Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - The Circus In The Senate Judiciary Committee + The Elections That Changed The World

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Full Episode - The Circus In The Senate Judiciary Committee + The Elections That Changed The World · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: as some sort of broker. So if your default is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: it's across the board is what they're trying to do.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're advocating for you.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and then compares them to every single plan available to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: find the best one that will work for you and
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Hello there and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast. I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: am the namesake of said show. I've got something a
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: tiny bit new I'm going to try later in the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: podcast today, something I'm calling Wednesday's Issue. Those of you
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of a certain age who grew up watching local TV,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: because nothing else was on when you got home from school,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: you may remember Wednesday's Child. It was sort of a
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: focus on somebody doing something unique or whatever in the community. Well,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: think of this as Wednesday's issue, if you will. The
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: idea is pretty simple. Once a week, I hope, I
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  Speaker 1: want to take one of these problems that everybody in
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  Speaker 1: politics is very good at complaining about, but we rarely
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  Speaker 1: actually spend enough time actually trying to solve the actual
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: problem and do a bit of a deep dive on
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: said problem. What is the problem? What have we tried?
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  Speaker 1: What have we learned? Why didn't it work? And if
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  Speaker 1: we were actually serious about making things better, what might
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  Speaker 1: we try next? So I don't expect to have the
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  Speaker 1: answer every Wednesday. In fact, if I claim I do,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you should probably stop listening. I swear I'm not going
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: to be one of those arrogant podcasters. I alone can
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: fix it and know everything. But I do think we
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: need more political conversations that don't end with, and here's
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: why the other side sucks, or here's why everything sucks.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: kind of like a Jon Stewart segment or something like that.
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  Speaker 1: But before I dive into my Wednesday issue in full,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm going to end up starting with that crazy
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  Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee hearing with Jack Smith, and a reminder that
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  Speaker 1: we don't have a shared reality. And when you don't
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: have a shared reality, boy, can you go down some
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  Speaker 1: horrendous paths. Speaking of Mr. Stewart, by the way, apparently
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I was a punchline for him last night. And we
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: can keep going back even further, like when candidate Trump
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: attacked John McCain's military service in 2015. I do think
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's the beginning of the end of the marriage between
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  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
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  Speaker 2: It's not!
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  Speaker 1: He's still standing, you're not!
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  Speaker 3: He's not dead.
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  Speaker 1: He was just fired. For God's sakes. John, John, John, listen,
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  Speaker 1: I understand you've got to go back 15 years to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: look for punchlines, or I guess 11 years and all
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: this stuff. You might want to update your files a
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: little bit. I make fun of myself for all the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: times that I say that, hey, this is it. Now
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  Speaker 1: Republicans are finally going to break from Trump and It
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: is absolutely worth mocking at times. And at the same time,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: you know, don't be totally ignorant about it because the
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  Speaker 1: fact of the matter is Trump continues to lose Republican
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  Speaker 1: supporters every year. It just never goes as fast as
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: you or anybody else wants to see. But dude, I
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: wasn't fired. Some of us actually choose to leave. Have
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: you been fired yet? You know the difference. Anyway, but
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: thank you for making me a punchline and hopefully For
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: those of you that are now here wondering if I
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: was dead or alive, welcome to the Chuck Todd cast.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Stewart, for reminding people that I have
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  Speaker 1: not died. But I tease. But look, I want to
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  Speaker 1: also thank the New York Times for paying attention to
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  Speaker 1: a segment that was our lead segment on Super Tuesday
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  Speaker 1: with Chris Eliza and I. And it was this idea.
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  Speaker 1: Would you want Trump to campaign for you? And if so,
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  Speaker 1: which states? Well, the Times helpfully actually talked to nine
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  Speaker 1: different Republican Senate nominees, some incumbents, obviously, some challengers, and
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  Speaker 1: asked them, do they want Trump to campaign for them?
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  Speaker 1: And what was telling is who said yes. And you
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  Speaker 1: can kind of imagine it sort of went in line
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  Speaker 1: to what Chris and I were saying yesterday. And I
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  Speaker 1: just thought Sullivan said yes. And indeed, Trump is going
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  Speaker 1: to try to get out there because there are pockets
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: of Of of of base voters in Alaska that perhaps look,
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  Speaker 1: presidents don't visit Alaska very often. So I can see
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  Speaker 1: why Dan Sullivan, who needs an improved base turnout, is
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  Speaker 1: interested in having him there because it brings some it.
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  Speaker 1: It's a convening event in a state that is hard
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  Speaker 1: to have one event that sort of convenes the eyeballs
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  Speaker 1: of the whole state. Not surprisingly, Michael Watley in North Carolina, because, hey,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: when you're behind, you'll take any help you can get.
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  Speaker 1: John Husted that. given the registration advantage of Republicans have
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  Speaker 1: over Democrats in Ohio, they're gonna bring him, apparently he's coming,
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  Speaker 1: and he's coming to a town a little bit north
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  Speaker 1: of Dayton. It's probably the area I would pick if
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  Speaker 1: you were in, there's no doubt that they were trying
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  Speaker 1: to micro-target that a little bit. But the problem with
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  Speaker 1: bringing Trump is it's hard to hide him, right? And
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  Speaker 1: if you don't want voters in other parts of the
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  Speaker 1: states to see your full attachment to him. That could
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  Speaker 1: be tricky. And the other thing that, you know, why it's,
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  Speaker 1: I think, a double-edged sword for Husted is that he
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  Speaker 1: successfully got some people thinking Sherrod Brown is the incumbent.
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  Speaker 1: The more he hangs with Trump, the more it may
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  Speaker 1: remind people he's the incumbent. And of course, Ken Paxton,
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  Speaker 1: which was the one person that I thought was the
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  Speaker 1: only one really that could benefit from him. What was interesting,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: the two no's were John Sununu and Susan Collins. Not
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  Speaker 1: surprising there. I don't think anybody in New England, I
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  Speaker 1: don't think many New England Republicans that think they have
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  Speaker 1: a chance to win would want Trump to campaign for him.
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  Speaker 1: And the unclear no comments came from Roger Marshall, Ashley
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  Speaker 1: Hinson of Iowa and Roger Marshall of Kansas and Mike
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  Speaker 1: Rogers of Michigan. And in all those cases, it certainly
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  Speaker 1: makes sense to me why they don't want to show
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  Speaker 1: enthusiasm for it. The problem all three has is Trump
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  Speaker 1: comes and I think Trump's definitely going to go to Iowa.
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  Speaker 1: We'll see if he goes Because he's going to go
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  Speaker 1: to the third district in Nebraska, which to me makes
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  Speaker 1: a lot of sense if you're Todd Ricketts. Excuse me,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Pete Ricketts. Todd Ricketts is the Cubs owner. Pete Ricketts
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  Speaker 1: is the senator. That would make some sense to me,
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  Speaker 1: if you will. But we've already seen Ashley Hinson somehow
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  Speaker 1: had something else to do when Vance came to the state.
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  Speaker 1: Marshall has campaigned with Vance, so we'll see. But anyway,
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  Speaker 1: I just thought it was interesting. what the campaigns, the
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  Speaker 1: campaigns that were willing to say yes on the record,
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  Speaker 1: the campaigns that were willing to say no on the record,
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  Speaker 1: and then the three that didn't want to do it.
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  Speaker 1: Axios also, one other quick update before I get to
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  Speaker 1: sort of the heart of what I want to talk
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  Speaker 1: about today. Axios is an update about Trump and his
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  Speaker 1: propaganda ads. It is essentially, you know, some stories, you
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: know exactly what the story is, and then you just
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  Speaker 1: get confirmation. And I'm about to go off on confirmation
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  Speaker 1: bias in a minute. But sometimes the Trump White House
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  Speaker 1: is so predictable, you can sort of have an idea
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  Speaker 1: of exactly how this plays out. And according to Axios,
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  Speaker 1: it played out exactly how we had laid it out,
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  Speaker 1: which is he himself wants these ads. He himself is
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  Speaker 1: designing these ads. He's picking and choosing. He's finding the
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  Speaker 1: ways to do it. They're now hoping this gets more
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  Speaker 1: media attention. Would you compare it to the amount of
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  Speaker 1: money they're spending in the actual political advertising? It is
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  Speaker 1: chump change. But the just the idea, right? What he's
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  Speaker 1: doing is breaking a norm, taxpayer dollars for government propaganda.
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  Speaker 1: And you can argue anything taxpayer dollars pay for that
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  Speaker 1: promotes something government wants promoted. I guess if you disagree
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  Speaker 1: with it, you can claim it's propaganda. But this, when
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it this self-serving, it isn't really promoting the idea of
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  Speaker 1: vaccinations or seatbelt wearing. The type of taxpayer-funded PSAs that
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  Speaker 1: at least in theory are going to the public good
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  Speaker 1: Promoting Donald Trump doesn't necessarily go to the public good
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  Speaker 1: or doesn't help people in their own lives. But it's
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: interesting that the White House now says, oh, we love
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  Speaker 1: the media attention because the more media attention it gets,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the more the more. So it's clear they don't have
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: that big of a budget for these ads. And in
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: some ways it is designed, at least the White House
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  Speaker 1: is claiming it is designed for maximized attention. Mainstream media
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: outrage and maximized outrage from the political class. Well, I
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: guess congratulations. It is maximized outrage from the political class.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Before I get to my Wednesday issue and my deep
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: dive on sort of on public education, which we're going
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: to do, by the way, my interview is with Dana Bash.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: She's got a terrific new book called 15. Basically, it's
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: about elections that change the world. It's kind of a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: big deal, if you will. She IDs 15 of them.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: And let's just say we're not talking to many American
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: elections here. We're going way back. There's a there's a
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: conclave for a pope that is included. There is something
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: from there is something that takes us back to Caesar
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: that is included in the Roman Senate. So she has
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: a broad definition of election, which, of course, we get into.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: But I've known her. I've known Dana a long time
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: and she's a good friend. And I think you'll enjoy
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: that conversation. And I definitely think you'll enjoy the book
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: on that front. I will have a fun little top
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: five list. It's very 2026 ish. And I'll take some questions.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: But let me begin before I get into my big issue.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I have to talk about what happened yesterday at that
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that featured Jack Smith. I guess
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: we'll call it Jack Smith and the Atlanta Hawkeyes. The
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: former special counsel, Jack Smith, went before the Senate Judiciary
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Committee Tuesday. And I suspect the one thing most people
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: are going to remember from this hearing going forward is
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the moment Missouri Republican Senator Eric Schmidt thought he caught
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Jack Smith committing perjury. And he had his Perry Mason
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: moment all ready to go, right? And even had it
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: scripted out. He had sent previews to various conservative amplifiers
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: that were ready, influencers that were ready to just pounce
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: because they already know the story of Jack Smith, right?
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: They've already decided. Schmidt had apparently obtained some text messages
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: that referred to Jack Smith attending a basketball game in
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: February of 2024. Well, Schmidt had a theory. He suggested
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: that Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks game. And you
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: might think, why would Smith Why would Schmidt want to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: put Jack Smith at an Atlanta Hawks game, right? Perhaps
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Smith could have secretly met with Fulton County District Attorney
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Fannie Willis, who, of course, was investigating and trying to
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: prosecute Trump. Remember, there's this theory that Trump has manufactured
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: that there's this grand conspiracy and all these people have
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: been working together and There was this hidden hand of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the Biden Justice Department behind Fannie Willis, hidden hand going
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: on in New York and Jack Smith. And there was
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: just this elaborate, you know, you know, tentacles of an octopus. Right.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: It was in all these different places. So Schmidt's got
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: what he thinks is he's got him right. He is
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: going to set him up. And Schmidt's asking, you know,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: these questions of Smith and Smith is acting pretty confused.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: He said, he goes, you know, I don't think I
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: attended an Atlanta Hawks game. And Schmidt kept pushing. And
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: he essentially told Smith, be careful here because I've got
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: the evidence. And then Schmidt announced that Smith may have
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: just perjured himself before Congress. And then just for good measure,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Schmidt decided to call him a dirtbag. I mean, it
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: was just such a really kind of a sad, pathetic performance,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: especially when you realize he didn't have the goods. Jack
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Smith never had been to Atlanta Hawks basketball game. He
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: had gone to see the Iowa Hawkeyes, and it was
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the women's basketball team. It was Caitlin Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And he went to a game in College Park, Maryland,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: where Iowa was visiting Big Ten matchup against the University
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: of Maryland. He was not in Atlanta. It was not
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the Hawks. It was the Hawkeyes. Well, Amy Klobuchar figured
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: out what apparently neither Senator Schmidt nor anybody on his
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: staff had figured out. before Schmidt publicly accused a former
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: federal prosecutor of committing a crime. The basketball game was
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: in Maryland. Look, people make mistakes. Senators make mistakes. Journalists
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: make mistakes. I've made mistakes. Prosecutors, Eric Schmidt talked about
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: what a great prosecutor he was. He makes mistakes. But
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: it wasn't the most revealing part of this because after
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: it became clear what had happened, Schmidt didn't say, you
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: know what? I screwed it up. I messed up. Sorry
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: about that. He didn't apologize to Smith. He didn't retract
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the accusation. He stood by calling him a dirtbag. And
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: this is the part that should matter here, because the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: mistake itself is almost a perfect illustration of confirmation bias.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: You begin with a conclusion. Jack Smith was part of
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a grand conspiracy against Donald Trump. Fannie Willis was part
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of that grand conspiracy, too. Therefore, if I can put
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Jack Smith in Atlanta. You know, small town, right? You know,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: just by the way, as if just him being in
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Atlanta would have proven the conspiracy, but he couldn't even
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: place him in Atlanta, right? Perhaps I can connect these
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: two pieces of the conspiracy. Hey, he's just asking questions. Well,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: then somebody finds text saying Smith was going to a
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: basketball game. Hawkeyes becomes Hawks. Basketball becomes Atlanta. Atlanta becomes
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Fannie Willis. And suddenly a United States senator is publicly
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: accusing somebody of perjury. You're not following the evidence to
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: see where it takes you, Mr. Prosecutor. You're taking the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: evidence and trying to make it take you where you've
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: already decided you want to go. And here's the irony
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: to what Eric Schmidt did. The entire Republican critique of
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Jack Smith is that this is precisely what Jack Smith
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: was doing to Donald Trump, that he started with a conclusion,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Trump is guilty, and then went looking for the evidence
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: to prove the crime. So in the process of trying
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to prove Jack Smith suffered from confirmation bias, he Eric
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Smith gave us one of the most extraordinary demonstrations of
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: confirmation bias that I've seen in quite some time. And
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: then he wouldn't admit it, right? This is what is
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: just so wrong, particularly with Trump's Republican Party. People think
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: because Trump never backs down, sticks to his lies, that
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: they will look weak if they admit that they messed up, right?
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: And you gotta remember, Eric Schmidt is sort of a
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: product of Trump's Republican Party, not one that was ever
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: grounded in truth. Right. The pre-Trump Republican Party, a guy
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: like Eric Schmidt probably doesn't get a Senate nomination, but
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: he was able to succeed in Trump's Republican Party. And therefore,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: this is the world sort of that he lives in.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: And that's the bigger problem, because of evidence that confirms
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: your worldview matters. But evidence disproving your worldview doesn't change anything.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Then evidence doesn't really matter to you. And by the way,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: there was a pretty amazing bit of timing to all
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: of this. Axios published a story Tuesday morning saying Schmidt
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: is increasingly being taken seriously as a possible running mate
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: for JD Vance in 2028. Axios reported that Vance considers
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Schmidt trustworthy, intelligent, articulate, and here's the best part, a
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: deft political operator. And then a few hours later, the
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: deft political operator gave us the Atlanta Hawkeyes. Heck of
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: a job, Schmitty, right? I guess Schmidt happens here. But
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: there's something else about this hearing that bothers me a
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: lot more than just Eric Schmidt embarrassing himself. What Jack
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Smith actually investigated has been completely lost. So a little
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: reminder on what Jack Smith was investigating. Listening to parts
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: of this hearing, you could come away thinking Jack Smith
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: simply woke up one morning, decided he didn't like Donald
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Trump and launched a couple of criminal investigations. As we
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: all know, that is not what happened. This episode of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Kalshi.
• 18:41
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• 18:44
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  Speaker 1: on your mind. For example, one market, of course, that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I'm monitoring very closely is the U.S. Senate and control
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: of the U.S. Senate. As recently as September 10th, Republicans
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: were favored to retain control. Fifty two percent right to
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: to to buy a share of Republicans retain control is
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: going to cost you fifty two cents. would have only
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: cost you 48 cents to buy essentially a share of
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the prediction that Democrats would win control. But boy, have
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: things changed in two weeks, right? Democrats are now favored,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: according to the markets, the market to buy Democratic control
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: is up to 62 cents. The market for Republican control
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: is 38 cents. So it's the Democrats' high watermark so
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: far of the cycle. And so far, the number is
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: growing by the day. And so you know what that means.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: If you're confident, you think this number is only going
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: to grow, then you better hurry up and get in
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: now if you believe the Democrats are going to do this.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: And if you look at this and go, hey, I
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: think the Republicans are going to retain. And in fact,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: whether they retain or not, I think we're going to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: see some polls. There'll be the natural tightening of October.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I better get in on this, get a piece of
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: this Republican number before it goes back up. And, you know,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: either way, you can make a couple of bucks. So
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: it's fascinating. And depending on how you view the next
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: three weeks are going to go, not necessarily Election Day.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: But the narrative of the next three weeks may impact
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: which side of that equation you want to purchase. So
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: here's what you need to know about Kalshi. You're going
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: up against other traders directly. There's no house setting the odds.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Just people putting their own opinions and predictions on the line.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: So if you trade $ 25 and you use the code
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Chuck Todd, they'll throw in another $ 25 instantly. As always,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: please remember to trade responsibly. Smith was appointed in late
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: 2022 to oversee investigations that were already underway because Donald
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Trump chose to hurry up and launch his campaign for
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: president to force the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: The whole reason he announced in November of 2022 was
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: to derail the legitimate investigations that were that were taking
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: place in 2012. his behavior and what he did in
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: January 6th, and then what he did after leaving office
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: with classified documents, right? So one of the investigations was
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: about Donald Trump's handling of classified documents and the government's
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: efforts to recover those documents and his alleged attempts to
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: essentially obstruct the process. And of course, the other one
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: was about what was he doing to try to essentially
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: prevent the inauguration of Joe Biden. So There were investigations
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: of allegations of fraud and then came the effort to
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: prevent or delay the certification. This is what Jack Smith
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: was investigating. And that's why phone records of members of
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Congress became relevant, right? Smith's investigators wanted to know about
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: calls coming from the White House and Trump's orbit to
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: members of Congress during the effort to delay certification. Who
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: called whom? When? For how long? The records at issue
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: did not contain the contents of those conversations. Smith testified
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: that obtaining the records was relevant to determining Trump's intent
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and the scope of the effort to delay certification. Now,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: there are legitimate questions about this, and Mike Lee raised
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: one of them. How much protection should members of Congress
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: receive under the speech or debate clause? When should prosecutors
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: be allowed to prevent a phone company from notifying somebody
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that their records have been subpoenaed? And Lee and Democrat
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Chris Coons have actually worked together on legislation dealing with
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: stronger safeguards surrounding these types of gag orders. That's a
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: good thing. Have that argument. That's congressional oversight. But don't
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: erase why prosecutors were looking for those records in the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: first place. They weren't investigating whether it was a crime
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: to be a Republican. They were investigating the unprecedented effort
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: by a sitting president to remain in power after he
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: lost an election fair and square. And the same thing
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: happens when we talk about the classified documents case. It
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: gets reduced to Trump had classified documents. Biden had classified documents.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Other presidents had them. Everybody does it. Except Smith's case
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't simply about possessing documents. It included allegations of obstruction.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: And again, I want to emphasize the word allegations because
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the case never went to trial. And that gets us
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to something Donald Trump has become incredibly successful at doing.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: He makes the investigation itself seem like a scandal. Trump
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: loves to remind everybody how many times he's been investigated,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: which to me would be embarrassing. Because the more you're,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: most investigations aren't just kangaroo courts, although apparently Donald Trump
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: would like to create them. He's been investigated for Russia,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: for Ukraine, January 6th, classified documents, the Georgia case, the
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: New York case, over and over. And he uses the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: number of investigations as evidence that the investigations themselves must
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: have been illegitimate. Look how many times they've come after me.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: But that's not an answer to the evidence in any
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: one of those investigations. And there's a pattern here. Attack
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the investigator, attack the institution, challenge legitimacy, litigate, delay, right?
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: He will never do anything the first time he's asked.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: turned cooperation with an investigation into a political question. And
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of course, ultimately convince your supporters that the real scandal
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: isn't whatever conduct was being investigated. The investigation is the scandal.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Why are they trying to stop me? They're afraid of me.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: That's why they're coming after me. And if they're coming
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: after me, they're really coming after you. Russia, of course,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: is the best example. You can believe there were serious
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: mistakes surrounding the Russia investigation. You can believe people got
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: ahead of the evidence. Some did. But Russia did interfere
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: in the 2016 election. The Mueller investigation documented that very well.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Mueller also examined multiple episodes involving potential obstruction by Trump.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: And politically, Trump was extraordinarily successful at turning that entire
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: thing around until the argument became almost entirely about the
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: people investigating him. And Jack Smith became another great example
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: of this. Neither federal case against Trump ever reached a
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: trial on the merits before Trump returned to office. The
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: election case ended after Trump's 2024 victory because Justice Department
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: policy bars prosecution of a sitting president. So now the
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: political shorthand becomes, see, they never proved anything. Well, wait
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: a minute. There is a rather large difference between being
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: acquitted after the evidence is presented and the evidence never
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: being adjudicated at trial. Neither one proves guilt. But the
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: second one sure as hell doesn't prove innocence either. And
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: that's what got lost yesterday. Instead, we got John Kennedy
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: telling Smith he made him want to throw up in
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: his mouth. We got Ted Cruz shouting ridiculous political theatrics.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Eric Schmidt calling him a dirtbag. And then we got
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the Atlanta Hawkeyes. Their hearing was supposed to expose Jack Smith. Instead,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: it gave us a pretty good demonstration of what happens
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: when everybody arrives with the story already written. The conclusion
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: comes first. Then we go shopping for the facts. Can
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: we have enough of that? Aren't we done with this?
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: It's almost feels as if, right, you know, if it's true, right,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: if this is the, if the break's actually happening, right,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: as Jon Stewart is mocking so many of us political
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: analysts who say, hey, this break is coming. But this
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: is sort of the, you know, is this where the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: cult gets, you know, you start to see it, you see,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: and it's not the cult of the elected officials who
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: are just finger in the wind going wherever they can go.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: It's the voters themselves who are just not moving anymore.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And they're just going, you know, are just not persuaded
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: by Trump anymore. We'll see. We got, we got five
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: weeks to find out for sure. But something tells me
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: that that's the direction we're headed. All right. Let me
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: pivot to a little bit of a, I know when
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I first started this podcast, I said one of the
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: things I wanted to be was in the solutions business.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: A lot of people use independent media and influencer platforms
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to get a point of view out there. I'm trying
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to see if we can create convening to do some
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: repair and restoration of the American experiment, whether it's constitutional
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: amendments we need, whether it's right-sizing the democracy or this one.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Revitalizing American Public Education. And this is my deep dive
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: for today. This is the Wednesday issue. American public education
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: was one of this country's incredible competitive advantages. We decided
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: that educating people wasn't simply a private benefit for the
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: child or the family. We decided that education was a
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: public good. We decided that the country would benefit if
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: everybody could read. The country would be better if everybody
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: had some basic understanding of math and science and history.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: that the country would benefit having a literate population. And
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: that's one reason I think that public education is to
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: me akin, I think of it the same way I
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: think about the postal service. If you design the postal
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: service purely as a business, there are plenty of places
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: in America where you'd simply stop delivering mail. It's too expensive.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: The economics don't work. That's not the mission. We decided
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: there was value in giving everybody access to a delivery
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: mechanism to share information. It was the country's first information network.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And that's what public education in some ways was supposed
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: to be, a public good, no admission fee. This isn't
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: supposed to be some profitability test. The point is to
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: educate everybody. And yet we're looking at an education system
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: at the moment that isn't producing the results we need.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Everybody has a theory about why. Some blame teachers' unions, parents,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: COVID recently, phones in schools, partisan school boards. not enough
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: adequate funding. We don't do enough testing. We do too
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: much testing, culture wars, bad teachers, bad administrators. Take your pick.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Education is a little bit like healthcare. Everybody's been to
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: a doctor, so everybody thinks they understand healthcare. And everybody
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: went to school, so everybody thinks they are an expert
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: at how the education system should work, right? We are
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: all experts in the system we personally experienced. That's not
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the same thing as understanding the system though. So rather
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: than start with Blaine, I'd like to start somewhere else.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: What have we actually learned in this 25-year experiment that
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: we've had in trying to reform the public education system?
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Because that's what we've done the last 25 years. We've experimented.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Charter schools, no child left behind. increased accountability. At one point,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: we had more testing. Then we pivoted to less testing
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: or no testing. We've tried smaller classes. We've tried more money,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: increased technology. And now we're talking about less technology and
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: increasingly vouchers. And the voucher argument was seductive. And it
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: still is. Your neighborhood public school isn't working. Well, why
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: should your child be trapped there? because you don't have
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: enough money to move or pay for private school tuition.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Give the parents the education dollars, let them choose. It's
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: a really hard thing to push back on, right? Empowering parents, right?
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: And we're a free market country in theory, right? So
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: the idea that competition will force schools to improve really
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: does sound like a no-brainer, except we've now been doing
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: versions of this for long enough that we can ask,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: where's the transformation? And that should be the question. The
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: question shouldn't be, can you find a kid who benefited
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: from a voucher? Of course you can. There's plenty of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: individual examples, but that's not the question. The question is
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: whether vouchers improve the education system, which is how they
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: were sold. Did they create better educational outcomes across communities?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Did competition produce the great improvement in public schools that
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: this theory promised? Because if we're gonna take public dollars
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and fundamentally change how education is financed, that ought to
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: be the standard we use to see if it works.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And this week, thanks to our friends at the New
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: York Times, there was a fascinating exercise involving 37 different
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: academics and researchers who study education and outcomes in the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: United States. And they were asked to evaluate 30 different
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: ideas for improving student achievement, effectiveness and cost. And what's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: interesting is that the results, they're not gonna conform very
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: well to everybody's ideological wishlist, okay? It isn't gonna make
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the right very happy, and trust me, it isn't gonna
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: make the left very happy. So small group tutoring did
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: extremely well. Focusing on the science of reading, phonics, that
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: did well. Universal pre-K, more learning time, high quality curriculum,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: teacher coaching, expanded access to advanced classes, targeted incentives to
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: get good teachers into high poverty school districts. None of
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: those are ideological ideas. In fact, they're kind of boring. Meanwhile,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: private school vouchers finished 28th out of 30th in proven effectiveness.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: And they weren't cheap. It came with a huge cost.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: So minimal effectiveness and giant cost. Researchers pointed to some
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: of the problems we've seen now. A substantial amount of
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: voucher money can go to families whose kids were already
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: attending private schools. The subsidy then contributes to higher tuition.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: And sometimes the voucher doesn't come close to covering the
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: full tuition anyway, meaning some of the private schools A
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: lower income family might most like to access remain out
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: of reach. It doesn't do what they promised it would do.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: And then you have a lot of grifters in this
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: space who see, oh, look, there's available tax dollars to
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: grift from. I'll start a private school. I'll start a
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: charter school. I'll start this because I want a piece
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: of this action. It's guaranteed money. And then they, you know,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: essentially they price in the cost of the voucher and
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: then try to find profit on the upside. So you
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: end up creating a private education industry that simply, it's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: almost like private equity. It absorbs public money without solving
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the public education crisis. But the education left, those on
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the left on this issue, don't spike the football here
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: as I'm dismantling vouchers. The smaller class size didn't do
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: particularly well either, especially when researchers considered the cost. Across
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: the board, teacher pay increases also weren't especially impressive either.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: This idea that you got to do this merit-based. You
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: can't just give bad teachers the same raises that you're
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: giving good teachers. Targeted high pay for teachers working in
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: high poverty schools. Now that had real impact. So everybody
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: on any ideological side of this argument had a finding
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: that hopefully made their point of view a bit uncomfortable.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: And to me, that's where education reform ought to begin.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Because perhaps we've spent a generation now arguing about the
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: structure of education when we really should have been spending
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: more time thinking about the mechanics of learning. And perhaps
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: we've spent too much time searching for the answer, the
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: one big reform that's just going to fix public education.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Look at places like Mississippi and Louisiana. They didn't discover
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: a miracle cure. They combined a few things, reading instruction, curriculum, accountability,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: a few other interventions, and they just simply stuck with them.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: So there isn't really one answer, and that's the answer.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: And I think this is another question we need to
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: ask about public education. What should be a service and
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: what should be an industry? And this is the larger
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: question that vouchers raise for me. There are things markets
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: do incredibly well with, right? But markets don't necessarily guarantee
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: universal anything. Education is one of those places where universality
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: matters a lot. It's not that I simply want my
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: kid educated. I have a stake in your kid being
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: educated as well. We all do. I want the person
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: who's going to repair my airplane in 20 years to
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: be educated. I want the person who's going to become
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: my nurse educated. I want the person voting in an
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: election educated, right? I want members of this American democracy educated, right?
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: This is national infrastructure. So instead of spending another decade
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: figuring out new ways to allow people to escape public
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: educations and escape the system, maybe it's time to spend
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: that energy figuring out how to improve this system. And
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: here's where I'm beginning to think we may be trying
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: to solve too much at once. Let's just start with
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: pre-K through third grade.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: That should be the initial focus first. And then we
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: start and then we can, you know, it's sort of
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: like how do you eat an elephant one bite at
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: a time? Well, in this in this debate about what
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: to do about public education and how to evolve it
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: and how to remodel it and how to reform it.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Let's start with with some with the part that we
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: have more agreement about, which is pre-K through third grade. Right.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: If we get that right first. If we make those
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: years the national project, by the end of third grade,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: let's try to make sure a child can read, that
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: they have foundations for math, that they know how to learn,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: and that they become curious, and that they've learned how
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: to function around other kids. And then we've begun to
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: understand something equally important. How does this particular child learn?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Because our education system is still largely organized around one
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: fairly arbitrary characteristic, age. Now that makes sense up till
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: about the second or third grade. And in this age
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: of AI, right? It's gonna be a lot easier to
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: convince everybody, keep the technology out of here, pre-K through three.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And creating those foundations becomes easier to teach, easier to
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: put those foundations in. And then when you introduce artificial
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: intelligence and you introduce the technology tools that can then
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: enhance and then personalize strengths and weaknesses in your ability
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: to learn, then you might be onto something and then
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: we may be onto the next great way that we
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: create a public education system. But it is, I think
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: it's that mindset that we need to sort of reorient
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: ourselves around. Because it's pretty clear people learn at different speeds, right?
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: And yet we keep grouping people by age. And I
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: think that this is where we run into a problem,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: especially as we transition from second or third grade to
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: sort of the real learning years, right? Where education really,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: where the work really sort of kicks into another gear,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: which is fourth, fifth and sixth grade. And I do
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: think when everybody, when you're trying to put everybody in
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: age groups like this, Everybody in that room is supposed
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: to move through roughly the same material, roughly the same pace.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: We now know kids just learn at different speeds. The
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: same child can learn different things at different speeds, right?
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: A kid can fly through math and still struggle with reading.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: We know there are numbers kids, there are words kids, right?
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Some kids are great readers, really struggle with numbers, right?
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: And this is the type, we really haven't had a
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: system flexible enough to handle that in parents' simply get
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: frustrated with the public school system and just immediately sometimes
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: go to private in that situation. When maybe we need
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: to sort of modernize, because we have learned a lot, right?
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: We really have learned a lot about how children learn
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: and how important the earliest part of learning really is.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: And I think third grade really is a hint, right?
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: This is where I think third grade can become an
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: important sort of fork in the road in your education
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: and your path to wherever your endpoint ends up being.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: And it's not because there's some magical biological transformation at
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the end of third grade, right? There isn't. But by
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: then we've had several years to get to know the child.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: We know how they learn. We've identified where they're struggling
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: and where they're thriving. We've seen what engages them. Hopefully,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: if we've done pre-K through third grade correctly, we've given
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: them the basic tools they need to start becoming more
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: independent learners. So after third grade, You can change the
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: architecture of the education. You can get those that need
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: acceleration and you can accelerate them. Those that need deceleration,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: give them more time. Hey, this episode of the Chuck
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  Speaker 1: rating was as of August of 2026. So, and it
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  Speaker 1: needs to be fluid, right? You might be accelerated in
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: math and need small group tutoring and reading. Six months later,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: maybe you're ready to move. Then you move. If you
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: need another six months, give them another six months. Maybe
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: the kid who looked average in math at nine suddenly
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: takes off at 11. Maybe somebody discovers an aptitude for
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: writing at 13 that nobody saw at 10. The group
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: adapts to the kid rather than demanding that the kid
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: adapts to the group. And as children get older, interest
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: ought to become more important too. Because aptitude and interest
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: aren't necessarily the same thing. You could be really good
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: at something and hate it. You can struggle initially with
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: something and then become fascinated by it. So school should
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: be helping kids discover both of those trajectories. What am
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I good at? What do I love doing? What am
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I curious about? Where do I need help? And the
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: more we learn about the brain and learning, the better
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: we've gotten at figuring this out. AI is likely going
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: to help us do this probably quite well. Now, there's
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: one enormous caveat in all this, and I think the
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: biggest challenge in trying to create, because I do think
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: pre-K through three, right, arguably socialization is as important as
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: everything else. But socialization also matters the older you get too, right?
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I don't want to create a school where every kid
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: sits alone in front of a screen, working through some personalized,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: perfected curriculum. So you do need the socialization part. Learning
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: how to deal with somebody who annoys you is education.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Working with somebody who doesn't like you is an education.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Learning to lose, learning to be on a team is
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: an education. Perhaps playing in the band, right? Getting up
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: in front of the class. All of those things are
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: part of education. So you want to preserve some of
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: the age-based activities. You want to preserve it in sports,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: preserve it in the arts, in music, civics, at lunch,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: physical education, still have clubs and projects, and still portions
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: of academics. Because you don't want to replace one overly
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: rigid system with another. And I certainly don't want to
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: replace the classroom with a collection of kids wearing headphones
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: staring at personalized screens all day. So the goal ought
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: to be a system that recognizes two things can be
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: true at once. Children benefit from being educated together, And
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: children don't all learn the same things at the same speed.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Those shouldn't be contradictory ideas. We can preserve the social
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: commons of school while making the academic experience much more
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: responsive to the individual kid. And if you preserve some
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: of those social commons, it actually, you might create a
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: better community, right? And that's what I fear about a
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: sort of pick essentially destroying public education one voucher at
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: a time. Public school is one of the few remaining
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: places in American life where you don't get to curate
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: everybody around you. You don't pick every kid in your
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: fourth grade class, right? You don't pick everybody that travels
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: on your bus. You don't get to pick everybody who
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: shows up in the cafeteria. This is all part of
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: living in a society like America. The grand American experiment Well,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the public school system is sort of the first place
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: you sort of experience this unique American experiment. Let's not
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: get rid of this because we're then essentially getting rid
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: of one of the building blocks of this country. So
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: here's my starting point. Let's stop trying to reform all
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: 13 years of education all at once. Let's make pre-K
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: through third grade the national project for the next four
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: to six years. Take what we already know works, reading instruction, tutoring,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: high quality curriculum, early intervention. Let's get that foundation right.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Universal pre-K ought to be a thing, not universal daycare.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Really needs to be pre-K, needs to have a curriculum.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: And then we start building a more flexible system on
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: top of it, right? Creating realistic pathways, right? involving parents
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: in the decision-making process, involving teachers in the decision-making process,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: acceleration when a kid is ready, deceleration when a kid
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: needs it, and more consideration of aptitude and interest as
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: they get older, all while preserving the social part of school.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Because educating a child isn't simply filling a brain with
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: facts or information. It's teaching a human being how to
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: function around other human beings, And in this country, it's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: an introduction to pluralism, learning to work, live, eat, play
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: with people who don't always look like you, people who
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: didn't grow up with what you had. But you start
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: to learn that as a kid, and you're going to
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: be a better citizen as an adult. Now, this brings
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: me back to vouchers. And this is ultimately why I
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: think the voucher era of the education reform movement has
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: probably reached its intellectual dead end. It doesn't mean we're
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: going to abolish every existing voucher program tomorrow. And I
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: know it doesn't mean, I know there are individual stories
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: where children have benefited. But that wasn't the big promise
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: of this voucher system. It was supposed to improve the
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: public education system. That competition and choice would force the
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: system to improve. Public education is not a marketplace. And
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: it never should be. Again, if we did this to
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the Postal Service, nobody would get mail in Alaska. And
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: we've had a quarter century now of watching versions of
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: this voucher experiment. Where's the transformed public school system anywhere? Actually,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: there is. It's been transformed, all of it badly. The
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: more an area uses vouchers, the shittier the public education
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: system has become. And the more frustrated parents have become,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: by the way. We're spending substantial amounts of public money
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: subsidizing families who are already sending their kids to private
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: schools anyway. And then we've created a private education industry.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: But we have not improved the public education system. That's
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: a problem. Politically, by the way, I think Republicans are
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: realizing that vouchers are not are not delivering. Look at
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the fights over schools in Iowa. One of the reasons
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Rob Sand has traction, what Kim Reynolds did to the
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: public schools and the voucherizations of everything. Rural Iowans, there's
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: not a lot of school choice out there. The messing
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: with the funding system in Kansas is why the Democratic
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Party got life in Kansas. And I really think the
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: reason Greg Abbott might lose, he's still the favorite to win,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: but he might lose. Yes, it's a bad year to
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: be a Republican. Yes, the economy is not going up well.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: And yes, data centers have had an impact. But ultimately,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I told you about the January 6th rally
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: goer who was supporting Gina Inouye instead of Abbott. It's
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: over schools and it's over the school funding. Vouchers were
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: supposed to settle the education debate for conservatives. And instead,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: voters continue to be angry about their public schools even
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: after these voucher programs get implemented. And it really has
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: impacted communities where the public school isn't simply a school,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: it's the school. There's no marketplace of seven private alternatives
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: sitting 10 minutes away in many of these rural counties.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: And you can't keep telling parents you've fixed education if
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: they keep telling you their school isn't fixed. So perhaps
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: this should be seen as an opportunity. Declare the 25-year
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: search for an escape hatch over. Vouchers were, you know,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: it felt like in some ways vouchers were potato chips here, right?
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: They were empty calories. It made it feel like you
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: were trying to do something, but instead you were actually
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: making the problem worse. And all you were doing was
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: making a lobbyist happy for some private education system. So
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: let's have a real national argument about making the institution better.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: I know public schools aren't perfect. They're never going to be.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Nothing's perfect if humans run it. The whole point of
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: this segment is that I know they're not perfect. But
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: because educating everybody is something a country, especially this country,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: has to do and should do, our future depends on
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: a well-educated population. And I don't think we should accept
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the idea that because fixing the institution is hard, The
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: answer is simply to give up on it and just
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: hand people the tax dollars we were going to use
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: for public schools and let them use it for whatever
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: they want to use it for. So look, I'd like
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: to hear from you guys on this. I'm sitting behind
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: a microphone proposing changes to a system that millions of teachers, principals, administrators,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: and parents continue to have to navigate every day. I'm
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: done navigating it. So tell me where I'm wrong. Tell
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: me what I'm missing. Tell me what else I should
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: be including here. But I do think we need to
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: go tackle this bite-sized. And the number one thing we
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: can do and enhance, and we know this has enormous
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: impacts on long-term outcomes, is focus our national priority on
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: universalizing and improving pre-K through the third grade. We do that.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: than everything else, building on top of that. Going this
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: magnet school route is a good idea. Taking the idea
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: that charters, some that have done well, merging it back
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: into the public education system, maybe even invite some of
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: these better private schools to be a part of it
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: as well. And then we can have multiple paths that
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: these well-educated in the public school system, pre-K through third grade,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: where what best works for each one of these kids.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: This doesn't strike me as a very partisan, something that's
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: gonna be ideologically divisive. It just takes a little bit
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: of leadership, a little bit of political will, but you're
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: gonna have to put your talking points to the side
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to take your ideological glasses off
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: and be serious about what's your goal. If you don't
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: want a good public education system, then stop lying that
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: vouchers are going to improve it and just say, no,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: I don't think we should have a public education system.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Then advocate for that and make that argument. But don't,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you know, don't pretend you care about the public education
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: system and then advocate for a system that just takes
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: tax dollars away from it and creates a, a private grift.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: One more thing about kids in school before I get
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: to my interview with Dana Bash. Alabama, the state of
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Alabama just got TikTok to change the way its product
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: works for teenagers. And I'm a little bit surprised that
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: this hasn't gotten a lot more attention because the way
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: this happened is almost as interesting as the settlement that
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: TikTok had with the state itself. Alabama did not pass
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: some sweeping new law regulating algorithms. Congress didn't finally get
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: its act together on behalf of Alabama for some reason.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Here's what happened. The Alabama attorney general sued TikTok and
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: ByteDance last year using the state's existing consumer protection laws.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: The state's allegation was essentially that TikTok had designed a
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: product extraordinarily effective at keeping young people engaged, including features
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Alabama argued encouraged compulsive use. while misleading parents and consumers
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: about the risks and about the effectiveness of its protections
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: for younger users. TikTok denied wrongdoing. This thing was headed
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: to court. In fact, Alabama was about to become the
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: first state to take this type of case against TikTok
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: before a jury. Jury selection was supposed to start Monday.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: TikTok settled Friday. And this isn't simply a check. TikTok
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: basically accepted the premise of the lawsuit. They agreed to
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: pay Alabama at least $ 100 million, but it also agreed
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: to actual changes affecting teenage users. The two-hour daily limit,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: interruptions after prolonged use, restrictions on use between midnight and
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: six in the morning, stronger parental controls and age verification,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: restrictions during school hours, no cosmetic procedure filters for teenagers.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: an option for a non-personalized feed. You don't have to
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: have an algorithm. Now, look, we don't know how effective
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: all of this is going to be, but I was
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: told these social media companies couldn't do these things before
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: and that none of this was having such a huge impact.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: And we know that teenagers have been figuring out ways
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: around rules invented by adults since, you know, the beginning
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: of teenagers. But think about this in the context of
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: everything we just discussed. We're asking a teacher to stand
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: in front of a classroom and get a 12-year-old interested
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: in fractions or the Civil War or to kill a mockingbird.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: And sitting in the kid's pocket is perhaps the most
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: sophisticated attention capture device ever invented, backed by an algorithm
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: that never gets tired, never has a bad day, never
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: has 29 other kids demanding its attention, and has been
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: optimized for one purpose. Keep looking at me. Then we
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: look at the teacher and say, why can't you keep
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: these kids engaged? Now, maybe it's not entirely a fair fight.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: And for years, we've treated this terminology almost like the weather.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do? Kids have phones. Well,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Alabama demonstrated that government isn't completely powerless here if you
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: use the tools of government. And what's particularly interesting to
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: me is how they did it. They didn't wait for Washington.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: They used consumer protection law already on the books. And
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: there are plenty of laws on the books now, right?
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: And this wasn't California or New York or Elizabeth Warren.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: This was Alabama. This is a conservative state. They used
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: existing law and they forced one of the largest tech
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: platforms in the world to negotiate over how its product
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: interacts with kids. We'll see if the restrictions work. Some
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: of them might, some of them might not. But protecting
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: kids from technology designed to monopolize their attention is doesn't
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: have to become another red-blue fight, right? And if we're
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: serious about revitalizing public education, maybe we should stop asking
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: schools to solve every problem that we've allowed the rest
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: of society to create for the school system. Anyway, the
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: other part of the Alabama TikTok story is these tech companies,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the fact that they settled and didn't go to juries,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: and the fact that they can implement the things they
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: promised to implement. We know what they've been really doing.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: They studied behavior and they optimized their product to take
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: advantage of our weaknesses. And this is why we invented
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: consumer protection to begin with. And this is just another
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: way to protect the consumer. So good for the state
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: of Alabama to figure out how to protect young consumers
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: from the menace that is some of these algorithms. All right.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: With that, I'm going to sneak in a break and
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: we come back. My conversation with Dana Bash about her
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: new book about 15 elections that changed the world. Well,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: my next guest has a fascinating book that when I
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: first saw the title, I was amazed. thinking, I can't
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: wait to see what elections she picked. And then you
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: get the book and you're like, well, this is even
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: more interesting. But now a lot harder for me to
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: debate her on. It's my guest is Dana Bash, and
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: she's got a terrific new book, a book called Fifteen
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Elections That Changed the World. And I will not to
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: give it away here, but the most recent election is
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen which is basically the beginning of our collective adulthood.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: So let's start there. Look, everybody knows you from CNN,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: chief political correspondent, State of the Union, all of those things.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: So what got you into this? What got you into
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: this topic? And then I want to talk about your
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: criteria for picking your 15 elections to change the world.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: And I'll just give it. Your first one is Julius
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Caesar and your last one is Nelson Mandela. And in between,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: we have 13 other ones that you included in here.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: So explain the premise.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: This is fantastic.
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: A huge thrill, honestly, because no, it's true because only
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: till recently did you and I have the ability to
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: go on with each other on, on, on, Public platforms
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: and not just talk behind the scenes as friends.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: Or be at GW together since we're GW's favorite media
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: people out after, because Frank Sesno didn't go to GW. Sorry, Frank.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: I know you're watching.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: No, he did not. But he just, he's a mockery there,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: as I say.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: He's a middleberry guy.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Very much a middleberry guy.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: Okay. So the answer is, first of all, this is
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: obviously very subjective.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: And I, before this is over, I'm dying to get
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: Chuck Todd's elections that might not be included in this.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: Recent ones excluded.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: My wheels have been turning. I've been trying to get there.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I do have one country I'm going to single out,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: and I'm curious where you went there, but we'll wait.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: We'll wait till we get there.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: Okay. So the answer is.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: The criteria were that they had to have a real impact,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: not just in the current events and current times, modern times,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: but also that rippled even at the time beyond the borders,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: but also through generations in some way, shape or form.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: And I think that was really the sort of the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: bottom line.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: We had lots of ideas, talked to actual real historians
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: This is and we just decided 15 is a good
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: number and we and we did this.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: But we say right at the beginning of.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: The book, very clearly, this is obviously not exhaustive. And
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: we're hoping that David Fisher, who I say we my
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: amazing co-author and I are hoping that this does stir
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: some discussion and conversation from those who think about it
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: to come up with other ideas.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: Well, look, let's also start with the year. You're expansive
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: with the definition of the word election.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: Precisely.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: So election doesn't just mean a president, a prime minister,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: a senator, but it's also.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Or democracy itself, right?
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, democracy... Well, democracy... Democracy itself matters for elections,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: but sometimes elections and democracy are the people who are
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: elected and democracy. And that certainly is the case in
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: several of these elections. But one of the examples that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: we give is the good Pope, Pope John XXIII, his election.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: In the conclave.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: And we can talk about that if you want. And
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: another is Martin Luther King.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: Second. He was never elected to office.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: No, he was never elected to government office, but he
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: was elected to lead the bus boycott in Montgomery when
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: they needed somebody who was new and fresh and.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: Who could inspire people. And they found him.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: He was a relatively new pastor at the Dexter Avenue
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: Church in Montgomery. And by a show of hands in
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: a church basement, they said, oh, sure, we'll pick this guy.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: That's probably my most favorite in here because it's the
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: it is there is a Forrest Gump like quality to
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: it a little bit.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: And it actually and it's just one of the. which
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: is elections big and small. You don't always know how
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: critical your vote is going to be. nevermind for that election,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: but for future generations and for movements beyond what that
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: vote carries. And that was true in Montgomery, Alabama, when
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: they said, yeah, we like this guy, Martin Luther King Jr.,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: who's in his twenties and doesn't know, have experience in
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: any of this, who obviously went on to help change
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: America and really the world. And definitely for bad, because
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: we have Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in this book.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis really, Hitler used the tools
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: of and the structure of democracy to take over an
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: entire country and then almost an entire continent.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: So let's go through this. I assume you start with
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Caesar just sort of as the idea of just giving
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: others a choice.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: That's right. Julius Caesar, because the Greeks and the Romans
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: were really the Greeks.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: That's really the birthplace of the democratic system and some
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: form of democracy.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: But Julius Caesar is Julius Caesar.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: And there's so many learning about him and his election
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: the way I did with this book. There's so many
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: cautionary tales. There are so many what's old is new
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: again characteristics and dynamics. For example, number one, Julius Caesar
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: ran for the office that he ran for ultimately, the
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: biggest office, because he didn't want to be prosecuted.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: He was in debt because he was.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: The lower offices, the lower sort of ranks that he
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: ran for, he had to borrow a lot of money
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: and he was in a lot of debt. And he said,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: I'm either going to go to jail or I'm going
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: to be exiled or I.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: Can run for office. Sound familiar, Chuck?
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know who you could be referring to,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: but anyway.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: That's A. B, when he was running, he was a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: huge populist. The masses loved him, even though the masses
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: didn't really vote. It was mostly people in and around Rome.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: And C, money mattered.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: And money helped to buy votes, not officially, but effectively.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: And and then he another cautionary tale is that he
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: was this great Democratic leader who said, nope, I'm not
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: going to let anybody else run for this. I'm going
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: to take it as my own. And he became a dictator,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: maybe a benevolent dictator, depending on who you liked.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: But he became a dictator.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: Hey, how much is wealth a through line in all
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: of your elections?
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: So much. Yeah, it's a good question. I didn't think
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: about that. Wealth is a big deal. Wealth is a
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: big deal.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: I think more so the money in and around whatever
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: democratic process that we're talking about. But it's always been.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the things that I learned.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: Since the beginning of democracy, in Julius Caesar's time, money
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: in politics was a thing.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Was this human nature, do we think? I mean, you know,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: the human being assumes that if somebody has a little
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: bit of money, then they must be They must do something.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: They must know something. They must be better at something.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: And so therefore, is that what it is? What do
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: we think it is?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: Is it more basic than that?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's that if you have money, you
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: want to keep the money and you want to put
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: somebody in power who will help you keep that money.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, let's just fast forward.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: Now that I'm thinking about that, this is a really
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: good sort of through line that I'm now exploring in
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: my head. Let's fast forward to the Magna Carta.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Because the only reason the Magna Carta was written and
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: drawn up and approved of is because the barons and
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: the earls, they wanted to keep their money in their land.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: And they were pissed off that the king kept taking
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: it from them to.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: Fight his wars.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: And so they said, hold on a second, we need
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: some kind of system where we have more of a
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: say here.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: So that's an example of money in politics, but in
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: a different, different way.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: It is, you know, when you look at all of these,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: it feels like a lot of it is about. A
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: lot of it is about power, right? Obviously, it's about
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: getting power, but it just feels like in each case
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: that money mattered quite a bit.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, money matters quite a bit. And and in some
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: of these cases, people didn't.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: The sort of concept of a democracy and being included
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: and for most of human existence, when we're talking about people,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: we're talking about men and white men.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: Just men, yeah?
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Well, we don't know if they were all white back
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: in the Julius Caesar day, but- Okay, fair.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: Men and mostly wealthy men.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Wealthy men, yeah.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: Depending on where they lived.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: Men with some sort of status, whatever.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: Whatever they were.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: And so part of the sort of exploration also is
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: trying to engage the people who were eligible to vote
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: on how to do it, come up with the systems
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: that allowed it to be as free and fair as possible.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: And so the education there, the Mayflower Compact is the
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: third that we talk about.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: And I mean, they thought they.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Blows them north.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: They got blown north, ended up at Plymouth, you know,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: Thanksgiving time back in the 1600s.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: Please, people from Boston are still pissed off about it, right?
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: They hate their weather. They're still angry that they ended
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: up in New England. But anyway, go ahead.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: But because they got there and they realized, wait, we
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: don't have to abide by the laws that were set
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: up for Jamestown. We can come up with our own.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: They were like, oh, okay, we can do this. And
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: they sat on the ship and they came up with
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: this compact.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Who did they model it off of? Is it, you know,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: obviously there was, there had to be some inspiration for
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: the Mayflower Compact. What was it?
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: It's a great question.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: Some of it was sort of church elections back home.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: Some of the sort of leaders were very well read and,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of gentlemen who did a lot of
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: sort of thinking and studying and learning.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: And They also knew that there was.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: A form of it in Jamestown, but Jamestown was much
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: more dictatorial because Jamestown was settled by businesses. And the
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: people on the Mayflower were kind of a combination of
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: effectively religious refugees and others who were working for a business.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: But I think for the most part, it came through business.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: basic rudimentary church elections.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: Um i want to go back to the roman empire
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: here a little bit before i get to um and
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: it is and i'm curious and i guess the magna
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: carta is your transition here between sort of the the
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: idea of lords barons whatever we wanted to call it
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: you know these You know, basically the Roman generals who
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: went unpaid and then became kings, I guess, you know,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: is sort of, you know, I remember when I finally realized, oh,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: all these kings were just unpaid generals who decided to
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: hold their people hostage and make them pay money for
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: them to get protection.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: They were just a bunch of protection rackets.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. is I was surprised, if I were to say
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: this in hindsight, I'm surprised there's so few elections on
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: the continent of Europe that you chose.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: That's fair. That's fair.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: And France would be the one.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: That- Which one? Okay, tell me, which one?
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't have, look, it's a fair point. I
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: don't have a good way of doing it, whether is
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: it after the French Revolution, is it, I don't know.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: You could, there is, whether it's the French Revolution, period,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the failed one or the successful one. I don't know.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: But I that would look, I think, you.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: Know, that would have been that actually that actually would
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: be a good one, because I think that the first
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: one is such a glaring example of how revolutions sometimes
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: eat their revolutionaries with Robespierre.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: And that would be that would be a good one.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Look, you could actually your sequel could be about revolutions.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: And you could sort of do the frame as revolutions,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: you know, and then you have the Russian Revolution, French Revolution,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: different versions of it.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Which sort of gets you on the same. In some cases, like,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: you know, was 1932 in Germany, was that an election
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: or a revolution? Revolution.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: It really probably depends on your perspective.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: It was, it was, it was a very clever revolution
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: using the democratic system put in place after world war one,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: the parliamentary system to taking advantage of that to revolution coup,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: whatever you, whatever you want, but they did it with
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: the will of the people.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: They did it with the democratic system.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: You know, there are some kind of, it depends on
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: what you consider revolution, um, there's.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: A Chinese election in here, Sun Yat-sen.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting. Did you feel, what I
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: liked about is how global the book was, right? You're like, okay,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: you got the biggest country in Asia, the biggest country
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: in Eurasia, the British, you sort of a nod to
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: the British empire a little bit, I guess, with the
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: Magna Carta, certainly a little, you know, One in Africa.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: You know, you sort of cover your bases. I guess
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: you could say, hey, where's South America? And I'm sure
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: you had some cutting room floor stuff. But tell me
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: about the president of China. I loved this one. And
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: how successful did somebody have to be to qualify for
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: the list?
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's... it's not so much the success of
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: the individual in the individual's election. It's the impact of
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: that election. And to me, this is one of the
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: most impactful elections that I knew I'm embarrassed to say
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: like zero about.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: This is why I wanted to single it out too.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about it.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: You know, my, my, look, I feel this way about
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Chinese history in general. It's like, I, I constantly, when
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I need a new history book to read.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I always now defer something Chinese because I feel, I mean,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: you probably had a similar education as I did.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: You're just not, you know, we sort of gloss over.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: We do a few dynasties here or there in your
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: high school history or even college history. But you move
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly to Mao, you know? Yeah.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That's exactly right.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: So this is in between imperial and Mao, and frankly,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: how China got to Mao with this individual, Sun Yat-sen.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: And he, so there was like 500 years or more
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: of imperial dynasties, right? And- Fast forward to 1911, and
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: this guy, Sun Yat-sen, who's 13 years old, goes with
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: his father, who has a job in Hawaii, the kingdom
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: of Hawaii back then. And he starts to learn and
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: starts to kind of get wind that there's something other
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: than imperial rule.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: And he starts to....
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: Find other people who feel that way. And he pushes, pushes,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: pushes mostly from the outside. He travels around really the
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: whole world, but especially in the United States to get money,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: to get attention.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: Well, it's important to point out like the world is
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: on fire during these two decades.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: And the world is on fire. You know, this is
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: very similar.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: Frankly, to the world we're living in right now. where
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: there is uprising, political uprisings everywhere. It is a global
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: phenomenon anyway.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: Yep, that's exactly right. It's a global phenomenon. And I'm
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: glad you said that because up until just a few
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: years before this time period, China was still kind of
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: walled off from the world.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: So have these influence. Right. What was happening in Europe
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: or North America didn't really have any impact on China.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: It didn't have any impact because they literally refused to
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: have any kind of trade or. Well, they had some trade,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: but it was slow, slow, slow. And the opium wars
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: that China was involved with. Which several of them, they
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: ended up losing. The result of the losses to those
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: wars meant that the treaties were such that they had
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: to open up the country.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: More and more to the West.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: And the more they were open to the West, the
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: more the economy changed, the more information got in there
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: and so forth.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: Right. So this guy, Sun Yat-sen, he pushes and he.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: Gets to the point with the people around him that
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: he is able to get a democratic election going because
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: the imperial family, the Qing dynasty became so weak that
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: they had to agree to a democratic election.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: So he's elected.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: He actually vows that he's not going to serve more than,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: I think, six months and ended up being true that
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: he didn't serve one term. Maybe that goes to your
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: question about how significant of a player did they.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: Have to be?
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: And he wasn't in the actual job of the president
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: of China. But because the democracy didn't go so well
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: and things started getting really even worse economically, particularly for
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: the villagers and the bankers. the peasants that they, and
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: he and the people who succeeded him said, make a deal.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: They made a deal with the Soviets that they could
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: come in and help.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: And then Mao comes in.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: And China and the CCP is born and China has
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: not been the same since.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: Is this butterfly effect or do you think it really
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: like one thing led to the other? But if this
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: election doesn't happen, we don't get Mao or if this
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: election doesn't happen, you don't get the pact with Russia.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: Is that what you feel like this is?
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: Look, it's always hard to know. It's always hard to know.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: Is it possible that.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: The imperial family was so weak that Mao and the
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: Soviets could have come in without.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: Sun Yat-sen, maybe?
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: But also maybe not, because the other dynamic here is
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: that the... successor to sung yet sen in in his
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: party was chang hai shek right and he is uh
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: the one who said i'm out of here went to
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: taiwan and.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: Started pushing for taiwan and this is.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: The father of taiwan chang hai shek is the father
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: of taiwan so this this guy sun yet sen is
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: in especially given what we know about the the differences
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: between China and Taiwan, Sun Yat-sen is a hero for
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: the CCP because they consider him as the person who
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: allowed for communism. And he's a hero for the Taiwanese
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: because without him.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: There would not be Chiang Kai-shek.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: That is fascinating. And that is a terrific story. Before
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: we get to the American elections that you include in here,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: I want to touch on a couple others. Let's talk
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: about the Pope and you in this one. It's John
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: the 23rd, who's arguably the first television televised Pope, I guess,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: meaning like it's, you know, the Pope that showed up
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: to Yankee Stadium was John the 23rd. Right.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: Like it's it's.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: And I assume you view his election and just how
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: we modernize the Catholic Church. Is that exactly. Yeah.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: Well, and that it's that. But then there's another theme that.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: Is true in several of these elections that this illustrates,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: which is the cardinals who elected him in the conclave
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: thought because he was older, he would just be a
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: caretaker and he wouldn't do anything to change the Catholic
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: church very much. And then he certainly did because he
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: called an ecumenical council and which happened like 10 or
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: 12 times in the history of the entire Catholic church.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: And what that means is that you want to make
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: some serious changes. And among the changes he made was
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: saying that masses are allowed to be held in the
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: local language because until then they were all in Latin.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: which made Catholicism so much more accessible to people and,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: and the dogma and the prayer is so much more
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: accessible to people who were Catholics around the world. And
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: then it's also the, he's known as the good Pope,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: what you were just referring to. He, People knew him
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: because of television, because of radio.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: He went out.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: I think he was the first pope to ride a
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: train and see people that way. He went to prisons,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: famously saying, you can't come see me, so I'll come
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: see you. He was a pope for very long, but
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: he was not what the cardinals who elected him apparently
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: were bargaining for. But he became a saint, so they
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: clearly liked him.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: If I'm wrong about this, I know my listeners and
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: viewers will let me know. But I believe John the
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: 23rd is the only pope in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: I think because he he was the first pope at
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium. I think there's been other popes since. And
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: they used to have I know at one time in
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: Monument Park, they had a there, you know, that, you know.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: next to Gehrig and Ruth and all of that stuff
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: is a homage there to, I believe, to John XXIII.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: He also, I just want to say one more thing
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: about this pope, which I think is cool. He, what
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: he did for the Jewish community is also historic. Just
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: going back to World War II, when he was a cardinal,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: he helped make, make available baptismal certificates for churches in,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: in Hitler's wake.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: Go ahead.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no. Go keep going. Cause he was
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: also father of the Catholic charities too, right?
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, actually I didn't know that.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: Or was he a big player?
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: Cause I, you know, it's funny.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: My, my grandmother, my grandfather was in World War II,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: you know, to this day was like the Catholic charities
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: were the best Jewish charity there was back then.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. I mean, and so, so he, he's saved,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: untold lives of Jewish children in Europe because Catholic, local
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: Catholic churches got these baptismal certificates from this Cardinal in Italy.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: And they were able to use them to say, no, no, no,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: this isn't a Jewish baby. This is a Catholic baby.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: And that's, that was not nothing. And he also, as
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: part of that ecumenical council, when he changed the rule
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: about Latin, he also explicitly said that Jews were not
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: responsible for killing Jesus, which is, was not nothing.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: It's a it was an important thing because that is
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: still that is still something used all the time uh
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: yeah and and uh when when when anti-semitism uh shows
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: up and rises um you know when i saw the
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: title of the book i went oh there's gotta gonna
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: i i know indira gandhi and golda meyer are gonna
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: be of course.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: I know you did it as one chapter why is
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: that yeah Um, because I think that they're obviously their
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: personalities are so different, but they were around the same time. They, again,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: they were put in place by the men who led
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: their parties in the parliamentary systems.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: In which they served.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: And they were largely put in place by the men
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: because they thought they would be malleable. Right.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: And guess what? they weren't malleable. Right.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: Well, it's just like how the first women became governors, right?
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: It would be the spouse. And it's like.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: Precisely.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: It didn't turn out the way these men thought it would.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: It didn't at all.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: And in one of the cases in Dhiragandi, I mean,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: that's another example of somebody... she came from a family,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: like one of the founding families of Indian democracy. You know,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: Gandhi is not, Gandhi is her husband's name. Uh, and now,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: and it's no relation to Mahatma Gandhi.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, there was like, maybe like her husband
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: is distant or something like that.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: Distant, but, but she's not like, you know, his daughter.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the name didn't hurt.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It didn't hurt.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: Uh, But so she grew up literally working to create
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: democracy in.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: India.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, if she were a man, we write in here,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: if she were a man, she would have been groomed
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: to be one of the first leaders of India. And
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: she only ended up there by happenstance, again, because she
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: was in the party structure and somebody died. And so
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: they put her in there.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: But she's a.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: Another example of somebody who, when shit started getting real
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: and hard, she didn't do some great things.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: She took some of the.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: Democratic principles and powers away from the people in a
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: not so great way. She then came back and she
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: was reelected and she sort of changed her ways. But,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: you know, she went off the....
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: Off the road, off the Democratic road for a little while. Well,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: she's not the.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: Only Indian president that has done that. They go back
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: and they they they're mostly Democratic. Sometimes you emphasize the
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: word mostly. Yeah.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: And then she did not have the greatest end.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: She was she was murdered apparently by somebody in her
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: own security team.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Golda Meir. Why? Why do you feel like her election
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: changed the world?
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I think for both of them, it showed that
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: in major countries, particularly in the case of India, which was,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it was a nuclear war, power
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: then probably not yet probably not yet not yet but
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: it was a major it is a major country in
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: the world there was a already a woman elected in
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: uh what became Sri Lanka but these were sort of
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: the first majors and again they were around the same
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: time but they changed the world because they showed what
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: was what was possible that it actually is possible for
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: a woman to be a leader Even and especially when
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: the men who say, okay, fine, you can be the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: prime minister, don't really expect them to amount to much
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: more than, again, caretakers. And they did so much more.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: So if you can see it, be it. And you
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: can see them. And people said, oh, wait, I can
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: start to be them. And then for Golda Meir, it's
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: not just that.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, she would.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: a, an international sensation well before she became a prime
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: minister because she was born, well, born in Ukraine and
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: then grew up in America. And so she used her,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: and then she moved to what was then, um, the
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: British controlled Palestine with her husband.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: And she used her knowledge of America and her.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: Passion for creating a state of Israel to really help
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: build them.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: And she was, there were founding fathers and then there
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: was the founding mother. Well, and you could argue she.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: Did, she probably, you know, when you think about, and look,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: this is, this is a relationship that is more fractured
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: than ever, but the, the American Israeli relationship in some
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: ways she was, She helped create it. She helped really
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: create that bond.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: That was different. It wasn't necessarily, you know, the relationship
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: in the United States and Israel was always close, obviously.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: We played an important part in recognizing all that. But
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: I think you could make the case that she really
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: cemented this partnership that right now is under stress.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of my favorite quotes, and you'll love this,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: is when she was on the phone with Henry Kissinger.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: Apparently Nixon loved Golda Meir, by the way. She's on
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: the phone with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. And she said,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: you know, come on, we need to get whatever weapons
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: she was asking for. And Kissinger said, I am a,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: I think he said, I'm an American first, a patriot second,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: and I'm a Jew third. And she said, well, you know,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: Henry and Israel, we read backwards.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: Well, it's funny today. What is that's funny.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: I see.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: Now I see. Now I got the punchline. Took me
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: a second. I got you now. That is a good one.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: The what is it? What did Mike Pence used to say?
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: He had a line like that. I'm a conservative. I'm
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: a Christian and I'm a Republican Republican in that order.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: A Christian, a conservative and a Republican, I think, in
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: that order was.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: I think he said American. American was in there somewhere.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: OK. May not have even said Republican was a conservative
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: American and Christian.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Well, definitely his party was third.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, that was his religion and his and his his
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: faith and his beliefs. Exactly. Came ahead of the club
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: that he was a member.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: Correct. Boy, there's that point.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: He lived up to that.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did. He really did. Look, Mandela, obvious on
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: that one. Was there another African election you thought about
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: at all? I mean, look, that's that's it. I'm just curious.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: And maybe it's maybe it's it's sort of a weird
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: form of confirmation bias in that it's it's we were
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: we were alive. We were just graduating from college. And,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: you know, he.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: Went to college. There were still protests like Mandela. You
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: didn't drink Coors beer at any party in college that
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: I went to if you were caught with Coors.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: Wait, you drank in college?
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: Well, you know. You didn't know that liquor store didn't
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: card around the corner from Riverside at GW?
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: I can't believe you drank underage.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: That liquor store never carded.
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: How dare you, Josh Todd.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: But, you know, we had Mr. Beer. Remember Meisterbrow? Mr. Beer. Oh,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: so gross. $ 7 cases.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it tasted like it.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: Like a $ 7 case.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, of course you got to do Mandela. Also,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: the story is, is remarkable.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: It is a remarkable. And in some way, just.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Learning more about it in hindsight, it's, can you imagine
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: being in prison for 30 years without the internet, without
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: modern technology and becoming an international symbol of, of the
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: plight for freedom?
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: Well, like he was there.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: It is there is there is a I guess you
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: could say Navalny is the closest heir apparent we've had
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: in our in the modern era. And that's one of
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: the areas who but unlike unlike Mandela, Navalny didn't get
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: to get out.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: And he, right.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: And, and what I learned, and I guess, again, shame
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: on me, because I should have known more of the details,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: particularly since it was happening when we were kind of
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: alive and conscious, conscious. But the fact that he rejected
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: so many offers for his freedom.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: Because he would not do anything that was not absolute
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: blanket freedom. rejection of the systemic racial segregation and everything
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: that went along with it. And it also is a
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: reminder that you can push, push, push, but until you
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: get a person in power who is, to quote one
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: of the people we covered for a long time, John McCain,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: who's willing to put country and, and, and humanity ahead
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: of your own political, it's not going to happen.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: And the clerk was the guy. Cause he said, all right,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: like we're done. Let's talk about this. It's interesting.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: Like the clerk and that's the clerk and Gorbachev. It
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: sort of was happening right around, right.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: Shop happens first where, and then the clerk right after,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: but it was, I wonder, I've always wondered how much
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: Gorbachev and what happened there had, had some impact on
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: the clerk. I don't know.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: Because it was all happening right around the same time.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was. I bet it did.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: Because Gorbachev, once he was out, he did go around
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: and talk about other countries. And he became, you know,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: he had a big platform and people listened to him.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: And he did talk about Mandela. So I bet he did.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: So.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: So you stop in 94 and you say you don't
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: do it any any sooner because, look, there's. There's two
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: presidential elections that I think 50 years from now will
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: be looked back as consequential, right? One is 2000 and
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: the other is 2016. No, I don't know. I know. Look,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to get there. But that's what's interesting.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: And this is what gets to why.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: And I'm saying what about Obama, just so everybody understands,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: not because he's a Democrat, because he was the first
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: black president.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: Right. And I think there's, you know, look, I wrote
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: a book on Obama and I remember writing and I said,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: he will always be America's first black president. You know,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: for what, no matter what his presidency, how his presidency ages,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: the good, the bad, the indifferent, he's always going to
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: be historically a bit more, a matter more because of
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: the country's history with race and because he was the
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: first black president.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: So that's always going to be there. The question is
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: how much, you know, what it, you know, the fallout
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: from his presidency in some ways, that's the, that's the
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: verdict that history hasn't rendered yet.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: The backlash.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: And the backlash to it and Trump's relationship to it
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: and the election in 2000, by the way, do you have,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: Do you get Obama without the election in 2000? Do
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: you get Obama without the Iraq war? I mean, there's
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: all sorts of, right, you know, what ifs in there.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: The point being is as much as I think that
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: the first thing people will do is do what I did. Well, boy,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: you know, we have two incredibly consequential elections, I think.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: history will say, but guess what? 10 years ago, 08
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: would have been, no, no, we had two and I
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: would have said 2000 and 2008. And now 2016 keeps growing, right?
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: Just like 2000 did. I always say this about the
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: 2000 election. It was the most important election that people
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: didn't realize was important until after it happened.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: That's the whole point of this book. I'm so happy
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: you said that. You don't realize it always in the moment.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: And that was a classic one because the campaign itself,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, you and I were both younger covering that
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: campaign and having, and the joke about that campaign is
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: how little difference there was between the two of them.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, it was sort of like, you know,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: Bush was basically saying, hey, if you, if, don't vote change,
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: vote for me. You know, it was just sort of like,
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to, I'm not going to change the
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: way things are. You know, I'm just going to restore
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: honor and integrity into the White House. Right. It was like,
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: I'm just running against his character. That's it. And, and,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: and I always thought.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 3: But he was, but he was running on conservative principles.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: No doubt.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: You know, but the distinction.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: The distinction between these two were so small. And I
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: think it's why turnout was so blah. I think it's all,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: I always said the reason that election ended at a
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: tie is neither one of them made the case to win, right?
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: Because they were both sort of just running to replace.
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: They weren't, they didn't necessarily, neither one of them knew
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: exactly what their presidency was going to look like. And obviously,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: you know, a certain day changes everything for George W.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: Bush.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: But, you know, boy, in hindsight, 2000 becomes this incredibly
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: consequential period. election.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: And I totally agree with you.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: You know, it will.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: All right. So now that you're saying that, I understand
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: why you said 2000 and 2016.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: That makes more sense.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: No, it's sort of like it's the fallout from it. Right.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: And and and I think that this is why I
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: think you picked your correct elections and you left off
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: some correctly because it's too early. A, it's too early
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: or B, sometimes consequential people getting elected didn't necessarily, it
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: wasn't a necessarily, you know, it was sort of like
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: the change had already happened and that's why they got elected,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: you know, type of mindset or whatever it is. So, um,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: you know, so I, I sort of, I sort of get, um,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: I get that. But I look at these three elections, right? 2000, 2008, 2016.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: I think in 20 years, you know, we may say
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: 2016 is the most consequential of the first quarter of
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: this century, right? Like we still don't know fully yet.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: And by the way, 2028.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: Maybe or maybe not. I don't know.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: How is that going to be the action or reaction
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: to what started in 2016?
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: Will it continue it? Or will it say, nope, we're done?
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that that's the... And it does
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: take a generation. You know, I'm being a history junkie.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: And one of the questions I ask historians all the time,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: what is the ideal... ideal space before you think you
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: can write about an event and get the most accurate picture.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, what's their answer?
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: And it's, well, it's, it's, it's, it's short enough where
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: there are people still alive who went through that event,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: but far enough, far enough away where there is no
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: consequences for them to tell their story. Right. Like that's the,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: that's the sweet spot you want. Is it 20 years?
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: Is it 25 years? For instance, I think this was
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: the first time we've had a more honest conversation about
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: 9-11 and about the fallout from 9-11 without feeling like...
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: I felt more comfortable having certain conversations about the fallout
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: of 9-11. Just like security, the debate, should we have
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: had a Homeland Security Department? There were certain debates that
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: we had But you muted them a little bit because
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: you didn't want to offend anybody. Right. There was still
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: there's still a lot of people that was raw for.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: And frankly, because we, you know, we all live when
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: you live. I always said that New York and D.C.,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: because it happened to us, it was more acute. And
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: one thing I'll never know the answer to is whether.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: The rest of the country was as obsessed with it
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: as we were. And did it wear away sooner than
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: we allowed it to wear away in the rest of
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: the country? It's always a question I've had in my head.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not, how do you, you know, you can't un,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: you can't un, you can't take yourself out of having
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: been a part of the story. So.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, I just, so I don't, there is
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: no perfect answer, but.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: I found this year harder on 9-11.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: Did you? Well, it's just probably the last one. It's
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: probably the last big anniversary, you know, that I'm not
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: saying there won't be commemorations, you know, as long as
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: there are survivors that are alive in the same ways
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: there's commemorations every year at D-Day and about every five
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: years a president comes.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: You know, so I'm not you know, we will have
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: those things, but this is probably, you know, the last
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: time that we have the big conversation. And I, you know,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: I'm You know, there's plenty of young adults who weren't
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: even born.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: And I think that's why I think I found it harder,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: because for the first time I'm looking.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: Around the office. You had to explain it.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, never mind to our kids, which that's understandable,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: but like to my colleagues and peers.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, wait a minute.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: I'll give you here's a good reason why you need
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: time to truly understand why an event has a huge
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: consequence that you don't fully appreciate. Take what was happened
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: to us with data and the digital revolution. So 9-11
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: happens and suddenly the country is comfortable giving up a
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: little bit of its privacy in exchange for security. And
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: it's a habit that we develop out of necessity because
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: our government asks us to. And for the most part,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: we're scared and we agree to it. collectively as a side.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: Not everybody was on board, but it was a 65.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: You go back to those polls, right? It was like 65%
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: were willing to give up some freedoms in exchange for security, right?
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: That was how acute the threat was. The 9-11 Commission
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: comes out and we basically decide to embed all of
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: these new surveillance systems and all of this stuff. And
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: we've got to find out more about everybody. And literally
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: the month that the 9-11 Commission report comes out, there's
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: this kid in a dorm room in Harvard that starts
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: an entity called Facebook. And all of a sudden we
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: go from agreeing to give up a little bit of
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: our privacy in exchange for security to then getting in
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: the habit of giving up a little bit of our
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: privacy in exchange for using a piece of software that
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: we now call an app.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 3: I think there's a book in here, Chuck.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, I wrote a column about it. But the
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: point being is.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 3: I think this is fascinating.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: I love this. Europe never feels as comfortable giving up
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: data to social media companies, to digital. To this day,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: Europe is, I always say, if you care about privacy
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: in America, be thankful for the Europeans because they're the
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: ones pressuring people. these big tech companies to have to
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: play by a more stringent set of rules when it
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: comes to cookies and all this stuff. But guess what
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: they didn't go through? They didn't go through 9-11, right?
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: We in America have gotten into this habit of just
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: handing over everything. And I think it's one of the
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: fallouts from 9-11. And if 9-11 doesn't happen, is our
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: relationship with big tech completely different than to do what
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: it is today where it feels like we've been, I
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: feel like we've collectively, we're held hostage by big tech.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Right.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: Think about how do people see your show? How do
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: people read your book? If you don't make an algorithm,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: you don't, right. It's like, it is, it is, it is.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: And it's funny. It's like, this is not something I
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: felt like I could see until you're this far away
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: from the actual event that happens.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: I would totally read that book. Yeah, but that's- And
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: you can say it was born in this conversation.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: Born in this conversation. All right, we're 47 minutes in.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: And I, look, one of my focuses when I bring
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: people on to talk about their book is I actually
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: like to talk about their book and what they wrote about.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: But there's a lot of people- Yeah. That say, Dana
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: Bash is on. Can you please talk about the frickin
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: midterms and come on? And can you talk about Washington
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: from Chuck Todd?
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: They don't need me. They do.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: But let's let me let me get your, you know,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: give me your five favorite races that you're obsessed with
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: at the moment that you feel like are going to
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: tell the story of 2026. Because I know when I
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: was sitting in your shoes, you know, at the end
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: of the day, you want to cover everything. But you
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: you have to use. you know, when you're in this
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: national platforms, you have to use a handful of races
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: as avatars, right? You know that, you know, because, you know,
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: you can't do it all no matter how much bandwidth.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: News channel should have, but we all know that way.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: We all know the way our business works. It isn't,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: it doesn't always work that way. So what are your
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: avatars for the story of, of 2026?
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: First of all, the Michigan Senate race.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, that's, I know that's maybe obvious, but
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: It just.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: I would have opened a bureau there if I could have.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, especially when, you know, when when Mike Duggan
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: was running as an independent, that governor's race, you had
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: you had you had the crazy center race with the
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: ideological fight on the left. And then you had this
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: three way dynamic as an independent. You know, you had
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: either scenario at one point. I literally I would have
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: begged NBC to open a bureau there. a full-time bureau
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: in Michigan. I think it's that important this cycle, but
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: even just with Abdul Al-Sayed, I mean, what happened? The
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: 2028 primary is being impacted right now in that race.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: 1000%.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: And it's because the question is, can one of the
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders left candidates win beyond a blue state or
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: a blue district?
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: And Michigan is as swingy as it gets right now.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: So that's going to determine the answer to that.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: Well, there's no doubt. Michigan won. Totally agree. Totally see it. Absolutely.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: What else?
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: I also think that Mike Lawler's district in New York.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: And the reason is because he is.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: He's running against a not a.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: Liberal, a moderate Democrat, who's kind of got the perfect resume,
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: the military background. And he is running, embracing Trump, where
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: he thinks it matters, but also pushing him away or at.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 3: Least separating himself. But I think that, I think that
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 3: if she wins.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He says yes to everything.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 3: But if she wins there, if she beats him, then,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: or let me, let me actually do the flip side.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: If he loses everything, I think it means that Democrats
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: are going to do really well, even though you would think, no,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: that that should be one of the first to go
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: because it's a Harris one district, one of only three.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: But I think because he frankly is running. A. very
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: smart campaign and she is running a very smart campaign.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: So I think that that could be determinative of the mood.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: I heard that the personal relationship between Jeffries and Lawler
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: is awful. That if there is one race.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 3: I can tell you it's awful.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: I was told if there is one, Akeem Jeffries only cares.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: Someone joked with me that honestly, if they didn't win
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: the house but beat Lawler, he wouldn't consider it a failure.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: That's like however personal that's become between the two of them. Wow.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 3: I didn't know it was that bad.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: It may explain why there was so much anger there.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: at this Jared Golden, Marie Glusenkamp-Perez rules committee vote.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: I think Lawler was a part of it. I think
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: Lawler was helping Jared Golden in there too. What's interesting
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: about Lawler, you're right about to single him out because
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: here's a guy who's got incredibly good relationships with people
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: like Jared Golden, Marie Glusenkamp, with the sort of the
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: blue dog Democrat crowd, and at the same time went
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: to the Trump convention. There's not many people sitting in
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: districts like his that are trying to do both. And
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: I think you and I both believe I think that's
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: a trap for these Republicans. Right. Can you you know,
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: when you look at that New York Times poll, it
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: might not be. And Lawler Lawler is the only one
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: trying to do both. I can't think of somebody else
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: trying to. I mean, I look at Mike Rogers and
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why he's not pivoting more to the center.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: It's just been surprising to me. He sort of stayed,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: you know, they're so.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 3: Concerned about base turnout.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: Because the whole country is running against Al-Sayed and he's
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: actually running against Al-Sayed.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: So he might as well do it.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that could be. All right. So Lawler and Michigan,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: those are two good avatars. Give me two or three
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: more that you feel like will help.
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 3: I think Iowa.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you. And one in the Senate race.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: For me, the whole state of Iowa is the blue
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: wave test, right?
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: If the wave is big, Iowa.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: Is a lot of blue.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: Because I think in both the governor's race and the
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: Senate race, it's the blue wave and it's people are
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: so pissed and they're so hurting and they love Trump
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: and the tariffs and the Iran war and all that.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: But the governor's race, the Democratic candidate is so strong.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: And in the Senate race, the Republican candidate is strong.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: She's pretty strong.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: Whether or not the Democrat at the top of the
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: ticket is going to pull over.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many coattails he's going to have.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: I know I've been obsessed with the coattail. Because I
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: think these governor's races, right? I mean, does Abbott have coattails?
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: And if so, what are they? And can Abbott get
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: over 54, 55? Right, I don't know. But let me
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: give you one more little fun little Iowa nugget because
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: you may want to use it. You may have seen this.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: And to me, it tells you everything. It sort of
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: reinforces your Iowa point. Zach Nunn and Miller Meeks.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: They just voted on Iran. Yeah, we just did that
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 3: in Inside Politics today.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: If that is not your canary in the coal mine.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: I feel so vindicated right now and seen because on
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: Inside Politics.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 3: I just did something that Chuck Todd did.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: Blessed without knowing it i feel like my i think.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: That's a huge turning point about i.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: Agree i agree because they're big trump supporters and vice versa.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: And not only that, it's the fact it just tells.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 3: You how 100 percent how.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: Hard defending this Iran war is becoming 100 percent. These
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: are Zach Nunn. He's not. I mean, he is a look.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: He is a card carrying member of the Republican Party.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? And I mean that in
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: a he's a he's a good Republican. He is not.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: He is Bob Dole like right. If Trump's the nominee,
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: he's with him. If he's with him, like he's just
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: a loyal party soldier. And he's a good Republican. When
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: he moves, that means something's happening in his district on
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: this issue.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 3: People are pissed. They don't want to spend all the
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 3: money that they're spending for fertilizer, for diesel. Oh, my God, diesel.
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 3: And that's directly from the Iran war.
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Then there's Texas. We've been here so many times,
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: but I actually think this is the first time where
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: We're getting close to October and the Texas fantasy hasn't
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: gone away yet for Democrats.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 3: I try to remember, was that true for Beto? Was
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 3: it already going away at this point? It wasn't quite
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 3: going away.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: I actually think with Beto, nobody still believed it. Nobody
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: was believing it still. Didn't you feel? I don't remember.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 3: I have to go back. I don't remember. You have
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 3: a better memory than I do. I think what's interesting
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: is that it's.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: Not just what I remember. It's pre-COVID.
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I think that in Texas that it's it
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: is like Iowa. It's not just one race. It's not
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: just the Senate race because it's Ken Paxton, who's a
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: very flawed candidate against Tallarico, who's, you know, a different
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: kind of Democrat down there.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 3: It's Abbott. Who is Texas. I mean, he is Texas
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 3: and he's obviously worried.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: He completely changed his position on data centers, for example.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: And then there's South Texas where Republicans, I mean, this
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: is talk about hubris. They just because you win Latino
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: voters once doesn't mean they're a permanent member of the coalition.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 3: Right. Because they're hurting economically.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, and maybe because people who are maybe even citizens
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: are getting picked up by by ICE for no reason
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: other than the fact that they are Latino.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: They have a last name with that ends in Z
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: or something.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Doesn't always stick.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Texas. I mean, so give me one more that
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: you think helps tell the story. I'm with you. I mean,
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: because Texas also, I mean, look, you go.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 3: You're with me so far. You're with me.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: OK, all four. I think those are all.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 3: I am going to go with. I'm going to go
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 3: with Alaska.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 3: I know it's a little offbeat because it has its
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 3: own DNA in every way, shape or form.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: But a lot of Western, you know, in fairness to
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: other Western states like Montana. Right. Like, yeah, I feel like, yeah,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: they all have their own identity. That's not quite what
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: we East Coasters sometimes do with politics.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: OK, scratch that. I'm actually going to I'm actually going
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: to put a pin in Alaska. I'm obviously watching it
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to go to Ohio, the Ohio Senate race.
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: Because the governor's race he could and the.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: Governor's race but the senate race in particular the the
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: fact that schumer convinced um our our senator we've been
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: covering since he was a house member sherrod brown who
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: went head-to-head with you in political trivia every time i
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: saw it happen i did not know who was going
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: to win.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: Um he is he's he also is good with uh
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: some baseball trivia. Oh, really?
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: But it has to involve the Indians or Guardians. Yeah,
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: I get that, which is why he's on the ballot again.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: So he, I mean, the fact that Schumer, I don't
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: think it was probably very hard to convince him to
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: try to run again, but he's genuinely a populist.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 3: He always has been.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: And so Ohio, when we first started covering it, it
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: was politics.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: Remember when we first started covering it?
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 3: So goes Ohio, so goes the nation.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: But think about the shared brand that we governed in 06.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: The question was, is he too liberal for the state?
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: Should Democrats have found somebody? And now it feels like
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: his economic populism. That is liberal. Sort of call it
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: just mainstream culturalism. I don't know. You know, it's it's
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: sort of like he fits the state better now than
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: he did in 06.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 3: It's really true.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: And so so the question is whether or not that
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: what what would if Sherrod Brown wins. You know, this
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: is the only part that tells me about.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Here's the only part that shocked me about why
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: he ran. Yeah. That he ran.
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: The reward for winning the Ohio Senate race in 2026.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 3: You have to be in. In the Senate.
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: You got to run again. No, you got to run
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: again in two years.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 3: It's special.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, right.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 3: That's true. It's special.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: This is the rest of Vance's seat.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 3: It's J.D. Vance's term.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: And, you know, Sherrod Brown, you know, he's going to
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: have to run in 28 with J.D. Vance at the
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: top of the ticket. It's just hard. It's just that
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: I always thought he was going to run for governor
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: because there were a bunch of Democrats trying to get
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: him to run for governor. And I don't know if
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: that would have meant Amy Acton would have moved to
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: the Senate race because she was in very early. And
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: it was there was a bunch of people that assumed
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: that because the Senate race was a two year gig,
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: that he would pick the governor's race so that he
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have to turn right around. But that to me
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: is what gives it it's more of a Schumer question.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: recruiting coup than he gets credit for because he talked
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: him into doing something essentially. All right. And if you win,
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: you're going to run again for me.
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: I assume Schumer got that. Look, I think we now
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: know that Sherrod Brown would love to be a senator
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: for life if he could be. He's going to have
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: to work really hard to do it.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that is definitely true. Thank you for having me.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: It's great to have you here. One question that I
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: get a lot from folks that I don't have the same.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: How much would you say, is the Trump White House
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: harder to work with now than the first term? Is
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: it still weirdly easier to work with because they care
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: about what's being on air, but hard to work with because, like,
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: how would you characterize the sort of the relationship that, look,
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: you have to have if you run a Sunday show.
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: You know, we can talk this balance between access and non-access.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: It's just, it is what it is, right? Now we say, look,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: if we want to know what's happening, you've got to
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: be able to bring the treasury secretary on. At the
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: same time, they make demands that are sometimes very hard
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: to deal. How would you characterize the relationship these days?
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's great with the mainstream media, but
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: I think we always have to keep in mind, and
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: people may or may not realize this, that the president,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: for all of his knowledge and use of modern media,
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: of social media and so forth, he's a creature of
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: the 80s and he loves legacy media. So he wants
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: his people to be on our shows. He just does.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 2: He wants himself to be on our shows. Maybe not
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: my show, but your former show. And, um, and he, uh,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: and so that is, that does help in being able
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: to ask the tough questions of people who work for him. Yeah.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: What do you make of what a bunch of us
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: are doing out here in independent space?
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: Do you? You know, it's funny. Oh my God, I
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: love it.
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 3: Are you loving it? Are you having a good time?
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And when I was seeing, when I was on
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: the other side, I remember going, I don't know, you know,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: and then you're over here and you're, look. There are
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of things I miss. The collaboration is the
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: biggest thing, right? The hardest thing about independent is the
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: I in independent because there's not a lot of we.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: You can build some we, don't get me wrong. And
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: we've all got, you put in together, but the collaboration,
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: the team, those resources, they're still really good resources. So
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: as much as we like to be, you know, us
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: independent people like to be like, it is, look, there
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: are trade-offs. I, you know, there are certain things I
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: can do and say in topics I get to cover
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: that I never would have been able to do or
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: say or cover before. And I think, frankly, there's a
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: more honest relationship between sponsors and what I do. And
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: yet the things I do with sponsors, I never would
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: have agreed to in my other life. And yet I'm
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: wondering if actually that would have been a better way
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: to handle it. It's just interesting. Like the lessons you
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: learn on this side, which is, you know, we build
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: this firewall. There was such a firewall built. And, you know,
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: the thing that we overrate is what the public thinks
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: of that. Public doesn't care. And they don't, even if
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: we tell them there's a firewall, they don't believe it
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: exists anyway.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: That's probably the one small aha I've had about that. But,
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: you know, the resources are awesome. So having a polling outfit,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: you know, those are the things I miss.
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 3: Well, so I look at you and our other....
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: Friends and colleagues, former colleagues who are doing what you're doing.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, God, that is so, I absolutely love it.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: I love reading your sub stacks and everybody's and watching
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 2: and all of your YouTube channels.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 3: Like it makes me so happy.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: But there's too much stuff to go through sometimes.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 3: It also looks like so much work.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: Like I work hard, I work hard, but I think
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: that you, it being an end, because it's just you,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: like you are working your soft.
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: I will say this. It's I've suddenly realized I'm doing
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: five shows a week. I was like, wait a minute.
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: I thought I left the whole point of walking away
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: was not to have to do five shows a week anymore.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: But there's something about, if you feel like it is funny,
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: if you have control of a situation, you'll end up
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: working more.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever it is, it's, you know, perhaps it's the
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: incentive of, well, you have to sing for your own
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: supper and those sort of things. But you kill. Yeah,
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: it is. Here's the thing. I used to joke the
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: grass is always browner. You know, everybody that would leave,
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, people would leave NBC all grumpy, grumpy,
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: and then they go to one of brand X or
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: brand Y and they go, oh, wow, I missed this.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: The point is, is that, look, there is some green
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: grass and then there's brown grass, too. And in both
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: both both sides of the equation, what we don't what
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: we don't want to see happen is is it any
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: of it going away?
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: It all needs to be reanimated. There's no and refreshed
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: all the time. but you don't want it to go
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: away and you just keep fighting for the independence because
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: that's what you don't want to lose.
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 3: Yep. Amen.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: And that's what I feel like you guys are the,
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: you're one of the last ones standing on the independence front.
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: So we're trying, I know. I don't want to get
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: into the other part of it. It is what it is.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: There's not much you can do. You know, you're a journalist,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: the corporate boardrooms, the corporate boardroom.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say, and I really mean this. I
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 3: know you said people don't believe it in any way.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 3: I don't feel it.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 2: I don't have a clue what happens in the corporate
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 2: corporate boardroom. And I don't, I don't care. Cause no one,
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 2: no one, I don't, it has zero impact. I don't
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: have any idea.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 3: It does. It does. There's no pressure.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: When would you have time actually to like, worry about
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: what's happening in corporate boardrooms? This story is too big
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: to ignore.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 2: No, but I mean, like people think, oh, they're doing
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: it because of, you know, the billionaires who run their company.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, no.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: Billionaires do run our companies, but there's no impact on
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 2: what I'm doing on the ground.
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: I don't have time cues, but I bet you, you do.
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: I need to let you know. Dana, it's always great.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: This was awesome.
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 3: Chuck, so good to see you. I'm very grateful. Go revolutionaries.
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: All right, it's time for my top five list. And
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: this week, it's my top five 2026 results that will
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: have an outsized impact on 2028. Some of it's on
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: the presidential level and some of it is on the
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: issue level. So number five on my list is the
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: independent experiment. Does one of them break through, right? Nebraska. Montana, Idaho,
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: South Dakota. We have variations of this experiment. Democrats have
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: essentially stepped aside for independence in those four states I've
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: talked about. Seth Bodnar in Montana, Ryan Vangs in South Dakota,
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: Dan Osborne in Nebraska, Todd Achilles in Idaho. Look, I
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: don't expect all of them to win, but if one wins,
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: one or two, but just one win, I think it
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: has an outsized impact on how parties start to think
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: about challenging aging incumbents in one party states, right? Because
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: if one breaks through, then every state party that has
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: become functionally non-competitive is going to look at it and ask, huh,
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: why are we insisting on putting our damaged party label
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: on the ballot? Democrats will ask the question in more
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: places outside of Nebraska, Idaho and South, right? They might
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: start saying, hmm, maybe this is a way to Try
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: to compete in Wyoming. Maybe it's a way to try
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: to compete in Utah. Maybe it's a way to try
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: to compete in North Dakota. But Republicans could eventually ask
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: the same question about, say, Massachusetts or Connecticut. One independent
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: Senate win this cycle could turn this experiment into a
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: strategy in this supposed rigid states, right, in the dark
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: blue or dark red state. is there suddenly a different
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: path to create competition? One of these independents winning will
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: accelerate this experimentation in other one-party states. So that's number five.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: Number four on my list of 2026 races that will
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: have outsized impact almost no matter what the result is.
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: By the way, in the other way, if none of
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: these independents break through... I think there's going to be
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: some questions about what's the, you know, is there a path?
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: Is there truly a path for independent senators, for independent?
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: And what would that path look like? Number four on
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: my list, California's wealth tax. Can the left win this argument, right?
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: It's California. Prop 40, it's a pretty extraordinary test. A
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: one-time tax of up to 5% of wealth above a
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: billion dollars, with most of the money intended to go
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: to healthcare. So let's forget California for a moment. Think
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: about the Democratic presidential primary in 2028. If a billionaire
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: wealth tax loses in California, opponents of the idea are
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: going to have a pretty powerful response when somebody proposes
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: taking it national. You couldn't even pass this in California.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: But if it passes, particularly if it passes comfortably, boy,
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: you're going to hear about this result constantly, not just
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: from the economic populist swing of the Democratic Party, probably
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: from every candidate on that stage, nobody's going to want
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: to be against it. So we'll see. Now, look, I
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: know there's competing props, right? Props 41 and 42 could
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: effectively negate Prop 40, even if voters approve it. So
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: It's possible that we get a convoluted message, but if
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: the basic message is you can sell this in California,
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: but more importantly, I really think it's the reverse. If
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: this fails, I do think this takes a big wind
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: out of the sails. And you've heard me on this.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: Why can't we just stop adding loopholes and weird things
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: to our tax code if we just got rid of
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: some of these write-offs and just kept it the progressive
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: tax code it was always intended to be? Those who
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: make a lot of money would pay a lot of
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: taxes and those who don't make a lot of money
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: wouldn't pay a lot of taxes. Isn't that how it
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: should work? All right, but I digress. Number three on
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: my list is Texas Senate. And the basic premise is this.
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: If Democrats can't win a Texas Senate seat against Ken
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: Paxton in this cycle, when are they ever going to
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: win in the state of Texas, right? It is the
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: ultimate Texas test. This has been Charlie Brown in the
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: football and Lucy and all that business, right? And the
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: circumstances have never been better for him. Maybe you could
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: argue that Tallarico could be slightly more closer to the
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: center ideologically, although he really has pivoted, right? He has
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: tried to run away from some of his more culturally
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: left things that he has said, right? But in this cycle, right?
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: In this political environment, against this nominee, right? If Democrats
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: come up short now in Texas, We're probably looking at
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: another decade before you'll see national donors invest in Texas again. Now,
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: I say all that, and number two on my list
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: is another Texas race. It's Texas governor, and it actually
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: fits into what I call, I think this is the
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: voucher election, right? I think, and this is more than just, boy,
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: if Democrats win more than one race in Texas, right?
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: I happen to think they're going to beat Paxton. My
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: guess is they come up a little short with Abbott,
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: but let's say Abbott loses. I think it has an
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: outsized effect. on the perception of whether vouchers are a
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: good political idea or a bad political idea, right? Greg
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: Abbott made school vouchers a signature achievement, and Gina Hinojosa
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: has made public education and opposition to vouchers central to
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: her campaign. And we're in the first year of this
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: Texas Voucher Program, and it is polarizing, it is unpopular
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: in some places, and if Abbott loses, I think it
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: radically changes this national debate over vouchers. I've told you,
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: wherever this has been implemented, It has not improved the
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: perception of education in that state. It has only raised
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: more concerns. It has only made more parents unhappy. It
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: has only outraged particularly really frustrated and outraged rural communities
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: in particular who just don't have the schools to pick from.
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, they thought their public school
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: was good. What are you doing to it? Why are
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: you cutting funding? just to appease a private education industry.
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: So I know I have two, and it's true, right?
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: These Texas races, I think, will have outsized impact in
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: 2028 and beyond, right? If Tallarico can't win under these circumstances,
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: it will take a decade before Democrats return to Texas.
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: And if somehow Abbott loses in addition, I think it
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: transforms the perception of the voucher issue in particular. And
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: number one on my list of 2026 results that will
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: have an outsized 2020 impacted, of course, is Michigan Senate
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: and Abdul El-Sayed. And it's not just whether he wins.
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: To me, it's whether he gets over 50%, right? Because
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: I think this is the result that produces the biggest
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: argument inside the Democratic Party in 2028, right? In many ways,
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: El-Sayed has become a test case for the progressive wing
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: of the party, right? AOC and Mamdani can win in
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: New York City. But if Abdul El-Sayed wins at Michigan,
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: a battleground state, a state Donald Trump carried twice, and
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: if he gets over 50 percent, look, if he wins
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: but gets under 50 percent, I think the progressive argument
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: is weaker, right? But him getting over 50 percent and
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: the progressive wing of the party can say, hey, why
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: shouldn't we be the leading faction of the party? Why
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: shouldn't the Democratic nominee in 2028 come from our wing
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: of the party? You know, instead of finding the candidate
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: from the center left wing of the party who could
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: most appeal to progressives, find the progressive that can most
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: appeal to the center left, right? It's that dynamic, right?
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: Which part of the party has the lead argument here?
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: This Michigan Senate race is going to have outsized impact
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: on that. So, It's a different type of top five.
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to shake it up so that we can
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: make this a more dynamic list than just saying, well,
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: here's where I have the main Senate race this week,
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: or here's where I think Florida Gov might be going
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: next week and things like that. I think there are different,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: we forget sometimes there will be some results in 2026
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: that have a bigger impact on the future than they
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: do actually in the moment that we see that result.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: And this was my attempt to find those five elections
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: and the outsized impact if a result goes a certain way,
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: those elections could have. Dave from on U Street in D.C. See,
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: they don't have a congressional district yet, but it eventually,
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: I think, will be part of D.C. 's second congressional district.
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: Because I do think if D.C. becomes a state, they'll
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: at least get two. You've talked about the blue mirage
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: and blue tsunami, but what about an electoral mega tsunami?
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: Like the Meg, like, you know, there's sharks, there's great
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: white sharks, and then there's the Meg, right? Is that
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: where you're going here? Plausibility aside, if an election produced
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: something as lopsided as a 90-10 Senate or 400 to
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: 35 House, how would committee assignments work when the minority
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: simply doesn't have enough members to cover everything? Would members
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: just serve on significantly more committees? Thanks for indulging our curiosity.
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the mechanics of policy are just as interesting as
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: the policy itself. I hope to see you at a
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: Revs game, Dave, on U Street. You will see me
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: at a Revs game, definitely. And I'm looking forward to that.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: That's a great question. I don't have, I mean, yes, there, look,
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: in both cases, I think if you had a result
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: like that, so the House and the Senate write new
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: rules at the start of each Congress. And literally, you
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: know what the rules of the next House are? Here
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: are all the official rules for the next house. It's
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: a blank sheet of paper at the moment. So if
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: you have this result, literally the new majority can write
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: a set of rules. There would certainly be some ranking,
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: but I have no doubt in a situation like that.
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: And look, the minority party would have no leg to
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: stand on. So it would just be all the majority
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: party trying to figure out. Right. And something like that.
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: You'd still have factions within the party.
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: You have a result like that. You're going to get,
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: you know, you're going to get some accident, a ton
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: of accidental members in all of those things. So it is.
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: But but what you're talking about, you wouldn't have literally
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: the two the two chambers can write a new set
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: of rules. to basically respond to the results that came
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: through in this election. I fear humoring you even more
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: on this issue to see, but that would be the base.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: And on committees, I think you would. I don't think
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: you'd have, I think you'd still have, everybody would still
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: be on the same amount of committees, right? The question is,
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: what would the number be in that scenario, right? You know,
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: what would your advantage be in each committee? And then
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: it would really be up to the party in power
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: to decide how much power they wanted to give which
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: faction of their party, depending on which committee they were
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: dealing with, right? You could see oversight being a little
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: bit more ideological members, but maybe on finance, you might
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: have a different set or maybe on the ag committee,
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: you'd make sure it came from, you'd have a lot
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: more geographic dominance there, particularly with the, because if you
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: won another scenario like that. But if you got something
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: like that, you'd get a brand new president. I think
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: you would see, I mean, essentially a result, my interpretation
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: of a result like this, it's a vote of no
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: confidence in the current structure of who's in charge of government.
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: And I think you'd have wholesale impeachments because guess what?
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: You'd have the votes to both indict and convict. So
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: it probably leads to mass resignations, but that's a pretty
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: chaotic result. But if you get a result like that
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: and a repudiation like that, I would argue the mandate
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: is that you're basically asking for a new president. And
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling that's what it would be. You
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: might have a situation in a weird way that would,
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: because a result like that is a massive vote of
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: no confidence, right? That's a massive vote of no confidence.
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: So in some ways you're incentivized. to do that. So
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: I know you wanted to get into the mechanics of impeachment,
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: but I did want to, if that really were the result,
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: and we don't see evidence that we're anywhere near that, that's,
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: you know, I think that's what voters essentially would be demanding.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you this, though, a result like that and
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump would beg to become a Democrat. All right,
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: Kyle writes in, he goes, he's writing from Washington's fourth
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: congressional district where he's currently running for the state legislature
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: in a district where the math is, let's say, not
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: exactly encouraging. Well, the fourth district is a complicated district there.
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: Is there value in running these uphill races beyond winning,
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: building a bench, forcing the other side to defend the ideas,
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: giving voters a choice, and slowly changing what's politically possible?
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: Or are some of us just doing our civic duty
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: with a side of public humiliation? So, No, I mean, look,
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of ways that further down
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: the ballot, in some ways, if you do align with
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: the national mood and the national election, you're the local
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: representative of the movement, right? That's number one. If you're
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: trying to run in a community that leans politically another way, well,
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: it's a way you're suddenly... You're the representative of the
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: party that they're skeptical of. So it's an opportunity. Look,
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: if we don't have political competition, you're going to get
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: political corruption, right? The lack, you know, political corruption thrives
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: in areas where there's very little competition. One party rule
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: always ends up being a grift after about eight to
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: 10 years. I think that that's why you have, you're
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: seeing what appears to be almost more anger in the
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: red states at Republicans than you're seeing necessarily, right? There's
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: only so much anger left in some of these blue
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: states or purple states, but in some of these red
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: states where there's no Democrats to blame, right? There's only
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: been one party in charge. And I think that in
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: those communities, if you have a healthy political party, again,
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: it goes back to, if you're a member of another party,
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, Libertarian Party, Forward Party, Republican Party, whatever party
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: you're running in and you're sort of running uphill in
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: what you're doing. I don't wanna presume which party you're
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: running in. Look, I also think you have trickle up effect.
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: The more candidates you have on the ballot, the better
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: usually that party does. There's another core, I've given you
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: two correlations. where primary turnout, the party that does better
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: turning out its voters in a midterm year in the primaries,
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: it almost universally translates into that party winning more seats
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: in the general. Well, the party that fills out its
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: ballot more completely with nominees is usually the party that
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: has this advantage statewide. Because in some, and if it,
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of logical, right? If you've filled
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: out the ballot then in theory, you have more people
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: knocking on doors, more people asking people to vote, more
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: people trying to get them to come out and vote.
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe it's your race that you're going to
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: encourage somebody to vote in. And if you get them
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: to come vote for you, well, you've suddenly helped other,
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: perhaps other candidates. You definitely have helped other candidates on
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: the ballot. And it might be you've helped other candidates
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: of the party you're a member of on the ballot.
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: So I get it. I get the feeling that you
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: may be having. But I'll tell you, to me, the
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: door-to-door campaigning, at least it's instant gratification, right? You know
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: immediately whether you've connected or not. But, you know, this
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: is sort of how the democracy started. It was hand-to-hand
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: voter combat, right? And the smaller the election, the more
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: you have that. And the more you have that usually
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: has a trickle-up effect. So, yeah.
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't feel like you're wasting your time. Forcing, you know,
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 1: forcing competition. You're only, you know, ever so in your
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: own way, you're hopefully preventing corruption.
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: The more competition that shows up and then you're also
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: if you care about your political party, if you care
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: about your political movement, you're serving as a surrogate. to
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: possibly getting somebody out that might not have come out
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: for any other reason other than you being the only
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: candidate that came to knock on their door. And that's where,
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: and I think that's where you have more of an
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: impact than perhaps is appreciated. All right. Shane comes in here.
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: This is Shane.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 2: Shane.
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: Hailing proudly from Missouri's controversial 5th District. Well, which 5th District?
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: New or old, I ask. After the midterms, do you
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: think Republicans who have been reluctant to challenge Trump will
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: become more independent as his time in office winds down
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: and his influence over primary races potentially changes? I've already
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: seen some Republicans distance themselves, but do you think that
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: could translate into meaningful action and greater willingness to hold
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: the administration accountable? Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Go Tigers, M-I-Z. Oh, interesting.
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: The Mizzou Tigers. You know, I saw your M-I-Z, and
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, is this a Brewers fan? And you were
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: talking about the Miz, meaning Mizorowski. But in this case,
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: you're talking about the Missouri Tigers. Big game this week.
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: You know, can you deflate the excitement of Florida Gators fans? Well,
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: we shall see, Shane.
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: I think it really depends on the size of the result. Obviously,
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: the bigger, you know, if Democrats come up short in
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: the Senate, win control of the House, but it's not
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: a big majority, I don't think Republicans are going to
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: bolt from Trump in a hard and fast way. If
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: this is, you know, Democrats win both Texas statewide, you know,
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: won the big two in Texas, both Gov and Senate,
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: Let's say when Kansas and Iowa and Alaska, maybe maybe
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: one of those independent races, Idaho, South Dakota, Nebraska comes
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: through and it's just a clean sweep like that. And
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 1: it's 30, 30 House seats in this in this gerrymandered map.
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: You know, then you may have some Republicans who are like, hey.
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: Finger in the wind, they're reading the tea leaves, especially.
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: Senators who weren't on the ballot in twenty six. but
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: hail from states where their party didn't do so well.
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: Those would be the first senators I would check out
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 1: and see. Obviously, look, any House Republican that survives this
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: isn't going to feel that same pull unless they want
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: to run statewide. It's those that aren't on the ballot
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: this cycle and how they behave. They're the ones that
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: I could see at least in the Senate, changing their
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: behavior based on if the results go decidedly against Republicans.
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Angie. First time, long time from Lincoln, Nebraska.
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: And I still miss you on MTP every Sunday. Well,
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you saying that, but I have to admit,
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: I don't miss being there every Sunday. With an independent
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: candidate here campaigning on not coxing with either party, I
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: started wondering, If enough independents won that neither Republicans nor
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: Democrats held an outright majority and those independents refused to
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: caucus with either side, who would actually control the House
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: or Senate? How would leadership be determined? And could one
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: party technically retain control despite not holding a majority of
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: the seats? Thanks, Angie. Yes, yes, and yes. And welcome
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: to what my friends in the independent movement and at
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: the forward party call the fulcrum strategy. The idea being
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: if you get just enough independents, right? So take the
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: House of Representatives. Let's say... you know, let's say the
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: majority is going to be in single digits, right? This
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: only works if you're in this single digit. And you've
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: got a commitment from, say, 10 to 12, a dozen
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: House members that are, you know, that basically want a
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: specific set of rules and they withhold their vote. Nobody
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: can get to a majority for the speaker, right? The
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: Freedom Caucus gave every faction the blueprint of how to
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 1: hold a speaker vote hostage to get something. And so
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: if the Freedom Caucus can do it for what they want,
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: why couldn't those that just want to get shit done
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: do it? And you could create a fulcrum caucus like that.
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: Or in the Senate, right? You know, I've always thought
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: if just six senators, you know, you already had them there, right? With,
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: you know, you got Lisa Murkowski and Angus King are
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: sort of there. And you had before you had Sinema
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: and Manchin. Um, you know, maybe you want to throw
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: in a couple more that might be a member, but
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: you could essentially cut a deal, you know, with your,
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: what is it, you know, if you want to guarantee
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: equal representation on committees or, you know, there's fewer things
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: that are probably worth asking for. Maybe you want a
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: specific promise on how the filibuster works, right? Which would
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: all be a part of a Senate rules package that
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: you would do at the top. So the answer is yes.
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: I think that this is ultimately what I'd like to
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: see lawmakers do, which is, you know, if we're going to,
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: if we're going to be in this polarized stalemate, why
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 1: can't a handful of lawmakers decide to become the fulcrum?
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: And if you're the fulcrum, you can decide, you know,
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: all right, we're going to give you, maybe, maybe these
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: senators say, you know what? We don't want either party
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: to run the Senate both years of this Congress. So
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 1: we're going to, Let the Democrats have it first and
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: then the Republicans have it second or vice versa, whichever
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: makes the most sense. And you might want to do
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: that as sort of a check, right? You get to
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: retain some power there. So look, I think there are
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways that if you have enough like-minded
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: elected lawmakers— who care more about getting shit done than
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: appeasing an ideological base or being good standing dues paying
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: members of the DCCC or the NRCC, right? If your
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 1: first thought in going to Congress is how do I
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: get shit done rather than how do I become a
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: committee chair and how do I use this as a
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: stepping stone to be a US Senator and President, then yeah,
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: I think the opportunity is there. You need enough like-minded,
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: sort of independent acting electeds. It doesn't mean they have
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: to be independents. They could be Republicans who behave independently
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: or Democrats. You know, think Marie Glusenkamp-Perez on the left
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: or John Curtis on the right or Lisa Murkowski on
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 1: the right or Jared Golden on the left. I think
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: in this case, you might see people like Dan Osborne said,
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to caucus with either party. Good. If
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: you're truly making a case, maybe he says, I'm going
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: to just caucus with whichever party's in the majority. And
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: maybe the deal you cut is I'll be in the
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: majority with either side. That's the deal I'm cutting for
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: my constituents. And I'm going to withhold my vote until
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: the two leaders agree. One will be majority leader for
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: one year of the congressional session, and the other party
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: will be the majority leader of the other session. The
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 1: point is, is that, yes, there is power here. If
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: you have enough people where you can impact the margin.
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: And that's the key. All right. Paul S. writes, Olivia
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed interviewing you back in April 2025
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: for our Sports Untold podcast. Oh, well, thank you, Paul.
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: And I continue to listen to the podcast and your
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: Super Tuesday episodes with Chris. A few questions I didn't
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: get to ask then. What are your favorite sports? And
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: favorite underrated sports movies. And what's your favorite political movie?
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 1: And finally, looking back at Trump's 2021 impeachment, do you
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: think the articles should have been broader, potentially including allegations
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: of reckless endangerment, election interference, or obstruction of Congress? And
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: could a different approach have changed the Senate vote? Have
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: a good weekend. Sincerely, Paul S. All right. So one
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: of my favorite and favorite underrated sports movies. So look,
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: my I think baseball movies are the best movies, right?
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: Make the best movies. And I think, right, the slowness
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: of baseball allows for you. I'm a sucker for so
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: many baseball movies. I love Kevin Costner in A Perfect
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: Game where he's just making the last great, you know,
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about that the other day when Justin
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: Verlander was doing his final start and Max Scherzer maybe
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 1: was doing his final start. I was thinking a lot
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: of that Kevin Costner movie and he's, you know, using,
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: you know, pitching the final game of his life and
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: he's pitching the game of his life, right? Um, so I, uh, uh, I'm,
• 2:31:49
  Speaker 1: I'm a sucker for most of them, but look, field
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: of dreams. I mean, just look, it is, I love
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: that it's in Iowa. I've got my own Iowa connections
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: and Iowa roots and I've spent a lot of time
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: with it. And I love the contradiction. My favorite thing about,
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: I used to be a huge Kevin Costner fan just
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: in general. Um, I felt like I, I, you know,
• 2:32:07
  Speaker 1: I felt like he was, if he was in a movie,
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: I saw it and I wanted to see it. And
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: it goes all the way back to Fandango, um, which
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: is actually an underrated road trip movie, you know, high
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 1: school kids getting ready for college or the war, depending
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: on which way they were going. Um, and there was
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: like one guy who was always passed out drunk, um,
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: was sort of the one gag of that movie. Um,
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm a field of dreams and, and I'm
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: a sucker for major league, you know, Willie Mays Hayes here. Um,
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's just so many, it's just, It's the
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: anchorman of sports movies because there's just so many great quotes, right?
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: Caddyshack and Major League, just a bit outside, right? There's
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: just so many of those. And an underrated sports movie
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: and one that I enjoyed, and I also read the
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: book and enjoyed that, North Dallas 40. There's a couple
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: of good football movies that don't get enough any given
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: Sunday in North Dallas 40. And both did a Better
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: than average job of capturing both the physical toll football
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: can take, but also the sense of team, right? And
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: just the, you know, and any given Sunday might have
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: the best scripted speech ever by a coach. That inch,
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: you're fighting for that inch. And now Pacino. Political movies.
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 1: So I think the most underrated, I'll give you the
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: most underrated political movie. You will look at every list
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: of all-time great movies, funny political movies, great political satire,
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: and this movie won't go on there. And I promise you,
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: if you go watch it right now, you'll be like,
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: oh my God, this movie's brilliant. It's Eddie Murphy in
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: Distinguished Gentleman. He's Jeff Jones, the name you know. The
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: whole premise of the movie is, What's funny, why I
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: love the movie is when it first came out, the
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: point was to be absurd and it was a little
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: over the top, except it's not over the top. It
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: is a really good satirical way of explaining how way
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: too many members of Congress work. Way too many members
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: work the way distinguished gentleman points it out. But, um, Essentially,
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: the premise is there's a Gray Panther Party. A congressman dies.
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: Eddie Murphy decides the greatest grift of all would be
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: a politician.
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: And that's the whole thing. Right. He's playing sort of
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: a con artist. And you think it'll be hilarious if
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: he could con the South Florida congressional district into electing him.
• 2:34:34
  Speaker 1: He's his his middle name is Jefferson. And he decides
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 1: to shorten it to Jeff. And he's got the same
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: last name as the congressman. And, you know, basically, they
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: want to use name idea to sort of sneak in.
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: Of course, it's a special election. It works. Jeff Jones,
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: the name, you know, was sort of his campaign punchline,
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 1: which I love. But then, of course, Eddie Murphy gets there.
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: He goes, oh, my God, I thought I was the
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: con artist. This is the greatest con of them all.
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: And it just goes through all of it. All the
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 1: people that are bought off in this committee and this committee.
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: And and oh, leadership packs. Oh, this is another. I mean,
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: it is it does it. It is the it is
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: the only movie that is correctly captured the absurdity of
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: the campaign finance system. And this sucker was written in
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: like 1989. And the thing is, you could watch it
• 2:35:19
  Speaker 1: and it is as appropriate to today's Congress than ever before,
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: except the dollar figures. The only thing that dates the
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: movie is the size of the checks. That's the only
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: thing that dates the movie. Others that I think are
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: underrated in the political space are Bullworth, holds up better.
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: It actually holds, I think, pretty well. And Primary Colors
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: is another one that ages well. When it first came out,
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: by the time Clinton left office, it felt more accurate
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: than we thought. And perhaps the movie aged well because
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: it came out before Lewinsky. And then when you watched
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 1: it after Lewinsky, the movie made more sense. And I
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: remember when the movie came out, John Travolta's Bill Clinton.
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: And yet, John Travolta's Bill Clinton. Wasn't that bad? So, anyway,
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: hope that works for you. These days, my favorite political
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 1: show is coming back in a couple weeks. Diplomat. That's so,
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: of all the political thrillers that have been out there,
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 1: I think this does politics as well as any of them.
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: It's a little more realistic than than than so far
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 1: you know obviously outsized exaggeration but i love how the
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 1: diplomat has handled the trump era and how they've who
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: was trump and who wasn't and all this stuff so
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: i have to say i'm anxiously looking forward to the
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: new season which starts i believe in about a week
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: or two and what was your last part of your
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: question was trump's 21 21 impeachment i think the only
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: thing i'd love to if you wanted to change things
• 2:37:08
  Speaker 1: the only thing to change would have been um Calling
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: McConnell's bluff and immediately sending over the articles. And I
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: understood the need to, you know, there was this concern.
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: Everything just went too slow. So rather than, yes, you
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: could have had different articles. It wasn't the articles. I
• 2:37:28
  Speaker 1: do think I. and maybe if it wasn't the issue
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: of delay in sending over the articles, I think it
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 1: should have been seen as a national emergency and everything
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: should have been boom, boom, boom, boom. And in some ways,
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: trying to let Biden get inaugurated. Look, I do think
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 1: it screwed up the Biden presidency, right? It really was
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: a mess, which of course was the feature, which is what,
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: that was Trump's intent, right? Figuring no matter what, he
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: screws up the start of his presidency and that in
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 1: itself is a political victory for Trump. But I would,
• 2:38:05
  Speaker 1: if you're asking me if I could go back into
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 1: a time machine and redo something, it would be as
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 1: soon as the house passed the articles of impeachment, they
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 1: immediately triggered the Senate trial and sent it immediately to McConnell.
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: Cause remember what McConnell's lone reason for voting not to
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: convict was the delay.
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 1: And starting the trial before Trump left office. I, I, yes,
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: that's what I would have liked to have seen, uh,
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: an accelerator and an acceleration of that. There's no reason
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 1: why that couldn't have, that couldn't have been, um, And
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: the only reason it didn't happen was out of deference
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: to Joe Biden. Which, of course, in hindsight was just
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: a gigantic mistake.
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: We are getting we are. We are one day away
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: from the best sports month that we have, which is October.
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: We got playoff baseball. We have the start of hockey.
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: You have the start of the NBA coming up later
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: in the month. College basketball practices have begun. We know
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: that season kicks off. There's this thing called the NFL.
• 2:39:11
  Speaker 1: There's my obsession called college football. Welcome to sports nirvana time.
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: And for political junkies who are also sports fans, right?
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: It's the last four weeks of the midterms. It don't
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: get any better than this. So don't tell me there's
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: nothing to watch on TV. Because I know there's plenty
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 1: to see. Whether it's a handful of debates that are
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: still happening on C-SPAN or playoff baseball. or college football.
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: It's all happening. So enjoy. I'll see you tomorrow.