Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump Is Setting Up A Midterm DISASTER For Republicans + AI, Education & 2028: Why The Future Is on the Ballot

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Full Episode - Trump Is Setting Up A Midterm DISASTER For Republicans + AI, Education & 2028: Why The Future Is on the Ballot · The Chuck ToddCast

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1:51
Speaker 1: Happy hangover Monday, the day after the Super Bowl, and
1:55
Speaker 1: don't worry. The NFL is working on the idea of
1:59
Speaker 1: another week to the season so that they officially take
2:03
Speaker 1: over President's Day weekend for the super Bowl. And you
2:07
Speaker 1: can see where it goes. Super Bowl Sunday we get
2:09
Speaker 1: President's Day off, because what's more American than that. The
2:16
Speaker 1: super Bowl itself, well, it kind of it kind of went.
2:20
Speaker 1: It kind of went the conventional wisdom. I mean when
2:23
Speaker 1: a sort of amateur like me is out there on
2:26
Speaker 1: the record saying I think this game's going to be
2:28
Speaker 1: like twenty to six. Well, you know, I missed a
2:30
Speaker 1: few points here or there, but it kind of went
2:32
Speaker 1: exactly how we thought that Seattle would, just so what
2:34
Speaker 1: they've done all year. They kind of grind teams down
2:38
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, we can't catch up
2:42
Speaker 1: when you're playing them. They just there is a relentlessness there.
2:46
Speaker 1: I'll say this. I got to give credit to the
2:48
Speaker 1: Pats defense. They Seattle could have blown this game open
2:53
Speaker 1: in the first half, and they made it. You know,
2:57
Speaker 1: Darnald missed a couple of throws by that much, a
3:00
Speaker 1: couple of great plays by the defensive backfield at Christian Gonzales.
3:04
Speaker 1: That was impressive. But at the end of the day, man,
3:09
Speaker 1: you cannot The Patriots tried to do something that no
3:13
Speaker 1: team had ever done in a Super Bowl. They try
3:15
Speaker 1: to win a Super Bowl without a left side of
3:17
Speaker 1: their offensive line. I know there were actual physical human beings.
3:22
Speaker 1: Perhaps I think they were. I wasn't live at the game,
3:25
Speaker 1: but if you told me that was just a green
3:28
Speaker 1: screen for their left tackle, because my god, poor Drake
3:31
Speaker 1: may I mean running for his life. It is what
3:37
Speaker 1: it is. That was the fear going into this game
3:41
Speaker 1: is that's what we'd expect, but that's what it was.
3:43
Speaker 1: But come on, for us football fans are not Patriots fans.
3:48
Speaker 1: Did we really want to see them just make it
3:50
Speaker 1: this easy to get back and win and winning super bowls?
3:52
Speaker 1: That it couldn't be this easy. They should be happy
3:55
Speaker 1: they're going to be contenders again when they get an
3:58
Speaker 1: offensive line. That's a great defense. It's a well coached team.
4:03
Speaker 1: But you got to give your hats off to the
4:05
Speaker 1: Seattle defense. Unbelievable. Kenneth Walker was unbelievable. Before those last
4:09
Speaker 1: couple of touchdown passes, Kenneth Walker was looking like the
4:13
Speaker 1: MVP in that front. But look, Sam Donald, he made
4:17
Speaker 1: a few throws that you're like, you know, when you're
4:20
Speaker 1: a Sam Donald fan, I didn't. I imagine there's a
4:23
Speaker 1: lot of no, no, no, no, no yes when it comes
4:26
Speaker 1: to Donald, but there it is. Kudos to the Seahawks.
4:32
Speaker 1: It was. This is one of those years where it
4:36
Speaker 1: felt like the NFC was just that much better and
4:39
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl produced kind of exactly how the season went.
4:45
Speaker 1: The AFC was weaker and a bit of a jumbled mess.
4:48
Speaker 1: The NFC was stronger with Seattle constantly on top, and
4:52
Speaker 1: we got the scroll. They got a few things on
4:54
Speaker 1: the non football playing side. First of all, look love
4:58
Speaker 1: Mike Turrico, consider him a friend. He had one of
5:02
Speaker 1: my favorite calls of the night when he talked about
5:05
Speaker 1: the rocket scientist jumping onto the field. I just thought
5:08
Speaker 1: that was a I love that. That's what he That's
5:11
Speaker 1: how he referred to the guy that whatever happened on
5:14
Speaker 1: the field. Obviously, those of us not there live don't
5:16
Speaker 1: know what the interruption was, but I liked the shout
5:21
Speaker 1: out to rocket scientists, bad bunny. The Super Bowl party,
5:25
Speaker 1: I was at everybody's like, well, that was interesting, and
5:29
Speaker 1: as somebody who grew up in Miami, it was very
5:30
Speaker 1: familiar to me. I enjoyed sort of the tour of
5:34
Speaker 1: Latin culture and the Puerto Rican culture, you know, going
5:39
Speaker 1: through the dominoes and the weddings and the cantinnaras and
5:42
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I thought that was a nice little touch.
5:45
Speaker 1: But I have no doubt that there'll be a lot
5:49
Speaker 1: of dumb social media takes on this. But if you're
5:54
Speaker 1: the NFL, you were there to expand your fan base
5:58
Speaker 1: to continue this outreach to Latin America, and Bad Bunny
6:02
Speaker 1: did the job. I think that the NFL was hoping
6:04
Speaker 1: that he would do on that front. I'm sure if
6:09
Speaker 1: you're trying to find out how popular it was, my
6:11
Speaker 1: guess is, if you like Trump, you didn't like Bad Money,
6:13
Speaker 1: And if you didn't like Trump, you said, wow, that
6:14
Speaker 1: was terrific. You know, not everybody's a Bad Bunny fan,
6:20
Speaker 1: but I get what he was trying to do. I
6:23
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting, I thought it was unique, and
6:27
Speaker 1: I thought it was worth watching. On that the commercials,
6:33
Speaker 1: I'm just creeped out by the d aging. I'm sorry
6:37
Speaker 1: that weird Eccinity ad with Jurassic Park and all. I'd
6:41
Speaker 1: rather see all those actors as they are now, give
6:44
Speaker 1: them to me with all their gray hair. Might even
6:46
Speaker 1: be funnier if they did that. But all of the
6:50
Speaker 1: d aging. And it was in a few ads. It
6:52
Speaker 1: wasn't just that one. It was oh, the Goodwill Hunt,
6:56
Speaker 1: the dunkin Donuts ad with everybody looking d aged except
7:01
Speaker 1: for Brady, which I guess was the Brady was always
7:05
Speaker 1: sort of Benjamin Button. Anyway, Again, I know all these
7:10
Speaker 1: guys have these all these great new tools to mess
7:13
Speaker 1: with thanks to AI, thanks to d aging. But eh,
7:16
Speaker 1: a little overused. I'm a little creeped out about it.
7:21
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued. I didn't know there was going to be
7:23
Speaker 1: a Once upon a Time in Hollywood sequel, so call
7:26
Speaker 1: me intrigued on that. So thank you super Bowl commercial
7:28
Speaker 1: for that. And finally, I guess this was I said
7:33
Speaker 1: it would be the year of the AI ad. There
7:35
Speaker 1: were certainly AI companies and teases and and different AI
7:43
Speaker 1: agents being advertised. It felt like, my guess is just
7:46
Speaker 1: like what we saw during the Crypto super Bowl a
7:50
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, and we had our Internet super
7:52
Speaker 1: Bowl way back when half of those AI agents that
7:58
Speaker 1: advertised in this super Bowl will not be in existence
8:01
Speaker 1: in what three years? What should we make the over
8:04
Speaker 1: under that two and a half years that some of
8:06
Speaker 1: these companies will no longer be be relevant or be
8:12
Speaker 1: ever heard of, or some of these things the only
8:14
Speaker 1: time we'll ever hear from them might actually be the
8:17
Speaker 1: Super Bowl ad you watched last night. But all in all,
8:24
Speaker 1: I'm sad that football season's over. I am a huge
8:26
Speaker 1: football fan. I love it, but hey, let's turn to basketball.
8:30
Speaker 1: We got the All Star weekend next weekend, we got
8:32
Speaker 1: the best part of college basketball coming up, so I
8:37
Speaker 1: know how I'm going to be spending a lot of
8:38
Speaker 1: my evenings over the next over the next few weeks.
8:41
Speaker 1: And as I told you before, I love the Olympics.
8:45
Speaker 1: So there. So look, we got through the Super Bowl
8:47
Speaker 1: without two without any political disruption, which is kind of nice.
8:53
Speaker 1: And I barely made it through the Super Bowl without
8:54
Speaker 1: one Cali disruption from my dog. All right, so let's
8:59
Speaker 1: get focused on the show ahead. Let me give you
9:02
Speaker 1: a quick little table of contents. I've got a few
9:05
Speaker 1: things to say about the about the weekend that was
9:09
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump, both the European essentially the Europeans at
9:16
Speaker 1: the Olympics expressing their expressing their opinion about Team USA
9:22
Speaker 1: and how humiliating that was for US Americans watching on
9:25
Speaker 1: TV and live. We'll get to that. We've got the
9:28
Speaker 1: Donald Trump racist meme. And what's interesting about that story is,
9:33
Speaker 1: like with a lot of things with Donald Trump, I
9:35
Speaker 1: don't know how we're surprised or shocked that he does
9:38
Speaker 1: something that's racist, that he either shares a post that's
9:42
Speaker 1: racist or implies something that is racist. And you know,
9:48
Speaker 1: there's always this question, is he you know, he always
9:51
Speaker 1: wants to say I'm the least racist person. But as
9:53
Speaker 1: there was a great debate line back in twenty eighteen,
9:56
Speaker 1: I think it's Andrew Gillham to Ronda Santis. I don't
9:58
Speaker 1: know if you're racist, but a lot of racist people
10:00
Speaker 1: think you're racist. The point is this consistency of Donald
10:06
Speaker 1: Trump that whenever sort of there's a line, he's willing
10:10
Speaker 1: to cross it and be on the side of those
10:14
Speaker 1: that would be accused of being racist. But we're going
10:16
Speaker 1: to get to that in a minute. I also have
10:18
Speaker 1: the most underreported story last week that is a huge
10:23
Speaker 1: consequence to campaign twenty twenty six and why perhaps we
10:28
Speaker 1: can call the election right now. We can at least
10:32
Speaker 1: on the House side, that we can call it right now.
10:35
Speaker 1: I will explain statistically why that is later in this episode.
10:41
Speaker 1: My big interview for the day is with somebody who
10:44
Speaker 1: wants to run for president. It's Ram Emmanuel, former mayor
10:46
Speaker 1: of Chicago, former ambassador to Japan, former chief of staff
10:49
Speaker 1: of Barack Obama, former member of Congress, a former senior
10:52
Speaker 1: advisor to Bill Clinton. He has been a presence in
10:57
Speaker 1: and around the establishment of the Democratic Party for as
11:01
Speaker 1: long as I've been covering American politics. I think he
11:04
Speaker 1: really got his start in the eighty eight cycle. I
11:06
Speaker 1: got my start in the ninety two cycle. So known
11:09
Speaker 1: him a long time, and so you will see that
11:13
Speaker 1: there is a that that comes through in the conversation.
11:17
Speaker 1: But look, we go through all of the potential hurdles
11:20
Speaker 1: he may face as a presidential candidate, including talking about
11:23
Speaker 1: his faith, talking about his support for Israel, where that goes,
11:27
Speaker 1: But the conversation goes all over, and I'll preview that
11:30
Speaker 1: as we get closer to that part. And it's Monday,
11:33
Speaker 1: which means that you're it's we got to go into
11:35
Speaker 1: the toodcast time machine, and boy do I do I
11:39
Speaker 1: have an historic event for you that is extraordinarily relevant
11:44
Speaker 1: to geopolitics in the moment we are in right now.
11:49
Speaker 1: That is the big hint. I will get to close
11:51
Speaker 1: will close things out with some Q and A and
11:56
Speaker 1: by the way, my love for the Olympics. But let's
11:59
Speaker 1: get started with the fallout from Donald Trump and the
12:06
Speaker 1: racist meme attacking the Obamas, because you know, whenever we
12:11
Speaker 1: have these incidents with him, because these are very frequent, right,
12:15
Speaker 1: you can go down the litany of lists, we can
12:18
Speaker 1: go back all the way to twenty fifteen. Frankly, with
12:20
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, you can go all the way back to
12:22
Speaker 1: the eighties in the Central Park five. Actually, if you want,
12:25
Speaker 1: you can go. When it comes to race and the
12:27
Speaker 1: questions of racism, you go all the way back to
12:29
Speaker 1: the early seventies when he had to go hire a
12:31
Speaker 1: lawyer named Roy Cone because the Nixon government, the Nixon
12:36
Speaker 1: led Justice Department, was investigating his father's firm, essentially for
12:45
Speaker 1: bias in how they rented and sold houses and apartments
12:50
Speaker 1: in suburban New York City. So the point is the
12:54
Speaker 1: accusation of racism. The question about whether he was racially
12:59
Speaker 1: tolerant or or not, or racially accepting or not has
13:01
Speaker 1: been hovering over Donald Trump for his entire adult life.
13:05
Speaker 1: He leans sometimes, it seems as if he leans into
13:09
Speaker 1: racist tropes almost as a way to quote. Maybe he
13:13
Speaker 1: thinks he's owning the Libs or he's somehow giving fuel
13:18
Speaker 1: to the to his base. I think sometimes he insults
13:20
Speaker 1: his own base. I think he thinks that deep down
13:23
Speaker 1: that the MAGA base is all racists. So that's why
13:26
Speaker 1: he plays to it, which, if you're if you believe
13:30
Speaker 1: it is in his agenda but you're not racist should
13:33
Speaker 1: offend you, and I think that that was so the
13:37
Speaker 1: what I took away from this story was not that
13:41
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did this. Of course Donald Trump did this, right,
13:44
Speaker 1: that is not the news. What was new and important
13:50
Speaker 1: to chronicle in this story was the immediate reactions of
13:54
Speaker 1: people like Tim Scott, who said, this is the most
13:57
Speaker 1: racist thing that's come out of this White House. By
13:59
Speaker 1: the way, that phrase was fascinating, Right, talk about a
14:02
Speaker 1: guy you'd like to put under a polygraph and say, huh,
14:05
Speaker 1: you're implying you've seen other racist things come out of
14:07
Speaker 1: this White House. Right by saying this is the most racist.
14:10
Speaker 1: He didn't say this was the only racist thing that
14:13
Speaker 1: came out of this White House. So that's of note.
14:16
Speaker 1: Let's just say I listened to words very carefully, and yes,
14:18
Speaker 1: I part sentences too much. So assuming the other aspect
14:25
Speaker 1: of this was watching how many other Republicans decided to
14:30
Speaker 1: go in on that, and there was the weasel words.
14:33
Speaker 1: I can't imagine he did this. It must have been
14:36
Speaker 1: a staffer, right, these staffers that apparently are up as
14:39
Speaker 1: late as he is. To the President's credit, he essentially
14:44
Speaker 1: while he didn't, he's essentially admitted he did it. He's
14:49
Speaker 1: now I think, claiming he didn't see it all the
14:52
Speaker 1: way through so we didn't see how it was ending,
14:55
Speaker 1: is how he wants to go. But it's it's interesting
14:58
Speaker 1: that he kind of, you know, reversed the bus that
15:05
Speaker 1: ran over the staffer that everybody decided, whoever this imaginary
15:09
Speaker 1: staffer was that did it. One would assume it's the caddy,
15:12
Speaker 1: Dan Scavino, who supposedly runs all the social media accounts
15:17
Speaker 1: from time to time. But they never did say his name.
15:19
Speaker 1: It was sort of implied, but it was Donald Trump's
15:22
Speaker 1: way of bringing back the bus. But the point was,
15:26
Speaker 1: and this goes back to something I wrote on Substack
15:30
Speaker 1: last fall, which was the cracks are beginning to show
15:34
Speaker 1: in the Trump coalition. Well, I don't know if a
15:38
Speaker 1: week's gone by where the cracks haven't gotten deeper, where
15:41
Speaker 1: you haven't had another Republican either decide not to seek
15:44
Speaker 1: reelection or decide to back away in some way. The
15:48
Speaker 1: comfort that more Republicans have in criticizing him publicly, in
15:52
Speaker 1: questioning him publicly. Look, it's not I'm not going to
15:54
Speaker 1: sit here and say it's an avalanche of criticism coming
15:58
Speaker 1: from Republicans, but you are starting to see that more
16:01
Speaker 1: of them realize they're the ones that are going to
16:03
Speaker 1: be on the ballot. The future of the party is
16:05
Speaker 1: in their hands because Donald Trump doesn't care about the
16:08
Speaker 1: future of the party. And you throw in the fact
16:10
Speaker 1: that I know to say Donald Trump had ever ever
16:13
Speaker 1: had a filter, it might be it might be an understatement.
16:19
Speaker 1: But here's what we do know. As people age, whatever
16:23
Speaker 1: filter they have goes away. So he didn't have much
16:26
Speaker 1: of a filter before. But it's but it's possible Donald
16:30
Speaker 1: Trump five years ago might have might have had some
16:34
Speaker 1: little voice in his head to say, don't retweet that
16:37
Speaker 1: Obama uh Obama racist meme. And this time there's there's
16:43
Speaker 1: no right. He's either he's living in his he's living
16:46
Speaker 1: in a cocoon that seems to be even more self
16:49
Speaker 1: serving than ever before. He does not seem to appear
16:52
Speaker 1: like when he was asked about Jadie Vance getting booed
16:56
Speaker 1: at the Olympics during the opening ceremonies, he seemed to
17:00
Speaker 1: feigned surprised by that. Maybe that's his way of spinning,
17:03
Speaker 1: or maybe he really is in this cocoon that he
17:05
Speaker 1: doesn't realize how unpopular his administration is how unpopular he
17:09
Speaker 1: is and how unpopular jd Vance is growing, but particularly
17:12
Speaker 1: in Europe. If he doesn't understand Teddy Vance has gone
17:16
Speaker 1: to Europe and attacked Europe every different way. He has
17:18
Speaker 1: attacked the culture of Western Europe. He is essentially said,
17:21
Speaker 1: you're bringing all this on yourself, and he has gone
17:25
Speaker 1: there to to give aid and comfort to all of
17:32
Speaker 1: these right wing movements that are very offensive to a
17:34
Speaker 1: lot of Western Europeans, particularly the ones that go to
17:38
Speaker 1: the Olympics that can afford to travel. Let's just say
17:43
Speaker 1: this ain't a jd Vance crowd, and it's you know,
17:46
Speaker 1: it's I would caution the president to be careful attacking
17:50
Speaker 1: Americans who American athletes who speak out. This is the
17:54
Speaker 1: age we live in, and I have to say I've
17:57
Speaker 1: been impressed. The athletes are all trying to walk a line.
17:59
Speaker 1: You can see it, but it's uncomfortable. It's no fun
18:03
Speaker 1: to be an American overseas. And no, I have no
18:06
Speaker 1: doubt there are other athletes in the in the village
18:10
Speaker 1: giving American athletes grief that there is a cold shoulder.
18:14
Speaker 1: You talk to any Americans to travel overseas right now,
18:18
Speaker 1: it is uncomfortable. It's much worse than it was during
18:21
Speaker 1: the Iraq War. So it is It wouldn't surprise me
18:29
Speaker 1: that when you sort of look at why Trump doesn't
18:31
Speaker 1: see how bad things are going for him, that because
18:34
Speaker 1: they've created this safe space in the Oval Office for
18:37
Speaker 1: him and they sort of block out any negative news,
18:40
Speaker 1: only show him like pieces of poles that give him
18:45
Speaker 1: aid and comfort, but they don't show him the big pictures.
18:47
Speaker 1: So he really doesn't know how bad things are. It
18:54
Speaker 1: only is going to lead for him to do more mistakes.
18:57
Speaker 1: I mean you want to if you want evidence, by
18:59
Speaker 1: the way of the film being totally and completely gone,
19:02
Speaker 1: just look go back and look at that performance at
19:04
Speaker 1: the National Prayer Breakfast where he was just awful and attacking,
19:08
Speaker 1: just attacking Democrats, saying democrats aren't can't be religious people.
19:14
Speaker 1: It was just it couldn't have been more Unamerican and
19:19
Speaker 1: certainly more anti First Amendment than what he did. But
19:24
Speaker 1: I do think it's important to note how much he
19:26
Speaker 1: has put his party in jeopardy just in these first
19:29
Speaker 1: six weeks of this calendar year. Right the year began
19:33
Speaker 1: with the Madurea extradition, which looked like it was going
19:36
Speaker 1: to be a good news story for him. Right, it
19:38
Speaker 1: was an impressive military operation. They extracted Madureau out and
19:44
Speaker 1: it seemed as if they made it seem relatively easy,
19:48
Speaker 1: and as a military operation, it was relatively easy. Now
19:53
Speaker 1: he is now botching the aftermath. Right, he is not
19:57
Speaker 1: interested in standing up to mindocracy. He has rejected the
20:02
Speaker 1: democratic elected leaders in Venezuela and not endorsed them. He
20:08
Speaker 1: went ahead and accepted that peace prize from MS Machado,
20:12
Speaker 1: which is still one of the most It's not surprising,
20:16
Speaker 1: but still seems so brazen and I can't believe he
20:19
Speaker 1: did it. But I say this because beginning with then,
20:23
Speaker 1: and if you think about it, there hasn't been a
20:25
Speaker 1: week that hasn't gone by, if not more, where he
20:27
Speaker 1: has said or done something that has put Republicans on
20:32
Speaker 1: the defensive. It's one thing to see, right the left
20:35
Speaker 1: get upset and the media and you can say, okay,
20:36
Speaker 1: this is partisan back and forth. But the distinction I
20:39
Speaker 1: want to make here is like what we saw with
20:42
Speaker 1: the Obama racist me the Obviously, there was plenty of
20:46
Speaker 1: outrage from people on the left and in the center,
20:50
Speaker 1: but to see elected Republicans express public outrage and the
20:55
Speaker 1: type of Republicans that did these weren't the liberal Republicans
20:59
Speaker 1: that always criticized Trump, right, like you're Lisa Murkowski's, perhaps
21:03
Speaker 1: you're Don Bacon's and folks like that. It was no
21:07
Speaker 1: or Tom Tillis, who has become more comfortable criticizing Trump
21:10
Speaker 1: of late. It was Tim Scott, right, it was Roger Wicker.
21:14
Speaker 1: It was Pete Ricketts, who, by the way, is in
21:17
Speaker 1: an increasingly more competitive US Senate race. Tim Scott, head
21:23
Speaker 1: of the NRSC, who just delivered some dire warnings to
21:27
Speaker 1: his Senate Republican conference that hey, Trump's approval ratings are
21:31
Speaker 1: a huge problem, and the Senate is really in play.
21:33
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, it may not matter who
21:35
Speaker 1: they nominate in Texas, it's going to be a competitive
21:39
Speaker 1: race and a money suck. So look in each individual case.
21:43
Speaker 1: And by the way, Roger Wicker, I think is just
21:45
Speaker 1: speaking out because he's got an extraordinarily large African American
21:49
Speaker 1: constituency in Mississippi. But if you wanted to put it
21:52
Speaker 1: in pure political terms, there's also a potentially competitive US
21:55
Speaker 1: Senate seat there. It's not his seat, it's Sydney hind Smith,
21:58
Speaker 1: the other Senate see there, So you could say the
22:02
Speaker 1: three of them all had their own political motivations to
22:05
Speaker 1: speak out and not wanting to be seen as silent
22:10
Speaker 1: co conspirators to Trump's racism. But that's just the latest
22:16
Speaker 1: right last week, what did I lead my what did
22:19
Speaker 1: I lead? The show? With the corruption from the corruption
22:24
Speaker 1: story from the Wall Street Journal that had a the
22:31
Speaker 1: UAE essentially as a government invest in the National Security Advisor,
22:36
Speaker 1: the UAE invest in Trump's company for Trump's kids company's
22:41
Speaker 1: crypto company four days before the inauguration, and of course
22:44
Speaker 1: it leads to a foreign policy change. It is at
22:48
Speaker 1: least half a billion dollars in investment, one hundred and
22:52
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars in direct cash to the Trump's literally
22:55
Speaker 1: just cash. And as Andrew McCarthy, this conservative legal analyst
22:59
Speaker 1: that writes for The National Review, said, you know who
23:02
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily critical of of sort of the mixing the
23:06
Speaker 1: bidens did of of of the professional, the personal, the political,
23:12
Speaker 1: and the family with Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. He
23:15
Speaker 1: said this, this is literally exponentially worse, uh and at
23:20
Speaker 1: a at another level of corrupt. So if you were
23:23
Speaker 1: outraged by the corruption of of of Joe Biden and
23:26
Speaker 1: thought that it may have reached in the level of impeachment.
23:30
Speaker 1: What Andrew McCarthy is arguing, and again conservatively right, this
23:35
Speaker 1: is the Conservative National Review legal analyst. This he said
23:39
Speaker 1: is literally, he said, at a couple of zeros of
23:43
Speaker 1: worse to this, Okay, not one zero, a couple of
23:46
Speaker 1: zeros when it comes to this, because the actual financial
23:50
Speaker 1: corruption is unbelievable and the direct policy changes that came from,
23:55
Speaker 1: you know, following the actual transactions, you know, you didn't
24:00
Speaker 1: quite see it as crystal clear with the purchase of
24:04
Speaker 1: the Hunter Biden paintings and all of that. It was
24:07
Speaker 1: a little less directly related to actual policy changes with Trump. Right,
24:13
Speaker 1: there's no subtlety. And that was another point that McCarthy made.
24:17
Speaker 1: But that's just that was last week, right, and the
24:19
Speaker 1: week before we had this second killing of an American
24:22
Speaker 1: citizen by ICE agents in Minneapolis, right, two different weekends
24:26
Speaker 1: essentially due to that, where again Republicans were criticizing the
24:31
Speaker 1: policy and feeling uncomfortable on this Abu Dhabi investment. Many
24:35
Speaker 1: Republicans aren't saying a word, but you now have Republican
24:37
Speaker 1: legal analysts who can't look away and have to realize that, hey, this,
24:41
Speaker 1: if you thought Biden, what the Bidens did between Hunter
24:44
Speaker 1: Biden Joe Biden was corrupt, then what the Trumps are
24:47
Speaker 1: doing is historic in its level of corruption. There's the
24:53
Speaker 1: bizarre raid of Fulton County and the votes. There's the
24:56
Speaker 1: talk about federalizing elections, which the most anti small sea
25:01
Speaker 1: conservative thing you could come up with. The thing is
25:04
Speaker 1: all of this. If I brought up Greenland and the
25:08
Speaker 1: controversy that sort of Royal Davos, and essentially it's arguably
25:14
Speaker 1: it is Greenland that has helped you unite Europe against
25:16
Speaker 1: the United States, which of course triggered Canada to go
25:19
Speaker 1: do a trade deal with China that we had been
25:21
Speaker 1: hoping that they wouldn't do when it came to our
25:25
Speaker 1: concerns about sovereignty and security when it involves China. So again,
25:30
Speaker 1: everything I've just discussed has all taken place since January third.
25:35
Speaker 1: At this is February ninth, folks, And I say a
25:39
Speaker 1: week hasn't gone by. It seems like every there's at
25:42
Speaker 1: least two major incidents a week where Trump either says
25:47
Speaker 1: something or does something that's putting Republicans on the defensive,
25:50
Speaker 1: that is urging Republicans to have to speak out. This
25:54
Speaker 1: is a growing electoral disaster, and I don't think folks
26:00
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28:56
Speaker 1: So that brings me to what I think is the
29:01
Speaker 1: most underreported story from last week. Obviously the Obama racist beam.
29:06
Speaker 1: We have the Abu Dhabi story, you have the fear
29:08
Speaker 1: of federalizing elections. Those arguably those three stories all got
29:11
Speaker 1: more attention last week than the milestone that was reached
29:17
Speaker 1: last week when we got our fiftieth and fifty first
29:21
Speaker 1: incumbent member of Congress deciding not to run for reelection
29:26
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six. This marks now we are inching
29:30
Speaker 1: ever closer to the highest ever open seat total in
29:36
Speaker 1: a midterm year basically since World War Two. Okay, in
29:42
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, there were fifty five members of Congress who
29:46
Speaker 1: chose not to return. Either they didn't seek reelection or
29:50
Speaker 1: they decided to go seek higher office, but they did
29:52
Speaker 1: not seek reelection. We are sitting now at fifty one.
29:56
Speaker 1: There's still most of the filing deadlines have not yet passed.
30:00
Speaker 1: We haven't had the California filing deadline pass, and we
30:02
Speaker 1: know there's going to be a handful of Republicans likely
30:05
Speaker 1: that walk away because of the remap. We have the
30:07
Speaker 1: Virginia remap that's likely to happen, that's going to lead
30:09
Speaker 1: to some retirements. We've got the Florida remap that's likely
30:13
Speaker 1: to lead to some retirement. So we are well on
30:15
Speaker 1: our right. The all time record, by the way, is
30:17
Speaker 1: sixty five open seats going into an election year, and
30:22
Speaker 1: that was back in nineteen ninety two. That was a
30:25
Speaker 1: confluence of circumstances. It was a reapportionment year, so you
30:28
Speaker 1: had your typical you had that, but it was the
30:30
Speaker 1: first time that the Justice Department insisted on majority minority
30:35
Speaker 1: districts in certain Southern states, which even led to a
30:39
Speaker 1: more upheaval in how the maps were drawn all over
30:43
Speaker 1: the country, but particularly in the South. And you also
30:47
Speaker 1: that was the if you did not if you chose
30:50
Speaker 1: to retire that year. There was one other loophole which
30:52
Speaker 1: encouraged a lot of incumbents to leave office at nineteen
30:55
Speaker 1: ninety two and not seek reelection. If you left in
30:58
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, you got to keep whatever left campaign
31:00
Speaker 1: money you had, and you get to keep it and
31:02
Speaker 1: make it your money. You could turn it into an
31:04
Speaker 1: iroa or investment fund literally. But if you chose to stay,
31:08
Speaker 1: you no longer it was no longer legal for you
31:12
Speaker 1: to make campaign money your own money. That's right, folks.
31:16
Speaker 1: It used to be members of Congress could take their
31:20
Speaker 1: campaign treasury and when they were done running, they could
31:23
Speaker 1: pocket whatever was left. That was perfectly legal. Now if
31:28
Speaker 1: you pocket it at least you have to come up
31:30
Speaker 1: with dummy corporations and charge your campaign account invented items
31:38
Speaker 1: for reimbursement in order to try to get that money.
31:41
Speaker 1: But before you could just pocket it. So that's why
31:44
Speaker 1: ninety two is sort of an outlier. But the real
31:46
Speaker 1: important story is for a mid term cycle. And I've
31:50
Speaker 1: gone back and studied this since nineteen fifty four. At
31:53
Speaker 1: fifty one open seats. Right now, we are only four
31:57
Speaker 1: away from the modern record of fifty five, which was
31:59
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, which led to a forty seat pick up
32:01
Speaker 1: for the out party. We're going to pass that. The
32:04
Speaker 1: question is how close to sixty five will we get?
32:07
Speaker 1: So how did we get there? All? Right? The latest
32:11
Speaker 1: two names, right, it didn't make what didn't make huge news.
32:15
Speaker 1: You didn't see it on any cable news Chiron. It
32:17
Speaker 1: was Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, Mark Emmedi of Nevada, both
32:21
Speaker 1: Republicans and Republican you know, solid Republican seats. They're unlikely
32:27
Speaker 1: to see de you know, they were going to likely
32:32
Speaker 1: win reelection had they chosen to run. But what's interesting
32:35
Speaker 1: about both of them, and it's part of a larger trend.
32:37
Speaker 1: I want to get into. Both were elected before Donald
32:39
Speaker 1: Trump took office, and both fit a growing category of
32:43
Speaker 1: Republican retirees that I call the exhaustion caucus. These are
32:46
Speaker 1: members who are no longer looking for a promotion in politics,
32:49
Speaker 1: right running for governor, running for Senate, running for some
32:51
Speaker 1: of the office. They're just looking for ourn exit. Right.
32:53
Speaker 1: Loudermoak was elected in twenty fourteen and started serving in
32:57
Speaker 1: January twenty fifteen. In fact, in his statement oouncing his retirement,
33:00
Speaker 1: he leaned into the citizen legislator idea representing people in Congress.
33:05
Speaker 1: He said it's a service, not a career, and he
33:06
Speaker 1: talked about focusing on family, being a husband and a grandfather.
33:09
Speaker 1: He didn't come up and just try to light the
33:11
Speaker 1: place on fire. Amadi has represented that second district in Nevada.
33:15
Speaker 1: He won a twenty eleven special election. He's the lone
33:19
Speaker 1: Republican in the Nevada delegation, and he framed his decision
33:22
Speaker 1: as passing the torch after roughly fifteen years in Washington,
33:26
Speaker 1: and he said it's time. He announced early because they
33:28
Speaker 1: have a later filing deadline. Want to give others time
33:30
Speaker 1: to step up. And again, this is the one congressional
33:34
Speaker 1: seat that represents basically everything in Nevada that is in
33:37
Speaker 1: the Las Vegas media market essentially. Now, look, they don't
33:41
Speaker 1: seem like guys that are plotting a comeback. They're just done.
33:45
Speaker 1: And I think that distinction matters because the most revealing
33:48
Speaker 1: thing to think about in these retirements is that there's
33:52
Speaker 1: clearly two different forces operating here at once, particularly when
33:56
Speaker 1: it comes to motivating what certain Republicans try to do.
34:00
Speaker 1: Because you have now we're up to I believe twenty
34:02
Speaker 1: nine Republicans who have announced that they're not seeking reelection,
34:06
Speaker 1: About half are running for another office, and about half
34:08
Speaker 1: are just walking away. Right, that group that's walking away,
34:12
Speaker 1: they're tired, tired of the grind, tired of the incentives.
34:15
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't like the performative, the way
34:18
Speaker 1: political theater now is the dominant force of American politics
34:21
Speaker 1: that you don't get any credit for doing legislating. Of course,
34:24
Speaker 1: the other group is leaving because you know, they just
34:27
Speaker 1: always had viewed the House as a stepping stone, and
34:29
Speaker 1: this is going to be a bad year to be
34:30
Speaker 1: an incumbent Republican, so you might as well go up
34:32
Speaker 1: and out because maybe you can set yourself up for
34:34
Speaker 1: another office two or four years down the road. Now,
34:38
Speaker 1: it's going to create a massive experience gap at some point.
34:40
Speaker 1: Right we are seeing a massive churn, and so there's
34:43
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of institutional memories that go
34:45
Speaker 1: away because the longtime members are the committee chairs that
34:48
Speaker 1: are leaving the institutional memory types when they walk out
34:51
Speaker 1: the door. You don't just lose votes, You lose people
34:53
Speaker 1: who know how to legislate, how to negotiate, frankly, how
34:57
Speaker 1: to work across the aisle, even in thisunctional atmosphere. And
35:02
Speaker 1: what it will mean is we're going to have a
35:03
Speaker 1: House it's likely to be more political, more partisan, more junior,
35:06
Speaker 1: more ambitious, more online, which means less functional. So it's
35:13
Speaker 1: it's you know, we'll wait to see what this Congress
35:16
Speaker 1: looks like in twenty twenty seven, but that's a likely problem.
35:19
Speaker 1: So fifty one, Why does fifty one open seats matter
35:23
Speaker 1: beyond being just a big number? And why am I
35:26
Speaker 1: now essentially saying hey, you can call it now the
35:29
Speaker 1: Democrats have one, They're going to win the House. It
35:32
Speaker 1: would take an historical set of events that we have
35:36
Speaker 1: no idea what they would look like for this not
35:39
Speaker 1: to be the case, because open seats always behave like
35:42
Speaker 1: a political accelerant. Right when a seat is open, the
35:45
Speaker 1: incumbent advantage disappears. National environment matters more, money matters more,
35:49
Speaker 1: candidate quality matters more. Historically, when open seats pile up early,
35:52
Speaker 1: it tends to mean one of two things. Either the
35:54
Speaker 1: majority party is bracing for impact or the members closest
35:58
Speaker 1: to the ground are seeing something coming that everyone else
36:00
Speaker 1: is still denying. And the other tael, of course, is
36:03
Speaker 1: that it's February. February. Retirements are the early warning system.
36:07
Speaker 1: If you're already at fifty one now, it suggests there's
36:11
Speaker 1: a lot of quiet quitting still sitting on people's desks.
36:14
Speaker 1: So let's talk about records, because this is where people
36:16
Speaker 1: can get sloppy. As I said, the modern mid midterm
36:20
Speaker 1: era benchmark, and then there's the all time benchmark. The
36:25
Speaker 1: modern benchmarks midterms since nineteen fifty four, the cycles with
36:29
Speaker 1: the huge retirement waves in the television era nineteen ninety four,
36:33
Speaker 1: twenty ten, twenty eighteen. Those are my modern reference points.
36:36
Speaker 1: And when retirement numbers start approaching that neighborhood forty plus,
36:41
Speaker 1: history usually points in one direction. Trouble for the party
36:44
Speaker 1: in power. Right, And if you extend the lens beyond
36:47
Speaker 1: the midterms, you have to use nineteen ninety two. Is
36:52
Speaker 1: that modern? Is that modern high of retirement? Sixty five
36:58
Speaker 1: House members choosing not to run again. And as I
37:02
Speaker 1: told you, there was a variety of reasons why that
37:05
Speaker 1: created such a massive shake up. It was still to
37:07
Speaker 1: this day over there, I think, where there was one
37:09
Speaker 1: hundred and ten new members of Congress, and it also
37:12
Speaker 1: led to than seventy three more new members of Congress
37:14
Speaker 1: the following cycle. We in a four year cycle, we
37:17
Speaker 1: really basically cycled out. Anybody that was left from the
37:21
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties in Congress was sort of really totally
37:25
Speaker 1: cycled out by nineteen ninety four. So now I want
37:34
Speaker 1: to be mindful of the fact that nothing is statistically
37:37
Speaker 1: sound here that I'm going to say right, when you
37:39
Speaker 1: only have when you only have like fifteen incidences to use, right,
37:44
Speaker 1: you can't say this is statistically sound. But I do
37:47
Speaker 1: think the patterns matter here a lot. So in the
37:51
Speaker 1: spirit of that argument, I'm going to frame it this way.
37:54
Speaker 1: Once you see the number of open seats get over
37:58
Speaker 1: twenty t's, it becomes extremely difficult for the majority party
38:04
Speaker 1: to hold the line because open seats are the proxy
38:07
Speaker 1: for vulnerability and opportunity. Well, guess what, we're now over
38:10
Speaker 1: fifty with essentially two with essentially about sixty percent of
38:15
Speaker 1: them being Republican. It's about twenty nine to twenty one.
38:18
Speaker 1: Here is where we're sitting at now. Open seats aren't
38:22
Speaker 1: a cause for the wave, but there the early warning
38:26
Speaker 1: sign that the ground is shifting and that you have
38:29
Speaker 1: some longtime incumbents reading tea leaves deciding they'd rather leave
38:32
Speaker 1: on their own terms than get swept out and humiliated.
38:36
Speaker 1: And then there's always one other piece to the puzzle.
38:38
Speaker 1: Presidential approval. Open seats are the engine. Presidential approval rating
38:43
Speaker 1: is the fuel. The president is popular, the party can
38:45
Speaker 1: sometimes blunt losses the president is unpopular, especially if they're
38:49
Speaker 1: just sitting below fifty percent approval and Donald Trump hasn't
38:52
Speaker 1: seen forty five it seems like in four months, let
38:55
Speaker 1: alone fifty. Midterms usually then become nationalized and become a
38:59
Speaker 1: national referendum. So you have a president's approval ratings sitting
39:02
Speaker 1: in the low forties, which look a lot like Bush
39:05
Speaker 1: going into six Obama going into fourteen and ten, Frankly
39:10
Speaker 1: and Bill Clinton going in to nineteen ninety four. So,
39:15
Speaker 1: putting all this together, here's why this story isn't fading,
39:17
Speaker 1: it's accelerating. We've entered the most volatile period for retirements,
39:21
Speaker 1: late winter to spring wind decision window. Members are looking
39:24
Speaker 1: at fundraising, the map, the mood, their own lives, and
39:27
Speaker 1: of course all these redistricting threats as well, and they're
39:30
Speaker 1: all deciding whether it's worth it. Do they want to
39:32
Speaker 1: get to know a new constituency for a cycle that
39:35
Speaker 1: may not go very well. I think we know the
39:37
Speaker 1: answer to that. And if you want to know where
39:39
Speaker 1: the next tranch of names is likely to come from
39:41
Speaker 1: on the retirement watch list, there's a couple of states
39:44
Speaker 1: where maps are in motion, Florida and Virginia. Right DeSantis
39:47
Speaker 1: has a special session in April where he wants to
39:50
Speaker 1: focus on redrawing the map, try to pick up four
39:52
Speaker 1: or five seats of more seats that are more Republican,
39:56
Speaker 1: seeing if he can somehow squeeze more Republican districts off
39:59
Speaker 1: of that map. I'm skeptical, but they think they can
40:02
Speaker 1: get a couple, especially if the Voting Rights Act essentially
40:05
Speaker 1: gets swept away by the Supreme courts, but you have
40:09
Speaker 1: when you're shaking up that map, it's likely to lead
40:11
Speaker 1: to retirements we hadn't thought about, even some incumbents. If
40:14
Speaker 1: it creates an incumbent incumbent fight stuff like that. Then
40:17
Speaker 1: of course there's Virginia where Democrats are pushing for a
40:20
Speaker 1: mechanism to enable new maps. Right, there's going to be
40:23
Speaker 1: a special elect constitutional amendment election in order to get permission.
40:28
Speaker 1: And if they do that, they may eliminate four Republican
40:31
Speaker 1: incumbents and most of them likely won't try to seek
40:35
Speaker 1: re election. So we're sitting at fifty one right now.
40:40
Speaker 1: The likelihood that this grows to over fifty five, which
40:43
Speaker 1: was the number that was hit in eighteen when Democrats
40:46
Speaker 1: then the out party, won over forty seats, then you
40:48
Speaker 1: see where this is going. Right, We already see the
40:51
Speaker 1: Houses already showing signs of high volatility. Majority party is
40:55
Speaker 1: bleeding its incumbency advantage. And oh, by the way, what
41:00
Speaker 1: happened over the weekend? Two more special elections. We're in
41:03
Speaker 1: very red And yes there's state legislative elections. Yes there
41:06
Speaker 1: are special elections happening on a weekend, and yes, the
41:09
Speaker 1: Democrats have more voters who pay more attention to these
41:12
Speaker 1: special elections and Republicans do. Okay, Well, that means Democrats
41:17
Speaker 1: are paying attention. It means Democrats are more fired up.
41:20
Speaker 1: And you know, we're seeing another weekend of over performance
41:24
Speaker 1: by Democrats in legislative districts that Trump carried by double digits.
41:28
Speaker 1: And it seems like another you know, this is like
41:31
Speaker 1: you know, another plane land safely at national right. It's
41:34
Speaker 1: happening with such frequency it's hard to call it news.
41:36
Speaker 1: It's almost like that continuation. So you all, this is happening.
41:42
Speaker 1: You've got open seats hitting critical territory and like I said,
41:46
Speaker 1: we've got I looked it up. There's another and this
41:50
Speaker 1: is this is intriguing. Here, there's another one two, three, four, five, six,
41:55
Speaker 1: seventy nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, forty fifteen, sixteen, seventy eighteen, nineteen,
41:59
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, two, three, four, five, six, twet seven. Okay,
42:03
Speaker 1: there's another twenty seven Republican incumbents sitting in districts where
42:08
Speaker 1: Donald Trump received fifty nine percent or less in the
42:11
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four presidential vote. And I've put the market
42:14
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent. I think now given the overperformance, given
42:17
Speaker 1: Trump's approval ratings, and frankly is just terrible leadership right
42:22
Speaker 1: now of the party on messaging. Anybody sitting in a
42:25
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent Trump district or less should be scared nestless. Okay,
42:30
Speaker 1: they should be feeling it a lot. Well, there's these
42:34
Speaker 1: Republicans I was just telling you about. There's a big
42:36
Speaker 1: chunk of California Republicans that filing deadlines March six. Some
42:39
Speaker 1: Georgia Republicans sit in there, do any more throat decide
42:43
Speaker 1: to do that. Wisconsin's filing deadline, Michigan's filing deadline, there's
42:49
Speaker 1: a New York filing deadline in May, which you could
42:51
Speaker 1: see it change a little bit. So this is a
42:55
Speaker 1: list that's likely to grow. And again I go back
43:00
Speaker 1: every single here. You could just look at this. I
43:03
Speaker 1: put together these different midterm charts. So twenty eighteen fifty
43:06
Speaker 1: five open seats the out party, the Democrats gained forty seats,
43:11
Speaker 1: flipped control. Right in twenty twenty two, there were forty
43:15
Speaker 1: nine open seats. Republicans netted nine seats and they flipped control.
43:20
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety four, there were forty eight open seats, Republicans
43:23
Speaker 1: netted fifty two overall and flipped control. Twenty ten, thirty
43:27
Speaker 1: eight open seats, Republicans gained sixty three, flip control. Two
43:32
Speaker 1: thousand and six, thirty one open seats. Democrats gained thirty
43:35
Speaker 1: one seats and flip control. Nineteen fifty eight, there were
43:40
Speaker 1: twenty eight open seats. Democrats gained forty eight. They already
43:46
Speaker 1: held control, they were already in charge, but they netted
43:48
Speaker 1: another forty eight. Nineteen eighty two a similar situation, there
43:51
Speaker 1: were twenty four open seats, So I just gave you
43:54
Speaker 1: in the midterms in order there right, every single won
43:58
Speaker 1: twenty four and above, going back to nineteen fifty four
44:01
Speaker 1: to midterms, and the out party always gained seats, and
44:08
Speaker 1: many times it flipped. Most of the time it flipped
44:11
Speaker 1: control of the House. So the point is, at this
44:15
Speaker 1: point in time, it is hard to come up with
44:20
Speaker 1: a scenario where Republicans are going to hold the House.
44:24
Speaker 1: Every historical marker says otherwise. The only two times where
44:29
Speaker 1: the party in power was able to do well is
44:31
Speaker 1: when the two when presidential approval was over sixty percent,
44:35
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety eight and George W. Bush
44:38
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two. That was post nine to eleven.
44:41
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety eight was the Monica backlash, where Clinton's personal
44:46
Speaker 1: rating was in the toilet, but his professional rating was
44:49
Speaker 1: sky high. It was this weird. The voter was almost
44:52
Speaker 1: like stubborn about it. No, we don't like Clinton, and yes,
44:55
Speaker 1: we love the job he's doing. It was like we
44:57
Speaker 1: were It was this fascinating in the way polling was registering. No,
45:03
Speaker 1: people were looking for a way to express personal disgust
45:06
Speaker 1: at what Trump, at what Clinton did, but they didn't.
45:11
Speaker 1: But they wanted to make it clear they didn't want
45:13
Speaker 1: them thrown out of office over it, right, And so
45:15
Speaker 1: you would see this dichotomy in the polling where his
45:18
Speaker 1: favorable rating, his personal favorable rating was upside down, but
45:22
Speaker 1: his professional rating was through the roof. The point is
45:25
Speaker 1: those are the two exceptions. Now ask yourself, what's Donald
45:29
Speaker 1: Trump going to do between now and November to somehow
45:33
Speaker 1: get a sixty percent joberating? Is it improbable? Yes, I'm
45:39
Speaker 1: never going to say anything's impossible in the Trump era,
45:41
Speaker 1: that's for sure. But the point is massive unexpected outside
45:51
Speaker 1: events like you know, aliens landing, you know in the Arctic,
45:57
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, whatever it is like, it is
46:00
Speaker 1: stuff you cannot you cannot say it's a feasible likely
46:06
Speaker 1: event to happen, right So, And of course what's really
46:13
Speaker 1: happening right now with Donald Trump is he is epitomizing
46:18
Speaker 1: the saying that I love to quote from Haley Barber,
46:22
Speaker 1: the longtime Republican operative and governor of Mississippi, who loved it.
46:27
Speaker 1: And I think it's somebody else's expression first. But good
46:30
Speaker 1: gets better and bad gets worse. And as we're seeing
46:33
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump, that is getting worse every week. Right.
46:37
Speaker 1: It feels like every week he throws another log on
46:40
Speaker 1: the let me piss off more than half the country bonfire.
46:46
Speaker 1: And that's why you're seeing more and more Republicans figure
46:51
Speaker 1: out a way to push back. Some say it publicly,
46:54
Speaker 1: some choose not to file for reelection, and others may
46:58
Speaker 1: be contemplating doing either of those things. Because if they
47:02
Speaker 1: want to speak out but they think it'll backfire, then
47:05
Speaker 1: my guess is they walk away if they assess their
47:09
Speaker 1: political situation and decide maybe they can survive by going
47:15
Speaker 1: after Trump. Maybe he's becoming more unpopular, Maybe the Epstein
47:18
Speaker 1: files have left to mark By the way, I didn't
47:20
Speaker 1: even get to the Epstein files. Right, that's like the
47:23
Speaker 1: other None of that has gotten any better for him either.
47:29
Speaker 1: It may be sullying the Clintons Bill Clinton a little bit.
47:31
Speaker 1: By the way, I still don't I don't under you know,
47:35
Speaker 1: other than Republicans wanting to attach Hillary Clinton to anything
47:38
Speaker 1: that they can attach her to. I do not understand
47:40
Speaker 1: why she's being asked to testify on anything Epstein. Right.
47:44
Speaker 1: There's nothing in the files in any case she was
47:46
Speaker 1: ever on the planes, ever did anything, et cetera. I
47:49
Speaker 1: guess they'll say, well, she must have had some played
47:52
Speaker 1: some part in the Clinton Foundation and the relationship with
47:54
Speaker 1: Gawaine Maxwell, even that seems beyond tenuous at best. She
47:59
Speaker 1: was sitting senator at the time. So I don't get
48:04
Speaker 1: that one. I don't see Melinda Gates being called up
48:07
Speaker 1: to find out what she knew about about Bill Gates's
48:11
Speaker 1: relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, Right, we don't see any of that.
48:14
Speaker 1: So that seems to be a head scratcher on that one.
48:18
Speaker 1: And we'll see if that that's one of those that
48:22
Speaker 1: I would say to mister comer, be careful what you
48:24
Speaker 1: ask for, be careful of what you're doing there. You
48:28
Speaker 1: want to talk about something that's more likely to blow
48:31
Speaker 1: up in your face than somehow create political deflection for Trump.
48:38
Speaker 1: It's playing games like this with trying to we're trying
48:43
Speaker 1: to target Hillary Clinton in particular, just you know, I
48:46
Speaker 1: know you think she's so unpopular, it doesn't matter what
48:49
Speaker 1: you do. I'd watch it. I think there's that's something
48:55
Speaker 1: I would be extraordinarily careful with. All right, I'm going
49:01
Speaker 1: to pause there. This is a good time to bring
49:03
Speaker 1: in the man who was one of the architects of
49:05
Speaker 1: the twenty six campaign side for the Democrats. He was
49:10
Speaker 1: the d Triple c chair at the time. Where I'm Emmanuel.
49:13
Speaker 1: He was a member of leadership inside the Congressional Democratic
49:19
Speaker 1: Caucus at the time. Now as a former ambassador of Japan,
49:23
Speaker 1: former two term mayor of Chicago. Right now, he may
49:26
Speaker 1: be the last two term mayor of Chicago, given how
49:28
Speaker 1: much they seem to be cycling through mayors these days.
49:32
Speaker 1: He's clearly thinking about running for president. He doesn't pretend
49:35
Speaker 1: he's not, and he's going about it in a different way,
49:38
Speaker 1: you know. I you know, it's a long shot, right
49:42
Speaker 1: being a card carrying member of the Democratic establishment, for
49:46
Speaker 1: as long as he has chief of staff to Obama
49:49
Speaker 1: and Japanese ambassador for Biden right a Clinton era, a
49:53
Speaker 1: senior advisor right. Basically, he's worked for every Democratic president
50:00
Speaker 1: that has served in the last forty years. He's been,
50:05
Speaker 1: you know, all part of you know, probably he got
50:08
Speaker 1: his start as a fundraiser, so you're never going to
50:12
Speaker 1: mistake Rammanuel for being an outsider. And yet what he's doing,
50:17
Speaker 1: he seems to be zagging in a variety of ways.
50:22
Speaker 1: First of all, he's almost laser focused on all things
50:25
Speaker 1: education and as they impact kids. He has been speaking
50:29
Speaker 1: out a lot on the idea of social media bans.
50:31
Speaker 1: Anytime another country bans access to social media for those
50:35
Speaker 1: sixteen and younger, he's promoting it on social media. He's
50:39
Speaker 1: talking about it. He was just in Mississippi and you'll
50:41
Speaker 1: hear him. We spend a lot of time on education.
50:43
Speaker 1: I think education is a dark horse issue. I think
50:46
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why Democrats have seen support from
50:50
Speaker 1: latinos erode and drift over to Republicans because the Republicans
50:55
Speaker 1: talk about education more than Democrats do now. Right now,
50:57
Speaker 1: Republicans talk about it in terms of vouchers and school choice.
51:01
Speaker 1: That's for a lot of Latinos. That's a very many
51:07
Speaker 1: of them would like to send their kids to parochial schools,
51:11
Speaker 1: like the idea of maybe some taxpayer you know, the
51:13
Speaker 1: taxpayer money being used to help subsidize that. So the
51:16
Speaker 1: point is that education, for whatever reason, which almost always
51:22
Speaker 1: was sort of one of the foundational issues that Democrats
51:24
Speaker 1: would talk about, sort of just slip down the priority list, right.
51:29
Speaker 1: It was always a big pillar of Bill Clinton's messaging
51:32
Speaker 1: and a big pillar of Democratic messaging in the eighties
51:35
Speaker 1: and nineties. And you know, essentially after Obama's first term,
51:41
Speaker 1: you saw right how other issues healthcare and the environment
51:46
Speaker 1: start to get prioritized more and more over education. And again,
51:51
Speaker 1: if you just want to look at it through the
51:53
Speaker 1: demographic prism, I think that's one of the explanations I
51:55
Speaker 1: would use as to why Latinos have been open to
51:58
Speaker 1: hearing Republican message, because I think on education and the economy,
52:03
Speaker 1: which are always basically one A and one B when
52:05
Speaker 1: it comes to when you pull latinos, Democrats have really
52:09
Speaker 1: been kind of quiet on education. Looks like they've been
52:11
Speaker 1: captive of teachers' unions and afraid to talk about any
52:14
Speaker 1: bold reforms and things like that anyway, So we spend
52:17
Speaker 1: a lot of time there, but we talk about everything
52:19
Speaker 1: under the sun, including being his establishment as he is
52:22
Speaker 1: given where the history of the Democratic Party goes, usually
52:26
Speaker 1: they look for new and people that haven't been around
52:29
Speaker 1: the block as much. So I think you'll enjoy the interview,
52:36
Speaker 1: stay for the deep dive on education, and don't miss
52:38
Speaker 1: the slight subtle digs at the at the current front
52:41
Speaker 1: runner for president a certain governor out of California. So
52:46
Speaker 1: let's sneak in a break when we come back. The
52:49
Speaker 1: man who used to be called Rambo and who knows
52:51
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56:16
Speaker 1: be interested in national office someday, but he's certainly got
56:20
Speaker 1: a lot to say about where the Democratic Party ought
56:24
Speaker 1: to be, what policy focuses ought to be. And I've
56:27
Speaker 1: been fascinated to follow what Ram Emmanuel's been up to
56:31
Speaker 1: because he's tackling issues that, if you read the polls,
56:35
Speaker 1: are issues that sort of less political Americans want politicians
56:42
Speaker 1: to focus on, probably the biggest one being education and
56:47
Speaker 1: everything derivative from there. He is not going out there
56:51
Speaker 1: trying to be the shiny object of the second And
56:55
Speaker 1: you know, you could argue maybe we're playing a little
56:58
Speaker 1: tortoise and hair aspect to this. So I enjoy catching
57:03
Speaker 1: up with Roma Mane because he's a lot of smart
57:05
Speaker 1: things to say, and at the same time, he's been
57:08
Speaker 1: around a block a few times politically, and this current
57:11
Speaker 1: political environment looks awfully familiar to me from a political
57:15
Speaker 1: environment that you oversaw in two thousand and six. So
57:20
Speaker 1: there's a ton of things I want to get to.
57:23
Speaker 1: But first let me start with with a simple question.
57:28
Speaker 1: Other besides speaking out, when I see you speak out
57:32
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, what else are you doing right now? Like,
57:34
Speaker 1: tell me your what's what's the average week like for
57:37
Speaker 1: Roma Mane?
57:38
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I'm uh so. I was on the
57:41
Speaker 2: way about a week ago. It's one of my favorite
57:43
Speaker 2: habits or past times. I was going to go give
57:47
Speaker 2: the keynote to Lynda Vains Johnson Library, which is all
57:50
Speaker 2: the presidential libraries. I really love that library. Why is
57:54
Speaker 2: that so? Because I actually think the architecture un I'm
57:57
Speaker 2: from Chicago, soil we're kind of I think the architecture
58:00
Speaker 2: captures the personality of the president is just big. It's power.
58:05
Speaker 2: It just you know, you walk in there's a picture,
58:08
Speaker 2: big black and white ten by ten him signing the
58:11
Speaker 2: Civil Rights Ad, the Voting Rights Act, and then there's
58:13
Speaker 2: a line of wall of pens going all leading you
58:17
Speaker 2: all the way to the photo of every bill he
58:19
Speaker 2: ever signed. I mean, that's just like it says Johnson,
58:22
Speaker 2: and then all it captures a character. And anyway, so
58:26
Speaker 2: I picked up when I texted Doris Kurrn's going her
58:29
Speaker 2: book Unfinished Love Story about her and her husband and
58:34
Speaker 2: Zara back. So I've been talked to Amy by why
58:38
Speaker 2: by coincidence we didn't plan this. I'm reading it, she's
58:40
Speaker 2: listening to it, and so that's kind of uh. And
58:44
Speaker 2: then obviously my three kids and they're in different points
58:47
Speaker 2: in their lives, et cetera. But then I'm, you know,
58:49
Speaker 2: reading a lot on AI. I'm learning besides my I
58:53
Speaker 2: try to read a book every three weeks. But I've
58:55
Speaker 2: started to solicit I had dinner the other day with
58:59
Speaker 2: the Evanthropic and we had a dinner for a little
59:04
Speaker 2: over a couple hours, and he gave me some reading
59:06
Speaker 2: and I've been reading on that. Somebody else gave me
59:08
Speaker 2: some other stuff, so I'm trying to get smart on that.
59:10
Speaker 2: I took a subject next is energy production here in
59:15
Speaker 2: the United States and great and distribution. So I take
59:17
Speaker 2: a topic and try to delve as deep as I can.
59:21
Speaker 2: But if you ask me, what is occupanting my time
59:23
Speaker 2: making sure my three kids are off to a good
59:25
Speaker 2: start in life, and which they are.
59:28
Speaker 1: But you know, it sounds like whether you look, I
59:30
Speaker 1: know you're thinking about it. You could do it, maybe
59:32
Speaker 1: you don't do it, but it sounds like you're you know,
59:36
Speaker 1: if you said you're going to run for president, what
59:39
Speaker 1: do you do to prepare? Well, one of the things
59:41
Speaker 1: I might suggest is, well, why don't you go learn
59:43
Speaker 1: about AI because if you've got to govern and economy
59:47
Speaker 1: that's going to be driven by this, because that's what
59:48
Speaker 1: you want to do. Yeah, you better know a lot
59:50
Speaker 1: more about it because I have a feeling our last
59:52
Speaker 1: two presidents, the current one and the previous one, didn't
59:55
Speaker 1: know much about it.
59:56
Speaker 2: Well, a couple of things on let me unpack, like
59:58
Speaker 2: twenty of the questions right there. One what I'm very
1:00:04
Speaker 2: excited about, and this is since we're both political junkies,
1:00:07
Speaker 2: but also policy Chuck, twenty twenty eight will be the
1:00:11
Speaker 2: first national election in twenty years. In my view, that
1:00:14
Speaker 2: will be about the future, not the past. If you
1:00:16
Speaker 2: really look at build back better and MAGA, you're driving
1:00:20
Speaker 2: fifty five miles an hour head looking through the rare
1:00:22
Speaker 2: view mirror twenty twenty eight, both for our party's primary
1:00:28
Speaker 2: and you also look at our primaries. I haven't had
1:00:30
Speaker 2: this in so a real discussion about the future and
1:00:34
Speaker 2: the countries. Naturally, the general election will be about the future,
1:00:37
Speaker 2: not the past. There won't be some kind of yearn
1:00:41
Speaker 2: to a era that bygone time? What will America be?
1:00:45
Speaker 2: So to me, that's exciting. And b whatever you come
1:00:49
Speaker 2: down to wild West on AI, don't let it go
1:00:52
Speaker 2: forward AI kind of those are the extreme positions. Whatever
1:00:56
Speaker 2: it is. We have a very technical, innovative advantage against China.
1:01:01
Speaker 2: They have an energy system that can do it. And
1:01:03
Speaker 2: we got to neutralize a negative that allows a positive.
1:01:06
Speaker 2: So to me, those are two subjects that are tied.
1:01:08
Speaker 2: But the other thing is you ain't getting from here
1:01:11
Speaker 2: to there, and those is you know, I have focused
1:01:13
Speaker 2: on education now in two weeks from now, you know,
1:01:18
Speaker 2: I went to Mississippi to talk about elementary education, et cetera,
1:01:21
Speaker 2: and see the Mississippi reading miracle in Michigan, in Grand
1:01:25
Speaker 2: Rapids and in how I will lay out a vocation
1:01:30
Speaker 2: ad plan because the ticket to the middle class runs
1:01:33
Speaker 2: through the classroom without it, like the Langran colleges, like
1:01:38
Speaker 2: the universal high school education, like the GI Bill, like
1:01:41
Speaker 2: the Science of Texts, Footneck Challenge without it. There's no
1:01:44
Speaker 2: middle class in America. That's the door you got to
1:01:46
Speaker 2: walk through to open up all the other doors. And
1:01:50
Speaker 2: to me, now, one last comment, and then this is
1:01:52
Speaker 2: also politics, which i'm you and I are at least
1:01:54
Speaker 2: the two of us are good on. I found it fascinating.
1:01:57
Speaker 2: In the Texas Special, the Republicans said, oh, this is
1:02:02
Speaker 2: a warning, which is true. Democrats said, look at his background.
1:02:07
Speaker 2: What he said was was nobody you listen. I stayed
1:02:12
Speaker 2: away from all the cultural issues and I focused on education.
1:02:15
Speaker 2: Vocational line. You ever hear that before from so anybody else?
1:02:20
Speaker 2: That's my point. I've been talking about education because, as
1:02:23
Speaker 2: you said, it may not be one, it doesn't come
1:02:26
Speaker 2: quote unquote under affordability, but it's where people live their lives.
1:02:31
Speaker 1: So I saw, I observed a focus group. And I
1:02:33
Speaker 1: keep sharing this anecdote because it really sort of jarred me.
1:02:37
Speaker 1: And I got two kids now, both of my key
1:02:38
Speaker 1: got one about to graduate college and one as a
1:02:40
Speaker 1: freshman in college. Moles tough, Thank you, I'm I'm first
1:02:44
Speaker 1: year of empty nest, which really sucks when there's a
1:02:46
Speaker 1: big snowstore.
1:02:49
Speaker 2: That was me, real, go shovel your mother wants it.
1:02:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, none of that works, right. And there
1:02:56
Speaker 1: was a participant in there that said something interesting that
1:03:00
Speaker 1: sort of haunted me about education, which he says, you know,
1:03:04
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, he says, you know, ten
1:03:06
Speaker 1: years ago, everybody said kids had to learn to code, right,
1:03:10
Speaker 1: and now what are we learning with AI? That might
1:03:13
Speaker 1: be a meaningless skill, right, something that we were trying
1:03:18
Speaker 1: to reorientate stem education, right. We were trying to reorient a
1:03:22
Speaker 1: lot of education that way. And the way that this
1:03:25
Speaker 1: person worded it was sort of, you know, my greatest
1:03:28
Speaker 1: fear is I don't even know what skills my kid
1:03:32
Speaker 1: needs to succeed when they go out into the world
1:03:35
Speaker 1: because it keeps changing so fast. And I thought, you know,
1:03:40
Speaker 1: I think my parents had an idea of what I
1:03:42
Speaker 1: needed to know to be out in the world. I
1:03:45
Speaker 1: think I've tried. I certainly guided my kids to where
1:03:49
Speaker 1: I think they can succeed. I got one in oceanography,
1:03:51
Speaker 1: one in sports marketing, where I know is a future
1:03:56
Speaker 1: oriented posture, right. But that struck me because I get
1:04:02
Speaker 1: it right, things are moving so fast. What are we getting?
1:04:06
Speaker 1: What's the education for? Right? And what skills? You know,
1:04:11
Speaker 1: we haven't redesigned our public education system since it started.
1:04:15
Speaker 2: Well, right, so it's been years. Yeah, so let me
1:04:18
Speaker 2: two to three. So what do you make of that?
1:04:20
Speaker 1: Yeah?
1:04:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, no. I look. One is when I was mayor,
1:04:25
Speaker 2: one of the most I think monumental changes we made
1:04:29
Speaker 2: only school system in the country to do this. You
1:04:33
Speaker 2: couldn't get your high school diploma without showing us a
1:04:38
Speaker 2: letter of acceptance from a college, a community college, a
1:04:41
Speaker 2: branch of the Armed forces, or vocational school.
1:04:45
Speaker 1: The only was the only was it the only only
1:04:48
Speaker 1: system in the.
1:04:48
Speaker 2: Country is called Learn Plan Succeed and we hired a
1:04:53
Speaker 2: ton of college and career counselors. I mean it was
1:04:56
Speaker 2: backed up with you know, we were the first city
1:04:58
Speaker 2: ever to do free community college. You earned to be average,
1:05:01
Speaker 2: et cetera. To me, you want to be a plumber,
1:05:04
Speaker 2: you want to be an electrician, Great? You want to
1:05:07
Speaker 2: go be a marine great. You want to be a
1:05:10
Speaker 2: paralegal nurse or a nurse great. You want to be
1:05:13
Speaker 2: a mechanical engineer great? Or you want to d G Mannies.
1:05:16
Speaker 2: You are not walking on graduation day without telling us
1:05:19
Speaker 2: where you're walking to. And the god children got that
1:05:24
Speaker 2: direction at home. Not every child gets that direction. So
1:05:27
Speaker 2: set the expectation, give the support, and in this future world,
1:05:33
Speaker 2: as the Ford CEO said just a month ago, I
1:05:36
Speaker 2: got seven thousand jobs paying six figure with benefits, and
1:05:39
Speaker 2: I got nobody apply it. I don't know that has
1:05:42
Speaker 2: the skills, so I don't. And AI won't change vocational carpentry, electrician.
1:05:49
Speaker 2: It won't eliminate it. I should say, not change it.
1:05:51
Speaker 2: May change it, but it won't eliminate it and the
1:05:53
Speaker 2: need for it. And that's true a nurse or specialization
1:05:57
Speaker 2: of nurse. That's true in other professions. But the fundamentals
1:06:02
Speaker 2: in third grade, you're gonna have to learn how to read,
1:06:04
Speaker 2: whether AI exists or not. You're going to have to
1:06:07
Speaker 2: know how to do math regardless. Now you may be
1:06:09
Speaker 2: right about coding, but to me when you said it
1:06:13
Speaker 2: hasn't changed in one hundred years, the biggest reform we
1:06:16
Speaker 2: did in Chicago that I think is relevant is the
1:06:20
Speaker 2: high school education. When we made at universal be average,
1:06:24
Speaker 2: you got free community college. In Chicago, fifty percent of
1:06:28
Speaker 2: our kids graduated with college credit under their belt on
1:06:31
Speaker 2: graduation day. And third, ninety eight percent metic requirement of
1:06:36
Speaker 2: producing a letter from a college, a community college, a
1:06:39
Speaker 2: branch of the armed versus or vocational. And eighty percent
1:06:41
Speaker 2: of the jobs of tomorrow requires something post high school.
1:06:45
Speaker 2: And we haven't fixed the education system to meet that
1:06:49
Speaker 2: eighty percent benchmark. And that's that's why I talked about
1:06:53
Speaker 2: and then to me, this is the ultimate thing every
1:06:56
Speaker 2: parent's trying to figure out. Your parent articulate, AI, other
1:07:00
Speaker 2: parents particulated. You know, they learned a lot during COVID
1:07:04
Speaker 2: about what was happening at their local school or not
1:07:06
Speaker 2: like it. No, And and since we're also junkies about politics,
1:07:11
Speaker 2: it was interesting twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, remember
1:07:16
Speaker 2: when they used to do the battery. Which part of
1:07:18
Speaker 2: you trust more? Healthcare? Taxis national security debt?
1:07:22
Speaker 1: Right?
1:07:23
Speaker 2: New York Times Bull And there was another I think
1:07:25
Speaker 2: it was CNN pul They did that bat. Each of
1:07:28
Speaker 2: them did their battery. Education wasn't on it and didn't
1:07:33
Speaker 2: even rise. And yet you have a thirty year low
1:07:37
Speaker 2: in reading. And maybe you just may want to ask.
1:07:41
Speaker 2: And the guy they just won, a Democrat that just
1:07:45
Speaker 2: wanted in a Texas special spent seventy thousand dollars on
1:07:49
Speaker 2: a district that's bigger than the congressional district. The beat
1:07:53
Speaker 2: somebody ten to one ran on one issue. Education.
1:07:57
Speaker 1: Well, this is an interesting let's mix it with the
1:07:59
Speaker 1: policy six here. The Kansas is your blueprint, right when
1:08:08
Speaker 1: brown Back messed with the education funding boom, Right, there's
1:08:13
Speaker 1: now sixteen of the last twenty four years in Kansas
1:08:17
Speaker 1: have been have had been Democratic governors? Yes, right, and
1:08:21
Speaker 1: it has been over this essentially education. Rob sand is
1:08:27
Speaker 1: probably going to be the next guy. I might be
1:08:30
Speaker 1: over my skis a little bit, but I certainly would
1:08:32
Speaker 1: bet on him being the next governor anybody else right now,
1:08:35
Speaker 1: assuming he stays laser focused on education, because a whole
1:08:39
Speaker 1: bunch of ey ones are really ticked off. The voucherization
1:08:42
Speaker 1: idea right in rural America sounds great until you find out, well,
1:08:48
Speaker 1: what school choice exists? Yes, and this is Texas too,
1:08:55
Speaker 1: so there's a this is a and I don't get
1:08:58
Speaker 1: the national Democrats don't seem to be fully engaged on
1:09:03
Speaker 1: this because they're like, well, education is a local issue, yeah,
1:09:06
Speaker 1: but it's a national issue that.
1:09:07
Speaker 2: Well, your last two presidents who got reelected one had
1:09:12
Speaker 2: raised to the top ran on it and reran and
1:09:16
Speaker 2: the other one ran on public school choice and teachers
1:09:18
Speaker 2: of excellence. So and you can't tell me the last two,
1:09:23
Speaker 2: meaning Joe Biden and Kamal Harris, what their education policy
1:09:25
Speaker 2: was except for open the bathroom door. Can't do it.
1:09:30
Speaker 2: And to me, that tells you why a twenty point
1:09:33
Speaker 2: advantage on an issue that touches everybody. We now have
1:09:37
Speaker 2: para pursue Now. I happen to think our kids are
1:09:39
Speaker 2: suffering from two things. Republicans have abandoned public education and
1:09:44
Speaker 2: Democrats have abandoned accountability. And our kids are falling through
1:09:48
Speaker 2: the crack. That's what's happening, and that's on us.
1:09:52
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a it's a very fair argument.
1:09:54
Speaker 1: And the the you know, it's if you I would
1:09:58
Speaker 1: also argue that the reason Democrats losing Latino voters because
1:10:02
Speaker 1: when you've ever you know, I used to, there was
1:10:04
Speaker 1: it was a standard thing whether your top three concerns
1:10:07
Speaker 1: if you're among Latino voters, and it was always some combination.
1:10:10
Speaker 1: Education was always higher among Latino voters than it was
1:10:14
Speaker 1: among all voters. Right. Education particularly for this is true
1:10:17
Speaker 1: of all first generation immigrant groups in this country, right,
1:10:20
Speaker 1: education is always right up there with the economy, and
1:10:23
Speaker 1: then sometimes over the economy.
1:10:25
Speaker 2: All immigrant groups, whether they've crossed the Real, the Pacific,
1:10:29
Speaker 2: or the Atlantic or the Mississippi, all of them always
1:10:34
Speaker 2: put education top because they made that struggle for the
1:10:37
Speaker 2: next generation. And that door of the school is that
1:10:41
Speaker 2: door into the middle class and every dream your parents
1:10:46
Speaker 2: had for you.
1:10:48
Speaker 1: Right, And I think used to put a period on
1:10:51
Speaker 1: this sentence. The only party even talking about education usually
1:10:57
Speaker 1: is the Republicans, not the Democrats.
1:10:59
Speaker 2: Well, look, I'm I mean this gets to this will
1:11:03
Speaker 2: age me. I don't care. I grew up at a
1:11:05
Speaker 2: time when you had Governor Bill Clinton, Governor Hunt, Governor
1:11:10
Speaker 2: Rithy who becomes Clinton secretary.
1:11:11
Speaker 1: But it was also Governor Alexander who.
1:11:15
Speaker 2: This was I'm Governor Winter, governor Child's Governor Miller. Now
1:11:18
Speaker 2: these were titans. They were in a competitive race to
1:11:22
Speaker 2: be the education governor. Had two things. I just told
1:11:25
Speaker 2: you before we got on what am I doing? And
1:11:27
Speaker 2: I was talking about going to Linda Maine Johnson. If
1:11:31
Speaker 2: you go back and look at the stuff while we
1:11:33
Speaker 2: know him, remember him for obviously the Warren poverty, the
1:11:36
Speaker 2: Great Society, but his what he wanted to be remembered
1:11:39
Speaker 2: as was the education governor. That's what he wanted to
1:11:44
Speaker 2: be remembered for. There's probably of one subject passed more
1:11:49
Speaker 2: individual bills in the education column than anything else.
1:11:52
Speaker 1: Why did lotteries spread like wildfire from nineteen ninety to
1:11:57
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six?
1:11:58
Speaker 2: Education?
1:11:59
Speaker 1: Right, everybody said I'm going to start at lottery and
1:12:02
Speaker 1: use it to fund education. Now, of course, the problem
1:12:04
Speaker 1: is every state legislature said, great, now, we don't need
1:12:07
Speaker 1: to fund education by education the lottery.
1:12:10
Speaker 2: Well yeah, so look, but I think here's the thing,
1:12:14
Speaker 2: and then you and we can pivot. This is also
1:12:17
Speaker 2: what I care about, passion of mice. I happen to
1:12:20
Speaker 2: think is what the public cares about. I'm gonna, as
1:12:22
Speaker 2: I said, I went to Mississippi, laid out an elementary.
1:12:26
Speaker 1: What did you learn about the Mississippi story? Because you know,
1:12:29
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who didn't think Mississippi's education
1:12:32
Speaker 1: plans would work. What why do you think it worked?
1:12:35
Speaker 2: Well? Two things. One is I've been following the debates
1:12:39
Speaker 2: on other topics, but when Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama replicate
1:12:45
Speaker 2: it and see similar gains, this was not a one
1:12:48
Speaker 2: trick pony. So this was clearly they had figured it out.
1:12:53
Speaker 2: And the truth is they didn't really figure out except
1:12:55
Speaker 2: for their return to the fundamentals. They rewired every teacher
1:13:00
Speaker 2: around the science and reading phonics train train trade, and
1:13:04
Speaker 2: they get constant trating it's not one and done right.
1:13:07
Speaker 2: They get a coach, the school gets a coach, The
1:13:10
Speaker 2: school coach coaches the principal coaches all the teachers on
1:13:15
Speaker 2: the sun and they.
1:13:16
Speaker 1: Give them the subject of teaching reading essentially.
1:13:19
Speaker 2: Okay, Two, they have a minimum. I'm doing this by memory,
1:13:24
Speaker 2: but I think it's an hour and fifteen minute per
1:13:27
Speaker 2: day for every child. Second is as a child is going.
1:13:34
Speaker 2: If that individual child needs more support than the hour
1:13:37
Speaker 2: and fifteen minutes every day, they get a tutor. Now,
1:13:43
Speaker 2: one thing I will say is and to their credit,
1:13:46
Speaker 2: and I met with mister Barksdale, the guy that created
1:13:48
Speaker 2: and that'scaped the funder this whole thing, I suppose structurally
1:13:52
Speaker 2: there was no other option. You couldn't kind of opt out.
1:13:55
Speaker 2: This is what you were doing. To get Mississippi money.
1:13:57
Speaker 2: You had to do this. So this was not like
1:14:00
Speaker 2: local control. They would no. And second is they're honest
1:14:06
Speaker 2: with themselves. They said, okay, we're doing really well, but
1:14:08
Speaker 2: we start to lose momentum in fourth and fifth grade.
1:14:11
Speaker 2: So they're now setting up reading clinics to try to
1:14:14
Speaker 2: figure out how to keep the third grade momentum going.
1:14:18
Speaker 2: There's also a one as element that left and everybody
1:14:20
Speaker 2: some A lot of people forget. If you don't meet
1:14:23
Speaker 2: the standard after I think it's three tests, you don't
1:14:25
Speaker 2: get to face the fourth grade. Now they don't just
1:14:29
Speaker 2: do read and get done. They do training support for teachers,
1:14:34
Speaker 2: rewiring on phone X, keeping them pop tout pop, you know,
1:14:38
Speaker 2: of their game. The principle understands it. They get kind
1:14:41
Speaker 2: of trained down it. The kids get a guaranteed minimum time.
1:14:46
Speaker 2: If you need more, they will get you more support.
1:14:49
Speaker 2: And obviously if you fail, you don't go forward. But
1:14:53
Speaker 2: if you succeed, not only go forward, but then they
1:14:55
Speaker 2: have now these reading clinics that they're going to try
1:14:57
Speaker 2: to figure out how to keep the momentum. And as
1:15:00
Speaker 2: I said, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, there's a county in Florida
1:15:06
Speaker 2: called Indian River County. All who have replicated all are
1:15:09
Speaker 2: seeing the same thing. So get back and do the fundamentals,
1:15:15
Speaker 2: and your kids will meet the scores. And I did
1:15:18
Speaker 2: this in Chicago. I look at Mississippi's demographics, and every
1:15:25
Speaker 2: smarty pants at every heavy league school would tell you,
1:15:28
Speaker 2: not those kids, not that zip code, not that race,
1:15:30
Speaker 2: not that gender, not that income. They tell you a
1:15:33
Speaker 2: hundred excuses. And Mississippi said, we're tired of being dead
1:15:36
Speaker 2: last from forty ninth to ninth. They went game on, baby,
1:15:42
Speaker 2: It's a great game on.
1:15:44
Speaker 1: It's a great story. Pivot a little bit of the politics,
1:15:56
Speaker 1: which is and I want to talk about out because you,
1:16:03
Speaker 1: I know, you want to talk a little bit about
1:16:05
Speaker 1: what Trump said about nationalizing federalizing elections. And I wrote
1:16:10
Speaker 1: a whole substackt on this phenomenon. And maybe this is
1:16:12
Speaker 1: more of a media issue, but also I think you
1:16:16
Speaker 1: as a politician have to figure out, you know, if
1:16:18
Speaker 1: you're trying to get people fired up about something, you
1:16:20
Speaker 1: have to find a way to get them interested in
1:16:22
Speaker 1: the topic. And here you have there's always what Trump says,
1:16:27
Speaker 1: and then there's stuff Trump does. And we have a
1:16:30
Speaker 1: remarkable capacity to focus on what he says and not
1:16:33
Speaker 1: enough on what he does. And the Abu Dhabi story
1:16:37
Speaker 1: in the Wall Street journal, which I think you wrote,
1:16:39
Speaker 1: you know, is just you know, it's it's one of
1:16:43
Speaker 1: those things we're so numb to it it takes your
1:16:45
Speaker 1: breath away, unbelievable. This is bigger than Teapot Dome. And
1:16:48
Speaker 1: I think Teapot Dome is the worst scandal against the
1:16:52
Speaker 1: American tax payer in history. Yes, and this is this
1:16:56
Speaker 1: force it It's not even a close call. Never mind,
1:16:59
Speaker 1: we don't even get to the fact that pardons are
1:17:01
Speaker 1: regularly sold. This is like a weekly thing. Every week
1:17:04
Speaker 1: there's a new round of partons. It's like, oh, Roger
1:17:06
Speaker 1: Stone has a client, and yet you know.
1:17:09
Speaker 2: And the os just become eBay.
1:17:13
Speaker 1: So why do you think you can get blaring hair
1:17:20
Speaker 1: on fire coverage on federalizing elections but essentially stealing from
1:17:26
Speaker 1: the American taxpayer and selling American foreign policy, which is
1:17:30
Speaker 1: what this was. And look, I think we want to
1:17:33
Speaker 1: be in business with UAE, you know, in a professional capacity. Okay,
1:17:38
Speaker 1: this is an important country, and so I'm not saying
1:17:42
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be in a straight up diplomatic and trade
1:17:46
Speaker 1: relation economic relationship country to country, but we shouldn't practice
1:17:51
Speaker 1: politics the way they practice politics. And it's also a
1:17:54
Speaker 1: constitutional last time you've.
1:17:56
Speaker 2: You've hit up one is. You're right, we should be
1:17:59
Speaker 2: in engaging the UA for both strategic, commercial and other interests.
1:18:04
Speaker 2: The problem is we're engaging in the UA for the
1:18:06
Speaker 2: Trump family commercial interests, not the Americans and the Wickaw family.
1:18:11
Speaker 2: Very clear, it's not Yeah, this is a second is
1:18:15
Speaker 2: you have And I think this has an impact on
1:18:17
Speaker 2: the president. As I wrote the other day in their journal,
1:18:20
Speaker 2: they feel betrayed. He was supposed to work on the
1:18:22
Speaker 2: American people's checkbook and he's focused on the Trump family
1:18:25
Speaker 2: checkbook and they know it, and they feel betrayed. And
1:18:28
Speaker 2: we have not seen the wholesale corruption like this, as
1:18:37
Speaker 2: you say, go back to teep hot Dome. But there's
1:18:41
Speaker 2: other elements. I've never seen something that is so brazen.
1:18:45
Speaker 2: I happened to think there's a broken windows strategy here,
1:18:49
Speaker 2: which is they've permitted the smaller crimes have kind of
1:18:52
Speaker 2: knocked down your antibodies, and it's created an environment for.
1:18:57
Speaker 1: A bigger If you notice who we pardon, the type
1:19:01
Speaker 1: of crime he always pardoned.
1:19:02
Speaker 2: What white collars, always financial.
1:19:05
Speaker 1: And every single one of them.
1:19:07
Speaker 2: It's not a coincidence. Nope, No, there's a pattern besides
1:19:10
Speaker 2: the cash and carry business in the Oval office. But
1:19:13
Speaker 2: this is what happened. Now, it'd be nice if you
1:19:16
Speaker 2: two things. I will say, he's gonna do what he's
1:19:18
Speaker 2: gonna do, right, It'd be good if you had a
1:19:21
Speaker 2: other branch of government holding the administration accountable, holding hearings,
1:19:26
Speaker 2: not just for the sake of holding hearings, because you
1:19:28
Speaker 2: have to shed light on this. And there is an
1:19:30
Speaker 2: element you now have. I think the deputy attorney not
1:19:35
Speaker 2: deputy I forgot Martin's title, but he is leaking a
1:19:42
Speaker 2: grand jury testimony and he quickly is getting out. But
1:19:45
Speaker 2: you know what, I also Robert Supreme Court. Remember inaugirl
1:19:50
Speaker 2: day Trump Folk said it goes thank you, just like
1:19:53
Speaker 2: thank you right at him. He gave him again on
1:19:55
Speaker 2: a jail card when he says, there's no way you
1:19:58
Speaker 2: can hold a president accountable, so you can't hold them accountable,
1:20:04
Speaker 2: so therefore he's going to steal the money. And the
1:20:08
Speaker 2: Supreme Court under Roberts has to be also. That's why
1:20:13
Speaker 2: that's why I'm in the view seventy five up and
1:20:17
Speaker 2: out across all three branches of government, because these guys
1:20:21
Speaker 2: have gotten really lazy.
1:20:25
Speaker 1: Well, I agree with you on that but I actually
1:20:26
Speaker 1: still blame the courts got put into a position to
1:20:31
Speaker 1: be getting involved in more activities that Congress should be doing. Right,
1:20:38
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about it, I've actually you know,
1:20:41
Speaker 1: I think our problem is Congress, right, the ineffect, the
1:20:45
Speaker 1: fact that it doesn't work. Right, they don't know it's
1:20:48
Speaker 1: that does a problem, right, it doesn't want to be
1:20:51
Speaker 1: the accountability branch. It's not doing these things but even
1:20:55
Speaker 1: simpler stuff. Right, why do we Why are the courts
1:20:58
Speaker 1: involved in reproductive rights because Congress wouldn't deal with it?
1:21:01
Speaker 1: Why did the courts have to get involved with desegregation
1:21:03
Speaker 1: because the Congress wouldn't deal with it?
1:21:05
Speaker 2: Right?
1:21:05
Speaker 1: Our broken Congress has then made people have to go
1:21:09
Speaker 1: to the courts. And then, of course the more the
1:21:11
Speaker 1: courts have been active, then you create interest groups that
1:21:15
Speaker 1: are trying to politicize the courts when ultimately the core
1:21:19
Speaker 1: the patient, the patient zero.
1:21:21
Speaker 2: As a reform member of Congress, her served elected four terms,
1:21:25
Speaker 2: served only three, but they have walked away from their
1:21:29
Speaker 2: responsibility full stop. And because they're not on point. As
1:21:35
Speaker 2: a co equal branch of government, you have any caffeinated
1:21:41
Speaker 2: executive branch run three bottles of red bull or cancer,
1:21:46
Speaker 2: red Bull and you have a Supreme Court that in mind,
1:21:49
Speaker 2: you you can you can give them. I'm not giving
1:21:51
Speaker 2: them a pass that you kind of I'll give them
1:21:53
Speaker 2: a pass because they know they gave a This is
1:22:00
Speaker 2: exactly I don't mean to get historical here, but you
1:22:03
Speaker 2: go to the Federals papers. This is exactly why what
1:22:07
Speaker 2: Hamilton and Madison were very concerned about, which is a
1:22:12
Speaker 2: corrupt executive, and the court says, whatever you do, you
1:22:17
Speaker 2: can't be held legally responsible. Now, I just tell you
1:22:21
Speaker 2: that was a get on. That was all this guy
1:22:23
Speaker 2: needs to get out of jail and that and he's
1:22:26
Speaker 2: gonna take it all the way to the bank, and
1:22:28
Speaker 2: we're going to be left holding the bag of Americans
1:22:30
Speaker 2: and him and his kids are gonna he's in here
1:22:32
Speaker 2: to make money and his kids are gonna make use
1:22:35
Speaker 2: of every day. And you get that Wall Street Journal story.
1:22:38
Speaker 2: I don't know about you. I read it twice because
1:22:41
Speaker 2: I as I'm an Emmanuel's never speechless. I was speechless.
1:22:48
Speaker 2: I could not believe. And let me ask you a question.
1:22:52
Speaker 2: How many people in the elected position today, well we're
1:22:59
Speaker 2: getting with all these subjects, any of them said, we
1:23:02
Speaker 2: need a understanding of what's went on here. We're selling
1:23:05
Speaker 2: probably the most important national security chip that we scared
1:23:09
Speaker 2: could go to China. We're selling it. We still have
1:23:14
Speaker 2: the same concerns. Now I'm gonna back up to you.
1:23:17
Speaker 2: And this gets to kind of another point. While I'm
1:23:19
Speaker 2: talking about nationals, that decision, et cetera, et cetera. This
1:23:23
Speaker 2: tells you how much Congress and Washington. But Congress, I'll
1:23:27
Speaker 2: give you that and the impact with no Washington post
1:23:31
Speaker 2: on point. Yeah, you have the head, the Director of
1:23:36
Speaker 2: National Intelligence. You have China g unbeknownst to anybody else,
1:23:44
Speaker 2: firing as head of the armed forces, and every intelligence
1:23:47
Speaker 2: agency across the globe is looking at our Director of
1:23:50
Speaker 2: National Intelligence is in Fulton, Georgia. Ways said, no, no,
1:23:55
Speaker 2: you laugh. We're about to go into the talks with Iran.
1:23:58
Speaker 2: I know what happens. You get these tell breeze on
1:24:01
Speaker 2: what you think. Where are the divisions in the Iranian position,
1:24:05
Speaker 2: Who's from what, etc? Yea our d and I Director
1:24:09
Speaker 2: and now Fulton, Georgia. You're about to host Russia, Ukraine
1:24:13
Speaker 2: in the United States and one of the most important
1:24:15
Speaker 2: part of the negotiations, whereas Europe. Our Director of National
1:24:19
Speaker 2: Intelligence Fulton, Georgia. Looking at ballots tells you everything you
1:24:23
Speaker 2: need to know about this administration. You have three and
1:24:27
Speaker 2: I'm probably leaving five events off across the globe. There's
1:24:31
Speaker 2: sixteen plus intelligence agen. You see a feeding interr she's
1:24:34
Speaker 2: in Fulton, Georgia calling the President's cell phone so he
1:24:37
Speaker 2: can talk to the FBI agents. Okay, you want to
1:24:41
Speaker 2: know why America's got a problem. We got an administration
1:24:45
Speaker 2: with the wrong priorities and the American people know, which
1:24:47
Speaker 2: is why the Republics are going to pay a price
1:24:49
Speaker 2: this November.
1:24:50
Speaker 1: So it's interesting you put it that way because I
1:24:53
Speaker 1: am somebody who still thinks, look, the election system's going
1:24:56
Speaker 1: to happen. But I know I'm sure people come up
1:24:58
Speaker 1: to you because they come up to me when I
1:24:59
Speaker 1: give talks. Are you sure he's gonna accept the midterms?
1:25:04
Speaker 1: Are you sure he's gonna not invoke the Insurrection Act?
1:25:06
Speaker 1: Are you sure? And it's like, look, with Trump, nothing's
1:25:11
Speaker 1: you know, there's no one hundred percent okay, And I
1:25:13
Speaker 1: and I accept that there are certain things he can't
1:25:17
Speaker 1: screw with. And I think our election systems are so diffuse,
1:25:20
Speaker 1: and so you know, you know the lack of federalization
1:25:23
Speaker 1: is what makes is a feature not a bug. Right,
1:25:26
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm pretty confident that we're going to have
1:25:28
Speaker 1: a normal, small, the democratic response to this administration. Am
1:25:34
Speaker 1: I not alarmist enough? Where are you on this? Because
1:25:37
Speaker 1: you know, being an alarmist in some ways, is it's good?
1:25:41
Speaker 1: It could be good politics for the moment, you know,
1:25:44
Speaker 1: like you've got somebody. Look, Gavin Newsom's out there saying
1:25:46
Speaker 1: this is what he wants to do. And you can't
1:25:49
Speaker 1: say Gavin's wrong, but I think he's been a bit
1:25:52
Speaker 1: of alarmist, but I understand who he's talking to. Let's
1:25:55
Speaker 1: say it.
1:25:55
Speaker 2: Well, three things. One is I do think it's weird
1:25:58
Speaker 2: that nobody wanting him made the connection between the Director
1:26:00
Speaker 2: of National Intelligence is infulted and you have three massive
1:26:04
Speaker 2: international events.
1:26:05
Speaker 1: Right, But you're you're accepting the premise that she's actually
1:26:08
Speaker 1: a player in the intelligence Well.
1:26:10
Speaker 2: I'm accepting the premise that the United States Senate confirmed
1:26:13
Speaker 2: her knowing full well every one of them. That was perfect. Yes,
1:26:21
Speaker 2: look at mister Cassidy and his big conscious vote for Kennedy.
1:26:24
Speaker 2: Now he's getting his butt kicked, lost his conscious and
1:26:27
Speaker 2: lost his election. Number two on the alarmist versus art.
1:26:33
Speaker 2: What keeps me up is they're going to do a
1:26:38
Speaker 2: lot FBI ice before the election. But it's, as you said,
1:26:44
Speaker 2: the diffusion because he's trying to consolidate it, will keep
1:26:49
Speaker 2: it somewhat, have some antibodies and protection. I worry about
1:26:56
Speaker 2: the post election and seeding.
1:26:59
Speaker 1: That's that's what I bring out.
1:27:01
Speaker 2: Okay, so close environment, yes, double so.
1:27:04
Speaker 1: People in about the power of the House on this.
1:27:06
Speaker 2: Okay, So here is I said this here who was
1:27:12
Speaker 2: in the Mississippi town hall? U what we did up
1:27:16
Speaker 2: in the water Valley? And I said, if somebody asked
1:27:21
Speaker 2: something kind of along the lines of what you asked,
1:27:23
Speaker 2: but you know close enough, it's a cousin of what
1:27:24
Speaker 2: you asked. I said, Look, what I really worry about
1:27:28
Speaker 2: is from this perspective, I think he's going to do
1:27:30
Speaker 2: a lot before the election. I happen to think the
1:27:33
Speaker 2: thin blue line that's going to protect this country is
1:27:35
Speaker 2: the American people. The Supreme Court walked, Corporate America walked,
1:27:40
Speaker 2: media titans and owners walked. The American people will protect
1:27:44
Speaker 2: this country. And I have confidence in that he and
1:27:46
Speaker 2: he is not a look the President of isays I
1:27:49
Speaker 2: don't agree with anything. But he knows that Democrats in
1:27:52
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five won thirteen out of thirteen state wide elections.
1:27:55
Speaker 2: He knows what's coming, so he's going.
1:27:57
Speaker 1: To do talking about it.
1:27:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's going about it. He's going to do everything
1:28:01
Speaker 2: he can, sorry by everything he can before the election.
1:28:05
Speaker 2: I still believe not after. The Constitution is very clear
1:28:13
Speaker 2: about the role of the speaker in organizing the House.
1:28:19
Speaker 2: The former speaker has a role before you get to
1:28:22
Speaker 2: the new Congress to let the new speaker. And I
1:28:26
Speaker 2: believe if you ask me, one part of my brain says,
1:28:31
Speaker 2: I'm kind of at forty to sixty on the paranoia
1:28:35
Speaker 2: after the election, I'm seventy thirty eighty twenty because January sixth.
1:28:41
Speaker 1: In this case, it's January third.
1:28:43
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what I worry about.
1:28:46
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you say that, and I'm the additional
1:28:49
Speaker 1: detail I include when I when I say when I'm like, look,
1:28:52
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about November. If it's really close, like
1:28:58
Speaker 1: I also think it's eight seats or less. Correct, if
1:29:02
Speaker 1: it's a blowout, I don't think Mike Johnson can do anything.
1:29:06
Speaker 1: But if we're talking like what we just had in
1:29:08
Speaker 1: twenty two and in twenty you know, we're sitting here
1:29:11
Speaker 1: in a three to five seat swing. Yeah.
1:29:14
Speaker 2: Ready, I want to do the phone call for you. Yeah,
1:29:17
Speaker 2: you can find me the votes.
1:29:19
Speaker 1: You can find me or you don't have to see
1:29:21
Speaker 1: certain people.
1:29:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is and Johnson, No, I'm not exactly what
1:29:29
Speaker 2: I say is a profound courage. You're gonna need a
1:29:32
Speaker 2: Mike penn'ce courage. And I'm not sure Speaker Johnson has that.
1:29:36
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty cool.
1:29:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't. And you know, I did it
1:29:40
Speaker 2: something we I.
1:29:41
Speaker 1: Mean, I am one of those who sort of I
1:29:44
Speaker 1: will respect how he got there. He's only there thanks
1:29:48
Speaker 1: to the the wills one person, Donald Trump, Right, So
1:29:54
Speaker 1: he's going to do his bidding because his political career
1:29:58
Speaker 1: is over if he does. And that's the that's the
1:30:02
Speaker 1: scary part of it.
1:30:03
Speaker 2: So you asked me, I get why, you know, I
1:30:07
Speaker 2: don't I understand why Governor k Newsom would say what
1:30:10
Speaker 2: he said.
1:30:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm not like, I think it's about arms.
1:30:13
Speaker 2: But in the you know the Joe, you know the joke,
1:30:17
Speaker 2: John Even paranoid people have enemies. So in the business
1:30:21
Speaker 2: of having a paranoia, mine is on January third, not
1:30:25
Speaker 2: on November six. Yea, I think that's the date.
1:30:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think so far of this of
1:30:32
Speaker 1: the Democratic team trying to head up the midterms? What
1:30:36
Speaker 1: have you liked so far? And what do you think
1:30:38
Speaker 1: needs improvement?
1:30:39
Speaker 2: Look, I I well, I kind of let me take
1:30:45
Speaker 2: a step back and tell you how I kind of
1:30:47
Speaker 2: view this. I see twenty twenty six and twenty twenty
1:30:52
Speaker 2: eight as a compendium elections.
1:30:58
Speaker 1: Potentially mirror images of six and eight in your head.
1:31:01
Speaker 2: Yes, so two things that are underappreciated and I don't
1:31:04
Speaker 2: see out in the bloodstream. We win in six thirty seats,
1:31:10
Speaker 2: but we use seven to set up eight in the
1:31:14
Speaker 2: main same way that George Mitchell going back to ninety
1:31:16
Speaker 2: one and the government budget forces George Bush to sign
1:31:20
Speaker 2: the tax increase, break his pledge and sets up Bill
1:31:23
Speaker 2: Clinton in ninety two.
1:31:25
Speaker 1: Yep.
1:31:27
Speaker 2: Oh, so two things that I think are really really important.
1:31:30
Speaker 2: I happen to think the Democrats have good candidates out there,
1:31:34
Speaker 2: they have a quality of candiates, They've done a good
1:31:36
Speaker 2: job recruitment where I'm I think there's an there's a
1:31:41
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven. Well, let me back up in twenty
1:31:44
Speaker 2: twenty six. I still think they need a six and
1:31:47
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six because eighty percent of this is a
1:31:50
Speaker 2: referendum on the Republicans. But you got to put a
1:31:52
Speaker 2: little lipstick here. We're gonna do a minimum wage, we're
1:31:55
Speaker 2: gonna do rate payers Bill of Rights, we're gonna do
1:31:58
Speaker 2: ethics reform, a change election. You know there has a
1:32:02
Speaker 2: monicam over. Here's why we're asking you not just to
1:32:04
Speaker 2: vote against them again. Eighty percent is a vote against them,
1:32:07
Speaker 2: as you can see in all the elections, but twenty
1:32:10
Speaker 2: percent were safe hands. Twenty twenty seven is very important
1:32:15
Speaker 2: to setting up twenty twenty eight. In that period, also,
1:32:20
Speaker 2: we've got three presidentials that seven states, six hundred thousand voters,
1:32:25
Speaker 2: seven hundred thousand voters have decided who's president. There should
1:32:29
Speaker 2: not be an empty line from school board to governor
1:32:33
Speaker 2: in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. No
1:32:40
Speaker 2: line should not have a surfer and a surfboard on it.
1:32:45
Speaker 2: Because I think this is going to be a wave
1:32:46
Speaker 2: election like ninety four six, twenty ten, and twenty eighteen,
1:32:51
Speaker 2: and if I'm right, getting into Arizona throughout the state,
1:32:58
Speaker 2: that state rep, that school board, that county commissioner, that supervisor,
1:33:04
Speaker 2: all the way up, true in Nevada, all the way up,
1:33:08
Speaker 2: true in Georgia, all the way up from the bottom up.
1:33:13
Speaker 2: You're organizing in twenty twenty six for twenty twenty eight,
1:33:16
Speaker 2: and you're deep, digging deep. Don't show up in twenty
1:33:20
Speaker 2: twenty eight in Georgia two months out and say, well,
1:33:23
Speaker 2: we got beat at this game. Well, the game started
1:33:26
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty six. Is started much earlier. But you
1:33:27
Speaker 2: get the point. So that's the two things. And I
1:33:30
Speaker 2: still think I don't mean to leave the Senate out,
1:33:34
Speaker 2: And but you look at this, I you know there's
1:33:36
Speaker 2: a fundamental and I happen to think.
1:33:38
Speaker 1: I think you have to. You have a way, you
1:33:41
Speaker 1: have as if the Senate is winnable, and if you don't.
1:33:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think this. This is all the makings
1:33:49
Speaker 2: of a wave election. You can see it in everything
1:33:54
Speaker 2: that we're looking at electorally. And B I think you
1:33:57
Speaker 2: wrote to this. And I'm a big believer the table
1:34:01
Speaker 2: is set by mid spring, not just by Kennedy, but
1:34:05
Speaker 2: by issue. And to me, you're gonna buy. I'm saying
1:34:14
Speaker 2: May fifteenth. But in that zone. We're going to know
1:34:18
Speaker 2: more about what's going to happen May in November, in
1:34:22
Speaker 2: May than you will in September.
1:34:33
Speaker 1: The Republicans, the one thing they're holding their hat on, right,
1:34:36
Speaker 1: they're hanging their hat on, is that tax season and
1:34:39
Speaker 1: tax refund season is going to make a whole bunch
1:34:41
Speaker 1: of people happy. And I actually think it's going to
1:34:43
Speaker 1: piss them off when they find out all this extra
1:34:46
Speaker 1: money is gone because it went to groceries, the electric bill,
1:34:50
Speaker 1: and healthcare.
1:34:51
Speaker 2: No, they do not that. Basically, While I believe in
1:34:56
Speaker 2: the power of prayer, that's a lot of prayer.
1:34:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, let me you know, because this is always
1:35:03
Speaker 1: the tyranny of of leading a political party is that.
1:35:07
Speaker 2: You're stupid until election day.
1:35:09
Speaker 1: Well, there's that, but there's no upside in being the
1:35:13
Speaker 1: long term planner, right. It's like you're right, like, hey,
1:35:17
Speaker 1: we've got a plan for twenty thirty two, and yet
1:35:20
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, but if you don't win in twenty
1:35:22
Speaker 1: twenty eight, you're going to get fired, right, you know.
1:35:24
Speaker 1: It's like the general manager that goes ahead and trades
1:35:27
Speaker 1: early for future first drund draft picks because he knows
1:35:31
Speaker 1: if he doesn't win. Now he's getting fired. He's not
1:35:33
Speaker 1: going to be making that draft pick. Twenty thirty two
1:35:38
Speaker 1: is a sobering moment for the Democratic Party in presidential elections,
1:35:41
Speaker 1: given what looks like is going to be a dramatic
1:35:44
Speaker 1: shift from the north to the south, with a dramatic
1:35:47
Speaker 1: shift from the coast electoral College electoral vote standpoint. Yeah. Yeah,
1:35:52
Speaker 1: So I hear your plan about the seven states, You're like, hey,
1:35:55
Speaker 1: and you know every single election should be competitive and
1:35:59
Speaker 1: you don't leave any stone unturned. What are the next
1:36:04
Speaker 1: three states that at a minimum right now you throw
1:36:08
Speaker 1: into the bucket, because look, you've got to start thinking
1:36:12
Speaker 1: about you know, I mean when you look at the
1:36:15
Speaker 1: path that fifty one Senate seats for Democrats, they have
1:36:17
Speaker 1: to sweep the battlegrounds just to get the fifty two
1:36:21
Speaker 1: or fifty.
1:36:21
Speaker 2: Three, not and not screw up Michigan in the primary.
1:36:23
Speaker 1: That's my point, right, And that's just akay. So here's
1:36:27
Speaker 1: what are like the next states that if you could
1:36:30
Speaker 1: get rewarded for investing in the long term, that you'd
1:36:33
Speaker 1: be investing in right now.
1:36:34
Speaker 2: Well, there's two states that come quickly to mind, because
1:36:41
Speaker 2: I think something's underappreciated that fascinating to me. Not as
1:36:46
Speaker 2: fascinating as energy production or AI, but fascinating from a
1:36:52
Speaker 2: pure political Two former elected Republicans in Florida and in
1:36:59
Speaker 2: Georgia are running in the Democratic primary for governor. It
1:37:03
Speaker 2: is nice. Yeah, And I say that's interesting because both
1:37:08
Speaker 2: if you listened to them but made a decision that
1:37:10
Speaker 2: the Republican Party is, they can't recognize it and they
1:37:15
Speaker 2: find more affinity in the Democratic Party.
1:37:20
Speaker 1: And I don't know, let's pause there. David Jolly and
1:37:22
Speaker 1: Jeff Duncan are the two guys you're.
1:37:24
Speaker 2: Referring to, lieutenant governor and a former congress.
1:37:26
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, These weren't liberal Republicans when they were elected.
1:37:30
Speaker 1: They were very much Chamber.
1:37:32
Speaker 2: Of Romney John McCain Republicans.
1:37:34
Speaker 1: Yes, Mitt Romney, probably more Mett Romney than even John McCain.
1:37:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally agree. They would probably say that Kay and
1:37:40
Speaker 2: I find as a socio political phenomenon. They looked around
1:37:47
Speaker 2: and maybe both of them said, oh, I can't win
1:37:49
Speaker 2: in the Republican primary. I don't think it was that pragmatic.
1:37:53
Speaker 2: I actually think they looked and they said, I'm not
1:37:56
Speaker 2: a Republican anymore. This is not my party. In the
1:37:59
Speaker 2: same way, same region. A lot of bolt evils, right
1:38:06
Speaker 2: blue dogs, you know, basically woke up one morning, so
1:38:09
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party is not my home anymore and became Republicans.
1:38:12
Speaker 2: Now the traffic is flowing the other way. Now, Paulus,
1:38:16
Speaker 2: will the party welcome what they get out of here? Yeah?
1:38:22
Speaker 2: And here's here's the.
1:38:23
Speaker 1: Thing that we're going to find out, aren't we.
1:38:25
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to find out two things that's very interesting.
1:38:29
Speaker 2: One is we always say we want to be a
1:38:31
Speaker 2: big ten party. We're going to see you who in
1:38:34
Speaker 2: the party thinks set So there's going to be that.
1:38:38
Speaker 2: And two is I don't think the party, my party
1:38:44
Speaker 2: is fully appreciated that almost fifty percent of the country
1:38:48
Speaker 2: is not in a party. The fastest growing party is
1:38:52
Speaker 2: unaffiliated voters under thirty five. And then second, contrary to
1:39:01
Speaker 2: popular view that somehow if you use a little smelling salts,
1:39:05
Speaker 2: the New Deal coalition will just pop up out of
1:39:07
Speaker 2: nowhere again that in fact, what Trump showed you is
1:39:12
Speaker 2: coalitions are forming and shaping in real time, and you've
1:39:18
Speaker 2: got to make a decision. In my view, that is
1:39:22
Speaker 2: what I argued in the journal piece. The unaffiliated voters,
1:39:26
Speaker 2: which are now forty five percent and growing. That's your majority.
1:39:33
Speaker 2: Now you can decide to go get that majority and
1:39:36
Speaker 2: not make it electorally transactional, but make it transformational, or
1:39:41
Speaker 2: you can decide not to. And I think these guys
1:39:44
Speaker 2: moving over is a window both to the unaffiliated and
1:39:48
Speaker 2: soft Republicans that we can be something bigger. And so
1:39:53
Speaker 2: I keep my eye Georgia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
1:39:58
Speaker 2: That's my three stick. That was my reason.
1:40:00
Speaker 1: There's your extra state that you would throw in a
1:40:02
Speaker 1: so you'd throw fourth.
1:40:03
Speaker 2: Three states to keep your eye on. Are those three
1:40:06
Speaker 2: states for the long for the twenty thirty two and beyond.
1:40:12
Speaker 1: There's this perception that to be a strong Democrat you
1:40:16
Speaker 1: have to be a progressive, that you can't be from
1:40:19
Speaker 1: the center left, you can't be you know, And I think, look,
1:40:24
Speaker 1: I think history shows that Bill Clinton showed you could
1:40:27
Speaker 1: be considered a strong partisan and at the same time
1:40:31
Speaker 1: govern more from the center than from the base. But
1:40:35
Speaker 1: that was not appreciated in real time, no, I think,
1:40:39
Speaker 1: and it arguably took it. I don't know if the
1:40:42
Speaker 1: Democratic Party appreciates that even today. So in fact, I
1:40:46
Speaker 1: just read an interesting little memo that somebody wants to
1:40:49
Speaker 1: circulate and we're asking me to read it, just sort
1:40:51
Speaker 1: of making the case that hey, this milk toast centrism
1:40:54
Speaker 1: is not the answer.
1:40:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you say? Well, he had a big
1:41:01
Speaker 2: primary New Jersey for governor six hands. We had the
1:41:05
Speaker 2: mayor Newark, very progressive, mayor Jersey, very progressive, president of
1:41:10
Speaker 2: the teachers Union, the largest union of state. Two members
1:41:13
Speaker 2: of Congress. Two members of Congress were on the moderate
1:41:16
Speaker 2: to conservative wing of the party. Their combined vote was
1:41:20
Speaker 2: forty nine point seven and the one that topped out
1:41:24
Speaker 2: of the five was the most conservative of the five.
1:41:29
Speaker 2: B You had an eleven candidates for Jerry Connelly C
1:41:32
Speaker 2: Congressional one k out of eleven got fifty nine percent,
1:41:37
Speaker 2: and he was the most moderate conservative. Whatever you want
1:41:39
Speaker 2: to use of the eleven and one's with not thirty
1:41:43
Speaker 2: but fifty nine percent. You and I are sitting here
1:41:46
Speaker 2: today will be very interesting. We won't know the answer. Thursday,
1:41:51
Speaker 2: there's a primary in New Jersey for Mikey Michaels Mikey
1:41:57
Speaker 2: Cheryl's congressional seat. That is a pretty wide spectr Lieutenant governor,
1:42:01
Speaker 2: former member of Congress, a supervisor Kenny and a person
1:42:07
Speaker 2: who found themselves is kind of like AOC. So we'll see.
1:42:11
Speaker 2: I don't think I think there's a bigger moderate wing
1:42:16
Speaker 2: of the party and there's a bigger pragmatic wing. Now,
1:42:19
Speaker 2: one thing that we know from presidential history Clinton, John Kerry,
1:42:24
Speaker 2: Joe Biden that ultimately, when the parties walk backs against
1:42:29
Speaker 2: the wall, they go pragmatic, not ideological. Winning will be
1:42:34
Speaker 2: more important than any particular thing.
1:42:37
Speaker 1: That's what well, that's been my I've made two points
1:42:39
Speaker 1: about like people always ask me, you know, who's who's
1:42:42
Speaker 1: the front runner? And I always say I flipped the script,
1:42:45
Speaker 1: and I always say, you know, at this point in time,
1:42:47
Speaker 1: nobody was talking about Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety, at
1:42:50
Speaker 1: this point in time, No, no.
1:42:51
Speaker 2: You were talking no, no, no worse than that. At
1:42:54
Speaker 2: this point in time, mario'comell, Bill Bradley, Bill Clinton was
1:42:59
Speaker 2: at two percent.
1:43:01
Speaker 1: And it was right. He wasn't even he wasn't even
1:43:05
Speaker 1: really being he wasn't high enough to even be talked
1:43:08
Speaker 1: about as a dark horse. Yes, by the way, Jimmy Carter,
1:43:12
Speaker 1: same thing. I'll give you another one that I like
1:43:14
Speaker 1: to remind people of just recently, if I told you
1:43:16
Speaker 1: at this point in time in the twenty twenty cycle,
1:43:19
Speaker 1: which would be February of twenty eighteen. Hey, rom you
1:43:23
Speaker 1: know who's going to be one of the finalists for
1:43:25
Speaker 1: the Democratic nomination for President's going to be the mayor
1:43:28
Speaker 1: of South Bend. You know, the guy that just and
1:43:31
Speaker 1: you would say, you mean the guy that lost DNC
1:43:33
Speaker 1: chair and I'd be like, yeah, that guy. So it
1:43:36
Speaker 1: tells you the Democratic Party always is looking for what
1:43:39
Speaker 1: I always say is two things new and somebody who
1:43:46
Speaker 1: you know, isn't that who hasn't been sort of in
1:43:49
Speaker 1: their face for the last five.
1:43:50
Speaker 2: Well, let me say this. The worst place to be
1:43:52
Speaker 2: in the Democratic Party is front runner three years out.
1:43:56
Speaker 1: Oh I know. I joke about that with Gavin You're like, okay, yeah,
1:44:00
Speaker 1: you win the first year and ask Kellary Clayton what
1:44:02
Speaker 1: that's like. And she was the front runner O five exactly,
1:44:07
Speaker 1: you know, al Gore was the front runner and oh one.
1:44:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I do think one thing that's very clear,
1:44:14
Speaker 2: and I say this is look as I evalue, make
1:44:17
Speaker 2: my view. Yeah, twenty twenty eight and for the country
1:44:20
Speaker 2: and for the party will be the first primary election
1:44:23
Speaker 2: and general election in which the future will be on
1:44:25
Speaker 2: the ballot.
1:44:27
Speaker 1: You know, we've done that. You could argue that it's
1:44:29
Speaker 1: funny we do this every twenty years. It's funny how
1:44:32
Speaker 1: it's worked out that way. Sixty eight wasn't open, eighty
1:44:35
Speaker 1: eight wasn't open. Eight wasn't open, twenty eight is an open.
1:44:40
Speaker 1: It's just interesting how it's just fallen that way.
1:44:42
Speaker 2: And I think we've had make America great again, build
1:44:47
Speaker 2: back better. You know, well, they're different in many many policyways. Spiritually,
1:44:52
Speaker 2: they emanate that they look through the rear view mirror
1:44:55
Speaker 2: with this hazy nostalgic sense rather than look to the
1:44:59
Speaker 2: future and say, here, what we're going.
1:45:00
Speaker 1: To do right?
1:45:01
Speaker 2: You know of a product of Bill Clinton's don't stop
1:45:04
Speaker 2: thinking about tomorrow.
1:45:05
Speaker 1: Or building a bridge to the twenty first century. It's
1:45:08
Speaker 1: one of my favorite like with I mean the joke
1:45:11
Speaker 1: you tell me fill in the gaps here. But I
1:45:12
Speaker 1: believe Bill Clinton hadn't figured out what his accepted speech
1:45:16
Speaker 1: theme was going to be. Bob Dole gave his yeah,
1:45:20
Speaker 1: and he's like, huh. When he wanted to build a
1:45:22
Speaker 1: bridge to the fifties or whatever it was, it was
1:45:24
Speaker 1: a bridge to the past.
1:45:25
Speaker 2: Very nostalgic. It was a nostalgic.
1:45:26
Speaker 1: Speech and literally aha, I mean it was sort of
1:45:30
Speaker 1: that suddenly gave it gave Clinton an idea, right, you know,
1:45:34
Speaker 1: it allowed him.
1:45:35
Speaker 2: Not only to be future, but also continue to be
1:45:38
Speaker 2: changed while you were running as the incumbent.
1:45:40
Speaker 1: Right, how did we end up? You know, it's funny
1:45:43
Speaker 1: the rules of politics that I grew up with, you know,
1:45:46
Speaker 1: whether it was well the candidates to talk about the
1:45:49
Speaker 1: future when candidates that talk about the past lose. Yet
1:45:52
Speaker 1: we had three straight presidents, right, Trump twice and Biden
1:45:56
Speaker 1: once who won by talking about the past.
1:45:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean each election is each election is slightly different.
1:46:07
Speaker 2: But maybe take a look at Joe Biden's twenty twenty
1:46:11
Speaker 2: This is my take. The past wasn't so much the
1:46:16
Speaker 2: factory or this. It was a time in which there
1:46:19
Speaker 2: was more comedy than conflict. If you ask me where
1:46:24
Speaker 2: he broke faith with the public, wasn't Yes, he made
1:46:29
Speaker 2: an implyed pledge. She never disabused the public. I'm not
1:46:33
Speaker 2: running again at twenty twenty four, then broke in. But
1:46:35
Speaker 2: I think the bigger pledge he broke with the public
1:46:41
Speaker 2: my observation. And I still think he'll man. He's a friend,
1:46:46
Speaker 2: and I think he I have a different view over
1:46:48
Speaker 2: the presidency. But his bigger break was he said I'm
1:46:51
Speaker 2: going to bring more comedy, and he ended up trying
1:46:55
Speaker 2: to unite the party, not the country. And I think
1:46:58
Speaker 2: that's where he gets off the rails. I think if
1:47:02
Speaker 2: you ask me why the party, why the country wanted
1:47:06
Speaker 2: some of this kind of nostalgic was And this is
1:47:11
Speaker 2: something I've been working through when you say, look, we've
1:47:14
Speaker 2: had our political difference, as partisanship is not do new
1:47:16
Speaker 2: to American politics. Fighting hard is not new to America.
1:47:20
Speaker 2: But there was a kind of a boundary sense.
1:47:22
Speaker 1: We were exhausted. We did to reset.
1:47:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and this this is a uh and I
1:47:28
Speaker 2: you know, look, you got three more years of Donald Trump.
1:47:31
Speaker 2: So the question is, and I think this will be.
1:47:33
Speaker 2: This is what I'm betting on, is the country is
1:47:34
Speaker 2: going to look at this and say, Okay, the puck
1:47:36
Speaker 2: will be not to have a democratic version of Donald Trump.
1:47:40
Speaker 2: The puck is going to be how do we Yeah,
1:47:43
Speaker 2: And I think that's actually what's you know, one of
1:47:45
Speaker 2: the things I've talked about is the party should be
1:47:47
Speaker 2: post Minneapolis. I know this will come. Yes, there's an
1:47:49
Speaker 2: ice component, there's an immigration component, there's actually, I think
1:47:55
Speaker 2: all the people in Minneapolis showed their true citizenship is
1:48:01
Speaker 2: not to democracy. But also I have an obligation to
1:48:04
Speaker 2: my neighbor. I have an obligation to the person down
1:48:07
Speaker 2: the road. And I believe the answer to the future
1:48:10
Speaker 2: is national service, reigniting that sense of bonds. Not your diversity,
1:48:16
Speaker 2: not your differences, but your commonality. And I think the
1:48:19
Speaker 2: country's isn't desperate form, which is why going back to
1:48:22
Speaker 2: five but is recently his last year for the paper
1:48:25
Speaker 2: The Washington Boss wrote about the need for national service.
1:48:30
Speaker 2: I am the last six months of high school should
1:48:32
Speaker 2: be mandatory. Six months clean a river, work alongside kids
1:48:37
Speaker 2: you never met, tutor, do a series of things because
1:48:42
Speaker 2: guess what, being an American is a gift. Yeah, and
1:48:46
Speaker 2: you need to reach I treat that gift with care.
1:48:49
Speaker 1: It's the single best idea Clinton had in the nineties,
1:48:53
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry it never I believe the Right killed
1:48:56
Speaker 1: it because they thought it was gonna.
1:48:57
Speaker 2: Well he did. He got court two things.
1:49:01
Speaker 1: He got Americ Corps.
1:49:01
Speaker 2: But the right, I'll give you a great anecdote, so
1:49:04
Speaker 2: we get Americrps doesn't get as big as he wants.
1:49:07
Speaker 2: Compromises et cetera. John McCain and Lindsey Graham come to
1:49:14
Speaker 2: Chicago in the Obama transition. One of the things that
1:49:20
Speaker 2: and we have a meeting there President elect Obama, Senator McCain,
1:49:24
Speaker 2: Senator Lindsay Graham, and UH and myself. There's a commitment
1:49:31
Speaker 2: that is, we're dealing with the auto industry and we're
1:49:33
Speaker 2: dealing with the financial you know, we will do a
1:49:37
Speaker 2: rewrite of both America or National Service and Peace Corps.
1:49:42
Speaker 2: And if you get past Lily Ledbetter, that shows health,
1:49:46
Speaker 2: the recovery, the budget team they and obviously Kennedy's ill.
1:49:51
Speaker 2: So there's an interest, there's a bigger motive to uh
1:49:55
Speaker 2: fulfill the pledge that the President of elect Obama and
1:49:58
Speaker 2: they chok on it, and that becomes in the spring
1:50:03
Speaker 2: of nine, the President signs into along with pass and
1:50:07
Speaker 2: a significant expansion of both AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps
1:50:10
Speaker 2: National Service legislation. But if you go back to Clinton,
1:50:14
Speaker 2: it was cut down. You know, those were the days
1:50:17
Speaker 2: it was coming out of seriously things. But he's still
1:50:19
Speaker 2: got amer Corps done. Yeah, not just.
1:50:22
Speaker 1: Because he wanted I got two more questions. He said,
1:50:28
Speaker 1: two more topics for you, and then I get you
1:50:29
Speaker 1: out of here.
1:50:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, one is and sniffling, But I got a head.
1:50:35
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it. Yeah, one is. Are
1:50:39
Speaker 1: we at a I think we're at a moment. We
1:50:42
Speaker 1: had the robber barons one hundred years ago, we have
1:50:44
Speaker 1: the tech titans of today. I think the anger at
1:50:48
Speaker 1: rich people I am, I am, I joke all the time.
1:50:52
Speaker 1: The pitchforks are being sharpened. And there are pitchforks in
1:50:55
Speaker 1: both parties right in different reasons, and they're coming. Yeah,
1:51:00
Speaker 1: what does this look like in an in in an
1:51:02
Speaker 1: A Ram administration? What do you what is tru And
1:51:05
Speaker 1: do we need a trust busting moment? And can you
1:51:09
Speaker 1: run against billionaires without coming across as against you don't
1:51:14
Speaker 1: make money?
1:51:16
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. I actually think one of the
1:51:19
Speaker 2: big problems facing the country is that our entire tax
1:51:22
Speaker 2: code is is now focused on wealth preservation, not wealth creation.
1:51:27
Speaker 2: When you really rip take Mitt Romney and he writes
1:51:30
Speaker 2: this up ed tax me more. But when you take
1:51:33
Speaker 2: each of the pieces and components that he talks about
1:51:36
Speaker 2: the whole, that's I don't mean to get technical, step up.
1:51:40
Speaker 2: It's about preserving wealth and it's not about creating wealth.
1:51:42
Speaker 2: It's not passing out to another generations. You never passed
1:51:44
Speaker 2: big taxes. This is insane. Now he does it from
1:51:48
Speaker 2: a fiscal perspective. I would take it from an investment
1:51:51
Speaker 2: perspective into future generations. And I'm based on my friendship
1:51:55
Speaker 2: with former Sarah Ronnie Romney Mitt. I don't think you
1:51:59
Speaker 2: would just agree with a number of things. There'd be
1:52:01
Speaker 2: more consensus on what the things you should pestine put
1:52:04
Speaker 2: that aside look like. Is that when I said, first
1:52:08
Speaker 2: person to say in either party sixteen and younger, no
1:52:13
Speaker 2: more social media apps. Protect the kids. And I've never
1:52:17
Speaker 2: met a parent in all my walkings around the country.
1:52:20
Speaker 2: My kid needs more time on the screen.
1:52:23
Speaker 1: I've never met that paron okay exactly.
1:52:25
Speaker 2: They feel that these guys have taken their kids away
1:52:29
Speaker 2: from them and are raising them on an algorithm that's addictive,
1:52:33
Speaker 2: and there's as much anger at that, as much as
1:52:36
Speaker 2: nobody has told these people bosto, take your hands off
1:52:40
Speaker 2: my kids. So there's a wealth piece, there's a power piece,
1:52:44
Speaker 2: and they feel like the government's role and we've been
1:52:47
Speaker 2: the government has been a well is to basically equal
1:52:50
Speaker 2: this out when it gets out of kilter. The era
1:52:54
Speaker 2: you're talking about whether that's the railroad barons, the conglomerate barons,
1:52:58
Speaker 2: or going into as Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt. The scales are
1:53:03
Speaker 2: tipped where heads eye win and tails you lose.
1:53:06
Speaker 1: Well, I thought, I thought Bernie Sanders made an interesting
1:53:09
Speaker 1: point the other day about the interest in the Epstein files.
1:53:12
Speaker 1: That look, the point he made fits his long term messaging.
1:53:16
Speaker 1: So you know, God bless Bernie. It's always about the
1:53:19
Speaker 1: billionaires and the millionaires. But I do think he made
1:53:21
Speaker 1: this observation, which he says, the interest in the Epstein files,
1:53:25
Speaker 1: beyond the conspiracy theorist is because people are tired of
1:53:28
Speaker 1: these rich guys playing by their own set of rules us.
1:53:31
Speaker 1: And I think he's right.
1:53:32
Speaker 2: No, no, there's no doubt. I mean, look, that was
1:53:35
Speaker 2: part of you know, my view when I advocated for
1:53:37
Speaker 2: Old Testament justice to the bankers. Right now, basically, here
1:53:41
Speaker 2: you are, your home is everything to you. You get
1:53:44
Speaker 2: liar loans, you lose your home. And these rich punks
1:53:47
Speaker 2: are talking about the bonuses and not one of them
1:53:50
Speaker 2: ever paid a problem thing of accountability legally professionally, and
1:53:54
Speaker 2: they walk around like it was you know, that was
1:53:57
Speaker 2: the financial trade.
1:53:58
Speaker 1: Do you see what let's happen. These crypto guys basically said, well,
1:54:02
Speaker 1: screw the Democrats, We're just going to go buy off
1:54:04
Speaker 1: the Republicans.
1:54:06
Speaker 2: And they have Want to just be clear, every decision
1:54:09
Speaker 2: the Court's ever made on politics, whether it's money, silver
1:54:13
Speaker 2: Voting Rights Act, et cetera, they've made the democracy harder
1:54:17
Speaker 2: and concentrated around wealth Supreme Court. Every one of their
1:54:22
Speaker 2: decisions around politics has made the system worse.
1:54:28
Speaker 1: What do you make of Jeff Bezos and what he's
1:54:30
Speaker 1: doing and what.
1:54:31
Speaker 2: Do you mean at Washington Post? Yeah, I didn't look
1:54:34
Speaker 2: for a guy that's I mean, not my money, But
1:54:41
Speaker 2: in the last year your net worth has increased, I
1:54:44
Speaker 2: mean billions zeros that people will never see. The Washington
1:54:48
Speaker 2: Post is non profit. It's a institution that serves the
1:54:52
Speaker 2: public good. You're lucky to be the steward of it.
1:54:57
Speaker 2: There's not charity from you. This is a contribution to
1:54:59
Speaker 2: our democ And I think he's.
1:55:02
Speaker 1: Like twenty thirteen, Jeff Bezos seemed to believe that. Oh
1:55:06
Speaker 1: then he bought it.
1:55:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know whether he
1:55:12
Speaker 2: did it. A proper analysis to realize newspapers Breaking News
1:55:16
Speaker 2: Live at ten don't make money out right. Okay, so
1:55:20
Speaker 2: your job here is not to lose money, But don't
1:55:24
Speaker 2: kidd me. You knew what you were doing when you
1:55:26
Speaker 2: got in. It's actually a public it's almost like an endowment.
1:55:30
Speaker 2: It's a public interest. So I'm not for it. And
1:55:35
Speaker 2: the notion that it's not like you're struggling. You don't
1:55:40
Speaker 2: know anything about the snap program from food benefits, et cetera.
1:55:43
Speaker 2: The idea that given that you have just made off
1:55:45
Speaker 2: the stock market billions, and I'm not saying that losing
1:55:51
Speaker 2: one hundred million is easy, but it doesn't change. There's
1:55:54
Speaker 2: not one vacation, one outfit, or one holiday that you
1:55:59
Speaker 2: have to cancel because of the washing Post. Nothing in
1:56:02
Speaker 2: your standard of living has changed.
1:56:05
Speaker 1: And by the way, I would argue that, hey, you
1:56:08
Speaker 1: can figure out how to lose less even make a
1:56:11
Speaker 1: couple of bucks if you have better, more innovative leadership.
1:56:15
Speaker 1: And he had terrible leadership being Jewish and being a Democrat.
1:56:23
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I've said is, look,
1:56:25
Speaker 1: before Donald Trump came down the escalator, I never felt
1:56:29
Speaker 1: as if my Jewish identity would come first as far
1:56:33
Speaker 1: as how people judged my work. After he came down
1:56:37
Speaker 1: that escalator. That suddenly was interesting to me, how that
1:56:39
Speaker 1: it was the first time I'd ever experienced any sort
1:56:41
Speaker 1: of anti semitism. And I joke that when I hear
1:56:45
Speaker 1: the word populism now it doesn't matter if I hear
1:56:48
Speaker 1: it on the left or the right. I know the
1:56:49
Speaker 1: next words out of their mouth is going to be
1:56:51
Speaker 1: something attacking Jews. How welcoming do you think a Jewish
1:56:59
Speaker 1: candidate for president? How welcome do you think a Jewish
1:57:01
Speaker 1: Canada for president is going to be in a democratic primer?
1:57:04
Speaker 2: Well, one is, don't worry about my faith. Worry about
1:57:10
Speaker 2: the faith America people of America have in America. That's
1:57:13
Speaker 2: what's hurting. I'm good with my faith. My Rabbi thinks
1:57:16
Speaker 2: I could do better. I say that tongue in cheap
1:57:20
Speaker 2: is here, and do I live by the Jewish moral
1:57:27
Speaker 2: code as best as I can and as best as
1:57:29
Speaker 2: the teaching of the Jews, and it's the work of progress.
1:57:32
Speaker 2: My faith is not Your concern is the fact that
1:57:34
Speaker 2: the whole generation of Americans have lost faith in America.
1:57:37
Speaker 2: I think America's lost faith in them. That's what we
1:57:39
Speaker 2: should be worried about. Second, since you like politics and
1:57:45
Speaker 2: love politics. I got elected to the congressional district. That
1:57:48
Speaker 2: Dan rossen Kowski, Roman Pucinski, Franken Nunzio, Rob Bigoevitch, Mike
1:57:53
Speaker 2: Flanagan and all along comes from Israel, Emanuel.
1:57:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, not a single bunch of Catholics huh.
1:58:00
Speaker 2: Eat European Catholics.
1:58:02
Speaker 1: Catholics, Okay, love us Jews.
1:58:05
Speaker 2: In Chicago after a long run of Irish Catholics and
1:58:11
Speaker 2: other type of ethnic out city that's only two to
1:58:14
Speaker 2: three percent the city that my grandfather came to when
1:58:17
Speaker 2: he was fifteen, one hundred years earlier. His grandson gets elected.
1:58:20
Speaker 2: So I've seen the other side of this now that
1:58:22
Speaker 2: is separate a faith issue from Israel, which is a
1:58:29
Speaker 2: different issue.
1:58:30
Speaker 1: Well, it's completely conflated. You know. My frustration is, you
1:58:33
Speaker 1: know it could be pro Israel and critical of BB.
1:58:36
Speaker 1: Can't you accept that?
1:58:37
Speaker 2: Jun There's one person in the Democratic Party that BB
1:58:42
Speaker 2: Netton now who in two thousand and nine, because of
1:58:45
Speaker 2: his difference on housing in the West Main called a
1:58:49
Speaker 2: self hating Jew. Believe and you're looking at yeah, he
1:58:52
Speaker 2: writes it.
1:58:53
Speaker 1: In his book You an Axel Rod? Right then he
1:58:55
Speaker 1: say David's Rod and ram a bunch of self hating Jews.
1:58:57
Speaker 2: Yeah that yeah, Ram is Emmanuel self hating joke. Maybe.
1:59:03
Speaker 2: And I didn't need a war to realize this guy
1:59:05
Speaker 2: was wrong, that he was leading Israel into the wrong place.
1:59:09
Speaker 2: He's not a real scientist when it comes to the
1:59:12
Speaker 2: tradition of what it believes to be a nation of nations.
1:59:16
Speaker 2: That's what Bengorian says. He's walked away from the vision
1:59:20
Speaker 2: of what it is. He has been turned his back
1:59:22
Speaker 2: on the spirit of Zionism. And to me, my faith
1:59:26
Speaker 2: is me and my God and my Rabbi. It's the
1:59:29
Speaker 2: faith people have in America that we should be focused
1:59:32
Speaker 2: on as it relates to Israel. Before everybody else said,
1:59:36
Speaker 2: oh my god, look what this guy's doing twenty years ago,
1:59:38
Speaker 2: I told him. And I didn't say it behind his back.
1:59:40
Speaker 2: I said it to his face in the Oval.
1:59:42
Speaker 1: Office, right because the assumption was you might have more
1:59:45
Speaker 1: credibility with him right now.
1:59:46
Speaker 2: Let me also say, Obama had to separate us. That's
1:59:49
Speaker 2: how I got and I said, what you're doing on
1:59:51
Speaker 2: housing in the West Bank is going to destroy and
1:59:55
Speaker 2: isolate Israel. As perituved out, well enough, here we are,
1:59:59
Speaker 2: and Chuck, Israel's never been more strategically secure and more
2:00:02
Speaker 2: politically internationally isolated. Welcome to Bibi's world, mister Sparta. That's
2:00:08
Speaker 2: what he wanted and that's what he's getting, but Israeli
2:00:10
Speaker 2: public will not support it. And what he's done in
2:00:14
Speaker 2: all the regions in the last two years has made
2:00:16
Speaker 2: Israel more vulnerable than it was before.
2:00:21
Speaker 1: How much of a litmus test do you think this
2:00:22
Speaker 1: should be and will be? For Democrats?
2:00:25
Speaker 2: You can't have a war like this, etc. Then it
2:00:27
Speaker 2: should be debated as should be a president is going
2:00:31
Speaker 2: to do something with China that's going to actually benefit
2:00:33
Speaker 2: him and endanger America, as should be sending chips to
2:00:37
Speaker 2: UAE so your family can make money. All of us
2:00:40
Speaker 2: should be on the table, because if you can't handle
2:00:43
Speaker 2: the national security, you can't handle that job.
2:00:47
Speaker 1: How much of Israel's politics I joke about this is Israel.
2:00:51
Speaker 1: Israel's politics is as polarized as ours is. Right, here's
2:00:54
Speaker 1: a note. They have an unpopular person who keeps becoming
2:00:58
Speaker 1: their leader. This is what right? Are is Israel our
2:01:02
Speaker 1: past or our future? Did we export polarization or are
2:01:06
Speaker 1: we starting to emulate that.
2:01:07
Speaker 2: This is this? That this is like a whole nother show.
2:01:12
Speaker 2: But I will say, you have a it's really it's
2:01:21
Speaker 2: not our future. And I meant what I said earlier.
2:01:25
Speaker 2: I think the Supreme Court, not the lower courts. Supreme
2:01:28
Speaker 2: Courts under Roberts has failed. I think the Republicans in
2:01:31
Speaker 2: Congress have failed. I think the corporate titans in their
2:01:35
Speaker 2: silence when they know under their breath it has failed.
2:01:39
Speaker 2: The thin blue line that will protect this country are
2:01:42
Speaker 2: the American people. And it's why Donald Trump is going
2:01:44
Speaker 2: to do everything between now an election day to make
2:01:46
Speaker 2: sure they're not hurt, because they will actually return the
2:01:49
Speaker 2: country to its proper balance.
2:01:55
Speaker 1: So you're putting on the you're putting on whether Israel's
2:01:58
Speaker 1: are past or our future?
2:01:59
Speaker 2: Right on punting damn right. That's a because I can't
2:02:03
Speaker 2: give that answer without it being like twenty more questions.
2:02:07
Speaker 1: No, it's a it's a fair point. Yeah, if Democrats
2:02:10
Speaker 1: fail to win the midterms, what is that? You know?
2:02:14
Speaker 1: How does that look?
2:02:15
Speaker 2: I look?
2:02:16
Speaker 1: Or you just don't see it.
2:02:19
Speaker 2: There's one pat when you have one party controlled the
2:02:22
Speaker 2: microphone and the gabble, there's a law of physics, massive
2:02:28
Speaker 2: turnout by the party out of power every election. All
2:02:30
Speaker 2: thirty of them plus have shown that two independence break
2:02:36
Speaker 2: two to one for the party out of power. Every
2:02:38
Speaker 2: election has shown that three low turnout by the incumbent
2:02:42
Speaker 2: party voters. Every election has shown that this is set up.
2:02:47
Speaker 2: I still hold by what I said, so I haven't
2:02:48
Speaker 2: changed my position. At twenty minutes, we are going to
2:02:51
Speaker 2: know the future by May fifteenth.
2:02:53
Speaker 1: I think you're right. From Emmanuel, it's always a pleasure.
2:02:56
Speaker 1: Thanks aways make me think too.
2:02:58
Speaker 2: We'll come back. We'll come back on do it America
2:03:01
Speaker 2: mirror images of each other.
2:03:03
Speaker 1: There's a whole documentary to do on that.
2:03:05
Speaker 2: Now it's it's uh uh and I do think one
2:03:08
Speaker 2: last thing I'll say and then I gotta.
2:03:11
Speaker 1: You gotta get better.
2:03:13
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a headquarter. Our job is to restore
2:03:17
Speaker 2: the faith of the American people in America. My faith
2:03:22
Speaker 2: is good. I have to work on it like everybody
2:03:25
Speaker 2: else has to do on there. It's restoring if you
2:03:27
Speaker 2: run for the big higher office, it's restoring that faith.
2:03:31
Speaker 2: That is the most important task out of us.
2:03:33
Speaker 1: Well, that's that's a that's a good pivot that makes
2:03:36
Speaker 1: because you're right, a lot of people have los are
2:03:38
Speaker 1: losing faith in the idea of America. And it's not
2:03:41
Speaker 1: just us, A lot of our allies feel that way.
2:03:43
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, brother, there's always.
2:03:57
Speaker 1: By the way, one of the things that I wouldn't
2:03:58
Speaker 1: mind hearing from you, the viewers. We love suggest booking suggestions.
2:04:05
Speaker 1: We get plenty of booking people throwing stuff our way.
2:04:09
Speaker 1: But if there are specific candidates or individuals or historians
2:04:16
Speaker 1: you'd like to hear on the podcast, don't be shy.
2:04:21
Speaker 1: Let us know. Ask Chuck at thechucktodcast dot com. Yes,
2:04:24
Speaker 1: the same place that you send all your brilliant pieces
2:04:28
Speaker 1: of email and analysis and questions to me that I'd
2:04:31
Speaker 1: love to read and absorb. But please use that address
2:04:37
Speaker 1: if you've got any other folks you'd like to see us.
2:04:40
Speaker 1: My goal is to try to between now and the
2:04:43
Speaker 1: filing deadline for the Iowa Caucuses if they are indeed
2:04:46
Speaker 1: first in the nation come January of twenty twenty seven,
2:04:48
Speaker 1: I hope everybody of consequence that's running for president that
2:04:52
Speaker 1: I get to spend thirty to forty five minutes here
2:04:55
Speaker 1: with us. So with that, one quick adendum before I
2:05:01
Speaker 1: get to the Toddcast time Machine event for this week,
2:05:03
Speaker 1: and that is it's like a little we had a
2:05:07
Speaker 1: little coda to the Washington Post events. Will Lewis the
2:05:12
Speaker 1: publisher in name only, I guess because he was nowhere
2:05:15
Speaker 1: to be found at the announcement of the layoffs. He
2:05:17
Speaker 1: was nowhere to be found in frankly, the last nine
2:05:20
Speaker 1: months of the newsroom itself. A photo showed up of
2:05:25
Speaker 1: him at the Super Bowl at one of the pre
2:05:27
Speaker 1: parties on the red carpet for NFL honors. And let's
2:05:31
Speaker 1: say that, suddenly an email resignation statement showed up and
2:05:36
Speaker 1: a lot of inboxes come Saturday. I believe it was
2:05:40
Speaker 1: Saturday morning that a very abrupt he thanked Jeff Bezos
2:05:43
Speaker 1: and walked away, had nothing to say about the journalists
2:05:46
Speaker 1: that he oversaw for a couple of years. So will
2:05:48
Speaker 1: lewis cementing his place as the single worst publisher in
2:05:52
Speaker 1: the history of the Washington Post. So congratulations mister Lewis
2:05:55
Speaker 1: on that, and probably you know, on hire should be
2:06:00
Speaker 1: seen in journalism circles. It's completely unhiable, just completely unhiable
2:06:05
Speaker 1: to run to run an enterprise. He might, he might
2:06:09
Speaker 1: have some smart things to say about trend lines and
2:06:12
Speaker 1: what's happening, but a manager of people and a leader
2:06:15
Speaker 1: of people he is not. And I think that that
2:06:18
Speaker 1: is obvious. Look, it's it's it is. It's really weird
2:06:22
Speaker 1: to be sort of, you know, our fourth day five
2:06:27
Speaker 1: without essentially without the Washington Post, because I know, yes,
2:06:30
Speaker 1: there's national reporter still doing good work, there's a congressional
2:06:33
Speaker 1: team that's still doing good work, and I don't want
2:06:35
Speaker 1: to I don't want to shit on them. Okay, but
2:06:39
Speaker 1: you know, the Washington Post is going to slowly essentially
2:06:43
Speaker 1: fade into more is relevant in Washington as Politico, which
2:06:48
Speaker 1: is there's nothing wrong professional professionally political punch bowl relevant
2:06:53
Speaker 1: and professionally, the Washington Post will be relatant as a
2:06:56
Speaker 1: member and a leader of the of the d m
2:06:58
Speaker 1: V in this community. It's over. That's what's dead, and
2:07:03
Speaker 1: the idea that they don't care about local sports, which
2:07:06
Speaker 1: is just such an important part of the community. So
2:07:09
Speaker 1: it's in that vein that I have a you know,
2:07:13
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes I have interesting business ideas that I don't
2:07:17
Speaker 1: share with you because I'm working on them myself. And
2:07:19
Speaker 1: then sometimes there are things that are above my pay grade,
2:07:23
Speaker 1: you know, and instead feel like something a challenge that
2:07:28
Speaker 1: should be issued publicly. So here's my public challenge to
2:07:32
Speaker 1: the three major sports owners of the Washington, DC market,
2:07:35
Speaker 1: Mark Lerner, who runs the Nationals, Ted Leons's owner of
2:07:38
Speaker 1: both the Caps and the Wizards, and Josh Harris, own
2:07:41
Speaker 1: owner of the Washington Commanders. You three have an enormous
2:07:48
Speaker 1: interest in having a local and regional news organization that
2:07:52
Speaker 1: is trusted, that is frankly a bit of a cheerleader
2:07:57
Speaker 1: to the local sports teams, even if they are will
2:07:59
Speaker 1: ever once in a while attack all of you for
2:08:02
Speaker 1: doing crappy things as owners every once in a while
2:08:04
Speaker 1: because we fans might get upset at you because we
2:08:07
Speaker 1: want to spend your money in ways that you don't
2:08:09
Speaker 1: want to spend your money. My tongue is I'm going
2:08:12
Speaker 1: hard in cheek here a little bit, but you get
2:08:14
Speaker 1: my point. But you you know, if your teams don't
2:08:20
Speaker 1: get attention and people don't know what you're up to,
2:08:22
Speaker 1: then maybe you have a harder time selling season tickets
2:08:24
Speaker 1: and maybe have a harder time selling single game tickets.
2:08:27
Speaker 1: Maybe have a harder time letting people know that Taylor
2:08:30
Speaker 1: Swift's coming to the new RFK or Bad Bunny's coming
2:08:37
Speaker 1: to the Capitol One Arena. And I say this because
2:08:43
Speaker 1: both Josh Harris and Ted leones Is in particular. I
2:08:45
Speaker 1: don't know the history of Mark Learner's investments, but both
2:08:48
Speaker 1: have invested in media organizations in the past. Josh Harris
2:08:52
Speaker 1: has been a funder and has made money off of
2:08:55
Speaker 1: investments on new startups in the past. By the way,
2:08:59
Speaker 1: I want to throw my Mark Ain into this conversation.
2:09:02
Speaker 1: He's another sort of major player in the Washington sports market.
2:09:05
Speaker 1: He's one of the I think minority owners and investors
2:09:09
Speaker 1: and the commanders owns. I think he's very involved in
2:09:12
Speaker 1: the professional tennis league that's here, and I believe in
2:09:16
Speaker 1: some of the soccer franchise as well. So and he's
2:09:18
Speaker 1: also very much a what I'd say is a member
2:09:21
Speaker 1: of the Washington community in some ways of more vocal
2:09:25
Speaker 1: than some of his other fellow sports investors there. So
2:09:29
Speaker 1: I should have included Mark iin into this, but I'm
2:09:32
Speaker 1: saying it publicly. You guys know how to get a
2:09:34
Speaker 1: hold of me, so I'm happy to help out in
2:09:36
Speaker 1: any way possible. But I think it's you in your
2:09:39
Speaker 1: best interests to come help fund. Whether it's d MV today,
2:09:44
Speaker 1: maybe it's a sports vertical at first, sports local culture.
2:09:49
Speaker 1: The point is, you guys have the resources to do this.
2:09:58
Speaker 1: Don't hire Will Lewis to do it. That would be
2:10:00
Speaker 1: my number one piece of advice. But beyond that, I
2:10:05
Speaker 1: hope you have an open door for whether it's myself,
2:10:08
Speaker 1: whether it's my friend Kara Swisher. And speaking of Kara Swisher,
2:10:11
Speaker 1: she's my guest this week on my new Sphere program
2:10:13
Speaker 1: Sunday Night with Chuck Todd. And I'll just put it
2:10:15
Speaker 1: this way. If you enjoy hearing sentences that include Jeff
2:10:20
Speaker 1: Bezos in the F word, you're gonna love this Kara
2:10:22
Speaker 1: Swisher interview. She doesn't hold anything back. She's got a
2:10:27
Speaker 1: lot of strong opinions, and she knows these people better
2:10:29
Speaker 1: than any other person. And by the way, if you
2:10:32
Speaker 1: want to know for care, if it's personal. Yes, it
2:10:34
Speaker 1: is her first job, mailroom inside the Washington Post, so
2:10:40
Speaker 1: it's personal for her. But she has a lot of
2:10:42
Speaker 1: smart ideas here. And I think we and it's not
2:10:46
Speaker 1: just about the Washington Post that we spend we talk
2:10:48
Speaker 1: about the tech titans in general and whether there are
2:10:51
Speaker 1: any good guys in Silicon Valley. Here's the good news.
2:10:54
Speaker 1: She thinks there's at least one good guy there. I'm
2:10:57
Speaker 1: not going to tell you it is here. Go check
2:10:59
Speaker 1: it out on newsphere. So just wanted to do that
2:11:02
Speaker 1: little coda on the Washington Post. Given how much time
2:11:05
Speaker 1: I spent on it last week, it's still pretty painful
2:11:09
Speaker 1: to realize that what just happened to the Washington Post,
2:11:13
Speaker 1: and then to see the Will Lewis thing. I mean,
2:11:15
Speaker 1: it was deserved, right. Whether Bezos fired him out of
2:11:18
Speaker 1: just a pr pr necessity, it was necessary. It gives
2:11:23
Speaker 1: Matt Murray a chance at maybe rallying the remaining troops there.
2:11:27
Speaker 1: And look, I'll say what I said last week, I
2:11:31
Speaker 1: feel for him on this, and you know, some of
2:11:33
Speaker 1: you look, he made his own bed, so you know, yes,
2:11:37
Speaker 1: but he's there to execute strategy. And the fact that
2:11:45
Speaker 1: the owner and the publisher didn't have the guts to
2:11:47
Speaker 1: be the face of this tells you who they are,
2:11:50
Speaker 1: tells you a lot about their character. And that's what
2:11:54
Speaker 1: I think has been the most damning thing about all
2:11:56
Speaker 1: of this. All Right, let's go back into time. It's
2:12:00
Speaker 1: time machine time. So where are we going in history?
2:12:11
Speaker 1: I kind of want sound effects, right, we'll get there.
2:12:14
Speaker 1: So where are we going? We're going to go to
2:12:16
Speaker 1: February eleventh, nineteen seventy nine, it's today. The Iranian monarchy collapsed,
2:12:23
Speaker 1: the Shaw's government fell, military declared neutrality in Iran, and
2:12:27
Speaker 1: a revolution that had been building for more than a
2:12:29
Speaker 1: century finally broke through. What followed was the creation of
2:12:32
Speaker 1: the Islamic Republic and authoritarian theocracy, one of the most
2:12:36
Speaker 1: consequential ruptures in US foreign policy, still shaping the Middle
2:12:41
Speaker 1: East today, global energy markets, and American politics. And as
2:12:45
Speaker 1: questions once again swirl about the future of Iran's regime,
2:12:50
Speaker 1: it's worth remembering something clearly at the outset as we
2:12:55
Speaker 1: go into this time machine. The Iranian revolution did not
2:12:57
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere, and America was out of bystander
2:13:00
Speaker 1: in it all right. So to understand how we got
2:13:04
Speaker 1: to February nineteen seventy nine and the Ayatola Kamani becoming
2:13:08
Speaker 1: essentially a dictator of Iran, we have to go back
2:13:11
Speaker 1: a lot further. Iran didn't suddenly appear in the twentieth century.
2:13:16
Speaker 1: For thousands of years, of course, it was known to
2:13:17
Speaker 1: the outside world as Persian, one of the oldest continuous
2:13:21
Speaker 1: state traditions on Earth, and the monarchy in Persia was
2:13:26
Speaker 1: not some modern invention either. By the time of World
2:13:29
Speaker 1: War one. Iran had been ruled by kings for centuries,
2:13:33
Speaker 1: most recently under the Kajar dynasty, which took power in
2:13:37
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety four. In fact, even the title Shah itself
2:13:41
Speaker 1: matters here. It's not Islamic. It's a Persian word, ancient Persian,
2:13:45
Speaker 1: and it dates back more than twenty five hundred years.
2:13:48
Speaker 1: The fuller imperior title is Shahanshah, which literally means king
2:13:53
Speaker 1: of kings. So when Iranians overthrew the Shaw in nineteen
2:13:58
Speaker 1: seventy nine, they weren't just rejecting a modern autocrat, and
2:14:01
Speaker 1: by the way, that last Shaw was an autocrat, I'll
2:14:04
Speaker 1: get to that. They were rejecting a pre Islamic royal
2:14:07
Speaker 1: tradition that stretched back to the antiquity era. This wasn't
2:14:12
Speaker 1: just political upheaval. It was a civilization break. In nineteen
2:14:16
Speaker 1: thirty five, Iran's ruler asked foreign governments to stop using
2:14:20
Speaker 1: Persia and adopt the name Iran instead. It was a
2:14:23
Speaker 1: nationalist gesture meant to assert sovereignty and create a modern identity.
2:14:28
Speaker 1: It wasn't the creation of a new country, but it
2:14:31
Speaker 1: was a demand to be seen on its own terms.
2:14:34
Speaker 1: So we all need that little history lesson every now
2:14:37
Speaker 1: and then. So now we place a rain into its
2:14:40
Speaker 1: regional context and just sort of a little bit of
2:14:42
Speaker 1: the backstory here on Iran. In the early twentieth century,
2:14:45
Speaker 1: during World War One, Persia was officially neutral, but neutrality
2:14:50
Speaker 1: never did protect it as a country. Its territory was
2:14:53
Speaker 1: repeatedly violated by the Russians, the British, and at times
2:14:56
Speaker 1: even the Ottoman forces. Persia was never part of the
2:14:59
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire. That's an important note. Historically it was often
2:15:02
Speaker 1: the chief rival to the Ottomans, particularly along sectarian lines.
2:15:06
Speaker 1: You had the Sunni Ottoman rule versus the Shia Persian
2:15:11
Speaker 1: identity right Sunni Shia, something that's been there from nearly
2:15:15
Speaker 1: the beginning of Islam. The lesson Iranians absorbed from World
2:15:19
Speaker 1: War One, though, was a harsh one. Neutrality does not
2:15:22
Speaker 1: stop great powers from using your country as a chessboard.
2:15:27
Speaker 1: So at the same time, the Ottoman Empire collapsed at
2:15:30
Speaker 1: the end of the war, and it gave birth largely
2:15:32
Speaker 1: through a European mandate system new states like Iraq, Syria,
2:15:37
Speaker 1: and Lebanon. Right. Iraq for example, emerged as a British
2:15:41
Speaker 1: backed monarchy in the early nineteen twenties, and it gained
2:15:45
Speaker 1: full independence in nineteen thirty two. So Iran is sitting
2:15:49
Speaker 1: there watching its neighbors be invented by outside powers while
2:15:54
Speaker 1: struggling to preserve its own independence in a world dominated
2:15:58
Speaker 1: by empires. What's interesting is this Iran did not passively
2:16:04
Speaker 1: accept monarchy as destiny. In fact, just the opposite. In
2:16:08
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, Persia experienced a constitutional revolution. It produced
2:16:15
Speaker 1: a written constitution, a parliament, the majills, I hope I
2:16:20
Speaker 1: get that jealous and I have no doubt, and I
2:16:25
Speaker 1: will mess up some of these pronunciations of some of
2:16:28
Speaker 1: these Persian words. My apologies, but essentially it was a
2:16:31
Speaker 1: parliament and limits on royal authority. This was one of
2:16:34
Speaker 1: the earliest constitutional movements in the Middle East. There's a
2:16:37
Speaker 1: real small d democratic tradition inside of Iran. Iran had
2:16:42
Speaker 1: a They did this decades before many of its neighbors,
2:16:47
Speaker 1: but it was fragile. Iranian politics became defined by a
2:16:51
Speaker 1: persistent tension monarchy, secular reformers, religious authorities, and foreign powers,
2:16:58
Speaker 1: and they were all always pulling around in different direction.
2:17:02
Speaker 1: Tension has never disappeared, It simply evolves in different ways
2:17:06
Speaker 1: over times, and we're seeing it play out at the moment. Right.
2:17:09
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen twenties you had Resa Shah Pahlavi.
2:17:13
Speaker 1: He seized power and eventually crowned himself. Shaw His project
2:17:18
Speaker 1: was modernization, centralizing the state, building infrastructure, weakening the religious authority,
2:17:25
Speaker 1: clerical authority, and enforcing secularism. But it was modernization from above,
2:17:32
Speaker 1: enforced by coercion. Parliamentary democracy was weakened, political pluralism shrank,
2:17:40
Speaker 1: the monarchy reasserted itself as the center of gravity. So
2:17:43
Speaker 1: we can look at it and say, well, great, they
2:17:45
Speaker 1: were modernized, they were westernizing, but they were essentially beating
2:17:49
Speaker 1: people into modernizing, right. It was not a democratic move
2:17:54
Speaker 1: to modernization, and it meant that Resa Shaw's project also
2:17:59
Speaker 1: came across as national. He was attempting to reduce British
2:18:02
Speaker 1: and Russian influence. Of course, that independence would not last.
2:18:08
Speaker 1: The most important Hinge point before in nineteen seventy nine
2:18:11
Speaker 1: comes in their early fifties. By then Iran had another Shaw,
2:18:15
Speaker 1: Riza Shaw's son, Mohammed Riza Pahlavi, and a democratic chosen
2:18:20
Speaker 1: prime minister by the name of Mohammed Mozadek. Well Mozadek
2:18:25
Speaker 1: the prime minister moved to nationalize Iran's oil industry. At
2:18:29
Speaker 1: the time, it was an attempt to challenge the British
2:18:31
Speaker 1: dominance and over their oil economy and asserting their own sovereignty. Well,
2:18:38
Speaker 1: guess what the Britz panicked called Warfaars intensified and in
2:18:42
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, the United States and the UK back
2:18:46
Speaker 1: the coup that removed the prime minister. So here's what
2:18:50
Speaker 1: happened next. The coup didn't just restore the Shaw, it
2:18:54
Speaker 1: also transformed him from a constitutional monarch into the central
2:19:00
Speaker 1: of the state. And so yes, the United States effectively
2:19:04
Speaker 1: helped rip up a fragile parliamentary democracy in favor of
2:19:07
Speaker 1: a more centralized, more authoritarian and at the time, because
2:19:12
Speaker 1: this was the Cold War, a more pro Western monarchy,
2:19:16
Speaker 1: it was what was in America's national interests that mattered
2:19:19
Speaker 1: more than what was in the small d democracy interests.
2:19:24
Speaker 1: This is an important point to understand. This is why
2:19:27
Speaker 1: a lot of things we did in the fifties and
2:19:29
Speaker 1: sixties in the name of the Cold War and dealing
2:19:31
Speaker 1: with the Soviets created a lot of anti americanism around
2:19:35
Speaker 1: the world. This is one of them. So from Washington's
2:19:39
Speaker 1: perspective at the time, right, Hey, this was all about
2:19:41
Speaker 1: stability and anti communism, pure and simple. From Tehran's perspective
2:19:47
Speaker 1: and the perspective of quite a few individuals, it was
2:19:50
Speaker 1: about lost sovereignty. So from that moment on, the SHAW
2:19:53
Speaker 1: in the United States became politically intertwined in the Iranian imagination.
2:19:58
Speaker 1: Opposition to the Shaw andre recently meant opposition to America.
2:20:03
Speaker 1: And this is where the long fuse toward nineteen seventy
2:20:06
Speaker 1: nine is let. The Shaw modernized rapidly, expanding education, advancing
2:20:10
Speaker 1: women's rights, pouring oil wealth into development. All that's good stuff.
2:20:15
Speaker 1: But the modernization was paired with repression. There was censorship,
2:20:19
Speaker 1: a powerful secret police. They crushed descent, and they were
2:20:23
Speaker 1: really tough on those that were overly religious. And it
2:20:26
Speaker 1: all came with visible American back in Regionally, Orian stood
2:20:31
Speaker 1: apart because while you had Arab states experiencing cups and
2:20:34
Speaker 1: military rule and pan Arab nationalism all over the place,
2:20:37
Speaker 1: Egypt under Nassar Syrian, Iraq under the Baptist regimes, Iran
2:20:42
Speaker 1: was actually the pillar of America's Middle East strategy in
2:20:46
Speaker 1: the Gulf region. That alignment bought power, and it also
2:20:51
Speaker 1: planted some rage, and this is the environment in which
2:20:55
Speaker 1: a man named Ayatola Ruhala Komeni. Yes, that Komene emerges
2:21:01
Speaker 1: as a symbol of the resistance. Here's an important clarification
2:21:07
Speaker 1: in history. Komene did not flee Iran. Comeni was arrested, released,
2:21:13
Speaker 1: and then banished from the country. In the early sixties,
2:21:16
Speaker 1: Comeny openly denounced the Shaw's reforms and crucially attacked Iran's
2:21:20
Speaker 1: relationship with the United States, particularly laws that granted US
2:21:24
Speaker 1: personnel legal immunity inside of Iran. Remember this came up
2:21:29
Speaker 1: again during our in the attempt to build a democracy
2:21:33
Speaker 1: in Iraq. That's that giving immunity to outside forces is
2:21:38
Speaker 1: never popular domestically wherever you are. Well, the Shaw had
2:21:42
Speaker 1: options and what to do with Komene. He could imprison him.
2:21:44
Speaker 1: He could have executed him, or he could have silenced
2:21:47
Speaker 1: him another way. Executing him risk turning him into a martyr.
2:21:51
Speaker 1: So the Shaw decided to expound. First it was to Turkey,
2:21:55
Speaker 1: then it was to Iraq, and eventually he'd end up
2:21:57
Speaker 1: in France. Well, exile was a miss because while exile
2:22:02
Speaker 1: was meant as an attempt to neutralize Komene, instead he
2:22:05
Speaker 1: kind of professionalized his movement and gave him gave him
2:22:10
Speaker 1: more rhetorical power from Paris. In exile, Komene gained something
2:22:15
Speaker 1: no opposition figure inside Iran could safely have had at
2:22:18
Speaker 1: the time, global media access without fear of arrest. So
2:22:23
Speaker 1: he unifies the opposition, and there was a by the
2:22:25
Speaker 1: way the opposition in Iran was dispersed. Here wasn't just
2:22:29
Speaker 1: the theocrats that were against him, right, So Coomane unifies
2:22:34
Speaker 1: the opposition and he frames it as a resistance not
2:22:37
Speaker 1: just on religious terms, but also moral terms, and he
2:22:40
Speaker 1: positioned clerical rule as authentic national liberation. So on February first,
2:22:46
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Comeni returns to Tehran to thousands of
2:22:51
Speaker 1: cheering crowds. Ten days later his February eleventh, and the
2:22:54
Speaker 1: monarchy officially collapses. The revolution that toppled the Shaw at
2:22:58
Speaker 1: the moment was broad based secular liberals. There were leftists, students, merchants, clerics.
2:23:05
Speaker 1: But the revolution didn't end when the regimes fall. They
2:23:10
Speaker 1: end when power consolidates, and the most organized faction was
2:23:15
Speaker 1: the clerical one, and they won. So what followed was
2:23:18
Speaker 1: not just a change of rulers, but a new governing model.
2:23:22
Speaker 1: They called it an Islamic republic, a theocracy fused with
2:23:26
Speaker 1: state power, something the region and the world actually had
2:23:29
Speaker 1: never seen before. Now you may be wondering when did
2:23:35
Speaker 1: the hostage crisis begin. So, the US embassy hostage crisis
2:23:38
Speaker 1: actually didn't happen immediately with the start of the revolution
2:23:41
Speaker 1: in February of seventy nine. It came nine months later,
2:23:44
Speaker 1: in November of seventy nine. But it flowed directly from
2:23:47
Speaker 1: everything that came before, memories of fifty three, fear of
2:23:50
Speaker 1: American interference, and the revolutionary needed to find itself against
2:23:55
Speaker 1: an external enemy, and the United States was an easy
2:23:57
Speaker 1: target because of our history with the country, and from
2:24:00
Speaker 1: that moment on US Iran relations froze into hostility. So
2:24:06
Speaker 1: what lesson should we take away from this, Well, we're
2:24:08
Speaker 1: in the middle of something here that we may help
2:24:10
Speaker 1: foment another revolution in Iran. We may be more active
2:24:13
Speaker 1: on this one, as active as we were in nineteen
2:24:15
Speaker 1: fifty three. Now this time we may be on the
2:24:17
Speaker 1: side of the people. We were not on the side
2:24:19
Speaker 1: of the people in fifty three. We were not on
2:24:21
Speaker 1: the side of the people in seventy nine. This time
2:24:23
Speaker 1: we might be on the side of the people. That's
2:24:25
Speaker 1: the one thing that's different here, and maybe that means
2:24:27
Speaker 1: a different outcome, but it is a warning about foreign intervention, right,
2:24:32
Speaker 1: and modernization without legitimacy, and what happens when democracy is
2:24:36
Speaker 1: sacrificed for stability. And in fact, when you hear the
2:24:39
Speaker 1: story of the Shah and the fifties and sixties, I
2:24:41
Speaker 1: can't help but think of NBS in Saudi Arabia. Right, Oh, hey,
2:24:45
Speaker 1: there's good news, he's modernizing, he's given women rights. But
2:24:49
Speaker 1: at the same time, there's still censorship. Right, there's still
2:24:53
Speaker 1: very little. You know, there's still terrible human rights violations,
2:24:56
Speaker 1: particularly when anybody violates the law. So it is there's
2:25:01
Speaker 1: a lot of lessons to take away from this So America.
2:25:05
Speaker 1: We can't say it created the Iranian revolution alone, but
2:25:08
Speaker 1: it did help destroy the alternative that might have prevented it.
2:25:12
Speaker 1: And that's the hardest left in them all. When you
2:25:13
Speaker 1: weaken a democracy to protect your own interests. We actively
2:25:17
Speaker 1: weakened a democracy in nineteen fifty three. Don't. You don't
2:25:23
Speaker 1: eliminate the instability, you simply delay it. So as we
2:25:28
Speaker 1: decide how involved we're going to get and what's happening
2:25:31
Speaker 1: in Iran. And you know, look I look at you know,
2:25:36
Speaker 1: I think that whenever we're on the side a small
2:25:38
Speaker 1: d democracy, that usually ends up at a better place
2:25:43
Speaker 1: than when we're just on the side of helping somebody
2:25:46
Speaker 1: who's just simply on our side in a larger fight
2:25:49
Speaker 1: against some other foreign power. And the Cold War created
2:25:54
Speaker 1: those types of relationships. The fear of China is creating
2:25:57
Speaker 1: those type of transactional relationships, these transactional relationships. And this
2:26:01
Speaker 1: is right. Donald Trump wants to make America. You know,
2:26:04
Speaker 1: when he talks about making America great again, he wants
2:26:06
Speaker 1: to go back to nineteen fifty style kind of imperialistic
2:26:12
Speaker 1: like foreign policy approach, right, and all of that bitness
2:26:18
Speaker 1: in the ass in Latin America, all of this is
2:26:20
Speaker 1: bitness in the ass in the Middle East. Transactional politics
2:26:25
Speaker 1: without some sort of small the democratic moral code is
2:26:31
Speaker 1: never going to create long term stability or security for
2:26:35
Speaker 1: us here in the United States. So with that, there's
2:26:39
Speaker 1: your time machine. All right, let's get to some questions.
2:26:52
Speaker 1: Ask Chuck, if Trump continues to claim you won the
2:26:57
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election, wouldn't that make the potential twenty twenty
2:27:00
Speaker 1: or run unconstitutional to determinants. I love how you're thinking.
2:27:04
Speaker 1: If you somehow proved he was the rightful winner in
2:27:06
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, wouldn't that undermine the legality of a future
2:27:08
Speaker 1: term and even weaken his legal protections? Tide to the
2:27:10
Speaker 1: presidency just seems like a self defeating argument. You know,
2:27:16
Speaker 1: this reminds me of a of a of a rule
2:27:18
Speaker 1: I used to have it I meet the press meetings
2:27:21
Speaker 1: with my staff, when we'd have these daily meetings about
2:27:24
Speaker 1: the editorial day, I'd say we've banned logic in the
2:27:28
Speaker 1: Trump era. And because what you're making, you're taking a
2:27:36
Speaker 1: news story and applying logic to it and say, well,
2:27:39
Speaker 1: doesn't this mean this Donald Trump has never allowed logic
2:27:43
Speaker 1: to get in the way of a good narrative, right
2:27:47
Speaker 1: of a good owned the libs mean of a good
2:27:50
Speaker 1: attempt at not having to admit defeat right. And so
2:27:56
Speaker 1: everything you're saying is correct. But that isn't what he's
2:28:02
Speaker 1: up to here, right, We know what he's really up
2:28:04
Speaker 1: to here. This is just continuing to try to continuing
2:28:12
Speaker 1: to try to sort of undermine more legitimacy of more institutions,
2:28:16
Speaker 1: and the more institutions I mean if he is able
2:28:18
Speaker 1: to fully undermine the entire election system, which is what
2:28:23
Speaker 1: he's attempting to do here at twenty twenty, then everything
2:28:27
Speaker 1: he would do to question the mid terms and anything
2:28:32
Speaker 1: like that becomes then natural or normalized because of what
2:28:38
Speaker 1: he's done with twenty twenty. So this is what makes
2:28:40
Speaker 1: what he's doing so dangerous. Here. He's trying to sort
2:28:43
Speaker 1: of legitimize interfering with future elections, right, and he's desperate
2:28:48
Speaker 1: to try to find even you know, even the illusion
2:28:53
Speaker 1: of evidence to reinforce his beliefs about what happened twenty twenty.
2:28:57
Speaker 1: And they look, it's clear they're manufacturing pretext here. Just
2:29:01
Speaker 1: they they've not legitimized a single fact. I mean, you
2:29:05
Speaker 1: go to this about twenty twenty. He's only gone after Georgia.
2:29:09
Speaker 1: By the way, let's i've gone in another place. Let's
2:29:12
Speaker 1: say he magically somehow figures out that he won Georgia,
2:29:16
Speaker 1: he still didn't have enough electoral votes to prove that
2:29:18
Speaker 1: he won in twenty twenty, there's still other states. He
2:29:21
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Arizona, he
2:29:23
Speaker 1: hasn't be able to find the votes in Nevada. He
2:29:25
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Wisconsin, he
2:29:27
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to find the votes in Michigan, he
2:29:28
Speaker 1: hasn't made to find the votes in Pennsylvania. So but
2:29:32
Speaker 1: again that's logic. This is not about logic, right, I mean,
2:29:34
Speaker 1: he thinks if he can somehow find anything that becomes
2:29:38
Speaker 1: believable behind his delusional followers on this, it allows him
2:29:44
Speaker 1: not to declare any victory about twenty twenty, but then
2:29:49
Speaker 1: he will use that as a way to legitimize likely
2:29:54
Speaker 1: using the government to interfere in the actual elections themselves
2:29:57
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight. Now, I
2:30:00
Speaker 1: say that in that I still don't believe he can
2:30:02
Speaker 1: effectively do that. I think there's enough checks and balances
2:30:04
Speaker 1: in the states. I think it's not going to happen.
2:30:07
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, I vacillate between being
2:30:11
Speaker 1: worried and laughing at these attempts that he's doing. I
2:30:13
Speaker 1: think he's making just an absolute fool of himself. And
2:30:16
Speaker 1: more importantly, I mean, I mean literally the laughing stock
2:30:20
Speaker 1: of the intelligence community is Tulsa Gabbert, Right, but she
2:30:23
Speaker 1: has been I will say that she must be beyond humiliation,
2:30:29
Speaker 1: which means she has her own sort of delusions about
2:30:32
Speaker 1: all of this. But it's it's whenever you apply logic
2:30:40
Speaker 1: to anyone of Trump's arguments, they fall apart completely, which
2:30:43
Speaker 1: means it's never been about logic all right. Next question
2:30:47
Speaker 1: comes from Luke Hey. Thanks for tackling the issue of
2:30:49
Speaker 1: sports betting. I've seen it devastate families, and I refuse
2:30:51
Speaker 1: to work for gambling platforms because of the ethical concerns.
2:30:54
Speaker 1: My question is about professional ethics. If people with integrity
2:30:56
Speaker 1: keep quitting problematic institutions, do those spaces just get worse?
2:31:00
Speaker 1: Is it better to stay and try to limit the
2:31:02
Speaker 1: damage from within? I'm torn between sticking to my moral
2:31:05
Speaker 1: line or trying to be sand in the gears from
2:31:06
Speaker 1: the inside loop. Well, welcome to what a lot of prosecutors,
2:31:12
Speaker 1: career prosecutors are contemplating at the Justice Department, What a
2:31:16
Speaker 1: lot of career in form policy folks are thinking about
2:31:20
Speaker 1: at the State Department. What many career military, particularly for one,
2:31:26
Speaker 1: two and three star generals, high ranking admirals. You know
2:31:32
Speaker 1: that this is this is this is a huge dilemma,
2:31:40
Speaker 1: you know, I don't I think everybody's got their own
2:31:43
Speaker 1: line so I'm not going to tell you what your
2:31:44
Speaker 1: line should be. I'll just tell you what my line is.
2:31:49
Speaker 1: If I feel like I can be effective, not just
2:31:53
Speaker 1: being sand in the gears right and doing you know,
2:31:57
Speaker 1: feeling like I have to sneakily up and things, but
2:32:00
Speaker 1: I feel like I can turn the tide, I can
2:32:04
Speaker 1: report what needs to be reported or whatever it is,
2:32:08
Speaker 1: then it is worth sticking around. If you feel like
2:32:10
Speaker 1: your position can prevent the worst things to happen, and
2:32:16
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, well, hey, you know, I just
2:32:19
Speaker 1: have to do it for nine months until we get
2:32:21
Speaker 1: new leadership. Right, That's why it to me, I would
2:32:25
Speaker 1: advise somebody at the Justice Department, in somebody the state
2:32:28
Speaker 1: department to stick it out right, believe in the democracy.
2:32:31
Speaker 1: You don't have to believe in the administration. You can
2:32:33
Speaker 1: believe in the democracy that there will be you know
2:32:36
Speaker 1: that bad There are good stewards and bad stewards, but
2:32:40
Speaker 1: there'll be another steward. Because I do think on the
2:32:44
Speaker 1: political side and in the public service sector, the more
2:32:47
Speaker 1: good actors that leave, they will only be filled with
2:32:50
Speaker 1: bad actors and it will only get worse than it
2:32:52
Speaker 1: might be irreparable. Right, So on the private sector side.
2:33:00
Speaker 1: I think it's a harder call, right. It's one thing
2:33:05
Speaker 1: to be stand in the gears to another thing. If
2:33:07
Speaker 1: you're literally working against the business interests of the company,
2:33:12
Speaker 1: and if they're not committing illegal acts, then I think
2:33:15
Speaker 1: it is better to quit on moral and ethical grounds,
2:33:18
Speaker 1: but do so publicly say why you're doing it. To
2:33:21
Speaker 1: do it silently, then it's ineffective. You know, speak out,
2:33:27
Speaker 1: become a whistleblower, right, become the person that worked for
2:33:29
Speaker 1: the tobacco companies to talk about all that you know,
2:33:32
Speaker 1: or the person that worked at Meta and saw everything
2:33:35
Speaker 1: that Facebook was doing to sort of weaponize the likes
2:33:39
Speaker 1: and the algorithms and stuff. You know. But I guess
2:33:43
Speaker 1: that's where I would go. I think it's I think
2:33:46
Speaker 1: if you're in the if you work for government, I
2:33:50
Speaker 1: think you're obligated to stick it out. I think if
2:33:54
Speaker 1: you work in the private sector and you have ethical
2:33:56
Speaker 1: and moral quandaries, I think then it's you know, I
2:34:01
Speaker 1: probably would be on the side of make it. It
2:34:08
Speaker 1: would be easier for me to support you walking than
2:34:11
Speaker 1: not walking, But I wouldn't do it quietly. If you
2:34:13
Speaker 1: want to, if you want to try to effect change,
2:34:16
Speaker 1: you know now if there can. If you think you
2:34:23
Speaker 1: know there is a reason to stay is if you
2:34:25
Speaker 1: think they're doing something illegal and you need to gather
2:34:28
Speaker 1: evidence and and and become a Whistleblower's that's yet another
2:34:32
Speaker 1: motivation to potentially stay if you truly believe something illegal
2:34:37
Speaker 1: is taking place. All right, appreciate the question, Luke, and
2:34:46
Speaker 1: you know there's no easy answers on those things. Next
2:34:49
Speaker 1: question comes from Tyler. Hey, I saw your video on
2:34:52
Speaker 1: the state's Democrats might put in play by twenty thirty two.
2:34:54
Speaker 1: I'm curious why Mississippi wasn't on your list. It's clearly
2:34:57
Speaker 1: it's nearly forty percent African American and often shows more
2:34:59
Speaker 1: Blue counties than other Southern states. Couldn't increasing registration and
2:35:02
Speaker 1: turn out among African American voters make it competitive. Would
2:35:05
Speaker 1: love to hear your thoughts. I think I did mention
2:35:08
Speaker 1: that Mississippi's on my next round of lists. I think
2:35:10
Speaker 1: I believe it's in that and as you know, I
2:35:14
Speaker 1: keep talking about the Mississippi as Democrats search for more
2:35:19
Speaker 1: Senate seats to put in play in the twenty six
2:35:21
Speaker 1: cycle that I think Mississippi should be one of those
2:35:23
Speaker 1: states for all it's exactly the reason you lay out right.
2:35:27
Speaker 1: I think Mississippi, into a lesser extent, South Carolina is
2:35:29
Speaker 1: the other state in the South where there's clearly an
2:35:33
Speaker 1: un activated African American vote, either under registrated in the
2:35:38
Speaker 1: rural counties in Mississippi and South Carolina or just under campaigned. Right,
2:35:43
Speaker 1: I've I've spent a lot of time a couple of
2:35:47
Speaker 1: cycles ago, we were doing some some of our counties
2:35:50
Speaker 1: to watch and before the twenty sixteen cycle or for
2:35:54
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty cycle, one of the counties I wanted
2:35:56
Speaker 1: to focus on was one of the African rural African
2:35:59
Speaker 1: American majority African American counties on the border of North
2:36:02
Speaker 1: and South Carolina. And how that the one time Barack
2:36:06
Speaker 1: Obama that Democrats carried North Carolina in the twenty first century.
2:36:09
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was on the ballot the first time, and
2:36:12
Speaker 1: he did a great job of activating the rural African
2:36:15
Speaker 1: American vote. North Carolina in twenty oh eight did not
2:36:18
Speaker 1: do as good of a job in twenty twelve, and
2:36:19
Speaker 1: they didn't carry the state, but they did in twenty
2:36:21
Speaker 1: oh eight. The point is, I do think that one
2:36:25
Speaker 1: of the reasons why Democrats have been slow at seeing
2:36:28
Speaker 1: the opportunity in Mississippi is that they're blind on rural America. Right.
2:36:34
Speaker 1: You know, their inability to get support from rural whites
2:36:37
Speaker 1: isn't due to just rural whites, it's all over. It
2:36:40
Speaker 1: explains why rural Hispanics lean right in Texas, rural blacks are.
2:36:47
Speaker 1: While they don't necessarily lean right in the South, they're
2:36:50
Speaker 1: less supportive of Democrats than urban African Americans. So yes,
2:36:58
Speaker 1: I do believe Mississippi should be a that if you
2:37:00
Speaker 1: expanded it out to the top ten states they should
2:37:02
Speaker 1: be focused on. I think it's six or seven on
2:37:05
Speaker 1: that list, and they need to. But it's a multi
2:37:10
Speaker 1: year project in Mississippi because there's a lot particularly in
2:37:14
Speaker 1: rural America, rural Black America, rural wide America, rural Hispanic America,
2:37:18
Speaker 1: Democrats have stopped showing up over the last twenty years,
2:37:21
Speaker 1: and they have to reverse that trend. Next question comes
2:37:26
Speaker 1: from Charles Davis. Great name, Charles, Love to know, Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Chaz,
2:37:32
Speaker 1: Chad you what's your favorite of all of our the
2:37:37
Speaker 1: insane amount of nicknames that can come out of the
2:37:40
Speaker 1: name Charles. But I digress it say says, thanks for
2:37:43
Speaker 1: your recent podcast of the Kenny Center. It really resonated.
2:37:45
Speaker 1: I believe Trump and his allies are following authoritarian playbook,
2:37:47
Speaker 1: but they underestimated the resolve of cities like Minneapolis and
2:37:50
Speaker 1: the power of grassroots resistance. The militarization of police and
2:37:53
Speaker 1: the behavior of ice agents are deeply concerning, and tragedies
2:37:56
Speaker 1: like the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretty show
2:37:58
Speaker 1: this takes serve my country in many and I've never
2:38:00
Speaker 1: been more worried or more hopeful that Americans are waking up.
2:38:05
Speaker 1: I voted our most of my life. Trump ended that
2:38:07
Speaker 1: no more, and I enjoy your podcast. Keep the good work. Look,
2:38:10
Speaker 1: I I appreciate you writing this note, And obviously it's
2:38:13
Speaker 1: not really a question, but it's a statement that I'll
2:38:16
Speaker 1: want to refer have a lot of people refer to
2:38:19
Speaker 1: when they start to feel bleak. You know, what he's
2:38:24
Speaker 1: doing is not popular. That's sort of the point of
2:38:28
Speaker 1: the opening of this podcast. Republicans don't like what he's doing.
2:38:31
Speaker 1: In the words of John dan Forth, aren't we better
2:38:34
Speaker 1: than this? Right? Jack dan Forth thought the Republican Party
2:38:40
Speaker 1: had had more morals than than than it does under
2:38:43
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and had any sort of ethical lines that
2:38:46
Speaker 1: they would draw, and they don't. But nobody likes this,
2:38:52
Speaker 1: you know, And it goes back to, you know, the whole,
2:38:55
Speaker 1: the whole. I do think there are a lot of
2:38:56
Speaker 1: people who supported Trump who don't like being seen as
2:39:00
Speaker 1: racist like Trump. And it's you know, I always say
2:39:07
Speaker 1: this about Trump. Everybody has their own line, and Trump
2:39:11
Speaker 1: crosses it at different times. It sounds like Charles for you,
2:39:16
Speaker 1: he crossed the line a while ago, as I always
2:39:20
Speaker 1: say for Liz Jady, he didn't cross the line until
2:39:22
Speaker 1: January sixth, right, But when he crossed that line, man,
2:39:26
Speaker 1: she was out, and she was out loudly. John Bolton
2:39:32
Speaker 1: was out, probably sooner than most people thought he'd be out.
2:39:35
Speaker 1: Mike Pence, Right, you see where I'm going here. Everybody
2:39:38
Speaker 1: has their line at different moments. Looks like Rand Paul
2:39:43
Speaker 1: has a line, looks like Thomas Massey has a line,
2:39:46
Speaker 1: looks like Marjorie Taylor Green has a line. And three
2:39:49
Speaker 1: years ago, if I said every Republic has a line,
2:39:51
Speaker 1: some of you might have said, well, Marjorie, there's no
2:39:52
Speaker 1: line for Marjorie Taylor Green. Yes there is. Everybody has
2:39:56
Speaker 1: a line, and I think, and this is what I
2:39:59
Speaker 1: think you're right about, which is, you know, not all
2:40:04
Speaker 1: of these stories impact everybody the same way, but a
2:40:08
Speaker 1: lot of people are impacted by at least one of
2:40:10
Speaker 1: these stories in the same way. And that's why he's
2:40:14
Speaker 1: got approval ratings that at best are in the low forties.
2:40:17
Speaker 1: That's why we are on the verge of having a
2:40:20
Speaker 1: record number of lawmakers say I'm out of Trump's Washington,
2:40:25
Speaker 1: get me out of here. By the way, you know,
2:40:27
Speaker 1: it's interesting about these retirees, right, those that there's about
2:40:32
Speaker 1: thirty retirements Republican retirees so far this cycle, Essentially half
2:40:39
Speaker 1: of them are retiring to run for higher office, and
2:40:41
Speaker 1: the other half of them are just walking away from politics. Well,
2:40:44
Speaker 1: the lion's share of those that are just walking away
2:40:46
Speaker 1: from politics all Republicans elected before twenty sixteen. Those that
2:40:50
Speaker 1: are doing the upper out are just about all Republicans
2:40:53
Speaker 1: elected twenty sixteen or later. The old Republican Party that
2:40:58
Speaker 1: accommodated Trump. More and more of them are having trouble
2:41:02
Speaker 1: accommodating him. And like I said, every week somebody he
2:41:07
Speaker 1: crosses the line for somebody else. He is not gaining
2:41:11
Speaker 1: any new support every week Donald Trump loses more support.
2:41:18
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Rico from Sequoia National Forest. All right, well,
2:41:23
Speaker 1: here we are two big baseball fans gearing up for
2:41:25
Speaker 1: ANO one hundred and sixty two game season. But I
2:41:26
Speaker 1: still can't get over what I think is the dumbest
2:41:29
Speaker 1: rule in sports, the intentional walk. If teams want to
2:41:31
Speaker 1: pitch around guys like Ocanni, fine, but make it cost
2:41:33
Speaker 1: two bases instead of one. I like where you're going there.
2:41:37
Speaker 1: MLBE keeps talking about speeding up the game, So why
2:41:39
Speaker 1: not fix this? What say you keep the cowardice or
2:41:42
Speaker 1: change the rule? Wow? Two bases for intentional walks? You
2:41:47
Speaker 1: know I could see I could buy into that. You know,
2:41:54
Speaker 1: maybe it's something like you get you can't you can
2:42:00
Speaker 1: only intentionally walk a player once again, and and you
2:42:07
Speaker 1: know you can so because I think what's first of all,
2:42:10
Speaker 1: it's bad for the fans, right, we want to see
2:42:12
Speaker 1: Otani hit. So let's just you know, I remember this
2:42:14
Speaker 1: with Bonds too, but let's just say with Otani. You know,
2:42:17
Speaker 1: you know, Tani is like, you know, a version of
2:42:19
Speaker 1: the NBA on the road, right, you know, NBA in
2:42:22
Speaker 1: the regular season and Lakers come to town. All right,
2:42:25
Speaker 1: I want to see Lebron. Oh, Lebron's resting tonight, you know,
2:42:28
Speaker 1: you know, with the with the with the with the minute.
2:42:31
Speaker 1: So it's not very fan friendly and you spend all
2:42:32
Speaker 1: this money, you think take your kid to see Lebron
2:42:35
Speaker 1: the one time a year that Lebron shows up, particularly
2:42:37
Speaker 1: if you're in the Eastern Conference. Right, So, nobody wants
2:42:40
Speaker 1: to go to a game all excited to see Otani
2:42:43
Speaker 1: play for the first time, only to see him intentionally
2:42:44
Speaker 1: walk three times. So I think an addendum I would
2:42:50
Speaker 1: make to your rule is I think it's one that
2:42:53
Speaker 1: you can't intentionally walk any player more than once a game,
2:42:57
Speaker 1: and if you do want to intentionally walks, it's two.
2:43:02
Speaker 1: It's two bases, I think. I guess I look at
2:43:08
Speaker 1: it this way. Rico and my dog here has a
2:43:11
Speaker 1: very strong opinion about this too, Speaking of intentional walks,
2:43:14
Speaker 1: she would like to be intentionally walked right after I
2:43:17
Speaker 1: finished taping this episode. But I think I don't think
2:43:21
Speaker 1: you will get support for just doing all intentional walks
2:43:24
Speaker 1: two bases. But I do think if you make it
2:43:27
Speaker 1: one per game, per player, that might be a better
2:43:31
Speaker 1: way to do things, all right, last question, like I said,
2:43:34
Speaker 1: I got to intentionally walk Cali just wanted to toss
2:43:38
Speaker 1: out a new name that scandal headlines. Okay, here it is,
2:43:42
Speaker 1: the Abu Dhabi crypto affair, all right, the Maga coin con. Okay,
2:43:49
Speaker 1: the shake Steak scandal kind of sizzling, right if the
2:43:54
Speaker 1: word sizzle in there, right, hope one of these sticks
2:43:57
Speaker 1: best Chase from Little Rock rket Saw. He claims it's
2:44:00
Speaker 1: he keeps saying the five Timers Club, Chase. I think
2:44:03
Speaker 1: we're up to six or seven Timers Club on this.
2:44:05
Speaker 1: So well, there it is. That's a good way to
2:44:09
Speaker 1: end this, end this episode. Let's see what you guys
2:44:11
Speaker 1: come up with. He's trying Abu Dhabi crypto affair, the
2:44:15
Speaker 1: Maga coin con, and the Shakesteak scandal, and Chase. I
2:44:23
Speaker 1: would probably say, let's go back to the drawing boarder.
2:44:27
Speaker 1: Let's get some more nominees out there. That's all I'm saying.
2:44:29
Speaker 1: Let's get some Let's get some more nominees out there.
2:44:33
Speaker 1: So with that, hey, listen, I I'm gonna be a
2:44:38
Speaker 1: cheerleader for one thing, and that's Team USA. I love
2:44:41
Speaker 1: you know. I give my old, my old, my old workplace.
2:44:48
Speaker 1: A lot of grief on what they've done to the
2:44:50
Speaker 1: new side of things. I'm not gonna walk in. I'm
2:44:52
Speaker 1: not gonna relitigate what's happened on that front. I just
2:44:57
Speaker 1: want to give a lot of kudos and credit to
2:45:00
Speaker 1: the coverage of the Olympics by my old employer. I
2:45:02
Speaker 1: think i BBC Sports do a terrific job. They have finally,
2:45:05
Speaker 1: I think, and you saw it with the last you
2:45:08
Speaker 1: really saw it in twenty twenty four with the gold
2:45:12
Speaker 1: Zone and everything they've done, but they have really figured
2:45:15
Speaker 1: out I mean the Olympics and this streaming moment, right like,
2:45:20
Speaker 1: if you talk about a sporting event that was built
2:45:22
Speaker 1: for this moment that we live in where you can
2:45:24
Speaker 1: just go find your sport, find your stream, the gold Zone.
2:45:28
Speaker 1: If you actually want to watch the Olympics for competition,
2:45:32
Speaker 1: you can just watch a stream that does that. You know.
2:45:35
Speaker 1: If you do want the stories and sort of the
2:45:38
Speaker 1: soap opera part of the Olympics that the network always
2:45:40
Speaker 1: gives you, you can do that too. But I just
2:45:43
Speaker 1: will say that I am there's no qualification here, guys.
2:45:49
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I love what's being done. I love the coverage.
2:45:55
Speaker 1: It breaks my heart that team USA and team is
2:46:00
Speaker 1: gets booed as hard as they are right now in Europe.
2:46:03
Speaker 1: That that hurts, right, I wish I but I also
2:46:06
Speaker 1: understand it. And the only word of warning I'd give
2:46:09
Speaker 1: to my friends at NBC Sports is, you know, I
2:46:12
Speaker 1: get you want to try to make the games about
2:46:15
Speaker 1: the games. There's there's there's avoiding politics, but then they're
2:46:22
Speaker 1: censoring it. Be careful of walking that line. I'm all
2:46:25
Speaker 1: for avoiding it. You want to showcase the games, but
2:46:29
Speaker 1: be careful censoring. I think it's important for the audience
2:46:33
Speaker 1: to know how unpopular an American official is. If there
2:46:38
Speaker 1: is a moment that that happens, all right with that,
2:46:41
Speaker 1: I'll see in forty eight nineos