Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - The Military Reveals Trump Has Been Lying About The Iran War + The Fired FTC Commissioner Sounding the Alarm on Corporate Power

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Full Episode - The Military Reveals Trump Has Been Lying About The Iran War + The Fired FTC Commissioner Sounding the Alarm on Corporate Power · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
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  Speaker 1: com slash chuck. Use that code. Hello, they'ren Happy Monday,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. This
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: is I Guess the Holiday Week. I say, I guess
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: a holiday week? Right when you have the big holiday,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: in this case, the fourth of July coming on Saturday.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: You know normally when it's in the day of the week, Right,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: if it's a Monday, Tuesday, fourth of July. The Friday
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: before becomes the start of a long five day holiday weekend.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Right if the fourth is on a Wednesday or Thursday
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: or Friday, then it's usually the following weekend. This one
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: feels like because either you end up with a short weekend,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: you do Friday through Monday, and come on, it's the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: fourth of July. We can't have a three day weekend
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: for the fourth of July. We got to make this
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: one of our longer holiday weekend. It's a five, a six,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: or a seven. So I think the Saturday means that
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: for many of you, the holiday weekend is going to
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: possibly start today on Monday, some of you Tuesday, and
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: definitely I think July first is sort of the unofficial
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: end of the business working week, at least in my
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: little unofficial survey of people I've talked to you about this.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: So the point is we are essentially entering in to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a holiday mode. That doesn't mean
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the news cycle is going to be a lull, and
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: in fact, it doesn't mean in some ways it may
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: even become sort of more front and center. You may
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: have to go out of your way to avoid news
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: if you're going to try to do that. Obviously, if
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: you've tuned into me, you don't want to avoid news
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and information. You kind of want to know what the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: heck is going on. First, let me give you a
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: little programming note beginning this week. I know you're normally
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: up that I update three days a week. I'll be
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: updating two days a week Mondays and Thursdays. I'll be
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: doing my big podcast Drops and Today being starting this
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: coming week, and we'll be operating this way throughout the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: entire month of July and for the first half of August.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: It's my way of sort of going from fifth gear
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: down to fourth gear. But new Sphere is still going
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: to be every week those of you that look forward
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to that. This week I interviewed Susan del Bennet, the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: d Triple C chair. I will share a little bit
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: more of what she had to say in my next
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: episode on that. I kind of want to let you
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: guys have an opportunity to consume that on your own.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So and I also have my new sports history podcast, Dynastic.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: A new episode is going to be dropping in the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: next few days and the timing is very appropro We
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: do a deep dive of the dynasty that is Wimbledon,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So I just thought I would get all of those
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit again. The big news being we will
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: do two drops a week for the next six weeks
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: as we try to ratchet down a little bit. So
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: let me give you a rundown of today's episode. Look,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't plan on doing more in Iran, but I
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: have a little bit on Iran, a little bit on
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the fight over the billionaire's tax and sort of what's
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: realistic politics, what's dumb politics? There, a little bit on
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: a fascinating interview by my friend John carl of Zuwan Mamdanni.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: He is absolutely comfortable being the face of the Democratic Party.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: In some ways, I feel like, in his own way
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: said bring it on, which is going to create more
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: tension inside the party. But it is exactly in some
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: ways he wants to lean like he's daring the right
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to make him the face. I think he sees an
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: opportunity here. And we're also going to give you a
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: little bit of preview of a huge primary not in Tuesday,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: because that's one other thing I left out. We are
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: going to do an election live stream on Tuesday night
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: for the Colorado primary. Because Colorado is suddenly this might
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: be the most fascinating Colorado primary in over a decade.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Michael Bennett's path to the governorship there suddenly doesn't look
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: so sure the way it looked two months ago. Is
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: John Hickenlooper in trouble? Could he lose a primary? It's
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: not totally out of the question. And then, of course
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: you have Diana to get the longtime member of Congress
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: from the Denver area. She's being challenged by a DSA
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: candidate and most has actually showed her trailing there. So
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of storylines to dig into in
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the state of Colorado, and so I'll be doing a
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: mini preview there. My interview is with alvar Obadoya. He
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: is a former FTC Commissioner's appointe of Joe Biden. He
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be still he should still be in
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: office at this point, but Trump fired him. He decided
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: not to fight it. Others are fighting it. It is
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: still not clear whether his firing was legal or not.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: He chose not to fight it. He accepted the firing
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and he's moved on. We are still awaiting that Supring
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Court case, by the way, on what was the legality
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: of these firings or attempted firings and federal agencies, whether
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: it's the Federal Reserve, the FTC, the FCC, the FEC,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: and all of that. So that's the conversation the time
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: machine this week. It's holiday themed and it's all about
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the bikini. That's my only clue for you. It's all
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: about the bikini. Right, it's summer. We'll see you don't
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: let your minds wander too much on that. But look,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: let me start with what was a really disturbing set
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: of breaking news alerts that we all received over the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: weekend on our phone. There's a cease fire, at least
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: we were told in the War of the Wrong. Now
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  Speaker 1: you got to hold onto that sentence because the United
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: States government spent this past weekend bombing the country that
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: were supposedly at peace with two nights of air strikes
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  Speaker 1: Friday and Saturday against a nation we signed a deal
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  Speaker 1: with eleven days earlier. So we probably should be honest
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  Speaker 1: about the language we are here. This isn't a ceasefire.
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  Speaker 1: There's plenty of fire. There's not been no there's been
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  Speaker 1: no ceasing, and it's in fact more fire than ceasing.
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  Speaker 1: But it's not the actual Actually the story I want
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  Speaker 1: to tell you today, the clocks of this ceasefires, frankly,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: was almost expected. Ceasefires are fragile in nature. It's not
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  Speaker 1: uncommon for them to break, especially when you have nothing
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  Speaker 1: really signed. Here. They signed a I think they docu
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  Speaker 1: signed a memo of understanding. That just means they and
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  Speaker 1: I think what we've learned is they don't understand the
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  Speaker 1: memo they signed, the Iranians or the US government. But
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  Speaker 1: the story today is is who broke the story? Because
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  Speaker 1: for the weekend, the United States military, not a reporter,
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  Speaker 1: not a leaker, not some Democrat on a Sunday show,
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  Speaker 1: the United States military, doing nothing but its own job,
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  Speaker 1: accidentally fact check the President of the United States, and
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  Speaker 1: in doing it, they revealed that he's been lying to
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  Speaker 1: you about this war for the better part of a month.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think that was the intent of the military.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, that's what makes it so devastating. And the
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: reason I want to single this out is because if
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  Speaker 1: there has ever been a line that American voters basically
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  Speaker 1: just refuse to cross, is accepting a lie about war,
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  Speaker 1: whether it's WMD in Iraq, whether it's Vietnam, and now
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  Speaker 1: whether it's here with Iran, because we now I know
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  Speaker 1: it is not news to people that Donald Trump lies
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  Speaker 1: to you, right, it's sort of you know, it comes
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  Speaker 1: to him as easily as breathing. Okay, I understand that.
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  Speaker 1: But there's little lies, there's big little lies, and then
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  Speaker 1: there's big big lies. This is a big, big lie.
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  Speaker 1: Here's how it happened. So this weekend, Central Command did
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  Speaker 1: what militaries do after they conduct to strike. They put
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  Speaker 1: out a statement. They listed the targets. They were routine,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: they were bureaucratic, There were taliatory targets. Look, the Iranians
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  Speaker 1: broke this ceasefire too, and I just want to imply
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: that this has been a two way street here. This
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  Speaker 1: is attack counter attack. But the statement that the military
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: that Suncom put out, you know, it was very sort of,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: like I said, bureaucratic. It's the kind of thing that
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: you might scroll past. The list though, reads like this,
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  Speaker 1: US forces hit Iranian defense sites, they hit coastal radar,
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  Speaker 1: they hit surveillance infrastructure, communications systems, surface to air missile system.
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  Speaker 1: The statement also said they hit drone storage facilities and
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  Speaker 1: mine laying capabilities. So follow all that away for a second. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to go back in time, not that far
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: back in time, just three weeks. Three weeks ago, the
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  Speaker 1: President of the United States told my friend and longtime colleague
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Kristen Welcome the following. Here's what he said about the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: very same Iranian military. Quote their navy is gone, their
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: air force is gone, their anti aircraft is gone. And
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: he went on. He said he'd demolished the air force,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: he the anti aircraft. He said they had no radar.
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  Speaker 1: He said his word, they had nothing. Nothing. So I
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: have a simple question, it's the only question that matters
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: this week. How do you bomb nothing? Is this a
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Seinfeld war? Were bombing nothing here? You can't blow up
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: an air defense system that doesn't exist, right, You can't
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: strike coastal radar belonging to a country that, in the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: president's words, has no radar. You can outrun two nights
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of sorties against an anti aircraft network that is quote gone.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So one of two things are true. There's no third
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: option here. So we're going to walk through both. And
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I know, trying to make the case that the president
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: is full of shit, it's not very hard, but I
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: do think it's important when you see it when it
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: literally is being shoved in your face, and it's about
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: war because the president doesn't get to escape out either door.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: On this one. Door number one, Aron reconstituted a destroyed
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: military in eleven days. That's possible. I guess if the
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: president didn't lie, then then this is what had to happen.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: They had to rebuild their radar, their air defenses, their
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: drone depots, their mind layers, all of it in less
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: time than it takes most of us to get a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: passport renewed. Are they that good? If that's your story? Okay,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: but understand where you just admitted. You've admitted that the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: quote obliteration never took. You've admitted you bombed a country
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: into a setback it shrugged off in under two weeks.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: That's not a victory. That's a receipt for twenty nine
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: billion dollars. Thirteen dead Americans made out to a regime
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: that was back on its feet before the ink on
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: your peace deal was even dry. Or let's go through
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: door number two, the simpler one, the Okham's razor door.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: The military. The Iranian military was never obliterated, the radar
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: was never gone, the nothing was always something, and the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: President stood in front of the country and the cameras
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and to Kristen Welker and described a war that wasn't
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the war we were actually fighting either. Iran is a
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: phoenix for the commander in chief is a liar. And
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: notice both of those answers or stories he does not
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: want told. That's the trap. Scent com by doing nothing
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: but its paperwork, sprung this trap on their commander, on
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the our commander in chief. Now, of course this is
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: a pattern. If this were a runoff, yeah, okay, maybe
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: you give the president propaganda of war, benefit of the doubt,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: fog of war's real early claims get walked back. It
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: can happen. But we know this was no slip. This
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: is the style of Trump. Go back to the word
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that's defined the entire war from day one. Obliterated. President
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: used it the very day of the original strike back
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, Iran's nuclear sides completely and totally obliterated.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: His Defense secretary went further and said Iran's nuclear ambition
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: had been obliterated as well as if you can bomb
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: an intention, and then he just kept saying it month
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: after month. September October November December, January CNN actually category
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: cataloged all over this, the same word on a loop,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: like a man reassuring himself. If you say it long enough,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: maybe it'll become true. Beetlejuice, bele, just beatle juice, obliterated, obliterated, obliterated. Meanwhile,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: his own government's early intelligence assessment found the strikes hadn't
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: destroyed the core of the program and had set it
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: back a few months. And then, of course he fired
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the person that gave the honest assessment. His own NBC
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: interview got fact checked. In real time, half of Iran's
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: unconventional navy was still floating. The very fast boats now
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: harassing tankers in the Strait of Horror moves, the ones
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: that pulled us back into this. So when I say
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: he's been lying about this war for a month, I
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: want to be precise. The weekend strikes are just the cleanest,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: most undeniable example, using the military's own words and facts.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Because this time the lie wasn't contradicted by a leak,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: by a reporter, by a politician. It was contradicted by
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: the bombs themselves. So here's the part that should stick
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: in your throat. He didn't just claim he'd won. He
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: threw himself a party, remember, on his eightieth birthday, in
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: front of a UFC cage set up on the south
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: lawn of the White House like it was a bouncy house.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: The President announced, and he wanted it on his birthday
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: because he needed the headline right that the war was over.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And he I think Docu signed it again right, he
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: posted the deal with Iran was complete. Days later, he
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: signed a memorandum at Versailles because he wanted to make
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: because you know, there's no historical significance to signing really
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: bad piece deals at Versailles. Anyway, he called Iran quote
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: called it Iran's unconditional surrender. It's quite a phrase. Hold
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: it next to this weekend's footage of American aircraft striking
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Iranian air defenses, and tell me which one is describing
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the real war for the record. Iran called the same
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: document a record of US failure, and the deal reportedly
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: hands Tehran twenty four billion dollars in unfrozen assets and
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: a line on three hundred billion dollars more for reconstruction.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: It's a strange looking surrender, and it certainly looks conditional
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: if it is a surrender. Surrenders don't usually come with
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: a check. Now here's where I'm going to use loose
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: some of you, and I want to keep, but I
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: want to keep some of you anyway. You can believe
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: this war was justified. You can believe Iran how to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: coming and the strikes were necessary. Then a nuclear iron
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: was the greater danger. And what they've been doing in
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the Middle East, you know, they're basically, if you're going
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: to do this, go all the way. And I'm not
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: here to take that from you, because that's a real argument,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and reasonable people are on both sides of it, because
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: that's not the failure. The failure isn't the decision. The
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: failure is the execution of the decision. And now it's
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a debacle. So it doesn't matter which side you're on,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: whether you think we should have done it and we
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: just did it badly, or we should never have done
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: it at all because we just opened up a can
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: of worms. The fact is everybody's right now because of
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the complete and utter foolishness and mismanagement by this administration.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: This makes the Keystone Cops look like Patton's Army. We
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: spent twenty nine billion dollars, and that's a lowball figure,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: by the way, because it conveniently leaves out repairing our
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: own bombed out bases in the region. We lost thirteen Americans,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: We signed a ceasefire that was taking on water inside
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: of two weeks. And through it all, the one consistent thing,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the one reliable feature of the entire war, has been
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: a commander in chief telling the public a version of
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: events that the facts on the ground keep refusing to confirm.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: It keeps lying about a war and an a war.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: That's not a small thing, it's the whole thing. And previously,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: when American presidents get caught lying about a war, it's
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: it that's over. A democracy. Cannot consent to a war
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: it's being lied to about. Can't weigh a car that
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: they keep hiding from you, you can judge, can't judge
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: a victory that has to be bombed back into existence
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: every couple of weeks. So look, we're trained to think
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of the fog of wars is the thing that keeps
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the truth from reaching us, the chaos, the distance, the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: enemy's deception. Right, We're not going to be very trustful
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: of statements coming from the Iranian regime, but this time,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the fog isn't coming from Tehran. It's coming from the
• 18:28
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• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And the most honest account of this war, the truest,
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  Speaker 1: clearest document we got this whole month, wasn't a speech
• 18:38
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  Speaker 1: target list written by the people dropping the bombs. Read
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  Speaker 1: it closely enough, because it's not a press release. It's
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: a confession that the President of the United States has
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: been lying this entire time about everything that has happened
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: in Iran, going back to the summer of twenty twenty five.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe that doesn't matter to enough people, but this is
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: why I don't think this. You know, he thought he
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: was going to memory hole this war and he was
• 19:11
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• 19:13
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  Speaker 1: gas prices down. Finally, here's the thing. Aron's not going
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  Speaker 1: you're in Louisiana. I want to move to another topic here.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: It's one that I sort of that I get the
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: desire of future Democratic presidential candidates to jump into it.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: And that is this idea of taxing. And the thing
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: is is that and I look, I'm gonna just a
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: little wonky warning here. Okay, there is a there is
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: a rational way to do this. The dumb, irrational, shiny
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: mental object way is to do what both gaven Neusom
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and Rocanna are arguing about. And look, there's a fight
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: between the two of them over this California billionaire tax.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: But I actually think all of this gets it something
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: bigger than this one proposal, because my first reaction to
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the whole thing was pretty simple, and I tweeted the following, Man,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: our politics are dumb. I get it. It's hard to
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: sell the idea of simply fixing our tax code to
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: get rid of the loopholes that exist only for the wealthy.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: But that's the real scam and issue. How about closing
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: all the wealthy loopholes that Congress is essentially sold to
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: lobbyists for the last thirty years. I promise you would
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: likely get the super rich paying more than they do
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: now rather than doing this class warfare cosplay. And I
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: stand by the core of that, but I want to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: be more precise. Right, that was sort of hot take
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: jackassery that I can all of us can get do
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: sometimes at social media. But I was sort of you know,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: you just you know, you're scrolling and you're like, ah,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: this is God, this is stupid. Nobody. We're having a
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: fight over something that is just it's never going to
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: work and it will only make things worse than their
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: tax code. So I want to be more preciser. This
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: is not an argument that billionaires are over taxed. No,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: they're under tax Okay, they're not victims here. This is
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: not some poor billionaire segment. The issue is that when
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: politicians reduce tax policy to slogans billionaire tax, wealth tax,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: death tax, fair share, the slogan starts doing the work
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: that actual policy design is supposed to do. And what
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: happens is we got a tax code full of tunnels, trapdoors, exemptions,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: carve outs, and escape patches. Because when you do these
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: sort of one time ideas, the billionaire's tax, or we're
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: just going to do this thing here, well, as soon
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: as they try to implement the top line thing, there's
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: like eighteen different unintended consequences below it. So then they
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: write all these loopholes to minimize the unattended consequences that
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: their headline, you know, beat their chest policy idea gets
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: implemented and it doesn't really do what they say it does.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: In fact, I'm going to use a slogan that the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: right wing's been using for a long time. Right think
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: about one of the most effective tax slogans of the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: last half century, and it's been the biggest ripoff of
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the American government in the last half century. It's called
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the so called death tax. Politically genius, morally sounded simple,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: why should the government tax you because you died? Right?
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: But as policy rhetoric it actually helped make serious inheritance
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: tax reform toxic. And while everybody argued over the emotional slogan,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the real machinery stayed intact. Essentially, what they've done is
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: it's allowed the super wealthy to put off ever paying taxes,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and then when they die there is no tax bill.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Here's how it works in plain English. If you buy stock, land,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: or a business or some other asset for a million
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: dollars and it grows to fifty million dollars, that forty
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: nine million dollar gain is usually not taxed until you sell.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: But if you die while holding it, your errors often
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: get to reset the value to the market price at death,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: So a huge amount of lifetime appreciation can simply disappear
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: from the capital gains tax system. It's not conspiracy theory.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: That's simply how the tax code works. It is the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: greatest loophole for the wealthy ever created, And the Congressional
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Budget Office has actually put some numbers on. Just changing
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: the taxation of assets transferred at death would raise about
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: two hundred billion dollars over ten years under a carryover
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: basis approach, or about half a billion dollars over ten
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: years if recrued capital gains were taxed at death. So
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: before anybody invents a new slogan, maybe we should just
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: simply start there. Then you add the other obvious stuff.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: There's the pass through business income where some high income
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: owners use these es corps limited partnerships to avoid the
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Medicare payroll tax, the net investment income tax. Right. CBO says,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: if you just close that one, it raises a half
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: a billion over ten years. If you raise long term
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: capital gains and qualified dividend rates by just two percentage
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: points right, so that people living on dividend income have
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: to have to actually pay their fair share, that's another
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: one hundred billion. Then there's that carried interest like ordinary income.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Just treating carried interest like ordinary income, that's another thirteen billion. Again,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: people getting bonus money without having to pay the tax
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: rate that most of us have to pay. Add those
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: up with the inheritance tax reform, and you've already somewhere
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: between seven hundred billion in over a trillion dollars over
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: ten years. And that's before you even get to a
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: full universe of tax expenditures, which are basically spending programs
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: hidden inside the tax code. There's another two point three
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: trillion dollars in that arguably, So when people say tax
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: the billionaires, fine, well, I think we're all listening. But
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: my question is, how are you going to do it
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: where it actually doesn't f up the tax code even
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: more and doesn't actually create more loopholes for the rich
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: that the only the rich has the ability to hire
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the people to take advantage of. Are you closing loopholes
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: to let wealth grow on tax Are we fixing the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: rules around borrowing against your own assets and then suddenly
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: not having to pay taxes on that. Are we stopping
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: gains from being erased completely at death? Are we treating
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: labor income and capital investment income more consistently? Okay, meaning
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the same person earning a million dollars a year and
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: nivited income does not pay at the same tax rate
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: than the same person earning just regular old paychecks. Are
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: we going to clean up this pass through income mess
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: that was manufactured by Congress with their various LLC reforms?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Are we just creating a new political brand that lobbyists
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: will immediately start carving exceptions into, because that's the pattern.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Step one is pass the slogan. Step two is write
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a new giant tax bill. Step three, every industry and donor,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: class lawyer and accountant lobbyists in Washington gets to work
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: to find a loophole that protects them. And then step four.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Ten years later, normal people are still paying taxes out
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: of every single paycheck, while the people with the best
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: accountants are playing by a completely different set of rules.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Now look onto this Newsome versus Kanna fight. Specifically, they
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: both have a point and both sides are also performing here.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Conna's point is, don't tell voters you support taxing billionaires
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: in theory while opposing the actual billionaire tax in front
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of you. All Right, fair politicians love future tens courage.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: I'm for the bold thing later somewhere else when the
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: votes are different. Right, But Newsom's point is not crazy either.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: The state level billionaire wealth tax is different from a
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: federal reform of the tax code. California relies heavily on
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: high earners for revenue. If you design a one time
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: wealth tax that encourages the most mobile taxpayers to move,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: you may get a big hit of cash in year
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: one and then suddenly have a weaker tax space for
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the next ten years. That's not defending billionaires. That's simply arithmetic.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: So the real question should not be who has the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: better slogan. Questions should be what policy actually survives contact
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: with lawyers, accountants, mobility, litigation, and Congress. And this is
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: why I'm skeptical when either party starts branding tax policy
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: on a bumper sticker. The death tax put us into
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: this mess. The inclement equality issue we have in this country,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: arguably at its core now, is how this death tax
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: has been absolutely manipulated by the rich in this country
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: to put off ever paying any capital gains until they
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: die and they won't have to pay it once they die.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Billionaire tax can obscure the details of how wealth is
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: measured when it's taxed, how liquidity works, whether people can move,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Trust me, people will be it will avoid the billionaire
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: tax with all sorts of different shell games, right, And
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. When you try to layer on top
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of this tax code, you actually make the tax code
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: more complicated and easier to manipulate. Fair share can sound great,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: but unless you define the base, the rate, the timing,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: and actually reform the tax code, it's a slogan that
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: pulls well. And that's it. So don't stop taxing, you know,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: let's let's let's actually fix this thing. If the structure says,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: wages get taxed immediately, but wealth growth can be deferred
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: for decades, borrowed against passed through entities, tax to prefer raids,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: erase to death, fix that. That's the billionaire tax that
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: they're getting away with. Fix that. Don't single out even more.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: You're just allowing the abuse to continue. If the structure
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: says Congress can create a loophole, then Congress will create
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: a loophole and lobbyists will find a way to protect it.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: And if a billionaire tax is just really shorthand for
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: fixing those things at a federal level, great, say that,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: write that, score that, but don't sell this class warfare
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: costplay while leaving the same old loophole machine untouched. Our
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: politics are dumb, and the slogan airing is making it dumber.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And I'm sorry. The tax reform isn't simple. I wish
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: it were simple and quick, but there's no new idea
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: we need here. Just stop the bullshit in Congress. Write
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: a tax code cleanly and enough. You know, Just let's
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: put the to this death tax, because that that is
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the big problem. The money's already there, the math is there.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: It's the loopholes that are preventing us from having what
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: appears to be a fairer system. And the real question
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: is are politicians serious about closing loopholes or simply renaming them.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: A few more things I want to get to socialists
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the rise of the Democratic Socialist Mom Donnie did a
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: bit of a victory lap and he was with my
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: friend John Carl And there's a few things that I
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: found interesting about the interview. One was Mom Donnie leans
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: in and he wants to be the national face of
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the DSA movement, and he doesn't mind, in fact, let me.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: And he also believes Tuesday began that essentially what happened
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday in New York City was the beginning of
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the debate about the future of the Democratic party for
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: the presidentialation twenty eight. You know, rarely do you have
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: a local politician. No, no, no, no, no, Please don't nationalize this.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: This is about us. Mamdani's been doing just the opposite.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Let me just read you a few of the quotes.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Here's one here. Well, a lot of pumits asked me,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: this is Mamdani. A lot of pumas ask me about
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: this race and what it means and how to think
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: about it. And at the core of Tuesday's results was
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: a message from Democratic voters across the largest city in
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: the United States of America about the kind of politics
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: they want to see. And we know that we oppose
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the cruelty of the federal administration. What is it that
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: we stand for beyond that? And then he was asked,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: are you okay with Republicans making you the face of
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the party, making you the Democratic Socialists the face of
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the party, And Mam Donnie says, let them. We don't
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: socialist win. I won last November, and over the course
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of these last six months, what we've delivered for working
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: people are the very things we were told were impossible.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: We've delivered free childcare for two year olds for the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: first time in New York City history. We've delivered tens
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of millions of dollars back to tenants who were taken
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: advantage of by bad landlords. We've delivered one hundred and
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: sixty five thousand potholes being paved. And we've done all
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: these things while also delivering the lowest recorded crime in
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: our city's history. That's what it looks like to have
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: democratic socialism. And what you're seeing is that New Yorkers
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: experienced this for six months and made the decision that
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: they wanted to see more of it on the national
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: stage as well. That's quite the story Mandani wants to tell.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Like the reality is, he won in three primaries in
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: what was already his base, in the strongest parts of
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the city that he was in before. There is no
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: evidence that this has expanded beyond there, in fairness, but
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what the evidence says. Right he is saying, Nope,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: I'm the national leader of this movement. This is happening.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: I'm in the largest city. We are not just a faction.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: We are making a statement. It's there's no if fans
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: or butts, and look he was asked about whether you
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: know he was not born in the United States. He
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: was asked whether he wanted to see a constitutional amendment
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: to allow somebody who wasn't born in the United States. The
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: President said, no, leave the constitution alone, which in itself
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: was interesting. Interesting. He didn't say that there needed to
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: be anything done with the Constitution, which I found quite
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: surprising in that answer, but it shows you he is
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: he planned to be the leader of this movement without
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: having to worry about being the candidate for president of
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the United States. That I think is fascinating on that front. Now,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: he was asked directly, can a democratic socialist be elected
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: president mom Donnie said the following, I think a democratic
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: socialist can get elected anywhere across this country for any position.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: What I think we need to bring is a focus
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: on working people. And then he's asked if that's the
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: direction the party should go in twenty eight and he
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: said the following, I think the direction that the party
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: should go in is how best to fight for working people.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I think we need to have a platform and a
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: vision that doesn't sound as if it was cooked up
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: by consultants, but instead one that you would say in
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: response to someone who's asking why can't I afford my rent?
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Why can't I afford my groceries? Why can't I afford
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: my childcare? We need to make clear who we stand for,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: how we're going to stand for them, and that we're
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: actually willing to fight for them when the going gets tough.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: So there you go. Two other things that jumped out
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that'll be of concern to some of you out there.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: One was Mamdani was asked again about the what happened
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: to Congressman Dan Goldman who lost one of the primaries
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: that he got involved in. Uh He basically he was
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: not quite refused service for coffee, but was refunded because
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: essentially he because he support he supports he voted to
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: give military aid Israel. I don't want to assume that
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: they just did it because he was Jewish. I think
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: it that they said it was about his position on Israel.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: And so John Carl asked him the following question, do
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: you have a problem with I mean the idea of
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you know, an establishment like that saying they're not going
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: to serve some buddy if they support Israel? And Mom,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Donnie said, I've said that I have political disagreements with
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Congressman Goldman. I do believe that's that that's a response
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: that goes beyond that. I have to tell you. He
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: technically said he didn't agree with what was done to
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Dan Goldman, but that's some weak defense to there. Uh.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: He did go on to say that he admits that
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: anti Semitism is on the rise compared to the size
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: of the Jewish population in New York City and that
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: that was a real problem. The other thing he said, oh,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: is that he did not believe Israel should be a
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Jewish state, and so he qualified, yes, Israel has a
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: right to exist, but not as a Jewish state, which
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: was and he went on to say it would not
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: support any nation that does that. He singled out Saudi Arabia.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: I assume he will be about the Vatican, which is
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: technically its own country as well on that. So he
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: is Look, I think Mam Donnie as a performer is
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: very good, and I think he does a pretty good
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: job of trying to the most controversial things he stands for.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: He tries to rush off very very carefully, and there's
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: a bit of teflon that he has right now. But
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: make no mistake, he is leaning into being the face
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: of democratic socialism, and in some way it may be
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: move over AOC. He is move over Bernie. That this
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: AOC may be Bernie's heir apparent on the ballot, Mam
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Donnie is going to be Bernie's heir apparent sort of
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: in sort of being I think more of the godfather
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: of the movement itself. This episode of the Chuck Podcast
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: is brought to you by Ethos And what Ethos does
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: is it helps you find life insurance. Let me tell
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• 39:24
  Speaker 1: He bought a life insurance policy. Wasn't a huge chunk
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  Speaker 1: of change, but it was enough when we found it.
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• 40:44
  Speaker 1: think that the larger question is and this is where
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a quick little hobby horse here for
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: a minute. Because the three Democratic socialists that won those
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: primaries in New York this week, certainly, you know, got
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: a reaction from the president, right he he is, of course,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: decided instead of attacking socialism, he posted the following, the
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: communists are finally making their move. I've been waiting and
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: preparing for this for a long time. The game is
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: on enjoy watching. So the question is what are we
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: watching here? Right? Sit with that This is not the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: voice of a man who's afraid. And this is what
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: I fear is happening here, is that essentially the socialists
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: and the nationalists, socialists led by Mamdanni, the nationalists led
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: by Trump, they're feeding off of each other because look
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: at how excited you have Mamdanni, bring it on, make
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: me the face, and you have Trump going. I love it,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: enjoy watching. This is in some ways, this is the
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: contrast each wants. They don't want any of this pesky
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: nuance that most of us have and that live in
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: between the thirty five yard life. These guys love the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: bright color contrast between the far left and the far right.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: So the fact that he says enjoy watching it's not
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: the words of a man who's afraid of what's happening
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: in New York. That's the voice of a man who
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: thinks he just got a gift. And by the weekend
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: he'd move from calling them communists to calling them godless communists,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: and that they're coming for your churches. So let me
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: lay out the trade. These two ends of our politics
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: have quietly worked out. I think once you see it,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: you won't be able to un see it. For an
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: extremist faction to win either one of them. It doesn't
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: actually need you to love its ideas. It needs you.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: It just needs you to believe the other side is worse.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: It's the whole engine. Fear of them is more reliable
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: than faith in us in the defining nature of our
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: politics for this century right, which means the most valuable
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: thing a democratic socialist can have is a frightening Republican
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: to point at who's moving from nationalism to fascism. And
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: the most valuable thing this president can have is a
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: frightening socialist point at that he can accuse of being
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: a communist. So they point at each other on purpose.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Right now, the single best ally the DSA has in
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: American politics is Donald Trump, And the single best ally
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has right now is the DSA. They are
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: not enemies. They are each other's reason to exist. Every
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: time one gets scarier, the other gets stronger. That isn't
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: a conflict, It's a partnership and a product. Their partner
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: to manufacture is our fear. Okay. The founders saw the
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: zelops coming. They assumed some faction would always show up
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: convinced it alone had the truth, and they built the
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: big machine to contain it. Two chambers, separated powers, staggered terms,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: massively huge size of a House or representatives. The whole
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: point was so that no single faction left or right
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: could seize the whole government at once, and that part
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: still holds. Nobody installs socialism because three candidates one in
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: New York City. Nobody installs fascism because a small movement
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: captured a party the overnight takeover of the whole thing.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: The document is genuinely still in the way of that.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: As we've seen, Trump has not been able to install
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: this nationalist that some believe is fascist sort of vision
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: of government. Stephen Miller has a vision he'd like to install,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: but he's been prevented by that pesky constitution, which maybe
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: bends at times, but it hasn't broken just yet. But
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: that's not the threat that's actually on the table. The
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: threat on the table is smaller and a lot more achievable,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: because a concentrated faction doesn't need to capture the country.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: It just needs to capture a caucus, the leadership of
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: one block, the agenda of one party, in one chamber.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: And there the Founders left us more exposed than we
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: want to admit, not because they failed, but because we
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: stopped finishing what they started. So here's a safeguard. Most
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: people forget. Madison's answer to faction was never just separate
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the powers. It was scale. His argument, and you can
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: read it right now in Federalist ten, was that the
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: cure for faction was more factions fill the chamber with
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: so many competing voices, so many rival interests, that no
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: single concentrated group can ever run the table. The danger
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: was never a faction having a voice. The danger was
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: a concentrated faction having a voice far out of proportion
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: to its actual size. The protection was supposed to be
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the sheer multiplicity of factions, and that depends on a
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: chamber big enough to hold it. He cared about this
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: so much that for Madison it became actually the very
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: first thing he tried to write down when they sat
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: down to draft the Bill of Rights. The amendment that
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: they listed first before free speech, before religion, before the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: right to bear arms, wasn't about any of the freedoms
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: we think of today. It's about the size of the
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: House of Representatives. They literally called it Article the first.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: And to understand why it's sat at the very top,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: you have to understand what people were actually afraid of
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: in seventeen eighty nine. The fear wasn't a king anymore.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: The fear was simply distance that the House was meant
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: to be the people's chamber, the one part of the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: federal government citizens elected directly. Remember at the time, we
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: did elect senators directly then. And the anti federalists looked
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: at it and said, if you let those districts get
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: too big, if you let one representative speak for too
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: many people, the people's House stops belonging to the people,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: becomes a club. Madison took that seriously enough to answer
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: it across three different Federalist papers. Was not a footnote
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: to him, it was close to his entire argument. So
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: he wrote an amendment to guarantee the House would always
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: grow with the country. The formulas stepped up over time,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: one representative for every thirty thousand people, easing towards one
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: for every fifty thousand as the nation got bigger, but
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the principle underneath never moved. As America grows, the House
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: would grow with it automatically. It would have been the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: one piece of the Constitution that scaled itself forever. So
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: the Chamber could never drift too far from the people
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: in siding. But it never passed, not because anyone defeated it.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: That's actually the part that matters. That three things happened.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: The first is just human nature. The amendments about rights, speech, religion,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: due process. They were more popular, they were more exciting,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: they got people more fired up, and the states rushed
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: them through. People didn't like process back then either. The
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: structural one, this boring one I'm telling you about apportionment math, well,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: it lagged behind. The second is almost embarrassing. Somewhere in
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: the drafting a single word got transcribed wrong, and it
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: broke the formula. So for a sketch of the nation's growth,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the math literally contradicted itself. It called for more representatives
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: than it allowed at the same time. It was a
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: clerical mistake, but enough to make a cautious state legislature pass.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: And the third was just bad timing. As Vermont and
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Kentucky joined the Union, the number of states needed to
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: ratify it kept climbing, and the amendment kept falling short
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: of the moving target it came with when one state
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: and then everybody moved on. But you know what's funny
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: about this, It was never voted down. You know, like
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the argument for the Equal Rights Amendment was never sort
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: of unfinished. You could finish it. It still sits out there.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: It's never been killed, it's been stranded. It's an amendment
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: sitting there. And because the founder set no deadline article,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the first unratified sits out there to this day. Now
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: here's what you bother you. We didn't even need the
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: amendment to fix this. Congress did set the size of
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the House by ordinary law. It's always done this, and
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: the House did grow seat by seat for over a century,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: right until nineteen thirteen. That's the year we hit four
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: thirty five, and then in nineteen twenty nine Congress passed
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: the law that simply frozen at nine four thirty five.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: It's not in the Constitution a statute, it was a choice.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: The founder's very first instinct was to keep the People's
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: House growing with the people. And it wasn't beaten down
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: by an enemy, and it wasn't ruled on constitutional We
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: just had powerful politicians afraid of the people and afraid
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: of losing their power. So that is what choice built.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: We froze the House at four thirty five. Country kept
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: growing anyway, and from about one hundred million to about
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty. Now the districts didn't multiply the
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: way Madison wanted. They just swelled. And now you have
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: outsized influence. Right now you have these nearly million population
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: in sized districts. And when the district gets that big
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and that's safe, we know, just a small faction it
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: can take over the district and a low turnout closed
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: primary like New York City. That's the whole ball game.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: And it looks like that somehow that the Socialists are
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: taken over the Democratic Party. I'm not saying they're not
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: a huge influence but this was a very small sample size,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: and that's the thing actually worth worrying about. This is
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: not about worrying about communism on the left or fascism
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: on the right. I do think this machine is going
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: to stop those two things. But what it no longer
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: can reliably stop is a determined few capturing the leadership
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: of a caucus. Because we shrank the people's House relative
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: to people, and until we do, until we get more
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: people feeling like they're represented here, you're going to have
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: this sort of race to the extremes, this sort of
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: back and forth like this. I'd like to think I
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: know that the extremists. Look, we always stamp out extremism
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: in this country. May take us longer than it should,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: but we always do it. And I think some of
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: these folks now get it. And so they're just trying
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: to take over. Right. The right figured it out and decided, hey,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: let's just take over a faction of the Republican Party
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and we can take over to the party. And now
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: the DSA looks at Trump and Mega and says that's
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a blueprint, and they're pursuing it. So the two ends
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: of our politics already understand this. It's why they keep
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: pointing at each other instead of the thing that actually
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: decides it, the size and the shape of the room.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: The cage was never locked from the outside. We've been
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: sitting in it for over one hundred years, calling it permanent.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: And I do think this fear of rise of nationalism
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: and socialism would be a lot more mitigated, and we'd
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: have room for a lot more voices, as Madison wanted,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: if we simply expanded the size of the house. You
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: probably didn't know I was going to go from New
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: York City primaries back to my hobby horse of expanding
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: the size of the house. All right, before we get
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: to my interview with Alvarro Badoya, which, by the way,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: just a fantastic interview. Alvar Out we had a great
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: conversation about Warner Brothers in paramount, about Amazon, about sort
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: of you know, the the how can we realistically regulate
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: these entities, How do we sort of speed up the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: ability of government to do this? So and Alvaro was
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: just a terrific guest, I mean, just a really really
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: he accepts the premise, you know, he accepts nuance, he
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: accepts counter arguments. I just think it's outstanding. But before
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: we go, quick little preview of Colorado and why you
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: should tune in on Tuesday night. It's just I know
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: it's just one state, but you've got Michael Bennett. I
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: think there's two marquee races that we're going to be following.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: You've got Michael Bennett, US City US Center running for governor,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: pretty heavily contested Democratic primary against the Sitting Ag Phil Wiser,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: and I have to tell you, the Sitting AG's made
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: it essentially made a fascinating argument that has really put
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Bennett in a box, essentially going, hey, Michael Bennett's been
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: a great US Senator. He needs to be fighting Trump
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: from Washington. The reason it's a brilliant way to go
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: after him is you're essentially saying, hey, he's running away
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: from the fight without saying he's running away from the fight.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: You're reminding people he's from Washington without like using it
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: as a negative. And you're allowing people who like Michael
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Bennett to have a permission slip to vote against Michael Bennett.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: When you put all that together, I've seen some of
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: the there was sort of a similar There was a
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: similar vibe to this back during the there was a
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: famous race where john sitting Senator John Carey faced the
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: sitting governor Bill Well for a US Senate se and
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: they both had high favorable ratings and literally people who
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: voted for Kerry had like a you know, fifty five
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: to sixty percent job approval rating a Well. That was
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: essentially one of the arguments some were making is Wells,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: you know, wells great governor, Let's not send him to
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: the Senate. And it was the idea was to essentially
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: give that swing voter a permission slip to vote against
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: somebody they like. Anyway, it's a we'll see what happens here.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: It's not quite been a left right contest. This really
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: has been a Washington, non Washington contest, and as we know,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: Michael Bennett's the one carrying the heavier load here being
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: from Washington, and the Senate race features so John Hickenlooper
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: is being primary by a state senator named Julie Gonzales,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: and she's run a very much a generational change argument,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: very much from the Left's not necessarily a sitting DSA
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: candidate like the race I'm about to describe with Diana
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: de Gatt, but she's hit from the left she trounced
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: him at the convention in order to make the primary
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: ballot Colorado, if you get a certain amount of support
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: at the state convention and automatically qualifies you for the ballot,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: you can't avoid that. In just petition to get on
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the ballot, Hickenlooper decided not to contest the convention endorsement.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I translation, he knew he was going to lose that
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: to the more progressive person, which in and of itself
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: should tell you something. The state party has essentially are
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: there to the left them where hicken Looper is as
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: a Democratic senator. So you know, look, we've seen in
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: the past insurgent liberal or progressive candidates in Colorado do
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: really well at these conventions and then sort of sort
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: of get stuck at about thirty five, thirty six, thirty
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: seven percent and not be able to break through unless
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: it's a super credit primary. But I definitely think Hickenlooper
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: is going to get held under sixty And the question
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: is is this a single digit race and how correlated
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: will be the Phil Weiser vote, Julie Gonzales vote between
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: the GOV and the Senate primaries, Michael Bennett and Hickenlooper
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: on that front, the marquee national race really is Diana
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: de Gett, longtime Democratic incumbent. She is getting a DSA
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Chapman official melot Kiros, twenty nine year old Democratic Socialist candidate.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Plenty of polling is shown her head. So you know,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: one week coming one week after the success of the
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Socialists in New York City to get another one. You know,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: it's one of those where the narrative can you can
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: ex we can all explain it away, but the narrative
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: is going to grow and the Socialists are going to
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: look like they're definitely on the march here inside the
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. So my point is a lot going on
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: in Colorado. We're going to be there, myself, Chris, Eliza, Jeffreys,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Kelly and the team at Decision s HQ, because hey,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: there's only one place to go if you want to
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: find out who wins before you go to bed before
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: midnine on a given night, and it's my friends at DDHQ.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: All right with that, let's sneak in a break and
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: when we come back my conversation with now former FTC
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Commissioner Alvaro the Doui, so joining me now Padua and
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Alvarro is a former commissioner of the FTC. It was
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a Biden appointee. He thought he'd still be a member
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: of the ft See. Actually i'm guessing it is. It
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: is June of twenty twenty six. In May of twenty
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: twenty three.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: More months I would have been commissioned US.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the President decided that his term should end earlier.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: And at some point alv Ro decided to stop fighting that,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court looks like he would have lost
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: that fight anyway. And hey, everybody's going to make a living.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: But true Alva is here and we want to look.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go off in a few places. One,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we mostly obsess over a topic he is
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: obsessed over Alvro that you've obsessed over, and that is privacy.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: What is the line? And it is sort of the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: because it has never been enumerated in our constitution and
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: this is why, frankly, we have the regulatory bodies that
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: we have, I think on this front. But also talk
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: a little politics and where where the where this new
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: regulatory fight is going to go and what or the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Democratic parties equipped for it. It's good, good to meet you,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: all right, nice to meet you. Well, let me start
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: with your time at the FTCING. And simply because and
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: this may have been a question I was going to
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: reserve for later. But given given your experience, that we broke.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: We broke a norm. This wasn't a guardrail, as it
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: turned out, this wasn't something Congress wrote into law, and
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: perhaps they should have. Well, we broke a norm where
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: you know, if you were confirmed member of one of
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: these sort of semi independent agencies the SEC, the FTC,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: the FEC, the FCC, that you'll stay on until your
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: term expires, regardless of who's president this term. Donald Trump
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: decided to challenge a lot of those guardrails. He's had
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: mixed success in the courts of doing it, but it
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: is sort of up end of these agencies. So, given
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: your experience, does Congress need to change the actual law
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: in how the FTC works if we want to guarantee
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: some sort of independence for the FTC.
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: So certainly what Congress would need to do is codify
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: the existing Supreme Court precedent saying that the FTC is independent.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: And let me clarify just one thing.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: So in many instances, this president has violated norms. Here
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: it is Supreme Court black letter law for ninety years
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: that by a nine to zero a ruling that the
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: president cannot remove members of the Federal Trade Commission without cause.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: And so if we wanted to reinstate that, well, what
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: would have to happen? Honestly, you need a different Supreme Court.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: Let me take back my initial answer, because the Supreme Court,
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: if it decides this case the way we think it will,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: which is say yes, you President Trump can fire FTC commissioner, we.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: May we're taping June twenty second. By the time this airs,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: we may already have this this ruling, you know, because
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: it could happen literally any.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: Now, let's just say, would be very surprising if they
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: decided that the FTC were in fact independent. And so, honestly,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: you would need a different Supreme Court because Congress did
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: right into the law you can't remove someone without cause.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: The Supreme Court in you.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Know nine, I mean, I don't mean to be.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Oh no, it's it's defined.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: It's defined in the laws to it.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: It is malfeasance, neglect, or inefficiency.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: And why and that is very subjective, is it not?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: So subjective because it was never used for the FTC
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: in the subsequent ninety years. It was broadly understood to
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: be a high bar, and it was understood to prevent
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: someone getting removed just because the president didn't like their politics,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: didn't like how they.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Kept on suing their donors, and so.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: It was a pretty high bar, and it withstood, you know,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: ninety years worth of the test of time.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: I'd say, right, it's interesting that you say it's the
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court and not Congress that needs to because here's
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: the other thing, the semi independent agencies. I mean, I
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what's in worse shape our
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: legislative branch or our judiciary branch, but I tend to believe
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: it's the legislative because the judiciary can only rule on
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: what Congress does do or doesn't do. Right, And Congress is,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: you know, purposely been ambiguous because they've wanted the the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: executive branch to actually have more running room. Right, This
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: was an intentional in many of the ways they've passed laws.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: The ambiguity was a feature, not a bug. And I
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: guess that's the question I have, is that if we
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: want independent, truly independent agencies on the consumer protection front,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: which to me, FTC, FCC, SEC, those are those are
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: the those are the bulwarks of consumer protection in one
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: form or another do we need to write? And by
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: the way, I'd throw in the FED and the FBI
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: into that too. I mean, I don't want to create
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: a fourth branch, but a truly does it need to be?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Does the articles of its creation need to change?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: So this Supreme Court, if it rules the way we
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: think it will, will say you can't have that. You
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: described it as a fourth branch. You can't have this independent,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: you know, executive branch agency but that doesn't directly report
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: to the president. And so yeah, you would need to
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: have that change now, I think, and I think there's
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: a compelling case for it, you know, I think I
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: think one of the reasons we were fired, if not
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: the reason we were fired, is that we kept on
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: suing the President's donors, and we had we had Amazon
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: in court and not one but two cases, one for
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: ripping off mom and pop sellers on their site, another
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: for making it nearly impossible we alleged.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: To get out of Amazon Prime.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: We were trying to undo the merger of Facebook with
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: Insta on WhatsApp, where Mark Zuckerberg famously said, you know.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Why compete when we can buy them.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: And we were enforcing a privacy consent to create against
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk and on and on and on, and so
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: I think it's very clear that we were inconvenient and
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: that we would make a Ruckaus and that's why we
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: were removing. And I think there's a pretty easy case
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: to be made that you want consumers, small businesses, working
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: people to be protected irrespective of how much money these
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: people have given to the president. And that's what we
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: lose when you lose this independent FTC.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: So one of the positives that I take away from
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: the Trump era is that Trump is provided an MRI
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: for our system. Right, it is the ultimate MRI. We
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: are finding out, Hey, oh, it turns out normal these
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: norms should be laws. It turns out these laws they
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: probably need to be rewritten. It turns out we need
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: to do this, not that it turns out, you know,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of it's you know, it's like having
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: it's like turning on the black light in the hotel room.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: You went, oh my god, right, like maybe that's the
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: better metaphor. And so you know, I look at the
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Department of Justice. I don't think it should be an
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: executive branch agency. I think it turns out it's just
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: it is too vulnerable to it doesn't matter that, you know, Okay,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: maybe the next president will respect some guardrails and norms.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter the way the system is built. There's
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: always going to be political questions about decisions the Justice
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Department made as long as it's that tightly intertwined with
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: with the executive branch. So you know, again, I'm not
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna move on here in a minute, because
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: you and I are not here to redesign and have
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: a new constitutional convention. But it seems as if Trump,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: when it comes to essentially everything between us and the law,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: he's really blown a hole through it, and we might
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: need to rethink all of the architecture of this.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and let me drill down on the Amazon example
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: I gave, because I think that that is where the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: black light is showing some real damage. So, you know,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: we allege that Amazon made it so hard to get
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: out of Prime that they literally called the UI the
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: user interface flow, the iliad flow. You know, we alleged
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: that the executives knew that it was impossible, but just
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: wouldn't fix it. We alleged they were making mom and
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: pop businesses give them fifty cents on every dollar they
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: made on the site. And the moment those businesses said, Hey,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: I'm going to sell for less off Amazon and make
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: more margin, because you know, it's pretty easy to beat
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: a fifty percent margin gobbled up by Amazon. The moment
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: they did that to offer me and you lower prices, chuck.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: Suddenly they'd be booted off of the bybox. What else happened?
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: In the meantime, there was a report. Senator Sanders put
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: on a report showing that alleging that Amazon systematically did
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: not refer its workers to outside medical care for at
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: least two weeks because that was a critical reporting period
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: for what constitutes a serious injury. He alleged that the
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: discs in people's backs were bulging and breaking, their wrists
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: would stop working, and what happens, So this is all
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: the contact we alleged. What happened since then? Million dollars
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: for the inauguration, twenty nine million dollars in the first
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: Lady's pocket for the documentary, according to New York Post,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: who knows how much to license the apprentice? Who knows
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: how much for the Golden ballroom and you have one
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: of those FTC lawsuits go away where the executives don't
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: even have to pay a dime in personal fines, no demotion, nothing,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: And who do you have as the new head of
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration? A former Amazon safety executive.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: So if this can happen, then absolutely our laws against
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: bribery and corruption are fundamentally broken when oligarchs can pay
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: to have their safety people in charge and pay to
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: have these lawsuits go away. Absolutely, we need to start
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: from scratch in terms of strengthening these laws.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: No, it's a I mean, ultimately all we have is
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: civil litigation. It feels like, at the end of the day,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the only thing that is working is civil litigation. Right,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the only thing companies fear is civil litigation. I mean
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: it is, Yeah, it is. I think both state governments
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and federal government is abdicated on this. All right, let's
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: talk about your passion, and that is privacy. I've been
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: waiting for a Congress. I've been waiting for a prediction
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: I made back when I thought I was smart about
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: these things, you know, saying after the two thousand and
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: six election, boy, you know, you know what the next
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: big thing. You know, Patient's Bill of Rights was sort
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: of the that was sort of the shiny metal object
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: of campaigns during the before Obamacare GAPT got passed, you know,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: for Democrats to show and even occasionally a Republican to say, no, no, no, no,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: I care about I care about you. Over the medical industry,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: I thought a privacy bill of rights fashioned after that
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: so called Patient's Bill of Rights was coming. John Tester
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: that six race he privacy was one of the big things,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: particularly a place like Montana. Right that resonated a lot.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: That's twenty years ago. Yeah, we still don't have this
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: digital bill of rights that I thought was coming. And
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: oh my god, technology has so accelerated that it's even
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: harder to protect our privacy. At this point, I say,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: this is somebody who has I think is a semi
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: public finger. I have to give up my right to privacy.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: I could argue that I've been compensated to do that
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: to a point, but it's really disconcerting that I have.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I do not have any control in my government has
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: no way to give me control of privacy. So I
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: think this is an enormous impossible task. But look, how
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: What's the first pike.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: I think some of the most important privacy protections today
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: are not getting passed in Congress. They're not, frankly being
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: one in state legislatures. They're not being one in lawsuits,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: even although you know, some of the verdicts against Meta
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: around the addictiveness of its platform are pretty compelling. I
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: think they're being one in collective bargaining agreements by labor
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: unions across the country. And I think this is like
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: the sleeper story about protecting our digital selves, our digital identities,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: our digital persons, our professions. I think this is the
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: hidden story. So and and by the way, I used
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: to be every word you said. I used to agree
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: with and say we need a federal privacy law. But
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: then what happened, Chuck, I was Al Franken's chief counsel.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: We stood up a privacy subcommittee, and then I was
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: that guy who had to start moving pieces into place.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: And you would not believe the lobbying that met me.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: You know, I would try to assemble a couple of
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: scrappy privacy groups together, civil liberties groups together, and then
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: all of my friends and their friends, my fellow Senate
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: aids would say, hey, do you know that, like Meta
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: is lobbying on your bill and be like it's not
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: even out of committee yet, what are you talking about?
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, yeah, they told.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: Us it would be the end of the internet, and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: so what I've noticed is the end of.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: The internet with thee Yeah exactly.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: Let me give you a very concrete.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: By the way, like who thinks the Internet is just
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: really well built, going swim? Be careful, really, you're promising
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: the end.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: Of the Internet, that's right.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: No, No, I honestly I think a lot of parents
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: wou would would say that. But there was a really
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: creepy thing that was happening on on the lots in
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: film and TV over the last several years where background actors,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: people we call extras, we're getting tapped on the shoulder
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: and then untild hey go to tent forty six, will
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: you Why? Oh, don't worry, but I'd just go. They'd
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: show up, they'd walk into the tent or walk into
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: the building, and suddenly they'd be asked to stand for
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: three hundred and sixty degree scans of their bodies their faces.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: Some people were asked to do this in the nude.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: Other people were asked to emote, and when they would
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: ask what the heck is this for, a lot of
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: them wouldn't get an answer. When they would ask, hey,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: can I get paid for this, they'd say, oh, no,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: this is part of the standard daily pay you get.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: And finally people started figuring out, oh, this is to
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: add you in post to a crowd scene so that
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: we don't have to pay you your daily rate. We
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: can just drop in the digital Alva Robado or the
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: digital Chuck Dodd into that scene without paying you. And
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: as a result of the screen actors strike, that was stopped.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: And now you need to be hold, given notice, given
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: information as to what's happening, you have to decide whether
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: you will allow it, and you have to get paid
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: for it, right, And you know, I think it's really important.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: Sometimes privacy is too abstract and people are just have
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: to imagine, you know, the valuable thing about themselves that's
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: being taken. What people need to understand is that now
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: companies are trying to digitize and monetize our livelihoods, you know,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: and make decisions about us at work based on information
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: and systems that are totally opaque to us. That they
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: entirely control. And I could give you example after example
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: of how labor unions have started winning bright line protections
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: against this kind of thing.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Collective bargaining. I see that. I am a You know
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: I am a I'm a mixed minds.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: Tell me more.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: I'm on collective bargaining for certain industries, like I'm not
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: always there, you know, I believe you know, the labor
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: unions for physical labor are in it beyond a necessity,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Like without them, you put people's lives in danger. And
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: I've always been of mixed minds on sort of the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: intellectual property labor unions, right, call them writer unions and
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: things like this, But you make a compelling case that collective, individually,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: it's much harder to protect your intellectual property, but collectively
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: you may have a better chance to protect your I mean,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: in some ways, it's how we got college It's how
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: the college football world started to get compensated when one player,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: it was actually a college basketball player, Charles O'Bannon, decided
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: that a video game using his likeness should have compensated
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: it before I used its likeness. And then of course
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: that was the beginning. It's one of the Obannon brothers.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: It's the beginning of what we have today in college
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: sports that won't get fixed until there's collective bargaining. You know,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I think that there's there's no doubt there to nature. Look,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I you make a compelling case on that, on privacy,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: But can I talk about the individual? No? No, no, no,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: But I want to talk about sort of the consumer. Okay, privacy. Well,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: let's get to the Let's get the privacy because here's
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: another argument I've heard about privacy. Individual My individual preferences
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: are of very little value to Meta and to Amazon,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: but my entire zip codes preferences are hugely important. And
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: that's always been It's the it's the collectively. Our data
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: is worth a lot to these people individually. If we
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: were all compensated for the individual contribution that our data
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: provided these companies, it would be minuscule. So what is
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: the balance to strike here? So?
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: Look, I think there's two kinds of protections that need
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: to be put in place here. First, our protections are
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: part of them, are protections around privacy and the collection
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: and use of data. But equally important is in antitrust
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: and the amount of power these entities are allowed to amass.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: Such that they are too big to regulate basically and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: too big to check. And so I think it is
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: only by having the combination of these things that you
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: can actually begin to exert a level of protection here.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: So I mean, so you basically asked the gazillion dollar
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: question around this, you know, how do you how do
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: you solve this? I think it is through a combine
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: nation of restrictions on certain data, sure, but then restrictions
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: also on how you use that information. And for example,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: the census has a great rule that has been waived
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: at certain points in this country's history. It was waived
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: during the Japanese internment, it was abused in other moments,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: but it has this general rule that says, you can't
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: use this information to harm people. Okay, you can only
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: use this for statistical and demographic purposes. And so you
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: see how you know, It's one thing to say thou
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: shalt not collect this social security number and this fingerprint.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: It's another thing to say, hey, guys, look, you'll figure
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: out the details, but the most important thing is that
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: you not use this against people's interests. Now, So I
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: think that's.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: Part of it.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: Having a set of yes, restrictions about collection some bright
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: line rules around you.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: But the other thing is.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Well, you've got to have good enforcement though, to make
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: something like that stiff. I'll give you an example of
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: once one rule that is always violated and never enforced.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: So in the FEC database, you know that there's a
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: law that says you cannot use the FEC database to
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: target donors. You know, because if every donor that's given
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: over two hundred dollars is sitting there in a free
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: federal database, you're looking for leads and people to donate
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: your campaign. Now, it is against the law to use
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: the FEC database to solicit folks. Yeah, enforcement and proving
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: it are very difficult.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: And by the way, the people on the other side
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: are very aware of this. And I'm not talking about
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: campaign finance. I'm talking about big tech. And one of
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: the ways they've succeeded in basically breaking tons of laws
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: around privacy is by slowly starving the agencies that are
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: charged with those laws, namely the Federal Tree Commission. And
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: so you stack up our privacy division at FTC, it's
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: like maybe fifty or one hundred people, depending on whether
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: you accunt lawyers or para legals or whatnot. Go Compare
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: that to the agency at you know, the UK's consumer
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: Protection agency, Go compare that to the EU member States
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: consumer protection agencies or Japan's stack us up to the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: G seven, and our enforcement has basically never reached the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: levels it had.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: The pushback on that would be, what's that, Well, growth
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: in Europe and Japan is stagnant. Growth here in the
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: United States is not. I mean, that's that they're going
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: to throw back at you. I think you would I
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: joke that thank God for the EU, or I'd have
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: no privacy protections.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, I think to say that the
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: delta in growth is attributable to privacy protections, I think
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: is pretty hard to say.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: Next one, but that's one. It's a whole list of
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: the regulatory burdens of the EU are generally cited all
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: the time, like here's I'll give you an example. Ever,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: somebody at Meta who told me a story, so you know,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: and sort of the radicalization of Zuckerberg and that so
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: early on, Zuckerberg is convinced by his lobbyists settle with
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: the EU. Let's go ahead and settle with the EU.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: And he regrets it. He regrets cooperating, and he didn't
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: like all the different times that they've launched investigations and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: his new mantras, we're fighting all regulation, every country, every level.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: We will never cooperate on regulation ever again. And you
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: know that's that's a scary proposition, given the power that
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: a Meta has in our information ecosystem. But you know,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: there is this perception of bureaucracy that the business world
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: thinks is just anti growth.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: And honestly, that is a disease that our affects our economy.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: That is, that is deeply shameful. So let's just stick
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: with Meta. This company has gotten so big, and Zuckerberg's
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: control of the company is so total because I'm sure
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: you know, the share are structured so that Mark Zuckerberg
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: still exerts effectively total control over the company.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: I did the same thing. I mean, isn't Musk learned?
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: This is a case where Musk learned from Zuckerberg. All
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: these guys learn this. They don't want shareholders to actually
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: have power in their companies to.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: I think it's a Peter Thiel playbook, but now I
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: think it was. Last year Reuters reported that a that
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: Meta was letting its chatbots that faced adolescents have quote
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: unquote and I quote sensual conversations with preteens. Right, you
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: have Sam Altman talking about rolling out Erotica on their
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: chatbot since he took a little step back. But we
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: have let these and this was the other half we
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: were talking about the two have we have let these
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: companies and Meta is the best example, gobble other smaller
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: companies up such that they don't compete with them, they
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: just buy them. We have let it happen so much
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: that anytime someone starts talking about breakup and breaking these
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: companies up, someone inevitably says, well, hold on a second.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: They're a pretty big part of my retirement account, you know,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: hold on a second.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: You're going to funds? No, you do so, then you
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: have some of your normal allies are like, hey, buddy,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: this screws up our pension investments, and we might, you know,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: we might you break up now. Of course I would argue,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: I just lost my grandmother at ninety nine years old.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, she ran out of money at ninety six
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: thanks to the breakup of AT and T is what
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: I used to say. My grandfather believed in only only
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: one stock. He would only buy eight. ATT breaks up
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: and it extended her retirement. Like, by the way, the
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: breakups of these companies could actually be really financially lucrative.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, I half joke. One of the reasons I
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: invest in Amazon is simply betting on the breakup. Like
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: that's part of the curve, right, That's part of my
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: investment strategy on Amazon. It's like it put it this way,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: it's inevitable to me that they'll self break up before
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: the government does it for them.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: Well, I think you're hitting on something that that that
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: small businesses and small retailers know and some people like
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: you know, which is that the American public benefits from
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: having robust competition of smaller and maybe some mid sized
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: competitors going head to head. We could go through example
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: after example in videos.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: I love at long distance. You know, you want to
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: talk about something that I'm ten years older than you
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: or I believe so even you have only vague memories
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: of the long distance wars and all this stuff. But
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: you know, we didn't even have competition. You had to
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: pay the rate that your phone company set. Period, then
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: we got competition, and then guess what, we got no
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: more charging for long distance phone calls. Within a twenty
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: year period. We went from being having to time calls
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: with Grandma after eleven o'clock in one time zone because
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: it was cheaper. Trust me, that was my family. We
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: were always looking for the cheapest. Oh.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: I remember we were doing the long distance of Crew.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: I loved it.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: When you're doing the overseas, you had to plot that out,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: and if you had relatives, you know, everybody, you'd sort
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: of figure out. Maybe you'd use a calling car that
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: might help save you a couple of bucks here. I
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: remember those and the breakup of eighteen. We literally go
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: from a breakup of AT and T in nineteen eighty two,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: to cheaper long distance rates in the nineties to no
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: long distance rates by two thousand. That's not an accident, yep.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: And now we've had the reconsolidation of wireless, and you know,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: I think one of the big mistakes that was made
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: in the prior Trump administration was letting the purchase of.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: T Mobile through.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: And the idea we were told is that, oh no,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: this isn't a merger of four competitors down to three.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: It's actually two competitors up to three because we need
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: we need a big company to compete with Verizon and
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: the likes of Verizon. And now what we don't have
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: is crazy John Lajaire, you know, cutting people crazy deals
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: on T mobile. And instead we have these three juggernauts
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: who provide work service, and the prices just go up
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: and up and up and and honestly, this is starting
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: to happen with streaming, with the paramount Warner Brothers merger,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: the attempt to merge them.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: You know, you had you know, we used.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: To have a world where Disney and twenty first Century
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: Fox were different. Amazon and MGM we're different companies. Discovery,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: Warner Brothers were different companies, you know, and and and
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: now all those companies are gobbling each other up, and
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: we're about to have I think the number five streamer
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: merged with the number three streamer. And already, look at
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: your streaming bill, you know, the stream Do you ever
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: recall getting an email saying, hey, congratulations, your streaming bill
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: is actually dropping, you know, a dollar next month, never gone,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: it never goes down. And instead they to use Corey
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: Doctro's term the and shitify it. You know, it used
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: to be the Prime had no ads. Suddenly Prime has ads,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: and it used to be that that, you know, twelve dollars.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: Netflix plan had no ads. Suddenly it has ads, and
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: so we're living this. You had that breakup, you have
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: that explosion in innovation you had you know, you know,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: long distance is no longer a thing, but now you're
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: getting the reconsolidation. And that's what we're living with streaming.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: And that's why, yeah, go ahead.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: And it's funny. You know, a lot of a lot
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: of political policy victories need narratives and need but they
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: also need a memory. And you know, I worry about
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: this a lot when it comes to adding some constitutional
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: amendments because it's arguably never happened even in my lifetime.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've added one technically, a technical one that
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: has to do with pay but essentially we haven't added
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: one and over you know, since the lowering the voting
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: age of what I would say of substance. Again, this
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: one was a specific having to do with congressional pay races.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: And if you don't, if something has not happened in
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: over fifty years, then we have a hard time believing
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: it can happen. Like I'll sit here and say, look,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: we need a couple of constitutional amendments, and I'll be like, well,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: that's never going to happen, and you're like, Okay, it
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't until it does. In our history, and we're at
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: one of those moments, right, They're in the Robber Baron
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: and the launch of the Industrial Revolution. There was crazy
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: growth and crazy abuse of labor and crazy abuse of consumers,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: and over essentially a thirty year period, we as a
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: society ever so slowly chipped away at that to try
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: to essentially right size the Industrial Revolution to our democracy.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: It took us thirty to forty years to do it. Arguably, yes, right,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: but is that is what got us there? Starting with
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: getting a couple of constitutional amendments. Then we got the
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: alphabet soup of FDR era and sort of the modern
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: regulatory state was built. I know we're going to go
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: through a similar period like this, but it is hard.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: It is hard to get people to buy into that.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: In breakups of companies, when's the last major breakup? Like
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting here trying to tell people, Hey, breakups are
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: good for consumers. Breakups are usually good for everybody. They're
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: good for stock prices, they're good for consumers. The only
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: people they're bad for is a couple of executives who
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: had a monopoly going. But I feel like you need
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: a story to tell to convince people that this fight,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: these fights are worth it.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: I think there's two stories people need to know, one
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: from seventeen ninety and another from twenty twenty six. The
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: seventeen ninety story is the story of the missing Amendment.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if you know about Thomas Jefferson's Missing.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: Amendment, No tell me about it.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: So stuff like this.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So Jefferson and Madison were corresponding, and you know, Madison,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: I think his first pen on the Bill of Rights,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: but Jefferson is feeding him ideas, and Jefferson's giving him
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: idea after idea, and Madison's just putting him in, putting
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: him and putting him in. And I think, you know,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: I couldn't be getting the specifics off on this, but
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: it's like the quartering of soldiers, freedom of the press,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. But Jefferson keeps on saying multiple times,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: you need an amendment against monopolies in the Bill of Rights,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: and it was just that it was like he had
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: seven or eight ideas and it was just that one
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: that didn't make it into the Bill of Rights. And
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: mind you like you might think, like, why why is
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: Jefferson against monopolies? These guys hated monopolies. You know, the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: Boston Tea Party was a protest against a monopoly on
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: te grant company. I think it was the duchiest India
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: company that was granted this monopoly on tea. And so
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: the people in Boston were pissed. They're like, no, we
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: like ta and what we like cheap tea, good tea,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: not the crappy stuff that the that this monopolist gives us.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: And so from the beginning, our government are systems of
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: power or of protecting the people, were built against one
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: kind of overreach, government overreach, not the overreach of private power,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: you know, the trust in the late nineteenth century corporations today,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: fast forward to today, which is the hopeful story. So
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: I came into this most recent job at the FTC
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: a pretty traditional I would call myself a normy East
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: Coast liberal.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I, oh no, you checked all the boxes.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: I correct, set of committee guilty guilty, You're right, guilty
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: as charged. And you know I called the president of
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: white supremacist, you know I I and look, I still
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: believe many of those things but I had this luxury.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: People think that the luxury of federal jobs is you
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: make money.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: You don't make money.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: The luxury you have is you get to meet the
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: entire American people. You get to visit with a grosser
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: in South Dakota, a pharmacist in West Virginia, corn and
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: soybean farmers in Iowa, shrimpers in the Gulf, you know,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: the people who build the skyscrapers in Miami. You know
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: the undocumented workers who build those skyscrapers. And the hopeful
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: story is that if you divide those people up by
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: the color of their skin, or their party politics, or
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: their religion or red state, blue state, blah blah blah, immigrant, native,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: et cetera, they look totally different. When you look at
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: what they worry about every day, it is exactly the same.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: It is these corporate behemoths bleeding them dry. And number one,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: they will tell you that. And when you put them
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: in the same room, they recognize each other, and so
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: they you know, I had it in a room a
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: Hollywood filmmaker and an Iowa cawcaf and soybean farmer, and
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: they immediately recognize each other and said, oh, yeah, my
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: inputs are winnowing down. You know, I used to have
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: twelve places to buy seat, now I have two. Oh.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: I used to have four places to get my archival footage.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: I'm about to have two.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: I used to have six places to sell my documentary.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: Now I have three, and I'm about to have one
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 3: if this merger goes through. Or oh I used to
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: have four places to process my cattle, Now I have one.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: And if we can unite around that, I do think
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 3: you could get a constitutional amendment. You certainly could get
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: another set of laws like the wave you just described
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: from eighteen ninety nineteen thirty six of laws checking corporate power.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: What is a consolidation that's pro consumer in your mind?
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: In my history? Is there? You know? Well there are?
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: I could? Could you know? So I'll give you an
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: industry that I deal with, which is right right?
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: Which is which is what?
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: Radio? Let's radio? Okay, we saw it, And certainly this
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: is happening with newspapers. I think the same attitude with
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: this TEGNA next our merger is being used, which is, Hey,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: this is a dying industry and consolidation gives it an
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: opportunity to collectively survive. Longer than it would if these
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: if they were competing. You know, there there is a
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: point where a sort of dying industry of some sort
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: of radio being, where consolidation actually extends the life of
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: that of said industry. You accept that premise, and is
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: there a time when there is such thing as a
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: good consolidation.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: Look, I think in anti trust law it's recognized there's
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: the failing firm defense if you are a firm that
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 3: is failing, if you're a hospital that's about to go
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: under and suddenly, you know, a chunk of you know,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: Western Pennsylvania is not going to have a hospital. You know,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: it is recognized an antitrust law that a merger that
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: otherwise might be deemed.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: This happened on the financial crisis. Merrill Lynch was bought
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: by JP Morgan, right in order to think that's at
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: the time it was seen as a they waved, they
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: waived a they waived an issue, they waived some law
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: in order to allow KP. Morgan to do this because
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: at the time it was deemed a necessity.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I might use yeah, I might not say it's
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: like that one. But let me give you a different examples.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: You put me on the spot. You said, give me
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 3: one consolidation that's good, And let me just give you
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: one example of a company that has used it for
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 3: good things.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: But there's another side to it. But is the outlier.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: So I filed a lawsuit against the company called Southern Glaciers,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: and they we alleged that they systematically gave large customers
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: basically secret deals that other customers did not get. And
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: in the public report, I'm not going to verify it.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: One of those large customers is Costco. Okay, And so
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: let's just say, for the sake of argument, Costco. Right,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: Costco is aggressively, vertically integrated, and and look, even though
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of problems with how Costco throws
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: its weight around in the market, I can't deny that
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: consumers like Costco. Okay, Like I'm not going to be
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: out here here and deny it. But but let me
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 3: tell you Costco is the way they treat the end consumer,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: because I have serious problems with how they screw over
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: their smaller competitors by allegedly cutting secret deals, you know,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: with their suppliers. But there's only one Costco. It's not
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: like people are out there saying, oh, I'm in love
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 3: with this other company. Man, I get these amazing deals with.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: These There are other costcos. BJ's exists, sam Club exists.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: I would compare popularity reports of those companies. Costco is
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: head and shoulders above the rest.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: Of I'm saying Costco isn't more popular, but there are
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: other companies.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm not.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: I'm not I'm saying wholesaler. They're the only you know,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: wholesaler out there. I'm saying the way they use their
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: vertical integration is qualitatively and quantitatively different than the rest.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: I think most people's experience with vertical integration, though, is
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: health insurance, and there is no Costco among health insurers.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: What you have right now are three vertically integrated tranches
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: of health Insuran, pharmacy, benefit manager, and pharmacy or specialty pharmacy.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: And people loathe their health insurers. And if you add
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: Blue Cross, Blue Shield, maybe there's a fourth. And these
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: insurers a'll say, oh, you know, we give you all
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: these benefits from the vertical integration.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: I don't see any of those benefits.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: Instead, what I see is that they're systematically bankrupting their
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: competitive pharmacy, the pharmacies that compete with their pharmacies. They're
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 3: bankrupting them by systematically steering lucrative prescriptions to their own pharmacies.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: I see that every single time I go to the doctor.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 3: I don't know about you, I get these random follow
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: on bills for twenty dollars here, ninety dollars there, one
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty dollars there. And so, you know, I
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: think that that vertical integration was supposed to be this
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: amazing thing that's supposed to give us Costco after Costco
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: after Costco, when in reality what it gets us is
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: United Health Group after Etna, after xyzcz insure.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: Interesting, So you were you found an example that is
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: an exception to prove your role.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: Guilty as charge?
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: No, look, I and I what about the dying industry aspect?
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean look, you know Clear Channel sort
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: of right, clear Channel, iHeart radio. I guess it's iHeart
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: radio now, you know sort of. There were some mergers
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: that it was allowed to happen in the nineties that
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: some people push back on. But you know, the whole
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: industry was was was shrinking, and given where it ended
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: up today, did it end up? You know? Is there
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: a for let me ask it this way you at
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: the FTC, would you look at a merger differently if
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: you knew the industry was was shrinking, if it's customer
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: base with shrinking.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: Look keeping it vague because they can't talk about specific cases,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: you know, I believe in the failing firm defense, and
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 3: I believe that when a firm is failing that that
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: it should be allowed to merge if it's going to
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: benefit the public and protect them. But what I would
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: also say is that you see example after example of
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: us blocking a merger and kind of like your your
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: long play Amazon strategy and your mom's AT and T strategy,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 3: the breakup results in this supposedly struggling firm, you know,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: or the firms that we're about to emerge doing much better,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: you know, both in terms of the stock market and
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: in terms of their their revenues and and look like
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: I think you're you're focusing on the media and and whatever.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: That's just what I know.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 3: But I think it's yeah, Look, I think it's I
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: think it is. It's it's appropriate because right now we're
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: dealing with this paramount Warner Brothers merger, and one of
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: the arguments that's being made is that that Warner Brothers
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: is struggling and it will never survive.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: And I look, I can make an argument that neither
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: Paramount or Warner Brothers can survive. Is going to catch
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: Disney and Netflix. Okay, not going to happen. And the
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: only shot that Warner Brothers in Paramount and Frankly Peacock right,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: it was the three of them. This goes to the
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: similar argument probably that you're going to come back at
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: me with that the T Mobile made when the T
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: Mobile sprint thing happened. But the assumption was Disney and
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: Netflix have such a head start, Amazon has such a
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: deep pocket, you know that sort of thing, that the
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: only shot that Warner Brothers in Paramount has or throwing
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: Comcast in there, is two of the three have to
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: have to combine in order to have a competitive shot. Yeah,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: that's the argument. What's the flaw in there?
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: There's two flaws. The macro level flaw is maybe there's
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: some world where that's true. Loading down that company with
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: eighty billion dollars in debt at god knows what interest
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 3: rate is not going to produce a healthy firm. I mean,
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: find me a healthy company with eighty billion dollars of
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 3: debt on its books, you can't. The other is that
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 3: if you look at some of those linear those linear properties,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 3: CEA is actually growing. And this idea that some of
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: these linear channels are actually dying or dead is not true.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: But here's the other argument, which is whole markets are
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 3: going to die, so documentary films. I'm pretty confident me
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: and you believe that you need to have a good
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: nonfiction documentary film market out there. Right now, there's three
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: buyers of serious documentary. There is CNN Films, HBO and Netflix. Netflix,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 3: as you might know, well pretty much only buys. And
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 3: I just had a roundtable in Atlanta. Oscar nominated filmmaker
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: Crystal and Hampton did an OSCAR nominated movie about Atlanta
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: abortion clinics. Stood up and said, Netflix isn't buying my stuff.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 3: They're interested in cults, true crimes, and celebrities. That take
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 3: that one off the block. What you're left with is CNN, HBO,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 3: and I had a guy in Atlanta stand up and say, oh, yeah,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 3: you know I did. I did sound and post production
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 3: for Navalney, for Icarus and for twenty Feet from Stardom,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: and Icarus and Navalney are both very critical of the
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: Russian regime. Guess who bought Navalney CNN films. Now David
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: Ellison wants to buy CNN and HBO. Do you think
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: he's going to make the next Navalne I don't think so. Separately,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: you have the actual historical truth, So you know, you
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: know that there are four TV news archives out there.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 3: There's CBS and NBC, ABC and the crown jewel CNN,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 3: which has round the clock news footage for the last
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 3: forty five years. You are about to go down to
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 3: a world where half of that is controlled by one family,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: and one family that has made its political stakes very
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 3: evident in who they support and don't support. So you're
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 3: about to go from three buyers of documentary to one
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: or two depending on how you count them, and four
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 3: sources of archival footage to really two or three depending
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: on how you count them. And every documentary filmmaker I
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 3: talked to says, look, our industry was already about to die.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 3: This is the coffin and the grave for us. And
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 3: so I would say that at the macro level, the numbers,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: you know, don't pencil out, and at the specific market
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 3: level for something as important as documentary, you're about to
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 3: see whole chunks of the market die.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: Making a really good intellectual argument, but you haven't made
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: a financial argument.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: Tell me more.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm sitting here, like I was thinking about this.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: Does I know the consumer would benefit from more documentaries
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: exposing and surfacing truth out there? And you and I
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: both know that civically we are a better society and
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: a free society when we have that. I feel like
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: you have a better shot at killing this merger if
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: you can make a more direct impact on the consumer case.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'll give you.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 3: I'll give you two very clear consumer cases. Number one,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: the price of streaming. Like you said, you know you
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 3: should chart out the cost of the streamers. It's like
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 3: the cost of fertilizer in Iowa. Okay, like they just
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 3: it's lockstep and it's always up and it's above inflation.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 3: And if you go down from five big streamers to four,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: obviously prices are not going to go down.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: Number one.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 3: Number two, let's say you don't care about documentary Okay,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 3: let's say you care about watching a good show with
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 3: your wife or with your husband at the end of
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: the night, to like decompress. And let me tell you
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 3: what the writers who stood up in these town halls
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: we did in New York and LA said, they said,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 3: they stood up and they said, look, you don't realize this,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: but you're gonna laugh less. You know a world where
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 3: there are you know, every single time one company gobbles
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 3: up another, it means that there's fewer people who are
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: going to get the joke. And I need to make
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: safer jokes. I need to make broader jokes, and I
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 3: basically need to dumb down my content. I had rom
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: com writers stand up in a movie theater in LA say,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 3: you don't appreciate this, but this is what's already happening,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 3: and it's only going to get worse. And then the
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 3: last example I'll give you is like, think of the
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 3: great television shows, the ones with like the long character arcs,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: with you know, the complex characters. You can really invest
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 3: in it, you know, The Wire, the Sopranos, the Office Friends,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 3: Sex in the City. When was the last show like
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: that that you came across recently?
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: So let me let me throw a counter at you.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: Tell me and I say this and that this is
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: the in my spirit of free market, please, the free
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: market of ideas, And that is so the world you're
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: describing was actually a small period of time. Okay, peak TV.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: Every show you just mentioned there, Yeah, was born in
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: the nineties and died sometime in the teens. Okay, fifty
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: years of television was shit. Okay, NYPD Blue was an innovation.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: We'd laugh at that show today. Hill Street Blues, right,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: was a it is it is the it is A
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: was a terrific show for its era. If you watched
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: it today, it would feel like it was written for
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: sixth graders. Ye, And I said this, I say it
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: this way. It was because we had no place for
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: creativity to explode. That the minute the Internet came in,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the barrier enter and we had
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: documentaries all over the place and had and so we
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: had a burst of creativity that gave us this twenty
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: year peak that you just went through. And now there's
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: a period of consolidation. Now I look at this as
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: a weirdly inevitable cycle, and in the world of media,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: it's true. And I can go back to the go
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: back and my listeners have heard me go off on
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: this before, which is simply if you go back to
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: the minute we figured out how to reproduce photographs. That
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: technology spawned a whole bunch of the news magazines, and
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: we had magazines all over the place. Then we had consolidation,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: and then we did moving pictures and it you know,
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: at first it exploded. We had a lot of little
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: radio stations, and then then we had consolidation, and then
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: cable TV and we had an explosion, and then consolidation.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: Tell me why this is, We're just not going through.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: So I look at what's happening here, and it feels
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: like the end of an era. But inevitably, you and
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: I both know the way sort of create creativity works
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: and the free market works. Is I understand the fear
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: of sameness. Well, I would say, is we live fifty
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: years of that shit where Love Boat and Fantasy Island
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: and all this garbage television that we got that I
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: grew up with in the seventies and eighties, where we
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: thought reruns of Leave It to Beaver were innovative, right,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: and then we go to this, you know, where this
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: burst of creativity, when we had a burst of diversity
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: of places to actually express that creativity.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't you.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, my counter is that I agree with all
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: of these concerns. Yeah, but I'm betting on the human
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: race to just through creative in another place.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying people are going to stop making songs,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 3: making art, making movies, making films. What I am saying
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: is that the reason, you know, Tangent, my apologies. No, no, no, no, no,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 3: We're talk about beautiful. We are needlessly suffering a drought
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: that we did not need, that resulted that came from
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: these Wall Street guys just getting rich off these mergers.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: Because you know what happened is you know, Disney, Fox,
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: sam Ison, MGM, Warner AT and T Warner, AOL, Warner.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: Brothers, Discovery.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: You know, the whole thing consolidated down and now I
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: don't know if you saw this from Seth Rogan, but
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 3: I just heard a bunch of people talk about it
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 3: in Atlanta and New York. Now it's financial guys in
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: charge of film and television, and they'll say like, hey,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 3: how many followers does that guy have?
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: How many? You know?
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: Uh, you know, literally is decisions based on marketing, I know,
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: and looked like, yeah, I am, I guess I look
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: at it. You know, I've sort of you know, this
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: is where I think the great thing that has been
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: exposed is you can't trust a publicly traded company to
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: own a news division. I just think that it's just
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: you just can't trust it. I say this individually, people
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: at these organizations want to do the right thing. Collectively,
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: it's hard if you have management that doesn't want you
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: to do it. So you know, this is why I
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: believe we're going to have a united artist for journalism,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: a united artist for local media, and I think united
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: artists for united artists, like I think it's it's one
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: could argue that co ops cooperatives of small business organizations
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: not merging but figuring out how to work together take
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: advantage of scale without having to give up their intellectual property.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: I think is the healthier way for our economy to
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: grow next. And I know I'm exploring ways like how
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: do we bring back the co op in business jargon?
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: I know why Wall Street doesn't want to bring it
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: back because the margins are not high enough.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you'll see a rich Shvayne I'm sure you're
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 3: well aware of in agriculture, in grocery all.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Over the place. We need more Land of Lakes and
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: we need more companies like Land of Lakes. If you
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: want to support your small business.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's anti trust exceptions for cooperatives to let
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: them collaborate in the way you're describing. And uh, absolutely,
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 3: I think it is a road forward that that Europe
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: has gone down quite a bit, that that we should
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 3: go down and it is a way to check this.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: You know, Wall Street, what could you have done.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: At the FTC to encourage cooperatives more of the creation
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: of more cooperatives?
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: Interesting?
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, I have a list of things I wish
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 3: I did more of. I wanted to get do more
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 3: to protect franchise ease. That's something that if I'd had
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 3: more time, I wanted to do. I wanted to do
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 3: more to protect people against AI chatbots. I think that
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 3: there's some real, some horrible stuff happening on co ops.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 3: To be honest with you, the existing laws in and
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: antitrust are are have exceptions for agricultural cooperatives. I can't
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: say I had anyone knock on my door and say, hey,
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 3: I need this to make it easier to organize a
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 3: co op. I would have taken that meeting in a heartbeat.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: Well, that's another one that feels like people don't know
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: how they work and they're afraid of them. They only
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: think about it is yes, it isn't that how New
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: York City sells condos? And it's like, no, that's it's
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: like like ninety percent of people's awareness of a co
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: op is that? That's very funny? Yeah. Interesting. Let me
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: quickly get you out of here. You you were quoted
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: recently and it caught my eye as saying that you
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: don't think the Democratic Party is built for this current
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: environment that Donald Trump has created. And I've let me
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: tell you what I heard, and tell me if I
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: heard you correctly, because this is a fear that I've had,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: that the that there's a if you can't beat them,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: join them defense. Like I've talked with another former Biden
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: official who said to me, I'm learning all the ways
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: that Project twenty twenty five took advantage of vague congressional
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: authorities in the in the agencies in order if in
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: order to do in order to sort of do things unilaterally.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: Is that the right answer? Why do you think that's
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: the is that the I don't want to presume that
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: you think that's the right answer, but that's what I heard,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: and I worry that that's not the right answer. That's
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: a response to the moment, and I get it. Yeah,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: what long term that probably is damaging is what he's doing.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 3: Look, let me tell you two things about what I meant.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: One is about risk aversion, and one is about just snobbiness.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 3: So right before we were fired, Commissioner Slaughter and I
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 3: called maybe twenty or so members of Congress and we said, hey,
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: we think we're about to get fired. We think if
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 3: we're fired, it'll be illegal. And you know, how do
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 3: you want to you tell us, you know, you're your
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 3: members of Congress. You know what should we you know,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 3: how should we talk about this? Think about this, et cetera.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 3: And Chuck, you know, I'll be honest with you. Seventeen
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 3: or eighteen out of the twenty were deer in the headlights.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 3: They were completely overwhelmed. They did not know what to do.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 3: Many of them overtly said to us with a look
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 3: of you know, not a little panic in their eyes,
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 3: we are overwhelmed. We don't know what to do. And
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 3: these are the folks who are supposed to be political animals.
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 3: These are the folk who are supposed to be street fighters,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 3: you know, fighting for people. And so we need more
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 3: people who understand. You know, the terms of engagement is
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 3: not a bill and a press conference in the steps
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 3: of the Capitol. It is meeting direct with people. Here's
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 3: the other really really important thing. We just saw this
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 3: play out with the UFC fight. There's there's some people
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 3: out there saying the UFC fight is corrupt. I agree
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 3: with you. You know, doing something you know that's paid
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 3: for by crypto and that you can only stream on
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 3: Paramount Plus. You know, that is called corruption. Using a
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 3: public facility, the White House, you know, nonetheless, to enrich
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 3: a particular set of companies. That's ugly, that's dirty, that's illegal.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 3: But there are also a bunch of people saying, oh,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 3: you know, like oh that's on the left, say oh
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 3: that's classless, you know, oh like oh that's so horrible,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: you know, like, oh, a fight on the lawn, you
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 3: know what. A bunch of rednecks. And let me tell you, like,
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 3: I flew into Atlanta the next day bumped into a guy.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: He was wearing a you know, two fifty UFC thing,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 3: and I went up doing, hey, hey man, how's a fight?
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: And you should have looked at him. He was like, oh,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: you know what it was?
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: It was amazing.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 3: I saw I saw him, you know, this fighter, and
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: I could tell it was a big fighter. I don't
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 3: follow UFC, my brother does. He was like, oh, he
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 3: was in the oval. He was like reading the declaration
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 3: in apendance and he came out and like, you can
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 3: meet everyone. Everyone's so nice, and he said this. It
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 3: was free. I didn't have to pay for a ticket.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 3: And he wasn't like some lobbyist. It was just like
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 3: a regular dude. He was a free Obviously I had
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 3: to pay for the food, you know whatever, but like
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: it was amazing, right, And I think what we on
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 3: the left miss about Donald Trump is, yes, he he was.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 3: He is a bigot, you know, yes he he divides us,
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 3: but he also sees a portion of this population that
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 3: too many of us on the left have discarded as
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 3: a bunch of yogls.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: You know, you know this is him. I always say,
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: you know he this This snobbery, by the way, goes
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: back to there was a time when when the w
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: w E was the w w F back and then.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: I remember, and I grew up with you.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: It wasn't it wasn't ever like you know, ESPN never
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: would put a you know, would never deign to like
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: cover it, let alone air it. And you know, Madison
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: Square Garden wasn't going to have WrestleMania, right, and they
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: were looking for venues, and it was Donald Trump's semi
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: bankrupt casinos in Atlantic City that needed that needed events
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: and needed headliners. And you know, he got into wrestling
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: because he thought, well why not. They'll bring people into
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: the seats, and it introduced him to a whole conversation.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: He ended up having a conversation with a group of
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: Americans that other politicians hadn't had a conversation with. So no,
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: I think the snobbery thing is is an excellent point.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: You know. My whole thing on the UFC fight was
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to the NFL Draft on the mall.
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: And if you said they wanted to put the UFC
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: fight on the mall as America's arena, right that's free
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: and open to the public where all of our stuff
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: is done, you know you can I can defend that.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: You know, just because you don't like the UFC doesn't
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: mean you know it was. I think putting it behind
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: to private gates and a velvet rope for a personal
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: birthday party was the part that was.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: The birthday party is.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 3: But let me push back a little on that because
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 3: I'm sure me and you we've been to White House parties, right,
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 3: we've been to and it's folks like us who got
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 3: to go to those spaces, and you.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: Want to see other people be able to get there.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 3: Exactly, And like that guy in Atlanta who got to
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 3: go to the White House and see his fighter, you know, like,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 3: hey man, you know, and I believe in that. It
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 3: is the making it about your birthday and enriching your
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 3: oligarch buddies. That is what is ugly and dirty and
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 3: illegal about.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: This now, and this is what Trump. This is the
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: pressure Trump's put on the left, which is you know,
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: I always say, there's like, take the cleaning up of DC.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: I'm glad the fountains work in Union Station now, you know,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: I hadn't seen it. It's work, And you're like, well,
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: I've not seen that it's cleaned up, and that's kind
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: of nice. You know. Ten percent of what he's focused
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: on I agree with. It's the the other ninety percent,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: you know, he takes everything and just makes it, you know,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: And I think that's always the tough line for the left.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: To walk like, how do you well, look, he's not
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: wrong about like, we probably ought to take better care
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: of some of these monuments, you know, and spruce things up.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: And the city should always be proud to serve Americans
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: when they come and visit, right, it should be a
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: showcase city, Like, Yeah, I want the Smithsonian to have
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: the attitude Joe Demaggio used to say he had. Why
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: does he play hard every game because he doesn't know
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: if somebody's watching him for the very first time? And
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I want Washington d C. The first
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: time a six six year old or seven year old visits,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: they're like wow, Right, I want them to always feel wow.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: So and how do you find like, you know, that's
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: another problem. It looks like the rights having more fun
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: than the left. And I guess that's something Mamdanni changed, right,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: And that's something that Mamdanni brought that nobody else has
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: figured out how to bring yet to their political campaigns.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: It is not just mom, Donnie, it's also you know, labor.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 3: I went to the California Labor Federation conference in Sacramento
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 3: a couple of months ago.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: It was amazing. It was so much fun. People are
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: really cool like it's not it is.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 3: It is. I think at some point, like meritocracy is good,
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 3: you know, going to nice schools, yes, you know, as
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 3: an immigrant, you know, my parents are super proud of
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 3: where I went to school, et cetera, et cetera. But
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 3: at a certain point on the left, we put those
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 3: things on a pedestal and we rewarded you know, titles
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 3: and laurels and risk aversion rather than scrappy people who
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 3: are connected to regular working people and small business owners.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 3: And that is something that you know, Zeron Mamdani and
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 3: the labor unions, which too often we've taken for granted,
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 3: still have authenticity, you know, the ability to come across
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 3: as regular human beings who do not you know, focus
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 3: group what they're about to say at all moments in time.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: So I think it's there.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 3: I just think it hasn't been centered in the left
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 3: and the Democrats in the party.
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: Who are your favorite potential twenty eight candidates? Yeah, well, I.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: Mean, look, that's that's tough.
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, mom, Donnie can't because he's he was
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 3: born abroad. Uh. Look, I let me tell you about
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 3: people who I'm really impressed by. My congressman from my
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 3: old hometown Binghamton, guy named Josh Riley. I was co
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: counsel with him for Senator Franken. He is in court
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 3: with the public utilities in upstate New York trying to
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 3: stop them from raising rates on people. There are elected
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 3: officials in Tennessee and Arkansas who are passing bills Republicans
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 3: who are passing bills to break up these vertically integrated
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 3: health Insuran pharmacy middleman you know, pharmacy oligopolies. There is
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 3: a guy in Colorado named David Seligman who sued this
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 3: weird corporate landlord named Gray Star, who was basically billing
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 3: people for rent. When their relatives died, they said, oh,
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 3: you got to pay the rest of the rent on
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 3: this guy on this He's running for Attorney general right
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 3: now in Colorado, a populist progres so less than one person.
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 3: There are a group of people who aren't getting a
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 3: ton of attention because they haven't hit the national scene yet,
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 3: but are doing the work and who my hope is
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 3: five years from now, will be household names.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: The generation have been Nators raiders.
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 3: Except anti monopoly rather than deregulatory. But yes, the same spirit.
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: I'll agree with you now.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: The consumer advocates. Look, the fact is it wasn't members
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: of Congress that responded. It took that's right. It was
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: people responding with civil litigation that eventually, right, I mean
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: civil litigation success usually leads to passage of laws, not
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: vice versa.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: Right, right, Yeah, I agree with that.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 3: And popular movements, whether it's against data centers or against
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 3: AI at work, that is the future. And I do
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 3: think that the future is bright across the country in
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 3: terms of pushing back on corporate powers.
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: Alvaro, this is great. We've gone an hour. I could
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: go longer with you. I want to have you back,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: And just like, I think I interrupted you way too much,
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: so I apologize for that. But this is we are
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: going through a new industrial revolution, and I do fear
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: that waiting to regulate is going to be too late.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: And we were able to catch up in the industrial revolution.
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: And I know there's some people saying, well, we'll catch up,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: it'll all work out. Yeah, Okay, this moves a lot
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: faster and our government government doesn't know how to move
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: this fast. Yep.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 3: I agree with that, but I think we're on the
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 3: cusp of that new response to the second Gilded Age,
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 3: and that's something I'm genuinely.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: And it is probably going to start at the state
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: level because that's where you'll get bipartisanship, because the federal
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: levels a bit too polarized at the moment. But what
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: you brought up in Tennessee and Arkansas have seen it too.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is it's consumer facing first,
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: and you start to see it, you know, when you
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: see people like Marjorie Taylor Green starting to articulate similar
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: things as a Jasmin Crockett, You're like, Okay, these are
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: people that are just interacting with small business people, whether
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: it's in the cities or one percent. Alvarro, this is great.
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: It's for my time Machine segment this week. Look, it's
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: fourth of July week, which means there was all sorts
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: of nominees and in fact, one that I thought about doing.
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: Actually I can kind of do it next week. So
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do it next week because there's a
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: there's another state's anniversary sort of state b A lot
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: of states came and you know, officially come into the
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: Union right around this week, right around the fourth of July,
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: particularly states that were led into the Union in the
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: mid to late nineteenth century, and there's a there's a
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: few pieces of interesting unintended consequences or intendive consequences from
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: what happened back then that actually ring very true to
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: some debates that we're having today about statehood. So I
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: want to I decided to save that because, Hey, as
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: I discussed with you, it's holiday week, right, so I
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: thought this would be a bit more of an appropriate
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: little history lesson for the week. It's the summer. We're
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: going to go back to July of nineteen forty six,
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: the summer we didn't know what the word adam really meant.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: So we're going to begin this week with something that
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: if I simply said it without context, you might assume
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: it was a fake story. The bikini swimsuit is named
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: after an atomic bomb test. Sounds ridiculous, right, sounds like
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: one of those things somebody made up on social media.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: It isn't. This is true. On July first, nineteen forty six,
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: the US detonated an atomic bomb over Bikini a Tall
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. Days later, a
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: French engineer turned fashion designer named Louis Riard introduced a
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: new two piece tiny swimsuit, and he decided to call
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: it the bikini. He hoped it would have an explosive
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: impact on fashion, just as the atomic test had dominated
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: newspapers around the world. This was a huge story globally.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: Think about that for a second. Less than a year
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: after Hiroshima Nagasaki, someone thought that the perfect name for
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: a swimsuit was after a nuclear bomb test. Today that
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: seems bizarre and even a fence. But in nineteen forty
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: six it actually made sense. And let me explain. This
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: is what makes the story so fascinating. It's not the swimsuit.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: It's not even really the bomb. It's the strange few
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: years when the world, in America in particular, was still
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what the atom actually meant and
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: what I mean by Adam? Here is atom? Okay? Donald
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: Trump might be wowed by the idea that, wait a minute,
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: Adam is spelled with a T and not a D.
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: But I digress. We tend to remember the atomic age backwards.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: We think of duck and cover drills, fallout shelters, the
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: Cuban missile crisis. Frankly, my parents lived through it right
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: they live. They went to school during duck and cover drills.
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: So why do I know about these things because they
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: told me about them, right, And growing up in Miami,
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: my dad would tell me you could see you could
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: actually go down off the coast and see the military
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: build up as it was taking place. He was in
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: high school at the time. Mutual assured destruction. We assume
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: Americans greeted the bomb with permanent fear, but history is never,
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: of course, that tidy, right, That's what the segment's all about.
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: Fear did arrive immediately, but so did optimism. At the
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: time they existed side by side scientists who had worked
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: on the Manhattan Project. He immediately began warning about the
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: dangers of nuclear weapons. Right if you saw Oppenheimer, that
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: was very true to the historical record. Okay, He in
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: particular was absolutely petrified of what he had just been
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: a part of the bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded.
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: The doomsday clock would soon follow, and just weeks after
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: the Bikini debut, John Hershey published Hiroshima in The New Yorker,
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: forcing Americans to confront the human consequences of the bomb
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: in what was then unforgettable detail. All of this was
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: happening right around the same time. It's all the same summer,
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: same country, one culture was trying to process two completely
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: different emotions wonder and dread. And remember we didn't have
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: an enemy yet with the atomic bomb, so it was
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: really about the technology fear, not necessarily the fear of
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: it falling into somebody else's hands. So that's the tension
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: I find fascinating as I was digging into this because
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: in America nineteen forty six, America still had the monopoly
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: on all things atomic. The United States had developed the
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: most powerful technology in human history. We had just won
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: World War Two, the economy was booming, science had seemingly
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: delivered civilization from fascism. The atom wasn't viewed only as
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: a weapon. It was viewed as the future. In fact,
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: at the time, in this small period of time before
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: the Soviets tested their own nuke, people imagined atomic powered homes,
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: atomic cars, atomic airplanes, atomic medicine, atomic agriculture. There were
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: atomic kitchens. The word atomic itself was simply being used
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: as shorthand for modern. It was just another way to brand,
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: and at the time, branding something atomic was a net positive.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: It was powerful, it was scientific, it was the future.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: The atom was going to transform everything. That optimism feels
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: a bit foreign right now, doesn't it right? But it
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: was real in the late forties, and that's why the
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: bikini story now makes total sense. Louis Riard wasn't celebrating
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: nuclear war. He was simply borrowing the emotional vocabulary of
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: the moment of the culture. In fact, he wasn't even first.
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: A rival French designer had just introduced another tidy swimsuit
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: that he called the a Tomb, claiming it was the
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: world's smallest bathing suit. Playing off the other part of
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: atom Well, Riard wanted to top that. His suit, he joke,
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: was so small it split the atom. He even struggled
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: to find a professional fashion model willing to wear it.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: As you might imagine, eventually he hired a new dancer
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: to debut. The point wasn't subtle. The bikini was supposed
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: to shock people, just like the bottom. What's interesting is
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: that this really wasn't a French story. It was really
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: an American one. The branding may have happened in Paris,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: but the emotional force behind it came from the American culture.
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: We had explorted something brand new into the world's imagination.
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: This wasn't jazz, Hollywood, or Coca cola. We were exporting
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: the atomic age, and it seemed cool. That may be
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: the strangest American cultural export in the twentieth century. But
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: for about two and a half years, it was cool.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: But guess what. Something very different was happening on Bikini
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: a Toll itself. The people who actually lived there were
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: being told to leave their homes. American officials described it
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: as a temporary sacrifice for the good of mankind. Many
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: believe they would eventually return. Most never could. Over the
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: next twelve years, the United States would conduct twenty three
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: nuclear tests at Bikini a Toll. The name became famous,
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: the place became radioactive, and the people disappeared from our memory.
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: The Bikini really isn't a story about commercialization. It's a
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: story about normalization. Human beings normalize. We normalize extraordinary things
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: with astonishing speed. Sometimes we do it in months, times
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: in weeks. The atom had entered everyday life before the
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: world had even decided how to feel about The optimism
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: didn't replace the fear. The fear didn't erase the optimism.
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: People lived with both at the same time. The Bikini
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: is that artifact of that small period of time when
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: we thought this was all really cool. An article about
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: Hiroshima and The New Yorker is another story, one culture,
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: two completely different emotional responses, and both were real. Obviously,
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: the bounced shifts Soviet Union test its own atomic bomb
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: in nineteen forty nine, Suddenly the Americans didn't have a
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: monopoly on atomic Then we had the hydrogen bomb. Fallout
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: became a household word by the early sixties. The Cuban
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: Missile crisis permanently altered the emotional meaning of nuclear weapons. Today,
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: when we hear the word atomic, we don't think anything
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: fashionable or skimpy. We think fright We think fear, were frightened.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: The atom didn't change experience with it, and this is
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: a pattern that repeats itself through history. Every generation experiences
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: a breakthrough technology railroad, electricity, or plane, internet, artificial intelligence, anyone.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: At first we see only possibility. Eventually we become more
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: aware of the risks. Technology is not what's changed, it's
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: our relationship with it. The atomic age follow that pattern
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: as well, only at the time faster, which brings me
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: back to the beginning. Today, billions of people know what
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: a bikini is. Very few know what bikini a told is,
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: or why the swimsuit carries its neck right, you know,
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: in some ways because it you know, bikini sounds like
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: it stands for a skimpy bathing suit, and so the
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: word feels eny right, feels small. Maybe that's why I
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: enjoy these little corners of history so much, though not
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: because they're trivial, but because they're reminders that people living
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: through history don't know which part of their world future
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: generations are going to find strange. What are we doing
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: right now that somebody else is going to say, you,
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: guys did what If I told you today that a
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: swimsuit was named after an atomic bomb test, You'd probably
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: think I'd fallen for some fake history. Except it's true,
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: because history is always stranger than our memory of it.
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: Summer of nineteen forty six, America and much of the
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: world was trying to live with two ideas that seemed
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: impossible to hold together today. That the atom might save
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: the future and then it might destroy it. For a
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: brief moment, both as far as this country was concerned,
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: thought it was equally possible. Maybe when you're staring at
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: somebody's bikini. First of all, don't be staring at somebody's
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: bikini but realize why would maybe take a second to
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: realize where the name came.
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 4: From as chuck, So a little last chuck.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: All right. First question comes from Heather g in La
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: and she asked, do you see somebody jumping into the
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight president race? Presidential race prior to the
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: midterm election. So it is there is quite a few
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: examples of people announcing their presidential campaigns literally the week
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: of the midterm elections that Thursday and Friday. Maybe they
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: show up on a Sunday show the following Sunday. But
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: whether it's a campaign, an exploratory committee, officially throwing whatever
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: you want to call it, that has been what the
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: what the? And usually it's somebody who who is in
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: the one percent category that tries to because you know
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: there's there only could be one person who announces first. Right,
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: the question this time I think this is a fair
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, since everybody kind of knows that that's
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: the pattern, usually that means someone's going to try to
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: one up it, right. Do they announce on election night itself?
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: That could be? Do they announce the weekend before? That
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: could be the downside of doing this though, if you're
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: if you're a very prominent person supposedly working on something,
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: is to look like you care more about your politics
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: than what's happening at the moment in your party and
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: et cetera. And I think that that's that's the fine line.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: I think anybody that wants to be the nominee is
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: not going to do it before the midterms. But somebody
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: that just wants a little bit of attention and wants
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: to see if they can, you know, maybe even if
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: it if it's divisive virility, but it gets maybe that
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: it elevates their name, wreck their name idea a little bit.
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: If you're a little lesser known, you know, if you're
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: like i've heard Josh Green, the governor of Hawaiis said
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: he's not ruled out running for president, you know, maybe
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: maybe somebody like him would have to do that. I
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: remember Paul Song has got in super early because nobody
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: knew who he was at the time. You know, at
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: the time he was a former one term senator from Massachusetts,
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: and nobody how do you say your name? You know,
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: the t count of for the s and all that business.
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: So it is I think if you have somebody that
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: jumps in before the midterms. It's someone in that in
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: that category sort of seeking a little extra attention because
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: they won't be able to stand out announcing after the midterms.
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: Right after that, they'll just be one of eighteen candidates
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: that are thinking about running for president. By the way,
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: one little aside here on that, because I was watching
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: Newsom and ro Kana go back and forth on this
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: California billionaire tax, it made me think, like, you know,
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: there's probably a better way to spend the midterm if
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: you want to be if you're really serious about running
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: for president, and you're serious about also being the leader
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: of the party, why don't you do something more tangible?
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: You know, I it I'd like to see a presidential candidate.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, whether you're from Team D or Team R. Right,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: if you're from Team R, you know you're you want
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: to you want to go. Maybe you set up an
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: entire independent expenditure campaign and you Glenn Young Cain become
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: the face of it, and you do everything you can
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: to get Michelle Tafoy elected to the United States Senate
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: in Minnesota. Or you're Ram Emmanuel and you go to
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: you know, or your or your Andy Basheer. You're somebody
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: and you go to a red state like Mississippi or Kansas,
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: and you do the same thing, and you do in
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: the message being you're trying to expand the map for
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: your party. You're trying to show you're both the party leader.
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: But then you're also trying to contrast you're going to
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: a red leaning state in that case, in the case
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: of the ours be a blue leaning state. But actually
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: do something to help your party. Don't just don't just
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: sort of chase the empty calories of social media to
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: go viral on clips about a billionaire's tax or about
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: Somali's in Minnesota. Why don't you actually try to help
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: your party do better in the midterms. Why don't you
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: try to help your party register new voters, Why don't
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: you try to help your party expand the map. Why
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: don't you try to help your You know, that's that's
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: the type of work that probably gets more rewarded down
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: the road. You won't get the immediate impact, but I mean,
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's the difference between you know, to me,
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: the empty calories of trying to just bullshit rhetoric on
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: billionaires tax is like essentially taking taking peds and just
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: trying to and trying to take a shortcut to look
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: like you're working out versus starting up a campaign in
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: a Mississippi or for a demok or Minnesota, for a
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Republican that's actually doing the hard work without using, you know,
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: artificial means to inflate your reality. All right, next question
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: comes from Graham, and he writes, Hey, love the show,
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: especially the interviews. Curious, what do you think actually happened
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: in that meeting between Trump and Senate Republicans that brought
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: them back in line? What kind of leverage or argument
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: gets senators to reverse course like that, especially if they
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: were already on their way out. Thanks Graham. Well, all
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: I can do is quote Bill Cassidy because he's the
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: one that flipped and ran Paul. Now, both Cassidy and
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: Paul simply, you know, especially Cassidy says his complaint was
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: they weren't getting briefed. And if you're not going to
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: brief and if you're not gonna because the whole point
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: of the law is you've got to report back to Congress,
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: and they never reported back to Congress. He got a briefing,
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: So he basically says he gave him the vote for
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: the briefing. Now, the Cassidy interview, the boy, there's a
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: lot to it. I'm going to save a little bit
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: of it for my next episode. But he did a
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting interview with my friend Margaret Brunnan on Face
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: the Nation. It's a pretty long interview and talked about
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: the meeting. It's interesting. He's I just want to share
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: a few things that Cassidy said, right. He said about
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: his defeat, you know, and this is where kind of
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: I think it puts your It will help explain where
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: his head is at. He goes, let me first quote
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: a famous philosopher, James Bond and Quantum of Solace, and
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: he says, you can be judged by the strength of
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: your enemies. To beat me, I had a governor, a
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: state legislature, a president, cabinet officials, and members of Congress
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: all coming at me. Really came down to the President
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: being offended that I voted to support the constitution, which
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: is what he calls his vote to convict after Donald
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: Trump's actions en role in the January sixth insurrection. And
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: I think he sort of, you know, so, I think
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: there's a little bit of he feels as if he was.
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: You know, he's a bit martyred a little bit on that.
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: But the most fascinating parts of the conversation there were
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: about so he said, because he got his briefing, you know,
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: that's what I was looking for. And yet he was
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: still pretty tough on Trump. He said, I don't know
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: if he said, I don't know if they're empty threats,
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: referring to Trump apparently re Trump re threatening Iran. Right,
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they're empty threats, because you can
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: certainly return to bombing. But the fact is that a
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: medium sized power at this point is perceived to have
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: fought a superpower to a draw, requiring some measure of
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: accommodation of We the superpower, and we spend twenty nine
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: billion dollars, we have thirteen American dead. We hope to
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: get back to status quo ane I will say in
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: the briefing last night, referring to the briefing he got,
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: they would make the argument that we've actually made progress.
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: If that's the case, we should all be thankful. So
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: the point being is he does it. He seems to
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: be both still skeptical, but because he got his briefing,
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: he felt compelled to at least change his vote on
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: the War Powers Act, which clearly was of importance to him.
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: Is it just simply getting access to the President that
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: got him to flip his vote. That's one way to
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: look at it for what it's worth. He lambass Kennedy,
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: and then he says, you hate the question of whether
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: you regret your vote. Can you explain why you said
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: yes to Bobby Kennedy as HHS secretary. I'm going to
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: reach a Cassidy's own words, of course, and I have
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: before Bobby Kennedy was going to have the ear of
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: the President. The President seems to be fascinated with the Kennedy.
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: So either he was going to be in a position
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: where there were guardrails, and I did have commitments made
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: as to the kind of guardrails, or he was going
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: to be appointed White House healths Are, in which case
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: he would have the President's here without the guard Now,
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: now I had to make a decision. He's going to
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: have the President's here? Is it going to be with
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: some sort of guardrails, whether it be a commitment to
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: meet on a quarterly basis in which there could be
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: regular communication, in which there could be a kind of
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: an agreement that I would have. You know, obviously, as
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: a chair, excuse me, I have some role in terms
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: of the people who as system or would he be
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: an unappointed, unsentate confirmed healthcares are. That's kind of my choice,
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: and I chose. You can criticize it, but I chose
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: to have the one with the guardrails and running falls up.
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: Do you think it could have been worse? Look, it's
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: something you cannot know. We can't go back in time
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: and say him as White House are would have been worse.
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: But we do know the president is very influenced by
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy. And so if that's the case. If that's
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: the case, is it better or at least at the
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: outset when these decisions are being made, that there's an
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: open line of communication, a commitment to appear on a
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: quarterly basis, with a commitment to say that, to preserve
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: this and to preserve that what was better At the
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: time I made the decision it was better to have
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: the guardrails. You can criticize that, but I think again,
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: as I'm searching for kind of the right diagnosis and
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: the right care, you can criticize me, but I'm not sure,
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 1: it's quite as kind of black and white as people
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: like to say. So to understand his argument, he's basically
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: saying he thought Bobby Kennedy, as a confirmed Senate, confirmed
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: Cabinet secretary who has to report to Congress, who then
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: has his budget approved by Congress, who then has his
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: staff a lot of his deputies approved by Congress, not
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: all of them, but some of them, that that was
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: a better way than just Bobby Kennedy sitting in the
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: White House. I accept the premise that that's what he believed.
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: It does look kind of ridiculous in hindsight, Like just
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, the fact is you cannot have Kennedy's voice
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: in these Senate confirmed positions giving credibility to this hope
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 1: them that he pushes, and that's what happened here. I
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: accept his explanation, but count me as somebody who completely
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: disagrees with his diagnosis on this one. All right, I
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: did my Cassidy thing now, all right? Next question comes
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: from John and Cincinnati. Was that an HBO show? But
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: I digress. After the announcement of a flat five year
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: eligibility rule in college athletics, I was curious to hear
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: your take what are your thoughts on the decision and
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: spinitual impact? Hope you're enjoying your summer. Well, I guess,
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: are we just getting rid of red shirt completely? If
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 1: that's the case, right, are there still going to be
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: medical red shirts? Are we going to do that? You know,
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: this feels like every time we have a oh this
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: is it, then there's always a loophole. Right, It's kind
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: of like our tax code. But the five year rule
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: seems as good as any I guess. Look, I go
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: back to something I said. I was invited on my
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: friend of mine sports podcast the other day and he
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: was asking me about this, and I said, look, I
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: think everything that Congress is trying to do right now,
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: and everything in NANCYAA is trying to do right now,
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: none of it is going to work until you have
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: collective bargaining, until you have an entity where you have
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: an actual entity you're negotiating with. I think now these
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: are all ad hoc rules. Five year reveals fine, but
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: that's something that probably at this point, if you're going
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: to be a professional league, and at this point college
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: sports is a profession, well then you're going to have
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 1: to have some labor law here, and the easiest way
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: to make that happen is collective bargaining. And there's not
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: a professional sports league that doesn't have it right at
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: this point. I know there's probably some exceptions of a
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: small sports league that doesn't. I'm not going to let's
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: not get into that. But the point is of the
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: major sport, with the reven the college football brings in
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: in college basketball, the amount of revenue they get in,
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: there's no other pro sports entity that has that kind
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: of revenue and doesn't have collective bargaining. I just kind
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: of think that that's, you know, that's the answer here
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: to these things should be negotiated, whether it's five years,
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: whether they're medical red shirts, this is what collective bargaining.
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: This is what a player's soci Now. The hard part
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: is figuring out is this going to be done by
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: conference or you know, does it get done you know,
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: as a larger entity. And I think that's unfortunately the
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: mess here. But I think Congress trying to put a
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: layer of law on here without a a sort of
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: an agreed upon way for the players to speak, I
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: just think you're just never gonna You're never going to
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: get anything passed. Congress is never going to be able
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: to pass anything that has any legal teeth to it.
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: And the only way around this is is is to
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 1: have the collective bargaining and have the direct the direct
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: negotiations between the entities that run college sports and the
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: players that participate in college sports, and Congress can pass
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: some guardrails around it. You know, you can't do this,
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: this and this, but every other rule. This shouldn't be
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: debated by Maria Cantwell, Richard Blumenthal, Roger Marshall and Cruz.
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: You know, they shouldn't be deciding is in five years?
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: Is six years or you know winning that should be
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: done by the two entities with with with more skin
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: in the game here. Hey, really enjoy the show. It's great.
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: Penn Caine in for my windshield time. Okay, that's interesting.
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: Curious about straight ticket voting since we have it here
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: in Alabama, what do you think are the unintended consequences,
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: especially when it comes down to down ballot candidate quality.
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: Thanks Stephen Birmingham. PS. The ass check jingle is my favorite.
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 1: Good right. You know, It's like I feel like I'm
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: doing the Trump Dance when I do it. On that front. Look,
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: straight ticket voting just I mean it is. It is,
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: it is small, it is undemocratic, right, it is designed
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: you know, it was it was essentially the idea of
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: political machines. And so you know, anything that was the
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: idea of a political machine is a bad idea to me. Right,
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: straight ticket voting, and I think it just ends up
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 1: allowing parties to get cronies in, right, it allows that
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 1: the unqualified grifter to get in and just offering it
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: essentially allows people to hide behind others that maybe are
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: unqualified and all this stuff. So I don't see any
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: upside do it. I wish somebody would explain to me
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: that there is other than to hold power and to
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 1: have and to essentially use a tool of government to
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: have more power over a democratic process. I don't see.
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 1: I mean all I mean straight ticket voting. You know
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 1: that that's for Putin, that's for Iran, that's for the
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: undemocratic places on this earth. So I just sorry, straight
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: ticket voting to me, is couldn't you cannot come up
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: with an the idea that you know? It's just it
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: is to me the definition of undemocratic and illiberal democracy.
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: Nick in Michigan's second Congressional district Rights Hey there's a
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: long bit of belief. Thank you for following my request. There.
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: There's been a long belief that a moderate Democrats are
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: more electable. But I'm starting to wonder if that's overstated.
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: Do you think the party may be overestimating the value
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: of moderation. Could candidates who offer a clear break from
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: the status quote generate the kind of energy needed to win?
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: Thanks Nick. So it's and maybe you'll hear this as
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: a familiar argument I've made before. You know, the word
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: moderate does a lot. Sometimes it's everybody has their own
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: definition of it. I'm looking for moderate in temperament, as
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: I've always said, not necessarily moderate in politics, modern in temperament.
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for incrementalists who are moving forward and not
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: people that are looking back. And why do I say incrementalism,
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: because look, I just you know, I'm a student of history,
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: and anytime you try to take a leap forward, there's
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: always a backlash. If you move things a little bit
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: at a time, you can avoid backlash and bring people along.
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: Social Security and the implementation of social security and the
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 1: add ons to social security over the years are the
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 1: best example of that working of incrementalism working. And suddenly
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: building a massively important institution that has kept more seniors
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: out of poverty than any other program we've ever come
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 1: up with. So I start from there. You know, electability
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: would this means is definitely sort of eye of the beholder, right,
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: And so you can be electable and be very liberal.
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: You can be electable and be very conservative. You can
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: be electable and be very centrist, like I don't, I don't,
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: I don't believe the ideology. It's it's really to me,
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: you know, it's rigidity that the voters will reject. And
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: so to me, moderate is shorthand for are you a pluralist? Okay,
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: As you know, I've been coming back to pluralism, trying
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: to make make make an old political science term cool again.
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: Meaning you accept the premise that not, you know, not
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 1: everybody's going to agree. We're going to try to figure
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: out how to govern within that, within the confines of disagreement,
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: and and accept that premise, and so then we're going
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: to tailor our legislation so that we can minimize opposition.
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: You can call that moderation. I can call that incrementalism.
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: I can also you could you could call that status quo.
• 2:32:07
  Speaker 1: I could call that progress, because do you actually want
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: to make progress or do you just want something to
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: run on. So it's so I don't think. Look, was
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama a moderate? Was he a centrist? No, he
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: was moderate in temperament. Bill Clinton was moderate in temperament.
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush was moderate in temperament. Ronald Reagan was
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: super conservative but moderate in temperament. It is, you know,
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: to me, the worst characteristic of Donald Trump is his temperament. Right,
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: he just doesn't have the temperament to be president of
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: the United States. It's his single you know. Yet there
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: are a lot of other reasons he shouldn't be president.
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: You could come up with grifter nature, all that stuff,
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: but ultimately it's temperament. And so I just you know,
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: this is one of those where I saw, I'm like,
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not advocating for moderates who are merely mouthed. I'm
• 2:32:59
  Speaker 1: just moderate in temperament. Look, I think mom, Donnie's moderate
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: in temperament. I think he does a great job of
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: moderating what are some very extreme physicians. And so, look,
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: communication matters here. You know, offering somebody a seat at
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: the table doesn't mean you're a squish, means you're a pluralist.
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: It also means you're a pragmatist. Also means you accept
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: the premise that everybody at the table isn't going to
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 1: agree on the one solution. So I think it is well,
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: let's put it this way. We haven't elected too many
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 1: ideologues president of the United States, so I disagree with
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: the premise that on overestimating the value of moderation. Right,
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: the two most extreme presidents an ideology that we've ever
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: elected that wherever non by the two major parties in
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: the last say seventy years or very Goldwater in sixty
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: four and George mcgovernment of seventy two, and they got
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: wiped out. One was an R got wiped out and
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: one was a D that got wiped out within six
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: years of each other, ectually eight years of each other,
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: an eight year span in between one of the closest
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: elections we had in the twentieth century, by the way,
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 1: and by the way, following the seventy two blowout, one
• 2:34:22
  Speaker 1: of the other two of the other, two of the
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: closest elections we had in the twentieth century, and two
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: of the biggest blowouts we had in the twentieth century. Right,
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: and it was because we during the Cold War, we
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: absolutely were rejecting political extremism, whether it came from the
• 2:34:36
  Speaker 1: right in Goldwater or the left in mccovern. Now, some
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: of you can say, but Trump's an ideolog, Trump's not
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: an idea log Trump maybe enabling quite a few extremists
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: within his political movement, but he sold himself as a transactionalist,
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: as a deal maker. He went out of his way
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: to try to not to look like, in fact, he
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: is jealum. And it's his sorts of strength, the fact
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: that he has no there's nothing that he is for
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: other than himself, right, everything else is up for debate,
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: up for sale, up for transaction, et cetera. But it
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: is also why he didn't get defeated as as as
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: easily as Goldwater did. And so that's why I think,
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I think what is electable is somebody who
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: isn't going to divide? Are you? Can you be a uniter?
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: Can you be moderate in temperament and being an attempt
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: not to govern in a way that's intentionally divisive? Donald
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: Trump tries to find issues on purpose that divide the country.
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: Is that what you're going to do from the left,
• 2:35:50
  Speaker 1: are you going to purposely right? Right now? The Democratic
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: Socialists purposely want to divide the country over Israel and
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: over Judaism. Right, if they were serious about pushing their agenda,
• 2:36:00
  Speaker 1: they dropped the Israel stuff. Notice, you know, and that
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean they wouldn't have the same form policy beliefs.
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 1: But the fact that they've made that there litmus test,
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: that becomes a divisive factor. Now it's good, you know,
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: that is good primary politics. It's usually bad general election politics.
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: So that'd be how I would try to explain the distinction.
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: But maybe I don't do a good enough job. Maybe
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: the voters don't. Certainly the leaders, you know, I think
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton all understood the
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: story of America is this sort of complicated things that
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we're sort of we're we're a very diverse
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: nation when it comes to ideology and our beliefs, and
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: you kind of, you know, if you don't try to
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 1: govern from the center out, even if you have conservative
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: beliefs or liberal beliefs, you're not going to get anything done.
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 1: That would be the other morning I had. I think
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 1: that's why you see swing voters gravitate to supposedly the moderates,
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 1: it's moderate and temperament, but what it really is is
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 1: about are you am I going to have a seat
• 2:37:08
  Speaker 1: at your table? And if the voter doesn't perceive they're
• 2:37:12
  Speaker 1: going to seat at the table, they don't think you're
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: a moderate. And to me, that's one of my definitions there.
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: I hope that helps, and I'd love to hear your
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: response and retort by that where you're going to stick
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 1: to Michigan. Cam k from Royal OK Michigan Rights, Hey,
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: appreciate your thoughtful independent approach. I believe many of our
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: political challenges stem from structural issues, particularly an imbalance of
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 1: power between the wealthy and the broader public. Do you
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 1: think reforms aimed at redistributing power, like expanding representation, adjusting
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: the courts, are limiting concentrated influencer necessary to meaningfully improve
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: our system best re cards, Yes, Yes, A thousand times yes,
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 1: And Cam, I have a feeling I want to hope
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 1: you know I answered your question in this episode, and
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: I hope you really listen to the first part of
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 1: this episode where I get through I mean, I think
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 1: that structural forms on our tax code could actually do
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: more and accomplish more than sloganeering on the billionaire attacks.
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: For instance, the representation issue right the fight inside the
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party would be less. So if there was more,
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: if we actually had expanded the table and put more
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: seats at the table, where there would be more socialists,
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 1: there'd be more nationalists, there would be more moderates, there'd
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 1: be more liberals, there'd be more conservative there'd be more independents.
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 1: There may be libertarians, there'd be more environmentalists, there'd be
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit more of everything. But right now we've
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 1: got a system where the two parties are afraid of
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: different factions popping up. And if we expanded the size
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: of the House of Representatives as the founders intended, then
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: we'd actually have the more factions. The Madison argument is
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 1: the more factions sitting at the table, actually the more
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 1: one thing, the more honest a small d democratic process
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: will be, the outcomes will be because nine times out
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: of ten, people just want to know they've been heard,
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately, the system we have right now, it makes
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 1: it where a lot of people, good chunk of these
• 2:39:07
  Speaker 1: countries doesn't feel like they're being heard. And that to
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: me is what we should be concerned about and I
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 1: think it's why we're feeling as polarized as we do.
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: Final question for this Monday episode Melaura and Bellingham, Massachusetts
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 1: rights first time, but Malaura aspires to be a five timer,
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: Well bring it up. We can't wait. I really appreciate
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 1: your recent discussion on civics education and the idea of
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: starting with the Constitution. Do you have any go to books, documentaries,
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 1: or resources that offer a clear and accessible overview of
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 1: the constitutional faithful listener, Malaura, and not beyond the Federalist papers.
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 1: And I guess I'd like to make the Federalist papers
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: cool again. The Federalist papers. Here's what I might suggest,
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: And maybe you've given me a book idea and updated
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: Federalist papers, you know, basically taking all the Federalist papers
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: and rewriting and rewriting that for the modern for the
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: modern era. So it's the same argument, but instead of
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: it talking about eighteenth century America, we talked about twenty
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: first century America. And so what I think what you
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: have just made me realize is you know what we're missing,
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: we're missing and how you selling the Constitution in the
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: twenty first century, because that's what the Federalist papers really
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 1: were right. It was a set of articles to just
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: make the case for ratification of the Constitution. What if
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 1: we just simply updated the case and didn't just republish
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: the Federalist papers, but updated the Federalist papers so that
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: people understood the tools how the Constitution works, tools that
• 2:41:00
  Speaker 1: are at their disposal if they choose to use them. So,
• 2:41:06
  Speaker 1: I think what you're what I'm saying is there's not
• 2:41:08
  Speaker 1: a good book that does exactly what I'm describing, and
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 1: maybe sort of a citizen's guide how to make the
• 2:41:17
  Speaker 1: Constitution great again. Maybe it I ought to be a
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: book that myself and maybe another historian friend of mine
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: ought to become the authors of. Anyway, it doesn't have
• 2:41:32
  Speaker 1: to be me. Maybe my friend Lindsay Shravinsky or at
• 2:41:35
  Speaker 1: the George Washington Library. Maybe that's a good idea for
• 2:41:39
  Speaker 1: her too. But either way, you've Melaura, that's a very
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty impressive first question because she suddenly got
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 1: me thinking about a book proposal with it all right,
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: with that, I will put a pin in this one.
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: Since last we spoke, then that's have had a little
• 2:41:59
  Speaker 1: bit of We've been a little bit of a slump
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: got me a little bit nervous here. The bullpen is
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: the bullpen, and it turns out if we're not scoring runs,
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: we don't have the bullpen to win three to two games,
• 2:42:14
  Speaker 1: two to one games, four to three games. That's a
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 1: little distressing. Of course, the big question is will then
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: be buyers at the deadline and actually try to make
• 2:42:25
  Speaker 1: a little run. All I would ask is, let's start
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: to give our young guys a chance at competitive baseball. So,
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: mister Lerner, let's spend a couple of bucks. Let's do it.
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: Let's go get a couple of arms in the bullpen.
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 1: Let's improve it. Let's go find a Let's go find
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 1: somebody else we can rely on in that bullpen, and
• 2:42:43
  Speaker 1: let's see what Let's see what's possible. Let's see what's
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: possible on that front. And I have to say I
• 2:42:55
  Speaker 1: am getting sucked into the World Cup. I know I'm
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: not going to tell you the world's biggest soccer but
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 1: let's just say I gravitate towards the teams that like
• 2:43:06
  Speaker 1: to press and like to keep going. And I do
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: enjoy the aggressiveness of the American team. So man, let's
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: let it ride. You know, I don't know why we
• 2:43:17
  Speaker 1: have to face both Bosnia and Herzegovnia, but we're gonna
• 2:43:20
  Speaker 1: be and we're gonna beat both of them in our
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: next match. I'm convinced of it. All right. With that,
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: I will see you for the Thursday episode, and I
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 1: hopefully we'll see some of you with our live election
• 2:43:33
  Speaker 1: night coverage of the Colorado Primary. Tuesday night coverage will
• 2:43:38
  Speaker 1: begin at nine pm Eastern