Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Is Trump Deliberately Trying To Start A Civil War In Iran? + Does Talarico’s Win Put Texas In Play For Democrats?

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Full Episode - Is Trump Deliberately Trying To Start A Civil War In Iran? + Does Talarico’s Win Put Texas In Play For Democrats? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: a sponsor I absolutely embrace, so use that code. Hello,
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  Speaker 1: They're happy Thursday, and welcome to another episode of the
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  Speaker 1: check podcast. This is our big weekend extravaganza, so you
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: will have it for the weekend. My guest is not
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  Speaker 1: other than my pow Chris Silissa. He has been my
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: partner in crime on these live election nights and one
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: of the things that I want to do when we
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: do these big live election night specials as we did,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and by the way, thank you. An enormous turnout of
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: viewers again through all of our different channels doing Decision
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: to sk HQ, Chris Salizzi's channels, my channels. We're glad
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to know that, you know, basically election night for people
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: that just want the information and not the spin. I
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: thinks turning into a more and more popular feature. So
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: we're happy to do that. But one of the things
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: we want to do is, you know, you sort of
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: you deal in the moment, but you know, both Chris
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  Speaker 1: and I like to sort of soak in the in
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  Speaker 1: the data as it comes in, and you sort of
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: ruminate in it after and you after all the numbers
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  Speaker 1: get in, you sort of learn more stuff. So he
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: and I spend a bit of a debrief, if you will,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: for most things Texas and the fallout going forward, and
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  Speaker 1: I have a lot actually a few more things I
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  Speaker 1: want to say before we get to the interview with Chris,
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  Speaker 1: so because you know, yes, it was to kick off
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  Speaker 1: of the primary, but there's a lot of other things
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that have that I've kind of left on the cutting
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  Speaker 1: room floor with you guys, simply because I've been very
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: focused on on the Texas primaries. Wanted to make sure
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  Speaker 1: our live Election Night special went well. But the fact
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  Speaker 1: of the matter is the war that Donald Trump started
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: less than a week ago is not going well. It's
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  Speaker 1: it's not going certainly not going well politically. And the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: question is, you know, is it going to bog us down?
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  Speaker 1: How is it going militarily? Well? This feels in these
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  Speaker 1: early days, and look, I I want to be mindful,
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  Speaker 1: and it's it's in some ways when you're when you're
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: skeptical about a decision, you can easily get quick to
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  Speaker 1: find reasons to reinforce your skepticism. So I am sort
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  Speaker 1: of acknowledging my own sort of editorial bias here. Right.
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  Speaker 1: I think this feels like can of worms has been
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  Speaker 1: opened up, and now I'm looking around, I see a
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  Speaker 1: lot of worms. Right. We've got multiple countries that have
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  Speaker 1: that have somehow been dragged into a piece of this war,
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  Speaker 1: whether it's drones or missiles fired by Iran at Gulf states,
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  Speaker 1: you know, including Uae or Bahrain, whether it's suddenly Sri
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  Speaker 1: Lanka getting getting drawn into it because we sank an
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  Speaker 1: Iranian naval ship sort of in their waters in the
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  Speaker 1: Indian Ocean. It is it feels like this is I
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  Speaker 1: had hinted it for the last few weeks that one
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  Speaker 1: of the concerns I had about was the lack of
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  Speaker 1: was how much more risk averse the president was becoming
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: because he he had been warned about certain events and
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: when he went against those warnings and bad things didn't happen,
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  Speaker 1: it reinforced the notion in his head that hey, he knows,
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  Speaker 1: he knows this situation better than the so called experts.
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  Speaker 1: And what am I referring to so assassinating Solomoni who
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  Speaker 1: was the head of the republic, the the i r
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  Speaker 1: GC for the Iranians, somebody responsible for the death of
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  Speaker 1: many Americans, many many folks in the Middle East, essentially
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  Speaker 1: the key strategists in their in their terror campaigns. That
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  Speaker 1: that could that could spark a lot of fallout for
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  Speaker 1: American resources in the in the in the in the region.
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  Speaker 1: It did not the bombing campaign in the last summer
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  Speaker 1: that the US jointly did with the Israelis to uh
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  Speaker 1: finally penetrate and try to set back, if not, in
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  Speaker 1: the president's words, obliterate Iran's nuclear program was also something
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  Speaker 1: that the experts around him warned, Hey, be careful here,
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  Speaker 1: this could this could trigger a response that that could
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  Speaker 1: get that could get out of hand quickly. Nothing seemed
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  Speaker 1: to happen there. If anything, the Iranians looked like a
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  Speaker 1: paper tiger. They were clearly not looking for a fight.
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  Speaker 1: They wanted they wanted out, and since we weren't pursuing
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  Speaker 1: regime change, they took that as a you know, we
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  Speaker 1: just keep them from attacking again. We'll take that as
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  Speaker 1: a as a survive, not quite a win, but a survive. Well,
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  Speaker 1: then came regime change, and let's look, this is clearly
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  Speaker 1: why we acted when we acted right. You know, all
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  Speaker 1: of the you know, while there's been various confusing rationales
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: that have been presented to the American people about why
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  Speaker 1: we acted when we acted right, what seems to be
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  Speaker 1: the most truthful and the most salient and the most
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  Speaker 1: that has the most evident supporting that that has to
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  Speaker 1: be the reason is it was an opportunity, right, opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to get Kamani and the senior leaders of the Iranian
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  Speaker 1: theocracy and they were all going to be meeting in
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  Speaker 1: one place, and it was it was an opportunity. And
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  Speaker 1: apparently this opportunity was if you believe the reports available
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  Speaker 1: every Saturday, right, which was this was a meeting he
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  Speaker 1: was having on Saturdays with his senior leaders and the Israelis.
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  Speaker 1: It appears that the CIA and the Israelis, both of
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  Speaker 1: the intelligence agencies, knew this was going to happen, and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: there was one report that indicated this was going to
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: happen February twenty first instead of February twenty eighth. But
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: there were weather issues, and this timeline is important. I'm
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: going to get to that in a minute. Which would
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: have been actually the weekend before the State of the
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Union that these attacks could have started, but weather issues
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: and they decided to wait a week. At some point,
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  Speaker 1: the president is informed by somebody, is it Netnyahoo is
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  Speaker 1: at MBS right. We've had different pieces of reporting indicating
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  Speaker 1: different things that there was an opportunity that Kamanee was
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  Speaker 1: going to be meeting with this senior leadership and if
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  Speaker 1: they struck now they could get them. And essentially it
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: was a way could they pursue regime change without technically
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: having to you know, if they just took out cut
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: off the head of the snake, maybe the snake dies. Well, look,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: we're not yet a week end of this thing, so
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think we should say you know this, you know,
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  Speaker 1: cutting off the head of the snake. Hasn't worked yet,
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  Speaker 1: but there's a growing sense, and there's growing nervousness in
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  Speaker 1: the Pentagon and in even in those in and around
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  Speaker 1: the president that that the hope that once they got
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  Speaker 1: rid of Kamane, that there would be entities ready to
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  Speaker 1: rise up or perhaps figures within the regime that's we're
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  Speaker 1: going to be ready to make a deal, maybe ready
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  Speaker 1: to switch sides. Maybe he could find his own Delsi Rodriguez,
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  Speaker 1: the puppet vice president of Maduro that is now essentially
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: become a de facto I don't know what to call her,
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  Speaker 1: but but you know, as long as she pays pays
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Trump in access to the oil, he's apparently going to
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: leave her alone and let her rule. Well, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of democracy coming to Venezuela apparently is not
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  Speaker 1: the rationale he used to get rid of Maduro. And
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  Speaker 1: he had a singular reason to get Maduro's He wanted
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  Speaker 1: the oil because again, if it was about democracy, we'd
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  Speaker 1: have something right. There would at least be a commission
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  Speaker 1: starting to figure out when the elections would be held,
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  Speaker 1: or maybe there would be a temporary transitional governance team
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  Speaker 1: that might include the folks that actually won the last
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  Speaker 1: election that we recognized as a national government. But again,
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  Speaker 1: none of that has happened, none of that is close
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  Speaker 1: to even happening. So this is the rationale that he's
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  Speaker 1: essentially we're given here. And I say this because look,
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  Speaker 1: in talking to some sources that I know of folks
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  Speaker 1: on the ground there, there's a few things that are
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  Speaker 1: already seem to be clear. Is that whatever force, you know,
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  Speaker 1: whatever group of folks that might wanted to overthrow the regime,
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  Speaker 1: they went underground due to the repression that the regime
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  Speaker 1: brought down upon the protesters in January, and those folks
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  Speaker 1: seem to be either killed or underground. One. Two. There's
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  Speaker 1: definitely a power struggle, and there's definitely a desire of
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  Speaker 1: this theocracy to survive. They're not interested in putting down arms,
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  Speaker 1: and there doesn't appear to be a movement to do that.
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  Speaker 1: You know, the president has sort of said, well, everybody
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  Speaker 1: we thought could be a candidate to be a transitional
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  Speaker 1: figure is dead, and then the other people we keep
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  Speaker 1: thinking of, they die. Whether that's just his rationale for
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  Speaker 1: not having a plan be here, or that is exactly
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  Speaker 1: what happened. Either way, there's a bit of a vacuum.
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  Speaker 1: So now we are publicly and this seems just insane
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  Speaker 1: to me when you think about it, on a number
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  Speaker 1: of levels. Number one, the CIA, we are publicly letting
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  Speaker 1: people know that the CIA is trying to arm and
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  Speaker 1: train Kurds to essentially be a proxy force within Iran
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  Speaker 1: to try to disrupt and overthrow this regime. And I'm
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  Speaker 1: not quite sure, you know, what are we promising the
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Kurds in return. You know, the Kurds have been this
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  Speaker 1: incredible ally to the United States when they've tried to
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: deal with Isis, when they were dealing with with with
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: a sod in Syria. But the you know, but they
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: but there's that that's a very complicated issue, right The
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Turks have their issues with the Kurds. Others have their
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: issue with the Kurds. The Kurds, you know, thanks to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: our It's all goes back to World War One, right,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the Curds are
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: kind of left out of you know, they you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: you got land, but you didn't get land. But I'm
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: not going to get through a history lesson here today.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: But it so now we're trying to essentially trigger a
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  Speaker 1: civil war. I'm trying to figure out what we hope
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  Speaker 1: to do. Number One, Why are we publicly announcing what
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  Speaker 1: the CIA is doing. It seems like that is a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: bit of a head scratcher that you would do that.
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  Speaker 1: Number One. But if that's what we're you know, because
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  Speaker 1: every indication I've gotten from experts in Iran that at
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  Speaker 1: this point now the fear is the only hope is
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  Speaker 1: that it might that it's going to probably take a
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  Speaker 1: civil war to figure out who's going to be the
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  Speaker 1: next leader of Iran. There is no democratic transition, there
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  Speaker 1: is no smooth transition. There isn't this isn't This isn't
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  Speaker 1: going to happen as easily as I think people told
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump it could happen, or he may have manufactured
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: in his own head. Can I go back to the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: ease with which he got Maduro out of Venezuela, the
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: ease with which assassinating Solamani and blowing up their nuclear
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: bunkers in the mountains there, and the fact that there
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: was no immediate blowback, I think it it sort of
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: numbed him to the risk of this. And here we are.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: We now have multiple golf countries that thought having an
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: American air base meant they had they had security, it
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: would prevent a country from attacking them. Well, what's Iran done.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: They've been using very cheap rockets and drones to inflict
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: damage on Dubai, in the UAE, in Bahrain and in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: other places. Is this what the Golf States signed up for?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Now we know, we've got that report that NBS was
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: highly influential in convincing Trump to launch these strikes. Never
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: mind that the two people, one of the two people
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that were negotiating on behalf of the United States with
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the Iranians, with somebody who's in business with the Saudis,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: whose Saudy sovereign fund. I've brought this up before, but
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it bears repeating that this is a You're you're trying
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: to figure out step back here. You're trying to figure
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: out what's the rationale for why we're doing this in
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: round and why now we know Kahmani's a bad guy.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: The Iranians have been doing terrible things in the Middle East.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: They have been this is a theocracy there, this is
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: this is there. They're immoral when their treatment of women,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: their treatment of lesbians and gays, treatment of pretty much
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: any minority group. It is a theocracy. There's there's not
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: a defense of how they implement human rights in their country.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And they're not alone in being on human rights. And
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I'm glad to see we want to take a hard
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: line with iron I'm sorry when I don't take a
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: hard line with Russia, but I digress. But it is
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: important to understand this because we keep getting different rationales.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Why did we do it when we did it? The
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: president's business relationships with these countries and the golf you
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: cannot discount them as being factors in this. In this
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to sit here and say
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: it was the only factor, but you can't discount it.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: And then here you have a conflicted private citizen in
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner who's in business with the Saudis, whose private
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: equity fund really wouldn't be taken seriously without the Saudi
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Sovereign funds investment. He's negotiating with the Iranians, and then
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: he's going back when we find out NBS, and again,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I know I've been ranting about this before. NBS is
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: directly lobbying the present to go in with the Israelis.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And do this take out Kamani. It is time. The
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Iranians have never been this week, They've never been this vulnerable.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Strike now it is from a strategic point of view,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: understandable on the timing, and there's no doubt the Saudi's
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: benefit from a week Iran Saudi's and I'll be very curious,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: are the Saudi is going to be excited about a strong,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: small d democratic Iran when that happens, and hopefully the
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: next five to ten years, but let's be realistic, it's
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: probably going to take that long. But here he is lobbying.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And so Kushner comes back to the president, to his
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: father in law and says, yeah, they're not serious about this, right,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: NBS has already been lobbying the president. Kushner comes back
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and reports that we have no idea what kind of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: conversations Kushner is having with his business partners in Saudi
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: A review. That's why you worry about conflict of interest, folks.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: This is why you don't want this in your infecting
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: your government, because it erodes trust, belief. We don't know
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: what is the real motivation here. Then you've had other
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: pieces of this rationale having to do with well, Israel
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: was going to go anyway, or supposedly we wanted to go,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: but we didn't want to look like we were going first.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So we were hoping Israel would launch these attacks, they'd
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: get attacked, and then we'd response, and then we were
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: just looking like we were coming in. By the way.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: You know, Israel's brand is not great in the United
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: States these days, in either political party. We know this.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: It doesn't help that our government almost is trying to
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: use Israel as a shield here and that they're going
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: to get you know. You see, I don't think they're
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: they don't mind if people that are unhappy with this
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: decision don't blame the American government, but they blame the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Israeli government. And I'm highly concerned that there are people
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: in this Trump administration that are in some ways totally
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: fine with that just blame the Jews. So I certainly
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: hope that some that do care about this issue end
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: up correcting the record of us. This episode of the
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  Speaker 2: I'll be honest, Chuck. I was a bit skeptical at first,
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  Speaker 2: but the other night I went out with my wife
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• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Chuck podcast at checkout for the fifteen percent discount. Again,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: use the code Chuck podcast. But the point is is
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: that the president is really struggling with a rationale. And
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I think one of the near term issues that's clearly
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of it's the type of thing that
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: the public pays attention to is this issue of stranded Americans.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: And I want to get into this a minute, because
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: that keeps changing. Right. The President's first response on this
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: is well, it all happened very quickly right on Tuesday
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: when the President is asked and again I would have
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: made a bigger deal out of this is my podcast.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: The other day, but I was very focused on the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Texas primaries. So during this one press of Fatilbly, he's
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: asked why there was no evacuation plan for Americans in
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the region before the strikes, and the President said this, Well,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: it all happened very quickly. We thought, and I thought,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: maybe more so than most, that we were going to
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: be in a situation where we were going to be attacked.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: So they were getting ready to attack Israel, they were
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: getting ready to attack others. So I think I was
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: right about that we attacked first. So as you could
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: see here, he's desperate to try to try to come
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: up with the rationale that there was an imminent threat. Well,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: there's clearly was no imminent threat from the Iranians. And oh,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: by the way, this idea that we had to act fast,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: can I can I remind you of the timeline of
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: this and so this idea that we didn't have an
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: evacuation plan in places because we had to act fast. Okay,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: here's what the United States has been doing. And the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: President of the United States was live tweeting, has been
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: live tweeting the build up of our military assets in
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the region since mid January. In mid January, the President
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: orders the USSA Abraham Lincoln Strike Group to the region,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: explicitly calling it quote a massive armada heading to Iran
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: mid January. Remember today is March. I'm taping this in
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the first week of March. Okay, so this is more
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: than six weeks ago. Then on February thirteenth, all right,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the middle of last month, the USS Gerald Ford, the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: world's largest aircraft carrier, was redirected to the Middle East,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: which meant we had our rare two carrier hammer there
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: you had the Lincoln and the Ford. Apparently it's moderate
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Republican presidents that are named for our aircraft carriers in
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: this war. But I digress. Then, between February seventeenth and
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: twenty six, over two hundred military cargo flights delivered hardware
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: to bases in Israel and Jordan. On February twenty fourth,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: twelve f twenty two Raptors offensive stealth jets arrived in Israel,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: yet another clear signal that a combat was imminent. So
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon had time to move five thousand ton warships
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: halfway around the world. They had time to fly two
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: hundred cargo planes full of missiles. They had six weeks
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of build up to plan for the February twenty eighth
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: strike on Iran. If they had time to move the armada,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: why didn't they have time to move the Americans. So
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the administration is claiming, well, they had an element of surprise.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: That's what they needed as the excuse of why they
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: didn't warn Americans to leave earlier. Okay, surprise, we had
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: an armada there for forty days. The Iranians were not
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: surprised that we were going to attack. Old World was
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: wondering when we were going to attack. All of our newsrooms,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: myself included in my own, we were constantly planning, Okay,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: if we attack Iran in the next twenty four hours,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: we got to do this. We got to We all
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: had plan vs for what we were going to do.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Win the administration clearly signaling this was not hidden, This
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: was in plain sight. The only people who seem to
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: have been surprised by this were the American tourists and
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: expats who were told by the State Department to stay
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: put and use commercial flights to leave the region. Flights,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: by the way, that were canceled the second the first
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: bombs were dropped. You remember on January thirteenth, the President
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: famously tweeted that help is on the way to the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Iranian protesters, and in theory, you can say within about
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: forty days help arrived. So six weeks ago the President
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: promised help is on the way, and he was talking
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: about the aircraft carriers. But if you're an American teacher
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: in Kuwait, a contractor in Bahrain, and you're calling the
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: State Department's emergency line on March third, you know what
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: you got. You got an automated recording that said, please
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: do not rely on the US government for assistant departure.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Help wasn't on its way for them, was flying right
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: over their heads. So this idea that they, you know,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: they were not thinking about the evacuation plans for the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: scores of Americans that now live and work in this region.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Right Abu Dhabi has turned into one of the most
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: three or four most important financial hubs in the world.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So we had forty five days of logistics, two carriers,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty warplanes, two hundred cargo ships, and
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: then we issue a depart now order on Monday night,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: two days after the war started. In the air the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: courts were already closed, so the point is is that
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: this specific incident, right, so, there's already questions about what
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: is the rationale. Did we do it for a preemptive
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: reason because we thought the Iranians were going to strike us.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Did we do it because it was an opportunity because
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: comane you could get kamane. And did we do it
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: because we were trying to save the protesters who were
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: getting repressed and killed in response for them protesting the government?
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: The rationales keep changing on that, And if you're the
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: American public, and then you also you start to ask yourself, Man,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: is this the keystone cops here? Because they seem to
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: have all this, they knew what they wanted to do here,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to play war, to do a war game. They didn't
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: think about the consequences for American citizens that live and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: work in the region. And the point is is that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: this inability to plan to deal with American citizens in
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: the region is only going to reinforce the notion, well,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: if you didn't plan for that, what else didn't you
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: plan for? If you weren't prepared for that, what else
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: aren't you prepared for? And we're supposed to believe we're
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: going to be able to stand up a transitional government
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: in Iran at some point. This is this thing's not
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: going well for him. In Mike, this is the first
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: time in my lifetime that an initial military action ordered
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: by the President of the United States has not been
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: met with a majority supporting the strike. We even got
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the bad guy within forty eight hours, right, the one
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: known bad guy that people, oh, the Ayahtola. They might
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: not know Komani Kamni, but everybody knows Ayatola. So you
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: even have your headline and at best you're at forty
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: nine forty eight. A poll that looked like it was
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: cranked up a little bit to make it to just
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: get the approval of the missile strike to forty nine,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: to be a net positive by a point, also happened
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to be a poll to show the highest job approval
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: rating that any polls shown in six months. So I
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: know the poster that put out the pole, and I
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: think he did an honest job, but I think he
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: modeled it on an electorate that doesn't really exist. At
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the moment. Number one and number two, it's already an
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: even split, and the single best headline that you're going
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: to get out of this attack has already taken place
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: the death of the Iyatola. So what's plan C. We're
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: going to help arm and fund an insurgent force of
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Kurds and hope that they can help essentially decapitate the
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: regime from the inside. Because we're not putting boots on
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the ground. We're going to use the Kurds as the
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: US boots on the ground. I mean, essentially, it sounds
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: like we're hoping now for a civil war since there's
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: no Since this isn't going to be easy, so the
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: only and we don't want the Ayatolas to stay in charge.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: So plan sees a civil war and hope for the best,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: which is essentially how a rack ended up. This is
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: a rack on steroids. The much bigger country, there are
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: more factions, and we have less credibility than we've had before. Look,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: there's there's plenty of good that's come out of this,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: and geopolitical stuff. The biggest is you know, if if
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: you're an ally of Russia and China like Iran is
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: slash was, you're wondering what it's what it's been good for?
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing? Sorry I couldn't help myself. We have war,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: what is it good for? Allies with China or you know,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: if China is your ally, they're not coming to your defense.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: If Russia is your ally, they're not coming to your defense.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So in that sense that you know, we've exposed that,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I think that's a good thing. And I don't want
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to sit here and say that isn't right China and
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Russia are, you know? I hope the United States is
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: still a good ally for our allies. Hopefully we haven't
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: alienated too many of them. But this is not going well,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and I don't know how it gets better anytime soon,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: because in order to create the stability necessary for this
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: to get better, we've got to invest a lot more
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: time and energy into this region. And guess what's politically
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: unpopular doing exactly that. So the question is politically, I
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: don't you know. You look and it's like you look
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: at this combined Tuesday now the debacle of of sort
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of an array of rationales that may or may not
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: be the reason why we launched the attack. When we did,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: we were going to do but whenever we did it,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: it was a surprise, and we didn't have time to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: worry about American citizens in the region. But we did
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: have six weeks build up of our military assets to
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: say that this war is not going well for the president,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: not helping his credibility as an understatement, and you know
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: this is exactly why. Look, I think people did support
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: him because he said, I'm not going to get us
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: into these quagmires because it's a lot easier to start
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: a war than it is finish it. And you know,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the opposition gets to say, the people you attacked, the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: country you attack, there are people that they're going to
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: have their own say, and they're going to have their
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: own timeline, and they're going to have their own survival strategy.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: You can't assume everybody thinks like you, Right, It's one
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: of the mistakes we make in the press corps generally.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I don't want to assume everybody is thinking like me.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: But I'm just reacting to what we're seeing. And I'm
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: trying to give you historical context for why this is
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the single most successful military operation in my lifetime. Was
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: the first Golf War. George hw Bush did what he said,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: and they said they were going to liberate Kuwait. They
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: liberated Kuwait and they left, and the American public was
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: extraordinary supportive of it. But they didn't reward. George HW.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Bush politically, within eighteen months he was in danger of
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: finishing third place in a three way presidential election, and
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: he ended up finishing a semi distant second. That's under
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the best case scenario for a military intervention in a
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: country that starts with I weren't a situation where he
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't have any of the same benefit of doubt that
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: at George HW. Bush did any of the same you know,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: there was no you know in that. Again, both Bushes
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: built a coalition of supporters, took their case to the
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: United Nation, made their case to the American people, and
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: frankly to the world. Something this president has done noneough
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: And when you've done none of that, you have no
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: you have. You know, all he has is his own
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: political base that he can hope will have his back,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: and he's finding out not everybody does. It's interesting to
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: me when you look inside the numbers. Support for this
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: operation among Republicans is high, but it's not super high.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: It's it's seventy six percent. And anytime you're actually under
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: in eighty percent with your own party on anything, that's
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: actually a bit problematic. It's true in job rating that
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: when does when do presidents now get concerned. Not when,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: not when the overall number gets below say forty three,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: forty four, it's when your part, your own party number
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: gets below eighty. In the most recent polls I've seen
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: have all been in at about the mid to high
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: seventies of support, with the rest of Republicans either against
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: or in not sure yet. That's not going to get better.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: That's only going to slowly erode away. And you know,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: right in the middle of the Texas primary the other night,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: get a breaking news alert that we're suddenly using military
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: assets to go after cartels in Ecuador and we're claiming
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: narco terrorism. By the way, I think we still are
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: owed a better definition of narco terrorism. I think we're
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: owed a better explanation for our just what looks to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: many people like indiscriminate bombings of these boats in the
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Near Pacific and Caribbean. But this is, you know, this
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: is the issue here is the president has personalized this presidency.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: He sees this as his military. He thinks he can
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: just you know, he has no ideology, he has no
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: he's a unilateralist. He's not a multilateralist. He's not a bilateralist.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: He's not an isolationist. He is simply a unilateralist. What
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: he says goes, He hopes that's the way people behave
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in politics. Is an endorsement like his his announcement that
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: when he endorses in the Texas center race, he expects
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the candidate that doesn't get his endorsement to drop out. Yeah,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: that would be better for him, just like he expected
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: the Iranian leaders to roll over like Delsi Rodriguez did
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: for him. That isn't the way the world always works.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: That isn't the way life works for anybody. But he's
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: been deluded into thinking that he can make this happen
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: in his own presidency. And just because he's got sick
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: of fans around him that say sure, yes, sir and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: all that business, doesn't mean this is actually how the
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: world operates. And this is a mess, and this is
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: a mess that doesn't look like it's going to get
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: better anytime soon. And the problem that Trump's going to
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: do is he is smart enough not to put boots
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: on the ground that would just not you know, he's
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: already going to be asking Congress for more money to
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: pay for this war. I think that I think it's
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the floating is fifty billion dollars supplemental. I'm skeptical that
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: is going to be among the hardest votes that the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Republicans have had to jam through, I think, and I'm
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: not sure there's there's always been a handful of Democrats
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: that are very hawkish on Iran, But when this supplemental
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: comes with this lack of rationale, this is likely to
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: be a majority unpopular by the time they're asking for that.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: That is going to be among the tougher votes to
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: do in an election year. So Tuesday night, right already
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: a bad night for Republicans, with a nasty runoff that's
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: about to happen in Texas, Democrats end up getting a
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: nominee that that appears to be more electable than Texas
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: than any nominee they've ever had before, or at least
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: going back since and Richard's. And then you have this
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: erratic nature of how the war is being conducted at
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: the moment, and for United States credibility, he's not going
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: to back down now, right, So I have a feeling
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: this is not just another issue he's got to deal with.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: This is going to be the issue that dominates and
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: overtakes his presidency. And I guess what's amazing about this
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: is that it was a choice, and I think it's
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: a choice that he's someday going to regret. He may
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: already regret it, and I can tell you this, we
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: already know jd Vance already regrets it. I was a
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: bit of a hot take with chrys Elizabeth. I do
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: think this is at the heart of the political identity
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: that jad Vance has tried to forge, and he now
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: has to defend an administration that does the exact opposite
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of of what he's been advocating and his rationale for
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: why he was on Team Trump in the first place.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: I think it when something gets it to the core
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: of who you are, of your political identity, and you
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: suddenly have to just flip on it, you never recover.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Doesn't mean he won't get the nomination, but you never
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: recover that that is a tattoo, right that is going
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: to be hard to erase from the public's mind. All Right,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Before I get to Chris's interview, a few other Basically,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I've had a notebook of items that I've not been
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: able to get to for some time. Quickly on the
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: on the president's pronouncement that he's going to endorse in
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the Texas Republican primary, and he expects the candidate he
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: doesn't endorse to drop out. And all the reporting is
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: indicating that Cornyn is that Dune has convinced him to
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: do this, and everybody's going to convince him to do Corny,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Why are we so convinced that Ken Paxton is just
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: going to say, Okay, I'll drop out now he's going
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: to expect something in return. This is look Donald Trump
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: has created a Republican transactional mindset that if you want something,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: if you want somebody to do something, you're going to
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: have to get to give something in return. So what's
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Trump going to offer Paxton to get out early and
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: to try to save the Republican Party? One hundred million
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: dollars that's probably what it would cost, and it's no
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: guarantee that they'd win this runoff anyway, which of them,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Which means they're going to privately spend three or four
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to try to rescue Paxton. And it's
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: not really rescue Paxton, it's just to destroy Tall Rico.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: So you're looking at I think they're looking that can
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: they save a half a billion dollars what's he going
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: to offer Paxton? Is there an ambassadorship that he wants?
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Is this? Is this actually the exit ramp for Christy
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: no Right, who is clearly going to be the scapegoat
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: for the unpopular immigration enforcement policies of this administration? She
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: is it is? I think she now knows it's coming.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: It's clear. It's not a matter of if she's out,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: it's when they decide to pull the trigger there? Does
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: John Thune agree? Does John Cornyn agree to somehow help
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: confirm Ken Paxton as the next DHS secretary to replace
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: no Right? How what kind of bargain are Trump, Thoon,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: and Cornan willing to strike to get Paxton out of
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: the way somebody who they've made the case is morally bankrupt,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: by the way, not Donald Trump, but Thuone and Cornyn have.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: But the point is is I I I just got
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: to get somebody to quit magically, And there's nothing more
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: embarrassing to Trump. You know why Trump wants Paxton to
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: drop out. He knows Paxter could win. Corny's not a
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: believable mega guy. Look, Trump still matters in the Republican Party,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: just as chip Roy. Chip Roy, while he made it
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: to the runoff in the attorney general's race in Texas
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: finished kind of a distant second. He's unlikely to win
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: this runouf And you know why. His primary opponent who
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: defeated him essentially made the case that chip Roy wasn't
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: a trumpy guy and noted that chip Roy was essentially
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: thought the election de nihilism was silly and thought fighting,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: you know, essentially fighting going against certification was a bad idea.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So the point is is that chip Roy was damaged
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: when a campaign was running against him, that he wasn't
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: sufficiently pro Trump. So I'm not you know, Trump is it?
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: But this is the trap that Republicans are in right now.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: You can't get out of a primary without Trump, and
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: right now Trump is baggage if you're trying to win
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: a general election in a fairly competitive state. You know,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: a light from light red to purple. And I think
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: the question we all have in our minds is Texas
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: now light red? It's not purple, but is it now
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: light red? I think of Paxson's nominee. Yes, the answer
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: to that is yes. A few more thoughts in tall Rico.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: It is interesting to watch the coalition that he ended
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: up building and I think the biggest vulnerability he's going
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: to have it in general is that he's a lot
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: more progressive than his persona. Let's on right, being a pastor,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and this is a reminder. You can be an ideological
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: conservative or progressive, but if you have a moderate persona,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: you can win over swing voters who may may not
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: who if you seem like you're reasonable to deal with right,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: which can explain to mom. Donnie and I grew up
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: with a conservative senator named Connie Mack, who is quite conservative.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Would argue probably more conservative than either Rick Scott or
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Mark or Ruby on some things. But Connie mac always
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: had a smile on his face. He used to call
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: him the conservative with a smile demeanor is everything. Ronald
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Reagan very conservative. We always had a smile on his face,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: moderate temperament, and that could be the secret to Tall
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Rico right. Strident liberalism and strident conservatism turn off the middle.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Something potentially to be learned here, But I is look.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I think, on one hand, I think the tallar Rico
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: victory sends a message nationally that hey, demo was running
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: some errands Wednesday morning and ran into an acquaintance, all right,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: and I was just sort of complaining that I was
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: tired from the late night covering the Texas primaries, and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: this person said to me, oh, that's right. Was that
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: last night? And I said yeah, And he's like, who won?
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: And this is a person I've never really talked like
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: hardcore politics with, just sort of like, boy, it's crazy
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: out there. It's sort of the atmospheric. I have this
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: whole group of people. I'm sure some of you have
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: this where you kind of talk about politics like you
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: talk about the weather. It's like, man, it's nuts out
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: there today, you know, or something like that, and you
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: just kind of say it, and then you don't say
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: anything else because you don't really want to get into
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: a conversation because you're not one hundred percent sure where
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: they fit. But you know that they will agree. Oh yeah,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: it is crazy. You know, everything's crazy in Washington. And
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I said, oh, I said, and they said, well who won?
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I was following that one guy and I said, you
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: mean the young pastor? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy. I said,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: well he won the primary. And he goes, oh, I'm
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: kind of glad to see that. I'm tired of the
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: bomb throwers. And I wouldn't have you know, I think
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: this person truly is someone who's sort of a small
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: business owner. For what it's worth, I'm not a very
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: political person. I know it's hard to say that in Washington,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: but believe it or not, there's a chunk of people
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: that just happened to live in Washington and it's the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: nation's capital. Doesn't mean not everybody works in either in
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: government or a derivative of government. There's a there's a
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: chunk of folks who are, you know, no different than
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: small business owners in Kansas City, des Moin, et cetera.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: But it was that bomb thrower, right, And I've been
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: talking to you guys about where's the Democratic Party divide
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: are they Are they looking for a fighter or a
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: uniter and or are they looking for a bomb thrower
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: or a peacemaker? And I was a lit little skeptical
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: that peacemaker was going to work. And it's very possible
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: this is a Texas Democratic thing less, so everywhere else
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: we're going to find out, Right, it could be that
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: main Democrats want something different, but as a first impression
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: to the party, it's probably doing the Democratic Party brand
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: some good that their first winner is not a bomb thrower, right,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: it is if you followed and it's one of those
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: things if you follow politics online, it looks like the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Democrats are trying to emulate Trump, bomb thrower, all this business.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: But it's interesting to me that in real life they
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: perhaps voters behaved differently. Here it's one race, one state,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: one state who's got a whole bunch of people who
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Democrats who haven't won in a long time,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: so they'll you know, they're looking for anybody they view
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: as electable. But it's an interesting it's an interesting thing
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to watch. Truly, is a trip. All right, let me
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: sneak in a break and when we come back, my
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: full on debrief all things. We break it all down
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: about Texas, North Carolina and what this means going forward,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: including a new candidate, a new independent candidate for the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: US Senate in the state of Montana. All of that
• 50:22
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  Speaker 1: the receiving end of this, but he's pression and this
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  Speaker 1: is Crystal's a guest appearance on the Check podcast. Those
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: of you that may not know this, and maybe some
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  Speaker 1: of you don't know, I appear weekly on your Behind
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  Speaker 1: the Paywall podcast. You're an elite You're an elite network influencer.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a Britique offering.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: You have a velvet rope behind our conversations. You know,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: I'm a man of the people, as you know and say, no,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: you are. We're getting rid of Velve just for this.
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: When I heard when I got the email that I
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: was being asked to be on the Chuck Podcast, I
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: immediately told my wife, I've made it. You know, well,
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  Speaker 4: I thought Chuck was blackballing me off of the Chuck Podcast.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: Apparently not. He must be hard off for guests. Somebody canceled, No,
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: I bucked ken Burns for you.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: But how about that. You know America's two hudred and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday in the American Revolution. We can wait a
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: few days on that.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: You know, I trade bank accounts.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Now, well that's there, you got I teeth. Look, we
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: were we did a live stream on Tuesday night. Yeah,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: but you know, in many cases, you know, you have
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: the immediate moments when you deal, and then you know,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: you get a day, you get a night, you get
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: to sort of see this, and you know, since we
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: last saw you as a pair, Jasmine Crockett is conceited
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: quite quickly. And I think there was some question about
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: whether Taller I think Taller Rico's management of that was
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: quite deft when he said, hey, we're not calling, we're
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: not claiming victory until all the votes are counted in Dallas,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: which has made it harder for Crockett to have a
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: grievance when her own opponent was willing to have her
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: back there. And now it's you know, and now all
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: the all the eyes are on the Republican side. By
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: the way, we still don't have all the votes in no,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: we still don't.
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: Look it's like ninety five percent. And I do think
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: Cornan will finish a hagg marginally. I mean, it's it's
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: basically going to effectively be a wash. It's eight ninety
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: seven point eighty four to eight seventy one, six seventy.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: So Cornyan has had by twenty six thousand votes with
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: ninety more than ninety five percent.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: In Here is the stat that moved me the most
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: that I saw today, and that is in counties that
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump won by fifty points are more in the
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: deep red Texas counties. Okay, all right, Paxton consistently led
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: corn by four to five points, four to four to
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: forty when you put all those together, So I look
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: at that and you're just, you know, Cornyn, the question
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: is can Cornyn get to fifty?
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: This is you start to look and I it's you know,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: it's fascinating. I'm gonna share an anecdote with you. I
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: was running some errands on Wednesday morning, and you know,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: you know, you live in your neighborhood, you have the
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: same people you run into, and you know, and and
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: these are people that are not political people, but they
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: know what I do for a living. And you know,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: I was ran into one of these acquaintances and I said, yeah,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I'm tired. I was covering the Texas primaries. You know,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: I'm just sort of groggy, sorry or something like that.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: And this person said, oh, those were last night. He goes,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: so what happened? And you know, meaning you know, and
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I said, and he said, who won that Democratic race?
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: And I said, the young pastor did Tyllarrico. He goes, oh,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I'm relieved. He goes, you know, I just exhausted from
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the bomb throwers. And it was just, you know, we've
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: been having this debate, Chris, right, which is where is
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: the Democratic primary electorate? Is it in fight mode or
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: is it in exhaustion mode? And in twenty eighteen it
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: felt exhaustion right. They were in twenty twenty, twenty eighteen
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and twenty twenty it was less fight back and more like,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: this is crazy, let's have a reset, and they're all
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: The messaging was sort of around that. All the candidates
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: sort of leaned into that, whether you're Alyssa Slotkin and
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: yet this first year of Trump's second term, we've seen
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the fighters, whether it's Gavin Newsom in the presidential stakes
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: or frankly, it was Jasmine Crockett who jumped out sort
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: of tortoise and hair type of mindset, right. She jumped
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: out early and was doing better than I think a
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: lot of us expected, and we thought, oh boy, this
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: this fighter mentality maybe getting you know, Democrats maybe they
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: want to punch her. They don't necessarily want a preacher,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: and yet maybe they do. You know, you look at
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: the twenty then you look at the Virginia New Jersey races. Yeah,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: and you look at the the style of Mom Donnie Okay,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: which is moderate in tone even if it's progressive total
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and you're asked and you're like, maybe Gavin Newsom has
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: this wrong, Maybe he's making a mistake.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: It's so funny that you said that, because one of
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: the things I really like, it's always hard. I'll first
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: say it's always hard when we're live and we're trying
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: to analyze in real time, you're not totally sure where
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: the votes are coming from, and you obviously don't have
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: a minute to kind of step back and just be like,
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna go through each race. I'm gonna look at
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: each race and be like, oh, that's interesting, that's not
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: It's hard to have like deeper thoughts. That's why I
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: like a couple of days after you can sort through it.
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: I was on Wednesday morning, I was just looking at
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: the results, and I was thinking about the conversations you
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: and I have had in the run up to this
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: Tallarico Crockett, which is that a lot of the national
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: media has painted this as liberal Jasmine Crockett against my
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: James tell Rico, which is totally wrong. And I'll point
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: you to there's a great stat out there. There's a
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: great map online that shows that in the counties that
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders won in the Texas primary.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: Tell Rico won by forty points. I mean, the reason that.
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: He won is because of the left. Crockett was that
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: was never a that was never a governing dynamic. But
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: the other thing I was thinking about, to your point,
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: is like the fighter versus uniter, or the you know,
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: the the over partisan versus the kind of I don't
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: want to call Tallary called bipartisan, but a lot less
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: partisan energy.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: And I was thinking, you know what.
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: Like it's one data point, but if I'm Pete Boodagee
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: or like a Shapiro.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: I feel like a bit Andy Bisher.
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: I felt a little bit better after on the day
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: after than I did the day before. And again it's
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: one data point, like if Graham Platner in Maine goes
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: and beach Janet Mills by thirty points, Okay, well, got
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: to have in a different conversation, right, you.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Know I would also, I don't want to discount the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: following phenomenon, which is there's you know, when you've been
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: beaten to a pulp like Texas Democrats have been for
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the last twenty years, you're you're like anything, you know,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: there's there's a I'm going to quote an old Eddie
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: Murphy stand up line. It is like when you're a
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: starving person, any cracker tastes like our ritz, you know,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: and he's like, oh man, this is a great cracker.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: When you're starving, anything tastes like our rits, right, and
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: it is so that there is you know, this is
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: why you know, one primary does not make a trend,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: and you have to wait and we have to watch
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: and look Illinois in two weeks presents. You know, there's
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: all sorts of flavors of Democrats you can pick from
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: in that Democratic primary in Illinois. That frankly, I think
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: it's been hijacked by big money in a way that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: gosh to two extraordinary methods. But let's put a pin
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: in that buying the office, no, no doubt. But when
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: you what you have, so I you know, is this
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: a Texas Democrat are exhausted and they're looking for a winner,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: you know? Or is this you know? So that's that'd
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: be the only caution I want to put in here.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: But I have to say. Nate Silver wrote a really
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: interesting piece this morning on Wednesday about kid tell Rico
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: win correct and it was I I was talking about
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: this issue of partisan versus moderate which is that we
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: and he correctly said a lot of sort of inexperienced
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I call him in a you know, the problem with
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: big mainstream media these days, or whatever's left of it,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: is that there's a lot of important legacy titles with
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of inexperienced political reporters, you know, who think
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: politics started, you know after, you know, when Donald Trump
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: came down the escalator, and don't really have a lot
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: of experience beyond sort of the last eight to ten
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: years of American politics, and and so you know the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: difference between partisan. You can be moderate and temperament and
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: still very ideologically either conservative or modern. So I'll give
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: you you know.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: And that's mom Donnie, I think is such a good
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: example of that.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: People.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: How could he go and.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: Get along with Trump because he's temperamentially modern, even though
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: on a policy perspective he's very very liberal.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: So you know, one of the most conservative senators that
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Florida's ever had, and arguably more conservative than the two
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: senators that they have at the moment, was a guy
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: named Connie Mack. Totally honey, Connie Mack. I used to
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: call him the conservative with a smile because when he
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: ran as a conservative, and he ran when he won
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: an eighty eight uh, he won, I think despite his ideology,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: but it was because he was just simply a nice
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: guy that he was. Connie Mack your pal, and he
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: was just sort of and he always was. He was
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: he's always it goes. Reagan is the great you know example,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: and he was making Reagan which was, hey, look, if
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: you're going to sell austerity, you ought to be don't
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: be with a smile, don't be a dick.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: You know, yeah, exactly, you know, it's a simple lesson.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: But it's because I was thinking about that with Chip Roy.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Remembervatism with George W.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: Bush, And I know, like Chip Roy is kind of unlikable,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? And he got pummeled
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: in the Attorney General's race, like it does matter. We
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: talk about we always talk about Tim Burchett. Tim Burchett
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: is like among the most conservative members of Congress, but
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: like Algender, a Consecrtez loves him because he's like a
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: he's like a It's exactly what you said.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: He's not overly partisan, even though he's very conservative.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Another example on the right Mike Pence. Mike Pence, you know,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: lived in the same neighborhood I'd lived in for a while.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Everybody loved him. I don't know if anybody would have
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: ever voted for him, Okay, in the neighborhood. He was
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: very you know, and yet he was the guy that
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: you know, would bring in your garbage cans if you
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: were if you didn't have a chance to do it
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: because you were late coming.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: And I think people don't understand that. I think that's
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: such an important.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Intall Rico may have this, Yeah, and it may matter
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: more to Texans than perhaps it does to folks in Illinois,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: or perhaps it does. I mean, and so I I
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: but but there is something about temperament here and I
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: think we're we're you know, we're all trying to figure
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: this out in this second Trump term, which is our Democrats.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: And the thing is, if you're online, if you're a
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: pod Save America Democrat, you're you're on edge, You're.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: You're midas touch Democrat. You hate him and everything he does.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, if you're sort of not, if
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: you're trying to tune it out and you're you're you're
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: more looking, you know, but you're still you know, hopefully
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: you're subscribing to YOU or I because you're like.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: Let's thinking some attention.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you don't really want to be lectured all
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: the time in the screen and made to feel like
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: the sky is falling every second of the day. You're
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: you're looking for change, but you're looking for a change
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: in tone as much as a change in in in ideology.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: And look again, this maybe it's one state. It's one
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: very big state. Yep, it's it's gigantic and.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: A ton of profile and a ton of attention. I
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: I like the the main race is probably will be
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: the clearest example of that. The choice, I also think
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: it's a three way race, is a little more complicated.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: But in the Michigan Senate primary, you kind of have
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: Hailey Stevens, the member of Congress, who's very much like
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to talk about how terrible Trump is.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: You have Abdul l si Ed who's like Justice Democrat
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders. And then I think McMorrow probably winds up
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: being the Mallard. McMorrow winds up being the me who's
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: kind of a hybrid.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: She's Goldilocks. Yeah, exactly right. But I don't know.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: But I mean there will be more data points in
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: Look again, if Graham Platner beats Janet Mills by fifteen
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: points in the main primary, you know that, then the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: tall Eco thing looks like just a data point that's
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: contradicted by that data point, right, Like.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: We don't know?
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's talk. Let's have a little fun here.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I was. I did this sort of scenario with a
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: couple of people earlier, earlier today, and this is the following.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: If the Democrats had been the dominant political party in
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Texas for the last thirty years and the Republicans were
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: the ones that have had a hard time winning general elections,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: does the Republican electorate become more mindful of quote unquote
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: electability and and does the Democrat you know, and I
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: say this in that the fact is we've actually seen
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: this play out, right, Why does a moderate Republican like
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Larry Hogan successfully navigate a primary in Maryland that yes,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: he had a.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: Conservative Murphy Cracker thing.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Right, You're like, well, maybe this guy can win, right,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's one of those that that
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: Crockett probably wins. If Democrats had gotten comfortable winning one hundred.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: I think it's it's so much of it is expectations, right,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: if you've won and you control I mean, look, we're
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: talking about this. You know Gary Morrow, right, is the
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: last Democrat to win statewide in two thousand and.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Four, No, nineteen eighty four, nineteen ninety four. I mean,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: that's a long ass time you were in college or
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: high school.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: I was.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: I was graduating from Pace. That was my high school graduation,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: and I turned fifty a few days ago, So that
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: tells you how long it was. Like, I do think
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: there is a a an element of like, look, we
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: don't have the luxury of picking the perfect. We have
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: to vote with our head more than our heart. And
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: I think that always is the case in places where
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: you've been down one party has been down for an
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: extended period of time, you are more willing to.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: Be like, it's not my cup of tea.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: But like, I've spent the last twenty five years under
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: Democratic rule.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: So maybe Charlie Baker.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: As the governor of Massachusetts or whatever, you know, like
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: he's probably too moderate for me, but like, you know, and.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: I think that that better than those liberals over there, right.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: Because you know what it's like to live under. If
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: you're a Democrat in Texas, you've spent probably most of
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: your adult life under almost unified Republican rule. So you
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: now know, like, I'm not letting the perfect get in
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: the way of the good here, right, And I do
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: think I think that's human nature to do that.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: I don't want to let Texas go without picking a
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: few knits, because you know, one of it was interesting
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: last night, we had some we had you know, all
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: of the as Missus Todd likes to say, she goes,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: I love the numbers guys that you guys have on
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: the life nerves. Yeah, you know, because I say that,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: I say that lovingly. But if I had won, you know,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: there was this well hey, it just broke down the
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: exact same way that Royce West and m J. Hagar
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: broke down. And you're like, Okay, that's true, except you
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: know what both Crockett and what Crockett had that that
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Royce West didn't have was money and attention and all.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: In a way bigger profile. Nobody except people like us
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: even knew who Royce West was.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: So what I would the knits I'd pick here is
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: that So I think I'm going to separate Jasmine Crockett
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: political athlete right when you have like you know, you
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: take the uh. A good example might be a let's
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: take my son's favorite NBA team, the Phoenix Suns. He's
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: very frustrated they have one of the best players in
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: the NBA that that doesn't get enough enough attention and
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: yet is it Booker's fault that he has a terrible
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: infrastructure around him, that he's got a you know, a
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: campaign manner, I mean an owner that's you know, way
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: to this right that the big you know all the
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: The point is is that so here she was a
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: really good political athlete who had a terrible infrastructure run
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: because I at the end of the day, she did
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: not run a good campaign. She did not she did
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: not have a statewide organization. She was sort of she
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: you know. The problem is it strikes me as she
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: was the candidate and the manager, and you have to
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: have versus Talla Rico clearly had an organization. I mean, yeah,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: he's the.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: Real people Liz Smith who's had successful that's not just.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: That people, but they clearly had a ground operation. Yeah,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: clearly we're.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: Thinking of a real Grand Valley, right, and that's that's
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: how he won.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: And that should scare the Jesus out of Republicans, right
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: if Talla Rico can essentially recreate what Veto did in
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: the Rio Grand Valley, because people forget this, Beto cleaned
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: up in the Rio Grand Valley against Cruz. His problem, frankly,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I think was he didn't do as well. And this
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: was a critic of him. He was almost so obsessed
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: with the Rio Grand Valley that he sort of didn't
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: run up the score in the urban areas that arguably
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: he should have run it. And and you know this
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: was you know, this is the the if you were
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: going to make the case for Crockett on the ticket,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: it would have been, well, she's not gonna you know,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: the urban areas are going to turn out in greater numbers,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: you know, so then you just send her to to
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: the Rio Grand Valley and see if she can, you know,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: fight to a draw among Latino voters. So it is
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: it is clear that she didn't run a statewide campaign. No,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: And and so you know, look, I think that here's
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: what I've I feel like her decision to concede quickly,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: she conceded quicker than I fully expected, tells me she
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: wants a future in the party. And that says a
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: lot cruises up soon. And who's to say, you know,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: we've seen plenty of places where the second time you
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: run you maybe she'll figure out that she needs to
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: not always run hot, right, she's especially it's always in
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: fifth gear. She won't she won't necessarily have to do
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: that the next time. You know, does she have does
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: she have an ability to pivot and all this stuff?
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: And what kind of campaign? What kind of candidate is
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: she if she has an actual campaign infrastructure? Right now, look,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: here's stuff I don't know. I don't know whether she's
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: easy to that she will listen to an infrastructure. Right,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: We don't know those things. I don't you know, I'm
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: not going to sit here and say I know her
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: very well, but I don't think she's erratic, and I
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: don't think she makes the same miss twice.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: I thought it was very First of all, one thing
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: that I just looked up, she's only forty four years old. Okay,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: so put that, I think it is unlikely this is
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: the last you've ever heard from her politically. Second, I
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: when I got up Wednesday morning and I saw that
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: she had conceded and endorsed Tall Rico and then put
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: on Twitter, you know we're all unified, I thought, well,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: she's probably gonna run for something like that? Is that
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: is like the Democrat First of all, it's the Democratic
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: dream scenario, right, like they need like eight things to go, right, Chuck,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: to even put yourself in a position where they might win,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: and one of those things was you could not have
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: any look of particularly with Crockett being an African American woman,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: you could not have there be a vibe of, Oh,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: I don't really love the kind of campaign tallar Rico ran,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: and maybe I'll endorse them eventually, but it'll be right
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: like she gave an unequivalental endorsement.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: I will say I think she started too late, right,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: and she got into late for the size of the primary.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: Tel Rico had been in for a really long time,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: and I don't if you look at the numbers. She
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: did well where she was known. She did well on
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: the Dallas media market. She did pretty well in Harris
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: County in Houston, but man, like the entire if you
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: split the state vertically, she just gets destroyed right in
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: everything in the western part of the state.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: It just struck. It looks like a campaign that was
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: not complete, right, a campaign infrastructure that was just incomplete.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: She was the classic building it as the plane is
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: taking off and.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: A house member, right, A house members never run statewide
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: and it's not like running statewide in my home state
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: of Connecticut, where it's like you're if you're a member
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: of Congress who represent the twenty percent of the of
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: the state. You rep what what are the thirty six
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: members of Congress and Techo? I mean you read nobody
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: goes to the hell you are it' say California.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: One more little uh? You know how you sort of
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: you see an event, you see something happen, and you're like, hmm,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: there's more to this story. So the Kamala Harris last
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: minute endorsement, yes, all right, I promise you there's a
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: TikTok to do on this, right. My guess is Crockett
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: tried to get this weeks ago, of course, and I'm
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: sure Crockett, who's part of the Black sorority, She's a
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: member of one of the big black those Kamala Harris,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: this is one of those sisterhood things. Right are you
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: going to back?
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: You know, this strikes me as a classic Kamala Harris risk,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: you know, waiting too long, being indecisive. But oh am
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: I going to get involved? Am I not going to
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: get involved? All right? If I, well, boy, it looks
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: bad if I don't back the black woman. But you know,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: and then when does she do it? When it's too
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: late to help? So she gets all the worst parts
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: of this, which she did it after early.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: Vote was over right.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: I mean it makes no sense, it really made it
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: was really just strategically in act and it what it
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what my suspicion is is that this
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: is hand ringing inside a Karis world. Should they get
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: into these things? Could they not get into these things?
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: And then when you when you wring your hands and
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: this was, by the way, this is the knock against
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: her goes back to her original presidential campaign. It's going
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: to be for medicare for all? Is she not going
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: to be for medicare you know? Liberal? And you know,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: you know it's some sometimes you are who you are,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: and this is who she is, right, which is she's
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: never been comfortable with the political identity that other people
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: have of her, which means she is always second guess
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: her own political identity. Is she the prosecutor, is she
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: the defendant? Is he the social justice democrat? Is she
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: the moderate pragmatist or is she the progressive disruptor? And
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: you know, even in how she handled this endorsement totally
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: you know, to me, it was like, well, I don't
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't you know, I don't understand what
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: took so long other than it's clear it came from
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: her side, because it just it made no sense in
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: the property sense.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: It makes no sense because it's exactly what you said, Like,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 4: let's just let's just first of all, you're exactly right.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: This is not in a vacuum. This is consistent with
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: indecision and hand ringing that has gone literally back to
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: when she first ran for president. Now I would argue
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: before that, but yeah, president.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: It's also like, let's just let's just look at it, like,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: as in a sterile political decision, if you are going
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: to endorse, you do it so that you get the
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: potential upside. If you endorse two weeks ago, a Crockett wins,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: you say, oh, crocket one, I did that the classic
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump. Why the hell would you endorse where you
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: literally there's no win scenario.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: If Crockett wins, everyone like us is gonna be like
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: she endorsed her two days before the election.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: If it loses, people like us as we're doing it
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: to see, what the hell are you doing?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: Why did you endorse solely?
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: I mean maybe if Crockett had narrowly eked it out,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: perhaps Kamala would have been seen as sort of the
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: the tipping point at the end. That's about the only
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: try to think, no.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 4: Sense to endorse that late in the game, because you're
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: not going to get credit for it.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: Look, it's sort of uh in the in the fantasy
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: world where I have one hundred political reporters to assign
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: stories to, I probably wouldn't assign the Hey, go figure
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: out what took so long in the Kamala Harris endorsement
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: A jazment Crockett. So this is one of those tiktoks
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: that at some point I think, well, this is one
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: of those we'll learn this story in like six months
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: when somebody sort of as an aside, ask somebody about
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: it and we get the full story. But there's I
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: have a feeling that when we find out why this
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: took so long, that it will fit the pattern of
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: the Harris world's indecisiveness about her own political idea, and I.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: Think it will land ultimately as most of these things have,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: with her back on her right, not just the team,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: but back on her that she was like do I
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: get involved? Do I not get involved? And there were
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: some people saying get involved in there's some people saying
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: not get involved like in every campaign, and she just
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: waited to it, which is fascinating, by the way, because
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: you know the other politician I always Democrat politician. I
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: always think of who the knock on him was, always
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: he's too indecisive.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden. I mean that is that was always the
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: knock on Biden, like he can't make any decisions.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: It's why he didn't run for president's time around.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: It goes back to, Look, there are plenty of politicians
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: who don't like to make enemies and they don't want
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: to make anybody mad. And I'm sure you know in
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: that to succeed. Look, and I want to pivot to
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: something else. You know, there are certain candidates that also
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: are are crowd pleasers in the moment and sometimes right
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: this is the Donald Trump, uh, both positive and negative.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: He tells every crowd what they want to hear, ye
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: in the moment, regardless of whether it's a contradiction to
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: something he told somebody else. An, yeah, well, I have
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: a feeling. Our friend Gavin Newsom pulled one of those
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday night when he did a book interview with
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: the pod Save America Guys, where he knew the audience
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: was going to be super lefty. He knew where the
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America guys are on, particularly in foreign policy
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: and particularly when it comes to bb Net, Yahoo any
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: and he ended up give it, telling them what they
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to hear, using using phrases He's going to come
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: to regret, like accusing Israel of being an apartheid nation,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: and it is it is, you know, it is when
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: you use the language that is being used to target
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: Jews left and right, and you're you're sort of giving
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: aid and comfort with that terror, you know, but it was,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: you know, this is This is always something I've always
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: worried about with Gavin is that he's always I mean,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: the irony is his book is still who he is.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: He's in a hurry. He's in a hurry to cement
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: his status as the as the as the candidate for
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: the angry Democratic base. Okay, but you know, I think
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: that that has a low ceiling, and I you know,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's a I put it this way.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: I think he made a lot. He reminded a lot
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: of people of why there's so much skepticism his ability
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: to be a national candidate. When he went to me,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: when he went when he went as it just felt
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: like he was pandering to the crowd. It didn't feel
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: like a genuine flip.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: Well, and you know, we I think we did it.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: And I'll respect the flip. I'll respect the genuine flip.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: But here's what I would say, and I'm just look,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm are you is it a when you criticize
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration? Is it America that does these things?
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: Or is it the Trump administration? And this would be
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: the you know, I would ask Gavin news from that.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: You know, do you you know if somebody says, you know,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: America is now you know a bunch of thugs that
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: do this or that, or you know you're gonna attribute
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: it to everybody that lives in the country. Do you
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: do that in the United States? Why do we do
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: that with Israel all the time?
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: I I we talked at the end of twenty twenty
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: five about who we thought had good years and bad years,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: and we both agreed that Gavin Newsom then had really
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: a remarkable twenty twenty uf Fred he went from like
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: to wow, Okay, like either he or Kamala Harris is
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: the front runner. But I always remind people that remember
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: how Gavin Newsom started twenty twenty five, he started a
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: podcast that was expressly aimed at interviewing people with whom
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: he disagreed. So he had Steve Bannon on, he had
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 4: the late Charlie Charlie kirk on, and that clearly.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: Was a you know what, the Democratic Party is.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: Talking to themselves too much. We need to talk more.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: Gntalized way aloud from the loud influencer laud by the way.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: If I troll Donald Trump on Twitter, and like, my
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: point is is like don't. Gavin Newsom is a politician.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: I mean that in good ways and bad ways and
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: the bad way. He didn't decide, you know what the
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: world needs.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: They need me speaking out against Donald Trump.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: His first inclination was after the twenty twenty four election,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: we need to broaden the party out and I'm gonna
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: talk to people who with whom I disagree.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: That didn't go over very well. And what started to
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: go over well was I'm gonna just troll Trump. I'm
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: gonna give Trump his own medicine. And that propelled him.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: But let's not pretend that that was like the first
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: instinct that Kevin Newsom.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: Had when he saw what had happened in twenty twenty four.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: So I do think the danger for all of these
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: people at a national level, I know you know this
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: better than me, is it is hard not to tell
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 4: people what they want to hear.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: You are probably a people please, It's why you do
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: this job, right, right, That's why you got really really hard.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: But the truth is, when you have this level of
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: scrutiny when you're running for president, which he is, you
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: got to be real careful.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: You know. Look, and we talk about the A word authenticity,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: and you know it's sometimes overused and it's over over
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: you know, can be sort of over analyzed. But I
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: look at it, you know, it's sort of like Gavin Newsom.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like you have a your your, you
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: have your you have a stick shift, and you're trying
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: to let me try first gear, let me try say,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: let me, let me try all these different let's see
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: what where I can get traction right. And it literally
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: was him searching for traction versus be who you are
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: and see if the moment meets you, that's it, right,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: Like there's always two you know, it's like are you
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: you know, are you create. Are you trying to fit
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: the moment or are you already there and the moment
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: comes to you? Right? You know, like Donald Trump, it
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: turns out he didn't. Everybody's like, oh he figured.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has been the same erratic crank about all
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: of American governance for the last thirty five forty years.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: And he's had a victim complex his entire adult life.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: It's just it worked in that moment. It bit the
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: moment the Republican Party came to him. In many ways, right,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 4: is his anger hit.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: He was already a short attention span guy, a a
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: squirrel brain, meaning social media, which basically rewards squirrel brain. Right,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Oh totally, that's you know, so it is in some
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: ways and in you know, why is why is Trump
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: then defended? Well, he is who he is, and he's
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: always been this person, and there's a lot of truth
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: to that. Right, he may be consistently erratic on a
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: day to day way, but in some ways he's he's
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: he's consistently inconsistent, he's authentically Inauthentic's there's a there's always
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: been an odd through line to him.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, you and I I think agree. I'm not an
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: economist I'm not gonna although most economists say tarifs are
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 4: bad policy, but they're they're terrible politics. I mean, we
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: feel I feel very comfortable saying that. But like you
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 4: can go back to interviews in the nineteen eighties where
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 4: like a young businessman, Donald Trump is talking about how
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: you know, I think at that point he was talking
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: about Japan, but Japan is screwing us.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: So like there are, he is authentic. It's the same
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: reason why I always say, these people, it's a great
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: tribute question who.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 4: Who is in most polling, the most popular politician in
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: the country, active politician in office is Bernie Sanders because
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 4: people agree with him. If you go you can go
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: back when he was the mayor of Burlington and you're like,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 4: oh shit, he's saying the same stuffy saying.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: Now, Actually, our friends at c SPAN, our buddy Howard Mormon,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: could put I think put together this this montage of
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: clips of Bernie when he was a House member, I mean,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: for the when he was sort of the the gadfly
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: socialist of the House, and and you know, before he
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: was a senator and people actually took him more seriously,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: he was saying the same thing I don't think he
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: said billionaires came to him. We didn't have that the party.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: And he seen his quote unquote authentic because he he's
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: not met the moment. The moment came to him, right, And.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: Who reminds me of that too? On a smaller level,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: Not to go too down far.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 4: A rabbit hole, but remember when nau Ron Paul ran
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: for president a number of times, but the time that
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 4: he ran where he was like marginally credible, it was
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: because Ron Paul's views never changed. It's just that the
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: there became a bigger streak of people interested in like, yeah,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: maybe the fat is bad. They were libertarianism is the
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: right way to go. Like, it's not like Ron Paul changed.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: Ron Paul twenty oh two was a weirdo. And in fact,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders were literally Statler and Waldorf
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: for the House totally.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: They were regularly James traffickan't land where you're like eeah,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 4: that guy gets up and says some stuff.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: And like they were. And the irony is that they
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: regular voted the same on some foreign policy stuff, right,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: they were very much Paul was an old fashioned isolationist.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Paul looked like a total extremist during the Bush era
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: and then by it was twenty twelve, right, he ran
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: in Oway, but it was twenty twelve where he started.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: You saw it, Yeah, and in fact he technically finished
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: second to Romney.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you went to any event, and I
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: remember he won all.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: He won a lot of delegate conventions.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: If you were at any cattle call, any kind of
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: thing there was like you would be like, well, now
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: it wound up being there were a lot of deeply
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 4: committed people, but not enough of them.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: But the point is Ron Paul went from lone to
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: n He's.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: The godfather of the anti interventionist wing of the the
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: Trump coalition.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: And you know, by the way, I you know I did.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: I saw that you promoted my quote unquote hot take
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: right about Vans. That this is I think, And you know,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: as much as I'm always hesitant to be the U
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: to be a hot taker on this one, I feel
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: like I don't.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 4: There's no way to believe it. My view is it's
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: not a you're not saying you want to get. You're
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: saying it because you believe.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: It, right. I'm like, I don't see you.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: We don't have an I'm good at right ideas.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: But I don't see how this as recoverable for him
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: long term. That doesn't mean he won't be the Republican nominee,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: because he will be president.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: Willfully misunderstood the quote bash for that.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's not that we're saying.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: You're saying, I just a general.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Well, he just lost the most interesting part of his
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: political identity. And and once you lose something that was
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: uniquely yours, and when you're vice president, you lose a
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: lot of your own political identity, and you lose something
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: that was uniquely yours. Right that that sort of gave
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: him right his entrance into this. Right, he's the Iraq
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: War veteran that was like, wait a minute, we can't
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: keep doing this. We're sending the same people. They all
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: are people that lived in the areas of rural Ohio
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: that I grew up in. Right, That's who we're sending
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: on these wars. We're not sending the sons and daughters
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: of Donald J. Trump, you know, and the rich people.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: And he's now lost that identity. It doesn't mean it
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: ends his career. It just means I don't think he's
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: ever going to get elected president. Of the United States
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: now because it's sort.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: Of a core part.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: When you lose a core part of your identity, I
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: don't know how you recover.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: It's hard to get it back.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: It's hard to get it's almost it's impossible to get.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: And look, yes, being very tightly affiliated with Donald Trump
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: in a Republican primary in twenty twenty eight is probably
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: I still think net net a very good thing being
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 4: associated with Donald Trump in that legacy, unless that legacy changes, right.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're talking about a president who's in the.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: Upper thirties low forties in approval general electorate. The gap
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 4: between what Republicans like and what independence and Democrats like
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 4: is getting an independence are very much moving over to
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 4: Democratic views right now.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: Well, what's interesting, and you know it's funny yesterday, yesterday
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: or earlier this week, was you know, I've been so
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: consumed by the primaries that I sort of didn't I
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: wasn't hour to hour paying attention to the Iran or
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: spinning that was taking place by the administration. And then
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: you sort of step back the next day and absorb,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: you know, first of all, what an utter mess, and
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: when you actually put together what happened in Texas on
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: Tuesday Night, with the absolute erratic nature of trying to
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: essentially create a rationale for why you did this, and
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: your rationale keeps changing. This has been a disaster week
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: for the Republicans that are on the ballot in twenty
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: twenty six. It is and again, very difficult to defend
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: what's going on right now.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: It's the problem is it's like, I don't think Iran
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: decides this election, but every day Donald Trump is talking
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 4: about Iran or Ecuador or Ukraine in Russia is a
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 4: day he is not. Remember the affordability tour that he
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 4: was going to go on that Susie Wilds touted. I'm
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: telling you it's the infrastructure week. I mean the infrastructure
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 4: week of the second term. It's like, man, it's it's March,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 4: you know, Like it's like that's two months that have
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: been totally pissed away.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: Not only people start making.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 4: Their people's minds start getting They don't make their mind
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 4: up on the day before the election, right the parameters
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 4: get said months before.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: You know, We've seen all these studies that indicate this
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: what the perception of what the public believes the economy
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: is like. In June Memorial day is how they'll vote
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: at the ballot box, right even if struct well, it's
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: not that far. And b his what he's done right
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: now is actually screwed up the economy. Stock market's you know,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: been tanking. You know, I go back, Pam BONDI a
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. Why aren't we talking about Dow
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand? Hey, guess what thatw hasn't been in fifty
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: thousand since you opened your mouth, miss Attorney General. It's
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: been sitting under and it's now below forty nine. So
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: do you want to talk about that? I mean, you know,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: or do you want to talk.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 4: You about the upstate is previously your latching your the
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 4: economy is good. Argument that Donald Trump has done to
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 4: the stock market is literally political malpractice. I mean, it's
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: just so dumb because you can't control it well.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: And this sort of pivots and it's sort of like,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I want to I want to read you
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: this anonymous quote that was in Playbook, because this is
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: the what actual elected Republicans are hearing from their advisors.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: And this is characterized as a person close to the
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: White House telling Politico, I have no problem blowing up
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: the Iranians. But when you're at war, that is seventy
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: five percent of your time. This is what Susie Wallace
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: is going to be doing. This is what James Blair
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: they why does political director We'll be doing. This is
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: what senior staff will be dealing with. And that is
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: a problem, he goes. It needs to get over quick
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: otherwise this is an efing nightmare. It already is a
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: nightmare because you've got the Mega Coalition just tearing at
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: the seams. Anything in a game of subtraction right now
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: is effing disastrous. Anything that we do that hurts our
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: own base is catastrophic. They need to explain to the
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: American people, and they need, frankly, to do it pretty quickly,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: and specifically to the Republican base. Yeah, and it's already
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: they're all over the place. Was it the Saudis that
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: talked it's into it? Was it the Israel?
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: Did MBS convince Donald Trump do it? Did we do
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 4: that as Israel was going in any way?
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: Or and then this idea that we didn't have a
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: plan to evacuate Americans from the region because it was
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: too quick. Well, there's also reporting that indicates that they
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: delayed this a week because of weather.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: They were actually going to do this.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: The weekend before the State of the Year, before State
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: of the Union, and it literally weather was the only
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: reason they decided to tap the brakes. So meaning you
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: were preparing, you were preparing long enough to send two
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: big time aircraft carriers to the region. You didn't think
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: about a plan to evacuate Americans out of the Middle East.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: And now you're basically like, tough luck. You got John Rohm,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: a golfer, having to send his own plane to do
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: by mean, look, he's nobody's crying for him. They got
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: money to do private plane stuff. God bless him. But
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: the United States government isn't going to look out for
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: its own US citizens in the region. And the dismissiveness
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: of Trump on this is you know, uh, these are
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: these are his own, these are his own voters.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 3: And what what was the biggest foreign policy critique that
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: Trump latched onto in the twenty twenty four campaign. Joe
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: Biden mishandled the ending of Afghanistan. People were left there
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: who shouldn't have been left, Like it's all I mean,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's almost two on the nose.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: If apocracy or a currency, Trump would even be wealthier
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: than he is.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean it's yeah, I mean, and that's nothing
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 4: that we're not even getting into the Like Tulci Gabbert said,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: we can't go to war with Irock.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: JD. Van said there shouldn't be a war with with
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: Iron rather. JD.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: Vance said the same, you know what I mean? Like, oh,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump said we got to end forever wars. It's
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: like and and and even Chuck, is it.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: A war or not? They can't even agree within themselves
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: on Mark.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: The Mark Wayne Mullen. I mean, it was you know
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: what you needed, you know when they did that. There's
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: this Mark Wade Mullin like back and forth. You just
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: called it a war. Well it's you know, you know
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: that used to be the way Veep would end. And
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: you just sort of play the music, right, Cloe is
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: closer to.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: A documentary than people realize.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: Just play the music out of that, Mark Wade Mullein,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: play the club music, you know, or what of the
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: one of the two and you just walk away. You're like,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: are you kidding me? You know, it doesn't make any sense,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: just doesn't it just doesn't.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's no way to make it make sense.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: Well, now we've got a let's let's large large picture here. Yeah,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: how in play is the Senate?
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 4: So I looked, I looked kind of mid week at
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 4: the prediction markets, which we can debate forever, and I
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 4: know we've talked about like how accurate is that?
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: Well, the production markets look really accurate when it came
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: to their confidence in tall Rico and look really stupid
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: in their confidence and backstent exactly.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: So it's like, you know, right, there's no difference exactly,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: they're in the low forties for Democrats chances of taking
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: the scent.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: That's that's a brightish to that's a six point hike.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: By the way, since the end of twenty five.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: Remember it's gone up.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: It was one in three Riley. And I remember at
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: the time I had said at that price, uh, it's
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: a goodbye because I think that that the perception of
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: Democrats chances in the Senate. And that's the interesting you know,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: that to me is what i'll I will concede. What
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: makes the prediction markets interesting to me is the ability
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: to cash a ticket before the result happens. Where it
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: is now get upside.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 4: How she on Calshi and this will this obviously can move.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 4: But it's fifty five percent chance Republicans control the Senate,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 4: forty five percent chance de Senate. That's now, that's that
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 4: might be a little artificial high off of tall Rico
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: winning and there being a runoff on the Republican side.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 3: Market.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 4: These markets are very susceptible the random news occurrence.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: Right, But what but it tells you where, it tells you.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: It tells you where people's minds are, and they're starting to.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: Pay more attention to Alaska and Iowa.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 4: All if you have to win, if you have to
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 4: net at a minimum three, if Murkowski maybe in the
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 4: Chuck tout theory, switches parties. But let's just let's put
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 4: that out of mind, and let's say it's if you
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 4: have to net for what you cannot do. We've learned
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 4: this election after election you cannot only have four Republican
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 4: seats where you have any chance. It's just you have
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 4: no margin, right, And I think what they've done is,
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 4: I think you have to feel really good if you're
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 4: a Democrat about Roy.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: Cooper in North Carolina.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 4: Let's see about the primary in Maine. But it's you know,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: it's a state. Kamala Harrison one, it's going to be
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: a Democratic year. I never count Susan Colin top, but
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 4: you got to feel good there, you know. And then
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 4: it gets down to the kind of like, Okay, Alaska, Iowa, Texas.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: No, what about Nebraska.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, yeah, it's a tie tide race
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 4: The point is is the fact that we can throw
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 4: those out there suggests to me that they have enough
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 4: pieces on the playing field where it doesn't have to
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 4: be either we pull a royal flush or nothing.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 3: Right, so like there are different paths to get there.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: So I made the case of my podcast on Wednesday
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: that this is actually not that expensive of a cycle.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: When you look at the seats that the Democrats have
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: to defend. You're looking at Georgia and Michigan, and I
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: would argue Minnesota, in New Hampshire lightly, mysoft.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: Will raise so much on his own right, you probably
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: aren't going to have to handle that.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: You know, they don't have a New York or California
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: that they're spending, or Pennsylvania or in Illinois even or
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: even Illinois, right, Republicans aren't putting that in play, So
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: they don't have expensive races in the biggest States. So
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: the question is how and this gets it to do
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: you if you're Chuck Schumer, you're JB. Persh, do you
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: play in Texas in the run now?
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: How much do you believe in Texas? That's it it really?
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: Do you work hard to help Paxton win that runoff?
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Do you? And how do you do it? Do you
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: do the positive ad that thanks John Cornyn for being
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: a gun control advocate? You know, do you do that
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: kind of starkiness or do you do it the other
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: way of Ken is too close to conservative.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: For Texans sponsored by the Democratic Party.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: He's two right or he's two pro Trump?
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Trump totally.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: I think if they're serious about winning the Senate, we
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: see stuff like that and you so you could probably
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: and I don't, and I wonder if they'll do it.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: I'll be curious.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: That's also a cheaper day.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 4: I think if you meddle in that runoff, then if
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 4: like you feel like you've got to go in for
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: twenty five million to make any impact in a general
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 4: right like you could probably for.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 3: Ten million ish make a make a dent potentially in
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 3: the runoff pro Paxton. It's a little bit dangerous, but
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 3: at the same time.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 4: I think the only people who are like I can't
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 4: believe filling the blank party is meddling with other fill
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 4: in the blank party are like media types. I don't
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 4: think the average person gives a crap no, Like I
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 4: just don't think they care. It's like people who bang
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 4: the drum on campaign finance from yes, big money is
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 4: less is more powerful now and less transparent than ever before.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: You know how many voters care about it? Almost no?
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: No, And look it should be it should be that
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: bothers voters. But you know, good luck we well we
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: were just.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 4: We mentioned in passing. We can talk more about it.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 4: But the Illinois race it's just gross as gross.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 3: But like again, these people people don't see it.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 4: It gets disclosed late in all these super packs and stuff.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 4: It's like, you know, the Committee to Protect Goodness and Light. Well,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 4: that seems like a good group, but what's wrong, Like
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 4: it's you know, people don't see it and they don't
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 4: engage at the level we're at the point is is
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 4: like I think you the minor hit you might take
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 4: for meddling, it probably is well worth the potential upside
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: because if Cornin is the nominee.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: Tallery by the way meddling works, okay, and do we
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: have any doubt?
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: Like I think Tallarico loses to Corny in fifty four forty.
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: Six, I would I would probably say it's more like
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: Cruiz Meto, but I agree, I think it's two to
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: three points like okay, but but.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 4: It's very hard to see beating Corny even in a
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 4: really good Democratic I.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: Think Cornin gets forty seven corn It. I think tall
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: Rico gets forty seven. I think it Florida's going to
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: be forty seven forty eight. I think it's Flora's badows Florida.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 3: Where is against Paxton?
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 4: I think if you ran the race one hundred times,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 4: I think Paxson would win it more times than tall Rico.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 4: But it's not a lot more times than tall Rico,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? Like it's and so
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 4: it's like do you do you place a bet there?
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 4: And and like you said, Texas ain't cheap, So it's
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 4: it's you know, how do you feel? I'm fascinated by
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 4: the rankings of Like I think we would all agree
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 4: North Carolina and Maine are clearly Democrats' best chances, right,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: But it's like stuff, Then how do we sort Alaska, Ohio, Texas,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 4: and Iowa.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 3: Like, how do you that?
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: I think? I look, and we had a couple of
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: guests make this case last night. I I think I
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: agree that Alaska is the next best place because you
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: have somebody that actually won state wide. She's one state wide, right,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: And yes, I know Sharon Brown has and yes, the
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: last time he won was in a midterm year. That
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: is true. You know, I do think you know, I
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: don't know if he fits the moment, right. I think
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: that he's had a lot of electric offices there is
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: he's he's got a high floor, low ceiling. I think
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: we know this about sure. And it may be that
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: you could spend fifty million dollars on that race and
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: he'll get forty eight percent. And you can correct five
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: million dollars in that race and he'll get forty eight percent.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 3: Now a half percent, right exactly.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: There's there's an argument to be made that money isn't
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: going to be what decides as relative. It really is
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: about Republican turnout, you know, And is there a depression
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: a little bit? And do independence come in in greater number?
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: Do you get a supercharge of Democratic voters to show up?
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: And independence break sixty forty rather than say, fifty three
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: forty seven.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 3: Told me, you know, and I don't know if the
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 3: intrigued by Iowa. If Josh Turik is the.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: Nominee, we had somebody's I think his story is interesting
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: that totally rode off Iowa because Jody Ernst wasn't. And
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: I'm just sitting there going, yeah, you've never with all
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: due respect, you know, if you if you've not seen
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: Joony Ernst on the trails like a really good campaigner.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 3: So and is a good nominee.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 4: She's going to raise money, but like she never runs
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 4: statewide before and again the wind in the face of
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 4: Republicans and it's like turk to me, you know again.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 4: Paralympian he won two gold medals as a Paralympian basketball player.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 4: The guy's got an amazing story. He's I think if
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 4: he's the nominee, really hard to attack. That's not easy
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 4: to attack, like and may have it. He represents a
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 4: district that Trump won, Like.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 3: There's there's some there there. I'm kind of keeping that
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: one on hold, so.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: Let me try to land this plane. I did a
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: substack this week about sort of kicking off the midterms
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: and through the prism of twenty eight, meaning yep, look,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: we're not going, We're not going. Twenty six is going
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: to offer us clues about how twenty eight may play out, right,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: Clue number one was a topic we've already discussed. Democrats
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: want a fighter? Are they looking for in the words
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: of my acquaintance, no more bomb throwers? Right, you know,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the what's the attitude in Texas? The
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: clearly the attitude is please no bomb throwers. Give us
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: somebody that can win. Let's see if that translates throughout
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: the primary season. Number two is sort of the impact
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: of Trump, Right, is Trump and that positive and that negative?
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: How badly do you still need them? Obviously it's pretty
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: clear Trump is still the most animating force. This is
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: not a party that is yet thinking about the swing
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: voter in the middle. And you know, is the White
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: House focused on this? No, they don't appear to be.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: And you know that's a whole separate ball game. Right.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: If Trump takes the blame for a double whamming loss
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: in the midterms, meaning House and Senate, how does that
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: impact twenty eight? Right, that's we'll figure out. But the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: third item here is the last item that we haven't
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: talked about, and we got a new candidate officially announced
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: in Montana.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: The former president of University of Montana, who's running as
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: an independent, announced by trashing both the d's and the R,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: saying both parties have let you down. John Tester, the
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: former Democratic senator, has already endorsed him. There is a
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: Democratic candidate and instead testers endorsing the independent. I'm looking
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: at all of these these independent testers out here, whether
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: it's Duggan and Michigan, Osborne and Nebraska Bodner now in Montana,
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: South Dakota's got Dakota, Kansas looks like they're going to
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: get one.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: Coming close is an interesting to me.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: You know, that's why we like that someone wins and
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 3: someone loses.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: That's right. If if an independent breaks through, if one
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: breaks through in any of those states, I think that's
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: a big deal. Small deal, medium deal, I think big deal.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 4: I talked to Mike doug and former Detroit mayor running
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 4: for governores. You know, I think he's in the mix.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 4: I don't think he's ahead, but I think he's in
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 4: the mix. And his point was a point that you
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 4: and I have talked about for decades, which is people
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 4: need proof of concept. People won't buy that an independent
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 4: can win a real statewide race and really matter until
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 4: an independent it's a real It's like we, yes, we
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 4: had when I was growing up, we had Low Wiker
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 4: in Connecticut. Angus King was elected as a governor as
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 4: an independent. Right. I mean, it happens, but it usually
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 4: happens in smaller states. And it's like if Michigan elects
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 4: an independent, a guy who's expressly running like I was
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 4: a Democrat, I'm you know, I think both parties have
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 4: failed us. I want to solve problems. It's a little
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 4: bit an easier argument to make it for governor than
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 4: for Senate, but.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 3: I think that's what you need.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 4: I'm fascinated by that Missichigan. You turned me onto that
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 4: Michigan governor's race. And because what you have is like
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 4: two only o K likely nominees for the two parties,
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 4: like Joscelyn Benson's fine. I think James John James on
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 4: the Republican side, it's totally fine.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: Competent speaks. There's nothing there's not like a Wimer in
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 3: that field.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: And it's a little unfair to Jocelyn Benson. You know,
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: it's like when you're the when you're the next woman
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: in line behind a popular woman governor.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 3: That's true, or even Melissa slack Kid.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 4: My point is there's not somebody who's like an obvious
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 4: shining star that could be it. I'm fascinated by that.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 4: And and look, it's both a condemnation of the Democratic
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 4: brand in the Plaine States and also a really interesting
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 4: experiment in the Plain States because all these people are
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 4: aligned loosely. But but if I had to choose in
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 4: South Dakota, Montana, the Kansas guy in South and in Nebraska,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 4: all of those guys running his independence, they're more on
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 4: the Democratic side than the Republican side, but they none
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 4: of them identify as a Democrat because they can't win.
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: None of them would win with a D next to
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: their name.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 3: We don't even have a chance.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 4: And I think they will admit that and that that's
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 4: that's a brand problem for the party. But it's interesting,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 4: it's like what I help.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: Right, what to me, what makes Duggan's candidacy different is
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: he's running as an independent. Win Arguably he could have
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: had a better shot at winning a primary because he
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: was mayor of Detroit, and it would have been the
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee, probably would have been the Democratic nominee, and
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: but it was harder and he would have to run
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: a bit more partisan, and he chose that he thought
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: he could govern better as an independent, which that is
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: at is something you don't. You rarely see someone make
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: a choice that is harder politically. It would have been
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: easier to become governor by running in a Democratic primary,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: and he chose not to. Look, I'm one of those
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: I split the difference. I think it's a big deal
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: if Doug and wins. I think it's a medium deal
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: if any of the Senate independents wins and less more
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: than one wins. Sure if both Osborne and say Bodner
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: the Montana Nebraska both go, I, oh, well, then that's
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: a big story. Then that's a big story. And then
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: that's a that's an entirely different conversation. And I think
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: what that will do. And I think a dug In
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: victory all of them do this more than one I winning,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: I think almost guarantees we're going to have a three
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: way president.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 4: I was literally just gonna say, you will see the
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 4: independent third party candidates lining up to rite for president.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: But that's but twenty six is the testing ground told
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: you've got to be able to break through.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: If you can't love that storyline, I'm fascinated by it.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: You can't, but I but I'm going to be as
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: much as I'm a I'm an advocate of this moment
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: for for for independence. If you can't win now, I
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: don't think the water is going to ever be any better. Well,
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: and so if it does party identification, it doesn't work now,
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: it's not going to work galas party identification.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 4: I think Democrats and republic party ID is at twenty
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 4: seven percent lowers Lee and Independence at forty five. I mean,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 4: so it's to your point, like, if you can't win
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 4: with people hating the two political parties.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know when you do win.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: All right, let me really get you out of hearing this.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: Do you read Carl Heysen? Were you ever a big
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: fan of his?
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 3: He's a Florida man, right, yeah?
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 3: Arguably did one of his books. He's a like a
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 3: funny writer.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: Am I remember?
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 3: Yes? I need to read more because I remember I
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: liked the one I read.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: My frustration with with with Carl is that they haven't
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: made more of his books out of movie strip. Tea's
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: was the first big movie he got, the Burt Reynolds
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: and It's No Sugar Industry and it's The book is fantastic.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: The movie wasn't bad. Burt Reynolds plays a great sleevesball congressman.
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: Else Yeah, I mean he really, it's it's it was
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: the role I Ferguson, Oh turd Ferguson. He was, he was.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 4: It was.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: You know what if you told me it was actually
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: Norm MacDonald playing Reynolds.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 3: It's like one of my favorite impersonations.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: It's fantastic because it's not right. That's what's so great
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: about it. It's just not an impersonation. No, but I'm
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: very excited. There's a new Carl Hyson book being turned
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: into a to a TV show and uh, I'm just
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: very excited about it. I think Amazon Prime is going
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: to have it.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 3: What is what book is?
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: R J. Decker is what the new show? It's on ABC.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: It's from his book Double Whamming on Broadcast Broadcast. That's sorry,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: I thought it was trying.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 4: Not to watch a lot of broadcast TV, Chuck, it
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 4: doesn't fit with my hipster personality, I know.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: But you know, both ABC and CBS are desperate and
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: NBC are desperate to be cool again, so they're green
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: lighting grittier television. I like it, you know, but I'm
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: just very happy I think more. Look, my favorite Carl
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: Hyason book is called Tourist Season. Kay, it is?
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 4: It is?
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: What is it? It's it's a former Miami Dolphin, a
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: former Order, a Mikasuki Indian, and a Cuban exile together.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: I'm in, who are sort of this group of guys
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: who are just going to rid Florida of its asshole
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: tourists And it's just a It's.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 3: Just I love the concept. I'm already in on the concept.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: They never kill anybody. They just let the tourists and
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: the alligators fight it out.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 3: Darwin situations.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 4: It is.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: But Carl was a political columnist forever in the Miami
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: heralds and basically, when you chronicle all the crazy Florida
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: man stories that go back, he and Dave Berry, by
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: the way, how great you know back in the day
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: in the Miami Herald, Dave Berry and carlas I grew
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: up with. And it's like, this is why I got
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: into journalism and newspaper, guys, because you had great columnists
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: in my local paper, you know that were just hilarious.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: You know, my parents would always go, did you read
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: what Dave Barry said? Did you read what carlhis started
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: writing a.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 3: Sports section with Tony Kornheiser, Mike Wilbon and Shirley Povitch.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: You get of it? Wait, no one would do that.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 3: That would be idiotic.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, at least the Miami. Harold still actually wants
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: to publish a highest and column every now and then,
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: and at Dave Barry. By the way, Dave Barry is
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: a substack, I know, and it's funny as hell. It's
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: really funny. I know he's not everybody's cup of tea,
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: but it's funny.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 4: My wife yells at me because she's like, we just
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 4: got another charge on your kindle. How many books can
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 4: you possibly read? And I was like, if that's my
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 4: worst vice, so I'm going to go buy to our season.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 4: So if my wife yells at.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: You, it's because I blamed you for it. It's it's fantastic.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 3: And I do believe.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: I do believe he's one of his fictional characters is
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: who he thinks Lawton child's would be if he walk Yeah,
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: he's got a great lot.
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 3: Take care.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: Well, before I get to questions, I want to deal
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: with a little bit of break. It was perfect with
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: breaking news as we were taping this pod for the weekend,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: and sometimes you're relieved when it happens while you're still
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: in the midst of taping and the big breaking news
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: with Steve Daines calling it a career in Montana and
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: doing it within seconds of the end of the filing deadline. Look,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: I'm coming to you pretty cold on this, but if
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: you recall a couple of a couple of months ago
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: when I was talking about the what you what were
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: you would likely to see as this, you know that
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: there would probably be some more retirements that we weren't expecting.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: This will put Montana, this is this is going to
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: put the Montana sentenceeat completely really in play. Now there
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: will be a maybe there's a Republican primary, or maybe
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: there's a quick endorsement, and maybe there's a deal. Maybe
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: this is why Zinke's We're going to figure all this
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: out and I'm I'm you know, but the bottom line
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: is Montana is a competitive state. We've already seen the
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: question now is whether does this Independent Canada get more traction?
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: Is there pressure on John Tester to come out of retirement.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: I'm I have there's every indication in the interactions I've
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: had with with with John over the last few months.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: I'd be surprised he wants to get off that tractor
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: now that he gets to be on that tractor every day.
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: So I don't think he's going I would be surprised
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: if he did. But now we've got an open house seat,
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: an open Senate seat, Montana is going to be a
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: now key cog in campaign twenty twenty six, and it's
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: going to be an interesting test because Montana is a
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: red state, but it's a libertarian red state, right, It's different,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: and there is a skepticism of you know, of strong government,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: right Trump is not in know this is this is
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: a bit more of a libertarian conservative state rather than
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: a strong government conservative state. So it's you know, the
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: right type of you know, you've got to be a
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: pro Second Amendment Democrat if you want to win state
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: wide in Montana. And you know, but being skeptical of
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: too much development is actually a good thing in Montana.
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: And sometimes that you know, Democrats have done well when
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: they've been able to paint a Republican as a sort
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: of as a as a transplant, if you will, or
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: somebody that just sort of you know, has moved to Montana.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: There's a real sort of are you native not native
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: divide there if you watch Yellowstone at all. In fact,
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: the I think in season four and season five that
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: becomes a piece of that of that storyline, which is
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: the skepticism of the outsiders coming in and fear that
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: Montana is going to become the next Colorado. Right, Colorado's politics.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: You talk to old cranky conservative libertarian conservatives in Colorado
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: and they'll tell you this state change when the Californians
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: moved here. And that's what you hear from some Now
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: Montana's this state's changing now that the Californians and the
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: New Yorkers are coming, because I think there's now a
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: NonStop from LaGuardia to Bozeman, right, And you would think,
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: is that a good thing for Bozeman or do they
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: not want to make it so easy for the East
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: Coasters to come in? But this is a what's amazing
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: about Danes doing this at the last minute? Again, one
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: assumes since he was an actual NRSC chair a cycle
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: ago in charge of helping to get Republicans elected to
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: the Senate, that there is some sort of plan here,
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: because this puts the Republicans on the defensive. This is
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: a This is not an easy seat. This is like
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: defending an open seat in Alaska. You're the Republicans are favored,
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: but it's going to be some work. But I can't
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: help but go back to what I said at the
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: start of this calendar year about the growing number of retirements.
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: And granted that was more on the House side than
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: it is on the Senate side. But as these filing
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: deadlines are coming up that you were going to have
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: some that we're going to have second thoughts that they
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: want to tie themselves to Trump for one more election cycle.
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: Do they see the riding on the wall? Do they
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: want to be in the minority? There is, you know
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: again where we'll find out all of his rationale. I'm
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: admittedly coming to you with very you know, other than
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: the news that he's not running, and we're going to
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: get more information about that. But the reality is an
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: open seat means competition, and this was already a race
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: that Democrats were trying to figure out, do they try
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: to put it in play getting behind an independent candidate,
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: or is there is there another way to do this? Well,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: now they're definitely going to pl and the question is
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: what you know? Basically, it's it's as if the you know,
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: you played my father's favorite card game when I was
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: five years old, fifty two pickup. Right, You've just thrown
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: all the cards, the decker cards, up in the air,
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: and now we've got to figure out where everything is
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: going to end up and where everything's going to play.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: But that's another seat to defend in a place that
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: Democrats have had success in the past, particularly in midterm years.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: It is it is a lot easier for a Democrat
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: to pull off a victory in a midterm year in
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: Montana than it is in a presidential year. That is
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: a much harder task, particularly percentate candidates. But boy, this
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: week keeps getting worse for the Republicans. Right, you have
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: a White House completely distracted by the the you know,
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: when was the last time they did affordability pitch? It's
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: the infrastructure week of this term for Trump. He is
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: bogging the party down to having to defend something that
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: is not going to be very popular. That's taking place
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: in Iran, and now they have more places where their
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: vulnerability is going to be. It is going to be
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: on the ballot. So Democrats, Haley Barber is im good
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: gets better and bad gets worse. I think we just
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: have a week a headlines that show you for the Democrats,
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: good has gotten better. They got the candidate they wanted,
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: no runoff. Republicans haven't run off. Now they got a
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: new open seat they can target. Good got better, Bad
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: got worse. They're stuck going to run off. The President's
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: demanding somebody drop out. We'll see if that happens. They
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: have another incumbent deciding I'm out. I'm not doing this
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: anymore for whatever reason that is. And oh, by the way,
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: he just started a war that is rising at best
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: and shifting towards potentially majority unpopular at worse, that is
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: getting worse. Ass Chuck, Hey, Chuck, watching your live stream
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: and the Texas primary night, love the coverage. I'm curious
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: of states that are traditionally red or blue get less
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: federal investment than swing states. Does a traditionally red state
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: like Texas get taken for granted by the right and
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: ignored by the left, while Ohio gets all the infrastructure
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: investments as both sides try to woo their vote. For example,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: if this is the case, I wonder I people would
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: feel a little worse about the jerrymandering that locks of
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: state's representation in for a particular party. He goes thanks
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: to his PS I listened to your podcast on one
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: point three speed, and my girlfriend listens at regular speed.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: This may end up being our deal breaker. That's interesting.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: I already feel like I'm kind of a fast talker,
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: so I don't know how I feel about being on
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: one PA feed. And if I start speeding up, what
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: does it sound like if you put this on one
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: point three speed? All right, I know I'm coming across.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: I was going to make a reference to the to
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: a FedEx ad from the late eighties, and I thought,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: wait a minute. I'm guessing you have no idea what
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about. So I'll give you a better example
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: than what you just described. You know why I have ethanol.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: Why we all put ethanol in an ethanol mixture in
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: our cars for gasoline. It's because Iowa was a first
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: in the nation state for the presidential caucuses over the
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: last forty years, and you've had candidates on both sides
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: of the alpander to the ethanol industry. That's a big
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: deal in Iowa. So being you know, being a presidential
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: primary state, your issues matter. You know, I promise you
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: if Nevada stays first in the nation, Yuca Mountain is
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: never going to be a place where our nuclear waste
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: gets dumped because you'll never be able to win the
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: Nevada caucuses if you're a presidential candidate saying no, we
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: should put our nuclear waste in the desert in Nevada.
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: The point is, the answer is yes. Now, Texas is
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: not the best example because Texas being such a when
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: Republicans are in power, just like Texas benefits when Democrats
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: are in power, California, New York benefit and you see
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: it directly. And why do they benefit Well, a lot
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: of the time the leaders of Congress end up coming
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: from some of the largest delegations and maybe they'll be
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: the top leader like Schumer, New York, Pelosi, California, aking Jeffreys,
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: New York, or they're you know the number two or
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: number three. You know in this right, John Cornyn ran
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: for leader, he once was, you've got you know, back
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: in the early Oughts. Tom Delay essentially ran Congress. He
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: was a suburban Houston member of Congress, Dick Army. There
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: was a time that Texas had number two in number
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: three in the House leadership. So I don't know if
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: Texas is the best example on that front, but the
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: point is, the point is your instinct is spot on right,
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: which is the more competitive of an area that you are,
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: the more likely candidates are going to pander with you
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: with to fight for you on certain issues inside the
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: federal government. And if you're consistently a swing state or
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: a swing area or all of this, like Iowa was
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: for about thirty years. And magically ethanol is going to
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: be something that you pump into your car whether you're
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: in the state of Florida, state of Alaska, or the
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: state of Iowa. So yeah, there was a time that
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: that mattered to voters, that mattered to lawmakers, and that
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: would be what state you know, ultimately right, it is state.
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: You know. This is why having the state legislatures in
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: charge of designing the lines, you would think this would
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: come into their you know, And it used to be
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: states actually wanted to keep to make sure they had
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: senior had some member of Congress either in the center
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: of the House that had enough seniority that whichever party
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: was in charge of Washington at a given time, they
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: had some influence. Parties cared about having that right. That's
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: why you had for the longest time one D and
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: one R senator from Iowa, right, Harken and Grassley, they
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: served together. It seemed like forever, at least a good
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: twenty plus years. South Dakota had this where there was
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: this hope. You know, essentially Montana was big with this,
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: so particularly smaller states over time valued having that. So anyway,
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: your instinct is spot on on this. Like like I said,
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: Texas is that is not the best example because of
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: your partisan state, but you're a big state. You end
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: up getting you end up just by by sheer numbers.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: You end up having somebody in a leadership position that
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: can truly directly impact, right, And if you don't, if
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: you're not in leadership, you may be on the most
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: important committees, right or be chair of the most important committees.
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: I think a Texan has been in charge of the
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: tach Ways and Means Committee off and on I think
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: four different times this century. So so you know, anyway,
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: the point is yes in general, just wrong example, I
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: would just pick a different state, you know. I think
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: take in Oklahoma, right, They're going to have a harder
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: time unless they, you know, or Wyoming has a member
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: of leadership on the Republican side that helps them. But
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: you get my drift on that. Next question comes from
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: Adam B. Davey, Florida suburb in Broward County. For those
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: of you wondering, Hey, Chuck, could the Trump administration try
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: to trigger NATO's Article five over Iran, either to pressure
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: allies to join the conflict or to highlight NATO's limits
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: if they refuse, Or does the administration ultimately know the
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: US still needs its European allies for logistics and defense.
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: Ps I quit watching college football. With the breakup of
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: the Big East, my native West Virginia University was left
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: playing a bunch of games out in Texas and the
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: prairie lands. We don't belong there. Well, I'm gonna get
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: to that in a minute, Adam, because I West Virginia's
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: I agree that they've been uniquely screwed in all this,
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: in the in the expansion and the realignment and all
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: of that in West Virginia because it doesn't have a
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: large media market. That instantaneously means money is sort of
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: you know, mess things up. But anyway, but let me
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: answer your first question. No, I mean, look at how
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: instead of using NATO, looks like Trump's using trade deals. Right,
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: he got Spain to climb on board after doing some
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: threats on trade deal. Now here's another what if Turkey
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: triggers Article five? Right? You know, a Turkey ended up
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: shooting down some sort of Iranian I think missile that
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: was coming into its airspace. And Turkey is a member
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: of NATO, so maybe they end up triggering Article five,
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: which does this. And my guess is to be a
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: bit cynical about how this would work. If I were
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: in Trump's shoes, I wouldn't want to trigger NATO, but
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: I would maybe if I wanted that I would trigger.
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: I would let Turkey trigger it. But no, I mean,
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting. In a sidebar story I've been
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: following all this week is the fascinating debate inside the
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: UK Parliament because Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, has not
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: come out wholeheartedly supportive of American action, which is so unusual.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: The UK is always sort of right behind us whatever
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: we do, right, the so called special relationship not there
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: this time. That is, you know it. The debate in
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: different European capitals about what we're doing in Iran is
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: I think going to increase and get intense. I if
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: Trump really wanted to cause a problem within NATO, he
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: could do this, but I you know, I don't. We
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: weren't attacked first, right, so I'm not even sure it
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: would it would qualify on that front, you know, with
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: West Virginia. When I when I moved to d C
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: for college in nineteen nineteen, this is still the you know,
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: still the heart of the the of Miami's you know,
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: prominence in college football. The one thing I was excited
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: about about being in DC going to GW one was
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: Geneman have football team, so I didn't have to feel
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: guilty about rooting for Miami football. Two, being in the
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: Big East, I realized I was a road trip away
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: from Rutgers road trip from Temple, road trip from West
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: Virginia road trip. Actually the longest road trip was Virginia Tech.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: And I did all of those, by the way, and
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: I will confess probably the most unfriendly place I went
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: to was Morgantown. You'll probably laugh at that. I was
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: at the infamous game where they rocked the ambulance. And
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: if you say you haven't watched since the Big East Stays,
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: you know exactly. The game I'm talking about was in
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three. I think it was the year you
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: guys played Notre Dame in the National title game. I
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: think I think this is the major Harris team. I
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: hope I have my dates right on that, but I
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: remember that game. I'm sitting in the stands. We need
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: Boston College to upset Notre Dame for Miami to sort
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: of have a chance back into the title game. And
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: it happens, and somehow Boston College upsets Notre Dame. They
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: announce it in the stand and what does Miami do.
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: We lay the damn egg and we lose to you
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: guys in that game. But that was that was the
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: one time. I guess I'm glad I was there when
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: you guys won. And it might have been worse, but
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: I wore all my Miami gear on top of regular clothes,
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: so I literally the second I was leaving the stadium,
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: I shed it and just played neutral arbiter the rest
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: of the way. But I say that because you know,
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: West Virginia is a great, proud football program. They love
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: their team there, they love and they belong in a
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: major conference. They should be in the same conference as Pitt.
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: You know, look the Big East. I you want to
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: talk about a butter I like to do what IF's.
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a what if. What if Penn State
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't go to the Big Ten and instead Penn State
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: joins the Big East the same year Miami joins the
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: Big East and Penn State, Pitt, West Virginia, Syracuse, and
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: Boston College essentially are the North division of the Big
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: East and Miami, Louisville, maybe Virginia Tech. I believe at
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: that time South Carolina was up for grabs and they
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: were an independent that still could have been brought in.
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: And maybe we convinced Florida State. And I know in
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: the eighties and the mid eighties, when Florida State and
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: Miami were independent and Penn State was independent, there was
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: talk of a North South conference. The Big East was
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: just a basketball conference. At some point the Big East decided, well,
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: maybe we don't want to lose our football school, so
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: maybe we'll do this weird hybrid that they did right
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: where they had these basketball schools like Georgetown Villanova, but
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: then they also had the schools like Syracuse and BC
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: who also wanted football, and they were worried about losing
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: all of that, and so they created this hybrid. They
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: convinced Miami to get in and all that stuff. A
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: different scenario could have been, could have been if Penn
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: State had been the other anchor there. Right then you
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: had big, two big programs in Penn State and Miami,
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: and then everybody else sort of could ride that wave
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: and essentially be sort of on the same level. Look,
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not try to disrespect West Virginia here, but you know,
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: both Miami Penn State probably slightly bigger national brands than
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: West Virginia, by the way, who was in the same
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: conference for basketball with GW for most of the nineties.
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: And I remember, you want to talk about a tough
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: place to play, not only in football, playing in that
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: arena and Morgan Town was a tough place to play it.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: In fact, I remember sitting in the nosebleeds and it
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: was one of those where your your knee was above
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: the head of the person in front of you. But
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: it was a great environment, really concentrated the noise I
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: think to this day, West Virginia is still a tough
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: place to win on the road in that arena. But uh,
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: you know, we could have had a conference that made
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: some geographic sense, you know, and who knows then if
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: you had the Big East ACC merger and Penn State
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: and Miami in Florida State and Clemson in Virginia Tech
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: and but you have that Penn State brand in there too,
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: you know, we there may be it may be that
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: there are that the that the that that ACC is
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: truly a power conference just as up and down, just
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: as just as powerful as as the Big Ten and
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: and certainly comparable to the SEC. But you know, it
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: is one of those where one decision by Penn State
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: ended up impacting what seventy other football programs, right because
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: remember they sort of broke the seal here and when
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: they went then it was you know, it went down
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: from there. But hey, you know what, I know, the
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: Big Twelve is geographically a mess. It's a good commissioner.
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: It does give West Virginia fighting chance to be to
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: be relevant both in football and basketball.
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 3: So come on back, all right.
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Kelly X in Aubrey, Texas. Hey,
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: check I'm a transgender woman in Texas, and with the
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: Republican runoff elections for Senate and Attorney General approaching, I'm
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: concerned the candidates like Ken Packston and Chip Roy may
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: move even further right on transgender issues to win over
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: cultural war voters. Both have already made opposition to gender
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: ideology a major part of their political messaging. Do you
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: think one or both of them might use their current
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: positions to push even more aggressive policies or rhetoric on
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: transgender rights from the runoff and could that pressure other
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: Republicans follow their lead? Well, CALLI I wouldn't. I don't
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: think it's going to be in the runoff that that
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: becomes an issue. I think that's something that is more
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: likely in the general election. I've seen already some Republicans
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: resurface a quote from Tallarico who called who at one time,
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: I guess, referred to God as non binary, which I
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: think there's a number of ways you could interpret that.
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: You know, if you want to interpret it with skepticism
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: and weaponization, you can do that. You want to interpret
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: it as his own another way of saying, you know
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: God is genderless, meaning you know, if you know to women.
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe God's a woman to men. Maybe God's a man
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: to those who's transgender, maybe he's transgender. You know, the
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: point is that I have the beholder type of mindset,
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: you know, when it comes to God, and everybody has
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: their own relationship to God, and I do not want
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: to preduce, presume any any any version of that is correct,
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: right belief, faith is faith. On that front, I don't
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: I don't suspect it to be front and center in
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: the primary. I think I think it's all going to
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: be about who's who's who's more sufficiently pro Trump, right,
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's a general election. I think that in
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: both cases you will see I think particularly if Packston's nominee,
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: probably less so if Cornyn's nominee. But I know they
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: want to make a big deal out of that quote,
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: and I think they think that it can it can
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: get misinterpreted or you know, and all of that. So
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: I'm less convinced it's a salient primary issue because I
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: don't think that you're you're going to try to do
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: an issue that causes a wedge with the other candidate,
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: And I don't suspect that that's going to be the
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: case with me. Perhaps more likely between Paxton and Cornyn,
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: if he's trying to make the case that Cornyn is
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: not sufficiently part of MEGA. But I still think he
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: would use guns as a more effective wedge issue there
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: than transgender rites. But I'm not saying this to either
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: reassure you about the primary make you nervous about the General.
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: But I think you're more likely to see the scapegoat
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: escapegoating and the attacks rise up during the general. Next
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: question comes from Stephanie, and she writes, Hey, my husband
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: and I both listen to your podcast, and despite our
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: very different political views, we find your coverage balance and informative.
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: Right on. I need you, guys to become my marketing team,
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: a husband and wife marketing team. Our oldest son is
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: eighteen and has declared that voting is useless. I have
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: a friend who's had a similar conversation with their I
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: think he's now nineteen, but it was at eighteen. You
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: continue this breaks my civic minded heart. His entire awareness
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: has been shaped by Trump, and he has no concept
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: of what America can be or should be. He was
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: only seven when Trump started campaigning for the first time,
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't understand why things seem so outrageous to us.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: This is a conversation I've had with my own son, Stephanie,
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: who is also eighteen. How do we teach my son
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: in the entire generation of new voters that they matter
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: and what the constitution says without turning into the adults
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: from Charles Schultz's P that's wah wah wah, wah wah wah.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: Thanks for your help. And then she says, PS, I'll
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: throw a gonatchi your way since I'm desperate for any
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: baseball at this point. You are, And by the way,
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: I'm fired up. I'm even though I'm tired. I know
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to start watching the first game of the
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: World Baseball Classic, which I believe is in Tokyo, and
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: I think it's Chinese type against Team Japan. I'm looking
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: forward to it, which is Taiwan versus Japan. But I
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: don't think I think, I don't think it starts to
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: like ten pm Eastern time, you know, which for me
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: might as well be one am Eastern time. Look, this
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: is this is a real issue with some young voters,
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: the sort of this. They're not quite nihilists, but they're
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: just sort of like they haven't really seen a functional democracy.
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: So if you've never seen a functional democracy, what is
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: normal to you? You know, I think about this all
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: the time. I mean, I'm going to guess if you
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: have a son who's eighteen, it means you and I
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: are about the same age. And we grew up. We
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: grew up in an era where we you know, America
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: was winning. We won, right, we won the Cold War.
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: We were right, democracy won the argument. It wasn't that
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: America won the argument. Democracy won the argument. So in
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: some ways when we were coming of age at eighteen,
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: we saw it as hey, we're winning. This democracy thing
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: is working. In fact, let's spread it, Let's get more.
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: All right, maybe China's next. Remember you know Tienaman Square, right,
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: we were. I mean, I I was a first protest
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: I ever sort of launched as a as a high
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: school student. I was a senior. I think during Tienaman Square,
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: junior senior. I must have been a senior because I
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: probably would have done as a junior, but a senior,
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: I was enough of a leader that I could and
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: I just you know, I said, hey, let's all wear
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: black arm brands and solidarity with with the protesters at
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: Tienaman square. And you know, I think I got one
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: hundred people to do it. That was a high school
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: of three thousands. So I'm not going to sit here
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: and say it was it was. I had a huge following. Well,
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 1: we were coming of an age where where you know,
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: it seemed like the whole idea of democracy, that this
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: this this thing was working. You know, the twenty first
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: century has been a whole different story, right, they've they've
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: we've had now two generations see a lot of dysfunction
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: more than function, And you know, I think it is difficult.
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: I think I guess my best answer is to is
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: to try to showcase where local politics worked. You know,
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 1: there's still some local democracy that where you feel like
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: you you you know, voters taken action and then you know,
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: you know, we deal with it a different way. But
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you have a you know, I almost
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: want every member of Congress to read this question and
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: hear this question that you've written, because Congress being ineffective. Right,
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: everything that your son has learned about the Constitution, about
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: checks and balances, about the three branches of government haven't
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: functioned the way it's taught. And it's not because we're
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: teaching it. Incorrectly. It's because it doesn't function correctly, and
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: you know, I resist wanting to teach it. I teach
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 1: a classic college student called how Washington Works, and I
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: think it's I've never had a more challenging time trying
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: to explain how Washington works this year, because I'm like,
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: we're the it's changing dramatically and right now there's only
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: the Washington works with one one way currency and specifically
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: green currency, and that is what how Washington rolls these days.
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: So you know, this is this is why we need
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: some better leaders. But more importantly, this is why we
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: need to do some structural changes to the democracy, essentially
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: to convince people it still works. Not having to register
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: by party but still being able to vote right. Getting
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: rid of partisan primaries, I think would be a huge way.
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: You've got to if you want people to be good citizens,
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 1: they've got to know that their citizenship matters. And I
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: think we've not asked much of our citizenry. You know
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: what if we had a national service program where everybody
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: had to serve two years doing something for the country,
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 1: doing something for this, for this, for for the you know,
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: whether that's serve in the military, whether that's serve in
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: the Peace Corps, whether that's serve in a local a
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: local senior facility. I think there's a variety of ways
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: you could create mandatory national service that you know helped.
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: I think that would you know, first of all, it
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: would be an opportunity for people from different backgrounds to
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: serve together. Right, we know how well that is that
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: that works in the military. Imagine if you had that
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: in all sorts of ways, and it might sort of
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: restore restore the belief that your vote counts or that
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: your vote matters. Can tell you this if you live
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: in a North Carolina State Senate district with Phil Berger
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: and then who's down two votes with all the votes
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: counted now and now they're waiting for provisionals. There are
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: plenty of campaigns that prove every vote counts. But the
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: question I think your son is asking, is your vote
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: even worth it? And I think right now, when we
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: have such weak checks and balances in the system that
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: he's taught that we live in isn't really functioning the
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: way he was taught. It's hard not it. It's easy
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: to understand, and why he's this, why he's become this
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: cynical about it. My son's quite cynical as well. I
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: think there's a I just think there's a whole generation
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: that that sees it this way. That said, my son
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: does gravitate to anybody young who's trying to run for office.
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: He's always whoever the younger person is, he gravitates to
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: that person. This was true in twenty twenty. He was
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: really interested and intrigued by Pete and and that, and
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: it was simply because he was the youngest candidate. Maybe
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: a young leader, you know, whether whether you know, might
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: have been a Charlie kirk or or James tola Rico,
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: or it could be somebody else. You know, maybe it's
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 1: a ants if he's still considered young once he had
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: forty you know, maybe there's some some some faith there,
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: or certainly a new outside young leader. I might do it,
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: but you know, until the government itself functions normal semi
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: normally it is it is, it's probably hard to make
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: the case. I would be remiss, you know, I've wrapped
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: up question for that. I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge,
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 1: particularly if you're listening to this on March fifth, right,
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: I drop on Thursdays. Thursday is March fifth. Some of
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: you might be listening on the sixth, seventh, or eighth.
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: But if you're listening on March fifth, and I'm mister
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: three oh five, as most of you know me and Pitbull,
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: we're mister three oh five. I'm a Miami native. I'm
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: proud of that three oh five area code. But I'm
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 1: going to confess something I had never knew that we
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: Miamians had an official day on the calendar that we celebrated.
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: Apparently three oh five, as in March fifth, is now
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: three h five Day or Miami Day. I am. Apparently
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 1: this became a thing in twenty fourteen. According to our
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: friends at the internet. It started as a hashtag three
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: zho five day, sort of a fun thing and involved
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: into a community wide celebration. So it was the original.
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: The origin of this a Miami publicist. It started in
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: twenty twelve, a Miami publicist, Genuine Molina, launched a social
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: media campaign called three h five Capacito, and the concept
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: is that, inspired by English tea time, Molina proposed that
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: three oh five pm, matching Miami's iconic area coach, should
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: be the city's official daily coffee break capas Ethough time,
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: and it was a way to unify Miami's diverse spanglish
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: culture around the Ventanita tradition coffee window. So the idea
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: went viral so quickly that by two twenty thirteen, then
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: Mayor Tomas Regulado officially proclaimed three oh five PM as
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 1: Miami's official cafecito time. So it started as a time,
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: and then it went to a day, and the first
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: three oh five Day was celebrated on March fifth, twenty fourteen,
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: three oh five. So it's now turned into a community
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: wide celebrations of all things three oh five, not just
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: Cuban coffee, but Miami's music, Miami Base and freestyle art,
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: the Windwood Murals, local small businesses. There's now three oh
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: five block parties. So, man, I feel like a moron.
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 1: I missed this. I am sorry, I missed this. What happens?
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: You don't live in Miami anymore? And you know I'm
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: gonna bug my daughter all day on three oh five
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: to say hey, is this the Have you guys ever
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: celebrated three oh five day and three oh five? And
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: I say this because I am a member of my
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: family who was born on May the fourth. Be with
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: you and I will just say, this member of my
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: family is not thrilled that they have to share their
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: birthday with Star Wars Day. So I am, I am,
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 1: I am. I will see how much I bug some
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: of my relatives about this who happened to live in
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: Miami on three h five day? But I am. I
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: feel like a bad Miami native for not knowing and
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: not fully embracing. And I'll just you know, I'm first
• 2:31:32
  Speaker 1: of all, I love three or five capacito time. For me,
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: it is always capuasido time. I constantly am drinking coffee,
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: So it's a if, the if, if, if the hour
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 1: of the day ends in a p M or an am,
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's coffee time. But regardless, I will no
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: longer ever looked at March fifth the same ever again,
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: because I am not turning in my Miami credentials for
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: blowing this. Instead, I'm hopping on this bandwagon and I
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: am embracing. So happy three oh five day. Let's go go.
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: Let's go find go, find a catasito somewhere where you
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 1: live to celebrate three oh five day, and with that,
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: enjoy your weekend. I'll see in about seventy two hours