Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Jeff Bezos Gutting The Washington Post Is A Dark Day For Journalism + Addicted, Unregulated, and Everywhere: The Sports Betting Explosion

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Full Episode - Jeff Bezos Gutting The Washington Post Is A Dark Day For Journalism + Addicted, Unregulated, and Everywhere: The Sports Betting Explosion · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: a sponsor I absolutely embrace, so use that code. Hello there,
1:52
Speaker 1: Happy Thursday, Happy super Bowl Thursday. Right we are. We
1:55
Speaker 1: are now in the ninety six hour window of Super Bowl,
2:01
Speaker 1: of the sort of the Super Bowl extravaganza, and I'm
2:08
Speaker 1: tempted to say that the Super Bowl hype feels lessish.
2:13
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I'm saying that because I'm
2:16
Speaker 1: buying into the premise that they're you know, we don't
2:18
Speaker 1: have the traditional stars in the Super Bowl right now.
2:21
Speaker 1: There's no Patrick Mahomes and there's no Tom Brady, and
2:23
Speaker 1: there's no Josh Allen, there's no Lamar Jackson, no Aaron Rodgers.
2:26
Speaker 1: So I hate to like pile on on that, but
2:29
Speaker 1: there does feel this feels less hyped Or am I
2:36
Speaker 1: just accepting you know, am I putting my own bias
2:40
Speaker 1: on it? I will. I will accept the premise that
2:42
Speaker 1: I might be because the Super Bowl doesn't overly excite me,
2:47
Speaker 1: and I think out of you know, my great fears
2:50
Speaker 1: that it won't be competitive. But I certainly hope we will
2:52
Speaker 1: have a competive more to say about the super Bowl,
2:55
Speaker 1: As I always promise, I want to keep the sports
2:58
Speaker 1: to the end. But speaking of sports, it's actually a
3:01
Speaker 1: we have a derivative story today, which is mobile gambling,
3:05
Speaker 1: mobile gaming and sports gaming and the impact on our youth,
3:09
Speaker 1: the impact on young men, the impact on people's lives.
3:13
Speaker 1: Has this been too much, too soon, too fast? As
3:19
Speaker 1: many of you know, I am not shy about the
3:21
Speaker 1: fact that I enjoy gambling on football. I enjoy point spreads,
3:27
Speaker 1: and I am and I've said this I do. I
3:31
Speaker 1: don't bet player props, I don't bet any individual sports.
3:34
Speaker 1: I don't bet tennis or individual golf. I don't because
3:37
Speaker 1: I think the ind I just think your odds. You're
3:40
Speaker 1: putting your odds in the hands of a single individual
3:43
Speaker 1: versus team sport, etc. So I enjoy gambling on that.
3:49
Speaker 1: And yet we all know this does feel you know
3:55
Speaker 1: what has happened here, how much we went from zero
3:59
Speaker 1: to two hundred rather than doing this incrementally right, It's
4:03
Speaker 1: the akin to if the entire if we had decided
4:08
Speaker 1: we're going to legalize all drugs, anything that had been
4:12
Speaker 1: ruled as an illegal drug, We're going to legalize all
4:15
Speaker 1: of them at the same time, rather than well, let's
4:19
Speaker 1: try marijuana here and somebody else wants to try mushrooms
4:22
Speaker 1: over there, and Okay, we've handled the drug part actually
4:27
Speaker 1: in a very lot more of a responsible way, peacemealing
4:30
Speaker 1: it out little. Seeing how it is with mobile gambling.
4:33
Speaker 1: It went from the Supreme Court saying nobody can have
4:36
Speaker 1: it other than Nevada to suddenly, you know, we're only
4:40
Speaker 1: a handful of states at this point don't have don't
4:43
Speaker 1: have it, And at this because of the prediction markets,
4:45
Speaker 1: essentially every state now has some form of mobile gambling.
4:51
Speaker 1: And so my guest today is a danty fund. He's
4:54
Speaker 1: author of a new book called Everybody Loses and it is.
4:59
Speaker 1: It is a deep dot into the rise of the
5:01
Speaker 1: dominance of you know, these big online casino entities FanDuel,
5:08
Speaker 1: Draft Kings at MGM. But the two behemoths these days
5:12
Speaker 1: are Draft Kings and FanDuel. And so this felt like
5:18
Speaker 1: a pretty you know, I you know the reason I believe,
5:23
Speaker 1: the reason I want to spend a little time on it,
5:24
Speaker 1: and why I think even if you guys aren't those
5:26
Speaker 1: of you that don't come into here for sports, this
5:30
Speaker 1: is a public policy issue that just happens to be
5:33
Speaker 1: sports themed, and that's the focus of this conversation. So
5:37
Speaker 1: this is not something that I think you ought to
5:39
Speaker 1: skip over just because you say I'm not a sports fan.
5:41
Speaker 1: This is not a sports fan conversation. This is about
5:45
Speaker 1: this huge industry that's having a huge impact on people's lives.
5:50
Speaker 1: And there seems to be very little public policy, public
5:56
Speaker 1: pushback here from our elected officials because they're just pocketing
6:00
Speaker 1: all sorts of campaign contributions on this front. And so, yeah,
6:06
Speaker 1: am I using this Super Bowl as a way to
6:08
Speaker 1: talk about this, I am, And that's certainly what a
6:10
Speaker 1: lot of us journalists will usually do with the Super Bowl.
6:13
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, here's an opportunity to have this public
6:15
Speaker 1: policy conversation at a time when a lot of people
6:18
Speaker 1: are going to be paying attention to this issue of
6:20
Speaker 1: gambling on all that stuff. So that's my interview today.
6:24
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, I've made a few
6:28
Speaker 1: references and had a few rants about the Washington Post.
6:31
Speaker 1: But we now know what happened, and I guess you
6:35
Speaker 1: could say I'm this is my official obituary for the
6:39
Speaker 1: Washington Post because my frustration on this. This is not
6:45
Speaker 1: and I think different people go about this a different way.
6:47
Speaker 1: I do not believe Jeff Bezos's job was to be
6:52
Speaker 1: a to treat the Washington Post as a charity case.
6:56
Speaker 1: So I'm not you know, I'm not asking him to
6:59
Speaker 1: lose money to keep the Washington Post up and running.
7:02
Speaker 1: I'm asking him to be honest about what he's up to.
7:06
Speaker 1: I'm asking him to be more straightforward about his motivation,
7:10
Speaker 1: and I'm asking him to acknowledge that he The question
7:15
Speaker 1: is did he hire the wrong people or did he
7:19
Speaker 1: actually make a business decision that has nothing to do
7:23
Speaker 1: with the business of media and everything to do with
7:26
Speaker 1: the business of space before I get to it, but
7:29
Speaker 1: I want to start off with associating myself with something
7:35
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos said in twenty thirteen. Thanks to my friend
7:39
Speaker 1: Don Vanada, one of the great sports reporters out there,
7:42
Speaker 1: does a lot of great work over at ESPN, and
7:45
Speaker 1: it's been everywhere times you name it, he re upped this.
7:50
Speaker 1: It's an important quote, and I want to quote from
7:53
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. So when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post
7:55
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty million dollars in twenty thirteen, he
7:59
Speaker 1: did a Q and A in the newsroom with legendary
8:02
Speaker 1: Washington Post reporter Bob Woodwork, and Woodward asked Bezos, in
8:07
Speaker 1: front of all of his Jeff Bezos new employees at
8:10
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, a simple question, Why'd you do it?
8:14
Speaker 1: Let me read you Jeff Bezos's answer. In twenty thirteen,
8:18
Speaker 1: I finally concluded that I could provide runway financial runway
8:22
Speaker 1: because I don't think you can keep shrinking the business.
8:26
Speaker 1: You could be profitable in shrinking, and that's a survival strategy,
8:31
Speaker 1: but it ultimately leads to irrelevance at best, and at worst,
8:35
Speaker 1: it leads to extinction in some ways. I almost want
8:41
Speaker 1: to drop the mic and leave right like, there you go,
8:45
Speaker 1: what's about to happen to the Washington Post? Exactly what
8:48
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos said he wasn't going to do. So I
8:54
Speaker 1: wanted to start off with the Jeff Bezos quote so
8:57
Speaker 1: that as I read you, Matt Murray, and I want
9:00
Speaker 1: to say this about Matt Murray's the executive editor of
9:01
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. Matt Murray's had to be the face
9:06
Speaker 1: of all of this. It sucks that anybody has to
9:13
Speaker 1: be the face of this. But what really sucks is
9:16
Speaker 1: he didn't make these decisions. He has to execute a
9:19
Speaker 1: strategy and execute decisions that were made by two people
9:25
Speaker 1: who did not face the public or their employees. So
9:32
Speaker 1: you know, look, I do not I feel poor Matt
9:37
Speaker 1: Murray's been hung out to dry. And you could say,
9:40
Speaker 1: well he could have resigned. Well, look, everybody's got paid bills,
9:42
Speaker 1: so be very careful. It's always easy to say when
9:46
Speaker 1: you don't have that job, to say you could quit,
9:49
Speaker 1: you could do this. Well, you know, your circumstance is
9:54
Speaker 1: your circumstance. If you have the luxury to do it, great,
10:00
Speaker 1: and you think you can make a statement kudos, but
10:03
Speaker 1: not everybody does. Matt Murray is a great, capable editor,
10:08
Speaker 1: managing editor, editor of a newsroom, runs a newsroom. He
10:13
Speaker 1: is not in charge of the business strategy. He executes
10:16
Speaker 1: the strategy. So I say this because I don't I
10:20
Speaker 1: don't want to see Matt Murray demonized. You want to
10:23
Speaker 1: be angry, be angry at Jeff Bezos for hiring Will Lewis,
10:27
Speaker 1: and you don't even have to be angry at him
10:29
Speaker 1: hiring Will Lewis. What you should be angry at is
10:30
Speaker 1: that Will Lewis isn't being shoved out the door along
10:32
Speaker 1: with all these employees because Will Lewis's strategy has been
10:36
Speaker 1: a disaster. Every move he's made has cost the Post money,
10:40
Speaker 1: cost the Post readers, cost the Post relevance. So the
10:44
Speaker 1: idea that Lewis's job is safe, but three hundred Washington
10:50
Speaker 1: Post staffers are being shown the door because hey, this
10:54
Speaker 1: is you know, oh you know, we just no. The
10:58
Speaker 1: media business is hard, but this was a choice. But anyway,
11:04
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos in twenty thirteen said, you do this, and
11:07
Speaker 1: you know you may go to extinct irrelevance. So let
11:10
Speaker 1: me read you today's memo that I'm sure was approved
11:15
Speaker 1: by Will Lewis and Jeff Bezos, And I'm not going
11:18
Speaker 1: to read the whole thing, but I'm going to read
11:21
Speaker 1: a few paragraphs, so this one. These moves include substantial
11:25
Speaker 1: newsroom reductions, impacting nearly all news departments. For the immediate future,
11:29
Speaker 1: we will concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and
11:33
Speaker 1: impact and that resonate with readers. Politics, national affairs, people
11:38
Speaker 1: power and trends, national security in DC and abroad. Forces
11:43
Speaker 1: shaping the future, including science, health, medicine, technology, climate in business,
11:48
Speaker 1: journalism that empowers people to take action from advice to wellness,
11:52
Speaker 1: revelatory investigations, and what's capturing attention in culture, online and
11:56
Speaker 1: daily life. So that's the that's the mission. Apparently let
12:02
Speaker 1: me continue, But we take these actions with clarity of purpose.
12:06
Speaker 1: The need has never been more urgent to reposition the post.
12:09
Speaker 1: A more flexible, sustainable model will help us better navigate
12:13
Speaker 1: unprecedented volatility, competition, technological change, news, consumption habits, and cost pressure.
12:20
Speaker 1: As you know, we have grappled with financial challenges for
12:22
Speaker 1: some time. They have affected us multiple in multiple rounds
12:25
Speaker 1: of cost cuts and buyouts, along with periodic constraints on
12:28
Speaker 1: other kinds of spending. We have concluded that the company
12:32
Speaker 1: structure is too rooted in a different era when we
12:36
Speaker 1: were a dominant local print product. This restructure will help
12:39
Speaker 1: to secure our future in service of our journalistic mission
12:42
Speaker 1: and provide us stability moving forward. Then he keeps going,
12:46
Speaker 1: we are far from alone and reevaluate our model and
12:48
Speaker 1: rethinking how we operate. The ecosystem of news and information
12:51
Speaker 1: on and off platform is changing radically. News consumers enjoy
12:54
Speaker 1: more variety voices of platforms and options than ever before.
12:57
Speaker 1: In just the last five years, multiple startups, even in US,
13:00
Speaker 1: have created meaningful products that draw attention and generate impact
13:04
Speaker 1: at low cost. And it goes on to blame search
13:07
Speaker 1: and blame all these other structural issues that were issues
13:12
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, that were issues when Marty Baron took over.
13:18
Speaker 1: So the point being there, of course there have been issues.
13:21
Speaker 1: These are issues that The New York Times confronted, and
13:24
Speaker 1: as Nate Silver, if you should check out his substack,
13:27
Speaker 1: he noted that both you know, essentially this gets it
13:31
Speaker 1: to the real business decision that Jeff Bezos made. But
13:35
Speaker 1: he did a terrific sort of showing of that there
13:38
Speaker 1: was this study of sort of like impact, sort of
13:41
Speaker 1: judging how how much impact your news stories had, and
13:44
Speaker 1: the Times in the Post were essentially neck and neck,
13:46
Speaker 1: neck and neck. It's sort of, you know, whether it
13:49
Speaker 1: was attention impact, how often their articles were however you
13:53
Speaker 1: wanted to measure, But there was a pretty good measurement
13:55
Speaker 1: that he was using to do this, and I wasn't
13:58
Speaker 1: familiar with the the specific metric he was using, but
14:02
Speaker 1: it made the larger point that both the Times on
14:04
Speaker 1: the Post were sort of essentially in the same place
14:08
Speaker 1: late twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, even into twenty twenty, twenty
14:11
Speaker 1: twenty one. You know, the Times, like the Post experienced
14:16
Speaker 1: you know, this this sort of softening of interest in
14:19
Speaker 1: Washington news with the incoming Biden administration, right, and Joe
14:23
Speaker 1: Biden being sort of catatonic for most of his term,
14:27
Speaker 1: obviously meant that the attention economy when it came to
14:31
Speaker 1: Washington politics was less interested. The Times diversified, right, the
14:38
Speaker 1: Times has all had, you know, decided to use the
14:41
Speaker 1: opportunity when there was attention, and they they went big, right, Yeah,
14:46
Speaker 1: they cut their sports department, but only after they bought
14:49
Speaker 1: the Athletic Okay, the leading national sports news organization in
14:55
Speaker 1: the country. So they actually went bigger on sports, not smaller, right,
15:01
Speaker 1: And they went with a brand, and they took a brand,
15:03
Speaker 1: and they doubled down on a brand, you know. And
15:05
Speaker 1: they've done this with Wirecutter, and they've done this with
15:08
Speaker 1: their recipes, and they've done this with games. The Washington
15:12
Speaker 1: Post was perfectly positioned to potentially do something similar on
15:17
Speaker 1: a variety of fronts. This is among the wealthiest metropolitan
15:23
Speaker 1: areas in the country. You have some of the most
15:27
Speaker 1: well read people. People pay for news. Not every community
15:32
Speaker 1: is is my God. They charge you for everything around here, right,
15:36
Speaker 1: people are buying newsletters from punch Bowl and buying pro
15:40
Speaker 1: political pro subscriptions and National journal and hotline passes and
15:44
Speaker 1: all sorts of things. So this is a market that
15:47
Speaker 1: is very comfortable paying for information. But Jeff Bezos had
15:57
Speaker 1: a problem. His number one competitor for space contracts is
16:02
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. Elon Musk had had all sorts of ties
16:10
Speaker 1: to the two front runners for president in twenty twenty
16:13
Speaker 1: three and twenty twenty four, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump,
16:19
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk was leveraging those relationships in any way possible.
16:26
Speaker 1: And when he realized Disantas was going nowhere, right, He's
16:29
Speaker 1: eventually sidled right up to Trump. If there is a
16:36
Speaker 1: competitor in the private space race, to Elon Musk, it's
16:41
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin. The only way to build
16:49
Speaker 1: a private space company is to have access to the
16:52
Speaker 1: government's resources NASA and all sorts of infrastructure. All right,
16:58
Speaker 1: You know, we may be in the privatizing era of space,
17:04
Speaker 1: but the structure is still sort of government. You're very
17:07
Speaker 1: dependent upon government, and you need access to government. And
17:11
Speaker 1: if Donald Trump just shut the door on Jeff Bezos,
17:14
Speaker 1: Blue Origin would be just sort of stuck here, maybe
17:17
Speaker 1: have to work with another country if they wanted to
17:20
Speaker 1: get up and stuff like that. So he looked at
17:23
Speaker 1: the look I think his initial decision to purchase now
17:26
Speaker 1: when you have sort of everything, looks obvious now in hindsight.
17:30
Speaker 1: So why did twenty thirteen Jeff Bezos by the Washington Post.
17:33
Speaker 1: We know what he said. I told you up top
17:35
Speaker 1: what he said. But he's still like, why did he
17:41
Speaker 1: think it was a good idea? Well, if you recall
17:43
Speaker 1: at the time, right, I believe Amazon had just made
17:48
Speaker 1: the decision to create a basically open a second headquarters,
17:52
Speaker 1: and they made the decision to open it in Crystal City, Virginia.
17:57
Speaker 1: Why did they do that because the most important government
18:00
Speaker 1: contracts to AWS right the arguably the more profitable arm
18:07
Speaker 1: of Amazon, rather than the product most of us interact
18:12
Speaker 1: with on a on a daily or some of you
18:15
Speaker 1: on an hourly basis, our Pentagon contracts. So Amazon made
18:21
Speaker 1: the decision it needed to be close to Washington. Look,
18:25
Speaker 1: I'll be honest as a as a political anthropologist, the
18:28
Speaker 1: way I looked at it, I was I was rooting.
18:31
Speaker 1: I remember, remember there was this whole campaign who was
18:33
Speaker 1: going to get the second headquarters in? Amazon did a
18:36
Speaker 1: very public, almost American Idol style RFPs right request for
18:45
Speaker 1: proposals from various cities, and they had certain things they needed.
18:50
Speaker 1: They needed easy access to public transportation among you, affordable housing,
18:55
Speaker 1: all sort of. It was. Public transporation was a big thing,
18:58
Speaker 1: There's no doubt. I remember I was hoping he'd picked
19:03
Speaker 1: Saint Louis. And you've probably heard me a few times.
19:06
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with Saint Louis for a variety of reasons.
19:09
Speaker 1: You know, Saint Louis was I ate the I America
19:17
Speaker 1: all sort of chipped in to figure out, hey, we
19:20
Speaker 1: can't let Detroit spiral, and we got investment in Detroit,
19:26
Speaker 1: and we got Wall Street interested in Detroit. And Detroit
19:29
Speaker 1: is in better shape today than it's been in a while.
19:34
Speaker 1: We've not had that same You know, there was a time,
19:36
Speaker 1: right Saint Louis hosted an Olympics nineteen oh four. I
19:39
Speaker 1: believe it was because it was the gateway to the West, Right,
19:43
Speaker 1: Saint Louis was the most important, Say, before there was
19:46
Speaker 1: LA in San Francisco, there were Saint Louis. Right, it
19:49
Speaker 1: was the western frontier, and it was an extraordinarily important city.
19:54
Speaker 1: And even when I was growing up, right, you know,
19:56
Speaker 1: it was a hub and had lots of corporate headquarters there, right,
20:01
Speaker 1: and iSER Bush being the most iconic. But TWA Transworld
20:06
Speaker 1: Airlines that was a huge airline. That was not a
20:09
Speaker 1: small airline, that was a big airline. And it is withered,
20:14
Speaker 1: and there's a we can There's a variety of reasons.
20:16
Speaker 1: Saint Louis is one of those. When you if you
20:18
Speaker 1: ever wanted to understand how the interstate highway system really
20:23
Speaker 1: did segregate communities and destroy urban communities go traveling downtown
20:29
Speaker 1: Saint Louis when you go, and I believe it's fifty five.
20:32
Speaker 1: If I have it wrong, I hope, I hope my
20:35
Speaker 1: friends in Saint Louis will will correct me. I've got
20:38
Speaker 1: some I've got off and on ties to Saint Louis,
20:42
Speaker 1: and I'll leave it at that. Some of you will
20:44
Speaker 1: know what I'm referring to. But it's one of those
20:48
Speaker 1: that it's just ugly. It's terrible, like you know that.
20:50
Speaker 1: You know, there was a lot of of of urban
20:55
Speaker 1: planners in the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties who essentially
21:00
Speaker 1: used African American communities, you know, just almost either bulldozed them,
21:08
Speaker 1: divided them in half. But it was you know, if
21:12
Speaker 1: you were in a if you were fighting a not
21:15
Speaker 1: in my backyard mindset. You know, the black communities lost
21:19
Speaker 1: every one of them. And this was all over. You
21:22
Speaker 1: can read the Power Broker about Robert Moses and what
21:25
Speaker 1: he did in New York and how this was done.
21:29
Speaker 1: You can just see how the interstate system was built
21:33
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis. You can see remnants of this in
21:35
Speaker 1: New Orleans and some other of these cities that this
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23:01
Speaker 1: thirty percent off. So I was really but there was
23:08
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. So Saint Louis, I think needed
23:10
Speaker 1: a shot in the arm. But I also thought it
23:13
Speaker 1: was a Hey, this is a it still has some
23:16
Speaker 1: wealth to it. It still is a highly educated community,
23:19
Speaker 1: and more importantly, it's it's a more politically diverse community.
23:24
Speaker 1: And I would thought the tech industry needed more buy
23:27
Speaker 1: in from Red America. So, hey, don't you know you're
23:31
Speaker 1: going from Seattle? All right? Why don't you you know?
23:34
Speaker 1: I thought Saint Louis. So for a variety of reasons, right,
23:38
Speaker 1: I thought Saint Louis was gonna be a good spot.
23:39
Speaker 1: So but the point was they picked I remember the
23:42
Speaker 1: last thing I expected was DC. So Bezos made a business,
23:46
Speaker 1: and so what did he do? Then he buys the
23:48
Speaker 1: Washington Post. And I think he saw the Washington Post
23:52
Speaker 1: as an investment in being able to curry favor in
23:57
Speaker 1: Washington for Amazon. And it made a ton of sense. Right,
24:03
Speaker 1: you're the owner of the Washington Post. You're going to
24:06
Speaker 1: get more meetings with the lawmakers that you need to
24:08
Speaker 1: have meetings with. And you know, you could say, okay,
24:10
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezols, well we'll give him that too, But it
24:14
Speaker 1: only adds. It's only additive, right, It gives you outsized
24:19
Speaker 1: potential influence and all of it, you know, and so
24:24
Speaker 1: but in order in order for that to stay, the
24:29
Speaker 1: Post had to be robust. So he did endorse a
24:34
Speaker 1: robust version of the Washington Post. I think he saw
24:37
Speaker 1: it as a trophy. He did not see it as
24:40
Speaker 1: a business in and of itself, which has always been
24:44
Speaker 1: my frustration. He saw it as a trophy that could
24:49
Speaker 1: help him with his other businesses. So initially that's because
24:54
Speaker 1: he had all these government contracts with aws moves, the
24:58
Speaker 1: second Amazon headquarters, which is all about those Pentagon contracts,
25:02
Speaker 1: and then of course there's this hobby with space, all
25:05
Speaker 1: of it. Having you know, having that kind of of
25:11
Speaker 1: influence in Washington was going to be helpful. All of
25:13
Speaker 1: those businesses. Well in comes Donald Trump and the polarization
25:20
Speaker 1: of media in general and the weaponization by the right
25:24
Speaker 1: to attack any journalists, any journalistic organization that dared try
25:31
Speaker 1: to report accountability stories about anybody left or right. But
25:41
Speaker 1: you know, everything got and Donald Trump personalized everything in
25:45
Speaker 1: that first turn, and the question was how was it
25:49
Speaker 1: going to impact Bezos? And look, the conventional with the
25:57
Speaker 1: rest of official Washington was just as alarmed about Donald
26:00
Speaker 1: Trump as the Washington Post was, so in some ways,
26:03
Speaker 1: I think Bezos felt comforted that he was still on
26:05
Speaker 1: the side. Yes, he was did lose a government contract
26:10
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump essentially punished Amazon punished Bezos because he
26:16
Speaker 1: didn't like the coverage he was getting out of the
26:18
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Passed forward to twenty twenty three, right when
26:27
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos decides to radically remodel the Washington Post. Yes,
26:33
Speaker 1: there was a moment that the Post was having. They
26:35
Speaker 1: couldn't They were losing some traffic, losing and it had
26:39
Speaker 1: to have less to do with it, you know, They
26:41
Speaker 1: just they didn't do anything right with the upside that
26:46
Speaker 1: they were experiencing in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen and
26:49
Speaker 1: investing in sort of cementing some of the growth that
26:54
Speaker 1: they have. Right, you get growth, you should want to
26:55
Speaker 1: cement it. They didn't. The New York Times did right,
26:58
Speaker 1: just the Salzburger's just but there they own the Times.
27:04
Speaker 1: For the Times to be a successful business, Jeff Bezos
27:08
Speaker 1: bought The Washington Post for the success of his other businesses.
27:12
Speaker 1: He never was that interested in the success of the
27:15
Speaker 1: business of news and information itself, because if he had been,
27:20
Speaker 1: he would have made a lot more different decisions. You
27:23
Speaker 1: don't hire somebody who's just a tabloid editor from the
27:28
Speaker 1: UK who just is a clickbait, attention economy type of journalists.
27:36
Speaker 1: It's a great way to make money if you're an individual,
27:40
Speaker 1: it's not a long term sustaining business. Just go see
27:44
Speaker 1: the UK news market if you need more proof of that.
27:50
Speaker 1: And never mind that like will Lewis's journalistic credentials were
27:53
Speaker 1: pretty much shit for his connection with the with the
27:58
Speaker 1: Murdock scandals, that did cost him a bit of his
28:03
Speaker 1: reputation in the UK. But Bezos makes this hire anyway.
28:10
Speaker 1: You don't hire will Lewis because you think there is
28:15
Speaker 1: more money to be made in a transformational business to
28:19
Speaker 1: be created that somehow others Fred Ryan and Marty Bearron
28:25
Speaker 1: didn't figure out, you hire will Lewis because you want
28:29
Speaker 1: to change the tenor and reputation of the Washington Post itself.
28:36
Speaker 1: So again, it's twenty twenty three, Donald Trump's front runner
28:42
Speaker 1: for president, Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos is watching the entire
28:46
Speaker 1: tech community decide, and the crypto community are sort of
28:49
Speaker 1: both one and the same as decided. They've given up
28:52
Speaker 1: on Biden and Harris and the Democrats and they're going
28:55
Speaker 1: all in with Trump. They know that any policy proposal,
29:00
Speaker 1: if you give enough money, is a policy they can
29:03
Speaker 1: get enacted. One of those pokes is Elon Musk, who's
29:07
Speaker 1: got SpaceX. So Bezos had a choice to make. Now
29:14
Speaker 1: he could have sold the Washington Post. But why wouldn't
29:16
Speaker 1: he sell the Washington Post Because whoever he sold the
29:20
Speaker 1: Washington Post to would likely have kept it a robust
29:25
Speaker 1: journalistic organization, more like Marty Baron's Washington Post than the
29:30
Speaker 1: one whatever version we're going to see over the next
29:33
Speaker 1: six months. And it probably would have been heavy on
29:37
Speaker 1: accountability of this administration. Some crazy shit's happening every hour
29:42
Speaker 1: of every day, and the Washington Post, this is who
29:46
Speaker 1: they are in my entire lifetime. Right, the Washington Post's
29:51
Speaker 1: been a major news look. Essentially, Watergate took the Washington
29:55
Speaker 1: Post from being one of two major papers in Washington.
29:58
Speaker 1: You had the Washington Star in the Washington Post to
30:00
Speaker 1: suddenly being, oh, well, there's the New York Times in
30:02
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. They went from really good local paper
30:08
Speaker 1: to very important national paper. So just about anybody running
30:15
Speaker 1: the Post is going to have that as the North Star.
30:23
Speaker 1: But if he had sold it, Trump would have blamed
30:28
Speaker 1: Bezos still probably still punished him. Made it a little
30:36
Speaker 1: bit harder to get those space access to the space
30:39
Speaker 1: resources that the government controls lose out in just about
30:43
Speaker 1: every competitive bid with SpaceX. But if he keeps it,
30:53
Speaker 1: and he makes a few performative changes, again, it doesn't
31:05
Speaker 1: matter to him whether the Post succeeds or fails. We
31:07
Speaker 1: have all established, right, Peter Baker did a terrific tweet.
31:12
Speaker 1: He's a former Washington Poster works at the New York Times,
31:14
Speaker 1: where he noted, and actually Jeff Bezos' wealth has been increasing, right,
31:19
Speaker 1: you know, the one hundred million dollars is literally a
31:21
Speaker 1: rounding error for Jeff Bezos' network worth and remembers it's networth.
31:26
Speaker 1: This is he had to give half of his worth
31:28
Speaker 1: to his first wife, and he still has this kind
31:30
Speaker 1: of network. So it doesn't matter if the Post succeeds
31:34
Speaker 1: or fails. What matters is does Blue Origin have access
31:40
Speaker 1: to the government space resources? Is ABS going to get
31:44
Speaker 1: all of its government contracts right by the Pentagon? So yes,
31:51
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos made a business decision, but it was not
31:55
Speaker 1: about the business of the Washington Post. The Washington Post
31:59
Speaker 1: is a paw in his gallery that is used to
32:08
Speaker 1: make sure the other businesses aren't punished by a very
32:13
Speaker 1: pugilistic president who doesn't believe that there should be a
32:21
Speaker 1: free press that's there to be critical of him as
32:24
Speaker 1: much as is there's a free press there that can
32:28
Speaker 1: be praiseworthy of him if that organization deems it worthy.
32:36
Speaker 1: So I do think it's important that I accept the
32:39
Speaker 1: premise that this was a business decision. But don't you
32:42
Speaker 1: tell me it's about the business of news and information,
32:45
Speaker 1: because if he was making that kind of business decision,
32:47
Speaker 1: number one, he would have sold it, or number two,
32:50
Speaker 1: he would have created the Everything information store. Right now,
32:55
Speaker 1: as somebody else said to me, you know, it's possible that,
33:00
Speaker 1: you know, we Jeff Beason is just not that bright,
33:04
Speaker 1: meaning he's really good at one thing building Amazon. There's
33:12
Speaker 1: no evidence that Blue origins any good at as a
33:14
Speaker 1: private space company. Yet you know he is not you know,
33:19
Speaker 1: look whatever. Elon Musk has a lot of character flaws
33:23
Speaker 1: as a human being. But the guy's a genius. We
33:27
Speaker 1: know that, all right, he is. You know, if you're
33:29
Speaker 1: going to tell me, who do you want in charge
33:31
Speaker 1: of building a tunnel from LA to San Francisco. Yeah,
33:34
Speaker 1: I trust his math before I trust anybody else's math.
33:40
Speaker 1: I just don't want Elon Musk worrying about culture and
33:43
Speaker 1: society because I think he's a weirdo. But even weirdos
33:48
Speaker 1: are geniuses. In fact, a lot of geniuses are weirdos.
33:52
Speaker 1: So it's just possible he you know, he's just you know,
33:56
Speaker 1: net worth does not a high net worth does not
33:59
Speaker 1: always mean in high IQ. Donald Trump wants to believe that, right.
34:04
Speaker 1: He wants to believe only dumb people are poor and
34:07
Speaker 1: all rich people are smart because he's rich and he
34:10
Speaker 1: knows he's not very smart, but he wants people to
34:12
Speaker 1: think he's smart. So this is sort of the paid
34:16
Speaker 1: by numbers perception that way too many people in government
34:21
Speaker 1: are practicing these days, and I watched it a lot.
34:24
Speaker 1: The deference that gets paid to wealthy people in general,
34:27
Speaker 1: but particularly by politicians and others is kind of gross
34:32
Speaker 1: when you know they were an expert at one thing
34:36
Speaker 1: either they you know a lot of times right, I
34:38
Speaker 1: would say about the super rich people I've ever been around,
34:42
Speaker 1: about half inherited their money and about half, you know,
34:47
Speaker 1: did it because they were a part of building a business.
34:53
Speaker 1: But it didn't mean they were an expert at that business.
34:56
Speaker 1: It didn't automatically mean they were any good at anything else.
35:00
Speaker 1: So that is a possibility because if you were to
35:03
Speaker 1: look at the what the Washington Post is deciding to do,
35:07
Speaker 1: it is about the dumbest business decision you can do.
35:10
Speaker 1: So let's go back to my Matt Murray emails. You
35:14
Speaker 1: could say, I've got a lot of strong opinions on this.
35:20
Speaker 1: For the immediate future, we're going to concentrate on areas
35:23
Speaker 1: that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact and that resonate with readers. Politics,
35:27
Speaker 1: national affairs, people power and trends, national security and DC
35:29
Speaker 1: and abroad. Forces shaping the future, including science, health, medicine, technology, climate,
35:33
Speaker 1: and business. You know who else has that same north star?
35:37
Speaker 1: Every other news organization that cover is in Washington or
35:41
Speaker 1: covers Washington. That's Politico's north star. I could argue that's
35:45
Speaker 1: you know, punch Bowl probably covers eighty percent of that.
35:49
Speaker 1: National Journal or the Hotline would have said something like that,
35:52
Speaker 1: The New York Times coverage of Washington has that as
35:54
Speaker 1: a north star. So what the Washington Post had that
35:59
Speaker 1: none of these other news organizations had is they also
36:02
Speaker 1: were the regional and local authority. So they had a distinct.
36:08
Speaker 1: You know, last time I checked, do you want to
36:14
Speaker 1: stand out from your competitors or do you want to
36:17
Speaker 1: look very similar to your competitors. The Washington Post has
36:20
Speaker 1: made a decision to go small and to become more
36:25
Speaker 1: like Politico. And the irony is that, right the founders
36:27
Speaker 1: of Political Jim Banheid and John Harris left the Post
36:31
Speaker 1: and said, hey, they they basically say there needs to
36:34
Speaker 1: be you know, the Post, and you know, the Post
36:36
Speaker 1: should be focusing more on these areas and they could
36:39
Speaker 1: own this area now. Jimpnheid John Harris weren't advocating getting
36:44
Speaker 1: rid of sports and culture and all of that. What
36:46
Speaker 1: they were arguing is that the Post should be more robust,
36:49
Speaker 1: be smarter about some of its core authoritative topics, including
36:53
Speaker 1: politics in the coverage of Washington. And I've always said
36:56
Speaker 1: that the Washington Post for my adult lifetime used to
37:00
Speaker 1: what I said used to say when I worked at
37:02
Speaker 1: the National Journal in the Hotline, he said, boy, the
37:04
Speaker 1: Washington Post lets a bunch of us live right, roll Call, Politico,
37:09
Speaker 1: National Journal, punch Bowl. If the Washington Post chose to
37:14
Speaker 1: get involved in any of those areas and become, you know,
37:18
Speaker 1: hourly authorities on what's happening on Capitol Hill like punch Bowl,
37:22
Speaker 1: you know, or daily authorities about what's happening on campaign
37:25
Speaker 1: trail like Hotline, or daily and hourly newsletters about all
37:30
Speaker 1: sorts of industries in Washington, like Politico, they could do it,
37:37
Speaker 1: but it would put these others out of business, you know.
37:43
Speaker 1: So now the Post wants to retreat and essentially become
37:48
Speaker 1: a Washington trade publication that covers the business of Washington.
37:55
Speaker 1: That's Politico, that's Roll Call, that's National Journal, That's that's
38:00
Speaker 1: how the New York Times covered all. You get my point. So,
38:06
Speaker 1: if this were a business decision about positioning The Washington
38:09
Speaker 1: Post in a place to be a successful standalone business
38:13
Speaker 1: on its own. This is not what you would do.
38:18
Speaker 1: So again, it's a business decision, but it had nothing
38:22
Speaker 1: to do with the business of The Washington Post. Now
38:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to close on this before we get to
38:27
Speaker 1: my conversation with Danny fun about mobile gaming and whether
38:31
Speaker 1: this is a if we suddenly put a cart and
38:36
Speaker 1: of cigarettes, the proverbial cartner cigarettes in the hands of
38:42
Speaker 1: every eighteen year old boy in America, I guess, twenty
38:45
Speaker 1: one year old boy in America, young man in America.
38:53
Speaker 1: I'm going to confess something I am. I am enthusiastic
38:58
Speaker 1: about the future of news and information. I'm enthusiastic about
39:03
Speaker 1: independent media because look, I think the I think Jeff
39:09
Speaker 1: Bezos here behaved like an evil rich guy stereotype. Right,
39:13
Speaker 1: couldn't faith when he bought the Washington Post, he couldn't
39:15
Speaker 1: wait to be in the newsroom. When he absolutely destroys
39:19
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. He's meeting with peg Pete Eggseth at
39:24
Speaker 1: Blue Origin and his wife's hanging out at a Paris
39:28
Speaker 1: fashion show. Right, it is a classic, Like I mean,
39:31
Speaker 1: you couldn't script it better, right if you wanted to.
39:35
Speaker 1: It is gilded age, let them eat cake. You can
39:38
Speaker 1: pick your metaphor, and I'll tell you I do think
39:44
Speaker 1: the pitchforks are out. Bernie Sanders said something interesting, and
39:48
Speaker 1: you know, Bernie has a way of taking any issue
39:50
Speaker 1: and saying it's about the millionaires and the billionaires. But
39:53
Speaker 1: he made an interesting observation about the Epstein files, and
39:56
Speaker 1: he says, you know, one of the reasons he thinks
39:57
Speaker 1: that there's so much interest in the Epstein files beyond
39:59
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theorists. Right, spiracy theorists love the EPSCENEC files
40:02
Speaker 1: for a variety of other reasons. But there's sort of
40:05
Speaker 1: there's a next level of interest, right, there's just a
40:08
Speaker 1: it just garnered, and that is these fucking rich people
40:12
Speaker 1: played by their own set of rules, and look at
40:15
Speaker 1: the shit they get away with. And so here's Jeff
40:19
Speaker 1: Bezos behaving by a whole other set of rules. And
40:21
Speaker 1: I you know, look, I blame myself for assuming Jeff
40:25
Speaker 1: Bezos was more Warren Buffett than Elon Musk. Right. You know,
40:29
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett bought the Omaha World Herald of years ago
40:31
Speaker 1: because he wanted a good newspaper to read as he
40:33
Speaker 1: stayed in Omaha. And I think I know what I thought.
40:37
Speaker 1: I thought Jeff Bezos sort of raised middle class kid,
40:40
Speaker 1: you know, sort of raised in a way that a
40:43
Speaker 1: lot of Americans go through, you know, single parent for
40:46
Speaker 1: a while, stepfather, all, you know, moved around a couple
40:49
Speaker 1: of times, sort of lived, had a lived, had a lived,
40:54
Speaker 1: working class, middle class ferry experience that maybe may have
40:58
Speaker 1: ground him differently than it grounds a guy like Elon Musk,
41:02
Speaker 1: who was you know, raised by a weirdo father, and
41:06
Speaker 1: you know, or some of these tech guys who are
41:09
Speaker 1: all you know, a lot of them are you know,
41:12
Speaker 1: like Bill Gates was you know, his dad had you know,
41:17
Speaker 1: he wasn't. I think he was born in second base,
41:18
Speaker 1: not third base. But you get the drift, right, you
41:21
Speaker 1: get my drift. And so I think, you know, I
41:28
Speaker 1: was even impressed with how he handled his divorce, right,
41:31
Speaker 1: he didn't fight it half and half except that the
41:35
Speaker 1: premise that he couldn't have built his built Amazon without
41:38
Speaker 1: a spouse. You know, perhaps he was the guilty party
41:43
Speaker 1: and he felt like he had to just do it
41:46
Speaker 1: that way. I don't know, but it's interesting. It feels
41:56
Speaker 1: like there was one Jeff Bezos that we all thought
42:00
Speaker 1: we knew. And then there's the guy who's more interested
42:04
Speaker 1: in being in Hollywood, more interested in having these you know,
42:08
Speaker 1: weddings in Italy and Europe and having all sort of
42:13
Speaker 1: being flashy with his money. Right, it's his prerogative, enjoy it, Sure,
42:22
Speaker 1: go ahead, But I don't know if you know it
42:30
Speaker 1: is the amount of white collar anger that's going to
42:36
Speaker 1: be now coupled with blue collar anger. Right if blue
42:40
Speaker 1: collar Americans didn't like Mett Romney because he looked like
42:43
Speaker 1: the boss that was going to lay them off, and
42:45
Speaker 1: that's why some of these guys who may not have
42:47
Speaker 1: liked the skin color of Barack Obama but voted for
42:50
Speaker 1: him in twenty twelve, because Mett Romney looked like the
42:54
Speaker 1: guy that was going to lay him off. Well, now
42:58
Speaker 1: blue collar and white collar are going to be pretty
43:00
Speaker 1: angry at the boss. And you know, it's it is
43:06
Speaker 1: actions like this that I this this sort of moment
43:10
Speaker 1: that's coming and I and I think, again, I blame myself.
43:17
Speaker 1: I thought I've been I've been in a few dinners
43:20
Speaker 1: with Jeff Bezos. I, you know, clearly not enough to
43:25
Speaker 1: truly get the measure of the man. But he seemed
43:28
Speaker 1: like a pretty smart, well read, sort of pragmatic individual,
43:35
Speaker 1: meaning I thought he could read a room, and I
43:39
Speaker 1: don't think any of these tech guys can read a
43:41
Speaker 1: room right now. And you know, whether we call him
43:44
Speaker 1: a tech guy, he's kind of more of an old
43:47
Speaker 1: retail brick and mortar guy that used sort of technology
43:50
Speaker 1: to to sort of take over the retail market. But
43:56
Speaker 1: I I, you know, I don't think this is good politics.
44:00
Speaker 1: And the party that associates the most with the wealthiest
44:03
Speaker 1: people right now is on the right. You know, It's funny.
44:06
Speaker 1: For a period of time, all the rich people, the
44:09
Speaker 1: richest people in America seemed to be Obama supporters, right
44:12
Speaker 1: They loved Obama, the celebrity of Obama. And now they
44:17
Speaker 1: are whether they don't, maybe they don't like hanging with Trump,
44:21
Speaker 1: but they're all paying the price to hang with them.
44:27
Speaker 1: But like I said, the good news is, the public
44:30
Speaker 1: is not going to trust corporate owned media or billionaire
44:33
Speaker 1: owned media. They're only going to trust independent media. And
44:36
Speaker 1: the good news is there is whether we call it
44:40
Speaker 1: DMV today, DMV now. But the appetite, I mean, the
44:45
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis trade for the Washington Wizards has not been
44:48
Speaker 1: covered by the Washington Post. It broke about three hours
44:51
Speaker 1: after the Matt Murray announced the end of the sports department,
44:57
Speaker 1: and so I was curious if they'd even like NOE, like,
44:59
Speaker 1: this is the biggest trade in Washington Wizards for the
45:03
Speaker 1: Washington Wizards, at least since getting rid of Black Bradley Beal,
45:06
Speaker 1: and I think bigger than that, maybe not since Chris
45:10
Speaker 1: the acquiring Chris Weber. And there's no Washington Post sports
45:16
Speaker 1: section to cover it. I went over to see if
45:19
Speaker 1: they had any updates, maybe just carry a wire story.
45:23
Speaker 1: So now in order to call you know, I'm going
45:25
Speaker 1: to check out. I keep for no offense to my
45:29
Speaker 1: friends at the Washington Times. I keep forgetting that they're
45:31
Speaker 1: still doing some sports coverage there, and good for them.
45:34
Speaker 1: So I'll check that out and I'll be checking it
45:37
Speaker 1: out more for obvious reasons. I love my local sports teams,
45:40
Speaker 1: not all of them, but if you will. But the
45:42
Speaker 1: point about sports is this is sports is the community
45:45
Speaker 1: glue that builds the trust that gets people to believe
45:50
Speaker 1: the hard news that's being reported. So don't tell me
45:54
Speaker 1: sports is not worth the investment. What that tells me
45:59
Speaker 1: is you have a bunch of newsroom leaders particularly somebody
46:01
Speaker 1: that you're importing in where they don't have you know,
46:05
Speaker 1: they they their news organizations, you know they they've never
46:10
Speaker 1: covered sports the way our news organizations have. So it
46:13
Speaker 1: is a cultural disconnect. And I think Will Lewis doesn't
46:15
Speaker 1: fully appreciate what he has just done or what he
46:19
Speaker 1: thinks he's recommended. But here's what I will say. I
46:28
Speaker 1: don't think the Post will recover from this. They may exist,
46:32
Speaker 1: just like Newsweek exists, but his newsweek, the newsweek of
46:37
Speaker 1: Howard Feinman, of Evan Thomas, we all know it's not.
46:44
Speaker 1: It's kind of newsweek and name only. Now, look, there's
46:48
Speaker 1: still some good reporters left. The congressional team at the
46:51
Speaker 1: Post was fairly untouched. But what's going to look like
47:00
Speaker 1: in a year, And let me just tell you, it
47:04
Speaker 1: is going to be fascinating to see what the subscriber
47:08
Speaker 1: base looks like in six months. They thought they lost
47:13
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of subscribers after the bizarre editorial page shakedown,
47:18
Speaker 1: another business decision that it was all about space and
47:22
Speaker 1: nothing about the business of the Post. They ain't say
47:27
Speaker 1: nothing yet, So rest in peace, Washington Post. Maybe the
47:34
Speaker 1: brand will come back. Maybe somebody else buys it, or
47:38
Speaker 1: maybe we just build something new. It's okay. The New
47:41
Speaker 1: York Herald Tribune is no longer here than the World's Okay,
47:45
Speaker 1: the Washington Star is no longer here. There's some great
47:50
Speaker 1: journalists looking for work. I am. Many of you know
47:54
Speaker 1: what I'm up to. I've been quiet lately about what
47:57
Speaker 1: I'm up to, but I'm closer to being in a
48:01
Speaker 1: position that hopefully I can help contribute to solving this
48:04
Speaker 1: problem in the Washington market in particular. So in that sense,
48:09
Speaker 1: thank you Jeff Bezos for giving an entrepreneur like myself
48:13
Speaker 1: and a few others the opportunity to show that you
48:18
Speaker 1: can do your civic duty for your community and also
48:23
Speaker 1: make a dollar or two while you're at it. All
48:25
Speaker 1: right with that, we'll sneak in a break when we
48:27
Speaker 1: come back. My conversation with Danny fun about mobile gangling.
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50:18
Speaker 1: is the author of a new book. It's called Everybody Loses.
50:22
Speaker 1: It's by Danny Funt, and it's a book about gambling
50:27
Speaker 1: and the sort of this new era, right, this is
50:30
Speaker 1: not even ten years old, this sort of not quite
50:34
Speaker 1: national legalization of sports gambling. Now. The book itself is
50:38
Speaker 1: not necessarily an anti gambling screed, and it's not a
50:42
Speaker 1: nostalgia soak defense of some pure past, but it is
50:46
Speaker 1: an investigation into a policy decision that has had massive,
50:50
Speaker 1: unintended consequences, this rapid legalization and commercialization of sports betting.
50:58
Speaker 1: And you could say the core are gament of the
51:00
Speaker 1: book is this America didn't just legalize sports betting. It
51:03
Speaker 1: industrialized it financialized it, and embedded it into the media
51:07
Speaker 1: ecosystem with almost no guardrails. The result has been the following.
51:13
Speaker 1: It's an industry where states chase tax revenue, leagues chase engagement.
51:18
Speaker 1: Media companies, chase ad dollars. Sports books chase recreational losers
51:24
Speaker 1: and consumers are trained to lose slowly, constantly, and invisibly,
51:30
Speaker 1: hence the title Everybody Loses Well. The author joins me, Now, Danny,
51:35
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast.
51:36
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
51:38
Speaker 1: So let's establish a few things here. You do it
51:40
Speaker 1: yourself in the book. You're a sports fan, you gamble.
51:43
Speaker 1: I'm everybody that listens to my podcast knows I'm a
51:46
Speaker 1: sports fan. I gamble, I do picks for Tony Kornheiser.
51:50
Speaker 1: I've always dabbled in mostly football, in sports gambling, and
51:58
Speaker 1: yet there is it all feels like it's been too much,
52:04
Speaker 1: too fast, and all of a sudden. Now we're adding
52:08
Speaker 1: everything else to this prediction, markets and politics and culture,
52:13
Speaker 1: and there seems to be very little interest in public
52:17
Speaker 1: policy makers of figuring out, huh should we have erected
52:21
Speaker 1: some guardrails? So tell me your motivation for doing this book.
52:27
Speaker 3: You know, I've been covering it for several years, mainly
52:30
Speaker 3: for the Washington Post, and I felt like I was
52:32
Speaker 3: scratching the surface. I felt like two big things were
52:36
Speaker 3: not answered to my satisfaction. One was, why did the
52:39
Speaker 3: leagues and so many politicians have this profound change of heart. Right,
52:43
Speaker 3: they gave certain surface level explanations. I didn't find that
52:46
Speaker 3: totally satisfying. I felt like there had to be more
52:49
Speaker 3: to the story that hadn't.
52:50
Speaker 1: Been but put it pit in this The harshest penalties
52:55
Speaker 1: before the era of steroids that professional leagues ever leveled
53:00
Speaker 1: was over gambling. Whether it's shoeless Joe Jackson in baseball,
53:04
Speaker 1: Paul Horning in football, rumors of Mickey Mantle back in
53:10
Speaker 1: the day, Pete Rose, the Michael Jordan rumors that always circulated.
53:17
Speaker 1: It has always been this. The leagues were aggressively anti gambling,
53:24
Speaker 1: to the point where networks would get notes from leagues
53:29
Speaker 1: if they mentioned the points spread too much during some things,
53:32
Speaker 1: which created the al Michael speak right where he always
53:36
Speaker 1: you know, was al Michaels used to do it before
53:38
Speaker 1: anybody else do it Now it sounds silly when he
53:40
Speaker 1: does it. Some people may care about this last store,
53:43
Speaker 1: Oh shut up, we're all everybody knows it now. Anyway,
53:45
Speaker 1: I just wanted to remind people that there was a
53:47
Speaker 1: time of leagues and this is important because this is
53:51
Speaker 1: what I think, really, I think is exposes this vulnerability,
53:57
Speaker 1: is the is the whiplash the leagues have created on this,
54:00
Speaker 1: but anyway, continue.
54:01
Speaker 3: Absolutely, It's not distant history. You know, not only has
54:04
Speaker 3: players or coaches betting been the cardinal sin in sports,
54:07
Speaker 3: but even beyond that, just the influence that gambling, if
54:10
Speaker 3: it were expanded outside Nevada would have, was referred to
54:14
Speaker 3: as an evil like barely a decade ago by commissioners
54:17
Speaker 3: of sports.
54:18
Speaker 2: I remember the commissioner.
54:19
Speaker 3: Of Major League Baseball at the hearings in nineteen ninety
54:22
Speaker 3: two when Congress was considering this federal ban on book making,
54:26
Speaker 3: was asked if the leagues would ever do business with
54:29
Speaker 3: gambling operators, and he said that would make a mockery
54:32
Speaker 3: of my office. And now Vincent yes indeed, yeah, who
54:36
Speaker 3: spoke with me shortly before his passing.
54:39
Speaker 2: That.
54:40
Speaker 3: You know, so, what did it cease being an evil?
54:43
Speaker 3: Did you learn better? Did the calculus change? I didn't
54:47
Speaker 3: feel like they had been forthcoming about that, and I
54:49
Speaker 3: wanted to understand their thinking. The other thing that motivated
54:52
Speaker 3: the book was these companies are now the sports books
54:55
Speaker 3: themselves are now household names, obviously, but they don't give
54:58
Speaker 3: a lot of interviews. They're very secretive in all sorts
55:02
Speaker 3: of ways, and I really wanted to spend the time
55:05
Speaker 3: to cultivate sources within those companies to understand how they
55:08
Speaker 3: think about customers and how they think about their business
55:11
Speaker 3: and if they have any misgivings about how things are going.
55:14
Speaker 3: And that I felt was something I was very glad
55:17
Speaker 3: to succeed with. Was talking to dozens and dozens of
55:20
Speaker 3: people who work in the business.
55:23
Speaker 1: So it is, you know, the Supreme Court finding this
55:29
Speaker 1: has been something that the states of Delaware and New
55:31
Speaker 1: Jersey were always the most aggressive on this. They had
55:34
Speaker 1: filed suit forever they wanted sports books, and the Nevada
55:39
Speaker 1: exception was always very hard to rationalize and in fairness,
55:45
Speaker 1: from a pure legal argument, I always thought New Jersey
55:48
Speaker 1: and Delaware had very strong cases because the Nevada exception
55:51
Speaker 1: was very hard to explain.
55:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm definitely not like a Tenth Amendment scholar and could.
55:58
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're comparable states that are exempted
56:01
Speaker 3: from federal law.
56:03
Speaker 2: I do think it was.
56:03
Speaker 3: Noteworthy that when the Supreme Court ruled in twenty eighteen
56:07
Speaker 3: in favor of New Jersey that they said it wasn't
56:11
Speaker 3: that Congress lacks the authority to regulate book making. And
56:14
Speaker 3: I don't even think they specifically said this exempting aspect
56:17
Speaker 3: of that law was invalid. It was just passpo was structured.
56:21
Speaker 3: The ninety two law was structured in a very odd
56:25
Speaker 3: way where they said states that have ban book making
56:28
Speaker 3: can't rethink that they can't. You know that those those
56:32
Speaker 3: laws are locked in place as of ninety two. But
56:35
Speaker 3: they opened the door for Congress to immediately pass a
56:37
Speaker 3: bill that would correct the constitutional errors of that law,
56:41
Speaker 3: and as so often happens, there wasn't the political will
56:44
Speaker 3: to do that in states sees that opening right.
56:47
Speaker 2: This gets that.
56:48
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not going to go off in this
56:50
Speaker 1: tangent with you, but I when everybody expresses frustration with
56:54
Speaker 1: you know, why does this happen? This happened, This happened.
56:56
Speaker 1: It always comes back to Congress. You know, why are
56:58
Speaker 1: the courts so polite? Size Because Congress won't do its
57:01
Speaker 1: job and people feel like the only place they can
57:04
Speaker 1: get relief is the courts, and so the courts have
57:07
Speaker 1: been forced into becoming legislators. And in this case, they
57:10
Speaker 1: essentially wrote legislation that allowed for the structure of legalization
57:15
Speaker 1: of sports gambling in all fifty states.
57:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would suspect that had that decision come
57:20
Speaker 3: down in nineteen ninety three, Congress would have immediately passed
57:24
Speaker 3: an updated law. But you know, the leagues were the
57:28
Speaker 3: ones that lobbied Congress to put the ban in place
57:30
Speaker 3: in the first place. And although they were they were
57:35
Speaker 3: the plaintiffs, I guess in the Murphy and CAA case,
57:38
Speaker 3: the twenty eighteen case that the Supreme Court ruled on,
57:41
Speaker 3: there was not nearly the same motive to correct the
57:45
Speaker 3: Court's decision and lobby Congress. In fact, the leagues were
57:49
Speaker 3: so aggressive in lobbying states to legalize book making as
57:53
Speaker 3: quickly as possible.
57:56
Speaker 1: You know, my friend Tony Corneizer has a saying, they
57:58
Speaker 1: answer all your questions is money. And I can't help
58:04
Speaker 1: but wonder if the simple motivation of the leagues here
58:08
Speaker 1: is if we want our media rights to continue to
58:12
Speaker 1: exponentially grow, if it's so therefore growing the perceived value
58:16
Speaker 1: of these franchises, we have to continue to find new
58:20
Speaker 1: money into this space. And it turned out right there
58:25
Speaker 1: was sort of an exhaustion of only so many car
58:28
Speaker 1: commercials you could sell, only so many other industries wanted
58:34
Speaker 1: to advertise, And here was this. You know, they knew
58:38
Speaker 1: this was happening anyway, and they just there was just
58:43
Speaker 1: too much money to be gobbled up into Andrea. I mean,
58:46
Speaker 1: it feels like this is the only motivation that basically
58:49
Speaker 1: you may have morals and ethics, but clearly there's a
58:52
Speaker 1: price tag on.
58:52
Speaker 3: Them, no doubt. And obviously the leagues didn't suddenly get
58:56
Speaker 3: profit motivated in twenty eighteen, So I think what you
58:58
Speaker 3: said is exactly right. Media rights was what swung them.
59:02
Speaker 3: I really wanted to understand the convictions of the commissioners
59:06
Speaker 3: who had been saying things like this is an evil
59:08
Speaker 3: to think was that just dramatic languaged because they had
59:11
Speaker 3: other things motivating them. I do think David Stern, the
59:16
Speaker 3: former NBA commissioner, really did detest gambling. I think Fae
59:20
Speaker 3: Vincent also had sincere misgivings about what it would do
59:25
Speaker 3: to sports. But what I learned was as the leagues
59:28
Speaker 3: were in federal court fighting New Jersey on this, they
59:32
Speaker 3: were meetings secretively with representatives of the gambling industry. I
59:36
Speaker 3: say secretively, so much so that the NFL and Disney,
59:39
Speaker 3: because they also met with broadcasting partners, insisted that the
59:42
Speaker 3: meetings take place at park avenue cafes, not at their
59:46
Speaker 3: league offices because they just didn't want to welcome gambling
59:49
Speaker 3: reps through their doors. But in those meetings, the main
59:54
Speaker 3: point of conversation was your TV audience is aging. People
59:58
Speaker 3: are cutting the court on cable subscriptions. What can you
1:00:02
Speaker 3: do to ensure that people are hooked on sports even
1:00:05
Speaker 3: more than they had ever been? And they commissioned more
1:00:09
Speaker 3: than a million dollars of studies from Nielsen that found
1:00:13
Speaker 3: gamblers watch more than twice as many games as traditional fans.
1:00:17
Speaker 2: They're also watching blowouts.
1:00:18
Speaker 3: Because they want to see if a bet wins or loses,
1:00:21
Speaker 3: even if the game's been decided and normal people have
1:00:24
Speaker 3: changed the channel. And they also studied the direct and
1:00:28
Speaker 3: indirect revenue projections for the league, so if you added
1:00:32
Speaker 3: the sponsorships that the leagues would get from advertising, but
1:00:35
Speaker 3: more importantly, the indirect revenue from having such a hyper
1:00:39
Speaker 3: engaged audience of gamblers. The NFL, for example, was shown
1:00:45
Speaker 3: findings that they would make more than two billion dollars
1:00:48
Speaker 3: every year if gambling were legalized across the country. And
1:00:53
Speaker 3: because TV rights are their biggest money maker, that was
1:00:55
Speaker 3: just too good to pass up.
1:00:59
Speaker 1: I guess that's what was done with this. You know,
1:01:01
Speaker 1: I was trying to There's been a parallel track of
1:01:05
Speaker 1: developments over the last thirty years in our public policy,
1:01:10
Speaker 1: and that is we are running out of ways to
1:01:12
Speaker 1: tax people, right as you've had a you know, the
1:01:17
Speaker 1: the basically, it is just very hard to raise just
1:01:21
Speaker 1: ordinary taxes, right, whether you want to raise a property
1:01:24
Speaker 1: tax and income tax. The political it is very hard.
1:01:29
Speaker 1: And so what have lawmakers figured out? Vice taxes? Right?
1:01:34
Speaker 1: It started with the cigarettes and liquor, right, and you'd
1:01:37
Speaker 1: have these normal and you know, you throw in some
1:01:40
Speaker 1: tourism and they you know, all of these entities, and
1:01:44
Speaker 1: then marijuana, right, and then sports gambling and all this stuff.
1:01:50
Speaker 1: But I want to single out marijuana here for a
1:01:52
Speaker 1: minute because I might argue that marijuana the rollout of
1:01:56
Speaker 1: marijuana legalization and the rollout of sports gambling. Right. Essentially,
1:02:02
Speaker 1: what we did is we didn't legalize every drug. We
1:02:07
Speaker 1: legalized one drug, a specific drug. With sports gambling, we
1:02:12
Speaker 1: went from nothing to everything. There was no piece meal.
1:02:18
Speaker 1: If anything, all we've piecemealed is state by state. But
1:02:23
Speaker 1: the minute you get in there, we immediately went from
1:02:26
Speaker 1: this to betting on every pitch in baseball, or you know,
1:02:30
Speaker 1: creating all these you know, extra derivative bets all over
1:02:34
Speaker 1: the place, adding every sport across the planet, right in
1:02:41
Speaker 1: high it when you compare to marijuana, it's it's it
1:02:45
Speaker 1: like we're looking responsible when it comes to marijuana, well,
1:02:48
Speaker 1: looking completely irresponsible on sports gamble and.
1:02:51
Speaker 3: Not just that chuck, but it's like it's as if
1:02:53
Speaker 3: you legalize a drug. That's the legal industries is ten
1:02:57
Speaker 3: times more potent than what you were getting on the
1:02:59
Speaker 3: street because there are ways of betting legally that are
1:03:03
Speaker 3: so so much vaster, it's so much easier. You can
1:03:06
Speaker 3: bet on so many more things than you ever could
1:03:09
Speaker 3: have through a street bookie or even in Las Vegas
1:03:11
Speaker 3: there are most street bookies.
1:03:13
Speaker 1: Did only a couple of sports, and they were like, right,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: and you're not going to probably get player props.
1:03:18
Speaker 3: Yeah that same game. Parlays are essentially an invention of
1:03:22
Speaker 3: online bookmakers. These micro bets where you're betting on a
1:03:26
Speaker 3: play by play or possession by possession basis, that's entirely new,
1:03:31
Speaker 3: something you could only do if you're betting instantaneously from
1:03:34
Speaker 3: your phone. So yeah, I'm right there with you. It's
1:03:37
Speaker 3: like you might have thought there'd be baby steps or
1:03:40
Speaker 3: such tight guardrails at first, and then you'd ease things up.
1:03:45
Speaker 3: It was basically, you know, off to the races immediately.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: And this is where you know where you know, I
1:03:53
Speaker 1: go back to if you're really frustrated by this, you
1:03:55
Speaker 1: have one entity to blame, Congress. They had no interest
1:03:58
Speaker 1: and you know in some ways, Look, there was a
1:03:59
Speaker 1: store earlier this week. We're taping on February third, Tuesday second,
1:04:04
Speaker 1: right before the super Bowl. This is going to air
1:04:07
Speaker 1: before the super Bowl. But I wanted a timestamp it
1:04:09
Speaker 1: because I believe yesterday there was a story on Monday
1:04:13
Speaker 1: of how Draftking and FanDuel are suddenly throwing a bunch
1:04:17
Speaker 1: of money into federal political coffers because they're basically trying
1:04:22
Speaker 1: to prevent federal intervention in this. And what they've pulled off,
1:04:26
Speaker 1: which is state by state. Would you do this when
1:04:29
Speaker 1: you can get to pickoff regulation state by state, you
1:04:33
Speaker 1: really get to manipulate the process. Like I was reading,
1:04:36
Speaker 1: Apparently West Virginia allows all sorts of experimentation on their
1:04:40
Speaker 1: mobile gambling, so that governor gets more money from those
1:04:45
Speaker 1: two entities than other governors, and they want to keep
1:04:48
Speaker 1: that sort of ability to use West Virginia as a
1:04:51
Speaker 1: peatrie dish to decide, hey, does this work well, this
1:04:54
Speaker 1: new way of offering a bet work, et cetera. It
1:04:59
Speaker 1: does seem as if that Congress is in an uninterest
1:05:03
Speaker 1: or inability to get involved at the beginning has made
1:05:07
Speaker 1: it probably impossible to now erect guardrails after the.
1:05:12
Speaker 3: Fact, no doubt, after the Supreme Court decision, there was
1:05:16
Speaker 3: a bill proposed by Chuck Schumer and a retiring Utah
1:05:19
Speaker 3: senator who I'm blanking on, and it was sort of
1:05:22
Speaker 3: like just a symbolic you know, let's plan a flag
1:05:25
Speaker 3: of oh, we try to do something that got nowhere.
1:05:28
Speaker 3: Since then, Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat from Connecticut, and Paul Tonko,
1:05:34
Speaker 3: a Congressman from New York, also a Democrat, have proposed
1:05:38
Speaker 3: a very aggressive set of reforms called the Safe Bet
1:05:41
Speaker 3: Act that obviously the industry detests, but even much much
1:05:46
Speaker 3: more modest proposals are resisted so aggressively by the industry
1:05:52
Speaker 3: and industry friendly members of Congress, Like there's always been
1:05:56
Speaker 3: a federal excise tax on betting, so forever one hundred
1:06:00
Speaker 3: dollars bet, Congress or the federal government takes twenty five cents,
1:06:05
Speaker 3: which adds up to a lot, you know, if you're
1:06:06
Speaker 3: betting one hundred and fifty billion dollars a year. A
1:06:09
Speaker 3: few years ago, a few members, Tonko and Andrea Salinas,
1:06:14
Speaker 3: a Democrat from Oregon, proposed diverting. I think half of
1:06:18
Speaker 3: the money that raised toward research, treatment and prevention for
1:06:22
Speaker 3: gambling problems. But research is so conspicuously neglected. You know,
1:06:28
Speaker 3: we don't really have a firm grasp of just how
1:06:30
Speaker 3: many people are betting, let alone how many people have problems.
1:06:34
Speaker 3: And you'd think using an excise tax to study the
1:06:39
Speaker 3: breath of the of the sin that you're taxing would
1:06:42
Speaker 3: be common sense. It was resistance, you know, the fight
1:06:48
Speaker 3: against that was so aggressive, so severe, and I mean
1:06:53
Speaker 3: that just goes to show.
1:06:53
Speaker 1: How different correctional Yeah, Like, how did they make their
1:06:57
Speaker 1: case to not do this, to not divert this one,
1:07:00
Speaker 1: to studying this?
1:07:01
Speaker 2: Right?
1:07:01
Speaker 1: It's it's almost as rabbit as the gun manufacturers petrified
1:07:06
Speaker 1: of the CDC studying gunshot wounds as an epidemic issue.
1:07:12
Speaker 2: Right.
1:07:12
Speaker 3: The only thing I heard from people like Congresswoman Dina
1:07:15
Speaker 3: Titus of Nevada, who's a very industry friendly member, she's
1:07:20
Speaker 3: a yeah.
1:07:23
Speaker 1: Say no more right, NEVAA okay, I mean, like accept
1:07:27
Speaker 1: the premise that's your industry, right.
1:07:29
Speaker 3: All I remember her saying was this is already covered
1:07:32
Speaker 3: by states, that it would be redundant for Congress to
1:07:35
Speaker 3: fund it, which is just not true. State funding is
1:07:39
Speaker 3: so pitiful by the bare minimum that people advocate for
1:07:43
Speaker 3: on treatment, and you'd think, you know, a lot of
1:07:45
Speaker 3: gamblers who need help, need some safety net to get
1:07:48
Speaker 3: that because they're out of money. And also, yeah, or
1:07:53
Speaker 3: just understanding how much gambling is going on, States are
1:07:57
Speaker 3: not remotely funding that adequately.
1:08:08
Speaker 1: When it comes to these sort of bet creations, right,
1:08:14
Speaker 1: And I think that this is you know, I guess
1:08:17
Speaker 1: I look at it was the original sin allowing mobile gambling,
1:08:21
Speaker 1: because how did we go from allowing states to allow
1:08:25
Speaker 1: to be able to do sports books to mobile gambling?
1:08:29
Speaker 1: Like why was that not a larger debate or conversation.
1:08:34
Speaker 1: It just sort of this happened. And then this just
1:08:39
Speaker 1: these wonderful apps and I say it, they're very good.
1:08:43
Speaker 1: They're really you know, they're some of they're very user friendly.
1:08:47
Speaker 1: I mean, they're as good as any apps you're going
1:08:49
Speaker 1: to use in fact, they're too good at some point,
1:08:55
Speaker 1: How did that? Why was that immediately legal too?
1:09:00
Speaker 3: It's so much more profitable. For one, I did think
1:09:02
Speaker 3: it was a funny footnote on this story that New Jersey.
1:09:06
Speaker 3: You know, when they were petitioning the Supreme Court, they
1:09:08
Speaker 3: said this is strictly for land based casinos and race tracks,
1:09:13
Speaker 3: and then as soon as the decision came down, they
1:09:14
Speaker 3: updated the law to legalize online betting across the state.
1:09:18
Speaker 2: So it just makes so much more money.
1:09:21
Speaker 3: It's so much easier, obviously, and the fact that lawmakers
1:09:24
Speaker 3: didn't put two and two together seems bizarre. And yet
1:09:29
Speaker 3: some of them have copped to that, like the person
1:09:31
Speaker 3: who stands out in my mind as Charlie Baker, one
1:09:33
Speaker 3: of his last access governor of Massachusetts, was legalizing book making.
1:09:37
Speaker 3: Months later he became president of the NCAA, and he said,
1:09:41
Speaker 3: as soon as he started talking to students and college
1:09:43
Speaker 3: athletes and realizing how out of control online betting was,
1:09:48
Speaker 3: it dawned on him that if you have to go
1:09:50
Speaker 3: to Las Vegas or track down a bookie, or use
1:09:52
Speaker 3: some sketchy offshore website, people are not going to be
1:09:56
Speaker 3: betting at the rates they are now. And the problems
1:09:58
Speaker 3: would be a lot more contained. There are some states
1:10:01
Speaker 3: that restrict it to in person, including sometimes in person
1:10:06
Speaker 3: only on tribal land, just to simulate tribal economies. But
1:10:10
Speaker 3: ninety five percent of this business is now online.
1:10:12
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, I mean, I look at my own habit, Okay,
1:10:16
Speaker 1: I enjoy it. I now I've got my own ethics, right.
1:10:21
Speaker 1: I won't bet on any individual props or any individual
1:10:25
Speaker 1: games of sport, meaning tennis or any player where you're
1:10:29
Speaker 1: relying on a single individual. You know, I think tennis
1:10:32
Speaker 1: is you know, that's just more corruptible. And I just
1:10:37
Speaker 1: don't think it's a I think there's I look at
1:10:39
Speaker 1: it as hey, I think I think there's hidden odds
1:10:42
Speaker 1: against me on this. I just don't think it's as
1:10:45
Speaker 1: safe as a bet is both betting on a team sport.
1:10:48
Speaker 1: And so I have my own lines in the sand.
1:10:51
Speaker 1: But I think about my own habit. If I had
1:10:53
Speaker 1: to go down the street to a storefront to place
1:10:58
Speaker 1: my bets rather than just doing it on my couch,
1:11:03
Speaker 1: I'd probably bet I'd probably cut back on my gambling
1:11:07
Speaker 1: by eighty percent. And they know that, right, And yet
1:11:13
Speaker 1: it's likely the social it is probably the societal change
1:11:18
Speaker 1: we should be making.
1:11:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, those sorts of friction points do
1:11:22
Speaker 3: make a difference. One thing that's debated now is to
1:11:26
Speaker 3: bet online, you have to enable geolocations. They can pinpoint
1:11:30
Speaker 3: very precisely exactly where you are. You could they geo
1:11:33
Speaker 3: fence like federal buildings, so you can't bet in Washington.
1:11:37
Speaker 1: You're fascinating in DC where you because I've done this,
1:11:43
Speaker 1: you know where where it allows it. And then you're like,
1:11:46
Speaker 1: why am I not allowed here? I'm like in the
1:11:49
Speaker 1: middle of the district. But if you're really close to
1:11:51
Speaker 1: a federal building, right, or if you're too close to
1:11:54
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill, there's an extra geofence.
1:11:58
Speaker 2: Right.
1:11:59
Speaker 3: So there's some talk now of well we could geofense
1:12:02
Speaker 3: college campuses, or even more modestly, geofens freshman dorms or classrooms.
1:12:08
Speaker 3: And people say, well, people will cross the street or
1:12:11
Speaker 3: you know whatever. It's like, sure, but it would it
1:12:13
Speaker 3: would be a deterrent, or just on principle, it might
1:12:16
Speaker 3: make sense.
1:12:18
Speaker 2: Things like that.
1:12:18
Speaker 3: Friction points are such a buzzword because the industry has
1:12:23
Speaker 3: been very effective at making it as frictionless as possible.
1:12:26
Speaker 3: That especially seems like the apt way of describing this
1:12:29
Speaker 3: micro betting where you're you know, betting play by play
1:12:34
Speaker 3: and I you know, a psychologist of the University of
1:12:37
Speaker 3: New Mexico who study this said, just like we don't
1:12:40
Speaker 3: sell you know, two hundred proof ethanol to get you
1:12:43
Speaker 3: drunk faster, Like maybe you would want to put some
1:12:47
Speaker 3: friction points in place so that people pump the brakes
1:12:50
Speaker 3: a little bit or are given the chance to take
1:12:52
Speaker 3: a breath and say a you know, am I am
1:12:55
Speaker 3: I getting out of control here?
1:12:57
Speaker 1: So who is doing research? What were you able to
1:13:02
Speaker 1: uncover and how what is it being research that should.
1:13:06
Speaker 3: Be I've seen some compelling studies over the past couple
1:13:10
Speaker 3: of years that are able to isolate states that have
1:13:13
Speaker 3: legalized sports betting and those that haven't and see what
1:13:16
Speaker 3: the consequences are. And there is a demonstrable impact where
1:13:20
Speaker 3: it's legal. Bankruptcies are going up, credit scores are going down,
1:13:25
Speaker 3: personal savings are going down. There was even a study
1:13:28
Speaker 3: I wish I could remember the university to credit but
1:13:31
Speaker 3: incidents of domestic violence when the home football team loses
1:13:36
Speaker 3: are higher in states with legal sports betting than those
1:13:39
Speaker 3: that aren't. And by the way, like rage induced by
1:13:43
Speaker 3: gambling and the violence that can motivate is so scary
1:13:46
Speaker 3: and goes well beyond domestic violence.
1:13:48
Speaker 1: Well, this is becoming a thing with right. The NCAA
1:13:51
Speaker 1: even did public service announcement to television adds saying, hey,
1:13:56
Speaker 1: you know, leave the players, you know, leave the players alone.
1:14:00
Speaker 3: It's a disaster waiting to happen. I get into that
1:14:03
Speaker 3: in my book, and there are people I spoke one person,
1:14:06
Speaker 3: the chief security former chief security officer of the NFL,
1:14:10
Speaker 3: said it's only a matter of time, as he put it,
1:14:12
Speaker 3: before someone tries to kill an athlete because they cost
1:14:14
Speaker 3: them a bed. I think that would make some lawmakers
1:14:17
Speaker 3: take action.
1:14:18
Speaker 1: Danny, I can tell you this. Look, I'm a huge
1:14:21
Speaker 1: University of Miami fan. Arguably the only reason Miami lost
1:14:26
Speaker 1: was due to a block punt. And on that play
1:14:29
Speaker 1: there was a missed block. Okay, guy just seemed a
1:14:32
Speaker 1: whiff mm hmkay. The most bet on prop, one of
1:14:37
Speaker 1: the more bet on props was a block punt that
1:14:40
Speaker 1: it was going to happen, and so immediately social media
1:14:44
Speaker 1: goes into this conspiratorial mindset. You know, I feel terrible
1:14:47
Speaker 1: for this kid. Look, everybody has brain fart. It happens.
1:14:51
Speaker 1: But now, because of all this gambling in there, I
1:14:56
Speaker 1: understand why many will jump to that conclusion, right, because
1:15:02
Speaker 1: has this happened. Yes, We've just had baseball players get
1:15:07
Speaker 1: indicted for this. Basketball players get indicted for this. So
1:15:11
Speaker 1: it's not as if it's a crazy thing to assume.
1:15:16
Speaker 1: But wow, does that you know, look at what that
1:15:21
Speaker 1: guy's social media feed, what happened to it? And it's
1:15:25
Speaker 1: this is this is an uncomfortable development because it is
1:15:31
Speaker 1: inevitably going to lead to where somebody loses their loses
1:15:35
Speaker 1: their marbles over.
1:15:37
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean there've already been people arrested for
1:15:40
Speaker 3: threatening to kill people in the most gruesome ways. So yeah,
1:15:44
Speaker 3: sadly that doesn't seem alarmist. The cynicism also that you
1:15:48
Speaker 3: were describing. This kind of conspiratorial thinking is so mainstream now.
1:15:53
Speaker 3: Sometimes just as a game, I'll search the words rigged
1:15:56
Speaker 3: on X when I'm watching it's this one post after another,
1:16:00
Speaker 3: or this is ragged. Here's proof it's ragged.
1:16:02
Speaker 1: You know, sure script, they're following a script, right, the
1:16:05
Speaker 1: old script. I see them, my son. It's so prevalent
1:16:08
Speaker 1: in the conversation that my son will say, well, that's
1:16:11
Speaker 1: against the script, and I'm just like, you know, it's
1:16:13
Speaker 1: just like he's like, the language is so coded now
1:16:16
Speaker 1: that everybody speaks it this way.
1:16:18
Speaker 3: Now, right, And this is why this is such a
1:16:21
Speaker 3: bigger problem than just how it affects gamblers, because so
1:16:25
Speaker 3: many fans in general are adopting that kind of cynicism.
1:16:29
Speaker 3: After a couple of players on the Cleveland Guardians were
1:16:32
Speaker 3: arrested last year for fixing specific pitches that they intentionally
1:16:37
Speaker 3: threw his balls allegedly and were able to bet tens
1:16:40
Speaker 3: of thousands of dollars on that, which.
1:16:42
Speaker 1: By the way, like I've thought about this incident a lot, right,
1:16:45
Speaker 1: you're am Manuel Classe. This is the guy that's been
1:16:48
Speaker 1: alleged to uses you make a ton of money. You
1:16:52
Speaker 1: may have a lot of buddies, friends, family relatives, maybe
1:16:56
Speaker 1: have had their handout. You can't help them all out.
1:17:00
Speaker 1: But you rationalize doing this because you're like, look, i'll
1:17:03
Speaker 1: get the guy out, I'll throw him a pitch. I'll
1:17:07
Speaker 1: go ahead and give him this. I get to help
1:17:09
Speaker 1: out my buddies or help out my friend. It's no
1:17:12
Speaker 1: sweat off. You know, it doesn't cost me a thing. Yeah,
1:17:16
Speaker 1: it cost me a pitch but I'll find my way
1:17:18
Speaker 1: out of it, right, you know. And in his own
1:17:20
Speaker 1: head he's like, I'm not you know, I'm not throwing
1:17:22
Speaker 1: the game, right, I'm I'm I've got I've got this
1:17:26
Speaker 1: under control. And I say this because I'm not trying
1:17:30
Speaker 1: to rationalize justify what Emmanual Classe is accused of. I'm
1:17:33
Speaker 1: not doing that at all. But this is how good
1:17:37
Speaker 1: people end up doing bad things with good intentions.
1:17:42
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, I think the argument that today's
1:17:44
Speaker 3: athletes are uncorruptible is so ridiculous, and there's so many
1:17:48
Speaker 3: reasons why.
1:17:49
Speaker 1: No, they're comfortable in the way I just described, and yeah,
1:17:51
Speaker 1: and they're not, in their mind not being corrupt. They're
1:17:55
Speaker 1: just throwing a bone to a buddy so that they
1:17:57
Speaker 1: don't have to write a check themselves.
1:17:59
Speaker 3: It's even important to remember that fixing doesn't necessarily mean failing, right,
1:18:04
Speaker 3: Like you could say you could bet on will the
1:18:06
Speaker 3: next pitch be off speed? So you could just say, hey,
1:18:08
Speaker 3: I'm going to throw a breaking ball to lead off
1:18:10
Speaker 3: this batter. Bet on that you're not doing you know,
1:18:14
Speaker 3: you're not trying to lose, You're just giving them an
1:18:16
Speaker 3: inside edge. You could bet on who will the first
1:18:19
Speaker 3: player be to catch a pass in the Super Bowl.
1:18:22
Speaker 3: So if the quarterback said I'm going to throw it
1:18:25
Speaker 3: to my tight end, you know that's fixing. But it's not.
1:18:29
Speaker 3: It's not intentionally losing. So that temptation is just so
1:18:32
Speaker 3: much more. You know, you could easily imagine someone going
1:18:37
Speaker 3: down that hole.
1:18:40
Speaker 1: Well, is there any good guys in the sports industry
1:18:42
Speaker 1: on this?
1:18:46
Speaker 3: Good guys is a tough way of putting it. I
1:18:48
Speaker 3: would say there are definitely people who are alarmed of
1:18:50
Speaker 3: what's happening and speaking up about it. Tony Clark, the
1:18:54
Speaker 3: former baseball player is now head of the Players Union,
1:18:57
Speaker 3: spoke to me saying the players Association and was not
1:19:00
Speaker 3: consulted as legalization took off. He's worried about all the
1:19:04
Speaker 3: threats that players are facing, the temptation for them to gamble.
1:19:08
Speaker 3: Thinks something must be done. You've seen athletes recently. Tyrese
1:19:13
Speaker 3: Halliburton in the NBA said, you know, I feel like
1:19:16
Speaker 3: a prop out there. I don't like what's happening. Michael
1:19:20
Speaker 3: Porter Junior, whose brother Johntay was banned for life for
1:19:24
Speaker 3: including with gamblers to fix his prop bets, gave a
1:19:28
Speaker 3: very candid interview this past offseason, saying things are out
1:19:32
Speaker 3: of control and just the mess that this has made.
1:19:36
Speaker 3: I can't believe the league embraced this. You're hearing more
1:19:40
Speaker 3: of that, and yet a lot of I get the
1:19:42
Speaker 3: sense that a lot of people in sports are walking
1:19:44
Speaker 3: on eggshells when they talk about gambling. Maybe their friends
1:19:48
Speaker 3: are doing ads. Maybe they might want to work in
1:19:51
Speaker 3: media and realize.
1:19:52
Speaker 1: They're too much money involved.
1:19:54
Speaker 2: Look, yeah, I mean that simple.
1:19:56
Speaker 1: You know, thirty years ago. You know, look, I'll give
1:19:59
Speaker 1: you a I think this is a Apples to Paris comparison. Okay,
1:20:05
Speaker 1: not quite apples and oranges. And that is the decision
1:20:09
Speaker 1: by Congress to legalize advertising of prescription drugs. And then
1:20:15
Speaker 1: how all of a sudden this became a crutch for
1:20:19
Speaker 1: the news industry in particular, and it was sort of
1:20:23
Speaker 1: this lifeline, right, and that's and then so what happens
1:20:26
Speaker 1: is they get so addicted to that that, you know,
1:20:29
Speaker 1: even as you have entities that are concerned that, hey,
1:20:34
Speaker 1: these pharmaceutical companies by advertising, you know, it's misleading people
1:20:38
Speaker 1: about certain drugs and this and that, and the news
1:20:44
Speaker 1: organizations were less credible because they so desperately needed to
1:20:48
Speaker 1: add dollars from those prescription drugs. Right, Look me, just
1:20:52
Speaker 1: doing this segment may put sponsorships. You know, I am
1:20:55
Speaker 1: not you know I say this. I use a few
1:20:58
Speaker 1: of these apps. But you know, the the sudden necessity
1:21:05
Speaker 1: the sports information world has, right, they so dominate, particularly
1:21:10
Speaker 1: podcasting and all this other stuff. You know, if you
1:21:15
Speaker 1: took it away, suddenly you'd have people say, hey, that's
1:21:18
Speaker 1: going to be my livelihood. There's no advertising. This is
1:21:21
Speaker 1: going to leave this huge hole in vacuum. And it's
1:21:25
Speaker 1: just like yeah, I mean, it's like it's like getting yourself.
1:21:29
Speaker 1: It's like going to the mob for security. Be careful
1:21:32
Speaker 1: who you get into bed with. You suddenly can't get
1:21:34
Speaker 1: out of your deal.
1:21:35
Speaker 3: Right, I'm concerned about being complicit in promoting gambling through
1:21:38
Speaker 3: those ad deals. I'm maybe even more concerned about how
1:21:41
Speaker 3: it might cause journalists to think twice about covering something
1:21:44
Speaker 3: that would embarrass the sports boxer and the leagues for
1:21:48
Speaker 3: doing business with them. And you know, sometimes I.
1:21:51
Speaker 2: Can feel like a sort of a J school debate,
1:21:53
Speaker 2: like to add.
1:21:54
Speaker 1: I won't echol debate. Look, I'll tell you look, this
1:21:57
Speaker 1: happened to me with the NFL. I was doing a
1:22:00
Speaker 1: story during the Super Bowl I Meet the Press, featuring
1:22:03
Speaker 1: a player who was soon in the league over the
1:22:05
Speaker 1: concussion issue. This is CTE. This goes back about to
1:22:08
Speaker 1: any and I was going to do the episode of
1:22:11
Speaker 1: Meet the Press on the field of the Super Bowl
1:22:14
Speaker 1: was an NBC year, and the NFL informed NBC Sports that,
1:22:18
Speaker 1: you know, no, and so I was basically told, we're
1:22:22
Speaker 1: not going to tell you what to cover, but if
1:22:24
Speaker 1: you want to do, if you want to broadcast from here,
1:22:27
Speaker 1: you can't cover that story. I chose to do the story.
1:22:30
Speaker 1: So I stayed back in DC. You know, sweat off
1:22:32
Speaker 1: my back was like, was there a small personal discipline
1:22:35
Speaker 1: how I missed out on going to a Super Bowl?
1:22:37
Speaker 1: But that's how the league's strong arm, right, And so
1:22:42
Speaker 1: they did. They were doing that on concussions. Imagine what
1:22:44
Speaker 1: they're going to do on anybody of their media partners
1:22:48
Speaker 1: that questions their relationships with these sportsbooks.
1:22:51
Speaker 2: No question.
1:22:52
Speaker 3: Someone at ESPN said the rule, like the unspoken rule
1:22:57
Speaker 3: in the newsroom for so long, was you can sort
1:23:01
Speaker 3: of reference gambling, but don't do anything that will f
1:23:03
Speaker 3: up our deals with the leagues, which meant, don't push
1:23:06
Speaker 3: gambling too much.
1:23:06
Speaker 2: Because the leagues didn't like it.
1:23:09
Speaker 3: Now it's the other way, right, don't say anything bad
1:23:11
Speaker 3: about gambling is it'll f up our deals the leagues.
1:23:14
Speaker 3: Another former ESPN reporter said, it's as if sports media
1:23:18
Speaker 3: is being bribed by all this ad advertising that they're
1:23:22
Speaker 3: not covering things they might. They're biting their tongues, pulling punches,
1:23:26
Speaker 3: you know, choose your metaphor. I think that's very real.
1:23:29
Speaker 3: That's not just a hypothetical danger here.
1:23:32
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the sadly, the societal triggers that
1:23:36
Speaker 1: might sober up policy makers and sober up the leagues.
1:23:41
Speaker 1: It sounds like number one is a player gets attacked
1:23:45
Speaker 1: by an angry gambler. Is probably the is probably one
1:23:51
Speaker 1: of those triggers. Yep.
1:23:54
Speaker 2: I think there's three. They're all pretty disturbing to think about.
1:23:57
Speaker 3: One is that. The other is a ration of suicides
1:24:00
Speaker 3: among gambling addicts, which has happened in Europe and been
1:24:03
Speaker 3: a big motivator for reregulating that industry, saying, the industry
1:24:08
Speaker 3: can't self police, this is out of control. We must
1:24:11
Speaker 3: tighten the card rails. And the third would be a
1:24:14
Speaker 3: major match fixing scandal, you know, even beyond what we've
1:24:17
Speaker 3: seen now where people say this is destroying sports. Were
1:24:21
Speaker 3: not going to allow that. Even if it's making.
1:24:23
Speaker 1: All the money fixing, All the fixes that have been
1:24:26
Speaker 1: exposed of are always sort of lesser, you know, it's
1:24:30
Speaker 1: frankly where there's less money at stake, right, or less
1:24:34
Speaker 1: fewer gamblers in that take the recent indictment, it was
1:24:38
Speaker 1: almost all involving games, not in the Power for or
1:24:42
Speaker 1: five conferences in basketball.
1:24:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was humiliating to me as a Georgetown grad
1:24:48
Speaker 3: because there was one fix where de Paul allegedly intentionally
1:24:53
Speaker 3: lost the first half. So the indictments in Georgetown was
1:24:56
Speaker 3: up double digits and then the fix was over and
1:24:58
Speaker 3: DePaul came back and won.
1:25:00
Speaker 2: So stuff like that things.
1:25:02
Speaker 1: Well that's the story of Georgetown basketball, as my friend
1:25:04
Speaker 1: chrys Eliza will tell you, Yeah.
1:25:06
Speaker 2: No doubt.
1:25:07
Speaker 3: But yeah, if it were something on the scale of
1:25:10
Speaker 3: a Pete Rose or you know, even it's strange. The
1:25:13
Speaker 3: biggest scale gambling scandal of this century was Tim Donneghe
1:25:17
Speaker 3: the NBA ref who was convicted of, you know, betting
1:25:21
Speaker 3: on more than one hundred games he officiated. It seems
1:25:24
Speaker 3: quite clear he was blowing the whistle to look out
1:25:26
Speaker 3: for those bets and people made hundreds of millions of
1:25:29
Speaker 3: dollars supposedly off of colluding with him. You'd think the
1:25:34
Speaker 3: NBA would never touch gambling after that. But if something
1:25:37
Speaker 3: like that were to happen now, I think people would say,
1:25:40
Speaker 3: this is a direct result of what's happened, you.
1:25:51
Speaker 1: Know, you get it something here with officiating, And so
1:25:54
Speaker 1: then it becomes the question is are we going to
1:25:57
Speaker 1: start regulating sports simply to make or the gambling is honest? Right?
1:26:03
Speaker 1: Because I've thought about this issue of referees in this respect,
1:26:08
Speaker 1: I'm very friendly with some college basketball coaches, and I
1:26:10
Speaker 1: was really curious because I've been very you know, there
1:26:16
Speaker 1: are no correct me if I'm wrong, but you're there
1:26:19
Speaker 1: are no full time college basketball officials, nobody whose full
1:26:23
Speaker 1: time job is this. They all have another job. These
1:26:26
Speaker 1: are these are side hustles. Some of them are hoping
1:26:30
Speaker 1: they can get the call to the NBA, or get
1:26:33
Speaker 1: the call to the NFL, or get the call to
1:26:35
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball. But in that, particularly in these college ranks, right,
1:26:38
Speaker 1: and that in many cases, this is a second job.
1:26:45
Speaker 1: If you're a MAC referee, right at this point, maybe
1:26:51
Speaker 1: you're not. You know, you're you're trying to get to
1:26:54
Speaker 1: the sec or you're trying to get to the big ten,
1:26:56
Speaker 1: or you know, and at some point, you know, maybe
1:27:00
Speaker 1: you know you're It just feels like the corruptibility of
1:27:08
Speaker 1: underpaid refs in lesser known conferences that are equally available
1:27:14
Speaker 1: to gamble on by the same people are a huge vulnerability.
1:27:19
Speaker 1: And yet so there's a part of me that says, hey,
1:27:22
Speaker 1: we should worry about professionalizing the referee ranks, And then
1:27:25
Speaker 1: I look at it the other way. It's like, wait
1:27:26
Speaker 1: a minute, are we going to try to sort of
1:27:29
Speaker 1: police the sport just to make sure that gambling is
1:27:33
Speaker 1: on the up and up.
1:27:35
Speaker 3: I do think that's a reason why there's such a
1:27:37
Speaker 3: push to automate so much of officiating, you know, automatic
1:27:41
Speaker 3: ball and stripe calling, using technology to spot the football
1:27:45
Speaker 3: in a football game, all sorts of stuff like that. Yeah,
1:27:48
Speaker 3: the technology is very appealing in its own right, but
1:27:50
Speaker 3: a big argument for it is it removes the corruptibility
1:27:54
Speaker 3: risk of officials, I think, which is.
1:27:57
Speaker 1: Sort of strange in it like that we're so wororried
1:28:00
Speaker 1: about the coruptibility, we don't want to actually limit the
1:28:04
Speaker 1: potential for corruption. Instead, let's eliminate some jobs.
1:28:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, there's a lot of evidence of
1:28:13
Speaker 3: officials being corrupted quickly. One that I thought was very
1:28:16
Speaker 3: funny is there's this issue in tennis of what's called
1:28:19
Speaker 3: court siding, where gamblers who are at the matches are
1:28:22
Speaker 3: betting before the sportsbook heres that a point went a
1:28:26
Speaker 3: certain way, and sometimes overseas the umpire and a tennis
1:28:31
Speaker 3: match would input who won a given point, and they
1:28:35
Speaker 3: were paid off by these court siding gamblers to just
1:28:38
Speaker 3: be a little slow in tapping the tablet computer and
1:28:42
Speaker 3: saying this point went this way that way, and if
1:28:45
Speaker 3: you can get that twenty or thirty second edge, you know,
1:28:48
Speaker 3: where you're like a step ahead of the sports books,
1:28:51
Speaker 3: you can make a lot of money.
1:28:52
Speaker 2: It's as subtle as that. Sometimes.
1:28:54
Speaker 1: So you, like I said, you confess that you are
1:29:00
Speaker 1: a modest gambler, you enjoy sports. After you did this
1:29:04
Speaker 1: whole book, How do you watch sports now?
1:29:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've honestly, you know, I bet a little bit.
1:29:13
Speaker 3: I was in New York when they legalized, and who
1:29:15
Speaker 3: could resist, you know, pocketing thousands of bucks just to
1:29:18
Speaker 3: sign up for a half dozen sports books. So I
1:29:20
Speaker 3: was doing a bit of betting. Then I lived in
1:29:22
Speaker 3: Colorado when my wife was in grad school and I
1:29:24
Speaker 3: was alone a lot, so definitely betting a little bit
1:29:27
Speaker 3: back then. Over the past year, I got to say,
1:29:30
Speaker 3: I haven't been betting nearly as much, sometimes not at all,
1:29:33
Speaker 3: because part of it is just hearing from professional gamblers
1:29:37
Speaker 3: and book makers how difficult it is to win. You
1:29:40
Speaker 3: know that one percent of people are making money, that
1:29:43
Speaker 3: if you do make money, they'll cut down how much
1:29:45
Speaker 3: you can wager very aggressively.
1:29:46
Speaker 1: This is a problem, Like, you know, this is a
1:29:49
Speaker 1: problem I've run into. I'm I guess I'm a I
1:29:52
Speaker 1: didn't think I was that good, But the minute you're
1:29:56
Speaker 1: on a run, you suddenly they like limit and you're
1:29:59
Speaker 1: just like, will wait a minute, how is that? How
1:30:03
Speaker 1: is that legal?
1:30:05
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh, people say it shouldn't be, but.
1:30:08
Speaker 1: I don't care. Yeah, I don't know. I don't understand.
1:30:12
Speaker 1: You know, it should the same, It should be the
1:30:17
Speaker 1: same amount. If I win too much or lose too much,
1:30:21
Speaker 1: should be the same metric. But that's not the metric
1:30:23
Speaker 1: they use to determine, right.
1:30:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and when you lose, when you're losing.
1:30:27
Speaker 3: The sky's the limit. Like there's someone who's lost one
1:30:30
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars betting on sports online, and.
1:30:32
Speaker 1: They have a bunch of free bets. Hey, look you've
1:30:34
Speaker 1: got free bets. You got five for your bets. Yeah.
1:30:36
Speaker 3: So, between that and also just hearing such upsetting stories,
1:30:41
Speaker 3: honestly of the industry taking advantage of people and praying
1:30:45
Speaker 3: on people, that turned me off to where I fell
1:30:48
Speaker 3: a little hooky about patronizing that business.
1:30:50
Speaker 2: At least for now, What.
1:30:51
Speaker 1: Have you learned about who controls Fandel and who controls Draftings.
1:30:57
Speaker 3: Fandel right around the time that legalization to off was
1:31:00
Speaker 3: acquired by an Irish company called Flutter. Fandal was based
1:31:03
Speaker 3: in Ireland to begin with. But Flutter is a conglomerate.
1:31:07
Speaker 3: You'll see Paddy Power betting shops all over England, Patty
1:31:11
Speaker 3: Powers under Flutter. It's a huge company. DraftKings is based
1:31:15
Speaker 3: in Boston. It's an American company. They're the two giants
1:31:20
Speaker 3: and FanDuel's leadership has changed a lot since it's founding.
1:31:25
Speaker 3: A lot of the people who founded DraftKings are still in,
1:31:27
Speaker 3: you know, in the c.
1:31:29
Speaker 1: Suite, are either one of them publicly traded companies.
1:31:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, DraftKings is in the US and Flutter is in
1:31:36
Speaker 3: other markets.
1:31:39
Speaker 1: Aren't the leagues have equity stakes.
1:31:43
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, early on, which I don't think it's conspiratorial
1:31:47
Speaker 3: to think that gave them an extra motive to course
1:31:51
Speaker 3: their business get vastly bigger.
1:31:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's layers to the.
1:31:55
Speaker 3: League's stake in the gambling business that even goes beyond that.
1:31:59
Speaker 2: One that I think is so alarming.
1:32:01
Speaker 3: Is that the leagues have a stake in these companies
1:32:04
Speaker 3: that are the so called integrity monitors that are charged
1:32:08
Speaker 3: with flagging and investigating suspicious bets, bets that shouldn't be placed.
1:32:13
Speaker 3: Considering that those companies have partial owners who you know,
1:32:17
Speaker 3: are the leagues themselves, that's a huge conflict of interest.
1:32:21
Speaker 3: Not only that, but their bigger business is an integrity monitoring.
1:32:26
Speaker 3: It's facilitating online bookmaking by distributing the data that allows
1:32:31
Speaker 3: real time betting. So there is such a disincentive for
1:32:35
Speaker 3: them to expose something that would you know, profoundly damage
1:32:40
Speaker 3: the betting business and the leagues for being a part
1:32:42
Speaker 3: of it.
1:32:44
Speaker 1: You know, you're really just describing are you describing tobacco
1:32:48
Speaker 1: companies in the nineteen fifties.
1:32:51
Speaker 3: For a while, I was reluctant to make that comparison,
1:32:53
Speaker 3: just because it's so inflammatory, and people like really freak
1:32:57
Speaker 3: out when you say that. I think the advertising is
1:33:00
Speaker 3: the most undeniable comparison. There's actually a group at Northeastern
1:33:06
Speaker 3: Law School that were instrumental in exposing industry practices in
1:33:10
Speaker 3: the tobacco business, and now they've set their sights on
1:33:13
Speaker 3: sports betting, and they made that comparison. I felt it
1:33:16
Speaker 3: was pretty convincing that the way celebrities and just beloved
1:33:21
Speaker 3: people are pushing this, saying it's harmless, suggesting the kids
1:33:26
Speaker 3: that it's just the thing that adults do or that
1:33:28
Speaker 3: people do, that has such echoes of how tobacco used
1:33:32
Speaker 3: to be advertised.
1:33:33
Speaker 1: So at the end of a lot of the podcasts
1:33:35
Speaker 1: I listened to, you'll get the perfunctory if you've got
1:33:38
Speaker 1: a gambling problem in New York, call one eight hundred
1:33:41
Speaker 1: hooe or something, and Washington, DC it's this, and Virginia's this,
1:33:45
Speaker 1: and they go through and then build the numbers. Did
1:33:49
Speaker 1: you call up any of those numbers? Did you see
1:33:51
Speaker 1: how they work?
1:33:53
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, that would have been smart. I did
1:33:56
Speaker 3: talk to someone who did. He was starting a telehealth
1:33:59
Speaker 3: company and he wanted to investigate what exactly is out
1:34:03
Speaker 3: there for people. Maybe he has a little bit of
1:34:04
Speaker 3: a motivation to say it's terrible because his company is
1:34:08
Speaker 3: filling a supposed void. But he said he'd call helplines
1:34:13
Speaker 3: and they would direct you to people who've been out
1:34:16
Speaker 3: of practice for years, or they said, I'm not a
1:34:18
Speaker 3: gambling counselor how did I ever get on this list?
1:34:22
Speaker 3: Or there would he would find that they would direct
1:34:24
Speaker 3: you to, you know, two counselors covering a state like Colorado.
1:34:29
Speaker 3: That's enormous and if you're on one side of the state,
1:34:32
Speaker 3: you know, good luck getting weekly helped from someone on
1:34:35
Speaker 3: the other side. It's it's not at all doing the job.
1:34:41
Speaker 1: And then how much did you get into the prediction
1:34:43
Speaker 1: market aspect of things, or did you really stick to
1:34:46
Speaker 1: sports gambling in this book?
1:34:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, didn't cover it in the book for a couple
1:34:50
Speaker 3: of reasons. One is just timing. It's really taken off recently,
1:34:54
Speaker 3: and as you know, books have to be finalized quite
1:34:56
Speaker 3: a bit in advance. And the other was I think
1:34:59
Speaker 3: they are annuinely in legal limbo and might get invalidated
1:35:03
Speaker 3: at least in some parts of the country as far
1:35:05
Speaker 3: as taking bets on sports goes. So I didn't want
1:35:09
Speaker 3: the book to you know, have a short shelf.
1:35:11
Speaker 1: Life, does me? I mean, leave you with this. Europe
1:35:16
Speaker 1: the culture of gambling has always been much greater in
1:35:21
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom in general. Right, the fact that FanDuel
1:35:25
Speaker 1: is Irish owned is not shocking to me. We know
1:35:28
Speaker 1: you can bet on you could always bet on American
1:35:30
Speaker 1: politics in London. You know, there's always been a looser.
1:35:34
Speaker 1: I mean, London is still one of the strangest casino
1:35:37
Speaker 1: gambling experiences I've ever had, where I'm playing black check
1:35:40
Speaker 1: and people are betting my hands behind me and all
1:35:42
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, it's one of those instances. Does Europe
1:35:46
Speaker 1: do anything better than we do to sort of minimize
1:35:49
Speaker 1: this risk? Or is it or was it simply because
1:35:54
Speaker 1: it was embedded in their culture? They're just a little
1:35:56
Speaker 1: more They've gone through growth. Are we just going through
1:35:59
Speaker 1: early growing pains? Is there anything to learn from how
1:36:02
Speaker 1: Europe's done this or is you're having the same problem
1:36:04
Speaker 1: now that this has all gone mobile.
1:36:07
Speaker 3: Oh, there's absolutely a ton to learn. And I think
1:36:10
Speaker 3: one of the most shameful things that happened with legalization
1:36:14
Speaker 3: here and I guess this is not unique to gambling
1:36:16
Speaker 3: when it comes to American policymaking was just being totally
1:36:20
Speaker 3: oblivious to precedent overseas, as if this is some grand
1:36:24
Speaker 3: American experiment and will figure things out as we go.
1:36:29
Speaker 3: All of the things that we're debating about, deceptive promotions
1:36:33
Speaker 3: and excessive advertising and too many ways to bed on
1:36:36
Speaker 3: things that are easily corruptible, all of those have been
1:36:40
Speaker 3: litigated in you know, public discourse or in courts in Europe,
1:36:44
Speaker 3: and there's been this realization that things were out of
1:36:47
Speaker 3: hand and they had to crack down. And now many
1:36:50
Speaker 3: of those same companies that were punished overseas for bad
1:36:54
Speaker 3: practices are doing the exact same things in the US.
1:36:58
Speaker 3: It's kind of galling, But yeah, as far as you know,
1:37:01
Speaker 3: are they smarter than us? No, They've just had more
1:37:04
Speaker 3: time to come to terms with how bad things can
1:37:08
Speaker 3: get if you don't really regulate this business aggressively.
1:37:14
Speaker 1: What's the what's left of the black market versus the
1:37:18
Speaker 1: the free market? I mean? Or is it still hard
1:37:21
Speaker 1: to assess because you basically two of the biggest states
1:37:23
Speaker 1: in the Union still aren't legal Texas and California.
1:37:28
Speaker 3: Right, But they've got prediction market betting now, so plenty
1:37:30
Speaker 3: of people will be betting on the Super Bowl through
1:37:32
Speaker 3: prediction markets in ways that are basically indistinguishable from what
1:37:36
Speaker 3: you can get.
1:37:36
Speaker 1: On indistinguishable Yeah, I've looked at it and you're like,
1:37:40
Speaker 1: it's the same point spread, it's the same You're just
1:37:43
Speaker 1: buying a quote share or something like that. You know.
1:37:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've even introduced they've even introduced so called combos
1:37:49
Speaker 3: for the Super Bowl that are their parlays.
1:37:52
Speaker 2: Who are we kidding? Yeah, you know.
1:37:55
Speaker 3: I don't want to sound like a broken record with
1:37:57
Speaker 3: the arguments for legalization. I do think it's worthwhile, though,
1:38:00
Speaker 3: to assess them in light on what's happened. One of
1:38:02
Speaker 3: the main arguments was it would drive out the black market,
1:38:05
Speaker 3: that if you could bet legally, why would you bother
1:38:07
Speaker 3: go into a bookie or some sketchy website.
1:38:10
Speaker 2: That has not happened.
1:38:12
Speaker 3: One credible estimate I think is that about fifty billion
1:38:16
Speaker 3: dollars continue to be wagered illegally. That might be baffling.
1:38:21
Speaker 3: Even beyond the states that haven't legalized. Why are people
1:38:23
Speaker 3: in states with legal betting betting illegally. There will always
1:38:28
Speaker 3: be some inherent appeals to going under the table, you know,
1:38:32
Speaker 3: betting anonymously betting on credit, betting on things you can't
1:38:35
Speaker 3: bet on through licensed operators. But again, the idea that
1:38:40
Speaker 3: we would drive this out through legalization was either naive
1:38:44
Speaker 3: or disingenuous. And when we're talking about corrupting sports, they said,
1:38:49
Speaker 3: the legal market will give us this huge window into
1:38:51
Speaker 3: betting activity. I spoke with all sorts of people inside sports,
1:38:55
Speaker 3: including at the companies that monitor those bets, say, if
1:39:00
Speaker 3: we had a real sophisticated fixer and a gambling syndicate
1:39:03
Speaker 3: working with them, they would obviously still go through the
1:39:07
Speaker 3: black market and we would have such a difficult time
1:39:09
Speaker 3: catching that.
1:39:11
Speaker 2: So that problem by.
1:39:12
Speaker 1: Only the dumb only really the idiots are going to
1:39:15
Speaker 1: use the traceable systems of the mobile. I mean, I
1:39:18
Speaker 1: still think one of the most you know, the greatest
1:39:20
Speaker 1: trick the Silicon Valley ever polled is if the federal
1:39:25
Speaker 1: government said, if everybody could please carry a device that
1:39:29
Speaker 1: we could track you with. Nobody would get that device.
1:39:32
Speaker 1: But when when Tim Cook says, hey, we've got this
1:39:36
Speaker 1: really cool device that allows you to track all sorts
1:39:39
Speaker 1: of things, and here's air tags and here's all sorts
1:39:41
Speaker 1: of things, you know, we'll gladly submit ourselves, you know,
1:39:45
Speaker 1: So it does, you know, Thank goodness, we've all been
1:39:50
Speaker 1: dumb enough for some of these guys to to allow
1:39:52
Speaker 1: us to carry around a GPS monitor.
1:39:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, in a way, legalization is like laying
1:39:59
Speaker 3: a trap for a really stupid people, and the hardened criminals,
1:40:04
Speaker 3: the people who know what they're doing, would never be
1:40:06
Speaker 3: so clumsy.
1:40:08
Speaker 1: Well, Danny, look, it's an eye opening book. It is
1:40:11
Speaker 1: one of those. And I don't want this to come
1:40:16
Speaker 1: across the wrong way, but it's like everything you reported
1:40:20
Speaker 1: is like, of course, I hate to say that, right,
1:40:23
Speaker 1: And there were things I didn't know, but yet it
1:40:25
Speaker 1: still came across of like, oh, duh, right, of course
1:40:29
Speaker 1: this is how it's working. Of course they're doing this, right,
1:40:32
Speaker 1: This is all in pursuit of the mighty dollar, right,
1:40:35
Speaker 1: Like it is. There's no doubt what the motivation is.
1:40:38
Speaker 1: And we are putting a generation of young men in
1:40:43
Speaker 1: harm's way. And I think that's the thing that ought
1:40:47
Speaker 1: have scared the but Jesus out of all of us.
1:40:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, gosh, say the whole book. I know
1:40:53
Speaker 2: you preface it how you did.
1:40:55
Speaker 3: I think there's stuff that will blow people away if
1:40:57
Speaker 3: they read the book. And I also think even if
1:41:00
Speaker 3: you suspected that there are some people in the industry
1:41:02
Speaker 3: who are conflicted about what's happening, to hear them say
1:41:06
Speaker 3: it so bluntly that they feel like this is ethically problematic,
1:41:10
Speaker 3: or like shit could really hit the fan if certain.
1:41:13
Speaker 2: Types of bets take off. I think that is sobering.
1:41:17
Speaker 3: Even if we sort of had a hunch that people
1:41:19
Speaker 3: might have felt that way, to hear them say it.
1:41:21
Speaker 1: Is basically what you're saying. You found people in the
1:41:23
Speaker 1: industry that is like, I can't believe we get to
1:41:25
Speaker 1: do this legally exactly. Yeah, Danny, the book's called Everybody Loses,
1:41:34
Speaker 1: but some of us are still going to chase the
1:41:36
Speaker 1: win on Super Bowl Sunday. Anyway, Danny, appreciate the time.
1:41:39
Speaker 2: Thank you, Chuck.
1:41:49
Speaker 1: All Right, so now you're going to feel guilty about
1:41:52
Speaker 1: using a mobile app to bet on the Super Bowl.
1:41:56
Speaker 1: Here's what I will say this. The big thing I
1:41:58
Speaker 1: took away from this interview is, you know, I am
1:42:03
Speaker 1: as I confess, right, I have this libertarian in me
1:42:07
Speaker 1: that is like, look, vices or vices, but I am
1:42:11
Speaker 1: you know, make the vice available, tax the shit out
1:42:13
Speaker 1: of it, create a little bit more friction, right, you know,
1:42:19
Speaker 1: and I think there's there is there is some way here.
1:42:26
Speaker 1: And I thought, I thought what was helpful from Danny's
1:42:28
Speaker 1: Like Europe's been through this and they figured out a
1:42:32
Speaker 1: which gambling's good and which gamblings too addictive and harmful? Right,
1:42:38
Speaker 1: and you know, everything in moderation. I remember when I
1:42:45
Speaker 1: was in college they had us take a class about it.
1:42:50
Speaker 1: Wasn't it was like about moderate drinking. It was like, look,
1:42:53
Speaker 1: we're not going to tell you to be tea todalers.
1:42:56
Speaker 1: But it was sort of explaining, essentially celebrating moderation. And
1:43:05
Speaker 1: I think this is a classic case where a little
1:43:07
Speaker 1: bit of gambling's fine, A lot of bit of gambling
1:43:12
Speaker 1: is destructive. Right. It's like a little bit of alcohol
1:43:15
Speaker 1: is fine, a lot of it can't kill you. You know,
1:43:18
Speaker 1: one cigarette is not going to give you lung cancer.
1:43:21
Speaker 1: A cart in mind, you know, it is all of it.
1:43:25
Speaker 1: You know, in some ways it's arguably what our founders
1:43:30
Speaker 1: thought about our politics too, Right, It's all about pragmatism
1:43:34
Speaker 1: and moderation. All right. With that, let me give you
1:43:40
Speaker 1: a few thoughts on the on the Super Bowl, I Eric,
1:43:43
Speaker 1: I have my fear is that it's a blowout that
1:43:48
Speaker 1: we're having eighties nineties super Bowl right where the NFC
1:43:52
Speaker 1: is so much more dominant than the AFC, and you know,
1:43:55
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, whatever AFC team sort of
1:44:00
Speaker 1: hacked their way to the Super Bowl. Remember when the
1:44:02
Speaker 1: San Diego Chargers with Nate Tron means business, you know,
1:44:07
Speaker 1: and they got there and they got kind of pummeled
1:44:10
Speaker 1: by Steve Young's forty nine ers. Right, all those Buffalo
1:44:14
Speaker 1: bill blowouts from the Jim Kelly era. I mean, the
1:44:17
Speaker 1: only team NFC team that didn't that would win super
1:44:21
Speaker 1: Bowls without blowing out the AFC were the Giants, Right.
1:44:24
Speaker 1: You had the Scott Norwood field goal, and then even
1:44:26
Speaker 1: the game against the Broncos. I think that the Giants
1:44:29
Speaker 1: trailed at halftime and then they ended up they ended
1:44:32
Speaker 1: up beating the Broncos for the first Super Bowl for parcels.
1:44:35
Speaker 1: So I fear we're gonna have one of those games.
1:44:39
Speaker 1: I hope not. Right the borings there was there was
1:44:42
Speaker 1: nothing that I don't know whether super Bowl parties right now,
1:44:48
Speaker 1: that's that's the That's the other question, is a super
1:44:50
Speaker 1: Bowl party? Is it better to be at a super
1:44:52
Speaker 1: Bowl party if the games will blow out? And is
1:44:55
Speaker 1: it better to be at home if the game is close, right,
1:44:59
Speaker 1: so that the one upside might be if there is
1:45:02
Speaker 1: a blowout. It makes for socializing at the super Bowl
1:45:05
Speaker 1: party a little bit easier. But there's nothing I hate,
1:45:08
Speaker 1: you know. I love me a good super Bowl party.
1:45:10
Speaker 1: I've got a great We've got some great friends that
1:45:12
Speaker 1: love to host. And but my only small peeve about
1:45:16
Speaker 1: it is if it's a really competitive game, It's like,
1:45:20
Speaker 1: I don't want to be at a party while I'm
1:45:22
Speaker 1: watching anyway, So my fear is that, right. I love
1:45:27
Speaker 1: the Sam Donald story. I still remember Freshman, the freshman
1:45:31
Speaker 1: at USC who was unbelievable, and I have I've not
1:45:35
Speaker 1: seen him be that good until he was a Viking. Right,
1:45:39
Speaker 1: by the way, what an indictment on the Jets, right,
1:45:42
Speaker 1: Sam donald redemption tour? Basically, once he left the Jets
1:45:45
Speaker 1: and could get anywhere else, it seemed to over time
1:45:50
Speaker 1: write his mental state memo to young quarterbacks, pray you
1:45:55
Speaker 1: don't get drafted by the New York Jets. My gut
1:46:01
Speaker 1: is also low scoring game because the dirty little secret
1:46:03
Speaker 1: about watching the Seahawks is they don't seem to want
1:46:07
Speaker 1: to put the game in Darnald's hands one hundred percent. Right,
1:46:12
Speaker 1: they've had they had a great one two punch. They
1:46:13
Speaker 1: only have one running back obviously that they're they one
1:46:16
Speaker 1: of their two stars there. But I mean, he's been
1:46:20
Speaker 1: a machine walker the way I mean, I know this
1:46:26
Speaker 1: is facing him in fantasy, right, and that defense is outstanding.
1:46:33
Speaker 1: Here's what I think about the Patriots. A Mike Vrabel
1:46:36
Speaker 1: Patriots team is not going to get blown out. So
1:46:38
Speaker 1: I do believe that they will muck this game up
1:46:41
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I am I am smelling very
1:46:46
Speaker 1: low scoring. You know, I could see twenty to three,
1:46:50
Speaker 1: I could see sixteen to seven. I could see you
1:46:53
Speaker 1: know that it could be Seattle's always in control, but
1:46:58
Speaker 1: right they don't seem to pull away. Maybe a few
1:47:01
Speaker 1: more field goals than touchdowns. The May injury concerns me
1:47:06
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, nothing like having a shoulder
1:47:08
Speaker 1: issue there, because his great strength is to throw the
1:47:11
Speaker 1: ball down the field a little bit, so you have
1:47:14
Speaker 1: to ask yourself about that. So needless to say, you know,
1:47:18
Speaker 1: I'm if you're gonna make me put money, I'm I
1:47:21
Speaker 1: would I'd feel the most comfortable with, particularly a first
1:47:25
Speaker 1: half under and probably the overall as well, and i'd
1:47:30
Speaker 1: be and I think it's Seahawks or nobody for me.
1:47:35
Speaker 1: And like I told you, I I you know, there's
1:47:38
Speaker 1: there's plenty of player props out there, but in some ways,
1:47:43
Speaker 1: I do think player props are sort of a bigger problem. Right.
1:47:48
Speaker 1: It's sort of my own more my own small little
1:47:52
Speaker 1: moral line in the sand that I'm drawing on that.
1:47:55
Speaker 1: So enjoy the Super Bowl. And you know, I have
1:48:03
Speaker 1: to say, I'm as you know, I'm a huge football fan.
1:48:08
Speaker 1: It's going to be a long five months until the
1:48:10
Speaker 1: start until the Hurricanes first game, which by the way
1:48:13
Speaker 1: is Labor Day Friday. Get ready, So I will not
1:48:17
Speaker 1: be talking about college football perhaps until at least September
1:48:24
Speaker 1: second or third. The one thing I'm going to watch
1:48:31
Speaker 1: for the advertisements is I am very curious what the
1:48:37
Speaker 1: AI messaging is. Not how many ads use AI, but
1:48:41
Speaker 1: how AI is messaged. Right, remember a couple of years ago,
1:48:45
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl is where we found out how Crypto
1:48:47
Speaker 1: is going to market itself. I have a feeling right
1:48:50
Speaker 1: this captive eyeballs we're going to I'm very you know,
1:48:53
Speaker 1: to watch all the different ways the AI lean in
1:48:57
Speaker 1: AI companies are going to gemmunicate. I know that's something
1:49:01
Speaker 1: that I'm intrigued about, curious about, and we'll be making
1:49:05
Speaker 1: a note up. So with that, let's do a little
1:49:07
Speaker 1: last check and then we'll get out of here. Ask Chuck,
1:49:12
Speaker 1: all right, I got six on the screen. I'm going
1:49:14
Speaker 1: to hit six. That's my goal. I'm sticking to it,
1:49:18
Speaker 1: all right. This question comes from James. He says, thanks
1:49:20
Speaker 1: again for the podcast. Listening from France right on helps
1:49:23
Speaker 1: me think differently about US politics and gives me hope
1:49:26
Speaker 1: as an institutionalist. I am the king of the institutionalists
1:49:30
Speaker 1: in independent media. You've said Congress has lost its incentives
1:49:34
Speaker 1: to act as a check on presidential power, and I
1:49:36
Speaker 1: wonder if that's partly due to nationalized parties expecting members
1:49:39
Speaker 1: to fall in line behind the president. But states still
1:49:41
Speaker 1: defend their authority across party lines. What incentives allow that
1:49:44
Speaker 1: and could something similar help Congress reclaim its power. Well,
1:49:49
Speaker 1: so this is where I believe that the fact you know,
1:49:54
Speaker 1: this is where the power of the primary coupled with
1:50:01
Speaker 1: the power of gerrymandering, coupled with the power of too
1:50:05
Speaker 1: big of congressional districts. Right, So I'm on my hobby
1:50:08
Speaker 1: horse and about that the actual size of the US
1:50:11
Speaker 1: House is way too small, and the shrinking, the fact
1:50:15
Speaker 1: that the that the representative democracy is further away from
1:50:20
Speaker 1: the average person. Right, we have one member of Congress
1:50:24
Speaker 1: now per eight hundred thousand people, when in nineteen thirty
1:50:27
Speaker 1: we were one member of Congress per three hundred and
1:50:30
Speaker 1: fifty thousand people. Eight hundred thousands is the size of
1:50:35
Speaker 1: a major city in this country. And you can't tell
1:50:38
Speaker 1: me that is a single community of interest, right. New
1:50:40
Speaker 1: York City is not a single community of interests. Austin,
1:50:43
Speaker 1: Texas is not a single community of interests. Detroit, Michigan
1:50:46
Speaker 1: is not a single community of interest. There are multiple
1:50:48
Speaker 1: communities of interest within said metro area. So this is
1:50:54
Speaker 1: where it's like, if you were to ask me, what's
1:50:56
Speaker 1: one reform that could do this, while well, it's getting
1:51:00
Speaker 1: rid of partisan primaries, right, if you could empower all
1:51:04
Speaker 1: voters in every congressional district to have more of a
1:51:07
Speaker 1: say on who the representative is. So either you're drawing
1:51:12
Speaker 1: districts to be competitive, which is why I'm always careful
1:51:15
Speaker 1: not to just trash all jerrymandering because in the way
1:51:18
Speaker 1: we've all self sorted as a country. We may need
1:51:20
Speaker 1: a gerrymander to create competition, but you know, you could
1:51:24
Speaker 1: mandate competition. You could mandate the size of the districts.
1:51:29
Speaker 1: Maybe no district can be bigger than point zero three
1:51:31
Speaker 1: percent of the population, which would put it in about
1:51:33
Speaker 1: one perform in two thousand at the moment. And if
1:51:36
Speaker 1: you did that, I think it would do. If we
1:51:39
Speaker 1: did that, and then the gerrymandering doesn't isn't impactful, Partisanship
1:51:45
Speaker 1: gets diluted, and I think incentives become more regional and
1:51:50
Speaker 1: geographic rather than partisan. Right now, when you have gerrymandering
1:51:56
Speaker 1: and partisan primaries, it means the head of the party
1:52:00
Speaker 1: has all sorts of outsized influence on the individual member
1:52:04
Speaker 1: of Congress. But if you have if your power comes
1:52:10
Speaker 1: from because you're you know, the whole of your electorate,
1:52:13
Speaker 1: well then the electorate itself has more influence on you
1:52:16
Speaker 1: than the party leader, because the party leader can only
1:52:18
Speaker 1: help you with one part of your of your constituency,
1:52:23
Speaker 1: versus having to answer to everybody. So you know, I
1:52:28
Speaker 1: think we need all three things right Doubling the side
1:52:31
Speaker 1: of the house right now, it would I would want
1:52:34
Speaker 1: it should just be one perform a thousand right now.
1:52:36
Speaker 1: That would mean doubling the sides of the House, that
1:52:39
Speaker 1: in turn minimizes the impact of gerrymandering. And on top
1:52:43
Speaker 1: of that, I get rid of partisan primaries and essentially
1:52:46
Speaker 1: all party you know, everybody votes, and you know, uh
1:52:50
Speaker 1: for for everybody, top two, whatever it is, you do
1:52:52
Speaker 1: it that way. Doesn't mean parties can't endorse, doesn't mean
1:52:55
Speaker 1: parties won't have preferences of who the officially endorsed candidate is,
1:53:00
Speaker 1: and then they can give those resources in a larger
1:53:03
Speaker 1: in an all voter primary. But this is how we
1:53:07
Speaker 1: elect our mayors, and our mayors are the least partisan
1:53:09
Speaker 1: office holders in America. And if we're tired of partisanship,
1:53:14
Speaker 1: that's the path to go. Thank you, James. Next question boy,
1:53:21
Speaker 1: another year. European question from another question from Europe So
1:53:25
Speaker 1: as sextuary insight insightful analysis that really helps me understand
1:53:28
Speaker 1: you as politics more clearly from a European perspective. I
1:53:30
Speaker 1: have two questions. How luckily is it that the divide
1:53:32
Speaker 1: between MAGA and liberal America becomes unbridgable and turns violent
1:53:36
Speaker 1: and our Americans even able to protest effectively given how
1:53:38
Speaker 1: comparatively limited their demonstrations seem compared to European protest kind
1:53:42
Speaker 1: regards Bernard from EU, you know, Fuddy Bernard. I've heard
1:53:45
Speaker 1: this from some of my other European friends, going, how
1:53:47
Speaker 1: come more people aren't in the streets right? My counter
1:53:52
Speaker 1: on that is, we did the streets stuff, and you know,
1:53:55
Speaker 1: the public was in the streets a lot in twenty seventeen.
1:53:58
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, I think now it's a bit more concentrated.
1:54:03
Speaker 1: But one one could argue that, you know, those No
1:54:08
Speaker 1: Kings protests keep growing, and we're about to have another one,
1:54:12
Speaker 1: I think, and that's only going to keep growing. So
1:54:16
Speaker 1: and we've seen the demonstrations in Minneapolis have been huge.
1:54:21
Speaker 1: But I understand, I get what you're saying. I think
1:54:25
Speaker 1: what you're saying is it feels like European protests have
1:54:27
Speaker 1: been bigger than about Trump in America than the American
1:54:31
Speaker 1: protests about Trump in America. As for the issue of
1:54:41
Speaker 1: that unbridgeable divide, I am. I'm mostly confident this won't
1:54:51
Speaker 1: end with violence, that this era that here's what I
1:54:57
Speaker 1: and I say this, and I don't say it for
1:55:00
Speaker 1: dramatic purposes, but look, we're going to get through this.
1:55:04
Speaker 1: We've been through these periods before. Now, a lot of
1:55:08
Speaker 1: people had to die before we got through it. With
1:55:11
Speaker 1: the Civil War, a lot of people died with our
1:55:16
Speaker 1: horrible labor laws in the nineteen hundreds and the nineteen tens.
1:55:20
Speaker 1: A lot of people die during the civil rights movement.
1:55:24
Speaker 1: So the question is how many people have to die
1:55:26
Speaker 1: before we sort of turned the corner? How violent? It's
1:55:30
Speaker 1: already violent. We've already had violence, right, January six was
1:55:35
Speaker 1: pretty violent. We've had two assassination attempts on Donald Trump.
1:55:41
Speaker 1: We've had those assassinations in Minneapolis, first of the lawmakers,
1:55:45
Speaker 1: then then the the two killings by Ice agents. The
1:55:57
Speaker 1: question is, so, look, we'll get through this. How how
1:56:03
Speaker 1: much blood has to be spilled? Can we get through
1:56:09
Speaker 1: this without a full fledged civil war? And you heard
1:56:11
Speaker 1: Tim Wilson. Now I think we don't want to be there,
1:56:16
Speaker 1: but it only takes you know, we are on it.
1:56:19
Speaker 1: We're in a tinder box. You know. I'll tell you
1:56:25
Speaker 1: a scenario that I've been very nervous about. If things
1:56:29
Speaker 1: had kept escalating in Minneapolis. Now, Donald Trump chose the escalation.
1:56:36
Speaker 1: So did Tom Holman, right by sending Tom Homan there.
1:56:39
Speaker 1: And they're making and some of the moves are real,
1:56:41
Speaker 1: and some of them might be the UH for show,
1:56:45
Speaker 1: But it all is in an attempt to de escalate,
1:56:48
Speaker 1: not escalate, and what it but it thinks escalate? It
1:56:53
Speaker 1: does Tim Walls call in the National Guard? And if
1:56:55
Speaker 1: Tim Walls calls in the National Guard, does truck then
1:57:00
Speaker 1: try to federalize that National Guard? And who does is?
1:57:03
Speaker 1: Do we see the National Guard and Minneapolis PD shooting
1:57:11
Speaker 1: or being shot at by ice and vice versa? Right?
1:57:14
Speaker 1: So I almost am uncomfortable even articulating that scenario, but
1:57:25
Speaker 1: we have to be honest. Right, it's all it's crossed,
1:57:27
Speaker 1: clearly crossed your mind and it's crossed my mind. But
1:57:32
Speaker 1: I don't think these divides are unbridgable. But I do
1:57:34
Speaker 1: think and I go back to something I've said, and
1:57:38
Speaker 1: I think I've said it here a few times, and
1:57:39
Speaker 1: I certainly say to my speeches, which is, you know
1:57:45
Speaker 1: what I think the biggest reason why particularly you guys
1:57:51
Speaker 1: in Europe are struggling. You can't figure out what you're
1:57:55
Speaker 1: seeing here. This looks so Unamerican. Is the American the
1:57:58
Speaker 1: America you're used to was Cold War America? Well, Cold
1:58:05
Speaker 1: War America was an outlier in America. Cold War America
1:58:09
Speaker 1: was the most pragmatic version of America that we had.
1:58:15
Speaker 1: The rest American politics up until nineteen forty, you know,
1:58:22
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine right for the Constitution in nineteen forty
1:58:26
Speaker 1: and American politics, you know, from I'm going to go
1:58:35
Speaker 1: ahead and say two thousand and five, two thousand and
1:58:38
Speaker 1: four to today has been very familiar. Our natural state
1:58:45
Speaker 1: is polarization. We make fifty two forty eight, fifty one
1:58:51
Speaker 1: to forty nine decisions. We don't make seventy thirty decisions.
1:58:55
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of people that are always going
1:58:58
Speaker 1: to be in the minority, and we make decisions as
1:59:01
Speaker 1: a country. It's not lost on me that we had
1:59:06
Speaker 1: our biggest growth as an economic and uh security power
1:59:14
Speaker 1: in the Cold War, when we were the most pragmatic,
1:59:17
Speaker 1: when we both parties kept their extremes at bay, and
1:59:23
Speaker 1: you know, we focused on the existential threat that was
1:59:27
Speaker 1: the Soviets and the fear of nuclear holocaust, and that
1:59:31
Speaker 1: kept us sober politically. Then that fear went away, So
1:59:40
Speaker 1: it so I don't so, I guess what I'm saying
1:59:43
Speaker 1: is the divides have always been unbridgable, but it but
1:59:49
Speaker 1: they're but they've been tolerated. Right, We tolerate our divides,
1:59:53
Speaker 1: we accept that we disagree on what those divides are,
1:59:58
Speaker 1: and we kind of muddle through. So we'll get there.
2:00:05
Speaker 1: But we've done a ton of damage. And you know,
2:00:09
Speaker 1: I it's going to take decades to restore the faith
2:00:14
Speaker 1: of global allies to stick by the United States again.
2:00:19
Speaker 1: We're probably going to have to We're probably going to
2:00:23
Speaker 1: have to go seventy percent of the way when all
2:00:25
Speaker 1: of these relationships for a while, when for a long
2:00:28
Speaker 1: time we only had to go thirty percent of the way.
2:00:32
Speaker 1: And we're going to have to have leaders, people that
2:00:39
Speaker 1: run for president, that accept the premise of what America
2:00:42
Speaker 1: is supposed to be. And you know, look, this is
2:00:44
Speaker 1: the first un American president we've ever had. He does
2:00:47
Speaker 1: not believe in the story of America. He does not
2:00:50
Speaker 1: believe that America is an idea. You know, he doesn't.
2:00:54
Speaker 1: I don't. And here's the thing with Trump. It's not
2:00:57
Speaker 1: that he doesn't believe it. I don't think he's really
2:00:59
Speaker 1: thought about it. You know, I think about it all
2:01:04
Speaker 1: the time. I think of every president as a chapter
2:01:07
Speaker 1: in the story of America. He doesn't most of our
2:01:13
Speaker 1: not most every president in my lifetime, and every president
2:01:17
Speaker 1: for the most part that I've read about, believed that
2:01:20
Speaker 1: a baton was passed to them, and they were going
2:01:24
Speaker 1: to be passing a baton, and that they were all
2:01:27
Speaker 1: writing another chapter in the story of America. Donald Trump
2:01:31
Speaker 1: doesn't want a chapter. He wants to throw away that
2:01:34
Speaker 1: book and only have a book, the Book of Trump.
2:01:37
Speaker 1: But he does not believe in the You know, I
2:01:41
Speaker 1: don't think he knows what a federalist paper is, and
2:01:43
Speaker 1: I promise you he hasn't read it all. If he's read one,
2:01:46
Speaker 1: he didn't done it since grade school. Next question comes
2:01:58
Speaker 1: from got somebody from Chicago. It's Mike, he said, some president.
2:02:02
Speaker 1: I were debating wild scenarios where Trump could serve a
2:02:05
Speaker 1: third term. One theory floated was that if Trump became
2:02:07
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House and the newly elected president and
2:02:09
Speaker 1: VP resigned, he could ascend to the presidency again. I
2:02:12
Speaker 1: know the Constitution bars him from being elected president again,
2:02:14
Speaker 1: but could he legally return via the line of succession.
2:02:19
Speaker 1: So it's funny. The Speaker of the House loophole has
2:02:22
Speaker 1: always been the one I've thought about too. I interviewed
2:02:26
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon about ten months ago and we went through
2:02:32
Speaker 1: this ould Trump twenty eight and he's like, oh, he's
2:02:34
Speaker 1: gonna be unbalot And I said, I said, I know
2:02:37
Speaker 1: you want to I said, constitution bars it. And he says, well,
2:02:42
Speaker 1: you just wait, We've got a path. It's the only
2:02:46
Speaker 1: one I can think of, is that one. I think
2:02:51
Speaker 1: that's the only one. I think it's the you know,
2:02:55
Speaker 1: it fits the description that my friend likes to say,
2:02:59
Speaker 1: which is, you know, our biggest problem with Trump is
2:03:01
Speaker 1: failure of imagination. You know, Donald Trump doesn't spend a
2:03:05
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about what's the best way to
2:03:07
Speaker 1: tame the Iranians, but he does think a lot of
2:03:09
Speaker 1: time about all the different loopholes that he can exploit
2:03:12
Speaker 1: in the Constitution. When you look at the language of
2:03:16
Speaker 1: the twenty second Amendment, it keeps using the word elected. Right,
2:03:20
Speaker 1: So that's loophole that you've found very well. And I
2:03:24
Speaker 1: think that that's a fair loophole. But the twelfth Amendment
2:03:27
Speaker 1: is fascinating because the wording doesn't have elected in there.
2:03:33
Speaker 1: It just simply says, no person constitutionally ineligible to the
2:03:37
Speaker 1: office of President shall be eligible to that a vice
2:03:39
Speaker 1: president of the United States, and you're ineligible. No person
2:03:44
Speaker 1: let's read the word no person shall be elected to
2:03:47
Speaker 1: the office of president more than twice. And no person
2:03:50
Speaker 1: who has held the office of president or acted as
2:03:52
Speaker 1: president for more than two years of a term to
2:03:55
Speaker 1: which some other person was elected president shall be elected
2:03:58
Speaker 1: to the office of the president more than once. Right,
2:04:03
Speaker 1: that's if a vice president takes over and serves less
2:04:06
Speaker 1: than two years of the previous president's term, they can
2:04:09
Speaker 1: still run for two full terms of their own, potentially
2:04:11
Speaker 1: serving ten years. So you know, the word elected matters
2:04:18
Speaker 1: a lot there. Right, you have to assume that Republicans
2:04:23
Speaker 1: win a House majority for this to happen. You have
2:04:26
Speaker 1: to assume that Donald Trump can get all the votes
2:04:30
Speaker 1: he needs to be speaker, so he would still have
2:04:35
Speaker 1: to go through a process right to become speaker. And
2:04:40
Speaker 1: I just you know, so, I think you've identified the
2:04:44
Speaker 1: one loophole where you could claim a fig leaf of
2:04:51
Speaker 1: constitutional legitimacy. But in some ways it reminds me of
2:04:57
Speaker 1: Putin and Medvedev. Phutin decided to become prime minister to
2:05:04
Speaker 1: abide by what was a two term limit in Russia,
2:05:08
Speaker 1: right for president, So what does he do? He makes
2:05:12
Speaker 1: the prime minister slot of the more powerful slot. He
2:05:18
Speaker 1: slides in and becomes Prime minister. Medvedev becomes the president. Right,
2:05:23
Speaker 1: he's the head of state. But that's really it. It's
2:05:24
Speaker 1: kind of like he weakened the presidency for that period
2:05:27
Speaker 1: of time to sort of how Israel's presidency works. Right,
2:05:32
Speaker 1: the prime minister has all the power, the presidency is
2:05:36
Speaker 1: head of state, a little more ceremonial, a few pieces
2:05:40
Speaker 1: of power, but not a ton. That's what this would
2:05:44
Speaker 1: feel like, right, And I I think you've identified the loophole,
2:05:50
Speaker 1: and I also believe that attempting it it would be impossible.
2:05:55
Speaker 1: I still think if there's going to be a Trump
2:06:00
Speaker 1: on the ballot, and that's the thing, right, Like Republicans
2:06:05
Speaker 1: would rather have a Trump on a ballot than Trumps president,
2:06:08
Speaker 1: right because they it's Trump's voters that they need to
2:06:11
Speaker 1: get their majorities in Congress, and they don't necessarily want
2:06:15
Speaker 1: to actually work with Trump the situation you're outlining, you know,
2:06:19
Speaker 1: and do they just campaign that Trump's going to run
2:06:21
Speaker 1: for speaker and then you make it a referendum on that? Right?
2:06:26
Speaker 1: But I do think you've found the loophole that it
2:06:31
Speaker 1: in theory could be it. I will just say I
2:06:38
Speaker 1: just don't think it could. I don't think it could
2:06:40
Speaker 1: pull it off. And then you know, the actuary tables
2:06:43
Speaker 1: are going to catch up to Donald Trump sooner than
2:06:45
Speaker 1: you think. Next question comes from Brandon and Charlotte. Hey,
2:06:48
Speaker 1: I really enjoy the podcast. Appreciate how you keep us
2:06:50
Speaker 1: informed without leaning into full doom and gloom. What are
2:06:53
Speaker 1: your thoughts on the DJ Collecting voter rolls and seizing
2:06:55
Speaker 1: ballot boxes in Fulton County, Georgia feels like voter suppression
2:06:58
Speaker 1: or worse, a way to track and target people who
2:07:00
Speaker 1: din't vote for Trump. Why isn't this getting more attention
2:07:02
Speaker 1: and how concerned should we be? Well, I think it's
2:07:06
Speaker 1: getting a decent amount of tension. What I don't understand
2:07:09
Speaker 1: is what they want to do with all these voter roles.
2:07:11
Speaker 1: I think some of this has to do with just
2:07:13
Speaker 1: simply purging roles voter roles and just trying to make
2:07:17
Speaker 1: it harder. You know, people are going to have to reregister.
2:07:21
Speaker 1: I know what I would do if you're concerned that
2:07:24
Speaker 1: they're messing with your voter registration, just go register to
2:07:27
Speaker 1: vote again. You know it cancels out the old registration
2:07:30
Speaker 1: and just do it again. That would be the number
2:07:35
Speaker 1: one way I'd protect myself on this if if I
2:07:38
Speaker 1: had af I were a registered voter in a state
2:07:41
Speaker 1: that has agreed to letting the Department of Justice have
2:07:44
Speaker 1: the voter roles. You know, there's a part of me
2:07:51
Speaker 1: that says, call their bluff and say, you know, yes,
2:07:55
Speaker 1: let's let's let's do an audit of all the voter roles.
2:07:59
Speaker 1: Let's set up a special committee, and let's explain how
2:08:02
Speaker 1: it works and explain how each state does it. Ultimately,
2:08:10
Speaker 1: what I think Trump's up to is that he just
2:08:13
Speaker 1: he just wants to keep feeding the conspiracy that he's
2:08:19
Speaker 1: somehow won in twenty twenty. And it's he is just
2:08:24
Speaker 1: so committed to it. I mean, I guess it's amazing
2:08:30
Speaker 1: that he's committed to the bit this long, right, but
2:08:34
Speaker 1: it is sort of I find it laughable, except it's
2:08:38
Speaker 1: so serious, right, what he's trying to do in the
2:08:40
Speaker 1: manipulation of it all. Yeah, I think what you're I
2:08:45
Speaker 1: think the realistic fear we should have is a form
2:08:50
Speaker 1: of voter suppression, which is just purging of voter rolls
2:08:54
Speaker 1: or using it to you know, perhaps the information is
2:08:59
Speaker 1: get into some nefarious political direct mail company to scare
2:09:05
Speaker 1: those voters from voting. But there are other ways to
2:09:09
Speaker 1: get those voter roles too, But that's what that's why,
2:09:13
Speaker 1: you know. I think the fail safe is if you're
2:09:17
Speaker 1: in one of these states that is decided to not
2:09:21
Speaker 1: care about their Tenth Amendment rights. I'm very curious to
2:09:24
Speaker 1: see what happens with this lawsuit from Fulton County with
2:09:26
Speaker 1: it and see if they get their ballots back. If
2:09:29
Speaker 1: federalism is still in existence, they'll get their ballots back.
2:09:36
Speaker 1: But I would I would advocate for, you know, just
2:09:41
Speaker 1: go red story again, give them more voter roles to
2:09:45
Speaker 1: go through. Next question comes from Brian. Hey, I've been
2:09:50
Speaker 1: a fan of your work since twenty oh seven. All right,
2:09:52
Speaker 1: thanks for everything you do. Maybe I need a refreshment.
2:09:54
Speaker 1: Our politics usually works what as usual anymore? But anyway,
2:10:01
Speaker 1: but isn't it unusual for the out party to get
2:10:03
Speaker 1: a bill through? How much influence should we expect in
2:10:05
Speaker 1: a situation like this? Best bride? One hundred percent? Now,
2:10:09
Speaker 1: I'll say this Traditionally, when a president gets shell ACKed
2:10:16
Speaker 1: in a midterm George W. Bush oh six, Barack Obama
2:10:21
Speaker 1: twenty ten and twenty fourteen, Bill Clinton nineteen ninety four.
2:10:26
Speaker 1: They've wanted to prove that, particularly Obama twenty ten and
2:10:33
Speaker 1: Clinton ninety four, because they had their own real ex
2:10:36
Speaker 1: storry about that. Hey, all right, we can go I
2:10:39
Speaker 1: can govern with the other side. Let me show you
2:10:41
Speaker 1: how I can govern with the other side. And there's you.
2:10:43
Speaker 1: And by the way, the new majority usually it's in
2:10:46
Speaker 1: their interest to prove because a lot of them won
2:10:48
Speaker 1: by saying, look, I'll work with Trump where I can,
2:10:50
Speaker 1: or you know, I'll work with Obama where I can,
2:10:51
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So so bad. There might be
2:10:59
Speaker 1: a few a few things here or there. Maybe it's
2:11:01
Speaker 1: on healthcare subsidies. I mean, Trump's such a political chameleon, right,
2:11:05
Speaker 1: he has no ideology, And if you know, it all
2:11:10
Speaker 1: depends on how much the Democrats want to want to
2:11:16
Speaker 1: allow Trump to come along for the ride, you know,
2:11:21
Speaker 1: or do they want instead to prepare for twenty twenty
2:11:24
Speaker 1: eight in twenty twenty nine, right, and you and you
2:11:29
Speaker 1: actually pass bills that are designed to be vetoed. So
2:11:33
Speaker 1: I think there are two ways if Democrats get control
2:11:35
Speaker 1: of Congress, of what you know, you find a few
2:11:38
Speaker 1: things you can work on, particularly affordability, maybe something on electricity.
2:11:42
Speaker 1: You know, there's going to be things that you should
2:11:44
Speaker 1: you got your budgets and things like that. But I
2:11:47
Speaker 1: might argue that if you're if you're trying, you know
2:11:51
Speaker 1: that you you pass some bills and you dare him
2:11:55
Speaker 1: to veto it. Now, the question is what if he doesn't.
2:11:58
Speaker 1: And this is Trump, you never know how much do
2:12:01
Speaker 1: you attempt to work with him? I think it depends
2:12:07
Speaker 1: on how you got elected. I think some people got
2:12:09
Speaker 1: elected to say we've got to eradicate Trump from politics,
2:12:13
Speaker 1: and some people will get elected by promising those swing voters.
2:12:17
Speaker 1: Look they're you know, I'm not going to throw out
2:12:19
Speaker 1: every idea just because Trump came up with it. But
2:12:27
Speaker 1: I do think when you look at you know, there
2:12:32
Speaker 1: was some affordability bills, that some economic stimulus that the
2:12:37
Speaker 1: Democrats passed in seven that George W. Bush signed. There
2:12:42
Speaker 1: was certainly welfare reform that Republicans passed that bill Clinton signed.
2:12:48
Speaker 1: So and we like, I go back to there's no
2:12:52
Speaker 1: greater political chameleon than Donald Trump. And you know there's
2:12:58
Speaker 1: always this one instinctive hit like look at what he
2:13:01
Speaker 1: did was how he was with mom Donnie? Oh, Mom
2:13:04
Speaker 1: Donnie won by you. You know, he likes to be
2:13:06
Speaker 1: associated with winners, and he may deem especially if it's
2:13:10
Speaker 1: a blowout. He may want to show that there are
2:13:13
Speaker 1: some things he's because that means some of his voters
2:13:15
Speaker 1: voted for the Democrats. So I wouldn't don't, I wouldn't assume.
2:13:23
Speaker 1: I wouldn't assume it's that it's going to be nothing
2:13:26
Speaker 1: but messaging bills if Democrats win full control of Congress
2:13:29
Speaker 1: in working with Trump. All right, I'm going to have
2:13:33
Speaker 1: two more questions here and this will be I will
2:13:36
Speaker 1: empty my mike cue four this week. Hey, Chuck, Anthony
2:13:40
Speaker 1: from La here, long time, first time, quick question. If
2:13:43
Speaker 1: the Senate ends up split, say forty eight Republicans, forty
2:13:45
Speaker 1: eight Democrats and four independents who are the independence? By
2:13:48
Speaker 1: the way, how is majority controlled determined? Do Independence have
2:13:51
Speaker 1: to declare a caucus and can they switch at any time?
2:13:53
Speaker 1: Could that lead to the majority leadership changing hands? Thanks
2:13:55
Speaker 1: for turning me into a college football fan last year, Anthony,
2:13:58
Speaker 1: right on, Perhaps the the conferences ESPN or Fox can
2:14:03
Speaker 1: give me a kickback for for bringing bringing another fan
2:14:06
Speaker 1: into the fold. Well, the independents also vote on who
2:14:14
Speaker 1: which who which party? Should organize. Now, some of that
2:14:18
Speaker 1: stuff's usually negotiated, you know, behind the scenes. Now, who
2:14:23
Speaker 1: are your for independence? Right? I think Lisa Murkowski is
2:14:26
Speaker 1: up for grabs, right. I think Lisa Murkowski if if
2:14:32
Speaker 1: if her vote is the difference between the Democrats having
2:14:36
Speaker 1: full control of Congress and organizing with them, right, if
2:14:40
Speaker 1: they are a seat short, does Murkowski become you know,
2:14:45
Speaker 1: and do Democrats offer her, say, energy and natural resources
2:14:54
Speaker 1: in exchange for coming over? So the independence in theory
2:14:58
Speaker 1: have some leverage here if they choose to use it, right,
2:15:01
Speaker 1: you know, I've always had this dream that the four
2:15:04
Speaker 1: to six of them in there would be independence and
2:15:06
Speaker 1: they would always vote in a block right each time,
2:15:10
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe they would agree, okay, for calendar year
2:15:14
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven, Democrats are in charge for calendar year
2:15:18
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight, Republicans or whatever it is. But ultimately
2:15:21
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, if it's one of those where
2:15:27
Speaker 1: you know, we had it when we had a fifty
2:15:30
Speaker 1: to fifty Senate with Dick Cheney as the tiebreaker, when
2:15:33
Speaker 1: George W. Bush came into office, and then Jim Jefferts
2:15:36
Speaker 1: decided to leave the Republican Party become an independent and
2:15:39
Speaker 1: caucus with the Democrats. And the minute he did that,
2:15:42
Speaker 1: it went from a fifty to fifty Senate to a
2:15:44
Speaker 1: fifty one to forty nine Senate and the Democrats had control.
2:15:48
Speaker 1: So that's how it works, right, And yes, it can
2:15:53
Speaker 1: be that fickle. You know. Jefferts just said, Ah, screwt,
2:15:57
Speaker 1: I'm out now. I think there was a lobbying campaign
2:16:00
Speaker 1: by Dashel and Harry Reid and all of that stuff
2:16:02
Speaker 1: that was taking place. You know, Jeffers was the most
2:16:05
Speaker 1: liberal Republican in the Senate at the time, right, Barack
2:16:08
Speaker 1: Obama got on inspector to flip to become the sixtieth
2:16:12
Speaker 1: Democrat for a small period of time until the Scott
2:16:15
Speaker 1: Brown election. So yeah, in theory, majority can change hands
2:16:23
Speaker 1: mid term. Wheat, Like I said, it happened in my
2:16:25
Speaker 1: lifetime in twenty oh one with Vermont Senator Jim Jeffers.
2:16:33
Speaker 1: Last question comes from Nelson H. In New Orleans, Louisiana.
2:16:37
Speaker 1: I love the podcast. I'm calling my shot if James
2:16:40
Speaker 1: Talerico wins the Democratic primary upsets John Cornyn, I'm getting
2:16:43
Speaker 1: the vibe that his timing could be perfect to catch fire,
2:16:45
Speaker 1: just like Barack Obama did in twenty eight. Sure it
2:16:47
Speaker 1: probably won't happen, but think about it. As we all say,
2:16:50
Speaker 1: history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does. Rhyme all
2:16:52
Speaker 1: the best in ghost Saints spelled of course with the
2:16:55
Speaker 1: French do. I am a believer that of the following
2:17:01
Speaker 1: that the most likely Democratic nominee in twenty eight is
2:17:04
Speaker 1: somebody we're not talking about today. I have floated tall
2:17:09
Speaker 1: Rico as that idea. Now I will say this, I
2:17:12
Speaker 1: think he's This was a bad week for tall Rico's politics, right,
2:17:17
Speaker 1: this story about how he referred. According to an influencer,
2:17:24
Speaker 1: Tall Rico referred to Colin Allred as a mediocre black
2:17:28
Speaker 1: man versus Jasmine Crockett a talented black woman, and that
2:17:34
Speaker 1: phrase really took off on social media. Colin Allred certainly
2:17:39
Speaker 1: took offense to it, understandably. So now there was no recording,
2:17:43
Speaker 1: it wasn't clear. What was What I found interesting to
2:17:48
Speaker 1: pick a word was Tall Rico never denied saying it
2:17:52
Speaker 1: and basically confessed to saying something like it. And then
2:17:56
Speaker 1: because when you're doing the that isn't what I meant
2:17:59
Speaker 1: to say, that's code for yeah, I probably was a
2:18:04
Speaker 1: little loose. Now you've thought he was off the record,
2:18:07
Speaker 1: but hey, if you're not assuming, you know I do.
2:18:15
Speaker 1: The only time I assume I'm not being quoted is
2:18:17
Speaker 1: when I'm in a private home with my close friends
2:18:20
Speaker 1: or in my house. I am very careful in public.
2:18:25
Speaker 1: I assume when people say anything to me that it's
2:18:28
Speaker 1: very possible they're recording that they could be used, you know,
2:18:32
Speaker 1: in social media for better or for worse. Right, So
2:18:37
Speaker 1: I am a big milk toaster. When you come and
2:18:40
Speaker 1: see me in public, it's sort of in sort of
2:18:44
Speaker 1: you know, unofficial venues. So so I think it's look,
2:18:51
Speaker 1: he's I think it's done some damage. And you know,
2:18:55
Speaker 1: I'm not one hundred percent convinced. Colin all Redwood have
2:18:57
Speaker 1: endorsed Stasman Crockett, but he is now and he's all
2:19:01
Speaker 1: in now. So but where your head is at is
2:19:10
Speaker 1: where my head's at. So another name I throw out there,
2:19:14
Speaker 1: Molly McMorrow, Right, I think she's somebody who are already
2:19:17
Speaker 1: went viral once when she was a state legislator. She's
2:19:20
Speaker 1: now decided to run for US Senate. She's I think
2:19:25
Speaker 1: she's going to be the Goldilocks candidate that Democratic primary, right,
2:19:28
Speaker 1: Ailey Stephens is going to seem to establishment abd al
2:19:31
Speaker 1: say it, it might seem too progressive. She's going to be
2:19:33
Speaker 1: the one that seems to bridge. That's certainly the race
2:19:35
Speaker 1: she's trying to run, and it's probably going to work
2:19:38
Speaker 1: just because of how defined I think Stevens and I'll
2:19:42
Speaker 1: do say it are becoming maybe Rob saying getting elected
2:19:50
Speaker 1: governor of Iowa. If somebody, some Democrat, pulls a state
2:19:57
Speaker 1: wide upset in the Deep South, in any race, right,
2:20:00
Speaker 1: the point is is that I think it's just as likely.
2:20:03
Speaker 1: I'm with you. Remember Better O'Rourke was considered a major
2:20:07
Speaker 1: presidential candidate. He didn't even win in twenty eighteen, and
2:20:12
Speaker 1: within six months of losing, he's considered one of the
2:20:15
Speaker 1: front runners for the nomination because of how close he
2:20:18
Speaker 1: came to defeating Ted Cruz in twenty eighteen. So the
2:20:21
Speaker 1: Democratic Party's history is they're likely more likely to go
2:20:26
Speaker 1: with the new, freshest face they can find Pete Bootage. Look,
2:20:31
Speaker 1: without the intervention of Jim Clyburn and Covid, I will
2:20:35
Speaker 1: go to my grave, believe in Boudhajj and Sanders have
2:20:37
Speaker 1: a fight to the convention, and I think Pete wins
2:20:40
Speaker 1: the convention fight. But it's close. But you know, and
2:20:44
Speaker 1: that's a world without COVID essentially, and in a world
2:20:49
Speaker 1: that Iowa counted the caucuses correctly and gave Pete his
2:20:53
Speaker 1: correct victory there in Iowa. But either way, the point was,
2:20:57
Speaker 1: this former mayor of South Bend, who loved lost a
2:21:00
Speaker 1: race for d n C chair, suddenly is one of
2:21:02
Speaker 1: the front runners for the Democratic nomination. Right the Democratic Party.
2:21:07
Speaker 1: An unknown governor from Georgia ends up the Democratic nominee.
2:21:10
Speaker 1: A lesser known governor of Arkansas ends up the Democratic.
2:21:14
Speaker 1: A guy who was state senator in six years before
2:21:18
Speaker 1: he ever ran for president ends up the nominee in
2:21:20
Speaker 1: Barack Obama. The history of the Democratic Party is when
2:21:25
Speaker 1: they and here's another fact in this recent era, when
2:21:30
Speaker 1: they go with first time candidates, the new candidate, they're
2:21:33
Speaker 1: more likely to win. When they go with people that
2:21:35
Speaker 1: have been around a while, they're more likely to lose.
2:21:40
Speaker 1: Al Gore, John Kerry, Joe Hillary Clinton, sitting Vice President
2:21:48
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris right. Biden was an outlier, an unusual you know,
2:21:53
Speaker 1: in a normal primary process, Joe Biden never wins that primary. Right,
2:21:58
Speaker 1: he was an accidental primary winner because of the circumstances
2:22:04
Speaker 1: of of Covid and Clyburn, and that nomination was looking
2:22:12
Speaker 1: a lot more like seventy six with beat Boodaget's Jimmy
2:22:15
Speaker 1: Carter parallels, or even a bit ninety two with Bill Clinton,
2:22:23
Speaker 1: you know, having to go all the way to the
2:22:24
Speaker 1: convention and and keep beating back Jerry Brown. So I
2:22:31
Speaker 1: don't think you're off kilter here. I like I said,
2:22:38
Speaker 1: let's see how taal Rico manages this first crisis of
2:22:41
Speaker 1: his political career. And I'll tell you this. I you
2:22:44
Speaker 1: know I was. I was more pro tol Rico as
2:22:49
Speaker 1: a potential dark horse if he'd run for governor than
2:22:53
Speaker 1: running for Senate. I do think that he's going to
2:22:58
Speaker 1: I think he'd have made it more because I think
2:23:00
Speaker 1: he could have run and lost for governor but kept
2:23:02
Speaker 1: it close and still preserved sort of a future. I
2:23:06
Speaker 1: think this Senate seat right, especially if Kaka pass the primary.
2:23:09
Speaker 1: But I just think it's the wrong position. I think
2:23:12
Speaker 1: he had a serving in Austin in the Texas State legislature.
2:23:16
Speaker 1: I just thought his issues that he was that Abbott
2:23:20
Speaker 1: would have been a better foil for him, and it
2:23:24
Speaker 1: would have been a It would have been better for
2:23:26
Speaker 1: the party, better for the future of Texas Democrats. But
2:23:29
Speaker 1: he's trying to take a short cut. He has too
2:23:32
Speaker 1: many consultants, I think whispering sweet presidential, nothing's in his
2:23:36
Speaker 1: ear and saying, hey, Senate's an easier road. Okay, good
2:23:42
Speaker 1: luck with that. But I like your thinking, Nelson, because
2:23:47
Speaker 1: history backs up your prediction whether it's him. The point is,
2:23:52
Speaker 1: if you're going to close this off into gambling terms,
2:23:56
Speaker 1: go find the twelve to fifteen to twenty to one shot.
2:23:59
Speaker 1: Right now the Democratic primary, they're more likely to be
2:24:02
Speaker 1: the nominee than one somebody who's run before, and two
2:24:11
Speaker 1: somebody who had national name recognition ten years earlier. How
2:24:20
Speaker 1: are that? Enjoy your weekend. I hope nothing crazy happens
2:24:25
Speaker 1: that I see you before Monday. But if not, hey,
2:24:32
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of being in this world. We can
2:24:34
Speaker 1: pop in and quickly jump on something. But if not,
2:24:37
Speaker 1: for that, I'll see you Monday. Joy the super Bowl