Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Special Episode - What If Trump Accepted His Loss In 2020? + What If Trump Won In 2020?

Transcript

Special Episode - What If Trump Accepted His Loss In 2020? + What If Trump Won In 2020? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: insurance is something you should really think about, especially if
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  Speaker 1: you've got a growing family. Hello Thearin, Welcome to another
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  Speaker 1: episode of the Chuck Podcast. It is the end of
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  Speaker 1: the year. There are different oh I would call them.
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  Speaker 1: We used to call them writing crutches back in the
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  Speaker 1: day that the end of the year brings many a journalist,
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  Speaker 1: you can some times come up with a listicle. I
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  Speaker 1: think Nate Silver did one, the fifty one most important
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  Speaker 1: you know political moments of the twenty first century ranked
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  Speaker 1: an interesting exercise, if and nothing else, it's a good
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  Speaker 1: way for certain people under the age of say thirty
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  Speaker 1: five to look at that list and ask themselves, Huh,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: what don't I know about? It? Is the older you get,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the more useless those lists feel. I say that with
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: no disrespect. I think the work Nate put into it
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  Speaker 1: was pretty good. But you do all sorts of We
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: have all sorts of writing crutches, listicles, or are huge. One. Look,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do one for New Year's resolutions for
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: various people for my sub stack that you can go find.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And that's another type of end of the year writing
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: crutch Well, one of the end of the year things
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  Speaker 1: that I have come to do ever since I started
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  Speaker 1: doing a podcast, and those of you, I know some
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of you have been with me ever since I started
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: one as Meet the Press host. First I called it
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. That was our way, remember the early
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: days of podcasts. She wanted to come up with a
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: with a name that you that once people understood the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: connection the name had to what you were trying to say.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: It was a really clever name. Well, I called it
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven because that was the year Meet the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Press was born, and I thought, oh, what a great way. Well,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I always had to explain what the hell nineteen forty
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: seven was, and it happened to also be the same
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  Speaker 1: year my mother was born. So she never liked being
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: reminded all the time of how old she was. So
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: that's when a producer friend, a producer, longtime producer of
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: mine and friend of mine, said, why don't you rename
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it and just call it the toodcast thing. You know,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: your name rhymes with podcasts, so just use it, lean
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: into it, be a middle aged dad. Dad punted up,
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  Speaker 1: and just do it. And so I went and called
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  Speaker 1: it the Chuck Podcast, even while I was at NBC
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and my friends at NBC when decided to leave, they
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: acknowledged that they couldn't find somebody else to do the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Chuck Podcast. So I don't own all my archives for
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: those of the NBC days. I do own my name, image,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: and likeness as we now call it, thanks to college sports.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: But I've had one consistent thing and I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: bring it back my first year of being an independently
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: run and own Chuck podcast, and that is my what
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  Speaker 1: If series, their alternative history. I first got obsessed with
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  Speaker 1: what If. Just to give you a little bit of
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  Speaker 1: the backstory here for those of you that are new
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to this, during the when looking back at the two
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  Speaker 1: thousand election stalemate, right, they sort of the election that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: sort of began polarization. Right before two thousand, we didn't
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  Speaker 1: think of ourselves as living in red states or blue states.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We lived in the United States. Yes, there were swing
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: states and there were states that weren't swing states, but
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  Speaker 1: we weren't really living in this red America or blue
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  Speaker 1: America until the two thousand election. Well, one of the
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  Speaker 1: more fascinating aspects of the two thousand election that I
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  Speaker 1: loved to create an easter eggon was one of the
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  Speaker 1: reasons why the Supreme Court was able to stop the
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  Speaker 1: count is because the secretary of State in the state
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: of Florida certified the election, and the election being certified
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  Speaker 1: as Bush being the winner basically gave the Supreme Court
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  Speaker 1: the exit ramp to stop the count. Well, back then,
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  Speaker 1: the state of Florida elected their secretaries of state. For
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  Speaker 1: those of you who are political junkies, know that the
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  Speaker 1: secretary of State at the time with Caston Harris Well,
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  Speaker 1: and she only became Secretary of State due to a fascinating,
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  Speaker 1: bizarre and not necessarily bizarre, but a fascinating set of
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  Speaker 1: circumstances that took place in nineteen ninety eight. In nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety eight, the incumbent Republican Secretary State was a woman
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  Speaker 1: named Sandra Mortham. She was embroiled in this sort of
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with you, it was a run
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  Speaker 1: in the mail scandal for a secretary of state. Why
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  Speaker 1: do I call it run in the mill because there
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  Speaker 1: had been one in Illinois, there had been one and
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  Speaker 1: I think in Louisiana. Because in many states the secretary
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  Speaker 1: of State hands out a lot of licenses, right, they
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  Speaker 1: sort of run that aspect. And there's been quite a
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  Speaker 1: few of these agencies in different states who have been
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  Speaker 1: caught taking money under the table in exchange for making
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  Speaker 1: sure somebody gets their license, their employer license to you know,
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  Speaker 1: maybe be it, you know, run a truck driver, a
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  Speaker 1: truck driving depot or something like that, all these different
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  Speaker 1: things that you do need state certification for. And this
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  Speaker 1: was That's what I mean when I say it was
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  Speaker 1: run in the mill. It was some sort of quid
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  Speaker 1: pro quo sort of blew up, but it certainly got
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  Speaker 1: enough traction that it was making Sandra Mortham an un
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  Speaker 1: pop She was a Secretary State. It seemed like forever,
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  Speaker 1: and it was one of those you could just you
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  Speaker 1: could smell the staleness on her she was going to
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  Speaker 1: lose a general election. Well, Florida Republicans do this too,
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  Speaker 1: so they at the last minute found a primary challenger,
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  Speaker 1: the daughter of a wealthy donor over the years, the
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  Speaker 1: granddaughter of the same Ben Hill Griffith that it puts
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  Speaker 1: his name on the University of Florida football stadium for
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  Speaker 1: the Gators, and Catherine Harris primarieser Win's the primary wins
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  Speaker 1: the general. Rest is history. Well, had Catherine Harris not
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  Speaker 1: run and Sandra Mortham had been the nominee, she does
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  Speaker 1: not win that general election. And there's a Democratic Secretary
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  Speaker 1: of State, and if the election had never been certified,
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  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court never stops the count, and then the
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  Speaker 1: recount goes in full. Now Bush may end up winning.
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  Speaker 1: There's never been enough evidence. You know, the biggest problem
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  Speaker 1: the Gore of Partisans had back then is the biggest
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  Speaker 1: loss of vote under vote was due to this bizarre
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  Speaker 1: butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County that made people who
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  Speaker 1: thought they were voting for Gore end up voting for
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  Speaker 1: Pat Buchanan. And there's there's a there's certainly there's certainly
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  Speaker 1: statistical evidence circumstantial evidence to say, geez, in this one
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  Speaker 1: area of you can and overperforms where he performed everywhere else.
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  Speaker 1: That doesn't make a lot of sense. And of course
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  Speaker 1: the design of the crazy butterfly ballot. But the point
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  Speaker 1: is we'll never know because we never did get the
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  Speaker 1: full recount. And oh, by the way, the Gore strategy
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  Speaker 1: of just asking for recounts in the blue counties is
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  Speaker 1: to this day one of the dumbest asks anybody in
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  Speaker 1: the business of recounts has ever made. It was just
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  Speaker 1: a strategic mistake and handed all the talking points over you.
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  Speaker 1: If you want to win a recount, you have to
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  Speaker 1: be on the side of count all the votes. The
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: minute you're not on the side of count all the votes,
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  Speaker 1: you're not going to win the politics of a recount,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: because yes, that's shit matters, not just the facts. You've
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  Speaker 1: got to have the spin. So I've always wondered it's
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  Speaker 1: one of my favorite it's a reminder and in fact,
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  Speaker 1: you can do this with history, right. You know, a
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  Speaker 1: butterfly flapsuit swings, YadA, YadA, YadA. Suddenly you know turtles
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  Speaker 1: can mate with each other that were once male and female.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever it is, My point is it is the whole
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  Speaker 1: idea of the butterfly effect. And there's butterfly's effects all
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  Speaker 1: the time in life, our own lives, butterfly effects in history.
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  Speaker 1: And it was the reason I liked I got obsessed
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  Speaker 1: with that is that I thought it was, well, you know,
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  Speaker 1: we can do this with a lot of historical events.
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  Speaker 1: So I've been doing this over the years. You know,
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  Speaker 1: what if Bill Clinton had resigned in nineteen ninety eight,
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  Speaker 1: when there there was so much pressure for him during
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  Speaker 1: the Lewinsky scandal to do just that avoid the impeachment,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: This is terrible for the party. It's terrible for the country.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you could be putting that. You know, with
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  Speaker 1: the president as compromised dealing with a scandal, is he
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: going to be thinking straight? And you know, to this day,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: there's some questions about whether we didn't get bin Laden
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: because we couldn't focus the country on the threat of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: bin Laden, and we did come close. I remember there
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: were some missile strikes that Clinton had ordered, and Republicans
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: criticized him for trying to wag the dog, trying to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: distract from the Lewinsky scandal. No, he actually was trying
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: to prevent nine to eleven as it turned out, but
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: we don't know this now, right, so what would that
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  Speaker 1: have been? And so the point is is that what
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  Speaker 1: if Hillary Clinton had run in two thousand and four?
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Well I did a what if on that and so
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: hence the series was born. You know, look, there's people
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that have done the what if on JFK better than me.
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  Speaker 1: Stephen King wrote a whole book called eleven twenty two
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  Speaker 1: sixty three that basically does that. Yes, that has been
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  Speaker 1: a model for me. I loved that book book better
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: than the TV show, though the TV show not half bad.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: This series James Franco stars in that one definitely worth
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: checking out if you haven't done it. In fact, I
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: think I saw Netflix is. It was originally a Hulu series,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: but I think Netflix is about to promote it. So
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people are going to rediscover this
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: TV show and go, hey, did you see the new
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: show on Netflix? And it's like it was on Hulu
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: a decade ago, So you know, you go through it
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and the thing is the beauty is every year. Even
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: did one on what if John McCain had one in
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight and what if the Republicans had
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: been dealing with the fallout right. That one led me
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: down the road to Occupy Wall Street becomes the Tea Party,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: but it's the Tea Party of the left, and et cetera.
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  Speaker 1: The point is is that this, to me is sometimes
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: some of the best ways to teach history are to
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  Speaker 1: actually go through alternative scenarios, so you can understand why
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  Speaker 1: things happened based on how things could have been. So
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: which leads me to this year's series of what ifs.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do just two episodes of them, but
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  Speaker 1: one of them, this one, is actually two what ifs
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  Speaker 1: in one because in some ways they're totally interconnected. It's
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a you might be surprised, it's a what if involving
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. By the way, I've done a ton of
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: these what if involving Donald Trump over the last couple
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: of years. As you might imagine, we did a what
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: if Donald Trump had been the Reform Party now many
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: in two thousand when he flirted with running for president.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I did a what if Donald Trump had bought the
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Buffalo Bills? He doesn't run for president if he buys
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the Buffalo Bills. Yes, I did that one as well.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: So I've done a variety of what ifs on Donald Trump,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: including the twenty sixteen what ifs, But this year when
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I asked for suggestion, there was an overwhelming amount of
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: suggestions for one what if, and it's the one that's
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: staring us all in the face as we deal with
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the Trump second term, which is simply what if Trump
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  Speaker 1: had won in twenty twenty, or alternatively, what if Trump
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: had accepted his defeat in a normal way, the way
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: pretty much every other losing candidate for president had accepted
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: defeat in the modern era. So the point is is
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that I did We're going to tackle sort of both
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: at the same time, and I think by doing it
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  Speaker 1: this way and here I'm not here, I want to
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: sort of explain what the what if series is meant
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: to do and what it's not meant to do. I'm
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: not going to sit here and be definitive that if
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  Speaker 1: this doesn't happen, this would have happened. What this is
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: designed to do is to sort of ask a certain
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: set of questions that, Okay, we ended up taking this
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  Speaker 1: fork in the road, what are the potential scenarios of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: what happened if we took this fork in the road,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And so I just wanted to give a little bit
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: of that preview, a little bit of that origin story
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: for those of you that have not been involved, but
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: also to let you understand how I'm approaching this, and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: you'll see that the minute you ask, you know, the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: minute you start down this road, you realize, oh my god,
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  Speaker 1: there are fifty other things that are impacted once you
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: go down this road. Exactly. This is what I think
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: this series can do best and what it always has
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: done well, which sort of provides sort of, oh, you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: this is why these things matter because it triggers nineteen
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: other derivative events that does thent happen if event you know,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: if if if you know, essentially event zero, right, it
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen first. Okay, So so let's get started. The twenty
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: twenty election is certainly going to be seen as I
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: still think the twenty sixteen election is one of the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: is a more important hinge moment in modern political history
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: than the twenty twenty election. But somehow the twenty twenty election, now,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I think the question is, yeah, I don't
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: know of the three elections two thousand, twenty sixteen, and
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty, how you order them now? It was a
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: no brainer to me that two thousand was one of
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: those incredible hinge moments, right, you know, a weird butterfly
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: ballot is created in South Florida, Palm Beach County, YadA, YadA, YadA,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: hunt a million iraqis die. You know, it still seems
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: to be I think a bigger hinge moment than twenty
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  Speaker 1: sixteen Trump or what we got now, which is twenty
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: twenty election denying Trump, right, but had What's ironic about
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  Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election now is there are two different
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: scenarios that would have made it a mundane and just
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: sort of another election where we would have moved on now, right,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: which is either Trump wins twenty twenty, wins reelection and
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: we're going to go through this. It's an entirely different
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. I think, at least at the beginning of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: his term we'll discuss or there's the Donald Trump that decides, yeah,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: one term was enough, I'm out, I'm done with politics,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and then the beginning of the next phase of the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Republican Party kicks him. So we're going to try to
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: dabble them both. So we're gonna said, so we're going
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: to ask sort of two connected questions, what if Donald
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Trump had lost and accepted it? And what if Donald
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Trump had won? And how would he have governed a
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: second term? And what would the two parties look like today?
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Because both universes tell us something important about the republic
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: itself in this moment, and once again a reminder this
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: what if? This is not about a fantasy. Okay, it's
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: not proving anything about whether you're right, whether the politics
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: of the left or right is right. It's just simply
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: identifying these important moments. Okay. So you won't get definitive answers.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: You're going to have a lot of open questions, and
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give you various plausible paths, and I
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: hope that, frankly, we have a continual dialogue about this
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: as we go forward. But I do think it helps
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you understand the history itself. It's sponsorship time. But you
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• 19:45
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the hinge moment. It's November twenty twenty.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Most important decision that Trump presidency didn't happen in office.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: It happened after the votes were counted. At that moment,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: there were three futures that were possible. Trump loses and
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: refuses to accept it. That's the world we live in,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and that's the world we live in right now. Okay,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: when you think about the various timelines, there's Trump loses
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and accepts it, right that's a different world that we
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: would have lived in. And then there's Trump wins reelection.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Now I've done the other what if, which is what
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: if Mitch McConnell votes to convict Donald Trump. You can
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: go back into the archives. It's the NBC archives. You
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: can listen to that one. Yes, I've gone down that
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: path as well. So we know what one path produce.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: The question is what did the others remove from the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: timeline and what replaced them. So let's start with Trump
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: loses but accepts it. It's a sort of normal election.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Trump loses narrowly, He complains, He sulks a little bit,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: you know, he does what most normal candidates do, hint
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit at unfair. You know, all these states
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: got to change their rules. Everybody got a ballot in hand.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: But after twenty four hours, he gets over it and
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: he leaves. So what disappears immediately? Right, there's no stop.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: The steel movement doesn't become a mass phenomena. We never
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: have the infamous four seasons press conference. We don't have
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the fake electors. We don't have you know, these weirdly
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: worded question, Well, is Joe Biden? Was he elected? Farren square, Well,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: he's the certified president or whatever it was that the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: various wordings people we'd use, and of course there's no
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: loyalty tests. And of course what we have is there's
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: no January six. January six never happens. Right, Congress never
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: experiences this physical trauma. There are no barricaded chambers, there's
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: no evacuated lawmakers, no members fearing for their lives. And
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: when institutions aren't traumatized, then they are going to behave differently,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and you would have had a more just sort of
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: normal everything normal opposition party and going okay, how do
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: we move on? Normal? This? Normal that? And Trump is
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: still Trump, but he's a grievanced ex president. He may
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: not be a commander of a movement anymore. Right, He's
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: still well would probably be the most quotable president. First
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: of all, here's another thing. He is no longer deplatformed
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: from Twitter and Facebook. Right, there's no rising up demand
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to cancel him and saying he's a threat to national security.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: You can't platform him. He is he is calling essentially
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: for the overthrow of the government. Look, I think the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: platforming him was. You know, limiting speech is never the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: right answer. Okay, I just think, ultimately, go find another
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: path before you make the decision to limit speech. I'm
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: not saying there isn't a time for that, but you
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: should always think look for a better solution than to
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: a limit speech if you're a private organization. But ultimately,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: while he would try, I think to see if he
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: could keep control of the party, it wouldn't have the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: same stickiness. You know, his folks would move on. Frankly,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: think Al Gore twenty oh one. Right, Al Gore had
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: a little bit of oxygen in the first sort of
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: three to four months of the Bush presidency. Nine to
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: eleven obviously completely sort of wiped any sort of buyer's
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: remorse about Bush. There was a rally around the flag effect,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and the whole Gore Bush thing faded even further. But
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: you know Gore, you know, I think we could have
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a debate about whether nine to eleven basically ended Gore's
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: ability to sort of be the president in exile after
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: a disputed election like that. But one could argue, you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: just like with you know, the Democratic Party got behind
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Gore because he was the nominee. There was never a
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: love affair with Gore, and I think frankly, pre January sixth,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: there wasn't this. You know, he had a base, but
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: it wasn't as devoted a following, perhaps would not have
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: looked as devoted of a following if there's no January
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: six But you know, because what did we learn in
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the actual timeline we lived in? Trump's grip on the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Republican Party titaned because he lost and refused to accept
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: it his whole never back down aspect. So in some ways,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and this is maybe something he an insight he understood,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: which is never the minute you sort of admit to losing,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: then you tell your supporters you can walk away. But
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: by never admitting losing, he he essentially was telling his
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: supporters to stand maybe to stand down, but to also
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: stand by. So Donald Trump, without January sixth, Donald Trump
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: would out stop to steal is a fading leader of
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party. He would still command a Lincoln Day dinner.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: He would still sell out any sort of fundraiser that
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: you were trying to do, whether it was in Des Moines, Iowa, Columbia,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: South Carolina, Manchester, New Hampshire, you named the sort of
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: you know, the presidential hotspot would still be seen as
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: somebody would bring in, but you'd also have a whole
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: bunch of other Republicans starting to maneuver themselves to be
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: leader of the party, and you'd start to hear people,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: we need to look forward, not backward, and it would
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: all have a little more juice, would have a little
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: more traction. You'd start to see people more interested in
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: new faces, not Donald trumpet because Donald Trump was a loser, right,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and party drops would drop him like that. Now, what
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: does the Biden presidency look like without January six Well,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: number one, he enters the office without the democracy in
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: crisis mandate, right, he got elected because of COVID. Okay,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the the you know, there's no bigger sort of mistaken idea.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: And then January sixth convinced the Biden team that they
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: had a mandate on something that for whatever reason, arguably
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: January fifth of the both Georgia senators the minute they
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: win control of the Senate. So suddenly they have the Senate,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the House, and the presidency. They got the try uh
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: you know, they got they got the they got all
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: three legs of the governing stool of Washington in their control.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: They get the trifecta. And arguably it only happens because
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: of Trump's inability to accept defeat. Right without that is
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: there do Democrats win both of those Georgia runoffs without
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: sort of Trump, you know, complaining about other Republicans and
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: complaining that nobody was helping them. And literally there was
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: a rally for those Georgia setic candidates that stopped being
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: about Purdue and Laffler and instead was all about his grievances.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, it couldn't have been messaged worse at the end.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: But if you don't have any of that, then there's
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: a Republican Senate. Joe Biden comes into office with a
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Republican Senate, and you you're immediately going to have a
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: different type of cabinet that you're going to nominate because
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: you've got to get them confirmed. You're going to have
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: a different agenda that you're going to be focused on,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: maybe those two thousand dollars checks or seven hundred and
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: fifty dollars checks. Right, you know, the entire atmosphere is different. Right,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: This is why this is such an important sort of
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: why this is really two what ifs in one. Right, yes,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: there's and we're going to get to the part of
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Trump and one, but him him not accepting defeat just
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: absolutely changes the trajectory of the Biden presidency in ways
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden himself on November tenth of that year had
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: no focus and no agenda, you know, sort of had
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: not envisioned the path he was about to take come
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: January twentieth. Right, So in that sense, it absolutely, in
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: some ways changes the Biden presidency more than any of
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: us fully appreciate, because he has to govern as a
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: conventional president. He's going to have to deal with pandemic exhaustion. Yes,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: there'll be the inflation risk, but again, I'll have a
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Republican Senate. He'll have to minimize what he can get done.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And it will make Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins probably
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: a lot more powerful than Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: And it probably means there's two or three other Republicans
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: that are part of this circle, maybe Dan Sullivan, maybe
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Todd Young. You know that there's a governing wing of
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party that suddenly wants to work with a
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden that wants to be a very center left presidency, which, again,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: with a Republican Senate, he'd have been boxed into being
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: a center left president because that would have you know,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: it's about what you can get done. But instead, of
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: course he is to become the symbolic defender of the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: republic and everything is this save democracy. And it led
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: to right less tolerance for executive overreach, less patients from
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the base, and a lot more earlier scrutiny. So I
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: actually don't know if it would have been a very
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: successful president, because I think the base would be frustrated
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: that he was calibrating his presidency more towards the center,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: more towards trying to work with abram If you think
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you were frustrated with Joe Biden trying to work with
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: a Democratic Senate, you'd have been just as frustrated, if
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: not ten times ten, with his obsession with trying to
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: work with Republicans in the Senate. And it's possible it
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: would have been Lucy in the football right. There's no
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: doubt that he thought he would have deals and it
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: would be you know, but maybe then he leads with
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: infrastructure in a different way. He focuses on hurrying up
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: and getting the shots out the door, which was the
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: number one reason he was elected in the first place.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: He's still going to be dealing with inflation. He's still
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: going to be dealing and put it. Remember think about
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: that inflation moment a minute, because it's going to come
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: back to a conversation. And I will tell you this.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I think the twenty two midterms are a complete and
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: utter disaster for him. Afghanistan still likely happens in a
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: very not so good place. Biden probably starts off less popular,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you know, Biden. The honeymoon for Biden improved because of
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: January sixth. People were so sort of fraught about it
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: that there was there was a mini rally around the
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: flag aspect to Biden coming into office, and there was
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: a Okay, please turn the page. Let's you know, you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and instead remember he is to start his presidency with
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: an impeachment trial. By the way, that doesn't happen, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: if you're not, you don't have He loses half of
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: his first one hundred days because the United States Senate
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: has the former president on trial. That is a you know,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: that is a total when you think about how much
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: political capital a newly elected president has at the beginning
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: of his term and you can't use it, so you know,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: it is it is. It's funny. When I was going
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: through this exercise, I was. You know, I kept getting
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: mired in this moment because it is the more you
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: think about it, the more you realize how much the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Biden presidency was colored by January six and how much
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party's mindset was colored by January sixth, And
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: in some ways it both galvanized them and it may
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: be why they did better than expected in twenty two,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: but it weirdly distracted the party from sort of being
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: focused on on keeping the main thing, the main thing,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: which is just focus on helping people get their lives
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: back to normal, which is all most Americans were looking
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: for in that post COVID mindset, and that post COVID
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: atmosphere ironically having less you know, coming in you know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: those Georgia runoffs January sixth. It weirdly, it raised expectations
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: for Biden, it raised expectations for the Democratic base, and
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: it became this almost pugilistic mindset. Let's you know, let's
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: get everything we can get now, this is the moment.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Republicans are on the run. Trump's a fraud and oh,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: by the way, let's make sure Trump never happens again
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and prosecute him to the hill. Right, None of that happened.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: It's a it's it's very much a more conventional presidency.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe it looks by the way, it may still be
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: a one term presidency because I don't think Biden ages
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: slower because you know, you know, the stress of the
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: presidency is the stress of the presidency, so it's going
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to aid you just as quickly, so that part doesn't happen,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and he's still going to pay a price for inflation.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: And it's likely the mid ters go worse for Biden
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: without sort of the ghost of Trump, right, because Trump
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: was you know, ended up being an overhang to the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: politics of twenty twenty two, right, impacting the Pennsylvania governor's
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: race the most, where you had one of his, one
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of his super acolytes end up with a Republican nomination
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: for governor, allowing Joshapiro to just walk in. Or the
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: whole doctor Oz situation. I think you know, McCormick wins
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: that Senate seat against Fetterman the first time Doctor Oz,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: doesn't We know that now for a fact, the Georgia situation, right,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: we can keep going down the line. You have a
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: better candidate against Rafaeld Warnock, Herscha Walker almost won imagine
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: just what a conventional Republican would have done against Warnock,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: maybe wins without having to deal with a runoff. So
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: all of that I think means that Biden has a
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: more conventional presidency. It is probably doesn't you know, I
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: don't think it changes his one term. I don't think
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: it changes the perception because this economy in some ways,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: because it was COVID driven, I don't think you I
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: don't think anything changes on that front. Nothing changes on Afghanistan.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: I mean Trump was going to do the same thing.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a minute. I think the
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: only thing, and this is going to come up in
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: part two of this what if, is the Ukraine situation.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: And I do think people underestimate how much Biden, how
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: much Biden was consumed by that. And I still think,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: no matter what that happens, and he still gets consumed
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: by that, that's that's that's sort of his first You know, Ultimately,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: whatever job you have, you lean into the part you
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: feel the most comfortable in as an expert. And when
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: it comes to domestic policy versus foreign policy, Biden was
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: always considered himself more of a foreign policy kind of guy.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: So it is I think the the impact on the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Biden presidency is what is the underrated story of part
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: one of this what if? So, Look, I think a
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: bad mid term, by the way, also accelerates the you
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: will you would have Democrats announcing challenges to Biden multiple
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: because it would have been an assumption that bad midterm
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: plus his age, he can't run for reelection. And I
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: actually think there's real momentum to push him out. There's
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: no threat of Trump on the other side. There's a
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: big primary happening on the Republican side of things under
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: that scenario, because do I think Trump still wants to run?
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe right, you know, but we don't know how much
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the lawsuits themselves motivated him to run. And without the litigation,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: you know, does he end up running? You know, does
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: he end up having all of this? So there's you know,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: there's also a mini what if he and what actually
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: happened is what if ron de Santis had not waited
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: till May to announce. I also have my theories on that. So,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: but ultimately I think the the the part one of
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: this what if, the huge impact, the giant impact more
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: so than anything else, is on that. And oh, by
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: the way, it also means that because there's a Republican Senate,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: we don't have my guess is the border. Let's just
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: say there's not handcuffs on Ali may Orcus and what
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: he can do at DHS, and he runs DHS a
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: lot more like Jay Johnson that he and j Johnson
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: operated under in the second term of Obama than what
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: we saw in the first term of Biden. Maybe that's
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: a bit of wishful thinking on my part. I will,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I will, but I think that is a stronger possibility
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: that dude just less of a progressive love fest inside
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: that west wing right. I mean, the west wing was
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: absolutely couldn't have been further to the left than what
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden had run as I mean, it just you know,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: and I think the more and more Democrats are acknowledging
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: this that the most surprising aspect of the Biden presidency
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: was how and it was the most surprising fact of
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Ron Klaim being chief of staff was how much the
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: progressive left had more impact on the agenda than anybody
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: would have expected from a Joe Biden presidency. You've got
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: a staff that Elizabeth Warren presidency would have put in,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: not the one that I think voters thought they were
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: going to be getting necessarily with Joe Biden. All right,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: So there you go. In some ways, probably Biden looks
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: weaker sooner in this scenario. I think that's fair to say.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: And I think the Democratic Party is more usiastic about
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: moving on from him and less worried about that situation,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: because you know, Biden really did sort of paralyze the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: party a little bit because the threat of Trump, the
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: threat of democracy being on the line. There was a
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: anybody hinting at biden weakness was not being a patriot
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: right In some ways, that fear of looking looking like
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: you were helping Trump somehow by undermining Biden, I don't
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: think would have been there. So it means we don't
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: get the Dean Phillips candidacy, because there's plenty of Democrats
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: already running in any you know, then Dean Phillips maybe
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: just endorses. He becomes one of the first members of
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Congress to endorse somebody run against him, and who knows,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I may be doing our what if here in four
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: years going? You know, if Gavin Newsom had run in
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: twenty four and challenged Biden in a primary, he actually
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: might have had a better shot at the presidency in
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: twenty four than he would have in twenty eight. But
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: because we haven't lived that history yet, I will wait
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: till it actually happens to decide whether that is a
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: relevant what if. But I but I digress. So ultimately
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Trump loses and accepts. I still think we end up
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: with a one turn Biden presidency. Doesn't mean we don't
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: have a Democrat elected in twenty four, but I do
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: think it it opens the door to a wide variety
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: of potential Republicans that end up the nominee. You know,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: and I and and I think the unknown here is
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: what kind of hold does Trump have on the party
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: as a sort of losing king maker? Right? George H. W.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Bush was not did not exactly have a lot of
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: say over who the nominee was going to be in
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: ninety six. So I'm I am. I'm of the mindset
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: that Trump's script is much weaker in this scenario where
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: he accepts to feed and he acts like a traditional politician.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Of course, we'd have no Donald Trump if he had
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: ever behaved like a traditional politician. So of course that
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  Speaker 1: for thirty percent off. So let's move on to the
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: harder sentario and the one that I hear the most
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: for people that don't like Donald Trump going, I wish
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: we'd just given him a second term, because then it
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: would have been Mike Pence ad vice president, not jd Vance.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: A lot of people now like Mike Pence. These same
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: people weren't so thrilled with them, say summer of twenty twenty.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: So here we are. So let's say Trump wins Reelectionarily,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: let's say it looks a little bit like his win
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: here in twenty four. Right, it's close but decisive, right
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to Biden won all the swing states in twenty it
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: was very close but decisive. Well, that's likely what we see, right,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: It's it's sort of the similar scenario, right, you know,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: as we find out these swing states don't just split,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: you know, usually they all go narrowly in one direction.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened in twenty It's exactly what
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: happened in sixteen, it's exactly what happened in twenty four.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: So I think for this purposes of Trump wins, it's
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: because he sweeps everything narrowly. So there's a few things
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: you've got to understand. Right, So he's a validated second termer.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Does he win the popular vote or not? Right, Let's
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead in this scenario and say yes,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: he does that. Let's just assume he gets the same
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: result as he got in twenty four when's the popular vote,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't get fifty percent, which is the most
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: likely scenario. It's very you know, and look, our electric
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: oral college is getting harder and harder to align with
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the popular vote because the size of the House has
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: not expanded and it needs to. And this is why
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: we are in this scenario where we've had now multiple
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: presidents elected with a minority of the popular vote. That
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: is a bad that is a recipe for future disasters.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: The way out of it is either a constitutional amendment
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: that gets rid of the electoral college, or an active
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: an act of Congress to expand the House the way
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: we did for the first one hundred and thirty years
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: of this country's existence until we stopped in nineteen twenty.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: But I will get off that hobby horse. So let's
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: set the scenario. Trump wins narrowly, which means what probably
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: holds the Senate by vote because he holds those he
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: holds that, he holds that those Georgia seats. Let's assume
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: he holds one of the two. Right, Warnock wins, but
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Asoff loses. That would probably be my guess of in
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: that scenario. So you're gonna have a Republican Senate. You're
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: gonna have a Democratic House. Still right, we're still talking.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: There wasn't enough. So we have a democratic House, and
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: you have a Mike Pence's vice president, not JD Vance's
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: vice president. This is really important. We didn't know how
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: important it was until now we see what staffing of
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: the White House look like January of twenty twenty five
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: versus what staffing of the White House looked like in
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: January twenty seventeen. Well, guess what staffing of the White
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: House in twenty twenty January twenty twenty one, in a
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Trump second term does not look like twenty twenty five.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: It looks more like twenty seventeen with some differences. Okay,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: so you're gonna have Mike Pence is vice president. Obviously,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: there's no January sixth, which means there's no Pences Trader narrative.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: He's not exiled, there's no massive sort of split between
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: the two. That doesn't mean Trump is ready to make
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Mike Pence's heir apparent. In fact, I think it's probably
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: just as difficult for Pence to get out from underneath
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the Trump's shadow here. But the more important thing is
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: that you have a Trump second term with Mike Pence
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: playing the same role he played in the Trump first term.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: He was a bridge between trump Ism and essentially institutional
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: conservatism and him being there and being on that winning ticket.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Trump's not just going to throw him away right away,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: because Trump still knows without Pence he doesn't win in
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: sixty Okay, and so Trump knows he can't totally throw
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: him away. But Mick Bulvaney writes, previous and John Kelly
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: all tried in some ways to put some guard rails,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: not on Trump when he was president, but on guardrails
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: around the Oval Office, at least in preventing too many
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: visits by your Roger Stones of the world. It's essentially
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: by the nutball wing of the Trump coalition, and all
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: three of them were really good at it. John Kelly
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: was probably the loudest about doing it. I think rights
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: was turned out to be. He knew he handled it
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: better than he was given credit for at the time.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: But a really important role was was Mike Pence. Mike
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Pence was sort of the go between with Congress. He
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: could smooth things over when things didn't go well over there.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: He's a former leader on the Congression Republican side. He
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: also had some decent relationships on the Democratic side, so
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: he was really in some way hit you know, Trump's
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Washington consigli air. Now do realize that Mark Meadows becoming
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: chief of staff was the first time Trump finally got
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: a chief of staff to let quote unquote Trump be Trump.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Mick Mulvaaney would say he was letting Trump be Trump.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Wright's preepus would say he was letting Trump be Trump.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Mark Meadows was the one that said, yeah, let any
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: cook in Because in some ways Meadows was more responsive
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: to that wing of the party than any other. Perhaps
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: he considered himself a creature of that wing of the party.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: He sort of got his rise as an outsider agitator
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: in the conservative movement, trying to break into the conservative elite.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: So in that sense, he he was a you know,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: sort of a shared he had a shared skepticism of
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the Republican elite. So Trump was getting his first taste
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: of having a chief of staff that was more pliant,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: but he also still had Bill Barr Justice. You still
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: were going to have Mark Esper a pentagon. You know,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: remember all the people that quit, well, they don't quit
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: if he wins the second term. Some of them are
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: pushed out because maybe they don't want him, maybe Trump
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't want him there anymore, or some of them are
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: burned out from Trump. But the you wouldn't have is
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: as sycophantic when you look at the cabinet meetings that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: we've all witnessed in the last nine months. I promise
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't get that same level of sycophantry and into
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: this direct second term with guys like Mark Short and
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Mike Bentz helping to at least vet the people that
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: were going to be coming into the administration. Yes, you
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: would have had a Republican Senate that was going to
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: give you more. But you still would have had a
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell as Republican leader, who of course still wasn't
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: a huge fan of Trump, but would realize that a
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: reelected Trump meant okay. But you would have, you know,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: but you would have had Lane Duck status start to
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: creep in pretty quickly, and in fact, I want to
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: get to there in a minute, but I don't want.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: You know, there is just there is just more continuity
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and there's less disruption. And then of course there's the
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: whole reaponizing of ice. Right, we've seen this weaponization of ice,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: the sort of changing the mandate of DHS away from
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: sort of security of the entire homeland to just being
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a deportation agency. All of that comes in some ways
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: in response to the surge of the border in twenty
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: one twenty two. Well, in this scenario, it's Donald Trump
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: that's president. In twenty one twenty two, by the way,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: we likely would still have some surges in the post
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: COVID environment that you would have had people wanting to
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: come back looking for jobs because finally things were opening up.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Right now that I'm there's no doubt in my mind
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: they would have dealt with the surge differently. This is
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: his singular issue. I think ultimately, at the end of
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: the day, Donald Trump will say the only reason he's
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: president is due to the border. Your likely talk to
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: most Republican historians and they will say, the only reason
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: he's president is because of the of the perception of
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: the border, both in sixteen and in twenty four. So,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: you know, it certainly would have it would have been
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: dealt with, but it would not have been It's hard
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: to imagine it's done with the same amount of I
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: don't know what else to call it, other than the
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: zeal that it's done with now and it's you know,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: not having the greatest effect. Then there's there's of course,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: we're going to remember remember where we are in the
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: timeline of life. Right this is immediately post COVID. We're
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: still trying to get the shots out. And remember it's
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: kind of chaotic in November and December of how we
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: were just getting the vaccine. But it's not clear how
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: many doses we can get out right away. There's a
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a line older people first, those with
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: those with health issues essentially also first in line, Right,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: all of that, How well is that run? How well
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: does that go? Because we know Trump was so frustrated
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: and how much he thought COVID was impacting his presidency
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: that he would micromanage it a lot. Right. But here's
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: another thing that I think is an open question on this,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: which is, because Trump is giving the vaccine, is there
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: more vaccine compliance? Is this the does the RFK movement
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: never happen or never get the same traction that it
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: got sort of in that period. Honestly, it feels like
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: it really sort of accelerated in the first six months
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: after the vaccine was made available. Is it a different
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: mindset about, you know, vaccine skepticism. I think it's fair
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: to you know, I think it's a I think these
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: are this is what I mean that the minute you
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: walk down afore, you realize, oh my god, there's all
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: these other forks. Right, because he's also a second term president.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: What happens immediately after a president's second term we all
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: realize he can only serve two terms. You also will
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: get a flood of presidential candidates, and the Republicans would
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: be going almost as aggressively as the Democrats, and you'd
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: start to see the early States flooded in ways that
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: we didn't see in twenty one and twenty two early
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: on because of the whole Trump sort of you know,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: you had the prosecution of Trump, the impeachment of Trump,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: the indictments of Trump, and all of that kind of
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: paralyzed what was normally. But again Trump wins kind of normal. Well,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: then you know Ted Cruz is podcasting in Iowa in
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: you know, by Saint Patrick State twenty twenty one, right,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: and you have Nikki Haley out there, and Ronda Santis
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: out there, and probably three or four more, maybe jd Vance,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: maybe Peter TiAl is carrying to convince Jady Vans to
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: immediately start running for president himself. Maybe you do have
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: a Donald Trump junior or an Eric Trump flirting around,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and I still don't rule that out for twenty eight
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: if anybody's keeping score. But the point is that you
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: have this, and it probably starts to drive Trump a
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: little crazy, because I know what people forget is that
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: you have a tiny bit of your reelection gives you
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: about six months of political capital. But Biden's political capital
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: right got eaten up by the impeachment. Then he gets
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit, gets the checks passed, and then Afghanistan happens,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: and then both the presidency essentially politically is over for him.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: So let's go that first nine months. I'm not convinced
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Afghanistan somehow goes better under Trump, because I don't know
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: if anybody could have left Afghanistan in a clean given
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: how we were leaving it, given how we handed it
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: over the Taliban. If anything, this is perhaps a even
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: worse political moment for Trump. You know, it usually takes
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: one just you know, you know, Biden in some ways
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: got propped up by Trump's problems and it sort of
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: kept him more politically relevant, though he could have slipped
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: into a lame duck status even faster without Trump there,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: but being in a second term. If the Afghanistan withdrawal
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: goes poorly, I don't think he you know, you know,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Trump wanted to be the guy that got out. I
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: think he hurts Trump even more than a hurt Biden,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: because people would have it would have been noted that, well,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: you signed this deal with the Taliban, and you handed
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: them Bagram, and you did all of this. It is
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: all I do this. What if about if al Gore's
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: president during nine to eleven, do we have the same
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: rally around the flag moment? And I don't think we do,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: because in that scenario, al Gore would have been you know,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: a Democrat would have been president for nine straight years,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: which means that Democrats have been running the CIA for
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: nine straight years, which means in essence, hey, this all
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: happened in democrats watch right, where the scenario of nine
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: to eleven actually happened, happening arguably both on a Democratic
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: watch and a Republican watch right. You had, you know,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: a handover and all of that, so it probably lessened
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: the political finger pointing because of that, you would have
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: had a different scenario. Again, this is why I love
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: doing these what IFFs, because you you have to not
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: ignore any potential derivative rabbit hole that either did exist
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: in the other one and how does it not exist
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: in this scenario or one that didn't exist in the
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: real world but would likely have happened in this one.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: So think about the first nine months for Trump. He's
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: got to be in charge of getting the shots out,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: be in charge of sort of getting us all back,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: you know, getting the masks off, right, Remember Joe Biden
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: declaring independence right, Trump, who already had a shaky track record,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: and all of that during twenty twenty, so that's happening. Oh,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: by the way, inflation because of the supply chain issue
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: is still happening. My guess is Trump does want to
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: have some checks because he's knew it was popular. Remember
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Trump was four checks more COVID checks before. So but
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: there's a Republican Senate, Democratic House. My guess is, we
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: get checks, but we don't get We just get lesser checks.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: So the bottom line is, in the same moment that
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: Biden sort of lost his elevation post with Afghanistan withdrawal,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: there was already crankiness about the economy and there was
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: all this and for Trump, I think this kicks in
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: at the same time because let's remember, while Biden could
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: sort of say, well that was Trump's economy, give me time,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: there'd have been none of that for second term Trump.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: So I do think you have that aspect too, So
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: you have more of a dire view of the economy,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: more of a problem where Trump owns the economy, more
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: with the voters, which in some ways, in the same
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: way that Afghanistan withdrawal pummeled him. I think the the
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: economy faltering on Trump's watch there honestly is the equivalent
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: of what we saw after after Liberation Day in the
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: actual first Trump second Trump term in April of twenty
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: twenty five, where that is clearly now if you look
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: back the you know, for me, that's his Afghanistan withdrawal moment,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: because it is from there that he laid claimed ownership
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: of this economy. It is now all his economy because
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: of you know, his manipulation of it, and it has
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: that kind of so so you know, in that sense again,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I think you have a politically weaker Donald Trump. Just
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: in general across the board, he's politically weaker, which maybe
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: why so many people have asked me, would we be
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: better off if Trump had just gotten his second term
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: immediately rather than the way he got it now? And
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: when you start to go through this, if you're asking
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: about if you're upset about all the violation of norms,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: what he's done sort of America's role in the world,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to get to that here in a minute,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: I do think you can make a strong argument on
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: those fronts, So you know, it is that is something
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I think that we also underestimate is sort of is
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: the irony is that Trump's second term is going to
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: be one of the stronger second presidential terms who had
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: since FDR. And it's because it was nonconsecutive. It was
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: because in some ways he got a stronger grip on
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party, which rarely happens for presidents that their
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: grip can get stronger going into a second term, can
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: get stronger even at the start of a second term. Yes,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: you know, the re elect moment can be a moment
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: of strength for a second term president, but in some
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: ways it starts weakening right away. This has been a
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: different scenario. Here's another thing to sort of consider what
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: we got. We'd had a different military structure. Right, there's
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: no Pete Haggs at the Defense Department, as I said,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: so you're gonna have less of the tumult. That doesn't
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: mean Trump doesn't want to put his stamp on the Pentagon,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to put a stamp in different places. And
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that there are people that try to
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: help them. And it doesn't mean Mark Esper isn't trying
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: to appease him wherever possible. It doesn't mean there isn't
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: a Trump class of submarine that's introduced all of these things, right,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: But I don't think we're having an excursion in Venezuela.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I do think you have,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: you know, you would have probably you would have some
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: of the sort of one off stuff that he has
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: been doing, what he did with the huties. I think
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: what we saw with Iran, and I think we'd largely
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: you know, in some ways. I think one of the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: you know, there's there's sort of two I think there's
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: two or three open questions here where I don't have
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: a good definitive answer that happened during the Biden one term.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: That are outside events, right, the two big ones being
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: October seventh, UH, and of course Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: So let's start quickly with I'm gonna get October because
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: I actually think largely the same way Biden managed bb UH,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Trump would have been just as deferential, perhaps even a
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: bit more so. But I don't know if many things
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: change other than I you could I could make a
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: case that Trump is quicker to rein in BB and
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: has more of an ability to reign in BB in
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: his aggressiveness in Gaza than Biden did, right, because you
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: know this is this is you know, we've said it
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: before and I and believe it. I don't know if
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Biden could orchestrate the ceasefire if BB's Prime Minister of
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Israel and he's president at the I mean, he was
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: struggling to make that happen, right, He'd have a few
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: temporary ones this or that, but it wasn't the same.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: In some ways, Trump has has more pull on BB
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: because BB made his bet and decided to politicize Israel. Right.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: I will, you know, not to go off on a
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: tangent here, but you know, if you want to know
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: why Israel is such a divisive issue in this country,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: you have one person to think. If you're an American Jew,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: it is not the left or the right of this country.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: It is it is Benjamin EA and his decision to
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: partisanize the issue Israel. Support for Israel was always bipartisan,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: and every prime minister practiced it that way until this one,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: and even this one tried to practice it that way
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: until Barack Obama. And so again, I'm don't want to
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: got off on too many rabbit holes here, So I
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: don't think a lot changes on October seventh. Other than
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: it's perhaps Trump has got a better ability to reign
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: bb in faster and quicker, and so maybe there's a
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: slightly less destruction than Gaza. I'm not saying that the
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: larger outcome isn't all the same. Now, let's talk about
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: the big one, which is Russia and Ukraine. Right. Trump
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: has famously said this doesn't happen if he's president, and
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: that somehow the Afghanistan withdrawal emboldened Putin. I think we
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: all know that the afghanistran withdrawal had nothing to do
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: with Putin. Thinking on Ukraine, Putin's had his sites in Ukraine,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: going back to Crimea, going back to Frankly, you know
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: when he gave the speech in Munich nearly a decade
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: ago explaining his warped view of history that indicates somehow
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Ukraine is Russian and always has been Russian and belongs
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: to Russia. So here are the questions I have which
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: I don't have a good answer for. If you recall,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: during the run up to the invasion America, we decided
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: and this was a Biden decision, and I don't think
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Trump makes the same decision, but Biden decides to let
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the intelligence community go public with what we have because
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: remember at the time, Zelenski did not believe the American
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: intelligence that said Putin is amassing troops on the border,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: this is going down happen And you know, we had
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: to show the satellite photos we were We did. We
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: did something we didn't do in previous attempts, which is
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: we went as public as we have with our intelligence.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: And it was a huge beat. And you know, maybe
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: you know, I always I think it was a good
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: idea for Biden to do this and for Bill Burns,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: who was CIA director at the time, to push for this,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: because you know, the CIA's reputation is not the greatest
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: right and it was the CIA that said it. You know,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: it was a slam dunk. That's I was saying, I
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: have weapons of mass destruction. This was a slam dunk.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Those were remember of mister Tennant's words. So there is
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: a show your work. I think, you know, trust but
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: verify whatever cliche you want to pull out of your vocabulary.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: That was necessary here for the American intelligence community. Well
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: does a Donald Trump led CIA who you know, maybe
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Gena Haskell stays she is not somebody that was a
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: big fan of being transparent. I say this with respect.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I think she was more of an old school CIA
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: person that, hey, you know, the intelligence gathering is a
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: dirty business. You don't want to know our sources and methods,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: but some things are better left you know that you
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: don't need to know. Type of mindset. So I think
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: she was sort of old school. So I don't think
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: it's as transparent. Do we warn the world that this
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: is happening? Do we sort of you know is? Or
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: does Trump back channel? Is this used as an effort?
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Does Trump try to back channel and get you know,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: as he claims, and get Putin to try to back off?
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Does Putin appease Trump and only do small incursions? Basically deciding, hey,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Trump snow fan of NATO. I think I could drive
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: a wedge, but I better not do a full invasion.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I'll do it piecemeal and Trump will sort of let
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: me take Ukraine one tiny piece at a time. First
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: it was crimea, I'll come in for this, I'll come
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: in for that. But there's sort of one offs. It's
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: not the full shock and all. Here's what I don't believe.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I don't believe Putin does nothing that's what I think
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: is utter fantasy. If you again, if the calculation is
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Putin's thinking, Hey, if I shock in all this, maybe
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: maybe Trump gets comfortable with NATO. But if I piecemeal this,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I can fracture NATO even more, I can fracture Europe
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: even more. And he goes down that road. That's and
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: and that's the only plausible scenario I can think of
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: that would have That would have perhaps and I think that,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: you know, then it's a it might be we might
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: be right back where we are right now, the situation
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: where Ukraine feels as if it is not allowed to
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: fight back as strongly as as the Russians are, I mean,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: you know, the fact, I mean, it was just so
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: demoralizing that President Trump never acknowledges that the Russians are
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the invaders. He never acknowledges that for if if Putin
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: is supposedly pro peace, why literally, on the eve of
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: what Putin knows there's going to be some peace talks
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: between Trump and Zelenski, that Putin pummels Ukraine the night
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: before to send a message, and what does Trump do
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: claims that Putin wants peace, to which is you know,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: it's a you know, Putin is a funny way of
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: showing it. That is not what peace seekers, that's not
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: how peace seekers behave. So I think that that's the
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: I think that that's the one, you know, if it
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: is that in some ways, it's a more sinister version
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: of how and it might, weirdly, you know, this might
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: be the mistake Putin made. I think the mistake Putin
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: made was thinking he could win this conventionally when actually
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: if he had done it a small bit at a
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: time where you know, Ukraine never went on permanent war footing,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: they don't get the same pushback. I don't know on
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: that one, and I don't want to sit here and
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: try to make up a definitive answer and say this
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: is for sure how it would go. I think the
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: open questions I have about the pre invasion period is
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: whether one America goes as public about it and sort
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: of you know, alerts the Europeans. Remember the Europeans didn't
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: fully buy in that we had this, and then they
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: more of them confirmed our intelligence. Right, that was an
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: important moment of unity and it really sort of brought Europe,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the United States, and Ukraine onto the same page that
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: you know, the American intelligence had everything, and we had
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: this so cold that it's you know, paranoid. You know,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I think Putin correctly is paranoid that he's we have
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: a mole inside the Kremlin just like he you know,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: there's all this paranoia that Putin's got some moles. You know.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: I'm of the mindset there's so many adversaries of the
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: United States have bought off people in the Trump administration
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: that in some ways there may be balance based on extremes. Right,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: the Iranians have somebody, the Russians, the Chinese, but everybody's
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: doing a bit of different bidding and it balances each
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: other itself out. That's my really dark way of showing
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: optimism sometimes about our current pay for play schemes that
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: the Republic's being turned into. But on a less cynical note,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: I think that's the real open question about Ukraine. So look,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this sort of trip down fantasy
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: island here where we had two different scenarios, one where
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: Trump concedes normally and what that does to the Biden presidency,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: which I don't think we fully appreciate how different of
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: a presidency Biden's presidency is without the cloud of January sixth,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: beginning his presidency with an impeachment trial all of those things. Right,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: If none of that happens, it really changes the Biden presidency.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, maybe he doesn't have the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: full trifecta. Right, it is the post election behavior by
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump really sort of changed the trajectory of two
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: presidencies because the Trump second term that we're experiencing is
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: far different. Okay, is there less guardrails than a second
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Trump presidency, Yes, but there are more guardrails than the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: term that we have now has, right, because you have
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: a go from you know, you had the Mark Meadows,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: which was the first chief of staff that was truly
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: behaving with the sure let everybody into the Oval office,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: that's okay, but you still had you know, sort of institutionalists,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: you know who may have had their own ideological beliefs,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: but they were institutionalists like bar justice, like esperate defense.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: So it is I think you have a sort of
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: cabinet that is sort of half Pence wing of the party,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: half Maga wing of the party. Right, you know, do
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: I think maybe you get now? I think Marco Rubio
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: might be Secretary State in the immediate Trump presidency, just
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: like he is in this one. I do think, you know,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Trump would freshen up. Most second terms have new secretary states.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe there's a new you know, does Minus
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: stand a Treasury that I actually think he does. I
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: think he enjoyed being Treasury secretary. So I don't think
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: that goes away until Trump pushes him out. So you know,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: it's just you know, he doesn't. There's no there's no
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: uh uh him trying to indict James Comey and indict
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: Leticia James and indict you know all of those folks, right,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: we never By the way, Jack Smith is a name
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: nobody knows other than folks in the Justice Department and
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: then the legal community. Right. Fanny Willis is a name
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: that has no national meaning whatsoever. Right, So it is
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think we fully appreciate, and I think it
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: what this exercise really did for me was one paint
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: a picture of just how much the the Biden governance
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: changed because of January sixth, And I didn't. You don't
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: fully appreciate, right when you're living through it, you're working
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: through it, and then you step back and look. So
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: I think that was inside number one for me and
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: inside number two. It's just it is a I think,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: fairly radically different presidency. Not because you know, for a
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: variety of reason. One is, we don't have this massive
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: deportation for us. We don't have his obsession with with retribution.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: So those are two big areas where he just is
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: not He's not trying to so you know, he may
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: have his continued obsessions with the press, but by the way,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: he's still tweeting there's no truth social that doesn't exist, right,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Truth social only happens because of the right. So it
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: is you know this. You know it's only been four years,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: right or I guess five years now since we had
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: this hinge moment, and yet it's astonishing all you know
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: what happened in those five years and how different they
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: would have been even with Trump, when with Trump winning
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: that immediate second term in twenty twenty. So I hope
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed this wet of exercise. I hope it inspired
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: you know. I'm you, guys send in a whole bunch
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: of interesting ones. I really wanted to stick with ones
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: that I thought could be sort of more open ended questions, right,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: whether it's you know, it's going to be different, the
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: question is how radically different? And I think in this
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: scenario we see we'd have had a radically different Biden
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: presidency had he conceded normally, And we would have had
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: a pretty different presidency at least on the domestic level
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: and certainly where the two parties are today. Right twenty
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: twenty four? Right? If Trump wins the second term, is
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Pete Bootage the front runner in twenty twenty four and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: is he the actual nominee in twenty twenty four? Right?
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: Is there Buyer's remorse on Biden? Was it turnout people
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: would say, boy trying to settle for Biden? The all
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: of the hand ringing that happened after Kamala Harris loss,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: which was well there should have been a primary, Da
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: da da dah. I think all of that comes back. Right,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: does Bernie in twenty four? Right? Does both Bernie and
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: Pete run? Or is it Pete and Royal Kanna? Is
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: it Pete and Elizabeth Warren? Is it Pete and AOC?
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: But I would say the person who's politics political future
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: probably actually got hampered the most of anybody in this
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: scenario is Pete Bootage. I think if Trump winning a
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: conventional second term in twenty twenty allows Pete to be
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: the sort of outsider front runner, kind of like in
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: the Gary Hart position for the old school political junkies
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: where or the John Edwards position in four or they
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: you know, going into eight. I think Pete is a player.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Is he the eventual nominee in twenty four I don't know,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: but I think he is more of a player and
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: more of a voice and more of a face of
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: the party. And then the version of Pete Bootage now
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: is Biden Cabinet secretary. So there you go. I hope
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. I love doing these things. I enjoy
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: the rabbit holes I go down. As you can see,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: I went down quite a few of them. And I'll
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: have another one for you next week that goes back
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit further in our time machine. Not quite
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: as far back as nineteen eighty five then Biff with
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: the sports aminec but pretty close. So with that, enjoy
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: the holiday season. I appreciate, appreciate you listening, appreciate you
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: enjoying this, and please send me some responses to this.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: I will do, We'll do. I'll do a special mail
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: bag that's just responses to this. What if you know
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: if you've got assumptions you want to challenge, hit me
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: with them. Areas you think I didn't, that I you know,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: skipped over that I should know, And I will do
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: a special mail bag on the MLK weekend for that
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: drop on that MLK Monday, and we'll do that as
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: our sort of what if mailbag episode. Other than that,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: with that, I'll see hopefully on this feed in the
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: next twenty four to forty eight hours. Thanks for listening.