Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - How Lindsey Graham Should Be Remembered + Can The Law Succeed Where Politics Fails?

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Full Episode - How Lindsey Graham Should Be Remembered + Can The Law Succeed Where Politics Fails? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: returns quints dot com slash chuck. Hello thereon, Welcome to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the Monday episode of the Chuck Podcast. Where As I
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: always promise you, it's politics for the rest of us,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: and wow, if you always need a reminder, and it is.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: It is something that that I've always lived with. They
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: expect the unexpected, right. The thing about politics that can
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: make it so compelling sometimes is just the real world
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: consequences that both impact politics, and then how politics gets
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: impacted and changes, because no matter what happens, the death
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of Lindsay Graham is going to be a fork in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the row moment. The question is at a fork in
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the road moment for South Carolina, for the Republican Party,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: for the US Senate, for his own legacy, and so
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to deal with a lot of the potential
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: fallout of what we're going to be dealing with here
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: with Lindsay Graham. I shared with you some of my
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: personal thoughts on Lindsay Grahm, and I'm going to share
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: a little bit more in this episode, including one of
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the most striking interviews I conducted, and had nothing to
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: do with the interview itself, but everything to do with
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the off the record conversation I had, and it was
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a joint interview I conducted with John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Happened to tape on January sixth, twenty seven, team just
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: before Donald Trump would take the oath after he was
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: certified as president. The interview itself is semi unremarkable, but
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: there's a reason for that, And what was more remarkable
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: was the conversation I had with these two gentlemen off
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: the record, And this point, off the record does as
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: far as many journalists concern expire upon death on this front.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: So I will share a little bit of that conversation
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and what it was about. Some of you may imagine
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: giving the timeline of events, it's Lindsay and McCain coming
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: back from overseas right before Trump's taking the oath of office,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So you can put together where that conversation is going
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to go. And it's a reminder of what Lindsay's mindset
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: was at the start of the first Trump presidency, obviously
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: how it evolved, and we'll get to that. We get
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: you through a few other things, you know.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: We need to pay a lot of attention to what's
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: happening in the UK and the political implications of Nigel
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Farage and what's happening there, given that in some ways
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: breaksit in Trump. We've been living these parallel lives, so
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: there's a lot there and I think it's gotten a
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: little underplayed, and I want folks to be paying attention
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: because I think this is something that could get imported
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: into the US. Trust me, I think a lot of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Americans are looking for their own count binface when it
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: comes to sending a message to both political parties. And
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: then I want to close with sort of unpacking this
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: battle of extremes. What's going on right now? How is
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: it that sort of ideological movements can take hold? And
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do it through the prism of Ram
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Emmanuel's trip to Israel where he sort of laid down
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: a marker there about the future of Israel's relationship with
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the United States, at least on an official front. That
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: it's obviously time machine, and I'll just drop you a
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: little hint here. It is at about an event that
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: frequently gets used to this day as a comparative when
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out what is happening in a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: battle between two ideologies. That's that's my one hint for
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: you on that. Do a little questions. And if that's
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: not enough, I gotta, I gotta. I got a modest
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: proposal for fixing Baseball's Hall of Fame. So how's that
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: for a thorough rundown. It's July. Remember we're gonna do.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: We do two episodes. We have one day. We'll have
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: my next one on Thursday. Obviously, when news breaks, I
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: will do my best to fill the vacuum, as I
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: did on Sunday with my initial reaction to Lindsey Graham.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm gonna begin.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: There because I think I think we've all seen it.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: And I know if you if you listen to this podcast,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I know you're sort of perhaps one part partisan political junkie,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: one part perhaps you know and partisan political practitioner, but
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: another part sort of student of politics. And I want
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: to speak to sort of my audience, this student of
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: political side of your brains here a little bit, and
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: let's just have a reality check. I think it's pretty
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: clear you can see, judging by the reactions to the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: passing of Lindsay Graham, is that most people are expressing
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: their own reaction through essentially their own politics, or their
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: own belief system or their own set of beliefs of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: where they wish Lindsey Graham were or whatever it is, right,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and you sort of see it, and I think that, Look,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I've done this over thirty years, and I will tell
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: you this. I think there's really two types of politicians,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: two types of elected excuse mean two types of elected officials,
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  Speaker 1: audiologues and politicians. And you may think, well that's simplistic.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: But hear me out.
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  Speaker 1: The ideologue has a belief system and they essentially want
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  Speaker 1: to get elected, to pursue and to persuade and to
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  Speaker 1: get more people believing, and to sort of plant a flag,
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  Speaker 1: dig a hole whatever it is, dig a trench, to
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  Speaker 1: keep their movement alive. And essentially they want their movement
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  Speaker 1: to be the mainstream of American politics. Perhaps they're fighting
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that make the movement the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Perhaps they're trying to make their movement the mainstream of
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  Speaker 1: the Republican Party. But you get my drift. You have
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  Speaker 1: your ideologues and then you have your politicians. What do
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I mean by a politician? So take Bill Clinton and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Ted Cruz. I think these are two good examples. These
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  Speaker 1: guys are politicians first and ideologue second.
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  Speaker 2: You may think, what are you talking about? Both of
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: them are.
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  Speaker 1: It's a partisan Democrat and a partisan Republican. But they're
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: very careful to try to follow where they think things
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  Speaker 1: are going a little bit right, and their goal was
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to be in the game, if you will, be in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of it. So with Lindsey Graham, I made
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: this comparison that many ways, Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden
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  Speaker 1: were mirror images of each other as US senators. I
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: know some of you can't remember Joe Biden the senator
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: versus Joe Biden the Vice president and president.
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  Speaker 2: But Joe Biden the.
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  Speaker 1: Senator politically was always that They always tried to make
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  Speaker 1: sure he was in the middle of where the Democratic
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  Speaker 1: Party was, not necessarily in the middle of where American
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  Speaker 1: politics was.
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  Speaker 2: Lindsey Graham I.
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  Speaker 1: Would describe as the same way that ultimately he was
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  Speaker 1: trying not to be in the middle of where American
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  Speaker 1: politics was. He was trying to be in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of where he thought the Republican Party was. He never
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  Speaker 1: wanted to be unfriendly with any wing of the Republican Party.
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  Speaker 1: Now part of that is pragmatic. He got elected state
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  Speaker 1: centered from South Carolina. South Carolina very much a state that,
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  Speaker 1: at least for the last you know, going to the
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  Speaker 1: sort of the original the rise of the sort of
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: strong Thurman was a party switcher. So really Carol Campbell,
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  Speaker 1: the late Carrol Campbell was in some ways, and you
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  Speaker 1: have Lee Atwater and all this stuff. You want to
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  Speaker 1: go real deep there in South Carolina Republican politics, but
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  Speaker 1: sort of you know, we're the founding fathers of the
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  Speaker 1: modern South Carolina Republican Party. And Lindsay Graham was definitely
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  Speaker 1: a student of that modern movement of and in some
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  Speaker 1: ways a part of it, you know, sort of I think,
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  Speaker 1: you know, was young and was coming up when Carol
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  Speaker 1: Campbell was sort of the first of the Republican statewide
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  Speaker 1: office holders to find success without having to have been
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  Speaker 1: a Democrat first, right, which was which was some of
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  Speaker 1: the you know, seventies and eighties versions of the South
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  Speaker 1: Carolina Republican Party. But when you follow so there's two
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  Speaker 1: ways to look at Lindsay. When you see his you know,
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  Speaker 1: his shift from sort of being McCain's wing man to
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  Speaker 1: Trump's wingman, many people looked at it and saw him, well,
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  Speaker 1: McCain never never, you know, never bought into Trump, wideded Lindsay.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm gonna even my answer as a political anthropologist,
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  Speaker 1: not necessarily we're my own principles. I think we all
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  Speaker 1: think we have an idea of how we would behave
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: under that circumstance. But I do want to remind you how,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: you know, perhaps how Lindsey Graham's and what we don't
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: fully understand is Lindsay Graham's own relationship with that senen see.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: I could tell you my belief.
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  Speaker 1: I believe that Senate seat was as important to him
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: as a spouse. You could have said the same thing
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: about John McCain and his relationship with the senatec Right,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the Senate gave John McCain relevance, and he liked being
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: relevant and he liked being in the middle of things.
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  Speaker 1: I think Lindsey Graham very similar. I think the Senate
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: seat gives him relevance, gave him relevance, and he always
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: wanted to be in the middle of everything. And whatever
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: you think of Lindsay Grant, this is why when I
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  Speaker 1: say there's audiologues and there's politicians, he was definitely a politican.
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  Speaker 1: And sometimes we love a politician when they adopt our
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: point of view, and we think politicians are incredibly unprincipled
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: and bought off when they somehow maybe once flirted with
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: our side. But it's somehow on the other side love something.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: So I think we are understandably can be harsh critics
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: to that. Remember, I'm not here to say you're right
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: or wrong about this. I am trying to really be
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: explanatory in this situation, and ultimately right history is. We'll
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: see how kind or unkind history is to Lindsay and
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: whether whether history will either reaffirm Lindsay what many believe
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: many believe was a mistake by Lindsay, or whether he
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: will somehow be proven correct on his decision to do.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: What he did.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: But the fact is it doesn't change who he is,
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  Speaker 1: and that's who he was, right. He was a politician
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  Speaker 1: who yes, he was a Republican because that was the
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  Speaker 1: only way to succeed in politics in South Carolina in
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  Speaker 1: the as he was coming up right in the in
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the eighties, going into the nineties and deciding to make
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: this a career. And that's why I always throw Ted
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: CRUs in there at I think these are I think
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: there are certain people that are political animals and would
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: run would have run for office as I think if
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Texas were a liberal, deep blue state, Ted Cruz would
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: have fashioned himself as a movement progressive and done his
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: best to try to get elected the Senate. I don't
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: say this to criticize to I just think there are
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: certain people are political animals, and they or attracted to politics,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: but they wanted and they're attracted to politics to get
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: access to power and influence and relevance, and so their
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: own geography essentially pushes them to just sort of decide
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that I'm going to be generous here that is most
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: pragmatic for having a successful political career from that geographic area.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Again, I.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: You know, I think you have to. You could say
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I'm being either too generous or cynical all at the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: same time. I'm just telling you making this sort of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: through my That's why I joke that these days I
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: call myself a political anthropologist. I'm trying to explain how
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: these strange tribes interact with each other. So look, I
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: do think that the Lindsay legacy is again going to
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: be through this prism of what you think of Trump
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and what you think of the Trump era, and how
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: existential you believe the Trump arra has moved things. And
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: for some of you it's totally unforgivable that Lindsay's been
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: too much of an enabler. I think for others you
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: would say, hey, Lindsay was just trying to be in
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: the room. And I think here's where some Republican senators
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: would defend Lindsay very quietly, where your romney' would defend Lindsay. Shoot,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: where you're Chris van Hollins or your Mark Warners with
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: defend Lindsay at least when it came to him being
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: a United States Senator. And let me put it in
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: these terms, you'll have a hard time finding many senators
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: say negative things about Lindsay Graham, not just out of respect,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: but genuinely. He was somebody just about every senator found
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: a way to work with and there would be some
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: issue you could work with. When it came to Lindsey Graham.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: It's very similar, frankly, to what you would hear, particularly
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: in the last ten years of his career in the
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Senate Ted Kennedy. What you'd hear many Republicans, maybe not
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: say very loudly, but they would say and they certainly
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: said it after he passed away. Well, let me tell
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: you about Ted Kennedy. Man, I was able to get
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: this done because of Ted Kennedy, and it was these
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: compliments were coming to the right. Lindsay loved the Senate,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and Lindsay wanted to be in the middle of everything.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: That's why you found.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Him in Barack Obama's oval office, and that's why you
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: found him.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: In Donald Trump's office.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: The same guy that found his way to Obama is
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the same guy that found his way to Trump because Ultimately,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: his north star was whatever it took to be relevant
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: to be in the middle of everything, as he himself right,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And I think the there there. I think plenty of
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the critiques that come at him are through the prism
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: of well, I wouldn't have done that. I can't believe
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: he did. Here's one thing I would like to I
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: always remind people when I do this in my own household,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: everybody has a line that once Trump crosses it, there
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: out there are plenty of people that keep moving the line.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: You have certainly plenty of rhetoric through the years where
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Lindsay himself has moved the line on Trump. And this
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: is where I would say, as if he were a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: navy man, we'd say he's a sailor because he knows
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: how to he will tack to where the wind is blowing.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: And as long as the wind was blowing in Trump's direction,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: he was not going to feel comfortable being Liz Chaney.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: He wasn't going to feel comfortable. That's not who he is.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: And again you could say that that's weak, that is
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: what it is. But it is a subjective. It is subjective.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: And again history, I think, over time will tell us
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: whether that was something that.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Was more destructive.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: To the US Senate and to American politics and to
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party, or whether it was helpful at the time,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: because here's what you will hear, and this is where
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: this has real world impact on the near term, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: this is now the near term fallout. Look, by the way,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: one more quick thing before I get to the fallout
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: in the United States Senate fallout in campaign twenty twenty six,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: both of which I want to get to in pretty
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: short order. You're going to see a lot of conspiracy theories.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: You already are seeing conspiracy theories. You're going to see
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories having to do that somehow the Russians were
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: behind this. You're gonna have conspiracy theories that somehow the
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Iranians are behind this. And you're going to have conspiracy
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: theories about his personal life that are going to start
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: to surface. You're going to have people trying to sell
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: all sorts of stories on this. Some of them might
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: be true, some of them will be.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Hard to verify.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: But I know that that's unfortunately a place at were
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: that the Internet is going to go and it's going
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: to force itself into the mainstream. Whether we want it
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: or not, so I would say this. I think it
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: is healthy considering how distrustful our world is and how
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: our enemies are going to try to weaponize this death.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: See the rings, They're better be a just have the autopsy,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: just make sure it's a.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Very just you know, it is.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Unfortunate that this is the world we live in, but
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I think it's healthier if people can see that. It's
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: like the most likely result is a seventy one year
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: old man who flies around the world a lot, just
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: came back from a ten hour trip, carries plenty of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: stress that we know of, and frankly, there may be
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: plenty of stress in his personal life that we know
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: nothing about. Because that's another thing. There's a lot of people,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: myself included, who all have their theories about Lindsay, who
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: all have their ideas about Lynd. And there was a
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: time I considered I had a pretty good sort of
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: professional relationship reporter to source with him, and then it
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: was less so, and there was sort of a I
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: don't know what happened to him with to me, I
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: could just tell you a couple of incidents that he
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: knows are true, and perhaps it explains things. But when
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I interviewed him and McCain on January sixth, twenty seventeen.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: We're sort of at the height of the Russia situation
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and the concern about what did Russia, you know, how
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: did they infiltrate our politics? Well, off the record, they
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: were the ones telling myself and plenty of other reporters
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: about this. This spy overseas named Christopher Steele, who had
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: had his own sort of research.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: That he'd been doing, the so called Steele Dosier, And.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: It's always been something that everybook. This is one of
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: those things that everybody in Washington knows, but it sort
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: of doesn't get said a lot, Which is probably the
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: two people that helped give credibility to the Steele Dosia
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: more than anybody else in sort of Washington was John
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: McCain and Lindsey Graham. It wasn't John Brennan and James
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Comy that which of course have since become sort of
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the central focus of Donald Trump. It really was Graham
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: and McCain who brought this to the FBI and to
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: our intelligence folks. So this was and there certainly were
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: plenty of intelligence sources. Now some of you who don't
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: believe in any of this may say, hey, you may
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: think Graham and McCain were being used. Others will say, aha,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I knew it, and there it is. But I do
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: think I owe it to you to This is sort
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of how I've, why I've where I operate from. When
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it comes to this story and its origin, story, I
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: think has never been fully fully appreciated. This episode of
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• 22:58
  Speaker 1: it's something that any a buddy that actually covered that
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: era and covered the first term. Oh yeah, that's right.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Lindsay and McCain were two of the you know, they
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: seem to be well briefed and well versed on what
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: was in that thing before many other people. Look, within
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: four days of that interview, that thing would explode and
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: then of course the rest is history. BuzzFeed did, frankly,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest mistakes in journalism. But
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: that's a that's a that's something that I have litigated
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: in the past and I won't relitigate at the moment.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: But look, you can't tell the complete story on this
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: in that front. I'm sorry to his family. Look, I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: think those of you, I hope you spend a few minutes.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: You may not have liked Lindsay Graham's politics. You may
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: think he has been all.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Sorts of bad things, but.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you know, you may think you understand his
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: personal life and the decisions he may or may not
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: have made throughout his life, but do understand this fact.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Here's a young man who is in college when both
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of his parents have passed away, one died of Cancer's
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: father dies of a heart attack. He's got a thirteen
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: year old sister at home, he's in college. He's suddenly
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: needing to raise her. That's what he does. He eventually
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: adopts her so she can be eligible for military benefits
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that came to him while he served. So, you know,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I do think when you're assessing somebody's legacy, don't leave
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: out their personal legacy. Don't leave out that that stuff either.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: We're all complicated, we're all human beings, so do know that.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: So none of us can crawl inside his head. Here's
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a guy who had to immediately go into adulthood, who
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: maybe immediately never had a social life when he was younger,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: when most of us are trying to go meet people
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: and all this.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: So the point is that there's going to be a lot.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: There and we you know, and again I have my theory.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: We all have our theories. At the end of the day,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I think that sentence was a spouse. I think he
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: love that sentence more than anything. I also know he
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: came from a generation that perhaps he didn't think he
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: could be successful in politics in South Carolina. If he were,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: if if if if he was publicly somehow a different
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: kind of a different person as far as the public
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: is concerned. Again, I don't believe it's my place to
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: sort of decide, oh, he must be this, and.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: He must be that. I'm not naive. I fully get it.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: I know what's been out there. I know.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: In fact, I'll tell you a funny little one of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: my early Lindsay Graham anecdotes. I'd written a column back
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: in my National Journal days, and it was a column
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: about people the dark course candidates for two thousand and
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: four presidential You know, if it was really about two
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight, you know, I think, no, I know
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what's right, dark horse candidates for two thousand
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and eight, right after, right after Bush won reelection. And
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I had Lindsay grahamont there, and I just had like
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a two liner. I'd do one of these comms. It
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: was called on the Trail back in the day for
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: National Journal, and I think my one line was something like,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: but he's probably got to get married if he's serious
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: about getting involved.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: In presidential politics.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And I had a friend of his immediately say to me,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: he loved that you mentioned him as a presidential candidate.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And he laughed and he said, well, He's probably right.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: I got to get married, so let me go find
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: a spouse, which in some ways was was That was
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: what was so charming about Lindsay. He could wink a
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: nod to everything that was being said about him. He
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: knew the rumors, and I think the fact that he rarely,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: if ever addressed them directly was a Lindsey winkn a nod.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: But again, I think none of us can crawl inside
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: his head, none of us live that early life that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: he lived.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: So all I would say.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Is, you know, we're all three dimensional human beings. Just
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: remember that, especially as we watch what is going to
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: be a pretty destructive conspiracy theory laden harabbitals. And you
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm not going to sit here and tell
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: you I'm a one hundred percent sure of anything, Okay, I
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: don't operate life through that way. I'm an Okham's razor person.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: And I think the most likely scenario is the scenario
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: seventy one year old man is burning the candle at
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: both ends, working seven days a week, always up, always
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: doing these things, perhaps carrying around personal stuff that we
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: don't know about, dies of cardiac arrest, whose father also
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: that cardiac arrest.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: So sometimes.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Ockham's razor is just that Ockham's racer. Okay, Now let's
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: do the real world impact of the loss of Lindsay Graham.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Lindsay's chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is a
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: gigantic problem for Todd Blanche, who is probably, in my opinion,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the most unqualified person ever nominated to be Attorney General.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Matt Gates included.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: I say this because Matt Gates wasn't the personal lawyer
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: for the president. I think this couldn't be more unethical.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: And so the point is Lindsay was going to be
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the protector of Blanche. Lindsay's the guy that could sell
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Tom Tillis. Lindsay's the guy that can sell Susan Collins.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Lindsay's the guy he's been the moderate senator whisperer those
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: that don't like Trump inside the Republican Party. It's Lindsay
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Graham that takes messages from them to the President and
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: from the President to them. In many ways, there's a
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: huge loss for John Thune. John Thune does not have
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a great personal relationship with Donald Trump. Lindsey Graham would
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: be who he could use and messages through. It's how
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell operated when he couldn't get along with Donald Trump.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: This is a massive vacuum. Lindsay was a trusted senator
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: inside that Republican conference. Whatever you think of him from
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: what you think the outside reputation of his was, I
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: can tell you inside he was very trusted and very
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and seen as vital in that bridge between Trump and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: the US Senate whenever there would be problems there. There's
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: no obvious replacement to fill that vacuum. In fact, if
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: you look at what's about happened to the Senate Republicans here,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: you're seeing a massive sort of the sort of the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: rational senators are leaving us left and right. There's no Cornant,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: there's no Tellus, there's no Cassidy, there's no Graham. There
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: might not be a Collins. We'll see what happens in Maine.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: That is, that was a ballast that kept the Senate
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Republicans from behaving like the House Republicans. You take all
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: five of those senators away, you got like Todd Young
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and Jerry Moran and Lisa Murkowski left.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: That may not be enough, right each one of them.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I think Andy Barr, who's going to replace Mitch McConnell
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: is not a real trumpy guy, so it's likely he's
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a bit ends up looking a bit more like a
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: John Cornyn, for instance. Certainly a conservative, but not necessarily
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: trumpy an. He comes from the Republican Party of the
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: pre Trump era, and that's usually you know, did.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: They get Yeah?
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: I always say this, The way to understand Republican politics
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: and where these folks really are is did they get
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: elected pre Trump or not? Right, those that got elected
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: since Trump came on stage are going to be more
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: trumpy and more deferential to Trump and the MAGA movement
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: than those that figured out how to get elected before.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: That's just human nature, right. So this is a massive loss.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: I think what was already an uphill battle for Todd
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Blanche probably is even harder.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: We'll see who ends up running this be given that
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the he was chair of the committee. Whether there's just
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the next person in line, or whether Thune decides to
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: have somebody else run it, I'm certain it's we're going
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: to be I'll be curious to see whether this slows
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: down the confirmation process a little bit, but make no mistake,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: that's an issue. But Lindsay also served as a way
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: to keep Trump from sort of going way down the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: American first nationalist, borderline fascist rabbit hole. Right, Lindsay would
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: grab him and think right like he was constantly. And
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: this is where, you know, some people can't stomach the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: fact that this is a role that he played, and
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you could. Again, I am just telling you the role
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: he played. I'll let you just judge.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: I'll let you. I'm sure plenty of you will judge.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Him on this, and I, like I said, I'm gonna
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I have one more story for you and on him
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: that will at least let you understand where I stand
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: on him. But I'm just trying to explain the role
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: he played.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: He did do that.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: He kepped Trump from from totally going down some crazy,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: even crazier rabbit holes.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: That is possible.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: So this has a this is a huge hole, you know.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: I look at the Senate Todd Young, I think shares
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham's concern about the international rule world order. I
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: think sees Putin as the threat that he is unlike Trump,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: but he does not have Trump's He just doesn't have
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Trump's here or influence.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: What made Lindsey unique in this respect is here was
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: probably you know, he was just in Ukraine, right, he
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: have Trump from abandoning Ukraine. He did, That's why you
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: saw what Zelenski said. He absolutely did. And you know
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: you see, baby Nat Yahoo. Some of you may be
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: ecstatic about the fault what I'm about to say here,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: but he's probably was somebody that kept Republicans from totally
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: abandoning Israel. So the point is he is going, he
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: leaves a gigantic vacuum in the Senate. Who fills it
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: is not clear at all. I think, like I said,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Todd Young and him share Dan Sullivan and Alaska, though
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: he's got his own if if he wins re election. Sullivan,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: you know, he remember when he first got elected, he
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: told I asked him who did he align himself with?
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: And he called himself a McCain Republican. Again, I don't
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: know how often he will say that these days, given
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: who runs the party, but that's certainly Dan Sullivan's instincts.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And in a Senate where Trump's no longer president or
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: even influential, perhaps that's the direction it goes. But David
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: McCormick's another one that I imagine might want to and
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: he's somebody that might have an ability to forge the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: personal relationship with the president, that might be the go
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: between between the sort of the non Trump Republican wing.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Which does exist.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It's not huge, but it's consequential and that so that's
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: probably where I would turn to to see, you know,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: but it's a huge facuate and it's going to impact
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Trump negatively. By the way you start counting up votes. Now,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the way the South Carolina law works is as follows.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: First of all, it's very laid out. He's the nominee.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: There's literally we already know the dates of the special
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: elections because it's written in the state constitution. It is
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: filing deadline open second Tuesday after the death. Well that's
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: a week from tomorrow. Two weeks after that is the primary,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: and if a off is necessary, two weeks after that.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: So we are looking at a mid August primary. I
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: think the second Tuesday in August, and then two tuesdays
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: later a likely runoff. And again I suspect you will
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: see a crowded feel. I suspect you'll see Nancy Mays.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I doubt Nikkay Haley runs because I don't think she
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: wants to lose, and Trump may go out of his way,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: unless somehow she became a consensus candidate, which I'm skeptical
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: of the one person that might become a consensus candidate.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: But I'm a bit skeptical as Henry McMaster, the outgoing governor.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Trump loves him and it's his appointment to make for
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the temporary side of things. Maybe right, I could maybe
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: see that happening, But I don't think that Deters Nancy Mayce.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I don't think that Deters the gentleman that primaried Lindsay,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: that kept Lindsay, you know, under sixty, right around sixty.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: If I'm not mistaken.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: So I suspect this is going to be crowded. And
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: by my goodness, congratulations political junkies, We've now got a
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: special sort of convention ish firehouse primary like thing going
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: on in Maine. We've got an actual new special primary
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and runoff likely runoff in South Carolina, all filling what
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: is normally supposedly the slow news cycle of July and August.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a campaign here.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: There is never a slow news day in the Trump era,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: let alone a slow news week, let alone a slow
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: news month. So with that, I think I want to pivot.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: This is where I want to pivot here to a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: few other things that I wanted to share with you
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: this weekend. But look, we're going to have a lot
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: on this going forward. Oh, one other quick thing I
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: want to I want to mention here about Annie Andrews.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: She's I interviewed on this podcast back in February. She
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: is very much in the mainstream lane of Democratic politics,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: probably a little more little close to the center, more
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: of a Joe Cunningham, you know, the last Democrat to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: win that House seat that Nancy Mace currently represents. Uh,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: they are so she's a doctor, she's no gatflaw. If
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: this Republican primary gets super right wing and super sort
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: of you know, the nominee ends up very hard to
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: sell to your Charleston Republicans your uh, which is to me,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like that's that's that's that's the swing vote.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: It's uh, I think I've described to you right the
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: right around my son goes to schooled Smu're right around.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: SMU is a very Republican neighborhood, except they haven't voted
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Republican for president since Mitt Romney. And that's kind of
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: how I would describe the presidential at least when it
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: comes to presidential vote. That part of Charleston is that
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: sort of Republican chamber of commerce, Republican, college educated, Republican,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you name it. That's why what happened here, and whether
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: there is the inability I kind of think in today's
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: politics where everybody's angry at the establishment and doesn't trust
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: the establishment, that if you try to do a coronation,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: you will start a bigger fight than necessary. That's what
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Maine Democrats realize, which is why this is as open
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: of a convention process as I've seen in some situation
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: like this, and why I suspect it is just going
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: to be like a thousand flowers bloom. It's South Carolina.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Politics is sport in South Carolina. So pull up a
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: chair and realize that the next six weeks are going
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: to feel like a South Carolina presidential primary sort of sprint.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: If you will, I think it'll be that loud, I
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: think it'll be that colorful, and perhaps that consequential. This
• 38:55
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  Speaker 1: All right now, I want to share with you sort
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: of wear my own sort of personal probably why why
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I could be a bit judgmental, certainly why my spouse
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: is a bit judgmental. On Wednesday, we were on a plane,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the three of us together, just happened to be sitting
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: on one of those shuttles to New York. I was
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: going up with my wife and Lindsey Graham was up there,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: you reckon. We had this long conversation, very animated conversations
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: after Trump got elected, and many of you know, my
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: wife is absolutely you know it has been a Democrat
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: for a long time, but an active Democrat, worked in
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: democratic politics. And she says to him, I'm just so nervous,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: you know, are you know, are you gonna are you
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: gonna protect us from the worst parts of of him
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: or the fear and all this stuff that that she
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: was expressing this name, and he was like, no, no, no, no,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: you know where that that is. It was this level
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: of reassurance, this sort of and maybe this shows you
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: just how an effective politician he was. He certainly had
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: her convinsed of who of of of who he will,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: of what he was going to be elect in the Senate. Now,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: a defender of Lindsay would say, well, he held his
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: work that in order to protect packed the country from
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the worst elements of Trump, he had to get close
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: to Trump. And as we know, there's a lot of
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: people who've rationalized that their decision to keep power and
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: say it was to get close to Trump. So I'm
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: a skeptic on that stuff, but I do know that
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: is how some might defend And I think and I
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: just made out probably a pretty I think there's a
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: lot of element to that with him.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: But I can tell you.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: The passion with which he expressed his concerns and what
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: he planned to do versus the behavior we would observe
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: later was a one ade. I've done my best to
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: explain it how I think he might explain it. I've
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: done my best to explain it is in a variety
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: of ways. Ultimately I can't crawl inside his head, but
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: that's what everybody sometimes, success or failure in politics is
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: about making a choice. He made a choice and for
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: him keeping that sentenceat you know, the fact is, had
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: he gone hard on Trump, he would not have He'd
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: have already lost his Senate seat in twenty twenty. And
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty obvious the calculation.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: He made. But like I said, between his role in.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Giving credibility to the Steele doss heated to so many
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: reporters and Intel officials, and his and sort of the
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: things that he would like, I said, like a good politician,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: whoever he was talking to, he made them feel as
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: if he heard them, he was listening, and he was responding,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: all right, let's leave Washington for a minute, go across
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic, as I promised. One of the reasons I've
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: I'm always keeping an eye on British politics is that,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: you know, for about the last decade, the UK and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the United States have been living parallel political lives.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: We may have different constitutions, we have different systems, we
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: have different political traditions, but boy has been remarkable in
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: how voters have expressed their frustrations both at the UK
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: politicians and at the US politicians. They had Brexit, we
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: had Trump, They've gone through It feels like I have
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: a dozen prime ministers in less than a decade.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Doesn't feel that way. They have.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: And we've now had three consecutive one term presidents for
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: the first time in more than a century. We had
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: two impeachments. They've had sort of what they call votes
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: of no confidence. Right, their governing party collapsed. Ours traded
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: control of Congress back and forth twice in both the
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: House and the Senate in the last ten years, as
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: voters keep firing whichever team happens to be in charge.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: So again, different systems, but the same restless electorate. Now
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: quick refresher if you haven't been following British politics lately
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: and why I'm dumping them. Okay, Labor came back into power,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: and Labor, of course basically their quote unquote Democratic Party.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Labor came back into power after fourteen years in the wilderness.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, promising competence and stability after
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the chaos of the Conservative years. Sounds familiar, right, Kir
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Starmer and the role of Joe Biden. Anyway, that honeymoon
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: did not last very long. Hey, neither did Biden's honeymoon.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Labor is now under new leadership, and if you believe
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: many in the polls today, the party with the momentum
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: though is not Labor or the Conservatives. At some point
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: they're going to have to sit for election and you
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: may see a brand new political party end up in
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: charge of parliament in the UK, the Reform UK. This
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: is Nigel Farage's party Right, And for those who've watched
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Farage for thirty years, it's actually a remarkable, remarkable the
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: fact that he is on the cusp of becoming Prime minister.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: The man who says spent decades as sort of a
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: professional outsider just throwing rocks at the establishment now actually
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: has a plausible path to becoming prime minister. But of course,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: since many anticipate him being the favorite, he's gotten a
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: lot more scrutiny of late, and now there's this scandal
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: surrounding his financial disclosures and his lucrative crypto dealings. Basically,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: he has tried to turn his political fame into wealth,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: a familiar path that we've seen here in this country.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: And whether voters ultimately decide those accusations matter in some ways.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Is besides the point. Farage's political response to this scandal
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: has been fascinated. He decided to resign his parliamentary seat
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: right and the idea seemed obvious. Force a special election,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: turn basically a new election for the same seat, and
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Farage would be on the ballot. Turn it into a
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: referendum on Nigel himself ask voters for.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: A simple question, you still believe me? Do you still
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: want me? Politically?
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: It was high risk, but it's a high reward move.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It's a way to just sort of get this. He
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: doesn't want this to linger when the actual national election
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: takes place, probably in a year or so.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Until something unexpected happened.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: The other major parties mostly declined to give him the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: fight he wanted. Now we're not going to field candidates,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: said Labor Tories, you name it, Greens, etc. Instead, the
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: race has become well, something else. One of the most
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: recognizable challengers is count Binface.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: And if you've been.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Following my Twitter feed, you know where I'm going here. Yes,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Count Binface, a man who campaigns wearing what looks like
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: a silver trash can on his head. That is what
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: the BRIT's called trash Canson. Over there, they call him
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Bins for what it's worth.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Now, if you've never heard of count Binface.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Just don't feel bad. But here's the thing, and this
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: is the larger point I want to make. Britain has
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: a long tradition of these satirical candidates actually participating in elections.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: They're not just making jokes from the sideline like our
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: comedians do. They get on the ballot, They campaign, they
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: give interviews, They make ridiculous promises that often sound only
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: slightly more ridiculous than the promises the actual, supposedly professional
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: candidates are making. And now Nigel Farage, a politician who
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: built an entire career arguing that Britain's political class had
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: become a joke, may find himself losing the spotlight to
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: an actual joke candidate. Yes, if you're not a huge
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: fan of these sort of bs artists that just try
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: to to sort of ride waves, like Farage, doesn't strike
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: me as a as anything other than kind of a
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: political grifter, right, take advantage of the moment. So to
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: say that there's something poetic, perhaps wonderfully poetic about this
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: is an understatement. The man who made politics into political
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: theater in the UK now is to compete with the
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: actual theatrics of a trash can himself. So watching this unfold,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I found myself I was exchange texts my old friend
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: of mine from my hotline days, my buddy Steve Beilifer,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and we were sort of laughing about the whole count
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: bin face, and somewhere in the conversation we were just
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: sort of lamenting that, you know, the American system doesn't
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: allow for this, right, And I think he tells you, like,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: America needs a count bin face.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: We kind of this has become absurd at times, our politics, right,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: and we kind of we you know, we have the onion,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: yeah we have. We have certainly plenty of satire out there,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: but sort of forcing the satire into the system might
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: actually shake up the average voter to realize, wait a minute,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta start voting with my brain again,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: not with my emotions.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: So we were going about this and at first we're
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: kind of joking about it, and then we started brainstorming,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe every healthy democracy needs a count bin face, right.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Britain's satire participates, right, our ours as I said, observes,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and what the beauty of Count bin Face is that
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: he gives sort of frustrated voter somewhere to go, right,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: somewhere to do the old double shooter.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Right. Here's my double.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Shooters to the system, right, And that's what Count Binface is, right,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: He's the double shooter.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: God damn it, you guys suck.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going to vote for a trash can, right, And
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: it's a way to essentially vote. I'm rejecting this entire
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: spectacle without actually rejecting democracy. In fact, it's a very
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: small d democratic response. So obviously, look, we don't have
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: that tradition here in America. Our absurdity has a funny
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: habit of becoming reality. So that got me wondering, do
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: we take this to actually a more absurd level. Maybe
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: we're all approaching this all wrong. Maybe instead of pretending
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: politics has become entertainment, we should just accept the premise
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: of the entertainment. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the People's
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: Entertainment Party. The nomination is not going to be decided
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina. No, we are
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: going to The nomination is going to be decided on
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: candidate islands. Right, we have an island off the coast,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: you know, just pick one. Right, we can go off
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the west coast, off the east coast. Right, we'll pick
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: an island. We'll call it candidate Island. Our host Harvey
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Levin of TMZ, and I say him, I'm not trying
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: to take a shot at Harvey. He's built himself quite
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: a business. I actually think in some ways Harvey is
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: is sort of the perfect mediator here, given I think
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: his sort of dispassionate disdain.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: In some ways embracing of the crazy right. Who's better?
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: You spent decades deciding which celebrity meltdowns deserve our attention,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: and modern politics is basically he beat now. Every week,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: candidates could compete in elimination challenges. Week one the Viral
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: clip Challenge. You have thirty seconds to accuse your opponent
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: of destroying America. Go extra points if nobody can explain
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: what you were actually arguing about.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: We two, you go on Donor Island.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Contestants race through an obstacle course collecting super community idols.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Week three it's the three hour podcast endurance challenge. You
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: have to survive in appearance with Howard Stern or Joe
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Rogan without contradicting yourself. Once week four policy week, never mind,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: ratings would collapse. Producers would have to immediately replace it. No, no,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: let's do outrage week. No more policy. Okay, I'm kidding,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: but you see where I want to go here. Underneath
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: the joke is something that genuinely bothers me right now.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: And this is why, in a bizarre way, going to
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: the most absurd corners might actually bring us back to
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: caring about expertise again.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Politics maybe the only profession in America where experience has
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: become a political liability. Nobody wants an inexperienced surgeon, Nobody
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: asks for the airline pilot who's never landed a plane,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Nobody hires the lawyer who's never tried a case. But
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: every election side, millions of voters are told that governing
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: experience is exactly why they shouldn't trust someone to govern.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: Does it get any stranger than that?
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: I don't blame the voters for this, Actually blame our institutions.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: They're the ones that stopped rewarding competence. Right, Congress stopped
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: looking like the first branch of government and started looking
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: like another television set. They abdegated their responsibility, so they
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: earn this sort of well, screw you, guys, I'm gonna
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: blow up the system because you don't know what.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: The hell you're doing.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: You don't even know how to read the Constitution. And then,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of course media and thanks to the changes that came
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: thanks to the oj simpsonification of all things media, that
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: created this algorithm of ship storms that we all have
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: to deal with. Right, redir rewards performance more than competency,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: and maybe we've all adapted to these incentives. So Harvey
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Levin of TMZ, we wouldn't be changing politics.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: He'd just be honest about the rules.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: And it brings me back to count Penface.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: He's funny.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: By the way, there's a music video that is just
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: it's like right out of MTV in the eighties. I
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: wish I could describe it, but it was just like
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: an eighties retro nostalgic music video that just lambasts farage
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and promotes the trash can but with such passion.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: It's fantastic.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: But the fact is it's a reminder that politicians that
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: they're allowed to be mocked before they're worshiped. Right, we
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: are worshiping way too many politicians. They do not need
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: to be worshiped, and Benface reminds voters that at least
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: these guys deserve more skepticism than we give them, and
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: it reminds people that politics is important. But politicians don't
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: have to be larger than my figures. So maybe every
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: democracy needs someone to say this is getting ridiculous. Britain
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: allows that person to beyond the ballot. America usually waits
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: until after we've elected ours. So let's be honest. If
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: this does happen, and I don't look this, Nigel Farraj
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: is so obviously you know this would be you know,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: but if he happens to lose, is there a more
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: fitting end.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: To Faj's political career if it comes at the hands.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: Of a trash can?
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: All right, I want to hit one other topic here,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: and it's there's a couple of things that have happened
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: in Israel, uh and in the West Bank or the
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: last week. There's rama Manuel's speech, there's what happened to Rocanna,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: and he's been telling the story and I want I
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: want to probably do more Rocana later in the week
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: on that front, but I think it all signals the
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: same thing, which is a a collective retreat that you're
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: going to see from from the deep partnership between the
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: United States government and Israel that we've that we've all
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: gotten used to over the last couple of generations. But
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: I want to sort of you know, here we are
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: in the year twenty twenty six, and you know, it
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago that we were this close to
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: the Middle East piece, And it's shocking to me if
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: you just look at it. You know, if I were
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: in a coma for the last twenty five years, I
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: woke up and be like, oh my god, I mean,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: we are further away now than we were in nineteen
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: forty eight. And it got me thinking, Like, if you
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: caught my column last week, it was about how I've
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: been obsessed with the fact that the caricatures that Barack
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Obama and Mitt Romney painted of each other in twenty
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: twelve actually is representative of the basis of the two
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: parties today. And I've been trying to figure out how
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: we got there, right, And I think, and some of
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: you are going to say, well, here he goes, he's
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: going to defend moderation.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Your goddamn right, I am.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: I think, actually, this is what happens when moderation stops working. Right, So,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: like I said, this whole I'm gonna walk you through
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: this year, this whole thing I've been dealing with. I
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: went back and read the campaign speeches, even more of
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: them in four eight and twelve, right, because I went
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: looking for the insults. How is each party trying to
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: be a character?
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Things Republicans would call Democrats, things Democrats would call Republicans.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: And what was amazing is if you read most of
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: those attacks that took place then today and I didn't
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: tell you when they were said, they wouldn't sound unusual
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: at all. They just sound like mundane every day back
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: and forth between the two parties, Republicans calling Democrats socialists,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Democrats warning Republicans were becoming nativists, grievance driven, hostile to immigrants.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, those were considered exaggerated caricatures. Today they
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: most sound like descriptions. So why does that happen? Well,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: my first answer was the it was an easy one.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Social media algorithms, echo chambers, all of that matters, And
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I'd still believe that, But I don't know if it's
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: the if it's the right answer, right. I think it's
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: that those have an impact that that certainly helps amplify
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: where we are.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: But I think it's something deeper.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: When moderation repeatedly fails, and by this case, moderation is compromised, right,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: radicalism stops looking radical. It actually starts looking realistic, because
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: if you can't compromise, then maybe one of the two
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: polls are right. Moderation doesn't usually lose because somebody else
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: made a better argument. Moderation loses when it loses credibility
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: when you can't get a two states solution. Right, If
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: negotiations never seem to produce results, if the status quo
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: keeps disappointing you and people, eventually the people who he
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: said enough, we've tried it earway stopped, they don't. They
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: don't sound like extremists anymore.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: They end up.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Starting to sound like the only people worth paying attention to,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: and that perhaps they were the only ones paying attention.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: And Look, this is not an American story, I think, frankly,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: it's the story of politics in general over centuries. But
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: it's certainly the story of the Middle East. Go back
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: to the turn of this century. Okay, no, Israelis and
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Palestinians were not at peace, but boy were they close.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: There was a serious argument inside both societies over whether
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: a negotiated peace was possible. People can debate forever why
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Camp David failed. There's Raelis have one version, Bill Clinton
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: has one version. I certainly think it's the it's the
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Palestinians that walked away from In hindsight, was just it's
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: ridiculous that they walked away. But of course Palistinian have
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: another belief. But either way, we were this close, and
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: everybody walked away. But that's not the point I'm making here.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: What mattered politically is what happened afterward. Right, they get
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: this close, then right after we get the second Intofada,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the suicide bombings, the sharper Israeli military responses, the return
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: of BB. Right, you know, you had those that were
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: not BB trying to be the more moderate forces. You
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: had settlement expansion, more failed negotiations, more wars, a United
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: States that rhetorically criticized the settlements, but that's all they
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: did because we knew the more the settlements expanded, the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: hard it was going to be to get the two
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: states solutions. And then of course every disappointment made it
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: harder for moderates to defend moderation people like myself who
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: are sitting there going, look what, there's a solution here.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: But if they're not going to take the solution, who
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: looks like the naive idiot. So if you were in
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: Israeli who believed negotiations could eventually bring peace, every bombing
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: made your argument harder. If you are a Palestinian who
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: believe negotiations could eventually produce a viable state, every failed summit,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: every new settlement, and every war major argument harder. So
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: every failure became exhibit A for the people who had
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: always said they wanted a maximualist. Right, there are those
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: in the Palestinian sciety who don't want Israel to exist.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: That's what a mos This is why so many people
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: can't deal with a moas. And there is a growing
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: movement in Israel that do not want it to stay solution.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: And then they get to say, I told you they
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: don't want peace. Negotiation is a waste of time. We've
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: been naive and I could be speaking for either Palestinian
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: hardliner or the Israeli hardliner. That's how the political center collapses,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: not because moderate suddenly becomes stupid, but they become a
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: less credible, less believable. The caricature becomes the movement. The
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: movement goes mainstream. And this is why I found Ram
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Emmanuel's speech in Israel so fascinating this week. It's not
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: about because he criticized BV NANYEO. That's easy, that's low
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: hanging fruit. That guy's been a terrible prime minister, right,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, look what he's done to Israel's image. Look
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: what he's done to safety and security. Right, Israelis are
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: more unsafe with BB in charge than they were before
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: he was there. Okay, that is something. It's just a fact.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: I happen to believe it's him. Others may say no,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: he's the only one that will defend him. But I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: just look at there was more peace and stability pre
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: BB than there is today. But it is remarkable who
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: was saying this. Ram Emmanuel spent his entire public life
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: essentially inside the pro Israel mainstream of the Democratic Party.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: His father fought for Israel before independence. Ram worked for
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, represented Chicago and Congress, was Barack Obama's chief
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: of staff. So you're not going to mistake Rama Manuel
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: for someone that's going to just use the G word
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: and become part of the anti Israel left and virtue signal, That's.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Not what he did with the speech.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: So when Rama Manuel stands and tell of even says
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: that the US Israel relationship is reaching a crossroads, it
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: is worth paying attention to. His message wasn't simply net
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Miya who is wrong. It was a lot more uncomfortable
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: than that. Here that Israel cannot assume unconditional American political
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: support forever. Right, if American policy was a two state
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: solution and they're not going to pursue one, then why
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: should we keep supporting everything they're doing? Right, we should
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: be doing everything we can to protect Israel's right to exist,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean you have to support every domestic
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: policy decision they make. And he warned that military success
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: has to be connected to a political strategy. He argued
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: that Israel has to present a credible vision for what
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: comes after the war in goes, because simply saying more
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: war is not a strategy. And he was highly critical
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: of the expansion of the settlements in the West Bank,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: something frankly that every president other than Donald Trump is
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: criticized even Trump has said it's getting a little much
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: a few times, depends when you find him. But we
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: only rhetorically complained we looked the other way as they
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: kept letting it happen. That if you're going to look
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: at various missed opportunities to sort of.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: Not allow Bob to end.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Up doing what he did, not stopping them not punishing
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Israel more during settlement expansion, that is a huge mistake.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: It's been a huge mistake.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Now you warn that Israel risk isolating itself from younger
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: Americans and from the political center of the Democratic Party.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: This isn't a fringe movement, folks. At the same time,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: he also make clear you he's not joining the anti
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Israel anti it's an anti Jewish left. And trust me,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: it's hard to see the difference with some of the
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: people who espouse this rhetoric. This is why this is
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: why this gets so complicated for some of us, and
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: why it gets complicated for me, because some of these
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: critics are people who are not genuine in their critique.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: They still have a bit of prejudice in their eyes,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: and it's hard to it's hard not to see that, Okay,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: rom de Israel's right to exist. He defended the need
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: to stop Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon. This is
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: a friend of Israel, and if Bibe doesn't see him
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: as a friend of Israel, Bbi's got the problem. He
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: also rejected slogans that had become fashionable in parts of
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: the American American laughter, So in other words, he didn't
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: go after Israel. Speaking from one of the polls, Ron
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: was trying to rescue the center. Now, maybe it's not
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: going to work for him, maybe he's the wrong political
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: messenger for this, but it's important that he did it,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: because whether you agree with Ram's conclusions or not is
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: almost beside the point. The point is that somebody who
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: has spent his career representing the political center now sounds
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: like somebody trying to save the center before disappears. And
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: that's why I sort of blended it with the column
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I wrote last week, because this is one of history's
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: cruelest patterns. When moderation repeatedly fails, the radicals don't have
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: to prove their right. They only have to convince people
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: moderation doesn't work. It's a much easier argument to be
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: made right.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: The billionaires and the millionaires.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: The globalists and the elites right, the woke academia. It's
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: a much easier argument. So, especially after years of just
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: not getting stuff done, years of disappointment. There's one more
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: angle to this, and this I said in my column, right,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: we fear extremists, but we root for rebels. The two
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: aren't the same thing. Extremists make us uncomfortable. Rebels are
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: easy to romanticize. And that's the trick in modern politics
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: is convincing people your radicalism isn't extreme at all, that
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: it's a rebellion against a broken establishment. That's true whether
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: you're talking about democratics, socialism, or Magan nationalism, the Israeli
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: right or the Palestinian rejectionists. The ideology may change, the
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: psychology does not. And that brings me back to, oddly enough,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: where we started today's show. I spent a bunch of
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: time remembering Lindsey Graham and sort of the type of
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: politics he represented, pretty transactional, but always trying to Again,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: if you're coming up with the best expression of this,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: it's searching for what is possible, no matter what. And
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: Lindsay was somebody who every once in a while. He
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: came from an era of leaders who actually believed that
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: part of their job was occasionally telling their own party. Now,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: certainly McCain did it, Biden has done it, probably not
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: enough while he was in the White House. Ram Emmanuel's
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: trying to do it now, and you can pay a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: political price for doing it. And that's the real lesson.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: Moderation doesn't disappear because extremists suddenly discover better arguments. Appear's
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: because enough people conclude the moderates have run out of answers.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: I think that's what's happened in Israel, in the Middle
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: East in general, nobody trusts the.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: Moderates to figure this out anymore.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: The challenge for every democracy isn't simply defeating extremists. It's
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: making moderation credible again before enough people decide they're exhausted,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: they've exhausted every single other alternative. Because once that happens,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the caricature doesn't stay. A caricature becomes a movement, then
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: it becomes a party, and if you're really unlucky, it
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: becomes an authoritarian government. That's the thing here, and that's
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: the lesson to take away from this. Some of you
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: may hate this moderation, but without it we don't have
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: a pluralistic small dey democracy. History will show you, in fact,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: the time machine is coming up and I'm going to
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: get there that it doesn't matter which extremist side wins
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: the argument.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: If they get control, they want control. That's not a democracy.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: Keep that in mind, all right.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: With that, we're gonna sneak in a break when we
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: come back, talk about one of the characters in American
• 1:09:13
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• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: We'll have a fascinating conversation about third party politics, the law,
• 1:09:24
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  Speaker 2: it's good to see you, good to be here.
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  Speaker 1: So look, I always want to talk Florida politics since
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: we're a couple of Florida men when I'm with you,
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  Speaker 1: but I first want to talk to you about a
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  Speaker 1: little bit about what we discussed the last time, and
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  Speaker 1: just sort of I think it's remarkable the nationalization of
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  Speaker 1: your business because there are different fifty rules, right, and
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  Speaker 1: how that can govern you know, fifty different bars you'd
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: have to be a member of. Explain, explain how what
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  Speaker 1: is it that going national has done, and how you
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: know what is the most difficult part of trying to
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: be a national firm.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: Well, the way it all came to be is about
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: ten years ago or so, I asked myself if Google
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: was a law firm, what would it look like it
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  Speaker 2: was just kind of a crazy question. And the answer
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: was it would be everywhere for everyone, and they would
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: have a national platform and it would try to get
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  Speaker 2: as many cases as it could take in the ones
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: that could handle, but also refer out a lot in
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: places where they're not like at Uber drivers. And so
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  Speaker 2: that was the that was the vision. Uh. The key
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: in our business is you got to have great lawyers.
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  Speaker 2: So we've had to recruit and hire and make partners many,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: many great lawyers because a great case with a bad
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: lawyer is a bad case. Yeah, we know that.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: What's your vetting mechanism for that? How do you decide
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: if someone meets your standards?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: You know, it'd be like asking you if you could
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: have anybody, if you could pick any player to be
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: on your baseball team, who would it be? And if
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: it's not Show hey Otani, you know we know who
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: Show Otani is. We know who they are, and we
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: also know who the young prospects are. That's how we know,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: you know, we watch people and then we go and
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: make it, make a deal with them, and uh, you
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: know I had there's a great trial lawyer in Mississippi
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: named Rocky Wilkins and tried real hard and finally got it.
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  Speaker 2: But without Rocky, I wouldn't have the success we've had
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: down there.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: You know, trial lawyers, when you say that phrase, for
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: some people, it sounds like a four letter word to them.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: And you know that.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: And what I always say about a trial lawyer about
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: people who have negative feelings about a trial lawyer, I'm like, well,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: you've never needed one, and then the second they need one,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: then their attitude changes. But what would you say your
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: industry could do better to improve that image?
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I think I think one of the things we
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: could do better. First of all, you're right, it's frivolous
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: until it's you, your leg's been cut off, until you've
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: get t bowed. It's always. And the funny thing is
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: the people who you think would be the least likely
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: to call are the ones that call. I think our
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: business could I think that everybody putting up these numbers
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: of hey, I got a million dollars, I got two
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: million dollars, I got this, I got that, they're looking,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: they're perfectly healthy. You know, it falls right into the
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: trap of you know, there's a he got me a million dollars,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: and people are like, well, you don't look hurt. Well,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: they could be sitting in a wheelchair, you wouldn't know it.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: But it's also very misleading because some people are bragging
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: about getting a million dollars on a case it was
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: worth ten million, so it's not even accurate. And so
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: I think this whole gloating about these one case numbers
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: is a mistake and we could do better on that.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: But look, what we do is very simple this We're
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: in the business of getting back something that was taken
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: from someone due to no fault to their own, their health,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: their job, enjoyment of life. So what we do is
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: righteous and good and that's why I have no problem
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: doing it. And matter of fact, I can't think of
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: a much more fulfilling work to be in the I
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: think it was. The state of North Carolina.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: Earlier this month passed a law that would not and
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and correct me if I'm wrong, that would not allow
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: essentially private equity to invest in litigation, meaning they might
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: pay some legal fees up front to to do in
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: exchange for a piece of the piece of the settlement.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: In North Carolina wants to make that illegal. Where are
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: you on legislation like that, and where are you on
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: that on private equity, essentially using civil litigation potentially.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: As a way to hedge Well. Look, Peter thield Back
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: bankrolled hule COVID's lawsuit against Galker. Look, private equity is
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: a real threat to me because I don't use private
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: equity money. I use all my own money. So in
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: many ways I'm competing against But here's the deal. Insurance
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: companies have unlimited money, unlimited money, and lawyers don't. And
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: so the problem with the money that they're loaning, it's
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes twenty twenty two percent that gets passed
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: on to the client and a compound, so it's a
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: gigantic cost to the client. So I'm kind of ambivalent
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: on it. I don't need it, I don't use it,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: but I understand it.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I look at the issue of civil litigation. You know,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: I'm watching what's happening with Meta. Well, let me ask
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: you that are you involved with any of these cases
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: that are going after the social media companies for creating
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: defective defective product?
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: Which is the which are you involved in any of us? Yeah? Well,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: we had we were part of that. Mark Lanier was
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: the lead all year, but our firm was with him
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: against Meta in California. So you were in that case.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: We're on that case. So we also got a half
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: a billion dollar verdict against Google in San Francisco last year,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: my firm and David Boyce's firm. Yeah, look, social media
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: is a is a mortal threat to our privacy and
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: to our children. If you see it as a kind
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: of tobacco, yeah, I do, because the human mind is
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: a lot weaker than we've ever could have ever imagined.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: I mean a lot of smart people understand it. But
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: the human mind that's most vulnerable are our children's minds.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: And these children have unlimited access to this social media,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: and the social media's job is just like cigarettes, is
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: to addict the children to the clicks, to the pictures,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: to everything else. And they know how to do it
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: because psychologically they're expert at it. So yeah, I think
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: it's a mortal threat to our privacy, you know, and
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: to our children's well being. You know.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons that I think your business has
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: grown is I think more people are turning to civil
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: litigation because politicians have let them down because they're not
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: passing the regulatory Let's talk social media, and you know,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: to me, civil litigation at its best happens, and then
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: we get a law that's passed that protects everybody going forward.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: So that you don't have to have multiple lawsuits. Right.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: The only thing dumber for a company in dealing with
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: in losing a case about a defective product once, is
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: losing a case about a defective product twice.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: Do you see do you think your your business's growth
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: has coincided with essentially government's atrophy with business and regulation?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: No question, because who's going to protect us? Who's going
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: to help me? And is it going to be the government? No,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: who's going to protect me? Plus, I think that the
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: people understand that the rich have gotten way richer and
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: the poor have gotten way poor. And how really on
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: the backs of the middle class and the poor these
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: we are now back in monopoly days. I mean, we
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: need Teddy Roosevelt to come and deconstruct some of these monopolies.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: I remember during the pandemic when we ran out of
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: baby formula, and I was like, how do we run
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: out of baby formula? Well, there's only two companies that
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: make baby formula. Right now, we're seeing all sorts of
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: steel prices be jacked. We were thinking, well, we're taxing
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: tariffs over here the steel coming in, But the American
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: steelmakers are raising their prices because it's a perfect opportunity
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: to raise their prices to match the tariff prices. Who's suffering,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: the American consumer. We can't build boats. We can't build
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: boats that we need to. China puts out one thousand
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: a year. We put out one. And so these big
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: companies have got a stranglehold of monolipus a monopoly on
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: America is just squeezing us, and nobody's watching out for
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: the people being squeezed.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: Well, look, it does seem to me that it's like
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: that we are seeing. If I don't have anywhere else
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: to go, I'll follow lawsuit, right and at least you
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: might get some action in a courtroom, and at least
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: you might get some media attention that may turn it
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: into a political movement.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, look, we're going to be on this
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: social media platform for a long time. Another thing that
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: we believe then is processed foods. We believe that processed
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: foods is like tobacco. I mean, you ought to see
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: the data on that, and we're just gorging ourselves on
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: this processed food. When Bobby Kennedy was in our firm.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: That was his that was his hottest hot button. And
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: so we had a we had a case that was
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: thrown out in Philadelphia. We're refiling it, but we believe
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: that processed food is the next tobacco. Bobby Kennedy was
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: a member of your firm.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: Yes, interesting, Yeah, I had to feel I had to feel, well, look,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: he's he's smart and crazy and uh, you know it's
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: just and you just don't know what when he's talking,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: is that the smart Bobby or the crazy Bobby.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: That's how I kind of looked at it. But he's
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: very you know, compelling when he makes his case to you,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: he's very compelling. But like we had, you know, big
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: toxic torques, the some gas explosions East Palestine. He flew
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: in and I mean people flocked to Bobby. Bobby is
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Bobby's a pied piper. And uh so when we had
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: a lot of great times together. But when he became
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: when I had to fill out some forms when he
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: was being approved by the Senate, Yeah, on his earnings,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: what he made. Yeah, was he a decent lawyer. Yes,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: he's a very smart guy and he's very passionate. When
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: he's passionate. As you know, he is the most passionate
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: person in the room. And you know, again there's a
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: lot of rat holes. I think he goes down. That's
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: just total bs. But on the other hand, there's a
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: lot of questions he raises, you know, when he gets
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: into autism. His whole deal is, you know, you got
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: we got these vaccine courts that are protected. I mean
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: that nobody. We can't even we can't even sue the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: vaccine makers because of the vaccine courts. So who knows what?
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: And one thing we do know, the makers of pharmaceuticals
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: are not to be trusted. I've made a fortune because
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: they hide things. They rig trials, you know, my first
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: one was breast in planning.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: You don't think they should have some indemnity, Oh, I
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: mean when you're doing.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: They have total and you vaccine has total. Some is
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: different than yeah, I mean, yeah, I agree with that,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: but some are different than total. They have vaccine courts,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: which is basically nothing. It's like, listen, you're here about
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: people going postal when they come in and shoot everybody.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: How postal got to going If you get hurt on
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: the job as a mailman, there's no attorneys fees provision
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: for lawyers who handle your case. So when you get
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: hurt as a mailman, you have no lawyer that will
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: ever take your case because they can't get paid. Then
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: you hear about people going postal. The people will go
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: post still our former you know, postal workers who are
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: hurt on the job, couldn't provide for their family and
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: snapped because they couldn't get legal representation. So there's a
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: lot of people that have a lot of immunity. Sovereign
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: immunity is all over this country, in all fifty states
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: and fashion.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: You know, see where do you vet your scientific information?
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: You know, I say this since we brought it up Bobby,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: we know that he can cherry pick if he wants
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: to make a point because he's very passionate and he'll
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: ignore some evidence.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: So how do you ensure that Well, as far as
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: that goes, I've vet the signs, not Bobby. So because
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: it's my money, not Bobby's. You know, when I go
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: down a lane and decide to go, there's a huge
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: penalty for me being wrong money. I mean when i've
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: when I have these cases, Chuck, I mean, when my
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: cases against the tobacco industry that I have had going
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: on for years. When they come to trial, they come,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: they take down a Hampton end, they come and take
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: ten lawyers in I mean, and they litigate. Our cases
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: have gone all the way to the Supreme Court. So
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: the real thing that limits me from chasing frivolous actions
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: is my own reality that this thing's going to take
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: ten years. It's going to take ten years. So you
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: have a case, and I better have a case or
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: I'll go broke. So that's the government for me. Let's
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: talk politics a little bit. A year ago this time
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: you were talking third party. You want to start one
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: in Florida, and see what happened. You seem to be
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: a little less ambitious about a third party today. Why well,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not less ambitious because tomorrow morning, at nine o'clock am,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: we are taping on June twenty third for time stamping.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: Here a little bit, go ahead, okay, we will be
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: announcing the name of our party. Oh I had, I had.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: I have one hundred thousand dollars prize going right to
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: the winner. So you found a winner. You picked a winner.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: I've picked a winner. I've picked a name.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: The reason I was kind of a Bibulu.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: You might as well tell me the name now because
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: we're not going to report it until.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: After the fact. Well, if you, if you promise to
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: embargo it, I will embargo it until you announce it, okay,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: the common ground for the common ground, okay, to be
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: known as the Grounders, and you wanted to be known
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: as the Grounders, okay. So we had a lot of
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: we had thirty five thousand people submit names, and I
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: that's not my name. I'd never you know. What everybody
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: kept saying is it should be the People's Party, right,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: because you were mister people. But Ron Meyer, my lawyer
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: up in Tallahassee, he goes, you know, that's in that
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: the name of the party in China, the Peoples And
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: I hadn't even I was leaning that way without a concept.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: When he said the People's you know, communists China, I
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: was like, whoa, that's right, and so that's gonna be
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: the name. So I wasn't cool on it. What I
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: was thinking about was running on it myself, and so
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: that's why I was hot and cold on it. There
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: was really a few people that if they'd gotten into
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: the race, I would have run and so interesting they
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: didn't and so I didn't run. And so now I
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: believe this. I believe a lot of names there or
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: would you prefer it? Sounds like I prefer not, But
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: I think you can probably figure it out by the
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: dat But I just thought one would be catastrophic for
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: the state. And and and so I've watched a lot
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: of these rich people, uh go out and become politicians,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: and it's kind of you know, I kind of feel
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: sorry for him. And I didn't want to be feeling
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: sorry for myself out there trying to be Tom Steyer
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: spending one hundred million dollars to have So.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, look at it. You bring up a good point.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: Michael Bloomberg tried, decided to stay in the Democratic Party.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: Howard Schultz tried, and it didn't go very well. You
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: brought up Styre. He obviously decided to do it from
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: the inside. You know, it's not you know, it's so funny.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: People are a bit distrustful of wealthy people right now.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: So there's there's there's a lot of that too, right.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And what's the so all money won't buy you love,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: you know, And it's true, and so and because I
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: kept thinking, you know, what is it that I could
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: do that would be the most impactful in Florida. You know,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: I raised the minimum wage to fifteen dollars and I
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: legalized medical marijuana. I feel like those are better accomplishments
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: and bigger complimisation than any governor that I know of.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: And I did it, not me, I did it with
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: the people. We did it with sixty three percent of
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: the vote for minimum wage and seventy something for medical marijuana.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: And so at the end of the day, you know,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: I turned seventy this year, and you do lose a step,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: you still feel like I was. I went across the
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: street to shoot a free throw the other day with
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: my grandson, and I used to be able to hit
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: eight out of ten free throws, and I shot a
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: free throw. I didn't even hit the f and Net
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: I'm like, you know, all of a sudden, I'm like,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: you know, muscle memory, there is something to muscle memory.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: I don't have it anymore. And you start to lose
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a step, and he's like, how
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: am I going to How am I going to finish
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: this last part of my life? And you know, so
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: like you know, for now, right now, I'm out here
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: at my house in Hawaii with my grandchildren and my children,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: and I think, you know, I love Hawaiian the winter time,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: and that's when the whales are here, and that's when
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: the Florida legislature meets. So I missed I'd missed the
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: whales to be hanging out with a bunch of uh
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: you know what. So so I just decided this is
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: going to be a better path for me to to uh.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: As you get later go on in life, you want
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: to try to move from success to significance, to do
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: some things that matter without it being about you. And
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: so this seemed to be a happy meeting for me
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: because I believe truly that what has broken in our
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: country is the two party system, that the right is
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: too right and the left is too left, and they
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: think and compromise is absolutely not a non starter. So
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: let me ask it.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: How come you didn't partner up with Andrew Yang and
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: Christie Whitman.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: Who they're what they're doing with the well, they're they're
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: calling me. They I've had a lot I think they
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: want to make comment.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: My guess is they'd like to make getting coalition with you,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: and certainly collaboration and I believe we should.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: I believe you know, I've got to start. You got
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: to start somewhere. I'm starting in Florida where it can
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: go out. And I listened Christy Whitman, who was the
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: kind of Republican I used to look at it and go,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: she's reasonable. I could be for her. And so we've
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: had a lot of confent. What I didn't like about
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: in the beginning they all have there's no labels business.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: I think you have to have a team. You can't
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: be no labels. I mean, think about going to a
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: team without a jersey, without a name, without you know people,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: we're tribal. We want a team. That's the challenge here.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, I am very empathetic to this movement, okay,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: and because I'm I feel squeezed. The two parties are here.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: We have fifteen percent of the country dominating eighty percent
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: of our politics because of the way the primary system works.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: But the problem with moderates is there's no such thing
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: as a radical moderate right because by nature you're trying now,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: we got to figure this out, so you're not an absolutist.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: And the problem is in political parties, you're not an absolutist.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: You're punished, and I agree with that. But here's what
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: I believe. That the moderates can be the people in
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: the middle. I will always whenever I listen to that
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: Steve Miller song, you know, clowns to the left of me,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: jokers to the right, stuck in the middle, I feel
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: like I'm in a Steve Miller song. And but what
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: I believe is that the moderates could be the tie breakers.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: They could be. Well, we have been the tie breakers,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: but the problem is they're never represented once they get
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: Here's my frustration, and I'll just let me put it
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: in these terms. Think about the last seven states.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: Think about all the effort that's gone to win over
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: these voters that basically said, I don't like Hillary on
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: voden Trump, I don't like Trump, and voteen Biden, I
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: don't like Biden on voting Trump right. And we spend
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: all this money on it. And you know who's got
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: the least amount of representation once the governing begins. Those
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: voters who made that final decision, they have them. They
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: get the most attention during the campaign and the least
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: attention during governing.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: Well, because of special interest. I mean Look, once they
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: get in, people start, you know, buy an influence. And
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is the answer, but I
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: know this, what we have going on right now is
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: not the answer. And when I think of this whole thing, Chuck,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: I don't think of it in presidential of politics. I
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: think it has more in congressional politics, where you can
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: get in. Look right now, if there were three true
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: if there were three truly moderate independence grounders in the Senate,
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: they would control the Senate. Right.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: All you need is right, all you need is three
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: or four right now in the Senate, and all you need.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: And all you need in the House. I mean you're
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: a political junkie, yeah, all you need is you can
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: do the math. You can do the math better than me.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: So it's not like I'm gonna come in and say, hey,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: we're gonna have But but what we do know is
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: that independents are about the same as Republicans and Democrats
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: now in this country. So there's a lot of people
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: out there who are saying I don't have a team, right,
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: And so when I think about it, I don't think
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: about it in presidential politics. Now. Maybe one day it could,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: but I'm thinking you pick up three Senate seats, you
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: pick up seven, eight, whatever House seats, and all of
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: a sudden, that caucus, Yeah, gets to have an outside
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: say over what happens.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: So you're starting this in Florida. What where can you
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: make the biggest impact.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: Well, we started in Florida to see what happens. I mean,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: we see what happens. I'm going to get I'm gonna
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: announce the name, and then we're going to and then
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna then I'm gonna
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: save a.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: Small period of time to find a candidate for governor
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: if you choose to.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: But I take it you're not. No, No, it's not
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: think it's too late. I mean, look, the die is cast.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: It's going to be you know, Jolly versus somebody. And
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: you say somebody. You don't think Donald. Do you think
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: there's a chance Donald? No, I think it's going to
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: be Donald's. Okay, I think it's going to be Donald's.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: But I just say somebody. Out of respect for Renter
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: and yeah, the guy with one leg and fishback or
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: something fish back, I don't say it really too much
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: respect for that guy. But uh, but it's gonna be
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: it's gonna be It's gonna be Jolly Donald's, right, if
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: you had to go to the prediction, Calshie betting be
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: Donald's Jolly, and and then Jolly will lose, but not
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: as badly as people would have thought. That's what that's
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: my prediction. Yeah, he's a he's a He's a good
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: looking guy with a great look at family. Gwynn Graham
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: was a great Back in the day when we all
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: used to horse around together, Gwenn was we called her
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: the little sister of Morgan and Morgan because we we
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: all palid around so much. So she's like our Stevie
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: Nicks to the Heartbreakers. And so she's a great candidate
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: and a great name and great family too. So it's
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: gonna I think that Donald's will win, but I think
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: it'll be a lot closer than people ever would have thought. No,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: I'm a.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: If I have a skepticism on Jolly. It's didn't didn't
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: the Florida Democrats run this playbook before and it didn't
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: work right with me.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: Look, Charlie Chris was in firm. I brought in I
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: brought in Jim Messina, I brought in John Angeloney, I
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: brought them all. I brought the dream Team in and
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: it didn't it didn't sell. Why didn't that work? Is
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: that just a case of Charlie or do you think
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: it was the matter? I mean I I don't think,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: you know, I go back and forth. Well, first of all,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: first of all, there's a million more Republican voters and Democrats.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: You start off with that, and most people just vote
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: D or R. And then the second thing.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: So you have a you have a state party problem.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: So you have an organization infrastructure problem. And that has
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: been the case for thirty years.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: Right yeah, well it's got even worse after Andrew Gillian.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: But but so you so you got that issue with Jolly.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: But I think the Jolly issue is the Charlie issue,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: which is what do you believe in? I mean, are
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: you here for us? Are you here for you? You're a
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: Republican and then you get beat and now you're a Democrat.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: There's just that, there's that. Well that's what Jolly has
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: to answer. Look, I had Jolly on here and you know,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: look he is.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: He is. He is just he's really easy to like.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: You know, he's very listen. He that's just that's his
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: best thing. He's got going for him is his personality
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: and his family. I mean, they they're photogenic.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: The question I have is is it believable you can
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: go from take abortion, from believing, from saying one thing
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: to now saying the other. And how credible is that
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: to the voter? And I think that's it. That's always
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: the hardest issue to basically change on, right, because you
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: always hear this isn't.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: A political position.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: Someone asks, this is something that's grounded in their you know,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: personal beliefs and all this stuff. And if you're able
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: to when you flip it from one party to the another,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: and you want to and you go ahead and change
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: that issue, you know, in some ways, would he be
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: more credible as a pro life democrat?
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: You know? Right? So and and and look, Charlie Chris
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: went from chain gang Charlie right and pro life Charlie too.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: Let's let's you know, restore Felon's rights and pro choice.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: I mean it's like I.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: Want, I want our politicians to change your mind. I
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: want new evidence, and I hate the idea that we
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: punish flip floppers. But there are certain issues where people think, well,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: that isn't an evolution, right, Although I can argue there's
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of issues that can be where new information
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: can make you think differently, including on abortion. No matter
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: what you think here, what somebody's circumstance could change that.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: That you know that gets somebody pregnant could change your mind.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: But it's tough for most voters to accept.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: And that's the problem. What do you do? You really?
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: Are you really? Are you really on my team? Are
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: you a wolf in sheep's clothing? Is this for you
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: as look? But the simple truth is, believe it or not,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: most of these people get into politics. I used to
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: think there was noble No, it's for a pension, it's
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: for a salary, it's for health insurance.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: More get into it for that that I used to
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: I yeah, there was a long part of me that
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: you used to think that there was the same way.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: And I used I used to look at the state
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: of Florida.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, have you seen what an election supervisor, an
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: elected election supervisor's pension can be after you win a
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: second term?
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: And have you seen the double dipping that goes on?
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: But you know they they're here and there. It's like
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: I remember when you know and these are county offices.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: I think at statewide pensions. The dirty little secret is
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: nobody's in it for us. They're only in it for
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: them or for ego. You know, I'm Rick Scott, I'm
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You know, I'm going
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: to go get some respect after taking the fifth of
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: zillion times. There's a lot of both. But there's really
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: not what I used to think about. You know what
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: I used to think about politicians. I was like our
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: founding fathers, who were you know, doing this for us,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: take risking their lives for democracy. That's not what this
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: is about. I mean, I remember when Mike Fossano left
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: the Senate and then ran to be the tax collector
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: in Pascoe County. I'm like, why would anybody want to
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: be the f and I mean, who wants to be
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: the tax collector? And then you saw the pension, right,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: and someone saw the pension and his old house pension
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: and his old Senate pension, and then it all goes
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: together and then it's the last three. It's look it is.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: There is a.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: Reason why so many people want to stay in a
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: local elective right. I mean, you couldn't you couldn't drag
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: me to be in the Florida Senator of the Florida House.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: You couldn't, couldn't. I mean, I mean the iority to this,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: John is the people that deserve a pension in state
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: government are not the electeds. It's usually it's the elected.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: We're stuck having to work for the next person that
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: gets elected.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: Right, But that that is why people go into politics.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: They go into politics. They like to be popular, which
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: is good. You know, hey mayor hey mayor HEYI And
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: then they get to get and then once you get
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: into the House, now you got an a ID. You
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: can roll that right into the Senate. Once you get
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: to the Senate, you can roll that back to local
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: tax property. I mean, there's a bunch of supervisor of elections.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: And then and then, as you seen under the DeSantis,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: he's appointed all of his cronies to be the presidents
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: of our universities. Yeah, I mean, you know, forget the
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: other pitches. All of a sudden, somebody who does who
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: could probably not even pass the SAT score to get
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: into their university, is now the president of that university.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: And you'd watch it and it is just perversion politics,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: which makes everybody hate politicians.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: So jolly Donald so you're gonna help Jolly or you're
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: not sure yet?
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: Uh, I don't. I'm you know, I'm talking. I'm going
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: to talk to both of them. I had, you know,
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: Donald's a little bit a little bit, and I know
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: Jolly a little bit. You know, my my allegiance was
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: to Jerry Demis, even though I didn't think he had
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: a snowballs chance in hell. And I don't think he
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: had that.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: I think it had a better chance in a general
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: than people realize, especially with a very upset African American
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: community about voting rights.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: You are telling Noah about the flood. Yeah, so so
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: I do too. And plus, you know, the Demis are
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: from my town. I've you know, I've represented some of
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: their family members. I was big pro for no that'll
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: be an a what if? But look but yeah, so
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: I was. You know, I don't, I don't know what
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do, and uh but I'll do something.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: What do you know?
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: What?
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: What is your Where are you on? Vinmin Henson in
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: the centers? No chance in Hell? I interesting? What does
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: that mean? Say that again?
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: It means it means I take it. You've told mister Vinman,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: I just haven't accepted his phone calls.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: So you think Jolly has a better chance than Vinmin
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: in this political environment, no question.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: Interesting Jolly Jolly has Jolly is has curb appeal. By that,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: I mean you drive up and you see a car
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: in the showroom, I can see that Vinmin looks like
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: a car in Cuba. I mean there's no curb appeal
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: to his candidacy. And nobody's doesn't have a Florida story.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: He doesn't show the story. He's not he doesn't have
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: a look at His story is so nuanced and deep
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: down buried that only political junkies like me and you
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: know his story. So his story is different, and I
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: don't think he has a chance. That's tough stuff, do you.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: You know it's interesting.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: I've been I have this comparison of the you know,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: Florida and Texas. If the Democrats are going to be
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: competitive in the next twenty years, they're going to have
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to get competitive in one of
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: those two states, not both of them, but one of
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: the two. And for when they were competitive in Florida,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: they could win presidential elections when they haven't been. You know,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: the Texas Democratic ticket is super liberal. The Florida Democratic
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: ticket much more moderate. Yet the Texas ticket looks more
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: formidable wife.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: Than the Florida ticket because the candidate is charismatic. Look,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: I tell people all the time, you know, even to
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: my friend Jim Messina, you can't out coach recruiting. I mean,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: I don't care who the campaign manager is. I could
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: have elected Barack Obama because Barack Obama was just a
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: force of nature. The guy in Texas is kind of
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: similar to you think, so that not No, nobody's Barack Obama. Yeah, nobody,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: even Bill Clinton has a different deal, but he's but
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: nobody's Barack Obama. But that guy has something and Betos
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: showed what could be possibly when he got close. Uh.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: But the ironical thing about it all is you're talking
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: about Texas and Florida, but the but the real path
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: to watch is Iowa. To watch what's going on.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: That that I agree with that that's of all three
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: rates states, I was the one most likely to elect
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: to Democrats.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: But that is but but but but if I was
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: doing autopsies and they don't have the electoral votes, I
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: understand that. But if I was doing an autopsy, I
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: feel like, what is it that Iowa did that. We
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: didn't do. Why are they competitive.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, Yeah, and nobody's you know, it's interesting,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: but John's actually a similarity between all three states. Oh yeah,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: all three states have hammered public education where the Republicans
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: have decided to privatize it in some form or another.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: And what you have in Iowa is rural backlash because
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: I always say this where school choice is great when
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: you live but if the next school to pick from
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: is forty miles away, that's not much of a choice, right,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: and you know, rural islands. And frankly, I think rural
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: Texans feel this way because this has divided the Texas
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: Republican Party and I know from my own experience that's
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: happening in the places that I care about in Florida,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: both of them, the Northwest Corner end down in my AMMI.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: Is is that.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: Whatever choice you're offered, you don't have a lot of
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: accountability with that. And so the idea sounds great, Yeah,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: I want more choice. The execution of the plan has
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: been a disaster. It's what turned Kansas blue and it
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: is why Iowa. I mean, this was you know, and
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: she the governor there, said and she borrowed from the
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: Dessanta's playbook. Greg Abbott has made it a huge thing.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: I do think it's all grounded in education and and
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: and Iowa, frankly is just a little more. I just
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: think that the electorate is just easier to get to
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: on one message than either Florida or Texas because of
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: the size.
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: But I'll take it a step further on education because
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: I've been very close with this guy for his whole career.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: Is Andy Basheer. Andy Basheer beat Bevan because Bevan turned
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: on public school teachers. Period into story. Yeah, I wrote
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: a gigantic check to Andy the week before he won
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: by five thousand votes. I know that campaign inside out
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: because I was involved in it. And he won because
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: Bevin turned on teachers. And when you turn on teachers,
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: akin to what you're saying about Iowa. And by the way,
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: when we're talking about money, let's understand this about charter schools.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 2: It's not about choice. It's about money. It's about people
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: owning charter schools making the money on the real estate.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: You know, it is taking money from the government and
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: giving it to fat cats to have these bs. And
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: when you look at the how the children do. In
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: charter schools, the jury is not very kind to the
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: end results, but there.
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: Is no discernible difference between. Basically the outcomes are the same,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: which is, if there's parent involvement, outcomes are good.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: If there's parent not.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: Involvement, it doesn't matter whether it's public school or charter
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: school or private school.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: Listen, an A school is where you have parents with
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: A involvement, and an F school is the school that
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: has parents with f involvement. Because listen, I still have
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 2: PTSD from my children's spelling test, you know, in the
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: third grade where you're sitting there, you know, writing purple
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: one hundred times before they finally frigging out how to
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: spell purple. And then you wake up in the morning
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: and you're driving to school and you're like, okay, purple
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: EU the last thing they say they get out of
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: the car PU R P L E. You're like, yes,
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: and you're drained from the ten words the night before.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: And I had four of them and they and they
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: didn't process well either. I didn't had a bunch of
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a bunch of brainiacts. We had to
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: you know, go go, go, go go, and uh yeah,
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: but I was heavily involved with my children. I used
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: to tell them all bees are your enemies, and A
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 2: and a B is a three point five and a
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: and two b's is you know, three point two and
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: a and three b's you're going to junior college. All right,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: that's the rules.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: Just go.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: And you have to keep doing it. I mean, it's
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: darks in the ninth grade.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: How would you message against the property tax initiative that
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: Ronda Santis hopes to put on the ballot, Because I
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: think it's a tough thing to message against. I think
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: people won't like it if it gets past. But I
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: understand why it'll sound appealing to voters at first.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: Listen. I'm in the marketing business for I got restaurants,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: I got hotels, I got a lot of business. The
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: number one word in marketing in America is free, buy one,
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: get one, kids eat. The second best word in America
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: is money. The two best words together in America are
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: free money. He's offering us free money, and we are
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: selfish enough to say we don't care how we get it,
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: just give me mine. What's happened in America over the
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: years that I see is we're not interested in US,
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: we're interested in only me. You know, I got a
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: brother who's a dentist, and his whole one issue taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: And he's furious at the Somalians in Minnesota. Why he's
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: picked those to be his you know who he's upset about.
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: The graphs with the Somalians and Minnesota is what drives Mike.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: But it'll it could pass, But the problem is going
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: to be like Brexit when good look for implementing it.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, nobody's going to know how to do it.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at Brexit. Ten years later, it will
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: be you we going from the most desired state in
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: the country. I mean, all the billionaires are moving here.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: Everybody's coming here. If it's not broke, don't break it.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: Why he wants to break it is for one reason,
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: I think, for maybe a future somewhere but his, but
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: his windows are getting closed out on it.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: Look, I accept that. I actually think he believes in
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: the notion of starving the beast, which has always been
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: a one of the movements. I think, you know, sometimes
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: sometimes we try too hard to assume some negative motive.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 2: I think its motive is real.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: I think he thinks government should be smaller and not
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: around on the local level.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, good luck with that.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: And when somebody has a heart attack in your house
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: and you call up the empty and they're like, that's
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: gonna you know, you need to give us a credit
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: card before we're going to come to your house, because
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know how else we're going to be paying
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: for these things. They're gonna they're gonna probably ask for
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: payment in advance. I'm I'm sort of half joking, but
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: I think I'm outlining the television ad. I'd be running
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: against this initiative, which is, hey, this will be great
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: until you've got to slap down a credit card authorization
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: to guarantee the cops come into your house, or to
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: guarantee the ambulance come in to your house.
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: But the promise of free money. And by the way,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: property taxes might be one of the I mean, the
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: mortgage is the number one expense every year, but property
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: taxes is right behind it. Yeah.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: Well, look, the problem is how does Florida fund its
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: government If you have no income tax and you're at
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: a property taxes, Oh, you gonna have a twenty five
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: percent sales tax? Is that what we're staring at you
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: guys going to become Europe and the vat tax. There'll
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: be a Florida that they will they don't care.
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: Listen bricks at, look at bricks at ten years later
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: where all those people. Here's something I'm convinced of. I'm
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: convinced in Texas that the voters there would vo to
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: secede from the Union if it went on the ballot.
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 2: I a close because I actually believe let's just see
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: the country of Texas and let's do it our way,
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 2: and I believe there'd be enough voters in Texas to
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: secede from the Union. And I've thought about that before.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: And I think about it because I looked at brixtit,
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: I mean brixit made no sense at all. I read
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 2: an article the other day in The Atlantic cook about
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: ten years after Brexit and what a disaster, What a
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: disaster that has been. It's the same kind of disaster
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: waiting to happen. But the promise of free money is
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: the most compelling argument in advertising. Well are you really
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: gonna go through this sort of.
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: This third path of a career here, this political path,
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: and not ever run for office yourself?
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: I think so I think so. I think because you've
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: had the itch, I've had the itch. But you know,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: I believe that there should be a time for certain
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: people at a certain age not to run. I don't
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: believe that if you're seventy five now, this wouldn't affect me.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: But I believe that if you're going to be seventy
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: five during your term, you should not be allowed to
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: run again. I mean, this government is for the future,
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: not for today, and people when Mitch McConnell's up there
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: drooling and Diana Feinstein doesn't know where she is and
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 2: where we let people in and comas to cast votes,
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: it's just gross. It's just gross. And there should be
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: a limit on the time because look, I know that
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: my limits, because I'm guessing you weren't always I'm term limits. Yes,
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: I used to not be. I used to not be
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: term limits because I didn't like the idea of lobbying.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: I think it's been totally damaging in time.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: I believe term limits have made the Florida Legislature in particular,
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: a joke. It's run by lobbyists, it's run by outside interests,
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: and that's where I struggle with term limits. I understand
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: the appeal. But it's like, it's like this property tax reform,
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: careful what you wish for, because you know who doesn't
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: have term limits.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: Lobbyist don't have Terminalinits right. That was what I was saying,
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: is we've given the more power to special interest with
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: term limits. Now, on the flip side, I do not
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: believe a guy like Mitch McConnell should be in office.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: I do not believe that Jerry Nattler should necessarily still
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: be in office. There is a certain time where it's time. Listen,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: FBI agents have their guns taken. It's fifty nine. Airline
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: pilots lose their wings at sixty or sixty two. CEOs
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: are capped out of sixty five. There is something biological.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: Now there's exception. Look, there's a Nancy Pelosi for every rule.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: I mean that girl, well, Warren Buffett, I mean, look
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: at Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, you know, all of us.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: There is Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy at the end
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: and all of them. But there's only a very few
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: of them. The general rule is, let's take the guns
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: away at fifty nine, because generally speaking, it's a bad idea.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: All right, is the ten hour flight to Hawaii really
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: worth it? Over the Caribbean, it is listen, first of all,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: when I come from when I leave here and go
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: back to Florida, it's only seven and a half hours
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: with a tailwd all right, But it is worth it
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: because where I live is where I believe God lives.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: If there's a heaven on Earth, it would be right
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: here in Maui, Hawaii, which is the newest land mass
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: on the face of the Earth. The colors are more vibrant.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: The air, my son in law says, tastes like baby air,
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: like it was just born. And in the winter time
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: when the whales are jumping in my backyard here, it's
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: like having dinosaurs coming out of the water. It's prehistoric.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 2: It is. If I die, I hope I get to
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 2: walk right out this back door here and across to Lenai,
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: because this is where heaven is.
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: Well, the Maui Chamber of Commerce, thanks you.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: That was a and you know I represented, I represented,
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: I represent. Yeah, we settle that case for four point
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: seven billion dollars. Right below me here, Chuck is where
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: the height of fires were. And coincidentally, my son Dan
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: got married here in November. Everything burned down except for
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. Everything. Wow, everything burned down except for
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. And when I asked the priest, I said,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 2: do you think it was a coincidence or America? He goes, oh,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: it was a miracle. Well, let Pope Leo know. Oh well,
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: all right, all right, John, good to catch up.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: I appreciate your support of this, keeping everything I'm doing free,
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: which is my goal.
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: So thank you, sir. You're a very talented guy. Thank you. Brother. Well,
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: there you go.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: We'll see how John Morgan's third party, what happens to it?
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: Does it sort of get some traction? Where does this go?
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: I think we all know something is a foot in
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: twenty eight here the idea that we're just gonna we
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: have the two major parties are too unstable for us
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: to really go to war for their next election with
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: just these two parties. This is certainly the prison with ilas.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: All right, let's go to the time machine.
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: We are going, as you know, this is what I
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 2: do every week.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: I take a anniversary of the week in history, extrapolated
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: out because I think it's relevant to what is happening today.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 2: So where are we going? On our time machine.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: July seventeenth, nineteen thirty six.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: We're in Spain.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: This is the war that every generation believes it's about them.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: If you're a real student of history and politics, this
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: is something you too may have noticed over the years,
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: because if you spend enough time reading serious books about
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: politics or even longer essays trying to explain why certain
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: democracies succeed or fail, eventually somebody's going to bring up
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War. It happens over and over again.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: George Orwell did it? Ernest Hemingway, Abraham Lincoln, Brigade Picasso's
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: Guernica Spain becomes the analogy. Every generation seems to rediscover it.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the comparison is insightful. Sometimes it feels like the
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: writer has been waiting twenty years for an excuse to
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: quote Orwell. But after seeing Spain come up again and
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: again and again, I thought it would be fair to
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: ask start asking a different question, why Spain? What was
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: so extraordinary about one civil war in one European country
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: that writers, historians, and political thinkers have been returning to
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: it for almost one hundred years. The answer, I think
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: is that every generation eventually believes the Spanish Civil War
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: was about their politics or about them. And of course
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: the irony is that most of us don't actually know
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: very much about the Spanish Civil War itself. It's not
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: like we're taught it in American greatso or American high school.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: You know, you probably had to go to a little
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: deeper dive into European history in the twentieth century if
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: you were going to get a scholarship on the Spanish
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: Civil War. By the way, at the end of this segment,
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give a few book recommendations for you
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: on this, which I want to By the way, I'm
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: going to start making a a regular thing if you
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: want to know more about this. Here's the Here are
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: the two or three books I would recommend.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: So here's the basics.
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: Right, we know Franco, we know Hemingway, we know orwell,
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: maybe Picasso, some of you know. Maybe you know the
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln brigade. Beyond that, the story may get a
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: little fuzzy, right, that's okay, And you may remember, oh,
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: this is like the fascist versus the socialists. Right, there's
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: truth to that. But let's be honest, all of that
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: is hopelessly incomplete because Spain wasn't simply a war between
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: left and right. Right, there's there's a lot of people
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: who cleanly always want to make that case. It was
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: what happened after millions of people gradually stopped believing the
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: other side had a legitimate right to govern. By the way,
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: do you know it's a theme with my show today,
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: But I digress that lesson has never really stopped haunting democracies,
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: So let's go. Spain became a republic in nineteen thirty
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: one after King Alfonseau the thirteenth left the country. The
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: Republic inherited almost every division imaginable. There was rich and
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: poor cities versus the countryside, landowners versus labor unions, the
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church versus the anti clerical reformers, regional nationalists, right
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: those separatists, monarchists, liberals, socialists, communists, anarchists, the military. The
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: Republic was trying to modernize Spain. There was land reform,
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: education reform. They were trying to reduce the influence politically
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: of the church. They wanted civilian control of the military.
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: They were fighting for women suffrage, give women a right
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: to vote. To supporters, these all looked like long overdue
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: small deeds democratic reforms, but to many conservatives they look
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: like revolution. And power kept changing hands through elections, each
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: side increasingly treated the other's victories as something more dangerous
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: than an ordinary small d democratic loss. Political violence became
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: more common. Churches were burned, political assassinations multiplied. The political
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: center kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: arguably where our story begins. Not with the Civil War,
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: but it was with the collapse of something I've been
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: trying to make mainstream again, pluralism. The election of February
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, a left wing Popular Front coalition narrowly wins.
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: The coalition itself is hardly unified. Think of him as
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: it was, like moderate Republicans and Republicans at those believers
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: in the Republic. Over there, socialists and communists, the anarchists
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: were kind of operatingating. Nearby, you had the regional nationalists,
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: and they all kind of were in coalition together. They
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: agreed on defeating the right, and they agreed on remarkably
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: little else.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 2: Is that sound familiar to you.
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: The right, of course, was convinced Spain was sliding towards revolution.
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: The left became convinced the right was preparing to destroy
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: the democracy itself.
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 2: Existential right, right.
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: It makes it easier to go after the other side
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: if you think they're trying.
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: To eliminate you.
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: So then came the event that pushed everything closer to
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: the edge. Jose Calvo Sotelo, one of the country's leading
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: conservative politicians, was abducted and murdered by members of the
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: republic's owned security forces, along with some left wing militants.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: To much of the political right, this wasn't simply another
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: political assassination. It suggested the republic itself could no longer
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: guarantee political neutrality or basic security for those that disagreed
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: with the government. So the military conspiracy took hold. The
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: murder accelerated it. On July seventeenth, military units stationed in
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: Spanish Morocco revolted.
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 2: The next day.
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: That uprising spread into Spain itself. And here's the part
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: that many people forget. The coup failed, because that's what
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: this is, how this begins. It was with a coup, right,
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: it failed to do what coups are supposed to do,
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: didn't seize the country, divided the country. The failed coup
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: essentially became the starting gun for the Civil War. Now,
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: the nationalists were hardly one thing themselves. He had military officers, monarchists,
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: traditional Catholics, conservatives, the Falange. This was the explicitly fascist movement.
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: They were the fascists. Franco gradually welded them together into
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: an authoritarian coalition under military command. Now the republican side here,
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: and this is not republican, and isn't the American Republican Party,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: just the pro democracy, pro republic side of things. They
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: were not very unified. Yes, they included the liberals, the socialists,
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: the communists, the anarchists, the regional nationalists, the anti Stalin Marxists.
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: They fought Franco and they fought each other. The communists
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: didn't trust the anarchists. By the way, who coul trust
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: any anarchists, But I digress. The anarchists, of course, right,
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: distrusted everybody that's kind of on brand. The arguments weren't
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: merely philosophical. Some allies arrested one another, some disappeared, some
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: were executed. The left's internal divisions became one of Franco's
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: greatest advantages.
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: Again sound familiar.
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: Spain wasn't simply democracy versus authoritarianism. It's also a reminder
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: that coalitions could destroy themselves from with them well. The
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: outside world quickly arrived. Britain and France declared non intervention.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: It's one of history's great diplomatic ironies. The policy applied
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: most strongly to the countries willing to hopey it. Germany
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: and Italy openly supported Franca. The Soviet Union supported the Republic.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: Spain became a rehearsal really for World War Two. German
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: pilots tested bombing tactics, Italian troops gained combat experiments. The
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: Soviets expanded their own political influence. One bombing became symbolic.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: If you watched Oppenheimer or read the Kaibird book, you
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: know Oppenheimer was a donor to the cause of the
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: communist side of things, which was on the pro democracy
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: side in Spain. There was one bombing in particular that
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: became very symbolic, Guernica. This is Picasso's painting made the
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: destruction itself famous, but Guernica represented something else as well.
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: The twentieth century was learning that civilians themselves had become
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: part of the battlefield. Right, civilians were targeted, and that
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: used to be like with it's just something you just
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: didn't do anymore, and that Lesson obviously did not stay
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: confined to Spain. There were Americans that showed up. There
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: were twenty eight hundred who volunteered in what became known
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Many of them were actual communists,
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: some of them were socialists. Some of them believed fascism
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: had to be stopped before it ever spread across Europe.
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: Of course, one of the most remarkable contradictions of this
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: war is what black Americans did. They served in integrated
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: units in Spain, years before the US military integrated. Oliver Law,
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: a black labor organizer from Chicago, commanded white American volunteers
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: in combat in nineteen thirty six and thirty seven. Folks
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: that happened in Spain before it ever happened in America.
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: Man history has a way of producing some fascinating ironies,
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: right and then, of course there were all the famous
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: writers that showed up. Hemingway arrived, leaving the Republic represented
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: civilization's best hope. His Spain eventually became for whom the
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: bell tolls for generations of America. It was Hemingway who
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: was the emotional narrator of this war. George Orwell's experience
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: could hardly have been more different. He joined a militia,
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: he was shot through the throat, and then he watched
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: Soviet back communists begin suppressing other anti fascist groups. He
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: fled Spain, convinced that propaganda and totalitarianism were not monopolies
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: of the political right. The road to him riding Animal
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: far in nineteen eighty four runs directly through his experiences
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: in Barcelona. John Doe's passors came to Spain sympathetic to
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: the Republic. The disappearance and execution of his friend Jose
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: Roblz shattered that confidence. He returned believing too many idealists
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: had become willing to excuse political burder as long as
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: their side was committing. Spain didn't simply divide a country.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: It divided some of America's greatest writers at the time.
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: So it's another reason why every generation keeps returning there.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: Spain seems to contain almost every political argument of the
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: twentieth century in one convenient package. Militarily, Franco gradually gained
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: the advantage as coalition was more unified. Germany and Italy
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: supplied aircraft, troops and equipment. The Republicans possessed courage sympathy
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: from the world and major cities, but the sympathy wasn't ammunition.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: Madrid fell in thirty nine, the Republic collapsed an authoritarian
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: coalition with the Falange providing the fact its fascist wing
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: won the war, and Franco ruled Spain until nineteen seventy five. Folks,
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: because people sometimes forget the full outcome of this story.
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: In fact, they sometimes tell the story as though moderation
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: somehow prevailed at the end.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 2: It did not.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: Authoritarianism prevailed for almost forty years. Political parties disappeared, free
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: elections disappeared, Regional languages were suppressed.
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 2: Tens of thousands of.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: Spaniards were executed after the war ended, many more spent
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: years in prison. Hundreds of thousands went into exile. Pluralism
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: didn't emerge from the battlefield. It emerged only after decades
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: of a dictatorship convinced enough Spaniards that, guess what, we
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: need moderation again, because no extremist faction could permanently govern
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: by denying that anyone else had no place in the country.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: In fact, when Franco died in seventy five, Spain faced
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary question, how do you build a democracy after
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: a civil war in nearly forty years of a dictatorship?
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: Something Cuba's got to address. It's something that as well
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: is going to be addressing. It's something that Russia couldn't
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: successfully do. Their democracy lasted all of eight years before
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: Putin took over. But you know what have you seen
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: Spain today? Because the answer became Spain's democratic transition. Political
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: parties were legalized, elections returned, a new constitution was written.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: Former enemies agreed to compete again rather than.
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 2: Eliminate each other now.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, people had to die and rights had to be
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: gone for forty years for people to realize that moderation
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: and pluralism is the only way to make this work.
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: Part of the transition rested on what became known as
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: the Pact of Forgetting. The idea was simple, Spain could
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: stop using the civil wars a political weapon long enough
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: to build a democratic future. That decision, by the way,
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: still remains controversial to some. Many victims never received justice
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: from the frontcohiers. Many mass graves actually remain unopened, Families
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: waited generations for answers. Modern Spain still argues whether democracy
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: required too much silence, So the transition is not morally clean.
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: Let's not pretend it was what in our country either
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: was it it was politically practical, It wasn't built on agreement,
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: it was built on exhaustion. Enough Spaniards finally concluded that politalism,
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: it's not idealism. It's survived. And perhaps that's why every
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: generation rediscovers pain. It's not because history repeats itself so neatly.
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: Every generation that invokes the Spanish Civil War is really
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: talking about itself, its own fears and polarization. It's on
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: uncertainty about whether democracy is still strong enough to survive.
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: It's a debate we have every generation. It's frankly normal.
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: But just don't forget that Spain was talking as well,
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: and what Spain had to say was painfully simple. Democracy
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: isn't tested when everybody agrees. Democracy is tested when you
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: believe your opponents are profoundly wrong and you still accept
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: the right their right to compete with you for political
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: power in a democracy, and sometimes your opponent, who you
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: adamantly disagree with, is going to win and be in charge.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: Can you handle it well? Spain failed that test. They
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: had to go through a civil war, and then forty
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: years of a dictatorship, a painful democratic transition left many
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: wounds still not fully healed. Before enough Spaniards concluded that
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: sharing power with people you deeply dislike was preferable to
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: try to try and to kill them. So America in
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, let's not pretend we're Spain in nineteen
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: thirty six.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 2: We are not.
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: Every polarized democracy is not headed towards civil war, all right,
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: And every commentator who invokes Spain is a pale limitation
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: of George Orwell or Hemingway, no matter how badly they
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: want to be George Orwell or Hemingway. But Spain does
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: remain worth studying because every generation eventually thinks the Spanish
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: Civil War is about them. The truth's a little different.
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: Go look into Spain for answers to your own questions.
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe you'll find them, but you'll find out all the
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: wrong ways to do this. That's the reason to understand this.
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: The least we can do is understand what Spain was
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: actually trying to teach. Let's hope the rest of us
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 1: never need quite that much of an education of an
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: actual civil war. A second one here and somehow forty
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: years of authoritarian rule before we figure out what we
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: figured out better than anybody else, and what every other
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: country eventually tries to emulate. The only way to govern
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: a huge democracy is through pluralism. By the way, as
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: I promised here, I'm gonna do this here. Sorry, as
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: I promised a couple of book recommendations on the Spanish
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: Civil War. If you want to go deeper on this,
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: let me give you two. One of course, is or
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: While right, you might as well read him Homage to Catalonia.
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: It's his first hand account of being there, so that
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: I thinks that's one on ramp, but frankly a better one.
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: If you're if you're sort of if you're listening to me,
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: you're kind of an American political junkie. So this next book,
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: it's by Adam hawks Child. It's called Spain in Our Hearts,
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: and it really does sort of over index on the
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: American you know, sort of Americans that went there and
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: sort of the American side of things. So I think
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: it'll it'll just feel familiar and probably be an easy
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: way in. And then after that, you know, if you
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: get hooked on more, you can go deep, deep, deep,
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: there's plenty of great scholarship out there on the Spanish
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: Civil War.
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 4: But there's just two quickie book recommendations, ask Chuck, all.
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: Right, let's do a few questions.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: Uh, and then I got my quick modest proposals for
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: fixing Baseball's Hall of Fame. All right, first question, all right,
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: let me get this here comes from Brad Readings from
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: Michigan's third District. As someone who doesn't enjoy partisan politics,
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate your presentation of politics for the rest
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: of us.
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: Let's make that slogan great again. It feels like we're
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: stuck on a hamster wheel where each new president can
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: simply undo the last administration through executive orders, appointments, funding decisions,
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: and shifting agreements, while Congress and the courts do little
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: to stop the cycle. How do we break the pattern
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 1: and get back to the lasting governance.
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 2: And real progress?
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: Brad Well, you ask how we get there, and the
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: answer is, we've got to figure out how to make
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: Congress great again, how to make Congress relevant, how to
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: accept the premise these are not co equal branches of
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: government that actually our constitution indicates essentially that Congress is
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: the supreme branch of government. Right, there is a bit
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 1: supremacy there. Unfortunately, our partisan divide inside of Congress makes
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: it where the speakers are more partisan than.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: They are institutionalists.
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: And the only way to make Congress sort of get
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: its power and influence back is to have a speaker
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: that frankly speaks for the Institution and the Constitution over
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: above their own party. Now you may think, well, that
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: sounds both easy and impossible.
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 2: Correct, it is. It is It should be the easy part.
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: Of this, and yet it is so hard. Mike Johnson
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be there but for his loyalty to Donald Trump
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: and the most furthest right wing. And I promise you
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: Akim Jeffries, if he does not play kate his far
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: left wing, he will not be if he becomes, if
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: he gets enough votes to become speaker, he will be
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: a very weak speaker. Tip O'Neil is probably the last
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: speaker we had who I think was at least equally
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: put the Institution and the party. At least he's sort
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: of I don't want to say he was country over party,
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: but he was country and party.
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 2: At the same time.
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: Now he had the luxury of that Democrats have been
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: in charge of the House of Representatives for forty years,
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: and so there was an institutionalist mentality that tip O'Neil
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: both inherited from previous speakers and sort of kept and governed,
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: and he was sort of now. He also had an
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily diverse Democratic conference because back then you still had
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: the solid Democratic South who were very conservative the Reagan
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: Democrats in the eighties, so he had a third of
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: his constituents a speaker and as leader of the Democratic
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: Party were actually siding with Reagan. So frankly, the circumstances
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: and the incentives were actually there for him to be
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: the institutionalists. First literally with Tom full I mean, and
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: then you just saw the whole thing broke down right,
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: and it was literally, tip O'Neil is the end of
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: the air.
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: If you're doing your historical marker here.
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: Right, Jim Wright becomes speaker and new Ingridge rises to
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: just take right out and we have what we had
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: all the you know, the politics of today's Congresses were
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: essentially born out of the feuds between Jim Wright and
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: new Gingridge.
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 2: So ultimately that's our issue.
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: By the way, this is my way of telling you
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: go to New sphere this week and check out my
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: conversation with Jamie Raskin. Jamie Raskin, before he was a
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: Democratic member of Congress from suburban from suburban DC inside
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: of Maryland, he was.
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 2: A constitutional law professor.
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: He's been thinking about this for decades, not just years.
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: And I had a conversation where I said, I want
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: to interview Professor Raskin and talk about this sort of
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: systemic issue that we have, and then there's the Democrat
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: from Maryland that I want to speak to. And so,
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: to his credit, he accepted both premises, and he talked
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: about at times there are some things that he believes
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: in that he knows his party would not necessarily because
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: in the near term could quote unquote give up some power.
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: But he talks about various ways. But look, we both
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: are in the same camp. We know Congress is too weak.
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: The question is how do you strengthen it? And can
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 1: you strengthen it in this current polarized environment that we're in.
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: That's where I'm skeptical. We know what we need to do.
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: The question is do we have a politics that can.
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 2: Make it happen?
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you, Brad, I'm not convinced that we are.
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: What I think we need is a coalition speaker, right
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: we need, and we may get there. I think if
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: you see if the two parties are become controlled by
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: the progressive dsa adjacent wing on the left, and MAGA
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: and a nationalist stay in charge of the right, then
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: I think you may have a group of Democrats who
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: aren't comfortable with their leadership and Republicans aren't comfortable with
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: Then there might be the opening and you might get
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: what you got in Texas a coalition speaker. There have
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: been coalition speakers and a couple of other state legislators
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: around this country. Like I said, people don't realize that
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: this just happened in Texas in the last five years.
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: So I think that that's our only hope here to
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: get an institutionalist who realizes that Congress is a no
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: no longer functioning the way our founders envisioned, and that's
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: ultimately that's at the heart of everything. Our over reliance
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: in the courts, And if you're on the left or right,
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: you get frustrated that the courts have to weigh in,
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: But why do the courts have to adjudicate because Congress
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: won't do its job? So I know some of you
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: get so mad at the Supreme Court and the judiciary,
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: but they shouldn't have to be dealing with about half
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: the issues they have to deal with if you didn't
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: have a dysfunctional Congress who didn't have the guts to
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: deal with these issues themselves, including abortion rights.
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 5: By the way, all right, next time, Charles. All right,
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 5: a fellow, Charles, I'd love to discuss with you all
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 5: of our various nicknames where you chas a Charlie at
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 5: Chad Chuck.
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 2: Right, But I.
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: Digress, he says, Chuck. I heard your answer about how
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: Trump could potentially serve another term, but I don't think
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: the scenario propose works under the twenty second Amendment because
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: the to year exception applies to a term in which
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: someone else was elected. Could a more plausible route be
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: running as VP and succeeding a president who resigns, or
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: becoming Speaker and moving into the presidency through succession. I'd
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: love your take on whether either of those scenarios could
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: legally work. Go use Charles, by the way. In my
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: scenario of making that work of I also have the
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: president secretly getting an office. An OLC memo written that
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: would reinterpret the twenty second Amendment through the Prism, and
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: then once you have an official government take on that,
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: it does have different type of influence on the courts.
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 1: But I don't want to get into that. Your other
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: two scenarios, look, I think the I think both both.
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing, you are not eligible to look read
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: the twenty second you are not eligible to be vice
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: president if you are not eligible to serve as president.
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: That is my one question mark about the running made
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: idea right, it's very blicit in there. So that's one thing.
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: The speaker thing is a different story. But I also
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: think it's a temporary because then you'd have to have
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: the House sort of a ferment. Again, you might have
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 1: a different situation. That one is the one I think
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: you is probably if you're looking for the This is
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 1: a weird thing to say the cleanest constitutional workaround. Speaker
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: of the House is the one that strikes me as
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: potentially that way to go, or even I'll give you
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: another one, secretary State, but then that the problem with
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: that is secretary state comes after the speaker right in
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: the role. So then you're you're having a Now do
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: I think Donald Trump could tell Mike Johnson what to do? Yes,
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: do I think Donald Trump could tell?
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: And that's the part of this is I'm not one
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: hundred percent convinced that if Jdevance assumed the vice presidency
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: that he would somehow then just.
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 2: Back away and let Trump have it.
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 1: And I don't think you have it unless the voters
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: explicitly know that's what you're going to do, and if
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: you had popular support for something like that might be
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: harder to stop than you think. I don't buy that
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: you'd have popular support for that. So I think I
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: think your speaker is the one that's more plausible. I
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: don't know if he ever gets on the ballot, and
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: the other one because again the Constitution's pretty explicit you
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: can't serve as vice president if you're not eligible to
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: be president, and I don't think he could go the
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: whole way. This is why I think the potential and again,
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: what it creates is a legal question. I take your
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: point on the twenty second amendment. That's why I think
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: resigning before January third is about the only way to
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: make that work. I think the only other one that
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: works if he serves the full two terms is the
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: speaker of the house route, which also seems absurdly precarious.
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: All right, last question comes from there. We are hey
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: checking team. After watching Joe Kernin's recent interview with Trump,
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: I was reminded of a long standing question I have
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: as an expat who's lived in France for fifteen years,
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: where political interviews often feel far more probing and substantive.
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 1: Why do so many high profile American interviews lack tough
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: direct questions and meaningful follow ups? When politicians dodge our
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: audience expectations, shorter tension spans, friendly partisan outlets or access
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: journalists in the blame. There are certainly strong journalists in
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: the US, but why do so few prominent ones consistently
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: press for actual anths? Thanks, Garry, are part of it's
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: our culture, right. There's a culture of it in the
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: UK that's different where and we have such a this
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: is a free press right. The UK doesn't have a
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: fully free press right. The government can come down in
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: some ways. We have a fully free press, which means
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: you have a fully free way to dodge certain things.
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 1: Trust me, there were people who stopped coming on my show.
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 2: Because they didn't want to be interviewed by me. Lindsey Grant.
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: We brought him John Kennedy, Republicans from Ted Cruz right,
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: these guys, Nancy Pelosi right. It was mostly on the right,
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: these at the at the end, but certainly plenty on
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: the left as well, Joe Biden.
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 2: So you know that there.
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: So what you have is too many politicians can cherry
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 1: peck and yes, right, Joe Kernin is supportive of the
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: president's general agenda. So Kernin has to be the lead
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: if CNBC is going to get access to Trump. Right,
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: So it is it is really that transactional relationship that
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 1: you see. But let me there's you know, I let me,
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: let me defend the non you know, there's there's to
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: me I viewed. Let me tell you how I viewed
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: interviewing how I still view interviewing a politician, which is
• 2:31:49
  Speaker 1: I want to learn something. I'm not there to be
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 1: a candidate to debate. I think the the some of
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: the things that some people love, you know, like and
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: I could tell you used to like, well you did
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: a great job, you know, and those you know, it
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: would always come from partisans because I supposedly exposed some hypocrisy. Right,
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: you'd ask that question and Now they didn't give you
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: an answer that told you anything, but it was always
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: good for you for exposing the hypocrisy, which I think.
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: I think our job is to let people know, hey,
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: you're saying this, but it seems to be this, and
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: you make them explain their contradiction. Now, some people will say,
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: well you need to tell them their contradictions full of shit.
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, you can do.
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: That once and never interview somebody again. Or you could
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: do what I believed I was doing for my audience,
• 2:32:36
  Speaker 1: which was making it plainly obvious that somebody was obfuscating
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 1: and somebody was full of shit. So I think every
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: interview deserves different styles. I went pretty hard one time
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: at Ted Cruz because I know he was purposely avoiding something,
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 1: and I just kept going and going and going. There's
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: a famous YouTube you can go see of crews refusing
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: to endorse Trump and we go back and forth and
• 2:32:59
  Speaker 1: it goes there's another one where you know Trump, where
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: Cruise comes on is the last time Cruise was on
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 1: with me, where he talks about you know that, the
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: idea that Trump could ever lie. And then I brought
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: up what Trump said about his wife and his father
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 1: and say of all people that might have an idea
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: of Trump's capability of lying, I would assume it would
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: be you, and he just got mad at me from
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: bringing his family into the conversation rather than you know,
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: the point is that I didn't you know, the audience
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: got something out of it, I guess, but how much
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: did we really learn about what they're thinking about? So
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: I can tell you that I would always balance those
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 1: things and sometimes if they were just you know, you know,
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: as an interviewer, I think I was always trying to
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: channel the audience. You tuned in to meet the press
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: to be informed. Some people tune into a cable channel
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: to go rab ra. So look, I could tell you
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: that was my style, but I believe you can have
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: and I think we're proving it here with the Chuck todcast.
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 1: Is you can have a more substantive interview, understand every
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: contradiction the politician holds without being an asshole. And I
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 1: think that some people equate tough interviews with a member
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: of the press behaving like a like an asshole. Sometimes
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: that is necessary to channel the rage of the public
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 1: when you feel like government isn't responding to a crisis.
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: That's when I always have felt the most compelled to
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: be angry. Angry on behalf of everyday people, not angry
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: on behalf of an ideology or a politician or a party.
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: But I think there's a sort of look I'm not
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: I think Kernin is never going to ask Trump a
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: tough question because he doesn't want to make Trump mad,
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: because he doesn't want to lose his relationship with Trump.
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: But Kernin is not going to sit there and be
• 2:34:51
  Speaker 1: He doesn't. That's not that's actually not the compact he
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 1: has with his viewers. Joe's compact with his viewers is
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: that he's the conservative at the time. So I think
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: that audience expectation and you setting it with the audience
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: also matters in the different forms. So I understand where
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: you're coming from. You're like, well, this is the only
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: American journalist I've seen interview the president where you're standing
• 2:35:14
  Speaker 1: in France. But I think that that's I'm trying my
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: best to explain sort of how it is. You know,
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: do I wish politicians enjoyed going back and forth? I mean,
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: this is why my favorite interviews are people like Dick
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: Cheney who didn't who accepted the premise of tough questions
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: John McCain, who accepted the premise of tough questions. Barack
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: Obama would take one, but he'd lecture me and tell
• 2:35:40
  Speaker 1: me why I was. You know that I'm looking at
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: it this way and I should be looking at it
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: that way. Sometimes I got a little wonky when when
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: he and I would go back and forth on certain things.
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 1: But ultimately, sometimes sugar works every once in a while,
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: splash of cold water works, every once in a while,
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: heat works. But I promise you light always works the best.
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: Heat can expose some hypocrisy or certainly put a put
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: a put a spotlight on it, but light teaches you
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 1: more than any other aspect of conducting interviews. All right,
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: With that, a quick little sports rant. The announcement by
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: Justin Verlander that he's going to retire. He is reigniting
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite baseball debates. Who was the best
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: picture of this basically this generation that's retiring Kershaw, Scherzier.
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 2: Or Verlander. Now I've got two. I've got two.
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: Cats in this fight for what it's worth. When his
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: career began, I was a Kershaw guy. I have a
• 2:36:55
  Speaker 1: Kershaw jersey. As my son was growing up and became
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: a NAT's dropped my Dodgers jersey. And you know, for me,
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: my Dodger fandom ends now, and as far as I'm concerned,
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, the year the Nats were born.
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 2: I love Clayton. I love watching Kershaw. I really enjoyed him.
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 2: I love Max.
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: So I am invested in this debate just as a fan,
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: Max versus Kershaw versus Verlander. What's fascinating about these three
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: is what I what I did. I went through a
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: various deep dives. It's like, you know, you know, and look,
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: I can make the argument I'd rather have Max pitch
• 2:37:34
  Speaker 1: Game seven. I'd rather have Clayton be my ace in
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: the regular season. You know you can, and and certainly
• 2:37:40
  Speaker 1: Verlander is the one that's going to be the most.
• 2:37:42
  Speaker 2: Durable, So I think you can. I can. I could
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 2: spin any.
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: Of the three and spin them all at one. But
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: obviously the best argument for Max is actually not the
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: regular season, although a great He's got great stats there too.
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 1: What separates Max from both Kershaw and Verlin is his
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 1: success in the postseason. And so then I went down
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: this rabbit hole and I wanted to compare. I was
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 1: like looking like, you know, the Big Three here versus say,
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: Randy Pedro Shilling, you know of the of that sort
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: of late nineties early ATS era. You know, we keep
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: sort of the various the various entities that you could
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 1: go in different ways. You've got Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan,
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 1: Tom seaver kind of inter grouping. Maybe you throw Jim
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 1: Palmer in there. And it made me realize, especially when
• 2:38:37
  Speaker 1: you look at the following metric in the particularly in
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 1: the eighties, nineties ATS and arguably even today, which is
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 1: you have your regular season argument, which ninety five percent
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: of Hall of Fame voters focus on, and then you
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 1: have the postseason argument, which clearly doesn't have the sway
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 1: that it does perhaps in other Hall of Fames. And
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: so I want to propose a small little thing. It
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 1: is increasingly clear to me that the best way to
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: handle these debates about who's the greatest of all time
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: in baseball in different ways, we should have two Hall
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: of Fames. We've got the one we have now in Cooperstown,
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: which is your career Hall of Fame. We need a
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: postseason Hall of Fame. Now we've had a postseason now
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: going back to the mid seventies, right early to mid seventies.
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 2: So this is now fifty years right.
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: Baseball was approximately just under fifty years old when Cooperstown,
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of came to be. So this is
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 1: a good mark. We have fifty years of postseasons, never
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 1: mind the World Series before that, but we've had postseasons
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: that were bigger than the World Series. Because here's what
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: you realize that as our postseasons have expanded, there's a
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 1: real difference between some of the greatest pitchers of the
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: regular season eras versus the greatest pictures in postseason two people.
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: Really three people jump out at me in different eras.
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: Dave Stewart of the Oakland A's who beat Roger Clements
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: twice in Game sevens Kurt Schilling, mister bloody sock, Who's
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: you know, this has never been about politics, And this
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: is to me, I really believe it's this regular season
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: just doesn't quite add up, but his postseason does. And actually,
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 1: if you look at the stats, Steven Strasburg, because once
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: you go after the next three, the number four picture
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: of this era is Strasburg. And I think sometimes because
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 1: Strasburg came in with so much height and it's like,
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: but he's not a Hall of Famer. He didn't win
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 1: all these cy Young's and no hitters. But he had
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: a really, really good career, and he was really one
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: of the greatest pictures of his era, probably one of
• 2:41:00
  Speaker 1: the five best pictures of his generation. It's just that
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 1: in the accumulation of statistics, he doesn't cut it. Here's
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 1: why I would love to see a postseason Hall of Fame,
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 1: because the really special players are Hall of famers in both. Right,
• 2:41:18
  Speaker 1: Max would be a Hall of Famer in both, Sandy
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: Kofac's a Hall of Famer in both, Bob Gibson a
• 2:41:23
  Speaker 1: Hall of Famer in both, Reggie Jackson a Hall of
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 1: Famer in both, and that would be you know, Bill
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: Simmons has this idea of creating a pyramid of that,
• 2:41:31
  Speaker 1: you know, to try to separate out the guy who
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 1: took ten years to get in, or the Veterans Committee
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 1: or Harold Baines versus your universe nearly universal guys you
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 1: know that got into the Hall of Fame, like what's
• 2:41:43
  Speaker 1: coming in an Albert Pools or something like that. But
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: the postseason what here's the way I look reason why
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: I think this matters fans memories are postseason driven now,
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: not regular season driven. And so the great memories we
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: all have are not of what happened on May seventeenth
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 1: at a four h five start, but it's what happened
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: in game six or game seven of the division series,
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: the you know, game five of a division series, game
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: seven a of a of a championship series, or of
• 2:42:17
  Speaker 1: course game six or seven of a World series. I
• 2:42:21
  Speaker 1: think it'd be a lot of fun to have. I
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: think it's something fans care about, and I think of
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 1: you again. It allows us to create a real sort
• 2:42:29
  Speaker 1: of tier. Are you a two Hall of Fame guy
• 2:42:34
  Speaker 1: or a one Hall of Fame guy? And you know what,
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 1: there are careers that are very postseason heavy and deserve
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 1: acknowledgment in the postseason. I'm talking to you Andy Bettett,
• 2:42:47
  Speaker 1: and I'm talking to you Fernando Allens well.
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:42:51
  Speaker 1: And then there are guys who have this irregular seat,
• 2:42:53
  Speaker 1: like a Justin Verlander. And then there's guys like my
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 1: man Mick's sure who would easily be And I tell
• 2:42:59
  Speaker 1: you I would have a few things.
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 2: You have to have a ring.
• 2:43:02
  Speaker 1: If you didn't win a ring, I'll say there's another
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: nat that might make it if it's just a post
• 2:43:06
  Speaker 1: If there's a postseason Hall of Fame, Ryan Zimmerman is
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: going to come up short in the in the career
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 1: Hall of Fame by the metrics that are used. But
• 2:43:14
  Speaker 1: go look at at at his performance in the postseason generally,
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: and by getting you that that that ring, you get
• 2:43:22
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a different look, right. I would
• 2:43:24
  Speaker 1: say it's a ring and a minimum ten games of
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: postseason work that you're judged on. But again, the reason
• 2:43:31
  Speaker 1: for this, I don't want to hear from you baseball purist,
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 1: but honest, you know it's a small sample size. This
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: is about the fan experience, our memories. Ultimately, hall of
• 2:43:42
  Speaker 1: Fames are about the greatest moments that matter to us,
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: the fans, and the postseason is a huge part of this.
• 2:43:49
  Speaker 1: So come on, mister Manfred, let's do it. Let's launch
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: the Postseason Hall of Fame. And it's basically all of
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: these things celebrating just the postseason. Maybe it's a wing
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 1: on Cooperstown, maybe it's m LB, and maybe it's something
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: you do uh in a in an in another in
• 2:44:09
  Speaker 1: another area, another city, But I think it's I think
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: it would it's a way to create more debate and
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 1: in some ways settle some of the greatest debates. All right,
• 2:44:23
  Speaker 1: with that, I will shut up. I had a lot
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: to say. These two days a week means I'll have
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 1: more to say. And by the way, you get a
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: special third episode because you know what comes Tuesday. It's
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: Super Tuesdays with crystallism. So we've we're actually sneaking in
• 2:44:36
  Speaker 1: three different episodes this week just for you, my favorite
• 2:44:40
  Speaker 1: political junk pison. With that, I'll see you wouldn't be
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 1: upload again.
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 3: M h