Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump’s Government Has Lost All Credibility + What Biden Got Right & The Fight For Economic Dignity

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Full Episode - Trump’s Government Has Lost All Credibility + What Biden Got Right & The Fight For Economic Dignity · The Chuck ToddCast

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• 1:51
  Speaker 1: they're happy Monday. It is a federal holiday, President's Day,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: since we've separated out when I was a hit the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: very first year or two of school, I feel like
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: we had every state decided were they going to get
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: out for Washington's birthday or for Lincoln's birthday? And then we,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: of course we ended up with this President's Day. I'll
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  Speaker 1: tell you what sort of what doesn't happen as much
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: with President's Day as I wish it did. And look
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I've got I don't want you to think I'm just
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: going to go down this President's Day rabbit hole for
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  Speaker 1: twenty minutes. I got like a two minute riff here
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: in President's Day, and then we're gonna get in to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: what i have to say. It is a Monday. I've
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: got an interesting of how the Trump administration is accelerating
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: distrust in government and the irony being the reason Trump
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  Speaker 1: got to the presidency twice was playing on the fears
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  Speaker 1: of distrust of government. But I'm gonna get to that
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: in a bit. I also my interview today Jean Sperling,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: who's been a long time sort of economic advisor to
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  Speaker 1: president's Democratic presidents. He's worked, he's worked, I believe for
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the he did not work in the Carter white House,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: but he's worked in every other Democratic White House in
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: some form or another. And his sort of the reason
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: he always gets hired is because he's the economist that
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: seems to also understand how to read a poll and
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: understand how to apply economic policy to real world political messaging.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: It's not the easiest thing, it is Oftentimes economists can
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: frustrate a president no matter there. And he's also was
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: an original one of the early consultants to West Wing.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So for the West Wing junkies, trust me, you're going
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: to want to listen to this interview. It's also a Monday,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: which means I've got my time cast. We're going to
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: go into the Toddcast time cast, my Toddcast time machine,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and we're going to go all the way back to
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the eighteen forties. That's the only hint I'm going to
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: give you. But we're going to go all the way
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  Speaker 1: back to the eighteen forties, an important event that took
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: place that is still reverberating in our politics today around
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  Speaker 1: the globe. So there's two hints that I just gave you.
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  Speaker 1: Eighteen forties and politics around the globe. All right, no googling,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: see if you can figure it out while you're listening
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  Speaker 1: whatever you may be doing today. But we kick it off.
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  Speaker 1: It is President's Day and it is one of those
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  Speaker 1: things that I do wish there were. I don't want
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  Speaker 1: the lame list where historians decide who are the greatest,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: who are the worst, because a lot of times, you know,
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  Speaker 1: many of these rankings of presidents are more reflective of
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the time we're living in, and we apply our current
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: times to trying to figure out the success or failure
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  Speaker 1: of a given president. So I do think we sometimes
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: just like just like in sports debates, you know, should
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: you really put Bill Russell and Lebron James in the
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  Speaker 1: same category when you're trying to decide to do the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: greatest ever? When they literally played two different types of games,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: there was no three point shot. There was you know,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: literally there were nobody dribbled, nobody switched hands, dribbled. What
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: is allowed what is called dribbling today would have been
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: called palming in the sixties. So it's I almost view
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  Speaker 1: it similarly, right, It's look, the times that you live
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  Speaker 1: in matter a lot, and sometimes it is hard for
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  Speaker 1: us to understand what the cultural times were in that moment,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: no matter how much we read that said, I thought
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I would quickly go and talk about President's Day in
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  Speaker 1: this respect, we now have our third straight one term president,
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  Speaker 1: or you know, we're going to have a fourth one
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  Speaker 1: term president. We'll see if the person elected in twenty
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  Speaker 1: eight can get re elected in thirty two. And one
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  Speaker 1: of the interesting aspects of one term presidencies is we
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  Speaker 1: deem them all failures. Right, we look at a success
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: or failure of a president based on whether they get reelected.
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  Speaker 1: So essentially what we're saying is, and I think this
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  Speaker 1: is a mistake, and I'll get to it in a minute,
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  Speaker 1: but what we're saying is if you if you're not
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  Speaker 1: a good politician, then you probably want a good president.
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  Speaker 1: I will, I will certainly say if you're a one
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  Speaker 1: term president, it means you weren't a good politics, but
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't always mean you weren't qualified for the job,
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  Speaker 1: and if anything, you might have been really good at
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  Speaker 1: the job. So in that spirit, and in fact, if
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  Speaker 1: you're Joe Biden or Donald Trump, the way we judge presidencies,
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  Speaker 1: it's pretty clear neither one of them is ever going
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  Speaker 1: to be considered a successful president simply because neither one
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  Speaker 1: of them won re election. You know, Trump won non
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  Speaker 1: consecutive terms, but as we learned with the only other
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  Speaker 1: president to win non consecutive terms is at best you
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  Speaker 1: become an intriguing footnote in history. Hey check out Gover
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  Speaker 1: Cleveland in one non consecutive terms. But it is not
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  Speaker 1: as if his presidencies have left a legacy. Now it's
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  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it is more
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  Speaker 1: likely than not that being a one term president and
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  Speaker 1: an inability to win direct reelection will always be seen
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  Speaker 1: as an asterisk keeping you out of your top ten
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  Speaker 1: or top fifteen. However you want to do that, because
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  Speaker 1: part of a successful president in our democracy is doing
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  Speaker 1: policies that you can alsold to the public in that
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  Speaker 1: moment in time, not just hope historians one hundred years
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  Speaker 1: later say hey, that was pretty good. But in that
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  Speaker 1: spirit I thought I would talk about I would point
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  Speaker 1: out five one term presidents who history has been kinder
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  Speaker 1: to and will continue to be kinder too, because essentially
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  Speaker 1: their big failing was an inability to meet the moment politically,
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  Speaker 1: but their policies and some of the things that they
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  Speaker 1: proposed actually live longer beyond them. So let's start with
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  Speaker 1: perhaps the only one term president that chose to be
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  Speaker 1: a one term president, James Polk. He was the ultimate
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: checklist president. He promised to serve one term. He set
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: four massive goals, securing the Oregon Trail, acquiring California, lowering tariffs,
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  Speaker 1: establishing an independent treasury. He achieved all of them, expanded
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  Speaker 1: the US to the Pacific, and then he simply went home.
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  Speaker 1: We have never had anybody like him since who actually
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  Speaker 1: said no, I want to be a one term president
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  Speaker 1: because you got to get it in one term, and
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  Speaker 1: this is what I'm going to do. So Polk is
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  Speaker 1: still sort of, you know, always deserves either's some There's
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  Speaker 1: a couple of good Polk biographies that have been written
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  Speaker 1: in the last twenty five years. I highly highly recommend them.
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  Speaker 1: Bob Mary, I believe, was one of them. I think
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  Speaker 1: was the author of one of them that I truly
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed on that one. But I would encourage you if
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  Speaker 1: you've got to, if you're looking for a president that
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  Speaker 1: you haven't learned enough about, try James Polk number two
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  Speaker 1: on my list of underrated presidents on here in these
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  Speaker 1: one termers. James Garfield, you've heard me lion eyes him before.
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  Speaker 1: He's he's sort of he's he's the what if presidency,
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  Speaker 1: right because in two hundred days of a presidency he
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  Speaker 1: did begin the dismantling of what was then a corrupt
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: spoils system is what it was called. Ben But he's
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the patronage system, right, trying to take the patronage out
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: of politics. Now. Donald Trump's trying to basically eradicate all
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  Speaker 1: of those changes at Garfield and then later Chester Arthur
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  Speaker 1: made it is terrible trust in government if we go
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  Speaker 1: down this road. But the other part of Garfield, and
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  Speaker 1: the reason it's such a what if presidency is he
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  Speaker 1: was a fierce advocate for civil rights at the time
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  Speaker 1: and was very much pro reconstruction. I wonder if he lives,
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  Speaker 1: does Jim Crow get dismantled before really becomes embedded for
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  Speaker 1: another forty years in society. Number three on the list
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  Speaker 1: George H. W. Bush an extraordinarily busy and accomplished one
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  Speaker 1: term presidency. He just wasn't a very good politician and
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  Speaker 1: timing of the economic recovery was not good for him.
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  Speaker 1: It started to recover sort of after voters had already
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  Speaker 1: made their decision that he wasn't focused enough on the economy,
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  Speaker 1: and he was also overshadowed by Reagan. He didn't have
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  Speaker 1: the charisma of Ronald Reagan, but look helped. He was
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  Speaker 1: the president when the Cold War came to an end.
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  Speaker 1: He helped oversee renoifacation of Germany, and he chose stable
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  Speaker 1: global diplomacy and long term fiscal health, which actually created
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  Speaker 1: the first inklings of the Trump movement within his party.
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  Speaker 1: But he arguably essentially held off that sort of return
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  Speaker 1: to sort of pre World War Two conservatism that the
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Republican Party has now returned to. His actions helped hold
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that off for arguably another generation. John Quincy Adams, here's
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: a man born arguably one hundred years too early. He
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: proposed a national system of Rhodes canals and even a
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: national university an astronom astronomical observatories. Essentially, he was outlining
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  Speaker 1: the beginnings of the space program, our incredible land grant
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: university system that later Lincoln would help solidify. At the
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: time that he proposed these things, he was mocked, but
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: he actually was laying out the blueprint for modern American infrastructure.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: So in some ways he was just ahead of his time.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, he could never shake being a scion.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: That obviously didn't hurt. Then there's Jimmy Carter, who I
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: think is a presidency that won those of us who
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: lived up during the Carter presidency when we die off
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: because we saw just politically how erratic he was, and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: he wasn't a good politician, but it didn't mean that
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: some of the things he accomplished weren't going to be
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: seen as as you know, whether it's deregulation of the airlines.
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  Speaker 1: He did quite a few things that we are aging
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: fairly well, Camp David Accords. I mean, how important were
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: those uh to these days? And as you know, as
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Israel solidifies itself more and more as an accepted country
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and power and finally being accepted by more Muslim and
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Arab nations, you know, it all began with Egypt, the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Panama Canal Treaty, which of course Trump's trying to undo,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and his focus on renewable energy, yes the country wasn't ready, yes,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: not there, and using human rights as a pillar of
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: foreign policy, which I think will be something that will
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: be more of a given, especially when we move on
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: from the Trump era. I think the reactionary part of
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  Speaker 1: the Trump era, the lack of moral and human rights
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  Speaker 1: in our foreign policy, is actually going to make that,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I think, over time, make that more and more of
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  Speaker 1: a centerpiece. So one hundred years from now, how will
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Biden and Trump be viewed? Some of it is going
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to depend on whether you know, neither put it this way,
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  Speaker 1: Both will never be seen as consequential one hundred years
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: from now, right, either Trump's move towards nationalism and America first,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: protectionism becomes you know, defines the globe for the next
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: hundred years, and he will be seen as And if
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: it does lead to a successful America leader of the world,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and we do actually advance and avoid major wars, then
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: sure he might be seen as visionary. I'm skeptical considering
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the previous time that we were a very nationalistic globe
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and how that led to multiple wars. But we'll see
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: on there. I think right now many historians currently put
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Trump closer to the bottom. For As for Biden, you know,
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  Speaker 1: he he I don't know if it'll ever be considered
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: a good presidency or an undergraded presidency, but a few
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: things that were accomplished during his presidency may age well,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: whether it's the chipsack, the reindustrialization, the focus on renewable
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: energy as a you know, sort of an all of
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the above policy, if that is where we go, right
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: But a lot of both Biden and Trump. So the
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: point is is that I don't think Biden and Trump
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: can be fairly evaluated for one hundred years, right because
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: we all will personalize it so much, just like what
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: happens with Jimmy Carter, and maybe to a lessard and
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: George H. W. Bush. But anyway, there's my little President's
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Day rant on that the most important thing you should
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: take away from this is go read about James Bolk,
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  Speaker 1: the only true one term president that we had because
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: he wanted to be and you know, he's certainly, he's
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: certainly he did what many people would wish more politicians
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: would do. Set a checklist, accomplish it, and walk away.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: It is truly a sort of representative democracy. All right.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I want to move on to a larger, a larger
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: conversation today. I'm gonna start with a question that's bigger
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: than anyone headline. What does a real reckoning look like?
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  Speaker 1: You know? I And just stay with me here a minute,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: because I'm going to go into multiple stories from Epstein
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to DHS to the Me Too movement to plane crashes
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: to al Paso. But again, just stick with me and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: trust me on this one. But I want to start
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: with that question, what does a real reckoning look like?
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Because it is interesting to me that in the first
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Trump term we had a reckoning that was the Me
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Too movement sort of in some ways, Harvey Weinstein is
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: sort of a face of that, right, and it certainly
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: helped or the Epstein reckoning that we're having here in
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the moment now in the second Trump term, right. And
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's an accident that it's during the
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Trump terms that we want to have this outsized reckoning
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: because the Epstein files have become their own kind of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: moral and institutional stress test, just like the Me Too
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: movement did in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and twenty nineteen.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: But what's fascinating and where this where I'm going with
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: this today, is this the institution that seems the least
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: capable of dealing with Epstein and this Epstein moment is
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the government itself. And that's not because the private sector
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: is pure. We know that, please, okay. It's because in
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the private sector there's at least one brutal organizing principle consequences, right,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: There's reputational consequences. We're seeing that with Casey Wasserman, who's
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: head of the LA Olympic committees, faced a potential vote
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: of no confidence on that. He survived that, but he's
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: now going to sell one of his firms to sort
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: of get out from this. And he did flirtatious emails
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: with Maxwell. It wasn't even an Epstein guy, but he
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: was a Maxwell flirter. But it's reputational. There's liability issues, right,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: maybe why certain lawyers have been shown the door, certain
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: law firms have decided to part ways with managing partners.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: There's certainly customer consequences. People say, I'm not dealing have
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: business anymore. Right, Casey Wasserman's selling his firm because clients
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: didn't want to be associated. You have shareholders who don't
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: like it, contracts access. So there's actually in the private
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: sector there's a mechanism that forces some action and forces
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: at least some consequence, right, that we're not seeing at
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: all with this government. In government, right, in this government,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: especially the organizing principle increasingly feels like this deny, deflect,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: litigate the critics, and dare people to move on. Right,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: That's kind of what we heard with BAMBONDI. Let's talk
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: about Dow fifty thousand, move on. Nothing to see here.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Do you think this is just about Epstein? It isn't.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Epstein is just the most morally radioactive example of a
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: broader pattern. Because trust is the currency of government, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: without it you cannot have a legitimate government. And this
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: administration spends its trust currency like it's monopoly money. Right.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And the irony of this is Donald Trump became president
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: by playing on the on distrust of government. And what
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: has he done. He has made government less trustful. He
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: is making us less healthy because of the nonsense of DJHS.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get toss moral less, morally and ethically accountable
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: because do as I say, not as I do. And
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: perhaps it's making it's creating an economic revolution if we're
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: not careful. And I'm going to get to that in
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a minute. So let's start with the idea that government
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: can't carry the moral it's moral weight. Last week's hearings
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: right with the Attorney General of PANBONDI didn't reassure anyone.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: It did just thepposite, or reinforce the feeling that the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Epstein story inside government has become. It's not a story
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: of justice. It's not even a story about the victims.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: It's simply a narrative management story. That is all the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Justice Department is trying to do is manage this narrative,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: land the plane so that Trump is touched as little
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: as possible politically. That's all this is about. And if
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: you watched any of Bondi's hearings. You saw the move
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: questions about reactions, questions about victims, and questions about process,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and the response was simply combat right. They did an
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: invasion of privacy type thing of sort of finding out
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: what parts of the Epstein files lawmakers were searching, which
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I found to be just atrocious. You have deflection. It
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: turned into partisan trench warfare. And that matters because Epstein
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: is one of those stories where process is the morality.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It's not just what you know, it's how you handle
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: what you know. Did you want to do the right
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: thing when you knew this guy was morally praved and
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: ethically questionable, or did you look the other way because
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you got a free plane ride or because he was rich? Right,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: And it's whether you can prove your pursuing truth and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: justice rather than protecting reputations or settling scores. But that
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: is not what this Justice Department is doing. Instead, the
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: hearing left the public with the same sinking feeling we've
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: had for years that when a story touches powerful people,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the system stops feeling like a system. It starts feeling
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: like a club with velvet ropes and protect and it
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: becomes a protection racket. This episode of the Chuck Podcast
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  Speaker 1: thirty percent off. Look, I'm not going to do the
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  Speaker 1: name game for now. You have other people that do that,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: because that's exactly how the truth gets buried in a
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: fog of mentions, insinuations, and what's turned into sort of
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: sorting by tribes like what about ism. So when one
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: side says this with Epstein. The other side says that
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: with Epstein, But I want to say this, if your
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: goal is public confidence, you don't get it by acting
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: like the public is the enemy. And this is where
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the private sector comparison gets uncomfortable for government, because in
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the private sector, when there's a credible scandal with documentation,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: people can lose those contracts, get fired, get sued, get blacklisted,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: get forced out of the room. In government, the Epstein
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: response increasingly looks like nothing to see here. You're a
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: partisan for asking trust us. And also we're not going
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: to answer basic questions about what we did and why right,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And it's your taxpayers in some ways we have these
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: people should be more accountable to us, not less. How
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: is it that Casey Wasserman's agency is more accountable about
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Epstein than the fricking federal government. Epstein is a task
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: of whether the public still believes the government can tell
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the truth about the powerful people in this country, And
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: so far Pambondi and the Department of Justice is failing badly.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: F And this is a quick, quick decide, how do
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: you want to emphasize it the F F plus or
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: F minus. To me, if I go F plus, it
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: implies are really close to being a D minus, So
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go F minus minus minus minus center. But
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: that's the thing here. This isn't just about Epstein anymore. Right.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: If you can't tell the truth about any powerful person,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: and Epstein should be the easiest person to tell the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: truth about, turning to be the hardest one, Well what
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: else are you not telling the truth about? Right? None
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of this just stays in an Epstein box. It infects
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: everything else. So let's widen the lens. President's Day. The
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: airports are full, families are traveling, and we're back in
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: this uniquely American only ritual where government workers told are
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: told they're essential our tsa agents. So they're going to
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: have to show up the work with no promise that
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: they're going to get paid on time. They'll get paid eventually,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: but not on time. Ask your landlord if you can say, hey,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get paid eventually, so you'll get your
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: rent eventually. It doesn't always work that way. But they're
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: not going to get paid because politicians are once again
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: using their paychecks as leverage. The fact that this is
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: at all legal, I've gone through a rant about this.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: We should not we are You're supposed to be leader
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of the free world, the number one place to do
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: business in the world, and we behave like this with
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: our government shutdowns. It's absolutely absurd. It's not a functioning system.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: It continues to be government by hostage situation. I understand
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: this is what either party has is leverage. You take
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: whatever leverage you can get. But the fact that we're
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: using people's lives as leverage, livelihoods who are in charge
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of people's lives i e. TSA agents, is kind of ridiculous.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: And what do we do. We're hitting the wrong people first, right,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: we're punishing TSA agents and travelers for the init for
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: essentially a poorly run Department of Homeland Security, politically scared
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Republicans who know real reforms are necessary, and a White
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: House that doesn't want to give an inch because of
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the politics of this thing. So sadly, we built the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: system where the only way Washington can create urgency is
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: by inconveniencing the public. And look, this is how this
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: partial shutdown will land. We know we got about two
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: weeks because they're going to get paid, and when they
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: miss that first paycheck, perhaps that will start to motivate
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: people to do this, and I think it honestly, it's
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a you know, there are two things that I wonder here,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and I'll get to this a minute, but it is
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: we're you know, we know that this is what will
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: trigger the negotiations. But I have to say the fact
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: that if you look at the democratic demands right unmasking agents,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: there is not a single good argument for masking these agents.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: And I know it says, well, we're trying to protect
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: them from being docks Well, you know, if you do
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: your job within the constitutional norms, then you won't worry
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: about being docksed if you're an agent, an ice agent
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: that is going to break the law or go or
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: blur the line between what's legal and not legal. I
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: understand why you want to protect your identity, but that
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be no excuse. The body camera shouldn't be decided
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: by DHS when they get to turn them on or off,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: which is apparently what they want to do. So this
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: is a case where the demands being asked here are
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: not crazy, and anybody who considers themselves a libertarian and
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: a believer in the Bill of Rights should be able
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: to stand up for these quite easily. It's not very difficult,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and it it just it's it's this is again, you're
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: trying to restore trust in these agencies, and the fact
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: that the Trump administration does not want to restore trust
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: right is pushing back on some of these things is
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a problem. But here we are, and I think it's
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: it's you know, ab the only way that I think
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration could buy more time without having to
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: make huge changes is to fire Nome tomorrow. I just
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: don't know. You know, Trump seems to be very hesitant
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and nervous about having an unemployed Christy Nome and an
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: unemployed Corey Lwandowski, And you can read all about them
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: in that crazy well see turtles story about just how
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the two of them are sort of treating DHS like
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: it's their personal their personal plaything. But I understand that's
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: why Trump has decided he fired too many people that
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: became sources for disgruntled sources for the press, and he
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to create that in the old LBJA, do
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: you want people pissing into your tent or do you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: want people in your tent pissing outside the tent? And
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I think that that is clearly where Trump wants to go.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: But this whole thing, we know, this is a ridiculous standoff.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: And here's the problem. When government behaves like this way,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: people will then start treating the government like a joke.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: And when people treat government like a joke, they stop
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: following instructions, they stop believing it's warnings, they stop cooperating.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: And that brings me to the pattern that's been screaming
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: at me across multiple stories this week. The government says X,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and we will find out later that why happened. We
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: have yet another incident with ice in Minneapolis, where they
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: tell a story now and they fix it later. And
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that culture of tell a story now, fix it later
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: culture is all over it right, And this may be
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: one of the perfect microcosms of the trust problem we
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: have with government in this current moment. The immediate impulse
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: to tell the most self justifying story possible is clearly
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: how Christy Nome operates and how Stephen Miller operates, and
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: they try to tell the story as fast as possible.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Only later, when there's video or a judge or a
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: prosecutor involved, does government start walking back whatever it is
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: they were spinning early on. So in Minneapolis, the public
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: got a narrative an official narrative right away. Then it shifted,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Then prosecutors moved to dismiss it. Then DHS had to
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: acknowledge that accounts didn't match evidence. Then agents were put
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: on leave. And let's not skap past the most corrosive
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: part of this. When law enforcement leads with a narrative
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: that demonizes the person who got shot. I'm not even
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: talking about the dead. This is the gentleman that got
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: shot in the leg, and then the narrative collapses. It
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: justn't just hurts that one case. It teaches the public
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: to assume the first version that DHS tells you is propaganda.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: And it's pretty clear right now Christine knows. Whatever she
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: says first, you cannot believe. Even if she's telling you
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: the truth, you have no idea whether it's the truth,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: because she consistently gaslights the American public. So when the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: first draft of the government story is always self exoneration,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: eventually people will stop believing any draft of the story,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: any part of it. It'll always assume to be there's
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: more than what they're admitting. And there's no doubt. When
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: things are chaotic and the moment, information changes, and sometimes
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: what they truly thought happened, wasn't what it was. But
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: you have no benefit of the doubt anymore with us.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: You have lied too many times, Christine Home, you have
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: lied too many times. Stephen Miller, you have lied too
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: many times to the public about these narratives involving migrants,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: involving immigrants, involving these ice trades, and so there is
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: zero credit. But this is why large majorities now, this
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: is why the president, who at one time was right
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: side up on his management of immigration, is now upside now.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: And even on the border itself, he's barely seen as
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: doing a good job there simply because of how poor
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: and how much they have lied about their ice operations.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: The pattern is what matters here, and the pattern right
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: now is defend first, verified later, if you ever have
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: to verify at all. And it's the pattern we're seeing
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: again this week, including in the skies, the al Paso incident. Right.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you woke up the other morning and you
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: were like, what the hell's going on in El Paso?
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And are we about to are? I tell you my fear,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: we're about to start a war with Mexico. We've got
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: about the bomb cartels like why else would you shut
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: down the airspace for ten days around OL Paso? Right,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: So what happened, Well, what we have is a case
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: study and why the public distrusts institutions. So we have
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: this major extraordinary action that impacts thousands of people, followed
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: by contradictory explanations as to why it happened, followed by
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: reporting that suggests the real story is a breakdown in
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: inneragency procedure that the government is yet to come go
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: public with. In other words, the process failed and then
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: the messaging got weird. So the reporting around this story
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: is one big takeaway. This wasn't just about one incident.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: It was about whether the Pentagon and the Department of
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Homeland Security could move forward with technology without having to
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: get signed off from the FAA, and whether the FAA
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: felt forced to pull the emergency brake because it was
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: clear to them that the Pentagon and DHS were lying
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: to them. Right. So, now you have government agencies can't
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: trust other government agencies, And the FAA is one of
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: those semi non political agencies right that are dealing where
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: they know they're dealing with political appointees who are all
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: about politics first. And here's the bigger deal here and
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: why we want our FAA not to be politicized. If
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: you want people to fly and trust flying, you need confidence.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: You can't have been and this is not happening in
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a vacuum. Because we also earlier this week got the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: official NTSB report on that twenty twenty five National Airport
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: collision where sixty seven people were killed, and to me,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: it's raised major questions about the military and civilian aviation coordination.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: If this wasn't the US Army causing the crash, there'd
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: be a lot more a lot more accountability here, all right.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: The US Army clearly was in the fault here, and
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: they and their decision to even do these training flights
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a major airport put lives in danger,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and there should be real accountability, and there's going to
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: be none. But so when the public sees another episode
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: that looks like rules for the carve outs, for me,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: it's going to confirm the following fear that there is
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: a national security exception to accountability. Apparently safety is supposed
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: to be born. When safety becomes political, people will get hurt.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Just remember that. Now, take that exact same theme process
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the bypass expertise, sideline standard shifting late, and you move
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: it from planes to public health. And I want to
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: tell you the story about the FDA and Maderna, regulatory
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: uncertainty and national self harm. Maderna says the FDA refused
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: even to review it's mRNA based flu vaccine application, what
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: was called as a refuse to file. Now, whatever you
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: think about MODERNA, whatever you think about mRNA, here's what
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: does matter. Innovation depends on predictable rules. You can say no,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: you can demand more data, you can even reject something.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: But when the complaint is that the standard changed late,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the process got bent, and career staff got overridden, you're
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: not just deciding one vaccine. You're telling one of the
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: most serious scientific investors in the world that there is
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: no longer a stable country to build in Here in
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the United States, you cannot trust the Department of Health
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: to do the right thing. Regulatory uncertainty is a hidden
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: tax on national competence, and competence, like trust is a resource,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: once you drain it, you don't refill it with a
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: press release. And what's scary when you read the story
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: about the mRNA vaccine right, they were actually working with
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the FDA, making sure that the essentially with every little
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: step of the process, that the FDA was comfortable with
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: what they were doing. And then out of nowhere, because
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Kennedy has his crackpot theories, he has no scientific evidence
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: to back up his beliefs about mRNA vaccines other than
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: his crackpot theories. Okay, with a brain that probably was
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: drug addled by heroin for a decade. And I'm sorry,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I think this guy is mentally unfit to
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: serve in any office in the federal government. And instead
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: he's in one of the most important offices that have
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: to impact my public, our health, all of our health.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: And we see what his leadership has done. We have
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: people dying from the measles, we have a pregnant woman
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: who killed their child drinking raw milk. And I'm glad
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: to know that Kennedy was swimming in a polluted Potomac River.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And now we found out that there's like more sewage
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: leaking into the Potomac River. But man, what they are
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: doing to Maderna and MRINA vaccines. Look, I mean, it's
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: bad business, it's bad for our health. But I guess
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Europeans and the rest of the world will will get
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: scientific advances while we get to be in the dark
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: ages here thanks to Kennedy and his leadership. But again,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you cannot trust the government. We can't trust the government
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: to tell us the truth about air accidents. We can't
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: trust the government to tell us the truth about immigration enforcement.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: We can't trust the government, this government in particular, about
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: the truth when it comes to health. I got one
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: more to throw in here. What we're seeing now that
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: this is a pay to play administration. We had another
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: example the removal, departure, resignation, firing of Gail Slater as
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the Department of Justice's Anti trust chief reads like another
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: example of what actually has leverage in this administration. When
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: powerful interests complain, when big players make money who want
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: a deal, When allies feud, people become the collateral damage.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Gail Slater was getting in the way of some big
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: business deals, and they went right to the Trump administration,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: and Trump administration agreed that she was getting in the way,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: so they got rid of her. She's somebody that's you know.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Jd Vance is the one member of MAGA who seems
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: to actually supposedly support stronger government regulation on big business
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: and big corporation, particularly big tact right. He was one
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: of the few Republicans that praise Lena Khan when she
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: was at the FTC and Gail Slater worked for him.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: You know what, you don't hear jd Vance raising his
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: hand in disagreeing with this decision. But it is yet
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: another reminder that you can't trust government to do its
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: job properly because ultimately, if somebody writes a big enough
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: check to the President, to somebody in the administration, they
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: can manipulate the Justice Department and the Gail Slater firing, slash, resignation,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, is yet another example
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: of that again, can you trust government to regulate an
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: industry properly without pay to play accusations? So here we are.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: It's it's so let me just bring this back to
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: where we started. Epstein. Epstein isn't just a scandal, It's
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: a mirror. It reflects how power protects itself. It reflects
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: how institutions behave when the stakes are reputational and political.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: It reflects whether the public believes the system is even
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: capable of justice when justice is inconvenient. And last week,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: watching the government response, watching the posture, watching the defensiveness.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: It's not hard to conclude the following, the public's demand
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: for accountability is real, but this government's capacity to deliver
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it is in doubt. And you could say, hey, this
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: is true of Biden. This is true. Yes, Donald Trump
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: ran as somebody who was going to fix this, and
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: instead he has made it worse. He has accelerated it.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: We now have less trust and health, less trust in
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: law enforcement, less trust in big business. And it's really
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: due to the actions or lack of actions by this administration.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: All Right, I'm gonna sneak at a break and when we
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: come back my conversation with Jean Spurling again. If you
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: love the West Wing, you're gonna love a good chunk
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: of this interview where we talk about the essentially ekaha
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: when economic policy and political messaging both collide and align,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: and what a future economic messaging might work left or right.
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• 43:21
  Speaker 1: something you should really think about, especially if you've got
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: a growing family. So my guest today is a man
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: who's quite literally been in the room where it happens
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: on and off for over three decades of American economic history.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: He is the only person to serve as the Director
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: of the National Economic Council under two different presidents, Bill
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Clint and Barack Obama, and most recently served as the
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: White House coordinator for the American Rescue Plan for President Biden.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I'll ask him what he did as a child staffer
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: for Jimmy Carter's presidency, and she's worked for every Democratic
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: presidency in my adult lifetime. It is Jeene Sperling, And
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: what I have him on today is actually he's got
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a new gig these days. He's the founder and executive
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: director of what is dubbed the Economic Dignity Lab at
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy. Look, Gene is a
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: think tanker who's actually been a practical government servant as well.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you get your think tankers who throw out white
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: papers and ideas, and you get your government servants who
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: take those white paper and ideas well. Jean's kind of
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: been on both sides of it, and it is one
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: of the few people I know that, while he's wonky,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: he also understands campaign politics and that is a unique
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: breed of individual because it's not an easy thing to find.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: And you know, he's got the quirky sense of humor
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: like I like I do, and like I like. So,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: mister Sperling, good to see.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: You, Thank you chat, thanks you ha.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: In fact, I have to say I didn't know the story.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I was asking this. You know why He's coming to
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: us from California and I'm there going I just think
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: of Gene as a DC's DC guy, and I'm gonna
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: make you quickly tell this just the shortened version of
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the story. You're an Angelino because of a fun little
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Hollywood meets politics meets real life meets your personal life.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Tell us about it.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you you know, you could have said I've
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: worked for four presidents, because I had four years where
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: I was a consultant or part time writer for Jed Bartlett,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: the President on the NBC TV show The West Wing.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: But yes, the fact I'm coming from you in Santa
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Monica or that seems to be my main residence right now,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: does not feel comfortable to me. I grew up in
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: ann Arbor, Michigan. We only came to La twice in
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: my youth, and both times was to watch Michigan lose
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: to Southern cal in the road.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: And so when people ask me where I'm from, it's
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: ann Arbor. When they asked me where I've worked, it's Washington,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: d C. So it's very hard for me to kind
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: of acknowledge that I just happened to be here. But
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: the story was is that when I got done with Clinton,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: I'd gotten to know some of the people on the
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: TV show West Wing. I really dug in. I worked
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: on a really good story and I sent it in
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: and they asked me to do an interview. I went
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: out to LA and it just happened to be the
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: day where Aaron Sorkin couldn't meet with me because he
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: had a little legal trouble in an airport. But they
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: set up a meeting for me with all the writers
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: in the commissary. It's very exciting. You walk in. There's
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: guys from Er walking around. Now.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It is the old thing, the studio commissaries. Truly, we
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: are Star Wars bar scenes. You never know who you're
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: gonna run into.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just going through at the beginning through the gate,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: you think of blazing saddles and them crashing through. So
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: I go there. I introduced myself. First person on the
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: left is name Alison Abner. She's just starting her second
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: year writing for the West Wing, and I say hello,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: and what the heck? We got married. We've been together
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: twenty five years, so I've been you know, I've been
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: a bicoastal you know, spouse, and that means we've probably
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: lived about a third of the time in DC, a
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: third of the time in Santa Monica, and a third
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: of the time, including the entire Biden White House. I
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: commuted back and forth every single week, even more than
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: a California member of Congress.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Would you are it allows you mess? You know, you know,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a good thing or a
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: bad thing about showing off in a life. If you've
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: hit all these great statuses on airplanes, it means you're
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: never at home.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: No, you know. For me, what it's about is I
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: work like crazy on planes so that every moment I'm home,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: I can be with my family. So I'd say the
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: only time this whole thing was unbelievably painful was my
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: third year with President Obama. My wife had gone back
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: to start restarter her TV writing career. My son graduated
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: from high school, and I had about ten months where
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: I was commuting back and forth, and my daughter was
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: like seven or eight, and I used to get in
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: the car and just cry sometimes. But this last time,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: thanks to Zoom and other things I didn't have, you know,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: you could kind of be half there, half here. And
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: my daughter was sixteen seventeen and eighteen, and everybody knows
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: at sixteen seventeen and eighteen. They're not dying for you
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: to be there in their face every single night. So
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: that part was okay.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Let me I want to I want to dispense with
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: one thing about West Wing. I have been people always
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: assume I love the show, and I always say, you
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: know what, I've never I've never watched a full season,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: and let me tell you why, gee, and you can
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: tell and tell me why I'm wrong, because I know
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: you're going to be a defender, and I mean this,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: It's not as if I've seen quite a few episodes
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: and they're really good and they're really interesting, don't get
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: me wrong, but I always found it more unrealistic than realistic.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: And what I always hated was when people say, why
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: can't it be done like it was on West Wing?
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, because west Wing was never you know,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: and I've had this argument. I've actually I got arguments
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: a wrong word, a strong word, A debate with mister
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Sorkin where because he did it with Newsroom too, where
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: he's creating a utopia of what could be if you
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: had a year to prepare for every news cycle, for
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: instance in Newsroom, or you had five years of historical
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: context to then figure out how to have done it.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: So and perhaps I'm like too jaded because I'm old
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: hotline guy.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: Right, you're too jaded because you're old hotline.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I understand that. Tell me make the best case for
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: somebody today of why West Wing actually is emblematic of
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: how governing works well.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Listen, It's hard for me to think about the current
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: White House and how it functions well, but I would
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: say that if that for looked at the last couple
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: administrations and the years of Republican administrations before that, I
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: really do feel that there is a core truth in
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: the West Wing which the people there who are there
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: are privileged to be there, really are there to do
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: good for the world, but they're in a very highly
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: toxic and political environment. And so I think the way
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: that West Wing is more realistic than some of the
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: other Scandal and other shows out there is that those
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: shows tend to show people who are only there to
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: self deal to corrupt things, and I think what the
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: West Wing did show was a group of people who
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: were trying to do something idealistic, but they're in a
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: very very political environment. And if you're not political political
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: and you don't deal with those issues, you don't do well.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: I think what makes me sad a little bit is
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: I'm I spent a long time telling people that that's
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: the way white Houses really were. I'm not quite so
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: sure that the West Wing is an accurate perception of
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: the current White House.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: West Wing or Veep, who portrays staffers best.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I liked Veep too because I think Veep. I mean,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: of course, in Veep, nobody's really a good guy, but
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: it's meant as a satire.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: It's meant I guess, I mean, there are good Yeah.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: It's showing the real conflicts people are dealing with from
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: a kind of cynical point of view. But I still
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: really enjoyed that. I enjoyed the other shows too. I
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: just used to not like when people would kind of
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: think that that was more realistic than the West Wing.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I hate when people say, oh, politics is like
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: House of Cards. I'm like, no, it's stop right, Like
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: I'm like stop, that is not and that would so
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: that's where I always get I I you know, I
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: would basly that. Then then again, like you know, I
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: can watch a few Good Men two thousand times and
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: I probably watched it two thousand times, so it's not
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: that I don't love a good Aaron Sorkin script, that's
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: for sure. I mean, the man is a genius television writer.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: There's no doubt about it.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: When it comes to dialogue, all right, whenever I see Aaron,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: he asked me how my wife Allison is doing, and
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: I say, we're still together. And he says the two
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: lasting things of the West Wing residual checks and gene
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: and Allison's marriage.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: By the way, right when HBO Max was got to
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: get rid of it, there was like an uproar and
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: it reminded people, so it kept the checks coming, right.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: It really is. One thing I really will say is
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: the number of people who I've seen actually go into
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: public service. I mean, famously Cody Keenan, who well who.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Watched it in it like inspired them to do it.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think, you know, I don't think
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: it was a TV show for me, but I think
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: you would see, you know, I'd see people huddled around
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: RFK when I was a kid in sixty eight, and
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: you know, I think sometimes you know that perception that
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: that's something positive, that you can do good things, that
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: you don't have to be the candidate to make a difference,
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: and help people's lives or fight for justice. I think
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: it's a positive thing and it's still pretty influential on
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of college campuses around the country.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Right, it has had a lot of staying power. Have
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: you how serious have reboots been thrown around?
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's more people toying with people. I mean,
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: you know, I stay in touch with Brad Whitford in
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Delay Hill, and I did run in and I did
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: get to see Aaron Sorkin and Martin when we did
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: a twenty fifth anniversary celebration at the White House. But
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: I think there was once where I kind of was like, hey, guys,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: if this happens and I'm out of government, remember me.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: And I kind of got the word back. Now we're
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: just we're just toy in with you. But we'll see.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: Before I get to what you're working on. Because I think, look,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: I think and we've been I think we were in
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: a room together not too long ago. I think AI
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: job displacement is going to drive political debates fear of
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: AI job displacement over the next decade. Whether it hits
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: is another story. Right, there's the fear of it, and
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: then there's the actual fear is going to drive a
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: lot of political particularly in twenty twenty eight. So I
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: want to get to that. But before we get to that,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: what's the state of the economy? What do you look
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: at on a week to week basis to give your
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: bit to what touchstones do you look at to determine
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: whether this is a good economy, a bad economy, or
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: a shaky economy.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: So I think there's moments where you pretty much know
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: what you're looking for. Things are pretty clear, even if
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: you don't know what the exact narrative how it's going
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: to turn out, you know what the narrative is. This
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: is a little bit of a tricky time. I think
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: that what you were looking for after the kind of
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: worst of the post pandemic supply chain shocks and global
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: inflation was you were looking for what everybody called the
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: soft landing, and what that meant was that we would
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: be able to return to more of a normal, stable economy.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: So the Biden economy had amazing job growth, incredibly low unemployment,
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: but there was also high inflation. And you know, people
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: will fight forever, people like myself will say it was global,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: it was everywhere. It wasn't really a factor of Biden policies.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: But whatever you thought the cause was, people wanted to
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: see that soft landing. So what's interesting is that you've
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: had pretty close to what people hope for. When you
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: had high inflation. You can remember that Larry Summers famously said, oh,
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: the only way you're going to bring this down is
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: to have ten percent unemployment or two years of seven
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: and a half percent unemployment or five years of six percent.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Well that didn't happen. So the good news was that
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: we've been able to so far avoid a uh, you know,
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: avoid caming inflation inflation only in a Paul Voker sense
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: of well, I was.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Just gonna say, let me, let's let's put a pause
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: before you jump to that part. Doesn't this reinforce not
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: a belief anymore? But is this now a confirmation that
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: this was essentially COVID related, COVID inspired, COVID driven, and
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: because we had the artificial stoppage and then and then
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: suddenly it's sort of like kicking a hose and then
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: on kicking and a surge of product and a surge
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: of money, and a surge of this. You know, as
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: fast as it went up is as fast as it
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: went down. The fact that it didn't take ten percent
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: interest rates and it didn't take ten percent unemployment. Is
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: that now confirmation for you that this was global and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: ninety five percent COVID?
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: I think for me it is. I think it is
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: for a lot of people. I think it's hard to have,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: you know, this easy objective conversation because one, there's so
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: much politics involved, and you know, there's such a desire
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: for the current administration to blame the last administration. There's
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: so many people on the Democratic side that are just
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: disappointed that Joe Biden lost and that people ignored people
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: were so unhappy about prices. So there's so much political debate.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: But you know, I do think that for a lot
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: of people, I cited an article Mark Zandy from Moody's,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Peter orzag Our, former O and B director, and others
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: who definitely feel that the fact that this came down
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: without engineering a recession was evidence that this was overall
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: globally inspired pandemic related supply shot chain that said people
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: will still debate the American rescue plan, and I don't
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: think there's I think politically you'll hear Republicans now say,
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: oh my god, everything that happened, you know, bad was
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: due to Joe biden American Rescue Plan. That's clearly not true. Clearly,
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: the American Rescue Plan had some very good effects in
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: making us the leader and growth in the G seven, lower,
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: unemployment less scarring long term negative impacts. But people little
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: debate the inflation impact. And I think that the reasonable
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: debate says, hey, maybe it led to inflation here being
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: a point or a point half higher than it would
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: have been, but it had these good parts. And I'd
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: say the people who are most critical would say, no,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: it's more like three points higher. But I think you
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: and I both know that in twenty twenty two, after
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: Putin invaded Ukraine, you know, inflation almost everywhere in the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: world was seven eight nine percent, regardless of whether people
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: had done a major fiscal stimulus. And you also saw
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: every head of state did poorly everywhere in the world.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Now, that could be an anti.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: A reincumbent, you know, an incumbent in that setting, but
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: you know, for me, I think it is you know,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I think the fact that inflation went up everywhere and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: the way it came down, you know, it does confirm
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: that this was not fundamentally about fiscal policy, but about
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: the pandemic. But again, to be fair to some of
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: the people who disagree with me, they would say, you know,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: it's a more nuanced.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: Analysis fifty years from now.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: In an economics class that might look at a couple
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: of case studies about what you do in an economic crisis,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: either one that's directly about the economy, like what we
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: had with the housing crisis and the Great Recession, or
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: something like COVID, which sort of impacted the global economy.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: One of the things that my simple hot take has
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: always been, we had two choices with COVID. We either
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: had inflation or recession, and if we didn't throw money.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: If we had handled COVID the way we'd handled the
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: housing crisis, which is to be fiscally a bit small
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: se conservative about how much money we threw at the issue,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: we probably prevent inflation, but we might have had a
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: massive recession. The less I've always felt is if that COVID,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: coming just within a decade of the Great Recession, sort
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: of got everybody thinking, hey, we better if we're not sure,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: throw a little bit more money at it. Let's not underfund,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: let's overfund. Do you think fifty years from now, that's
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: how we'll look at those two events, and it's sort
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: of when it comes to government intervention, the economic crisis,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: the Great Recession will always be seen as an example
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: of government not doing enough, and COVID will be seeing
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: as an example of when government does a little too much.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: I know I'm being very I'm asking for a black
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: and white hot take on something that could be incredibly new.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: But generally speaking, written on this exact topic. I wrote
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: in the Wall Street Journal a while ago on the
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: lessons learned argument, and I think people will debate this.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: I think that there's kind of a will be you know.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: I think some people will make it a more simple
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: argument of uh, you know. But even then there's a
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: question of lessons learned or lessons overlearned. So the lessons
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: overlearned argument was one you did too little in the
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: financial crisis. I don't think by the way that was
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: by intent by President Obama as someone there. I just
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: think you couldn't get it, couldn't get.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: To politically look by the way in fairness, politically it
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: will I mean, you couldn't cross that that number. It
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: had to be under a truth exactly. You know, there
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: was sometimes people think there was just debate. But I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: do think that there was also a sense in two
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight two thousand and nine that if you
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: were wrong, maybe you could come back and get more.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: And I think one of the lessons that was learned
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: there was, hey, you may only get one shot, so
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: you might go bigger because you may not get another shot.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Two is the insurance policy.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: Other things might happen, like who would have predicted Putin
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: was going to invade Ukraine? As you remember, in the
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: financial crisis, there was the grease in you're a financial crisis,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: So another argument is put a little extra because there
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: might be unknowns that are going to slow you down
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: even more. One lesson I really think we learned well
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: was that when you don't do enough right away, there's
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of long term suffering that takes place, long
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: term unemployment, people who couldn't get into the job market
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: for four or five years. Economists actually have a phrase
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: that makes sense. They call it scarring, and it's right.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: What it means is they didn't These people didn't just
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: suffer for a year or two. Their lifetime earnings were changed.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: Their rates of divorce and alcoholism and suicide or deaths
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: of despair were changed. So one good lesson learned was
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: that in this financial crisis, you had a lot of
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: strength right away, and so you didn't get the long
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: term unemployment. We had a policy that actually prevented millions
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: of people from being evicted. So I think on the whole,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: the argument will be that the American Rescue Plan did
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: properly learn the lessons. The counter will be, well, but
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: maybe you overlearned by doing a little bit too much.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: And that's the people who will argue that the American
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: Rescue Plan, even if it wasn't the cause of all
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: the inflation or even most of inflation, kind of added
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: to it. And that's where I think you will continue
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: to have the debates where people like myself will say,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: and probably Jared Bernstein would say, and Peter orzagnersay, didn't
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: have that much, But my friend Jason Furman would say,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: you know, you should have done a bit more. I
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: do think what will happen going forward, Chuck, from now
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: on is that I do think you had an entire
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: generation of people who had never seen significant inflation.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: And so I'm not sorry, that's one hundred percent right,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: Like I I you know, I would sit there and
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: say I had a memory of my of my parents
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: excited when interest rates got from double digits to single digits.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: So I had at least remembered that era, and of
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: the era of the late seventies and early eighties. And
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: it did. I mean, we were one of those working
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: class families that we couldn't afford a house until interest
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: rates finally got to I think was just under nine
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: percent and we could finally get into a house exactly.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: That was a big deal. Four.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: When Reagan runs on mourning in America, things really aren't
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: very good inflation.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: They were better than they were.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: That's the key. It had. People remembered things being bad
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: for so long that when it improved, Reagan got lots
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: of credit. And what hurt President Biden is that even
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: when inflation came down, people still remembered beef and milk
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: and cheese and eggs being lower. And so I do
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: think that even though I don't believe the American Rescue
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: Plan was the cause of most or even a significant
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: amount of the inflation, do I think that next time
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: around people will think about it more, or worry a
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: little bit, or do the balance more. Yes, because they've
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: now lived through a world where they saw President Biden
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: do what you and I would have predicted would have
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: been a winning hand going into twenty four, which was
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: inflation coming down under three percent, record low unemployment, and
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: all of those things were dwarfed by people's unhappiness with
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: everyday prices that they went to the grocery store and saw.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: And that is both a polity, that's an economic lesson,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: but it's also going to be a political lesson for
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: I think a generation.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, what the seventies taught me and especially now
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: looking in hindsight, is that inflation is nonpartisan, or inflation
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: is bipartisan, however you want to say it. In this respect,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: inflation took down three presidents, right, Richard Nixon is loses
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: support among Republicans. People always forget this. If the economy
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: is better, Nixon fights harder, and Republicans probably fight on
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: his behalf and maybe, but you know, the bad economy
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: was a secret sauce that that made it easier to
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: dump him.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: Forward.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Look at the end of the day, right, you know,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: whip inflation now that terrible, you know slogan he had
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: win win, Whip inflation, Now that didn't work. And then Carter,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: you know one because of it and then immediately lost
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: because of it. So the point is is that it
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: was a reminder that the American public just focuses on
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: what's in front of them, not what not always what
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: what was, it's what is, and inflation is one of
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: those what is.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: Ord. The other thing too, is that if you're preventing,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: if you have greater job growth, lower unemployment, those things
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: are good and important. They don't affect everybody, right, you know,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: the inflation does. Now. One thing you and I did
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: know politically was we did know that gas prices have
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: a disproportionate impact on presidential approval.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Well that and that also is a scar from the
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: seventies and gas lines and I mean, my those are
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: bright memories for me, right, But I think what.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: Was learned in twenty three and twenty four was that
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: it's not gas prices per se. It's everyday prices that
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: somebody is confronted with on a week by week basis.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: And so even though inflation's coming down, even though the
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: job market is good, people are going through the grocery
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: line or the gas line and they're not happy. And
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: that's hitting a much wider number of people. And the
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: other thing that's interesting is I mean, you could say
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: it's American, but you could also say we learned its global.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: You can't name one incumbent head of state in the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: post pandemic period that did very well, not a single one,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: and so you know, I think it's an unusual combination
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: of inflation all the reins of the pandemic, but it's
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: kind of you know, one thing you can't do is
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: say if only Joe Biden had done like incumbent x
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: or Y had done. There are no ones. So that
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: again does suggest that the kind of unhappiness of people
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: dealing with everyday price is going higher. And it's what
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: makes things so puzzling about President Trump is that he
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: now has seen all these things happen. He's learned this lesson.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: He's got the benefit of hindsight, and this is a
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: point people never make, but they need to when he
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: comes in. Not only is inflation a little under three percent,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: every major forecaster in the country is projecting it's going
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: down to two percent. So I think a lot of
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: people on like the Bien Economic team, are like, boy,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: bad luck for us. Our soft landing is on its
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: way and it's going to land because of the hard.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: Work we did with the second time in a row
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: that Trump inherit's a healing economy from a democratic president, right.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: I know, and then he goes out of his way
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: to ignore every political lesson and put tariffs on everyday products.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: So that's why I've said before. You know, when they
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: say it's the Biden economy, I say, no, it's the
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: self inflicted wound economy. You could have just done nothing
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: and coasted on the Biden economy. You've gone out of
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: your way to keep inflation not just higher, but in
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: a lot of those everyday products. That makes people so unhappy.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: There is I'm curious your take on whether it is.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you don't think it's fair that service for
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: the in the Biden white House might be seen as
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: a demerit if you run for president. But what do
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: you make of this issue for Pete budd.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think that, Yeah, I think it's
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: a long ways to go. And you know, I'm like you,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: I'm an addict, so I a political you know, I'm
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: as much of a so I follow it, but I
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: think it's a long ways a way. I do think
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: that I do think that that people are you know.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: I think the debate that happened in the Biden White
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: House and where some of us might have different views,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: has been greatly exaggerated. It's as if like President Biden
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: didn't care about affordability. Of course, he was running, you know,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: he was the one who did the prescription drugs, you know,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: bring down prescription drugs and key things. He was the
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: one focusing on lowering electricity and energy prices our whole
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: We had a major childcare initiative, which, even as you
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: saw with Mayor Mandami, is one of the key issues.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: So I think people are wrong to think there wasn't
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: affordability focus. I think what it really came down to,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: and maybe where I sometimes had a little bit of
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: a different view, was that I did get my political
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: upbringing with Bill Clinton. And Bill Clinton was known as
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: the feel you're paying guy, And there's truth to that.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: Bill Clinton told me in my first few months in
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: the White House when I was writing the statements from him,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: he said, never write a statement that wouldn't seem right
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: to somebody in one of the thirty worst economic counties.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: That so, in other words, stay connected and touched first.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: I think what happened with Biden was there was a
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: conflict between that and the saying, hey, if you don't
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: put forward your best foot, nobody would.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: So it was the wrong lesson learned from Trump. I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: think there's a there's a there's a it's interesting you
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: say that there's a chunk of Democrats who think, hey,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: the lesson to learn from Trump is bullshit, like he does.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: No. I think, you know, look, I'm very I defend
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of the things we've done, and I realized
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: things are hard choices. I do think we probably could
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: have done a better job of starting by recognizing people's
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: unhappiness and then try to and then connecting, try to
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: explain why we're doing things to do better. But I
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: will say, Chuck that you know, at the time, there
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: were lots of smart political people who were saying, why
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: aren't you guys bragging about record job growth enough? Why
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: aren't you bragging if the president doesn't do that? So
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: I will say, but I will agree that I think
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: we could have maybe focused more on first, you know, connecting, Hey,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: we're not happy, prices are up. Explain to people that
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: we're doing everything we can, explain why we want to pass.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: But start more from the basis of a little bit
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: of Clintonian feel your pain. But I don't think that
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: should be confused with the idea that Joe Biden wasn't
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: out there fighting for a child tax credit which gave
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: people a few thousand dollars more in their pocket, fighting
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: for lower healthcare costs. I think criticisms of like, you know,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: I think people who want to show their new and
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: change oriented are going to probably pick some holes at
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: Biden alum in the primaries. That's kind of basic politics.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: But I think in the end people will have a
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: time chance to say what they could do and what
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: they could and the truth was, Joe Biden had the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: tiniest of margins. So like on a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, imagine what your job would have been like
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: had it been a Republican Senate with a Democratic House,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: which was the most likely scenario before the Georgia Ummels.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: So we got a lot of good things done. But
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: when those things got done, you couldn't always do them
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: exactly like you want, So you couldn't like necessarily get
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: everything out the door as fast as you wanted or
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: things like that. But you know, again, we've got a
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: lot there's gonna be a lot of primary candidates. They're
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: going to take a lot of shots at each other.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: I tend to like and know most of the people
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: that people are talking about, So I'm looking at people
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: I basically admire and I'm kind of like sitting back
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: and kind of watching, like I'm Chuck Todd, wanting to
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: see who's good, who's effective.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: Well, the most likely what's the most likely scenario of
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: one of them? When's the presidency Jean Spurley's going to
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: go work for.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: I will say that from a family perspective, for me
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: to go out with that would be both you know,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: from a human perspective, would be arrogant to suggest that
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: you know somebody would want you again, and from a
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: family perspective forecasting, that would probably not do well for me.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: Right now, we're focused on the upsides of not being
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: in the government, so.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about where. Because what you're you're one of
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: the few people who understands economists speak and sort of
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: Americans speak, right, which is why I think you've been
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: a popular staffer to be to bring in for presidents
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: because you're not just You're not just thinking like an
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: economist and a data guy, but sort of you're able
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: to fuse it with sort of realistic, realistic policy that
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: you can sell. Right, there's one thing about proposing Paul see,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: but it's policy you can actually sell to the public.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: I think the pitchforks are being sharpened. There's definitely distrust
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: and anger at sort of corporate America generally and the
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: and the biggest companies specifically AI. Job displacement's probably gonna
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: fuel this even more. It is is it inevitable that
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: just becomes just some sort of anger driven h political movement,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: or is there a chance for somebody to, you know,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: for for this not to end up down that road,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: Like I think it's we're inevitably going to go there.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: We're gonna have to have this moment that we end
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: up there. Maybe it's a little bit like the first
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: part of the twentieth century, but there really is sort
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: of almost a revolt against some of these folks here
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: because of the frustrations, and it will be this sort
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: of white collar, blue collar U mix. But maybe I'm wrong,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: and maybe AI is more like what you know, computers
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: in everyday life turned into increase productivity and all boats.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: Rows, so you know, I've never been somebody you know
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: who like starts running to a camp, you know, when
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: I see, you know, like with a policy tribe, because
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: I often don't think that it's helpful in finding what's
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: good economic policy or even what's good economic message to
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: think like you have to be in a single camp
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: or the other. So of course I run into people
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: who feel like, oh my god, everything we need does
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: has to sound kind of quote centrist or practical, and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: then other side who are saying, no, every single thing
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: needs to be populist anger. I don't know that the
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: world looks like that. I would say that to me,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: You've got to do maybe two things together, which is one,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: you need to be an optimist about people's lives. You
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: do need to show that you want to see more
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: people meet the American dream, not just tread water, but
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: get ahead and maybe own a house, have a little
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: nest steak for their retirement. You need that optimism and
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: positive view. And I do think that presidents who've done
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: well have done that and so. But on the other hand,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: I don't think you can hold back when there's clear
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: economic injustice. I don't know that Americans are, you know,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: have a I'm against, you know, business or corporate America.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: I think they understand that that's where a lot of
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: jobs and growth come. But they are against when they
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: think the system is rigged, or when a bottom line
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: that affects a chosen few is doing is more important
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: than your lives and your struggle. So I think you
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: need to I think what we need is to have
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: a degree of optimism that we are the ones who
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: can be good for the economy. We are the ones
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: that can help you get ahead. And that doesn't mean
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: being down on everybody who's a major job creator. But
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: on the other hand, people don't believe people who believe
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: in markets and capitalism, which I think is most Americans
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: still believe that the ultimate purpose of what they do
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: is not big bonuses for the CEO or just extracting
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: profits for shareholders. They think, as I've written about in
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: my book in the past and now, they think that
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: the ultimate goal rightly, does it benefit typical people, does
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: it provide economic dignity? And so when they see people
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: doing things that are just about extracting profits from them,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: when they see a kind of economic policy that is
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: not geared towards creating more jobs, good jobs, jobs with dignity,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: jobs with respect. Then they're going to be angry. And
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: I think it is okay to tap into that anger.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: And I think it is okay to say I believe
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: in our American market based system. But the goal of
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: that market based system is ultimately the well being and
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: economic dignity of working families. And if you have a
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: system that is rigged to benefit just the few and
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: not typical American families, then yeah, you should be angry
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: about that. And nobody running for president in the Democratic
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: side should be hesitant in expressing that anger. And I
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: will just I'll take a second just to start on
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: the AI if you want. But it's also a good
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: exams ample of that, you know. I mean, if you
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: listen to people now, you might think, if you were
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: listening to the White House, that will AI is just
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: going to happen, and maybe it's going to hurt a
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: lot of jobs, and we should preempt states from trying
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: to regulate it in any way, or make sure people
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: have protections of privacy or against abusive surveillance, or to
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: make sure that we're dealing with job dislocation. And the
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: response comes by no, no, no, we have to rush, rush,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: rush to get more GDP and greater growth, and I
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: think they will lose people because people will ask the
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: question I've said, but what's the ultimate point if why
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: would we have a policy that's not good for jobs,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: it's not good for the typical family. And I think
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: that it's not maybe the front and center issue now,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: but I think it will be, and I think it
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: will be part of that bigger picture, which is what
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: is the ultimate goal of our economy. And if people
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: think it's just to have some enormous wealth and five
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: or six AI companies and you know, we'll just deal
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: with the effect on job loss and income loss as
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: an after effect. People are going to be angry. They're
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: going to be rightly angry. And I think people going
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: in twenty eight will do better not to be like
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: they're head in the sand about AI or the good
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: things that could do. But people who are going to say,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: front and center, my goal is you your job, whether
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: your children can be as well off as you are.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: And when I'm thinking about AI, I'm thinking that about
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: how we shape it to serve average people. Technology is
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: not destiny. Democracy determines our destiny.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: So some of the proposals that are out there about
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: AI job displacement remind me if some of the ideas
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: that you guys attempted to implement during sort of the
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the era of the nineties, the free trade era of
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: the nineties, right, And I remember one of the central
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: promises on NAFTA was, you know, when when if factories
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: went away, there'd be there was always you know, there
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: was going to be money there for retraining and job displacement.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: And the money was there, and there was retraining. But
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: it turned out that didn't take right. There were weren't
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: There weren't as many people interested in some of the
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: retraining opportunities that were offered. I don't And I'm curious
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: what lessons you take away from that as you think
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: about developing Frank, what I assume will potentially be a
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: policy that a next a new president may may be
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: influenced by if sort of how to manage this displacement.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: The displacement's going to happen. And you know, I'm I'm
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: I am you know, I'm a capitalist. You know, I
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: think we just want capitalism with a little bit of
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: guardrails and technology. Right. This has been true of the
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: media business and it's true of really anything. Right, you
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: get a new technology, there's immediately fragmentation, maybe you get
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: a thousand startups, and then eventually you get consolidation, and
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: then a new technology comes and the cycle can begin
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: all over again. Globalization in some ways right the idea
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: of free trade, which of course the upside was there's
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: not a fruit you can't get any any month of
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: the year in America now, which was not true when
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: you and I were growing up. It was not true
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties. But that's what free trade
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: has done right in many ways. And that's just as
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: I always use I like to use produce because it's
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: the simplest example of what free trade has meant. Like
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: you realize that, you know, you get to eat certain
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: fruits year round now and back in the day you couldn't.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: But there was certainly right the arguably the seeds of
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: the Trump victories of sixteen and twenty four were planted
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: with globalization and free trade movement of the nineties. So
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: what policies do you now wish where it implemented better
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: than and what parallels do you see as you think
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: about what AI job displacement and what benefits are necessary
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: to ease that pain.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: So I guess I would disagree with one of your premises,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: which was.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: That I threw a lot in there. So the fact
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: that you're only disagree with one premise maybe is a
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: small victory.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, I think the core issue when
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: you look back on kind of the Clinton agenda was
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: that Bill Clinton came in with the view that, you know,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: there was going to be greater global integration and that
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: we really needed a robust response and so.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: And by the way, you guys, you know, a huge
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: opportunity in front of you, right, we basically the end
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: of the Cold War was this was the peace dividend.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: No, And I think that a lot of what he
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: was trying to do was integrate more of the world
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: to avoid some of the issues we're having now with
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: Russia and China. So there was a big foreign policy element.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: But the vision was that you would have universal healthcare,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: there would be a major universal training program for anybody
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: who lost a job for any reason, and then you
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: would also have significant place based investment in places. And
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: I think what happened with President Clinton was they didn't
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: get that we didn't get healthcare, and then we didn't
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: even get to propose our universal training proposal because we
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: lost the Congress for all six years both houses. So
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: I don't think that we ever got to test out
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: what that We ever got to test out what truly
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: having a robust safety net would be like, I don't
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: think it ever got to be put in place in
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: the way that it might have if Democrats had controlled
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: both houses for four or six years. So one, I
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: don't think we ever tested. Two, which is very relevant
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: is that globalization turned out to be much more dramatic
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: than anybody would have thought at the times, and then
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: you had eight years of a Republican administration that wasn't
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: really willing to adjust to that or do anything. So
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: I guess i'd say number one, we still have just
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: huge holes in what I think of as an economic
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: dignity net of making sure people are working or doing
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: their best or living lives of economic dignity even in
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: moments of disruption. And I think what globalization showed is
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: that even though there were lots of benefits to the
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: Internet era, and look, it wasn't just trade agreements, it
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: was the Internet, it was globalization. It was just a
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: smaller world even though there were benefits to that. You
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: can't have an economy where you say, hey, for sixty
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: or seventy percent of you, this is nice because you're
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: getting lower prices and mode choices. But there's like a
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: portion of you that are watching your community spiral down.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: You're losing your hopes, your dreams, You're watching your father
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: or grandfather become an alcoholic. And so one of the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: things that I talk about with economic dignity is you
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: have got to have policies that aren't just good for
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: GDP or don't just lower prices for some people. Generally,
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: you have to have policies where everybody feels they're not
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: being left behind. And you know, I wouldn't put as
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: much blame on anything Bill Clinton did, but I would
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: say that the accumulation of policies over twenty thirty years
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: did not put in place the type of job creation
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: focused protections, checks on abuse of corporate power that were
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: necessary to make sure everyone has economic dignity for all.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: So where AI becomes relevant is that globalization was a
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: bigger shock than we might than people might have known,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: and the holes in our safety net or our insurance
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: of economic dignity for all became more painful. I think
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: that's how you should look at AI. I don't think
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: AI is just another technology. I think AI is likely
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: to have a greater impact on job disruption and a
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: greater impact on maybe even the reduction of the amount
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: of jobs in the private sector than we've seen before.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: And so now is the time to me not to
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: sit back and watch and just say, oh my god,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: tens of millions of jobs are being lost or react
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: by just having a UBI program that writes checks to people.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: Now is the time to start shaping, to make shaping
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: our economy, and to me, I talked about three things
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: and what I wrote as an economic dignity compact for AI. One,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: let's create more dignified jobs where we know we need more,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: which are helping families with disability, helping people come out
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: of prison, helping people with addiction, helping people coach more
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: people on their healthcare. There may be twenty million missing
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: jobs there that could employ people, have a tighter labor market,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: and deal with a lot of dislocation. That's number one.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: We have the power to do that. We also have
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: the power to create tax incentives and subsidies that encourage
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: a company to augment use AI to augment jobs as
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: opposed to displaced jobs or to redeploy people. We control
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: our economic policy. We should be doing that now. Well. Secondly,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: going to the point I talked about, let's create an
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: economic dignity floor for everyone, so that if there is
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: a worse disruption than we thought, unlike what happened in
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: communities and globalization, now we're going to have programs that
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: focus on jobs, on helping people find new jobs, of
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: making sure you still have health insurance. And then the
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: third issue, which is going to be the toughest than
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: the one that hits us, is what are those overall
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: policies that help people move to the next job. I
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: just believe that we are a country where we care
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: about work, we care about contribution, we care about purpose
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: and potential. And what I don't like is that everybody's
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: kind of you know, you've got a White House that's
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: just saying go as fast as you can and geez
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: if it causes lots of disruption, kind of too bad.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: That that can't be our policy. Our policy going forward
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: must be AI is going to happen. You can't stop
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: at all, but you can have policies that shape to
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: make sure that it is serving the American people. What
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: is the point of an economy having high growth and
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: high productivity growth if it creates unhappiness for a large
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: portion of the economy. That's the focus I want to
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: do in my Economic Dignity lab is to focus on
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: our goal. What is our ultimate goal? Every day? It's
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: not higher GDP and productivity growth that makes people unhappy.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: It's higher growth and productivity growth that leads to more opportunity,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: more dignity, more upward mobility for more Americans.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: You know, Shared Brown's going to love the fact that
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: you use the word dignity so much. The dignity of
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: work myself.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: I wrote the book twenty twenty. The title is Economic Dignity.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: So I've got here. It is right here, copyrighting the
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: word dignity.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: Take that, take that, share it, h Let me get
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: you out of here on this. When is a company
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: too big to regulate? And when is when do you
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: fear that a company becomes bigger than a nation state?
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: And what happens there? I mean, like, I used to
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: think of this as sort of perverted Bond James Bond
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: plot lines, and but the fact of the matter is
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: these huge companies are bigger than most nation states, and
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: what does that mean right that they're there? That that's
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: it is different than what we've had, And does our
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: government of a responsibility from preventing that or do you
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: let capitalism be capitalism?
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: Well again, I think it goes back to the tests
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: that we have before. The purpose of structuring our economy
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: is not for the companies themselves. It's not for the
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: CEOs themselves. It's to have an economy that benefits people's
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: lives and gives people more opportunity. So when companies start,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: when companies get so large or integrated that they I
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: think there's two things you have to worry about. One
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: when you don't have true competition, you know, I mean
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: Adam Smith was not writing about a market economy where
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: you know, for big AI or big tech companies controlled everything.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: It was about how to have competition and why competition
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: would through some form of process he said invisible hand,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: I'll say a little more notable hand. Make sure that
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: it's benefiting everybody. So one when is that working? The
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: other way? Now? I know a lot of people aren't
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: always happy with everything Lena Khan did, but I'm I'm
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: I'm more of a fan of hers, and I think
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: that what she did and looking at big Tech and Amazon,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: was to look and say, in reality, are these large
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: companies suppressing competition and hurting people or are they actually
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: encouraging it? So you should have that test. And then
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: the second test is a democracy test. If the size
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: and power of companies mean that they are disproportionately determining
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: our policies as opposed to our democratic processes based on
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: what's best for people, then I think that's the problem.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: So for me, it's not you know you've been on
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: It's not just the size, but what is the impact?
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: And I think the.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: Reason how do you say that? I would say, arguably,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: right now, the between there are two industries that are
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: over indexed in Washington and they seem to get whatever
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: they want because of how much campaign money they give,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: and that is the Crypto and AI.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I think there's a lot to be said for that.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: And I think, look, I think there's always been big
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: companies who use political contributions and lobbying power to get
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: what they want at the benefit at the expense of
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: what might be the common good, and that is a
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: real problem. I think what's a little more concerning on
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: the AI front, though, is the idea that there could
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: be four or five or six companies that actually are
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: almost determining the structure of the economy, not just benefiting
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: their company at the expense of some higher prices for
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: other people, which is itself very problematic, but where it
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: looks like they're determining policy. And I do see sometimes
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: when I look at the White House, you know, I
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: do wonder our six or seven companies contributing whispering in
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: the ear? Are you seeing companies, you know, whether it's
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: crypto or AI or other places, actually part of deals
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: that are actually benefiting in a more corrupt way individuals
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: associated with the administration. That is very concerning. Now, look,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: some of the heads of these big AI companies have
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: notably gone out and said, we need to think about
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: what's best for the country. But the fact is that
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: when I still look at what's happening every day, it
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: looks like rush, fast, hygienp growth, high wealth, get things
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: built as quickly as possible, and those discussions about what's
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: best for jobs or people or the economic dignity of
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: people is being lost. And my prediction is going to
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: what you said at the beginning is if people don't
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: start talking about how to shape AI so that it
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: is benefiting everyone, they're going to get a backlash that
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: that might be even harsher than is desired.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 4: So we never do prevent medicine very well, so it's
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: benefiting everyone, and not have this perception that the White
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 4: House listens to five or six major companies and they
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 4: not the American people are determining what the what the
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 4: path of our economic future will be.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: Was take me back to your time in the Biden
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: White House when these AI companies were looking for more
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: government assistance to to accelerate what they were doing. Did
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: you feel like they had a gun to the head, like, well,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: you know, you either help us out here we're going
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: with the other guys, or you know, I can't.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: You know, at this time of that life, I wasn't
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: the National Economic consol Director, so I was running the
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: American Rescue.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: You didn't really have a good you didn't have a
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: good window into that. With the air I.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: Didn't see as much. But I never had the feeling. No,
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: I never had that that feeling. And to be quite honest,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: I think in some ways the Trump White House has
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: invited that, you know, I think I don't think that
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: the AI companies would feel like, oh my, if you
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: didn't do exactly what Joe Biden wanted, he was going
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: to go out and punish you, or single you out,
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: or call in the Justice Department, the criminal part of
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: the Justice Department on you. I think that, you know,
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: I think what you've seen more recently is really the
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: most unattractive thing I think I've seen in my political life,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: which is that the most well off people and the
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: most well off companies are the first ones to take
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: a knee and to uh and to do whatever this
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: administration wants. So as much as I agree that we
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: need to be concerned about the lobbying and political power
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: of major companies and are determining the path on AI,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: in this situation, it's a little bit like the White
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: House kind of invited it. You know, a little bit
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: of give money.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: As I said, you know, he's poker play.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: And you'll have influence and if.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: Not everybody knows, everybody knows how it works. You write
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: a big enough check to the right entity, you're going
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: to get a meeting.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: So I just don't think you would have seen that
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: kind of behavior, you know, towards the Biden administration, because
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: one it wouldn't have been tolerated, but two, on the
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: other hand, we wouldn't have been out there telling American companies, uh,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: you know, do do as we say, or American universities
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: or American law firms that you have to get in
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: line or there's going to be consequences. They may not
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: have liked our climate policy, they may have disagreed with
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: some anti trust policy, but the notion of you contribute
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: and get in line or you will face consequences was
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: just not part of the bid. No Harris administration.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna get you out of here on
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: what I think is the toughest question I'm gonna ask you,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: Jim Harbaugh. Good feelings are bad feelings when you think
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: about Michigan football.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: Good feelings, You know, you look.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: At this situation because you know, are you do you
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: wish he were still there? Or do you feel like, Nope,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: we got our title and I'm glad he left.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: I think that for a lot of reasons it made
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: sense for him to go. But look, I've been just
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: incredible Michigan football, Michigan bass ball, Detroit Lions, Detroit Tigers,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: Detroit Pistons fan for six nice runners.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: It's finally coming together six seven.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: So I've never had a football team in the I've
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: never had the Lions in the Super Bowl, the Tigers.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: We've had two World Series in my life. So let's
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: just say I'm not I'm more like the AI startup
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: than Navidia. You know, Navidia is like the Patriot fans.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: They have so much, they have so much. But I
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: will say that two thousand, that two thousand and three,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: two thousand and four, I mean that NCAA championship game,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: being there with my family at Michigan Ohio State, being
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: there at the Rose Bowl and they beat Alabama. I
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: think that was kind of like you said, your whole life,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: if we ever won a national championship outright like that,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: I won't ask for anything more. I feel like I
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: have to honor that for a few more years.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: And and you you never felt like the ninety seven
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: title was just because you split it with Nebraska. It
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: never felt perfect.
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: It did never feel quite as perfect, though I was
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: very happy, and I still to this day. You're ready
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: for this. When Michigan came for their their ceremony, with Bill.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: Did you guys invite them both?
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: By the way, Clinton the same day, but they had
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: separate ceremonies, and the and the Bill Clinton and the
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: Michigan one was right before a budget meeting, so they
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: gave Bill Clinton a hat that he wore, and he
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: came into the budget meeting. He was in the Cabinet
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: office and the first thing he did was pulling me
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: the cap. So I still have the hat that the
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: ninety seven Michigan football team presented to him. And I
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: also had the benefit of when Jim Harbaugh brought the
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: team to d C during the Biden administration. I got
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: invited to go over and be the dinner speaker at
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: one of their whole dinners and hang out with him
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: and them, and so oh, he will always be thankful
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: for Jim Harbaugh for that.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny about Jim Harbaugh, and I take
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: it you've gotten to know him a little bit. A
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: lot of people try to pigeonhole his politics. I'm guessing
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: he's a He's like most Americans. It's not as predictable
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: as people try to make them out to be. He's
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: pretty passionate on some issues, like I know reproductive rights
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: and things like that, and so people just assume he's
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: in one place, but he seems like he's genuinely like
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: your typical midwestern independent. There's a little bit of you
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: don't quite know where he's coming down.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, yes, And it goes to the question
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: you asked me before. I think people who sit around
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: and think, oh, should we be angry, populist or centrist,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: it's not the right way to think. Think about real people.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: What's best for their lives, what's best for their family.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: That's gonna I think that, as we said, that's going
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: to make for some populist anger, but it's but you
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: should think about their lives. And I think, yes, Jim
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: Harbaugh is one of those people that's a bit more complicated.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: It's very clear his wife is very pro life and
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: he's respected. That is very the other hand, the real
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: highlight of my you know, one of the highlights of
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: my time in the Bide administration was I was speaking
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: to the Legal Service Legal services, you know, the people
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: who represent the poor, and as they brought, knowing my background,
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: they brought Jim Harbaugh on to introduce me. Why because
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: Jim Harbaugh has been a huge advocate of legal services
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: for the poor and is actually on the National Advisory Board.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: So yeah, he's a little more complicated, and I think
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of Americans are a little more complicated in
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: exactly that way.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: So have you become LA's only Chargers fan now? Because
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: I know there's people are looking for Charger fans in LA.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: They find them.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: Now, I'm a Lions fan. I'm lucky enough to kind
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: of know a couple of owners of the Commanders, So
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: I think if I have a second team now, it's
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: the Commanders, but first team first and always will always
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: be the Detroit Lions.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: Well, look, it's a you know I The only good
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: news for you living out there in LA is you
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: might be able to see Tarik Schooble pitches a Dodger
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: before the season ends, which will really pitch you off.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: The only good news for me being now in LA
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: is one word weather, second word weather, third word weather.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: Jane, It's always fun to talk with you. Good to
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: catch Thanks all right, my friend, byebye. Well, I hope
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed that conversation. It should be noted I would
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: give you take a little bit behind the scenes, right
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: we tape, you know, the interviews were taped, usually in isolation,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: and then I'll do a monologue and I'll do all
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: these other things, and you know, we put them together.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: And in conversations with my producers Lauren and Nesa, we
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: were talking about this accountability monologue that I just did.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: Lauren mused to me, and I thought it's worth responding.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: It's like boy ro Conna and Thomas Massey, what if
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: they ran as a ticket in some form or another.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: And you know, on one hand, you can sit here
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: and laugh about it. You're like, wow, that'd be unusual
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: to me. And they don't really see eyed eye on
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: much other than government transparency and accountability. But maybe that
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: is a unifying necessity that the public needs in a moment.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: And you know, when I've been thinking about, you know,
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt that both parties have lost so much
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: trust with their membership for a variety of reasons. Right,
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: this is why there's only you know, in self described
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans twenty seven percent on each side, and
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: it's about forty five to fifty percent of people and
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: want to call themselves independent. You know, that doesn't mean
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: that a fewer people are left and right it's just
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: they don't want to feel like they can identify with
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: the other party. And while you've heard me advocate for
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: independent candidates, we had Paul Raikoff on here, it may
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: be that a bipartisan ticket that poks on both their
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: houses is a more powerful statement and maybe the temporary
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: reset the country needs. So, whether it's Conna Massey, whether
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: it's oh, let me throw another one out there, how
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: about Jared Poulis and Kevin Stead of Oklahoma, or you know,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, we could go down, how
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: about Lisa Murkowski and Raphael Warnock. I mean point is
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: is that that may be what it takes to sober
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: up both parties to have to reform themselves. All right,
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: let's go into the time machine. Where am I going?
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: Eighteen forties that reverberates today? Well, this week takes us
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: to February twenty first, eighteen forty eight. It's the day
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: that a short political pamphlet was published in London. It's
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: tied the Communist Manifesto. The authors Karl Marx and Frederick Ingels.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: It was barely fifty pages. It was written for a
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: small political league, is what it was known at the time.
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: And yet it became one of the most influential and
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: most abused texts in modern history. So let's start. Why
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: was eighteen forty eight and explosive era or a year
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: in world politics? The Manifesto lands at a remarkable moment.
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: Europe in eighteen forty eight was convulsant. Industrialization was accelerating,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: steam power, railroads, factories, mass migration from the countryside to
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: the cities in search of work. Traditional political systems at
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: the time were the monarchies and the aristocracies, and they
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: were colliding with these modern economic forces that were developing.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: Within days of this pamphlet's publication, revolutions erupt across Europe
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: timing year, Matt Marx and Engels weren't fantasizing about the upheaval.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: They were observing instability that was already underway. And that's
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: how I want people to read this Manifesto and understand it.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: Their argument wasn't that capitalism was weak. It was that
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: capitalism was so powerful and transformative that it would destabilize
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: everything around it. Now, what the text actually does here's
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: something that surprises people who've never actually read the Communist Manifesto.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: The first half of the manifesto reads less like a
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: denunciation of capitalism and more like a strange admiration. Marx
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: writes that the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, has done the
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: following accomplished wonders greater than the pyramids, revolutionized production, dissolve
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: feudal hierarchies which were terrible to people. By the way,
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: in globalized markets, which we do know lifted a lot
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: of people out of poverty. That's not the language of
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: simple hostility, and that's what you know. This is what
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: I think people need to at least absorb the observation
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: that Marx and Ingles were making. They were making an
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: analytical argument. Capitalism, in Marxist telling, is dynamic, innovative, and
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: historically transformative. I agree. He also said it's destabilizing, and
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: that's something we've all learned. Capitalism unchecked can be destabilizing. Now,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: Marx had one idea, but I think we've all sort
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: of agreed that there's needs to be guardrails on capitalism.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: What we've debated is what kind of guardrails and how
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: sturdy should they be. But it is destabilizing, and it
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: was at the time because it reduces labor to a commodity,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: It concentrates capital, it produces cycles of boom and bust.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: Creative destruction creates inequality faster in political institutions struggle to
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: adjust to the speed. So here's a deeper question. If
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: this pamphlet weren't titled the Communist Manifesto, if it was
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: titled something like on the Instability of Industrial Capitalism, how
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: would we read it? You might interpret it. Much of
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: it is simply a warning of what happens when capitalism
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: is unchecked. A warning that rapid economic transformation produces social fracture,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: a warning that unregulated market forces can create backlash, all
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: true by the way we've experience it in this country.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: A warning that growth without guardrails destabilizes democracies. But Marx
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: does go further than simply warning, and he doesn't argue
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: for reform. He instead predicts inevitability. He argues that capitalism's
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: internal contradictions will eventually destroy it and that reform cannot
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: save it. And this is where it shifts from structural
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: critique to becoming what it was used for for hundreds
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: of years, revolutionary doctrine. Now, the book does end with
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: the rallying workers of the world unite. The line is short,
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: it's emotional, and it's portable. It's designed to mobilize. So
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: it was designed to fire people up. And here's the irony.
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: Most of the pamphlet is theory, and history simply remembers
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: that slogan. Now, how did it get misused? Because like
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: everything in history, you see stuff get misused. Let's get
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: to the heart of part. The manifesto was writ in
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight. The regimes most people associate with Communism
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: under leaders like Joseph Stalin and Mazi Dung and Mao
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: emerged nearly a century later, and those regimes were one
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: party states. They were highly centralized, they were militarized, and
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: they were often brutally repressive. Now, in the manifesto itself,
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: there's no blueprint for Gulag's, there's no manual for secret police,
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: there's no architectural plan for totalitarian bureaucracy. I don't think
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: Karl Marx thought of himself as a totalitarian here and
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: would admire what Stalin or Mao did with his manifesto.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: So now you'd ask yourself, how did a dense economic
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: critique of the moment become the ideological backbone for dictators.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: Here's how authoritarian leaders, in order to grab power need
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: three things. A moral narrative gave them one, a villain, bankers, capitalists, etc.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: And a promise of justice. So Marx provided a compelling villain,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: the elite, the bourgeois. He provided a moral framework class exploitation,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: hey man, class warfare always works on American politics, trust me.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: And he provided emotionally powerful language. Workers of the World United.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: And what later leaders did was simplified even more. They
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: took a complex structural theory and turned it into a
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: binary the people and the enemies of the people. Which
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: side are you on? Once politics becomes moral absolutism, that's
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: when the institution's weaken. And once institution's weaken, ideology becomes
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: cover for control. It's important we got to be honest
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: about this. Marx does advocate abolition of private ownership of
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: the means of production, and he does call for revolutionary transformation.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: That language lends itself to radical application, but it does
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: not logically require personality cults and mass purges and secret
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: police dates. He was simply talking about economics. But those
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: other derivatives were choices made by dictators operating in volatile environments,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: civil war, foreign intervention, economic collapse. And they discovered that
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: if you simplified ideology into moral purity and made it,
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: it made it easier to consolidate power. Right, you could
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: either use Marx or you can use a religious text.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: But we've seen the pattern here. Nationalism gets weaponized, religious
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: text gets weaponized, Marxism gets weaponized, Liberal democracy has been weaponized.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: Complex ideas get flattened into slogan. Slogan's mobilized masses. Mass mobilization,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: then does what centralizes power? Power seeks permanence. Marx didn't
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: invent the pattern, he was simply folded into it. So
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: Marx did, though, predict revolution what happened in advanced industrial democracies. Instead,
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: that isn't where these revolutions happened. These communist revolutions took
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: hold in essentially the losers in industrialization, the places that
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: were behind the industrial leaders of the world Sarist Russia, MAOIs, China,
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: some of these postcolonial states. Right, the mismatch does matter.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: His theory assumed capitalism would mature fully before collapse. Well,
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: that isn't what happened here. And if anything, his manifesto
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: was used as a way almost to prevent the good
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: side of capitalism from encroaching into Russia, China in some
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: of these post colonial countries, and instead said you have
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: to fear this, so let's fight it before it gets here.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: So today, the Communist Manifesto gets invoked in American politics
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: in two equally inaccurate ways. On the left it sometimes
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: romanticized as a moral call for fairness, and on the
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: right it's treated as the origin story for every authoritarian
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: regime of the twentieth century, And both of those stereotypes
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: flatten men right. The deeper truth is as always, very
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: very much less tidy. The Manifesto identified a recurring tension
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: in modern societies. Economic dynamism creates indisability. Wealth concentration creates
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: backlash political systems like behind technological change. You don't have
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: to endorse Marks's conclusions to recognize that his diagnosis still resonates.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: His diagnosis is spot on. His conclusions were way too radical.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: The question, though he in eighteen forty eight, still echoes
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: and echoes quite a bit today. Can capitalism regulate itself
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: or must politics restrain it to preserve stability? I think
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: there is a collective other than a handful of maniacs
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: and Silicon Valley. I think most of us agree that
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: capitalism needs some guardrails. It does not regulate itself. Sorry
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: Iron Mark's answered that reform would fail. Modern democracies have
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: tried another route, regulation, labor law, social insurance, antitrust. You know,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: we have fits and starts, it works and then it doesn't.
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: Now it doesn't help that none of this is working
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: right now because we have a government that does not
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: have the trust of the public. So you need public
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: trust in order to successfully regulate and to enforce labor law,
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: and to make that social insurance seem nonpartisan instead of partisans.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: But either way, the pamphlet refuses to die because the
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: diagnosis is very familiar. It wasn't just an attack on capitalism.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: It was a warning about what happens when economic systems
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: transform faster than how politics can respond. Kind of seems
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: familiar today, doesn't it. This is why the way we're
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: going about AI is going to push people in more
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: radical places, just like it pushed people into radical Marxism
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: belief in some parts of Marxism, when actually we're not
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: listening to the first part, the analytical part, where we
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: need some guardrails we need some regulation. You can't trust
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: the private sector to do this on their own. What
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: we're doing with AI is playing with nuclear fire, essentially
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: nuclear powered fire, if there is such thing. All right,
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: there's your history lesson. Let's go to some questions. Ask
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: Chuck a little last Chuck. Here we go. First question
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: comes from a huge University of Michigan fan, so we'll
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: go there. Hey, Chuck, thanks for reading this, love the podcast,
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: and I've been a fan since your Daily rundown Day
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: circa twenty ten. Well man, you go way back. Thank you. Anyway,
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: my question is on the economic numbers we get from
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: this administration. Does something seem a little wonky to you?
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: The same month ADP tails his layoffs at their highest
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: level since twenty oh nine, we get a jobs report
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: claiming that the job creation is on the upswing. Then
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: we get a CPI report claiming that inflation has following
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: to two point four percent. But every time you go
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: to grocery shopping you get sticker shock from something new
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: and the only one who's not buying it. Is it
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: possible someone is cooking the numbers to make Trump look better?
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: After all, he fired the woman who used to compile
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: the jobs report because he didn't like the numbers she
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: was putting out. Thanks for your time, Phil and Rogers City, Michigan,
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: big fan of the other, You of m Go Blue.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: Yes it is you. I have learned this. You of
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: m is Michigan. Of course is Miami. Look. Welcome to
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: the What happens when a government doesn't tell you the
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: truth in all of these other places? Right, the government
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: misleads you on your health, The government misleads you on
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: airline safety, the government misleads you on immigration enforcement. So
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: of course you're not going to believe the numbers. You know,
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of do you believe your lying eyes? Right?
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: People experience at the end of the day. It's why
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: now the polling is going to matter here a little
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: bit more and hearing you know, you know, people the
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: public will tell us whether they feel as if this
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: economy is getting better. Look, it was a shocking jobs
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: report considering everything else that went into it. It's It's
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: also one of the things I've learned is be careful
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: of judging one one report. A lot of times you'll
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: have an outlier and then later, I mean, it was
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: it seemed you know, now the reason the report is
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: believable to me, is where all the job gains came from.
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: They came from the only part of the economy that's
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: growing home health care. Why is it growing because we're
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: all living longer and we need more home health care aids?
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: And why are these jobs? Why are there's so many
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: job openings for them? Because of what we're done with
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: immigration enforcement. A lot of first gen, first generation Americans
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: that come here as adults, that's that's the easiest first
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: job they can It is consistent that they can get
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: their hands on. So but I understand why you don't
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: believe them, because they've given you no reason to believe them. Right.
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: This is a government that has gone out of its
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: way to miss to mislabel things, to so distrust, to
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: lead with narratives before the facts come out, as we've
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: learned time and again at DHS, time and again at
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: the Department of Health and Human Services. You brought up
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: the answers. I have nothing to tell you other than,
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: like I said, there are some things in the job
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: report that do fit the facts, and the growth of
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: home healthcare aids and the fact that that job number
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: goes up as immigration reinforcement because a lot of those jobs.
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: Perhaps we're off the books and now they're less off
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: the books than they were, so that it is possible
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: that explains why there is a specific surge in one
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: category but nowhere else. As for inflation coming down, in fairness,
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: it has been. The question is whether it will stay
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: that way or whether this is just a quick dip.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, when if Trump gets his way
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: with a new FED share that does lower interest rates,
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: an he's still enforcing these tariffs plus the tax refunds,
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: will we have too much money in the economy, which
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: then launches inflation again. So I think it continues to
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: be an unsteady economy. And you have every the government
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: has given you no reason to believe everything they're putting out,
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: So I understand your skepticism, but I also think we'll just,
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: you know, let's take a look at the next report.
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: In some fairness to the BLS, right, we had the
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: government shutdown which caused sort of so this, you know,
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: this could also be a catchup as well, and then
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: we'll see what happens over the next couple of months. Okay.
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Mike from South Florida, and he
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: knows why whenever I see the word South Florida means
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: you're not from Miami, and he goes, yes, I'm from
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: Broward County. Thank you, Mike for your transparency there about
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: your South Florida ties gate as a label for scandals
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: feels tired, and I wonder if it's time for something
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: punchier to cut through the noise. I half jokingly suggest
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: calling Eric Hunter Trump, I see what you're doing there
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: and dubbing the situation the United States of Emirates to
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: mirror the viral style of modern conspiracy framing. That said,
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: I appreciate they do avoid clickbait and focus on substance.
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: That's exactly why I tuned in, Mike, I appreciate it.
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: You know. One of my favorite when I was at
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: the Hotline, which was back in the nineties, what made
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: us sort of gave us a little cult following in DC,
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: is that we always tried to have humor all the time.
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: We knew we were writing for a professional audience, so
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: we could we could bring humor to situations that maybe
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: in another place or on social media, would would come
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: across as bad taste to some. But one of my
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: favorite headlines that we ran once it wasn't mine. I
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: think it was my friend Steve Billefort, who was probably
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: the funniest guy we ever had in Hotline and in
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: one of the smartest editors we ever had as well.
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: I think it was one of these travel gates or
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: you know, something that we were given the gate to it, right,
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: the headline ones I'll take ends in gate for one
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: thousand alys where we were trying to mock this issue. Look,
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: it's there's nothing says intellectual laziness by by a headline
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: writer than just giving the gate to something. Look for
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: for a generation, it made sense, right, Watergate was huge,
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: So you did you know the gate thing was you know,
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: this is like Watergate or this or that? Right. I
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: think now that we're now past fifty years of it,
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: you know it's it's it's it's about time we can
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: do better. And I appreciate your your efforts here, Eric
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: Hunter Trump. It's I think it works better with Donald junior,
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: Donald Hunter Trump Junior, because he's actually a hunter, right,
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: So then you can you know he likes to do
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: the big game, Honey, I don't know. And U s
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: E U s E. I could see that, right, And
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: what is U s e U S. What else does that?
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: What act? What? What? What acronym with that turned into
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: for your United States of Emirates?
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: Use? And what are other countries and rich people doing
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: with the United States? They're using our government anyway? Fun one, Mike, Thanks.
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from shame Parts unknown, and he said, Hey,
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: I just listened to your double top five about the
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: formally lawful yet unusual practices of the past and the
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: amendments that should be in our near future. However, I
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: think there should be an honorable mention. With yet another
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: government shut down nearing, should there be an amendment or
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: whatever is applicable in this situation that make the salaries
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: of the House and Senate members first on the chopping block.
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: Rather than shuttering services utilized by citizens, furlowing folks that
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: live paycheck to paycheck, and forcing others to continue to
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: work without immediate compensation, we could withhold their bi weekly
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: payroll three point five million, if my math is correct,
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty five members atred and fifty dollars each.
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: While this probably barely scratches the surface of the cost,
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: maybe it would better influence them to work around the
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: clock to resolve the matters in hand. After all, they
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: are the governmental employees that are not satisfying the criteria
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: of which they were elected. I appreciate their salary hasn't
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: been increased in nearly twenty years, but they are still
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: making about double the national average. Thoughts on intended consequences
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: with this modification, you know you've had some do this. Look,
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: I do think we need to compensate elected officials better
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: because you don't want you don't want it to only
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: being wealthy people like I think where we really sort
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: of screw the pooches on state legislatures, where some of them,
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: these part time legislatures are just basically paid paid a stipend.
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: And what to me that opens them up to is fraud, right,
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: which is somebody who's who really wants a law pass
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: is going to tempt you with all sorts of financial opportunity,
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: and since the government itself isn't giving you hardly any compensation,
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: you might be more you know there to do it. Like,
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: let me put it in another way. Imagine if we
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: had college basketball referees that weren't paid for. Oh wait,
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: we do have this, right, What would there incentive be
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: if some big gambler came to you with a big
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: proposal for anyway. You see my point? Right, when you
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: don't pay people enough, you potentially incentivize corruptibility. Right, not
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: everybody starts as corrupt, but sadly we're human beings and
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: everybody has a price eventually, and everybody has a circumstance
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: where suddenly they have a price. So, you know, everybody
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: who thinks that they're morally perfect, I would digress. I
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: think the fact that members of Congress are getting paid
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: and the staff is getting you know, that's what you do.
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: I think you're right. I would throw staff in there too.
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: And you say it's not fair, Well, they're political staff.
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: They know what they're signing up for, and they're advising
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: these members of Congress. So if you did that, and
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: I think you know they're there, I I endorse it
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: makes sense to me. I mean, these TSA agents, what
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: we're doing to them, you know the unintended here's your
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: unintended consequence with what we keep doing to TSA agents.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: Why is that a safe job anymore? Who's gonna want
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: to like suddenly you've got to it. At best, you
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: better hope you have a spouse who has a steady
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: or paycheck. It's so I I uh, it's certainly logical
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: to me. I go back to it. Should we shouldn't
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: be allowed to it shouldn't. This isn't the way we
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: should shut government down, right, There's got to be another
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: way to resolve this. But simply stopping a functionality of
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: government that has already been agreed to for this fiscal year,
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: because usually we're arguing about the next fiscal year seems
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: to be seems to be problematic. But look, it's until
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: we come up with them better. You know, everything is
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: a bad incentives. If you have good incentives, you'll get
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: good outcomes. If you have bad incentives, you'll bad outcomes.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: And right now we have bad incentives when it comes
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: to the operation of government. Next question comes from Jack
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: Why and he writes, Hey, I absolutely wish I could
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: spend an hour a day listening to Rama Manuel. That
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: guy is so smart and would be a great leader
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: for the country. Your interview with him made me so
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: nostalgic for the Obama years, when the intellect of the
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: administration did not require affirmation. It was simply understood. The
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: true leadership that is demonstrated with their humble and educated
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: approach to governing with a focus on the American people
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: is something we should all be pining for. I know,
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: I am. It is good in my opinion that he
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: is flying under the radar. Thanks for having him on
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: your podcast, listening to him as time well spent. I
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: was nodding in an agreement so often that I got
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: a crick in my neck. Love the podcast and substack
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: way more than the corporate media shackles you were once
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: died to independent news and political media. It is far superior.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: Le Chezer. If you know you know best regards Jack,
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: Why I appreciate that. Look, you know it's funny. It's
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: like I sit here, I've gotten a ton of positive
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: feedback about Ram from people that didn't know they were
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: going to have positive feedback about Rom. I think I
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: think it is Look, I've known this version of Ram
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: a long time. But at the same time, I also
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: think this is why experience counts. I think there was
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: a time in Ram's political life that he was a
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: little too quick with a belief or a or a
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: proclamation or an answer. But his instincts have always been
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: sort of ultimately public first, and you know, you know
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: it is so I look at rom I think he
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: is speaking to the problems that I hope more candidates
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: speak to. And I'm also equally skeptical that, unfortunately, in
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: this anti establishment mood that both parties are in, he
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: probably has too many ties to quote establishment figures to
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: break through. But I hope people are paying attention to
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: what he's saying because he is. I feel like he's
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: actually trying to respond to what the voters have been
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: screaming here about for the last twenty years. All right,
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: next question, We'll make this the last one today. Number
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: five here on the list. I've gone deep with you today.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: It's a holiday. We'll go number five here and he
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: goes Hey. Most listeners are familiar with discussion on Trump
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: presidential impeachments, as we experienced a pair of those in
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: President forty five's term. How about the likes of RFK
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: Junior and Pambondi? What is the criteria for impeachment of
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: these cabinet members? Thanks, Chuck? Who is your favorite football
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: baseball players as a kid, By the way, Jim from Tobahana, Pennsylvania, Well,
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: let me get it. Look, the impeachment is the same thing.
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can impeach. Ali Mayorcus was impeached by
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: the Republican House. And one of the reminders is what's
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: an impeachable offense. Whatever a majority of the House of
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: Representatives decides it is. They are essentially a grand jury here.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: If they bring him articles of impeachment and a majority
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: approve them, then they then said official has been indicted,
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: all right, and then the Senate has to do a trial.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: And we you know, there's multiple Senate trials have taken
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: place over the years for judges and for other things,
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: but usually at a cabinet secretary when it reaches impeachment stage,
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: usually that cabinet secretary is more likely to resign. In
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: the Mayorka's case, it didn't because the Senate I think
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: was controlled by you know, there was enough control by
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: the Democrats where they could just refuse a trial or
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: just sort of do a quick trial, you know type
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: of thing. And I think at the time the Democrats
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: control the floor and they can make that easy. So
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: so ultimately it's the same, but it would take a
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: majority in this case, right, you have a Republican House, yeah,
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe you'd have impeachment discharge petitions and you
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: could get a couple on Bondy at this point, but
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: if you got there, she probably resigns before they go
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: through the trial itself. So that's usually why with political
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: appointees like that. You know, we've had an occasional federal
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: judge impeachment trial. You know, even a conviction. I believe
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: Elsie Hastings later would become a member of Congress. I
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: believe was you know, lost his judge ship during an
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: impeachment process. So there's no the criteria is no different.
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: It's just usually it never happens with a cabinet secretary
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: because by the time you get to the point where
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: the House can can pass articles of impeachment on a
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: cabinet secretary, a normal acting president listens to the public
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: and decides to call for the resignation and move on.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: And by the way, this gets it something here with
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: Nome or Bondi or RFK Junior, but really Noman Bondi,
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: let's say either one of them are fired or resign,
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: he will appoint an acting and how long will he
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: stick to the acting? Just something to keep in mind,
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that's something everybody wants to have.
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: You were asking, who's my favorite football baseball players as
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: a kid, well, number one my favorite baseball player Steve Garvey,
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: and my parents encouraged it until they did, meaning like
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: Steve Garvey was my favorite, you know, starting in linked
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight seventy nine eighty, I collected every one
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: of his baseball cards. That was the first big collection
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: I did, is I wanted every year every card ever
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: produced of there from and I even like included OPG,
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: which was the Canadian version of TOPS. They basically used
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: whatever the TOPS design was and then smacked it with
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: the OPG label in the back. I think that's how
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: their relationship with TOPS must have worked. So it was
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: some sort of design licensing agreement or something. And it
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: was the first time I ever spent one hundred dollars
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: on any card ever, was for Garvey's rookie So Steve
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: Garvey was my favorite, my favorite baseball player on the
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: football front, you know, it was my dad made me
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: a Packer fan. I always say made me a Packer fan.
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: It's like I just didn't really have a choice. Right
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: very early, like two of the first football books I
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: ever read, one was Run to Daylight by Vince Labardey.
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: The other Wood was instant replayed by Jerry Kramer and
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: Dick Shapp, So I was definitely brainwashed correctly when it
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: came to the Packers lore and all of that. By
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: the way, going to Garvey, and I know I sort
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: of left out the Garvey part, you know, when when
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: Garvey became a punchline like i'll I think it was
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: a Johnny Carson joke, and I remember being so crestfallen
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: it was a hank of Steve Garvey's your dad. You know.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: There was all this talk about Garvey and you know,
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: he cheated on Cindy Garvey, beloved Cindy Garvey, who was
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: I think a co host of a TV show called
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: That's Incredible with a guy named John Davidson, if I
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: have that correct, and That's Incredible. It was just basically
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: reality shows before we knew what reality shows were. It
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: was like crazy things people Now they call it America's
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: Got Talent or all sorts of you know stuff, But
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: back then we didn't call them reality shows. We called them,
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: you know, they were kind of magazine shows meets goofy
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: viral moments. So That's Incredible was one of those types
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: of shows. I think it was an ABC show, but
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: it was a big deal that Steve Garvey cheated on
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: his equally famous wife. She got that job because she
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: was Steve. Some people assumed because she was Steve, you know,
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: married to a you know, a popular baseball player in
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: la U, namely Steve Garvey. So anyway, I was a
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: Garvey guy. I still believe Garvey has a Hall of
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: you know is. I think the only reason he's not
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: in the Hall is due to the the disappointment a
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: lot of people felt, because I think he was seen
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: as I mean, he was a role model that my
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 1: parents wanted me to follow. He had this great mythology
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: about his you know, his father drove the team bus
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: for the Dodgers, and he was this, you know, mister
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: perfect and all that stuff. So there was this lore
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: about Garvey, and I think my parents thought he was
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: a terrific role model. And then the whole thing happened,
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: and then I think that back then we realized, we
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: would realize a few years later that Charles Barkley was right.
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: No athlete is, you know, should be a pr perfect
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: role model for everybody. But going back to the football front,
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: so basically, they made my players, my favorite players were
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: always Garvage where somebody were derivative of the Packers or
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: derivative of the Hurricanes. So Jim Kelly because of the Hurricanes.
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: So I always he's one of my all time favorites,
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: the first great quarterback for Miami. And you know, I'm
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry he never got a Super Bowl win, but
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: he's you know, he's probably the greatest quarterback never to
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: get a Super Bowl. I know you're supposed to say
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: Dan Marino. I think the fact that Kelly got there
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: four times puts him ahead of Marino any any And
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: he was the he helped implement essentially the modernization of
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: the you know, the offenses we see today in some ways,
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: you know, you could you could say that Kelly and
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: the k gun offense or the or the the the
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: the og of that there. And then James Lofton because
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: he was the best Packer at the time. When I
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: was a kid, I loved Eddie Lee Ivory. I love
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: lind Dicky. I still do. You know, it's funny with
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: the Packers quarterbacks because they've you know, both Farv and Rogers.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: And you know, this is the thing, like a lot
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: of my favorite players, their off field behavior makes it
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: harder to sort of root for them off the field
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: as much as you reform on the field. And you know,
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: I go back and forth, but I compartmentalize Aaron Rodgers.
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: I still wanted to go into the Hall of Fame
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: as a packer. He still did a lot of good
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: for the packers, and so I do kind of try
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: to compartmentalize these things. But some things you don't, you know,
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: I don't like, you know, whatever, you know, the whole
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: farv story. I vacillate on that one. I think some
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: people took advantage of him, and at the same time,
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: you know, ignorance is no excuse either. I think he
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: should have been understood more what people were using his
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: name to do and then what he thought. Anyway, there's
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: a lot I think there's nuanced to the story on that.
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I've had I've had my share of and
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: there's certain hurricanes that have some controversial off field issues
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: that yet I still will we'll compartmentalize about you know,
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: whether it's Michael Irvin or Ray Lewis on that front. Either.
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: So uh So, there you have it. I hope I'm
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: getting as you could tell. I think I gave you
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: an honest answer the right. The easy answer would have
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: been to say somebody like Johnny Bench, right, or Sandy
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: Kofax or whatever. I love Fernando too. First autograph I
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: ever got from a baseball player was Fernando Allenzolla at
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: Vero Beach in Dodger Town. All right, Well we ended
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: with a sports question, so I'll just leave it there.
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: Once again, the NBA still has an All Star Game
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 1: interest issue. Let me just leave you with a thought,
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: and for those of you that want to follow up,
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: I'd love follow up questions on it. Which is the
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: reason the players and the NBA took the All Star
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: Game seriously in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and even to
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: a lesser extent than nineties, was because the bonus you
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 1: got for being an All Star, in comparison to the
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: salary was was sort of it was probably somewhere between
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: five and ten percent of your overall year salary was
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: this bonus. And if you can get a five or
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: ten percent extra amount of money, that's motivation. Now you're
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: looking at best, it's somewhere between a half a percent
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: and a percent of what your yearly salary is. And
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: so I think that there's just look, as my friend
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: Tony Cornheis likes to say, the answer to all your
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: problems is money. How can they create a different financial
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: incentive for the players to get in the All Star
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: Game and a different financial incentive for players to play
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: to not deal with load management a different fact? You know?
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: So it is ultimately right, good incentives you get good outcomes.
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 1: Bad incentives you get bad outcomes. There are some bad
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 1: incentives that have been created in the NBA with tanking
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: with our All Star Game participation. So tweak the incentives.
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: That's where you got to go. Is it more money
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: at the line on the line? You know? Do you
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: make it a truly elite status? Does All Star Game
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: participation get tied to Hall of Fame consideration? Right? You know,
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of things you could potentially create. You
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: just have to You just have to choose to really
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: want to. And you got to ask yourself what do
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 1: you want out of your all start weekend? You know?
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: I think the fact is the three point contest continues
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: to be the one contest that even the best want
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: to participate in it. So come up with other skills.
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'll tell you what could be fun is
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to see more free throw shooting
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: contests where you did speed free throws or something like that.
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: You could perhaps do more skills if you want to,
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: you know, continue to have this. You know, you could
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: turn the All Star weekend into a big tournament. Again.
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: That again huge compensation for it, the way they did
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: with the NBA Cup, Right, players, the incentive is big
• 2:27:25
  Speaker 1: enough that it has caused teams to really want to
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: play hard during the NBA Cup games in the early
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: part of the season. So ultimately, that's what you do, right,
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: You examine and you find out where are your weak spots.
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: You know, I'll close with this, why did you know
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: it's February slowest sports month on the calendar, Although I'd
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: argue with Winter Olympics, Daytona five hundred, this week you
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: got increasingly interesting college basketball, et cetera, et cetera, that
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 1: February has certainly been fairly busy. But you know, Sports
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: Illustrated came up with the swimsuit issue when they looked
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 1: at their new stand sales and realized their slowest news
• 2:27:59
  Speaker 1: stand sales was in the mid to late part of February.
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: So they said what's a way to increase our newsstand
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: sales in February? Right, And so that's what they did
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: the NBA. Why did they come up with the NBA Cup?
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: They look, boy, we got a lot of we don't
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: have it. Nobody pays attention to the first part of
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: the regular season while the NFL is in session. What
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: do we do to create more something more interesting? While
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: they came up in the NBA Cup. So that's how
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: these problems can be tackled, should be looked at, right,
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: And it's you know, take the take the biggest loophole,
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: the biggest problem, the biggest issue, and then come up
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 1: with incentive structures that actually make it far more interesting,
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: far more useful, right, and go from there. All right,
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: I'll throw that out there. I'd love to hear from you,
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: my sports nuts that listen to this ideas you have
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: fixing NBA All Star weekend? What would you do? What
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: are what are some ideas out there? You know, my
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: buddy Bill Simmons can't just corner them mark on crazy ideas, right,
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 1: the rest of us want to participate in the crazy idea,
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: half baked idea genre that he is frankly executed. So
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: well over the years. All right, with that, I will
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: call it a podcast for this Monday President's Day. Episode.
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: Gave you a lot to chew on today, a lot
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: of little history to tag out and from there and
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: I'll see it, and we'll have a lot more to
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: say in forty eight hours. I'll see that