day
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: to day chaos, right the transfers, portal and the player eligibility.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't cement a compensation system into federal law
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: before the players ever get organized. So you get to
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: fix the calendar problems now and essentially punt the issue
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: of compensation down the road. Because here's the bottom line.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Until there's a collective bargaining, until there's some sort of
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: union or collective bargaining in college sports, we're not going
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: to be in a good place. Period. These are now
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: professional athletes. Suck it up, universities, suck it up, conference chairs.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: You've got to actually treat the players like partners here. Now,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Congress could actually make it happen. They could force it.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: The federal labor law that covers unions only applies to
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: private employers. Most big athletic programs are public university and
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: several sec states flat out ban public employee bargaining. Michigan
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: athletes could organize tomorrow Alabama athletes legally can't, but Congress
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: can fix that patchwork. That's even a model. We've had
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: a separate, custom built labor law for railroads and airlines
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: since nineteen twenty six. You can write one for college sports,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: two players associations, one for the revenue sports football and
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: basketball to bargain the cap and the transfer rules, and
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: then frankly one for everybody else to bargain healthcare, scholarship, safety, etc.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: And then here's the hammer. The anti trust exemption only
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: turns on when there's a ratified collective bargaining agreement, no deal,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: no immunity. It's not a radical proposal. It is literally
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: how every single other sports league in America already works.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: So look, I am very I think this college bill fits.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: This is nothing. It is one sided. It is basically
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: trying to jam the players here because they're trying to
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: do this before players union develops. And I know some
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: of this is complicated. Are you going to have players
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: associations by conference? Is there going to be the sec
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: players union? And we also have these issues of are
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: they public employees are they private employees? Right? If you're
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: working for the collective, that's a private entity. If you're
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: working for the university, and if it's a state school,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: that's a public entity. So there's certainly a lot of
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: but the fact that Congress isn't touching that aspect of it,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: to me is the incredible blind spot, and it is why,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: for what it's worth, I don't expect this to actually pass. Now. Look,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: I got one more quick rant about this, and it's
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: this SEC temper chantrum where Greg Zanki said, well, we
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: may not like this and we may just pull out.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: You know. Look, I I'll own my own bias here
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: when it comes to the SEC. As many of you know,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I'm a huge Miami, a Hurricane fan, and I've seen
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: this movie with the SEC now for forty years. When
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Miami and the other independence Florida State Notre Dame ruled
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: college football in the eighties, the SEC was begging for
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: a new system because their teams weren't winning. When the
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Big Ten and the Rose Bowl held the leverage, the
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: SEC pushed to blow up the Bowl structure. Snubbed in
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: the BCS time for a playoff, the SEC demanded. The
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: pattern has never changed. Whenever the power sits somewhere else,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: the SEC demands a new system that it revolves around them,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: and the moment the SEC is on top, the system
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: must be frozen in place. And now they in the
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: Big Ten want a playoff structure and a legal framework
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: where those two conferences never have to compete on a
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: level playing field. Again, call it what it is, but
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: I call it college football nationalism. You know, instead of
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: America First, it's SEC first. And here's why I'm not
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: just self interested here. I actually think it's self defeating
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: for college football. Look, I'm actually not worried about Miami.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: They'll get into one of the two super conferences if
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: college football decides to destroy itself and become a forty
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: team semi pro league, all right, But I'm hoping that
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: isn't the answer, because I think the sport's superpower is
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: its geography. College football sells out one hundred thousand seed
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: stadiums in big cities and packs them in small towns.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: It's the only sport in America that genuinely lives everywhere.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: The SEC first path shrinks that. Maybe they want only
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: forty communities tops allowed to truly compete and rules written
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: to keep new challengers out permanently. That's not a league.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: It's a monopoly, and I guess if they're working with
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: the Big ten, call it a duopoly. Right. The NFL
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: face this exact choice. In nineteen sixty one, the Giants
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: and the Bears could have hoarded their own TV markets.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: They had every short term reason to do that. Instead,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Pete Rosel convinced the big market owners to pull everything,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: pull all their media dollars, pull all their revenues, split
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: it evenly, and then Congress passed a law to let
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: them do that. That decision is why Green Bay, Wisconsin,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: population a little over one hundred thousand, has an NFL team,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: And it's why the NFL is a twenty billion dollars
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: a year colossus. While every hoard your own market league
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: is a footnote. This bill actually offers college football the
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: same door. Let all one hundred and thirty eight schools
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: pull their media rights, and yet it's the SEC that
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: is blocking the door. If they take it, everybody makes
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: more money, including the SEC. They're they're choosing a bigger
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: slice of a smaller pie, and history says the pie
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: is the whole ball game. We shall see, all right.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: I got three other quick sidebars for you that caught
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: my attention. This week that I thought was necessary to
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: go through. First, the measles numbers this week ought to
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: stop every single politician in their tracks. We've now had
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: more measles cases this calendar year twenty twenty six than
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: we had in all of last year, and last year
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: was an incredibly shockingly high year for measle outbreaks. We've
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: had more than twenty two hundred cases already. It's the
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: highest number in thirty five years, and we're only in July.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: But ninety five percent of the cases are among people
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown. Let's
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: think about that for a second. This isn't some new
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: virus that scientists are still trying to understand. This is
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: the measles we had essentially eliminated in this country. Which
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: is why I think it's fair to say that Robert F.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: Kennedy Junior bears real responsibility for the climate we're in.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: And I don't say that as a political shot. I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: say it because the evidence points in that direction. Robert F.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Kennedy Junior is literally responsible for this rise, arguably almost
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: all on his own. No, he didn't invent vaccine skepticism,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: he just made it mainstream there's no public official in
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: America who has done more of the last two decades
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: to undermine the confidence, specifically in the measles vaccine than
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Obviously, I've this has been an
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: obsession of mine. I haven't been on it in a while,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: But long before he entered government, he spent years questioning
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: the measles vaccine despite overwhelming scientific consensus that it is
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: safe and extraordinarily effective. Now he has since acknowledged that
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: the combined vaccine, the MMR vaccine, is the best protection
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: against measles. Okay, and that's welcome, but please, he has
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: created all sorts of questions about vaccines, and once confidence
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: in public health is eroded, it takes years to rebuild,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: sometimes decades. Viruses don't wait for politics to catch up,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: So when vaccine vaccination rates slip, when communities lose heard immunity,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: and when measles returns after we'd essentially eliminate it, it's
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: impossible to separate those outcomes from the atmosphere that was created.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: This is not a partisan conclusion. Science is and partisan.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: We're just simply following cause and effect here. Politics rewards
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: people for creating doubts. So congratulations Arefkjnior. You've done it.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: Biology punishes you for creating doubt. And if these outbreaks continue,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: eventually somebody is going to pay a political price for
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's not this cycle, maybe it's next year. But
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: parents don't like discovering that their child got sick from
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: a disease modern medicine had already beaten. This shouldn't be
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: a cultural war issue. It should be a competency issue.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: And just shame on everybody involved in a allowing this
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: menace to public health. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Anywhere near
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: public policy, he is single handedly, he is single handedly
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: responsible for any of these deaths and measles. I wouldn't
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: be surprised if that man. I certainly think, I certainly
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: think he could be. You know, there's immunity as a
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: as a political as a government official. But after he
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: leaves office, some trial or is going to create some
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: civil litigation. Trust me, the Mam Donnie speech, his movement
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: versus his mayorality. Quick observation about what we saw from
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: zoning Mamdani earlier this week. Whatever your views are on
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Benjamin Yah and whatever your views are on Gaza I
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: think the mayor made an important political choice this week,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: and I think it may prove to be an important
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: political mistake. He delivered what amounted to an address to
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: the city, voted to whether Benjamin Naniah, who should be
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: arrested if he comes to New York for the United
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Nations General Assembly. Then, after walking through the legal realities,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: he acknowledged that the Mayor of New York City doesn't
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: actually have the authority to make that happen. Now, look,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna My point isn't whether netnya who deserves
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: to face prosecution from the International Criminal Court. That's a
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: separate debate. My point is about what a mayor chooses
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: to elevate. During the campaign, Mom Dannie, the candidate, repeatedly
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: argued that affordability, not Israel, would define his administration housing,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: cost of living, transit, making New York more affordable. And
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: yet when he had one of his biggest opportunities to
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: use the New York City mayor oral bully pulpit, he
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: decided to give a formal address not about housing, not
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: about affordability, public safety, quality of life. He gave one
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: about foreign policy. Now, look, that's what your he could
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: have answered a reporter's question on this issue. He could
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: have issued a written statement calling on the federal government
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: to hand net Nyahu over. Instead, he chose a formal
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: address to the city. And I think it tells us
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: something because it's also clear that Mamdanni isn't simply trying
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: to govern New York City. He's trying to lead a
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: movement inside the Democratic Party. He wants to mainstream his
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: version of democratic socialism. That's his larger project, and up
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: until now, I'd actually argue he's been remarkably disciplined about
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: that project. He's had these bite sized governing initiatives that
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: have been brilliant. His ice cream regulation, you know, he
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: got rid of red tape on selling ice cream in
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: certain restaurants. The World Cup, traffic planning, the everyday municipal issues.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: I think he's been really it's sort of you know,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: it's been these little small ball stuff to sort of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: get shipped down on issues, and I think it's projected
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: competence in the first few months, and it might have
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: even encouraged skeptical voters to say, maybe the guy really
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: is focused on making city government work better. That's how
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: you could make a movement go mainstream. You don't start
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: by convincing everyone to agree with your ideology. You start
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: by convincing people you can govern. This is why I
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: think this speech on net Niyahu was such an unforced error.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: Instead of expanding his coalition, he reminded every skeptical voter
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: why they were skeptical of him in the first place.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Fairly or unfairly, speeches like this reinforce the perception that
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: underneath the affordability message, the real passion is Middle East politics.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: For him, that's why he ran, That's what motivated him,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: and he specifically wants to try to change America's relationship
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: with Israel. Whether that's an entirely fair characterization almost becomes
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: beside the point. Politics is about what voters conclude, and
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: I think this made it harder, not easier, for him
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: to mainstream the movement he says he's trying to build.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: And it also made me wonder for the first time
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: whether we're looking at someone whose next campaign is not
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: going to be for reelection in twenty twenty nine as
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Mayor of New York City, what it's going to be
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: for the United States Senate in twenty twenty eight, for
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: a seat currently held by Chuck Schumer, because that speech
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: sounded much more like the opening argument of a national
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: politician than the priorities of a mayor six months into
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: his job. Mom, Donnie was not born in the United States,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: so we can't run for president, but he can run
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: for any other office. Look, the Middle East has become
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: trapped in a cycle where every side can point to
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: the moment they were wronged, and too few people are
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: willing to acknowledge the suffering of anyone else. Hamaspar's responsibility
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: for decades of terrorism and for October seventh, Israel's government
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: has faced very fair intense international scrutiny and criticism for
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: its conduct in Goaza. Both of those statements can be
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: true at the same time. But if your job is
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: mayor of New York City, a city that is home
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: to one of the largest Jewish populations anywhere in the world,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: people are entitled to expect that your biggest speeches are
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: going to be mostly about New York City, not the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Middle East. And that's the political reality. And that's why
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: I think this week Mamdandi Mamdani made his own political
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: project just a little bit harder. Finally, before we get
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: to my interview with Nartanda. One piece of good news
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: if you've been listening to me rant about primaries for
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the last year. I had John Opdyke of open Primaries
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and one
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: of the things we discussed wasn't politics, it was constitutional law,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: because I think as we've been asking the wrong question
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: for years. Everybody argues that whether open primaries produce better
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: candidates better government. Look, we can have that debate, but
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: I think there's a more fundamental question. When the government
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: creates an election, pays for it, administers it, staffs, it
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: prints the ballots, counts the votes. Can the government then
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: tell millions of qualified citizens, sorry, you can't participate unless
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: you join a private political organization. That's a constitutional question.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: And Open Primaries has now filed an amicus brief this
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: week in an Oregon case making exactly this argument, And
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: I have to say, I think they're finally litigating the
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: issue from the right place here Amicus Brief Court, this
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: is what's needed. Their argument is refreshingly simple. Primary elections
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: aren't private club meetings. They're public elections. They're established by law,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: run by government employees, paid for by taxpayers, and in
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: many legislative districts, they effectively decide who's going to hold
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: the actual office. And if that is true, and your
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: right to participate should not depend on whether you've signed
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: up for one of two private political parties, think about
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: this contradiction. If I told you had to join the
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: Rotary Club before you could vote for mayor, you say,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: that's a joke, you'd laugh. I told you you had
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: to join the Chamber of Commerce before you could vote
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: for governor, you'd say, well, that's unconstitutional, because it is.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: Yet we've somehow accepted the idea that government can require
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: millions of Americans to affiliate with one of the two
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: private organizations before they're allowed to participate in what is
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: often the election that actually matters. The First Amendment protects
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: your freedom to associate, and it also protects your freedom
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: freedom not to associate. Government should not force you to
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: surrender one constitutional right in order to exercise another. And
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: that's the heart of this argument. And this is why
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: I think it matters because for years this debate over
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: primary reform has been treated as a policy debate. Well,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: I think it's the civil rights issues for all these
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: registered independents and no party registered voters who are locked
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: out of voting in some primaries. Nearly half the country
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: now identifies as politically independent, and in quite a few
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: states they're being told they can help pay for an election,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: but they can't participate in that election. Now, we'll see
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: what the Oregon courts ultimately do, and maybe this ends
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: up in the Supreme Court and we can get rid
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: of closed taxpayer funded primaries forever. But I'm just ecstatic
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: that we are seeing what I believe is the right
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: question that needs to be asked. Does the right to
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: vote in a public election come from your citizenship or
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: does it come from your party membership? Because if the
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: answer is citizenship, then I think the constitutional conversation about
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: closed primaries is going to be a route inside that
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: if it ever gets there. How with that, we'll sneak
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: in a break when we come back to my conversation
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: when near a tandem. Then on the other side of
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: that top five lists, some of your questions, we'll get
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: chatting them to test. Top five, Top five to test
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: top five. All right, let's do my top five list
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: this week. It is top five governor's races that are
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: most likely to change parties. I'll tell you, you know, the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: first the top couple on my list were easy to get.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: The sort of I would argue, sort of three through
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: eight are really close together, right, it's kind of like,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: you know, you can if somebody wanted to take issue
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: with one of the races I put in there instead
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: of one of the others I didn't, I would totally understand.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: So I'll start this way. Number five on my list Oregon.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: This is uh, the incoming governor co Tex. She is
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: not really you know, this is there's been unhappiness of
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the by the Oregon electorate with the leadership. They've gotten
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: out of the governor's mansion for quite some time, and
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: yet Democrats they'll change candidates and they keep holding the office. Well,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Cotech's trying to win reelection. She's going to face a rematch,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: this time without a third party candidate Christine Drazen Here.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: This race is just going to be This is a
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: neck and neck race, and this time if it's a
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: referendum on the incumbent. The one thing benefiting Governor co
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Tech is the fact that the atmosphere is a democratic here.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: But what's not helping her is Governor's races sometimes can
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: be insulated from that national conversation. And so number five
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: on my list Oregon Gov and co Tech. Number four
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: on my list is the open Republican current seat that's
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: currently held by Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who, by the way,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: is going to be coming on this podcast pretty soon.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: And that is that seat there. I've got a number
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: four in my list of most likely to flip. We've
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: seen Vivik Ramaswami, the Republican nominee, very polarizing figure. He
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: has struggled to build a lead on Amy Acting, the
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee. There's been plenty of polls that have actually
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: shown her up up point or two. I think that's
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: the challenge Republicans find themselves in. Look, the good news
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: for Republicans is Ramaswami is willing to spend his own
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: money and he's going to outspend Amy Acting here. But
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: she's kind of been keeping her powder dry. She's been
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: holding back her money. She's she's done a good job
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: of fundraising. She does not she can't match Ramaswami dollar
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: for dollar, but she's been holding back a little bit.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: I imagine she'll hit the airwaves in the next next couple
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: of weeks, because the once you go up, you never
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: want to have to come down. So she's probably waiting
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: until that happens. But with all the national money that's
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: going to be poured into that center race, particularly on
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: the Democratic side of the eye, it's a coin flip race,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: pure and simple. And I've told you before Ramaswami proposed
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: that unpopular consolidation of Ohio universities Dojah's unpopular, so he's
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: playing a lot more defense, I think than he planned
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: to do. Number three on my list is Wisconsin. We
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: don't know who the Democratic nominee is going to be.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: It is a total and complete mess. There is a
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: panic that he's a DSA candidate is going to end
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: up the nominee. The outgoing governor, Tony Evers suddenly decided
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: to drop his neutrality. He's in won't his current lieutenant
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: governor had to drop out. His former lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: is not getting his endorsement for some reason, and instead
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: they convinced the Milwaukee County executive to get back in
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: the race, and Evers endorsed him. The irony is that is,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: if you believe the most recent polling if the party.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: I understand that there there's some skepticism about Mandela Barnes,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: given that he lost to Ron Johnson back in twenty
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: twenty two, but it was a fairly close race. He
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: basically ran as a generic Democrat and lost by about
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: a point and a half. The perception was always Barnes
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: too progressive, was he too tied to the Well, he's
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: not a socialist. He is not the most far left
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: candidate in this primary, and he's kind of a known
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: entity in polling shows that against the Republican nominee, Congressman Tiffany,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: he'd actually lead in an initial horse race matchup if
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: you believe the market number. So it's a total mess here.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Democrats have tied their hands. I think it now looks
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: more likely than ever that there's going to be a
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: socialist nominee. And this is going to be quite the
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: test boy both Michigan and Wisconsin. Right the whole hand
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: thing right, Michigan and Wisconsin could have high profile Democratic
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: nominees that are either DSA or DSA adjacent. It's the
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: ultimate test to see if Democrats can sell socialism statewide.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: And two of America's most important swing states. Number two
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: on my list is Kansas governor. Right now it is look,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Democrats have had a two terms. Kansas has been a
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: windshield wiper here. The primaries in a couple of weeks
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: will finally know who the nominees are. But you have
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: to give Republicans the slide advantage here. We'll see. I
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: think the Kansas Center race could get competitive, don't. I
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: don't think this is I don't think this is a
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: total impossible race for Democrats to win. Lord Kelly obviously
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: not able to seek a third term here, But I
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: do think the I do think the the barrier is
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: quite the barrier's quite high. And Number one on my
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: list is Iowa. I mean Rob sand is consolidating support.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: He got the Senate nominee that he's more comfortable running
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: with than Josh Turrek. Republicans are very divided. They've got
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: an outsider candidate who's had to defend all the time
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: he spends in Kansas rather than Iowa. Sand's already been
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: trying to pain him as a part time resident. He
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: starts off behind pure and simple, and Sand is going
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: to have plenty of money from the outside, and he's
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: got thanks to his wife's family quite a bit of
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: personal money to use if that is necessary, So I
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: have Iowa in the number one slot of seats most
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: likely to flip. So there's your top five list for
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: the week, As always, brought to you by my Friend's Family.
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  Speaker 1: can visit gambling heelplinema dot org. You can call eight
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• 1:21:24
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  Speaker 1: zero seven eight six seven if you're in Louisiana ask Chuck.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: All right, let's wrap up the podcast. Do a little
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: Ask Chuck. I'm gonna try to squeeze in five questions
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: here today. This one comes from Donatello and from Kansas's
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: second District. I believe that is southeast part of the
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: state there an He writes, Hey, on a recent segment
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: of Ask Chuck, you were asked to USWD on your
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: creaky chair. Please do not do that. I love when
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: you get so worked up that it sounds like your
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: chair is enthusiastically agreeing with you. Check podcasts. One of
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: my favorite podcasts, lests do keep up the great creaky
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: commentary coming Dono Tello. Thanks. I am trying to do
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: my best here in my Florida studio here this chair,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: and it's I appreciate you asking me not to do it.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: The WD forty, it's the chair handle that's creaky. So
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: it's not even clear where the w you know where
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: all the places you would assume that the WD forty
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: could work, it just hasn't. So I'm hopeful I'm trying
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: to be a little more self aware about the chair.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: You know, I know now you can hear it. See now,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: i feel like I've got to like perform, Come on, chair,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: show me the creakiness. But I know that that can
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: be a little annoying, so I do want to fix that.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: Dean from I assume it's Long Island. He goes, Dean
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: from I don't know what else to assume there, right,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: other than Long Island. And he claims this is his
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: fifth He's now in the five timers club, and he says, hey, Chuck.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: Recently a younger colleague used the term jump the shark,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: and I had to explain to him where the term
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: came from. What is your favorite political term that most
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: people have no idea about its origin? Thanks Dean from
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: Long Island. All right, Dean, I did a little a
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: research on this because I was trying to decide, first
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: of all, is jump the shark a political term? Right?
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: You know, by the way, did you have to explain
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: who the funds was and all of that? But I'll
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: give you one because the origin story is a pretty
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: good one. Smoke filled room, Right, we talk about anytime
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: the establishment party bosses the idea that a decision is
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: made about a nominee behind the scenes, not by voters. Right,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: The phrase smoke filled room is sort of used almost
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: as a given right, So of course I decided to
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: look up what is its origin? Well, this one is
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: a good one. It actually dates back to the nineteen
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: twenty Republican National Convention that was held in Chicago, because
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: back then it feels like the Republican National Convention was
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: always held in Chicago. The convention was dead locked in
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, and a small group of party bosses sat
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: around a cigar haze in the early morning to broker
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: the convention to decide who would be the nominee. The
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: nomination ended up going to future Teapot Dome president Warren G. Harding,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: And it was an ap reporter named Kirk Simpson who
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: wrote that the nominee was chosen in a quote smoke
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: filled room. And ever since that phrase became pretty popularized.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: So I'd say smoke filled room because I've never been
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: in one for politics. By the time I started covering politics,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: I feel like we at least kicked all the smokers
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: to the outside. It was, you know that most of
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: the by the time the nineties came around, and certainly
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: in the early twenty first century, nobody was smoking cigars
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: inside conventions or frankly, inside many buildings, many buildings at all.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: All right, next question comes from Ricks and he writes, Hey,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: thanks for all you do the mornings. He says, here
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: my mornings start with a five am Chuck podcast are
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: always better. All right, Well, I appreciate that you recently
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: mentioned that President Trump's nomination of his former defense attorneyde
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: Blanche for Attorney General, and it reminded me of President
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: Kennedy appointing his brother, Robert Kennedy to the same role.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: How was that appointment viewed at the time, and are
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: there any interesting parallels today? Thanks for your work. Yes,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: And in fact, a lot of people thought it was
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: a bridge too far, and we passed a law basically
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: getting rid of that kind of nepotism, that presidents couldn't
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: do that. So in nineteen I was wanting to get
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the history I knew Congress passed a law to basically
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: prevent that kind of appointment in the future after Kennedy
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: appointed his brother attorney general. So they passed along sixty seven.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: It was the Federal Anti Nepotism Statute, And here was
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: the it was sort of here's the definition of relative.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: It says this that a public official, including the president,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: may not appoint So it's not just the president right
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: anybody who can appoint somebody to any sort of government position,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: a civilian position, and an agency over which this official
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: would exercise actual authority, right have a budget, hire and
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: fire people, etc. The statute defines relative broadly to include spouses, parents, children, siblings, nieces,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: nephews and aunts, uncles, in laws, and several other close
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: family relationships. So now the question is does it actually
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: apply to cabinet positions. The law was generally understood to
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: bar president from appointing a close family member to the cabinet,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: But in twenty seventeen, when Trump appointed Jared Kushner as
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: a senior White House advisor, the Department of Justice's Office
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: of Legal Counsel, which was controlled by Jeff Sessions at
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: the time and the President, concluded that the anti nepotism
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: law does not apply to appointments within the White House
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: Office because a separate statute gives presidents much broader authority
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: over their White House staff. So anyway, there is a
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: loophole there for West Wing's staff, if you will, at
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: least at this point. But the fact is yes, after
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: the Kennedy brothers, Congress did pass this anti nepotism law,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: which The intent was to prevent essentially presidents from appointing
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: more family members like that to the cabinet. The question
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: is what do we do now going forward with the situation? Right,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: this is what the Trump presidency has done. He has
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: done things we never contemplated presidents would do, like appoint
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: their personal attorneys attorney general. I guess we're gonna have
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: to pass a law saying that if that nobody can
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: be appointed attorney general if the president has retained that
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: person as legal counsel at any time in their history.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: Probably not a hard law to get passed in Congress.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: I bet right. Next question, could any Democrat possibly running
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: for president put old swing states like Florida, Ohio, or
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: Iowa in play? Thanks Josh. Look, I'm not ruling out
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: Iowa or Ohio. I'm not there in Florida. I think
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: Florida's got a a. I think Florida is a or
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: two away that the state party is a mess. If
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: they can win a major state wide office Senate or governor,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: they have an opportunity to rebuild their state party. And
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: that's possible. But if Democrats win the governorships in Iowa, Ohio,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: which to me are very realistic, as you just heard
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: from my top five list. I think, I think, I
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: certainly think Iowa is a bit more in play than Ohio,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: and especially with the tariffs. I mean again, you know
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: Iowa in particular, I'm I'm look, I'm less, I'm less
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: convinced Ohio can genuinely be a swing state. I'm not
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: saying Democrats can't carry Ohio again, but I think, you know,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's like the fifteenth swing state. You know
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: that that when when when Democrats already have three hundred
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: electoral votes type of thing, it's not going to be
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: the tipping point state. Iowa. On the other hand, though,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: I think that I was a little bit, I think
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: a little more fluid, and I certainly think this turn
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: toward protectionism is absolutely a recipe for scrambling Iowa's politics
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: going forward, frankly all of the Prairie politics, because the
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: agg community has benefited greatly from lower trade barriers. All right,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: last question for the weekend, and this is Kelly X
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: in Texas's twenty six congressional district represented by Brandon Gill.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: Five timer here, Kelly Wrights pulling in Texas shows the
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: Senate race between pakst and Tallarrico very close, or the
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: Republican candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and AG maintain larger leads.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: Could tall Rico generate any cotail effect for Democrats? Are
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: we more likely to see tickets splitting? Do you see
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: this becoming a broader trend in other purple closely divided
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: states and give bringing intelligence and reason to political discourse?
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: Fins up? Look that a Dolphins fan, you know, by
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: the way, I wish this fins up business had been
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: a thing back when I was a kid. I might
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: be I might have become more of a Dolphins fan.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a it's kind of a cool thing
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: to say, but Dolphins fans never I never heard fins
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: up back then when I was a kid, But I
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: kind of I kind of dig it. I kind of
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: dig it these days, it's genuinely. Governor's races are more
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: likely to have coattails sometimes than than senate races, for
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: one thing, although this is a unique type of senate race,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: and I do think you're more like you know, it's
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: interesting given the unpopularity and the character concerns about Paxton,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: ticket splitting seems inevitable here, right, you know? There's no
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: doubt in my mind. If Taller Rico's going to win,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: he he's going to have to win people that are
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: likely to vote for Greg Abbott as well, right, But
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: that's going to be something I'm I'm actually curious to
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: see what will the gap be. I mean, look, I
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: think Gina, you KNOWSA is going to do better than
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: people think against Greg Abbot. I think there's a little
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: bit of Abbot fatigue. He's got an enormous amount of money,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt about it. But I'm you know this,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: the school choice has been very polarizing in the state,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: less by party and almost more by rural urban suburban.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: So I you know, I think that that I'm very
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: curious what that GAP's going to be. There is one
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: way tall Rico can have coattails. It's more financial coat tails. Right.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: The more money that he brings in, well, that helps
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: everybody else. And in this case, because tall Rico appears
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: to be the leading fundraiser on the Democratic side, he
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: essentially quote unquote leads the ticket. Ironically, though on the
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: Republican side it's really Greg Abbott that's leading the ticket
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: on that front. So I certainly think tall Rico brings
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: resources into the state. Uh and that, and you know,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: then you have coordinated campaigns and you get out the
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: vote effort, and my guess is you will see a
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: tight correlation of the tall Rico. You know, also vote
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: in Harris County, Travis County, Dallas County. The question is
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: going to be in South Texas, right, Taller Rico did
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: very well in South Texas during the Democratic primary, so
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: do you know you know so didn't have his competitive
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: primaries Talerico did. I think the question is whether is
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: can she perform as well as we expect Tallarico to
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: do in South Texas. But I've seen those Saint polls
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: as well, and it is made. I'm not I'm not
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: going to say I'm convinced that Paxxton is going to win,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: but I think this is as I said earlier, I
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: think Texas is a much harder hill to climb for
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: tall Rico and Democrats. Then folks realize the the and
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: you can almost imagine what you're going to see, right,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: you know, an unpopular Donald Trump in October around the country.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean he won't be popular enough to say
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: to send to Alabama to try to save Tommy Tupperville
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: from getting upset by Doug Jones, or to send him
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: to West Texas to try to help Paxton get out
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: the vote there, because there's concern that maybe voters aren't
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: that enthusiastic about him. And that's the odd danger that
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: I think Democrats in some of these redder states where
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: they are getting traction is that while you know, the
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: last thing Susan Collins would want is Donald Trump to
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: show up in her state, I'm not even sure Michael
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: Watley by October will want Donald Trump in his state.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton, will you know? Ashley Hinson might certainly. Pete Ricketts,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: will you know? I do. And that's, you know, it's
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: a good way to bookend this with this question. If
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: Republicans saved the Senate and end up only losing the House,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: that will be the reason. It'll be because there were
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: just too many, too many red states that Trump could
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: still be a net positive for the Republican candidate, at
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: least at getting the vote out. That that caused the
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: Democrats to come up short. That's if they come up short.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: I think that that's how that would happen there, all right,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: Enjoy the weekend in the next twenty four hours. I
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: hope to be one of one of a handful of
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: people who are contributing to this billion dollar box office
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: smash for the Odyssey, and I look forward to not
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: contributing to the ridiculous debate taking place online about the Odyssey.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: What's amazing is there's a whole bunch of people looking
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: like idiots online discussing The Odyssey, while everybody else goes
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: to the movie theater and says, Wow, what a great movie. Now,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous that this thing has gotten such
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: great reviews. I hope it lives up to the hype
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: once I go see it. But I will say this,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: I've yet to be disappointed in a Christopher Nolan movie yet,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: and I don't expect to now. With that I'll see
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: in about seventy two hours until we upload again.