Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - U.S. Is Drifting Toward Competitive Authoritarianism + Social Media Has Fueled Extremism

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Chuck’s Commentary - U.S. Is Drifting Toward Competitive Authoritarianism + Social Media Has Fueled Extremism · The Chuck ToddCast

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1:50
Speaker 1: Hello there, Happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of
1:53
Speaker 1: the Chuck Podcast. We are ticking ever so closer to
1:58
Speaker 1: the holiday break first night of Hanukkah, ten days to Christmas,
2:03
Speaker 1: the New sixteen days to New Year's Eve, and of
2:07
Speaker 1: course when I'm counting down five days until the University
2:13
Speaker 1: of Miami's debut in the college football Playoff, I've got
2:17
Speaker 1: a pretty good I've got a pretty sort of robust
2:23
Speaker 1: show today that's going to hit a bunch of topics.
2:27
Speaker 1: A fascinating and an incredibly important study by some from
2:35
Speaker 1: some folks from the Council on Foreign Affairs about the
2:37
Speaker 1: state of the United States and its democracy. It's extraordinarily
2:42
Speaker 1: important read.
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Speaker 2: I'm going to.
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Speaker 1: Pass on the highlights in a minute, fascinating new poll
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Speaker 1: from the Searchlight Institute on corruption and more and portantly,
2:51
Speaker 1: it's not about the concern about political corruption. It's about
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Speaker 1: what voters believe is corrupt versus sometimes what lawmakers.
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Speaker 2: View as corrupt.
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Speaker 1: Here's a hint. Let's just say that they don't share
3:04
Speaker 1: the same definition of what is political corruption these days.
3:08
Speaker 1: It is Monday, which means we're going to hop into
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Speaker 1: the time machine, and I'm just going to give you
3:14
Speaker 1: one hint at what I'm going to be talking about
3:17
Speaker 1: in the.
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Speaker 2: Time machine monorail, mono rail, monorail.
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Speaker 1: How many of you will figure out what I'm going
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Speaker 1: to talk about based on that hint? Guess what I
3:29
Speaker 1: won't actually find out the answer to that. But I
3:31
Speaker 1: thought that would be a fun little clue. We'll do
3:33
Speaker 1: some ask Chuck and I have a few thoughts on
3:36
Speaker 1: the state of college athletics given what happened what we're
3:40
Speaker 1: watching at the University of Michigan.
3:42
Speaker 2: But I'm going to start.
3:44
Speaker 1: With the news out of Australia. It's pretty painful first
3:49
Speaker 1: night of Hanuka around the world, that this is what
3:55
Speaker 1: all of us had to wake up to on Sunday
3:57
Speaker 1: morning here in the United States and what the world
4:01
Speaker 1: is grappling with, and that is just yet another reminder
4:06
Speaker 1: of that anti Semitism is at an ugly level globally
4:14
Speaker 1: right now. Look, this is anti Semitism is not new.
4:19
Speaker 1: We've gone through fits and starts. Anybody who's Jewish knows
4:24
Speaker 1: the history. We know the history of this quite well.
4:27
Speaker 1: The rise and falls of attempts eradicating Jews, blaming Jews
4:33
Speaker 1: for financial problems, blaming Jews for cultural problems. We are
4:38
Speaker 1: the smallest of the major religions. We are the smallest
4:42
Speaker 1: of groups that there are. It's amazing how much power
4:45
Speaker 1: so many people try to attribute to us, and we're
4:50
Speaker 1: not even three percent of the world's population. Obviously what
4:55
Speaker 1: we've been You know, there's a lot of people that
4:58
Speaker 1: are looking at this and and immediately trying to make
5:02
Speaker 1: a political argument, to make the case that it's the
5:06
Speaker 1: left that is supercharging antisemitism or the right that is
5:12
Speaker 1: supercharging antisemitism. I will remind you all once again, I
5:17
Speaker 1: have only experienced it in stereo.
5:20
Speaker 2: All right.
5:21
Speaker 1: Before twenty fifteen, I experienced very little anti semitism, if
5:25
Speaker 1: any at all. I think I shared a story with
5:27
Speaker 1: you an old friend of mine, we were talking about
5:30
Speaker 1: this one time, and sort of right right when the
5:34
Speaker 1: rise of sort of it was those of us in
5:37
Speaker 1: the press that were starting to feel it first, and
5:39
Speaker 1: then it sort of broke open out into the mainstream.
5:43
Speaker 1: But in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, you can say it
5:46
Speaker 1: was coincidental with the timing of the rise of Donald Trump,
5:50
Speaker 1: or if that is what sort of essentially lifted up
5:57
Speaker 1: the pretext on all of this. But essentially the rise
5:59
Speaker 1: of the postopulous left with Bernie Sanders and the rise
6:01
Speaker 1: of the populos right with Donald Trump has given a
6:04
Speaker 1: permission slip to anti semits to either to either use
6:10
Speaker 1: it to promote a left wing ideology or use it
6:12
Speaker 1: to promote a right wing ideology.
6:15
Speaker 2: Here's what I will say.
6:15
Speaker 1: If you're using anti Semitism to try to promote the
6:18
Speaker 1: left or the right, you're obviously doing it wrong. And
6:22
Speaker 1: you're not very small d democratic, and you certainly don't
6:25
Speaker 1: believe in freedom, that's for sure, freedom of anything, let
6:29
Speaker 1: alone freedom of religion on that front. But I remember
6:34
Speaker 1: talking with this old friend of mine and we were
6:36
Speaker 1: talking about how our mothers would tell us these stories
6:41
Speaker 1: about anti about their about their anti Semitic experiences in
6:48
Speaker 1: grade school and high school. My mother's second generation in America.
6:53
Speaker 1: I believe his parents were first generation, and you know,
6:58
Speaker 1: they would tell us these stories, and my friend and
7:00
Speaker 1: I would sit there and go, you know, my mother
7:01
Speaker 1: would tell these stories about you know, kids in her
7:03
Speaker 1: high school looking for her horns or asking about her tail.
7:08
Speaker 1: And you know, he would say that, you know, his
7:10
Speaker 1: mother would you share similar things? And we would just
7:12
Speaker 1: look at them like they were strange beings. That's this
7:15
Speaker 1: can't be the case.
7:16
Speaker 2: What do you tell? You know? I didn't.
7:19
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say I was dismissing mother, But
7:22
Speaker 1: you know, you think, well, maybe our parents.
7:24
Speaker 2: Are exaggerating a little bit.
7:25
Speaker 1: You know maybe, and I'll tell you ten years later,
7:29
Speaker 1: a right, eleven years now, we're almost we're getting close
7:31
Speaker 1: to the eleventh year of sort of this what has
7:34
Speaker 1: been a consistent uptick? Really really you can I do
7:37
Speaker 1: believe the line of demarcation is June twenty fifteen, but
7:41
Speaker 1: you can see this uptick.
7:42
Speaker 2: And it is.
7:44
Speaker 1: This is not something that either side if we're going
7:49
Speaker 1: to try to make this always a two way fight
7:51
Speaker 1: between whose fault is it?
7:52
Speaker 2: Is it the left, isn't the right? This is collective.
7:57
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of there's a lot of blame
7:59
Speaker 1: to go around, but I think the one that's sing singular,
8:03
Speaker 1: singular for blame and most important is social media. In this,
8:07
Speaker 1: we've always had to anti semis. We've always had hate
8:09
Speaker 1: in the world, Okay, just it's just a fact. We've
8:13
Speaker 1: always had small minded people who have wanted to blame
8:18
Speaker 1: an ethnicity or a religious sect for their for their
8:22
Speaker 1: own personal problems. That's in it, and that is that
8:26
Speaker 1: is not new. Sometimes these sick people end up leaders
8:31
Speaker 1: of countries see Hitler, Kama Adolph. Sometimes these sick leaders
8:37
Speaker 1: end up leaders of political movements, and then there's always
8:42
Speaker 1: this what about is that comes along with with folks
8:45
Speaker 1: that are trying to defend their side from charges of
8:49
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, and it'll be like, yeah, but you know, yeah,
8:54
Speaker 1: but this disselected leader of Israel's bad about X, Y
8:59
Speaker 1: and Z doesn't justify hate on little kids celebrating Hanukah
9:03
Speaker 1: in Australia. There's nothing that justifies that. So I don't
9:09
Speaker 1: want to hear the Abbots and I ignore. And I'll
9:11
Speaker 1: tell you this, the beauty of social media and stories
9:14
Speaker 1: like this is it becomes self selecting. You see the
9:16
Speaker 1: people that immediately want to point fingers and say, aha,
9:20
Speaker 1: it's the left, a hats the right, And I'm like, aha,
9:23
Speaker 1: it's somebody that doesn't have a mirror in their own frickin' house.
9:28
Speaker 1: But I want to put the emphasis on the distinguishing
9:32
Speaker 1: characteristic here of this era of anti Semitism, and that
9:37
Speaker 1: is social media.
9:39
Speaker 2: I put my.
9:42
Speaker 1: I want to align myself with some remarks that Spencer Cox,
9:46
Speaker 1: the Governor of Utah, Republican governor of Utah said last week,
9:50
Speaker 1: and it wasn't on a specific thing, wasn't specifically about
9:52
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, but it was more about the toxicity, the
9:56
Speaker 1: toxic culture, the increase in violence that we've seen in politics.
10:02
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is, my friend Jonathan Martin Wright wrote
10:05
Speaker 1: in Politico this week the following comment received the loudest applause.
10:09
Speaker 1: He did a joint form with Josh Shapiro on this issue,
10:12
Speaker 1: Spencer Cox and Josh Shapiro in conversation with my friend
10:16
Speaker 1: Sabana Guthrie, and the loudest applause at the form was
10:21
Speaker 1: when he said the following. If you want to be
10:22
Speaker 1: angry at someone, be angry at the social media companies.
10:26
Speaker 1: These are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the
10:29
Speaker 1: history of the world, and they're profiting off of destroying
10:31
Speaker 1: our kids and destroying our country. And the amplification the algorithms,
10:37
Speaker 1: the fact that fellow crazy anti semites can find other
10:41
Speaker 1: fellow crazy anti semites online and think, oh, I'm not
10:45
Speaker 1: the only one that thinks this. And the minute you
10:47
Speaker 1: think you're not the only one, that you're not alone,
10:50
Speaker 1: it somehow rationalizes, It makes you feel better. It makes
10:54
Speaker 1: you think, oh, and then when you set up an
10:56
Speaker 1: ecosystem and a bubble that sort of self reinforcing, you
11:01
Speaker 1: think you're the mainstream. Everybody thinks their own media diet
11:06
Speaker 1: is a mainstream diet, right. It is the inability of
11:10
Speaker 1: so many people to put their feet in other people's
11:13
Speaker 1: shoes and other people's media filters. In fact, I think
11:17
Speaker 1: there's been some experiments. I really would like to see
11:22
Speaker 1: people sort of spend a day in a media filter
11:26
Speaker 1: of somebody else, and you do these various media filters
11:30
Speaker 1: just you know, I look at it as an academic
11:32
Speaker 1: exercise to try to understand the electorate. As you guys know,
11:36
Speaker 1: I have been referring to myself as a political anthropologist,
11:41
Speaker 1: meaning that I that is constantly what I'm ultimately always
11:45
Speaker 1: trying to figure out is what is why are we
11:48
Speaker 1: in this place? And if you're trying to figure out why,
11:51
Speaker 1: you have to understand the various political tribes in America.
11:54
Speaker 1: Some of these tribes overlap. People are members of multiple tribes,
11:58
Speaker 1: sometimes a remember of only one. But ultimately that's why
12:01
Speaker 1: I say I'm a political anthropologist. I'm trying to figure
12:03
Speaker 1: out how do these tribes align? Hey, gress what I know,
12:07
Speaker 1: I'm in my own tribe. I just try my best
12:10
Speaker 1: to roll down the window in my bubble and see
12:13
Speaker 1: what's going on outside of my bubble. But you have
12:15
Speaker 1: to it is hard to do it. You have to
12:18
Speaker 1: intentionally do it. You have to have the crazy ass
12:21
Speaker 1: Twitter feed that I have. That I promise you most
12:23
Speaker 1: people at America probably don't because I do try very
12:26
Speaker 1: hard to get the normies and the extremes because I
12:30
Speaker 1: want to understand what the conversation that is going on.
12:34
Speaker 1: Trust me, I'm sure some of you go. Some of
12:36
Speaker 1: you listening to me wouldn't even know who Candice Owens is.
12:40
Speaker 1: And by the way, God bless you, I'd love not
12:42
Speaker 1: to know who this woman is. But there are people,
12:46
Speaker 1: there's an entire community on the right that is consumed
12:49
Speaker 1: with trying to extricate this crazy woman from the mainstream
12:54
Speaker 1: of the MAGA world because of her just outlandish conspiracy theories.
13:00
Speaker 1: I can't tell if she's mentally ill or just simply
13:04
Speaker 1: a shameless grifter, or perhaps the two of the two
13:07
Speaker 1: go hand in hand. But there are plenty of people
13:11
Speaker 1: in mainstream America. I'm sure if I said the words
13:13
Speaker 1: Candice owned, my mother and my brother in law, my
13:16
Speaker 1: sister in law, who all are pretty pretty smart about this.
13:18
Speaker 2: Would be like, who the hell is that?
13:20
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't blame them. But that's because this is
13:24
Speaker 1: the world that we've all constructed, but it's the world
13:26
Speaker 1: that social media has gone out of their way to construct.
13:30
Speaker 1: And this is why, you know, I look at this
13:32
Speaker 1: rise of anti Semitism, and I look the fact that
13:34
Speaker 1: this was not a lone nut right, but there appears
13:38
Speaker 1: to be some coordination down there in Australia. I do
13:44
Speaker 1: I can't, you know, I know that ultimately individuals are
13:48
Speaker 1: to blame, not a computer, not an algorithm, but these
13:51
Speaker 1: tech platforms amplify, and you know, I you know they
13:57
Speaker 1: I think they have a responsibility to make sure that
14:02
Speaker 1: what they're doing is not putting more people in harm's way.
14:05
Speaker 1: And their amplification, their algorithms, are doing just that, they
14:10
Speaker 1: deserve no protection on Section two thirty, the part of
14:14
Speaker 1: the law that supposedly says, hey, we're just you know,
14:16
Speaker 1: we're not doing the minute they put an algorithm on
14:19
Speaker 1: these things, the minute they amplify, the minute they allow
14:22
Speaker 1: for the connection. Look, our First Amendment guarantees free speech.
14:25
Speaker 1: It doesn't guarantee of bullhorn, it doesn't guarantee a right
14:30
Speaker 1: to be the loudest voice in the room. It just
14:32
Speaker 1: simply guarantees that you have a right to free speech.
14:36
Speaker 1: So you have a right to be a hateful anti
14:39
Speaker 1: semi okay, But you don't have the right to have
14:44
Speaker 1: your extreme, hateful and hurtful political views be the dominant
14:50
Speaker 1: piece of conversation and be mainstreamed into America. No, because,
14:55
Speaker 1: by the way, we don't want it mainstreamed. And the
14:57
Speaker 1: tech companies do not have to protect you and do
15:02
Speaker 1: not have to amplify your speech. In fact, they can
15:04
Speaker 1: dial it down. In fact, there's plenty of academic studies
15:07
Speaker 1: that show if you dial down hateful content, you're not
15:10
Speaker 1: getting rid of it, you're just prioritizing it less than
15:14
Speaker 1: these algorithms. It's shocking how much turning that temperature down
15:20
Speaker 1: actually helps the conversation. So it's troubling, but I really,
15:29
Speaker 1: you know, you look at the situation we're in, and
15:33
Speaker 1: there's no doubt we have bad leaders around the world
15:36
Speaker 1: that are exploiting hate and anger to try to make
15:40
Speaker 1: a political argument. You have people on both sides of
15:43
Speaker 1: the aisle attempting to weaponize anger at Israel or anger
15:49
Speaker 1: at the economy and trying to somehow connect that to
15:55
Speaker 1: Jewish folks. The left does it with bb at times.
16:00
Speaker 1: The right does it with George Soros. I mean, George Soros.
16:03
Speaker 1: There is no greater victim, there's no greater victim of
16:07
Speaker 1: anti Semitic mythology, h and gross mischaracterizations than George Soros.
16:14
Speaker 1: And I don't know where he gets to go to
16:16
Speaker 1: get his reputation back considering the character assassinations that have
16:19
Speaker 1: taken place through the prism of his faith. There's there's
16:24
Speaker 1: no no, no doubt in my mind on that front.
16:28
Speaker 1: But ultimately, why do we have more collective conversation about this?
16:32
Speaker 1: Why is there more collective talk about this? Why is
16:35
Speaker 1: there frankly more insecurity for many Jewish Jewish people around
16:41
Speaker 1: the world. Why do we feel so less secure today
16:43
Speaker 1: than we ever have before? I think we can thank
16:47
Speaker 1: social media. I think the tech companies have not only
16:52
Speaker 1: not gotten the focus of this, they've not taken responsibility,
16:56
Speaker 1: but I think they need They need to be the
16:59
Speaker 1: focal Which brings me to that column that my friend
17:02
Speaker 1: Jonathan Martin wrote, which he says, you know, perhaps Spencer
17:05
Speaker 1: Cox needs to be the anti tech candidate. Somebody needs
17:09
Speaker 1: to take it to the tech community, right. The tech
17:12
Speaker 1: community has brought us a lot of positives. Okay, there's
17:16
Speaker 1: a ton of positives, and there's a ton of tools
17:19
Speaker 1: that have been invented that have helped me create a
17:22
Speaker 1: better communications system with you guys. Right, there's no doubt
17:26
Speaker 1: there's plenty of upsides from the tech community, but what
17:30
Speaker 1: they have done with social media, and this is why
17:34
Speaker 1: I don't think the public is going to be supportive
17:36
Speaker 1: at all of this light touch, non regulatory process that
17:40
Speaker 1: the President's trying to do an artificial intelligence. The same industry,
17:45
Speaker 1: the same industry that gave us social media without regulation,
17:49
Speaker 1: now wants to give us artificial intelligence without regulation. Considering
17:55
Speaker 1: how well social media went, how the hell are we
17:59
Speaker 1: doing this, right, This is the most illogical thing you
18:03
Speaker 1: could come up with. I can't believe the president is
18:07
Speaker 1: doing this. I think this is you want to talk
18:09
Speaker 1: about convincing more mainstream Americans to go get a pitch
18:13
Speaker 1: for it and start sharpening up, sharpening that sucker up.
18:19
Speaker 1: It is just crazy that we don't want to put
18:22
Speaker 1: any guardrails on the growth and expansion of the AI industry.
18:27
Speaker 1: It is absolute insanity. Okay, if you think social media
18:34
Speaker 1: created more toxicity in our culture and more violence in
18:38
Speaker 1: our culture thanks to the lack of regulation, what do
18:41
Speaker 1: you think is going to happen with artificial intelligence if
18:44
Speaker 1: we don't have some attempt at making sure there are
18:47
Speaker 1: constant guardrails being erected as we build this super highway.
18:53
Speaker 1: It is it is something that I think is I've
18:57
Speaker 1: talked about this before. I think it is politically absolutely
19:03
Speaker 1: going to be frankly an easy thing to exploit potentially,
19:07
Speaker 1: And that's why the tech community is really making a
19:10
Speaker 1: mistake here that they are not grasping just in what
19:16
Speaker 1: kind of precarious position that they're in. And maybe they
19:18
Speaker 1: think we don't need America and if America shuts us down,
19:21
Speaker 1: we'll just go somewhere else where we will be treated
19:24
Speaker 1: with lot. We can just buy our way into a
19:27
Speaker 1: policy that we want. And obviously, right now we have
19:30
Speaker 1: a situation where they can get whatever the hell they
19:32
Speaker 1: want from this administration if they just write a check.
19:35
Speaker 1: And that's disturbing, but that's why we still have a
19:40
Speaker 1: competitive democracy, although I'm going to get to that in
19:43
Speaker 1: a minute, where the voters can sort of have a
19:48
Speaker 1: say in this, because right now we have zero say
19:52
Speaker 1: in what social media has done to us, and we
19:56
Speaker 1: don't seem to have the collective will.
19:58
Speaker 2: It's growing.
19:59
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think it's a huge start that
20:02
Speaker 1: you've got. I mean, look, Australia is trying to ban
20:05
Speaker 1: social media for people under the age of sixteen. Spencer
20:09
Speaker 1: Cock made this. Cox made this mention that we wait
20:12
Speaker 1: to hand the keys to a car to a kid
20:14
Speaker 1: until sixteen, yet we give them an algorithmic driven phone
20:19
Speaker 1: at twelve. You know, perhaps we can give them a
20:21
Speaker 1: phone at twelve with no social media on it.
20:23
Speaker 2: Right, maybe it's.
20:24
Speaker 1: Flip phones from twelve to sixteen, because plenty of parents
20:29
Speaker 1: want to have some access to their kids and all that.
20:31
Speaker 1: I think that that's a legitimate concern. But you know,
20:36
Speaker 1: we can essentially say, you know, no, just you can't
20:40
Speaker 1: have a you know, because I don't know how else
20:42
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to monitor this. But if
20:44
Speaker 1: you actually just make the device itself against the law
20:50
Speaker 1: for somebody under the age of sixteen to have that,
20:52
Speaker 1: that might be a start. It is the one area
20:56
Speaker 1: where we're starting to see some bipartisan consensus, which is
20:59
Speaker 1: about access to screens and social media for people under sixteen.
21:05
Speaker 1: And we've decided this is a problem. Well, guess what
21:08
Speaker 1: do you think that our minds are only fragile from
21:12
Speaker 1: sixteen and younger, or that we've got these fragile minds
21:16
Speaker 1: that are much older too, and that social media warps
21:18
Speaker 1: those warps those over the age of sixteen almost as
21:22
Speaker 1: badly as they could warp those under the age of twelve.
21:25
Speaker 1: One other point in the social media front, Jonathan mentioned
21:28
Speaker 1: an interesting new report that noted about. It was a
21:34
Speaker 1: pole about the manosphere, if you will, what do Men Want?
21:37
Speaker 1: And it revealed that a majority of males sampled in
21:40
Speaker 1: that survey said social media feeds have gotten a lot
21:43
Speaker 1: more extreme. I mean, most of this is thanks to
21:45
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and his insanity and what he's done to
21:47
Speaker 1: acts and taking away all guardrails on acts, And of
21:51
Speaker 1: course every other social media company followed because they didn't
21:54
Speaker 1: want to get left behind. But what's interesting is that
21:57
Speaker 1: men themselves revealed in this pole that most controversial content
22:01
Speaker 1: reaches the men who are online the most, especially younger men,
22:05
Speaker 1: white men, black men, Hispanic men across the board. And
22:09
Speaker 1: we're seeing a more radical youth thanks to warped social
22:15
Speaker 1: media algorithms. So when we see this rise of hate,
22:17
Speaker 1: we see this rise of violence, and we're looking, you know,
22:21
Speaker 1: the easy thing is to try to point left, point
22:23
Speaker 1: right point at Israel point, Gad's a point, at Hama's
22:26
Speaker 1: point of protesters, people want to point at a whole
22:28
Speaker 1: bunch of figures except for the culprit that is in
22:32
Speaker 1: charge of the information ecosystem that destroyed the information ecosystem.
22:36
Speaker 1: And trust me, I'm aware of the irony that I
22:39
Speaker 1: am speaking to you in that ecosystem, and hopefully it
22:42
Speaker 1: gets to you. It doesn't get shut down by the
22:45
Speaker 1: algorithms of these big tech companies. But they're the culprits here.
22:48
Speaker 1: They've created this environment that has made it a lot
22:51
Speaker 1: easier for these hateful, awful, mentally ill people to find
22:56
Speaker 1: comfort in their bubbles because it looks like they're not
23:01
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23:10
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23:17
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Speaker 1: we found wasn't a lot, but it was important at
23:32
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23:35
Speaker 1: to college. Little did he know how important that would
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Speaker 1: be in that moment.
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Speaker 2: Well, guess what.
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24:44
Speaker 1: is something you should really think about it, especially if
24:47
Speaker 1: you've got a growing family. I want to pivot quickly
24:53
Speaker 1: to my Newsphere interview this week because some alarming new
24:57
Speaker 1: facts that I had not seen anywhere else from Mark.
25:00
Speaker 1: He's the vice chair of the Senate Intel Committee. Mark
25:02
Speaker 1: Warner has seen the second He has seen the video
25:07
Speaker 1: of both the September second second strike on those survivors
25:13
Speaker 1: from the first strike of the boats off the coast
25:16
Speaker 1: of Venezuela, and he revealed two facts that I had
25:19
Speaker 1: not seen anywhere. Fact number one is that the time
25:23
Speaker 1: that elapsed between the first strike and the second strike
25:26
Speaker 1: was somewhere between thirty and forty minutes because of cloud cover,
25:30
Speaker 1: so thirty to forty minutes. And then the clouds come up,
25:34
Speaker 1: and then apparently what is revealed, according to Senator Warner,
25:38
Speaker 1: was not fully clothed survivors clinging to their life. And
25:45
Speaker 1: then the second strike. Let's just say this is what look.
25:49
Speaker 1: He believes that if Americans see this video, they will
25:53
Speaker 1: be appalled. There will be and there's a reason why
25:56
Speaker 1: the Pentagon is fighting the release of this video. There
25:59
Speaker 1: is no defense there apparently is going to be no
26:02
Speaker 1: defense of what this video looks like. This is appalling,
26:05
Speaker 1: and there are probably going to be concerns that there
26:09
Speaker 1: are people that might have legal jeopardy here, but realistically,
26:14
Speaker 1: I don't know where you get the legal jeopardy when
26:16
Speaker 1: the president will likely just pardon anybody that is investigated.
26:21
Speaker 1: But there's a reason people are fighting very hard not
26:26
Speaker 1: to release this second video because if what is what
26:30
Speaker 1: Warner described to me a delayed thirty to forty minutes
26:37
Speaker 1: and they were not fully clothed, Essentially, just put yourself
26:42
Speaker 1: for the situation. Your boat explode, You're alive, you're swimming,
26:46
Speaker 1: You're clinging to the remnants of a boat in order
26:50
Speaker 1: to stay afloat not drown. Half your clothes are gone
26:56
Speaker 1: been blown off. Maybe you're just sort of trying to
26:58
Speaker 1: use and we decide to use the second shot. No
27:05
Speaker 1: wonder there are questions why the phrase war crime is
27:08
Speaker 1: being tossed around although we're not at war, because you know,
27:13
Speaker 1: as many a person has pointed out, the question is
27:18
Speaker 1: whether there is not whether this second strike was legal,
27:22
Speaker 1: But we still have real doubts about whether the first
27:24
Speaker 1: strike is legal, and it is worth noting that earlier
27:27
Speaker 1: this week. Earlier last week, Trump offered a veiled threat
27:32
Speaker 1: at Columbia because the president of Columbia has been critical
27:35
Speaker 1: of this, saying that he might not be out of
27:38
Speaker 1: the crosshairs. And then the President has said that they
27:42
Speaker 1: might target some of these folks on land. Whose land
27:47
Speaker 1: is it? Venezuela is a Colombia. Where's this headed? And
27:52
Speaker 1: again there is no Senator Warner could not give me
27:58
Speaker 1: the authority that he could not explain very well the
28:03
Speaker 1: authority that the White House was using that they claim
28:07
Speaker 1: these strikes were legal. I mean, they've cited an authority.
28:12
Speaker 1: It's not the if you're wondering what Senator Warner said,
28:15
Speaker 1: it is not the au MF that was passed by
28:19
Speaker 1: Congress that allowed for the invasion of Iraq, but and
28:26
Speaker 1: which has been used, which was used by Obama as
28:29
Speaker 1: justification for strikes, and I believe Yemen in some other places,
28:32
Speaker 1: So that is not there. So we still don't have
28:35
Speaker 1: a clear picture of the legal authority the White House
28:39
Speaker 1: is claiming to go after these folks. But he has
28:42
Speaker 1: threatened land strikes without asking for any authority from Congress
28:47
Speaker 1: and additional authority from Congress, nor has he made his
28:50
Speaker 1: case to the American public.
28:52
Speaker 2: And by the way.
28:53
Speaker 1: The decision to essentially commandeer an oil tanker rather than
28:58
Speaker 1: just blow it up, although blowing up an oil tanker
29:00
Speaker 1: would have been catastrophic, you know, essentially starting a fire
29:05
Speaker 1: on the Pacific Ocean potentially or the Caribbean Sea depending
29:09
Speaker 1: on where they were hitting this tanker. But if we
29:13
Speaker 1: can board a tanker, we could have boarded these boats.
29:15
Speaker 1: And I think the decision not to attack that tanker
29:18
Speaker 1: and simply to just commandeer it under totally undermines the
29:23
Speaker 1: rationale and justification of the strikes themselves. Why there is
29:28
Speaker 1: no good explanation for why we're not just essentially stopping
29:34
Speaker 1: these boats, grabbing these people and getting some intelligence so
29:38
Speaker 1: that we can actually learn something. And I want to
29:41
Speaker 1: just keep one thing in mind here, just one more
29:44
Speaker 1: thing in mind, which is the president's political standing is
29:47
Speaker 1: not great. He has had a terrible month. He had
29:51
Speaker 1: a terrible Friday, excuse me, Thursday last week when his
29:55
Speaker 1: retribution campaign. You know, basically he's the Emperor with no clothes.
29:59
Speaker 1: As far as Indiana Republicans are concerned, Grand Juries in
30:02
Speaker 1: Virginia are not might want to indict at Ham Sanders,
30:06
Speaker 1: but they won't indict Leticia James. When he's not feeling.
30:11
Speaker 1: When he feels as if things are going bad, that's
30:14
Speaker 1: just when he might do crazier stuff and might attempt
30:18
Speaker 1: crazier stuff to either change the subject or change the picture.
30:22
Speaker 1: One more thing before I get to an important essay
30:25
Speaker 1: that I think you guys have to make note of
30:29
Speaker 1: the president.
30:30
Speaker 2: It is notable to me that the President did.
30:31
Speaker 1: An interview with the Wall Street Journal over the weekend,
30:34
Speaker 1: and the most fascinating aspect of it was his tone change.
30:38
Speaker 1: He essentially is admitting that he's going to lose the
30:41
Speaker 1: mid terms. He said, you know, he basically said, we're
30:46
Speaker 1: going to try our best to win. We'll see what happens.
30:48
Speaker 1: We should win, but you know, statistically it's very tough
30:51
Speaker 1: to win. Yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense. So
30:53
Speaker 1: it's the beginning of the excuse making. It's the beginning
30:56
Speaker 1: of his way of admitting this economy, that the public
31:00
Speaker 1: doesn't like this economy. This was the interview saying, Oh,
31:03
Speaker 1: it's going to take time, my investments haven't gone through.
31:07
Speaker 2: It will happen.
31:10
Speaker 1: Just be patient, and as he said, hopefully it happens
31:13
Speaker 1: before the election, but it's notable, right. He went from
31:16
Speaker 1: this is a hoax two weeks ago to at least
31:19
Speaker 1: in this interview with the Wall Street Journal, sort of
31:23
Speaker 1: accepting the premise. Yes, we realized the public doesn't feel
31:26
Speaker 1: it or see it yet, but they will.
31:28
Speaker 2: But they will, he promises. He swears.
31:31
Speaker 1: These are these stages. We should call it stages of
31:34
Speaker 1: political It's not quite political grief, but it's sort of like,
31:36
Speaker 1: you know, first there's a dial right, then there's you know,
31:40
Speaker 1: somehow your argumentative. Then there's a form of acceptance. He's
31:45
Speaker 1: getting into the form of acceptance, but he's not accepting
31:47
Speaker 1: the premise that his policies are a problem. He's just
31:50
Speaker 1: simply saying his policies haven't.
31:51
Speaker 2: Kicked in yet.
31:52
Speaker 1: In that sense, he's no different than any other president
31:55
Speaker 1: trying to defend a bad economy.
31:56
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no.
31:56
Speaker 1: My policies haven't kicked in yet. It's always my policies
31:59
Speaker 1: haven't kicked in yet. I'm dealing with the predecessor's policies.
32:03
Speaker 1: So that says it's a familiar pattern. Perhaps the best
32:06
Speaker 1: part of that Wall Street Journal interview was the fact
32:09
Speaker 1: that you know he's doing the interview with the Wall
32:11
Speaker 1: Street Turnal reporters. But he's taking calls and doing all
32:14
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff at the same time. Right, And here's
32:16
Speaker 1: the I'm going to read directly from the article. At
32:18
Speaker 1: one point, the President, sitting at the resolute desk with
32:21
Speaker 1: a glittering Christmas tree at its side, asked an aid
32:23
Speaker 1: to show him the latest market data. He took calls
32:25
Speaker 1: from friends and allies multiple times during the interview, including
32:27
Speaker 1: from Interior Secretary Doug Bergham, who joined by speakerphone to
32:31
Speaker 1: discuss the administration's plans for Washington, d C.
32:34
Speaker 2: Area public golf courses.
32:35
Speaker 1: That is right, the President seems to not be worried
32:40
Speaker 1: about the price of groceries as much as he's worried
32:43
Speaker 1: about the designs and who's in charge of redesigning Washington
32:48
Speaker 1: D C's three public golf courses, Rock Creek Park, Haynes
32:52
Speaker 1: Point in Langston.
32:56
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're.
32:57
Speaker 1: Trying to hand democrats, it's easier fodder to say, you know,
33:03
Speaker 1: he promised this, to focus, laser focus on this and this,
33:07
Speaker 1: and instead he cares about building a ballroom, changing the
33:11
Speaker 1: name of the Kennedy Center, singing YMCA, and redesigning Washington,
33:19
Speaker 1: d C's golf courses, all of course extraordinarily important priorities
33:23
Speaker 1: to bringing down the costs of electricity and groceries in
33:26
Speaker 1: your home. Anyway, just not the smartest politician, but Donald
33:31
Speaker 1: Trump's never been the smartest about messaging in that front.
33:35
Speaker 1: But that brings me to I think a very important
33:38
Speaker 1: essay from a quarterly journal. I'm a politically like I say,
33:43
Speaker 1: I'm a want to be political scientist, I call myself
33:46
Speaker 1: a political anthropologist. That means I actually read political science quarterlies.
33:52
Speaker 1: And there's an extraordinarily important one that's out this week.
33:56
Speaker 1: It's an essay in Foreign Affairs, which is the flagship
33:58
Speaker 1: journal of the Council Foreign Relations. This isn't a partisan outlet,
34:03
Speaker 1: it's not a resistance blog. It's the magazine where American presidents,
34:08
Speaker 1: Secretary of States, national security advisors have gone for generations
34:12
Speaker 1: debate how the world works and how the United States
34:15
Speaker 1: role it should be. So three of the most respected
34:20
Speaker 1: democracy scholars in the world from Harvard Toronto and the
34:23
Speaker 1: Council on Foreign Relations, Steven Levitsky Luke and Way and
34:27
Speaker 1: Daniel Ziblat. They're not cable pundits, they're not people you're
34:30
Speaker 1: going to see in the round tables of Sunday shows.
34:33
Speaker 1: They're not political activists. They're simply political scientists who spent
34:36
Speaker 1: their career studying how democracies erode around the world, how
34:40
Speaker 1: they fail, and occasionally how they recover.
34:47
Speaker 2: Well. They have an essay called.
34:51
Speaker 1: With about competitive authoritarianism, and in fact, this is what
34:57
Speaker 1: they write. And this is why I took up very seriously.
35:00
Speaker 1: This was not something I read, no offense to my
35:01
Speaker 1: friends at the Bulwark. It's not something I read in
35:04
Speaker 1: the Bulwark, not something you're going to see it here
35:05
Speaker 1: in pod Save of America. Certainly not you might. I
35:08
Speaker 1: doubt you'll hear this from my friend Eric Ericson either.
35:13
Speaker 1: But here's this essay twenty twenty five. The United States
35:15
Speaker 1: ceased to be a full democracy in the way that Canada,
35:18
Speaker 1: Germany or even Argentina are democracies. Okay, they're just making
35:23
Speaker 1: a classification. And then comes the line the game, however,
35:27
Speaker 1: is far from up. They're not saying all is lost, okay.
35:32
Speaker 1: It is an important essay because they deal with this
35:35
Speaker 1: tension of yes we have had erosion and no, this
35:40
Speaker 1: isn't permanent. Okay, So they argue that Donald Trump's second term,
35:45
Speaker 1: the United States crossed a definitional line into something political
35:48
Speaker 1: scientists call competitive authoritarianism. Here's how they define it. A
35:53
Speaker 1: system in which parties compete and elections, but incumbents routinely
35:57
Speaker 1: abuse their power to punish critics untilt the playing field
36:00
Speaker 1: against their opposition. So elections still happen, but perhaps you
36:04
Speaker 1: threaten lawmakers to redraw the maps to make more favorable elections.
36:08
Speaker 1: Opposition parties still exist, but perhaps you raise the threshold
36:12
Speaker 1: for petition signatures to get on a referendum, or you
36:15
Speaker 1: change the dates and stuff see Missouri. But the referee
36:18
Speaker 1: is no longer neutral, right, and the House rules keep changing.
36:22
Speaker 1: And importantly, they're not saying this might happen, because it's
36:25
Speaker 1: already happened in this country. A year ago, this group
36:28
Speaker 1: predicted that this would be Trump's trajectory, that he'd weaponized
36:31
Speaker 1: state institutions the way elected autocrats have done in Hungry, Turkey, Venezuela,
36:36
Speaker 1: and India. And those are the four most important examples
36:39
Speaker 1: to follow here, because Venezuela obviously the helm election, the
36:44
Speaker 1: leader loss, and he wouldn't leave Turkey, Hungary and India
36:47
Speaker 1: have are what are considered fairsh elections. But we'll find
36:53
Speaker 1: out when the ruling party loses one day just how
36:56
Speaker 1: fair they are. But they write this, Indeed, the Trump
36:58
Speaker 1: administration has done exactly that. But here's what the authors say.
37:01
Speaker 1: They didn't anticipate. What's surprised even them wasn't the speed,
37:04
Speaker 1: but it was the scope. And they write this, one
37:07
Speaker 1: form of authoritarian behavior that we did not anticipate a
37:09
Speaker 1: year ago was the Trump administration's routine subversion of the
37:12
Speaker 1: law and even the US Constitution. Well, we've seen that
37:16
Speaker 1: with the strikes within as well. I mean, there is
37:18
Speaker 1: very little, very little doubt here that this is not
37:23
Speaker 1: yet not constitutional. The question is whether they'll even try
37:29
Speaker 1: to give some congressional authority on that. So let me
37:37
Speaker 1: outline a few more things that they write here, weaponizing
37:40
Speaker 1: the state. They call it the blueprint. Every competitive authoritarian
37:42
Speaker 1: regime follows a familiar playbook. Purge, then pack, so removing
37:47
Speaker 1: professional civil servants who see their job as the law
37:50
Speaker 1: and replace them with loyalists who see their job as
37:52
Speaker 1: the leader. Just to look at the FBI, that's exactly
37:55
Speaker 1: what they document happening inside the Justice Department, the FBI
37:58
Speaker 1: and other key agencies. When officials resisted, they were just
38:00
Speaker 1: simply removed. We've seen US attorneys, deputy US attorneys just
38:04
Speaker 1: summarily fired. When replacements were chosen, they weren't selected for experience,
38:08
Speaker 1: but for loyalty, including, as the author's note, Trump's own
38:12
Speaker 1: personal lawyers installed as senior Justice Department officials. It's just
38:16
Speaker 1: right out of, right, out of sort of. There's a
38:22
Speaker 1: fun parody about authoritarianism called Moon over Parador, with Richard
38:26
Speaker 1: Dreyfus to write that what seemed like parody is now real. Right,
38:31
Speaker 1: And then even when prosecutions don't lead to convictions, the
38:34
Speaker 1: authors explain why that doesn't matter. Such investigations themselves are
38:38
Speaker 1: the powerful form of harassment, right, making Adam Shift hire
38:42
Speaker 1: a lawyer, making Letitia James deal with this, making James
38:44
Speaker 1: Comy deal with this, legal fees, time, reputational damage, career
38:47
Speaker 1: disrupt eruption. The punishment is often the process itself. They
38:52
Speaker 1: don't care if they get convictions. They just want them
38:54
Speaker 1: constantly made to be, you know, unhireable. Don't get them
38:59
Speaker 1: on corporate boards, make them seem as if they're controversial figures.
39:03
Speaker 1: Then of course you got to follow the money. Because
39:06
Speaker 1: this is what's happened with their next move, going after
39:08
Speaker 1: civil society. How's the Trump administration done this. They've ordered
39:11
Speaker 1: investigations into Act Blue, the primary arm of the Democratic Party,
39:16
Speaker 1: Open Society Foundations, the George Soros founded organization. The Wall
39:21
Speaker 1: Street Journal reported that that there are plans to target
39:23
Speaker 1: Democratic donors through the IRS. That's right out of the
39:27
Speaker 1: competitive authoritarian handbook that these political scientists know. Then there's
39:31
Speaker 1: the pressure campaign against the media. Trump sued the New
39:34
Speaker 1: York Times. On the Wall Street Journal, the FCC opened
39:37
Speaker 1: silly investigations into ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, Comcast, which owns NBC.
39:42
Speaker 1: We've seen the FCC chair act like a thug in
39:46
Speaker 1: threatening Jimmy Kimmel, Disney and NBC. It is it is,
39:52
Speaker 1: and what makes this so dangerous and so effective is
39:56
Speaker 1: is not just what happened, but because of what didn't happen.
39:59
Speaker 1: In fact, the our authors are arguing that the most
40:01
Speaker 1: insidious change isn't the repression, it's been the self censorship.
40:05
Speaker 1: They point that outlets I've become realigning and pull back,
40:08
Speaker 1: like the Washington Post, like the editorial page is kind
40:11
Speaker 1: of a clown show. Now it is just outside of George, Well,
40:14
Speaker 1: there's not a readable columnists left in that place.
40:18
Speaker 2: It is just a joke.
40:20
Speaker 1: The editorial page itself is sort of it's like they
40:25
Speaker 1: have one thing they do every time if there's some
40:27
Speaker 1: economic controversy, they write some convoluted editorial attacking Elizabeth Warren.
40:31
Speaker 1: I guess that makes Cheff Bezos feel better, but it
40:34
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the point itself or any
40:36
Speaker 1: of the actual rational debate that's gone on. You've had
40:39
Speaker 1: the teen Vogue has sort of gotten rid of their
40:41
Speaker 1: political coverage. CBS clearly just has a new owner and
40:45
Speaker 1: they just wiped out, you know, brought in virtue signaling
40:49
Speaker 1: new editors to run thing. We've seen Disney cave in,
40:53
Speaker 1: We've seen plenty of again, all of these legacy media,
40:57
Speaker 1: these corporate owned, shareholder driven media organizations that all fall
41:03
Speaker 1: under Donald Trump's potential influence.
41:06
Speaker 2: Due to government.
41:07
Speaker 1: Regulation, they've all capitulated, which is why frankly, we're doing
41:11
Speaker 1: so well here the podcast, so in some ways, thank you,
41:15
Speaker 1: but unfortunately this is why we've all gone down this
41:17
Speaker 1: independent road. Because if you want to be honest and
41:19
Speaker 1: if you want to tell the truth, you're gonna have
41:21
Speaker 1: to find a different outlet, because you're not gonna be
41:23
Speaker 1: able to do it at the Washington Post, You're not
41:25
Speaker 1: gonna be able to do it at the major legacy TV.
41:28
Speaker 2: Networks that are left.
41:29
Speaker 1: I'm not saying individuals aren't trying, but collectively they're not
41:33
Speaker 1: even giving a chance. And here's the other thing. Here's
41:38
Speaker 1: the part we don't know. What makes self censorship so
41:42
Speaker 1: insidious is that it is virtually impossible to ascertain its
41:45
Speaker 1: full impact. So wrote these authors, right, we can see
41:49
Speaker 1: a firing, we can see a cancelation. What we can't
41:51
Speaker 1: see are the stories that are never pitched, the investigations
41:54
Speaker 1: that get quietly abandoned, or the headlines that are softened
41:57
Speaker 1: out of fear, or the questions that don't get asked
42:00
Speaker 1: stunt camera because executives in New York tell their correspondence
42:04
Speaker 1: please don't do it. Because our corporate overlords are afraid
42:08
Speaker 1: of blowback from the president.
42:11
Speaker 2: That is happening.
42:13
Speaker 1: You can guess where that's coming from. That's how democracies
42:19
Speaker 1: hollow out. And this is where the essay draws a
42:21
Speaker 1: crucial historical line. America has had its dark chapters. Jim
42:24
Speaker 1: Crow red Scared, Japanese Internment mccarthyis and Nixon. But the
42:28
Speaker 1: authors also argue that after Watergate, the overt authoritarian abuse
42:33
Speaker 1: largely disappeared. Since nineteen seventy four, no democratic or Republican
42:36
Speaker 1: administration had systematically politicized law enforcement or targeted political rivals
42:41
Speaker 1: the way Donald Trump is doing.
42:43
Speaker 2: George W.
42:43
Speaker 1: Bush, his Justice Department investigator Republicans and Democrats. Barack Obama
42:47
Speaker 1: appointed James Comey, a Republican, to be the head of
42:52
Speaker 1: the FBI. Joe Biden kept Christopher Ray as head of
42:55
Speaker 1: the FBI and appointee of Donald Trump. Mind you, Meyrick
43:00
Speaker 1: Garland bent over backwards as Attorney General, sometimes to a fault,
43:04
Speaker 1: to avoid the appearance of political interference. So the conclusion
43:08
Speaker 1: is one in each of those critical areas that Trump
43:10
Speaker 1: administration stands alone in its authoritarianism. Now, none of this
43:13
Speaker 1: is inevitable. And here's where the essay shifts from diagnosis
43:16
Speaker 1: to prognosis.
43:18
Speaker 2: He says, the.
43:18
Speaker 1: US still has advantages that most competitive authoritarian regimes do not.
43:23
Speaker 1: There's still an independent judiciary, there's still a professional military,
43:27
Speaker 1: though Pete haik Seth is trying to erode it. There's
43:29
Speaker 1: still strong federalism. I mean, look at the way Ron
43:32
Speaker 1: DeSantis is pushed back on the AI issue. In the
43:35
Speaker 1: AI moratorium that Trump has done, there's still a vibrant
43:37
Speaker 1: civil society hello, and there's a unified opposition party. And
43:43
Speaker 1: Trump himself lacks the single most important asset the author's
43:45
Speaker 1: note for authoritarian consolidation overwhelming popularity. Successful autocrats often rule
43:51
Speaker 1: with approval ratings over eighty percent. Trump is stuck in
43:54
Speaker 1: the low forties. And it's actually trending downward that matters.
43:58
Speaker 2: So that brings us to what they are. Thank you,
44:00
Speaker 2: is the greatest.
44:00
Speaker 1: Danger of them all. The greatest danger is not repression,
44:04
Speaker 1: but demobilization. It's not tanks, it's not mass arrests, its
44:09
Speaker 1: acceptance and resignation. It's people deciding not to run, not
44:13
Speaker 1: to donate, not to sue, not to vote. And then
44:15
Speaker 1: this line, which is really the thesis of the piece,
44:17
Speaker 1: The outcome of this struggle remains open. It will turn
44:19
Speaker 1: less than the strength of the authoritarian government than on
44:22
Speaker 1: whether enough citizens act as though their efforts still matter,
44:25
Speaker 1: because for now they still do. So there you go, Levitzky,
44:29
Speaker 1: Way and Ziblat. They aren't telling Americans to panic, They're
44:32
Speaker 1: just telling you what is Okay, this is what has
44:36
Speaker 1: happened to America the first year of Trump's second term.
44:39
Speaker 1: We have slipped into something called competitive authoritarianism. He is
44:42
Speaker 1: trying to create an authoritarian regime. There is democracy still,
44:46
Speaker 1: there is still competition, okay. And our future is not
44:50
Speaker 1: set in stone or the cement is still wet.
44:53
Speaker 2: Okay.
44:54
Speaker 1: They're warning against two equally dangerous instincts, complacency and fatalism.
44:59
Speaker 1: The future is going to be unstable.
45:01
Speaker 2: Okay.
45:02
Speaker 1: Neither full democracy nor entrenched dictatorship is going to happen.
45:04
Speaker 1: It's going to be a struggle. It is going to
45:06
Speaker 1: be a fight. The next elections may be fought in
45:10
Speaker 1: theory over policy differences, but they're really going to be
45:12
Speaker 1: about the larger issue of what kind of system are
45:15
Speaker 1: we choosing to live under? And that danger isn't that
45:18
Speaker 1: democracy disappears overnight. It's the danger is people stop believing
45:23
Speaker 1: that they can defend it. So please go read this piece.
45:28
Speaker 1: It's extraordinarily important. It's well argued, it is you know,
45:33
Speaker 1: evidence based, it is data driven. Is it is not
45:39
Speaker 1: just alarmist cable commentary. And that's the most important thing.
45:44
Speaker 1: And it comes from a place in the Council on
45:47
Speaker 1: Foreign Relations where important ideas sort of get launched for debate.
45:52
Speaker 1: And this is one that more and more mainstream Americans
45:57
Speaker 1: need to understand.
45:59
Speaker 2: What is happening as Tipping Place.
46:02
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Speaker 1: for thirty percent off. All right, it's time to jump
47:26
Speaker 1: into the time machine. We're going to go back to
47:37
Speaker 1: December seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine. A young Chuck Todd was
47:41
Speaker 1: a senior in high school. In case you were wondering
47:45
Speaker 1: what I was doing, December seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, it
47:50
Speaker 1: was the debut of an animated series for adults called
47:55
Speaker 1: The Simpsons. And who knew what kind of impact this?
48:01
Speaker 1: I would argue, bigger than Saturday Night Live, bigger than
48:05
Speaker 1: Meet the Press, right sort of, the launched Sunday Affairs
48:10
Speaker 1: Conversations right in some ways before it was the first
48:13
Speaker 1: place you ever had back and forth on politics in
48:17
Speaker 1: a first radio and televised arena. We had Saturday Night Live,
48:21
Speaker 1: sort of the king of parody. And then there's The Simpsons,
48:24
Speaker 1: And in some ways the Simpsons are probably is important
48:30
Speaker 1: of a participant into the changing ways that we satirized
48:34
Speaker 1: politics than any other program that has been launched in
48:39
Speaker 1: the last in the history of television. So that's the
48:42
Speaker 1: subject of my time machine history lesson of the day.
48:46
Speaker 1: How the Simpsons rewired politics, media and animation. And it
48:52
Speaker 1: all started December seventeen, nineteen eighty nine. It was a
48:54
Speaker 1: Christmas special. I remember it was a short on The
48:58
Speaker 1: Tracy Ollman Show back in the day, but this Christmas
49:00
Speaker 1: special aired on Fox and it looked loud, rough and
49:03
Speaker 1: kind of disposable. Right, thirty five years later, that cartoon
49:07
Speaker 1: hasn't just outlasted its peers, it's outlasted entire media eras.
49:12
Speaker 2: Right.
49:12
Speaker 1: The Simpsons didn't just mock American politics, that's easy. What
49:17
Speaker 1: they did is they reshaped on Americans understand power, persuasion,
49:21
Speaker 1: and performance, and in the process they changed what animation
49:24
Speaker 1: itself can be. And what I loved about what the
49:29
Speaker 1: Simpsons did is they did it.
49:31
Speaker 2: Look.
49:32
Speaker 1: Was there a social socially liberal lean to the show, sure,
49:37
Speaker 1: but it was not necessarily a liberal show or a
49:40
Speaker 1: conservative show. In many ways really mocked process and it
49:44
Speaker 1: was really good at surfacing hypocrisy and surfacing the absurdity
49:50
Speaker 1: of the professionalization of politics. And in fact, one of
49:53
Speaker 1: the early ways they did it.
49:55
Speaker 2: And I want to.
49:55
Speaker 1: Pop through a few shows that I think where they
49:58
Speaker 1: really were brilliant and what they did. And when you
50:00
Speaker 1: watch these shows today, you're think, oh, I've seen this
50:02
Speaker 1: in other places, But at the time, nobody had ever
50:04
Speaker 1: done this before. So Burns for Governor. When Moni Burns
50:08
Speaker 1: ran for governor, the Simpsons showcased in the pop culture
50:13
Speaker 1: area that something that we political reporters already knew, we
50:17
Speaker 1: political junkies already knew that campaigns were a business. The
50:20
Speaker 1: episode two cars in every garage and three eyes on
50:22
Speaker 1: every fish. Mister Burns he doesn't just run for governor
50:25
Speaker 1: because he believes in anything. He runs because regulation threatens him.
50:29
Speaker 1: That's why he decides he wants to run for office.
50:31
Speaker 1: The telling moment isn't the mutant fish. It's when Burns
50:34
Speaker 1: instructs Smithers to assemble a campaign operation the way a
50:38
Speaker 1: CEO would assemble a management team. And so for the
50:41
Speaker 1: wider world, they understood give me a pollster, a media handler,
50:44
Speaker 1: speech writer, an image consultant. And the episode showcased that
50:48
Speaker 1: Burns understood something essential. Campaigns aren't moral arguments, they're simply
50:53
Speaker 1: logistical ones. Now he loses not because voters rejected his policies,
50:57
Speaker 1: but because he fails to convincingly perform as a relatable figure. Right,
51:01
Speaker 1: he won't eat the fish. It's a lesson that campaigns
51:05
Speaker 1: still learn relearn every cycle. Another episode that I thought
51:09
Speaker 1: did a good job at sort of mocking government and
51:11
Speaker 1: politics the monorail episode and the use of Broadway to
51:14
Speaker 1: explain infrastructure failure. The episode Marge versus the Monorail endures
51:19
Speaker 1: because it understands persuasion better than most policy memos do.
51:22
Speaker 1: The episode is a deliberate homage to the music band
51:25
Speaker 1: Monoreil Monoreel. Sorry Lyle Lanley is Harold Hill selling civic
51:30
Speaker 1: fantasy through charming song. Well, the Monorail isn't about transportation,
51:34
Speaker 1: it was simply about identity. Springfield doesn't choose the monorail
51:37
Speaker 1: because it's efficient. I don't think they really needed one.
51:40
Speaker 1: They choose it because it made them feel important. That's
51:42
Speaker 1: how it was sold to them. In some ways, what
51:44
Speaker 1: it was mocking were all the smaller cities that were
51:47
Speaker 1: getting talked into debt financing arenas and other sort of
51:52
Speaker 1: supposedly public arenas or entertainment complexes or concert halls, but
51:58
Speaker 1: they were really about just helping them private entity make money.
52:02
Speaker 1: The episode's genius in some ways was showing that democracy
52:05
Speaker 1: can be overwhelmed by spectacle, not ignorance. In Mister Lisa
52:11
Speaker 1: Goes to Washington, it remained one of the smarter portrayals
52:14
Speaker 1: of civic education that we've had on television. Lisa's faith
52:17
Speaker 1: in democracy is shaken, but it's not destroyed. The system
52:21
Speaker 1: works barely because exposure still has power.
52:25
Speaker 2: Sometimes.
52:26
Speaker 1: The episode frequently is cited in academic work, believe it
52:28
Speaker 1: or not, because it models critical citizenship skepticism without disengagement.
52:33
Speaker 1: It goes back to the essay I had at the
52:34
Speaker 1: beginning of this episode, right, don't give up. Even when
52:37
Speaker 1: you think the system is rigged and it's messy and
52:39
Speaker 1: it's ugly, there are still ways that you can make
52:42
Speaker 1: the system work. Then, of course, there was sideshow Bob Roberts.
52:47
Speaker 1: Good homage to that mockumentary back in the day that
52:51
Speaker 1: show went further side show Bob riggs an election. It's
52:54
Speaker 1: revealed and he wins anyway, sound familiar. Episode predicts scandal fatigue,
53:00
Speaker 1: the idea that information alone no longer guarantees accountability. Unfortunately,
53:06
Speaker 1: that was something that I think when people watched it
53:08
Speaker 1: at the time. Oh no, that wouldn't really happen. Let's
53:11
Speaker 1: just say the episode has aged uncomfortably well. Trash of
53:15
Speaker 1: the Titans populism, deferred costs, and moral hatcher. Trash of
53:19
Speaker 1: the Titans is local politics.
53:21
Speaker 2: Done brutally right.
53:22
Speaker 1: Homer runs for sanitation commissioner, promising more services, less effort,
53:26
Speaker 1: and no responsibility. His slogan, can't someone else do it?
53:31
Speaker 1: It isn't laziness, it is actually resentment. Once elected, Homer
53:35
Speaker 1: delivers exactly what he promised, and the system collapses under
53:38
Speaker 1: the weight of deferred costs.
53:39
Speaker 2: Right.
53:40
Speaker 1: The most revealing moment isn't the failure, it's the response.
53:43
Speaker 1: Springfield exports its garbage to another town. The episode captures
53:48
Speaker 1: a timeless political truth. When costs are delayed or displaced,
53:51
Speaker 1: accountability totally evaporates. Look it was. One thing about the
53:58
Speaker 1: Simpsons is after a while their success at mocking actually
54:04
Speaker 1: made it where politicians wanted to be seen as on
54:08
Speaker 1: the side of the Simpsons, that on the side of
54:10
Speaker 1: the reasonable people, that they weren't the crazy runs. And
54:13
Speaker 1: you've had all sorts of people who have participated. Let
54:17
Speaker 1: their voice. Barack Obama, I think Joe Biden did once
54:21
Speaker 1: outcore Rush Limbaugh.
54:23
Speaker 2: Did.
54:23
Speaker 1: I believe you've had the George hw Bush episode when
54:28
Speaker 1: he moves across the street from Homer is really well
54:31
Speaker 1: done and it is almost in some ways an homage
54:34
Speaker 1: hw Bush. So it was proof and certainly plenty of
54:40
Speaker 1: media figures participated over the years Springfield became a legitimate
54:43
Speaker 1: public square. Then, of course there's the impact that the
54:46
Speaker 1: Simpsons had on what we all watched today, right. I know,
54:49
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of a lot of adult animation these days,
54:53
Speaker 1: and we have the Simpsons to think, right, think about it.
54:55
Speaker 1: Before the Simpsons animation in America simply meant kids. After
55:00
Speaker 1: the Simpsons animation meant tone and not age, right, And
55:04
Speaker 1: what we all figured out was it was easier to
55:07
Speaker 1: see an animated figure tell us an uncomfortable truth that
55:09
Speaker 1: a real person telling us an uncomfortable truth.
55:12
Speaker 2: Right.
55:12
Speaker 1: Without the Simpsons, we wouldn't have had King of the Hill,
55:15
Speaker 1: South Park Family, Guy, Futurama, Archer, BoJack, Horseman, Rick and Morty.
55:21
Speaker 1: I know I'm leaving a bunch out. You want to
55:23
Speaker 1: tell me your favorite You want to tell me you
55:25
Speaker 1: know what you think the Simpsons did to impact political culture.
55:29
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. And then, of course
55:31
Speaker 1: there's one of my favorite homages to the Simpsons. Two
55:34
Speaker 1: thousand and two, South Park aired an entire episode that
55:37
Speaker 1: might be the most honest tribute of them all. It
55:39
Speaker 1: was called Simpsons Did It, and the premise was simple.
55:42
Speaker 1: Every idea of the South Park writers were trying to
55:44
Speaker 1: come up with had already been done by the Simpsons.
55:47
Speaker 2: And the whole punchline of the episode is.
55:49
Speaker 1: Over and over again character shout out, Simpsons did It.
55:52
Speaker 1: It wasn't being a mockery, it was simply acknowledgment. It
55:55
Speaker 1: was clear our friends at south Park probably had writer's
55:57
Speaker 1: block that week, and it may be why they went
55:59
Speaker 1: to decide to just stick to parroting in the moment
56:03
Speaker 1: stuff on that front. But that episode captured something every
56:06
Speaker 1: creator understands. The Simpsons didn't just open the door. They
56:10
Speaker 1: mapped the room right, and they they allowed so many
56:15
Speaker 1: other creators to come in and have their own version
56:17
Speaker 1: of this in their own take an entire generation of
56:20
Speaker 1: writers to find the boundaries of what animated storytelling could
56:23
Speaker 1: do politically, culturally, and emotionally. So the Simpsons still kicking.
56:30
Speaker 1: They didn't just survive history. They've explained it. They taught
56:34
Speaker 1: audiences how to spot performative leadership, civic spectacle, deferred accountability,
56:40
Speaker 1: media driven politics, and they did it while teaching animation
56:43
Speaker 1: how to grow up. So that's why the show still matters.
56:46
Speaker 1: And somewhere a creator is still pitching an idea only
56:49
Speaker 1: to hear a familiar voice in the room say, Simpsons
56:52
Speaker 1: did it all right, let's get into a little ass
56:54
Speaker 1: chuck ass chuck to do.
57:00
Speaker 2: Here's my promise to you.
57:02
Speaker 1: Some of you probably been wondering, Hey, I threw a
57:04
Speaker 1: question in here a while ago. How come you haven't
57:06
Speaker 1: dealt with it? I thought it was a pretty good question. Well,
57:08
Speaker 1: I'm going to have an entire episode where I'm just
57:12
Speaker 1: answering questions and trying to play catch up a little bit.
57:16
Speaker 1: That'll happen in a couple of weeks and yes, if
57:20
Speaker 1: you want to chalk it up to oh, it's the holidays,
57:22
Speaker 1: but yes, okay, but it's going to be new content.
57:25
Speaker 1: I promise it is not. It is not me just
57:28
Speaker 1: trying to well. It is me trying to have a
57:31
Speaker 1: couple of days off. I'm not going to lie about that.
57:33
Speaker 1: But it will be timely and it will be useful,
57:36
Speaker 1: I promise. But let me get in here. Get three
57:38
Speaker 1: or four questions in here. First one comes from Tiffany
57:41
Speaker 1: and she writes, did Adam Schiff hurt or help Mandela
57:43
Speaker 1: Barnes by endorsing him for Wisconsin Governor? I live in Wisconsin.
57:46
Speaker 1: I have voted Republican until twenty eighteen. I think there
57:48
Speaker 1: are a lot of people like me politically in Wisconsin.
57:50
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone in Wisconsin will appreciate endorsement
57:53
Speaker 1: from California. Also, recent history shows that big endorsements from
57:56
Speaker 1: the Republican Party fail in Wisconsin. It seems a little
57:58
Speaker 1: out of touch for the Democrats big endorsements like this, thoughts.
58:01
Speaker 2: Thank you Tiffany.
58:02
Speaker 1: Well, Tiffany, there's one simple reason why an Adam Shi,
58:06
Speaker 1: why a Mandela Barnes would consider an Adam shift endorsement
58:11
Speaker 1: meaningful or helpful to him, and that is that Adam
58:13
Speaker 1: Shift has one of the most lucrative emailress of fundraising
58:20
Speaker 1: lists in the country. One he's from the largest state,
58:26
Speaker 1: particularly the largest liberal state in California. Two by being
58:28
Speaker 1: the face of impeachment, he build a massive donor list.
58:34
Speaker 1: Then being attacked by Donald Trump constantly has only served
58:38
Speaker 1: to make that donor list more active, more viable.
58:41
Speaker 2: So you are right.
58:43
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody, any Wisconsin voter is going to
58:47
Speaker 1: be moved by the endorsement. And if Mandela Barnes actually
58:50
Speaker 1: puts uses Adam Shift's endorsement and paid media, he'd be
58:53
Speaker 1: a fool. No offense to Adam Shift. But I don't
58:56
Speaker 1: think any make cares. I think you're absolutely right. But
58:58
Speaker 1: if you're wondering why is that, why does this endorsement
59:03
Speaker 1: mean something to Mandela Barnes to Chang to ching, to
59:07
Speaker 1: ching to ching. It is access to that email list,
59:10
Speaker 1: That's what it is. And Adam Shift probably only only
59:17
Speaker 1: president presidential nominees probably have bigger and more interesting level
59:22
Speaker 1: like Kamala Harris's list that she controls was going to
59:25
Speaker 1: be a good one. But Adam Shift is probably the
59:27
Speaker 1: single best left leaning fundraising list in America. That is
59:32
Speaker 1: not that for somebody who never ran for president. He's
59:38
Speaker 1: just all the ingredients are there, the impeachment, the attacks
59:40
Speaker 1: from Trump's and being from California.
59:42
Speaker 2: You throw all that in there.
59:43
Speaker 1: That was why Mandela Barnes wanted that endorsement, and why
59:48
Speaker 1: the endorsement matters to him. It is not intended to
59:51
Speaker 1: try to persuade you, and in fact, it sounds like
59:54
Speaker 1: that that stuff might actually dissuade you. And I think
59:56
Speaker 1: in some ways some of these endorsement I don't think.
59:59
Speaker 1: I don't think endorsem Smith's matter unless they bring you
1:00:01
Speaker 1: something else. And in this case, what he's looking for
1:00:03
Speaker 1: is just access to grassroots dollars, and Adam Schiff probably
1:00:07
Speaker 1: has the single best fundraising.
1:00:08
Speaker 2: Lists there is.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: All right, let me go to next question comes from
1:00:11
Speaker 1: Max w Hey, Chuck and Chris ah Hey, Solissa, you're
1:00:15
Speaker 1: not answering your mail bag, so I'm gonna have to
1:00:17
Speaker 1: answer your leftovers here.
1:00:20
Speaker 2: Max W.
1:00:21
Speaker 1: Wrights, I posted this as a comment for Chris Silia's
1:00:23
Speaker 1: mail bag already, but I want to suggest again what
1:00:24
Speaker 1: I think is a great wager. Oh on the Aggies
1:00:27
Speaker 1: versus Kane's matchup, loser shaves his head. Why are we
1:00:30
Speaker 1: doing this? No shaving of heads or goatee's or anything
1:00:33
Speaker 1: like this, but okay, let me listen.
1:00:35
Speaker 2: He goes.
1:00:36
Speaker 1: It's don monetary, demonstrates actual commitment to the schools you
1:00:38
Speaker 1: both support. I've made a few loser shaves bets in
1:00:41
Speaker 1: my day, and I'll be honest, I've never felt more
1:00:42
Speaker 1: invested in a result. Maybe Reginald could handle the Clippers
1:00:46
Speaker 1: well if you know, you know, but you'd better get
1:00:48
Speaker 1: them to him before he hits the Johnny Walker blue things.
1:00:52
Speaker 2: I will I have.
1:00:54
Speaker 1: I'm one time, let Tapper, Jake Tapper talk me into
1:00:56
Speaker 1: a This was back Phillies Dodgers Sarah twenty thirteen, twenty
1:01:03
Speaker 1: twelve NLCS, maybe twenty fourteen NLCS. I'm just trying to
1:01:07
Speaker 1: remember when the Dodgers were, you know, still hadn't quite
1:01:11
Speaker 1: gotten broken through. They were still still you know, thinking,
1:01:16
Speaker 1: you know, they were still believing Matt Kemp was the
1:01:18
Speaker 1: best player they could sign. Right, They weren't quite the
1:01:20
Speaker 1: Dodgers yet, they hadn't been become the juggernaut that they
1:01:24
Speaker 1: had become. And the Phillies were prett Good Juggernaut, that
1:01:27
Speaker 1: team that was the sort of the last gasp of
1:01:31
Speaker 1: Ryan Howard and that crowd, and Tapper wanted to create
1:01:37
Speaker 1: some social media fun and he wanted to make it.
1:01:41
Speaker 1: He was going to grow and I was going to
1:01:42
Speaker 1: shave one. I never agreed to the bet, but he
1:01:45
Speaker 1: tried to social media bully me about it anyway, So
1:01:49
Speaker 1: no I I lost and made a nice sizeable contribution
1:01:55
Speaker 1: to the charity of his choice. Look now, I will
1:02:01
Speaker 1: say this, I'm probably more comfortable trying to shave my
1:02:06
Speaker 1: head now that I would have been ten years ago, because,
1:02:08
Speaker 1: as you could say, it is thinning, and maybe you know,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: my only fear is if I totally do it, what
1:02:16
Speaker 1: happens if it, even this doesn't come back, right the
1:02:19
Speaker 1: fear us middle aged men have about what what if
1:02:22
Speaker 1: it doesn't come back.
1:02:24
Speaker 2: I was watching a basketball.
1:02:25
Speaker 1: Game over the weekend. The GWA Revolutionaries were in the
1:02:29
Speaker 1: in the Orange Bowl, this Orange Bowl tournament down in
1:02:31
Speaker 1: Fort Lauderdale. We were playing GW was playing Florida. I
1:02:36
Speaker 1: think they hung that held pretty well. They'd hit their
1:02:39
Speaker 1: free throws, they might have won that game. I think
1:02:41
Speaker 1: it was a pretty good test that you know, GW
1:02:44
Speaker 1: I think is a mid major that may make a
1:02:47
Speaker 1: strong case to get into the NCAA tournament. But the
1:02:51
Speaker 1: other game was you Mass versus Florida State, and UMass
1:02:54
Speaker 1: is coached by a Miami native named Frank Martin. He
1:02:57
Speaker 1: was the guy that took South Carolina. Well, he's gone
1:02:59
Speaker 1: full a head shave and he looks great. I mean,
1:03:03
Speaker 1: kudos to m I would not have thought that he
1:03:05
Speaker 1: would have done the cuball thing very well. He does
1:03:08
Speaker 1: it well. He looks good, just as menacing. I'd still
1:03:10
Speaker 1: be afraid of him coaching a team on the other side,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: but it looked like there's nothing that'll grow back, you know.
1:03:18
Speaker 1: So that's my fear of playing the head shave game.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: We'll see.
1:03:24
Speaker 2: I'd say that I think solicit fears he can't grow beer.
1:03:28
Speaker 2: We'll see.
1:03:28
Speaker 1: I'll ask him about this on our next episode. All right,
1:03:31
Speaker 1: next question comes from Andre from Los Angeles, and he writes, Hey, Chuck,
1:03:35
Speaker 1: why is it that when someone announces a run for office,
1:03:37
Speaker 1: the first focus is always on who their donors are
1:03:39
Speaker 1: and whether these donors will approve It feels like candidates
1:03:42
Speaker 1: are vetted by donors, consultants, and party brass long before
1:03:45
Speaker 1: they ever reach voters, which makes them seem inta authentic.
1:03:47
Speaker 1: Voters want real, opinionated leaders who feel genuine, not prepackaged
1:03:50
Speaker 1: for donor approval. Why has the donor class become the
1:03:53
Speaker 1: priority over the general public? Andre la go bruins hashtag
1:03:58
Speaker 1: UCLA because of how expensive campaigns have become. I'm not
1:04:02
Speaker 1: saying that's a good answer, in just telling you it
1:04:06
Speaker 1: is the answer, And there is a perception of viability
1:04:11
Speaker 1: has to do with access to money, whether you have
1:04:14
Speaker 1: it yourself, you have the donor. You know, it's sort
1:04:16
Speaker 1: of this dovetails pretty well with the question about Adam Schiff. Look,
1:04:21
Speaker 1: there's no doubt we have made money in politics. The
1:04:23
Speaker 1: fact that there is no regulation of money in politics, right,
1:04:26
Speaker 1: we have essentially have unregulated money in politics. They're okay,
1:04:30
Speaker 1: so you have to follow a couple, You have to
1:04:31
Speaker 1: jump a very small hurdle or two to maybe spend
1:04:36
Speaker 1: money that raised a certain way on these few logistics
1:04:39
Speaker 1: things for a campaign. But then you spend money over
1:04:43
Speaker 1: here there is no we have. This is why I'm
1:04:46
Speaker 1: a huge fan of a constitutional you know, we need
1:04:49
Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment to deal with this. We're going to
1:04:51
Speaker 1: have to I think there's some common sense campaign finance
1:04:56
Speaker 1: regulations that people could agree on. I think the idea
1:05:00
Speaker 1: of keeping corporations out of politics makes a hell of
1:05:03
Speaker 1: a lot sense. Figuring out how to have complete transparency.
1:05:07
Speaker 1: I mean, anonymous donors dark money are terrible. We basically
1:05:11
Speaker 1: have one or two people that are representing somewhere between
1:05:16
Speaker 1: thirty and thirty percent of all money spent is probably
1:05:19
Speaker 1: among a group of people that's less than ten. That
1:05:23
Speaker 1: is not a democracy, right, That is a plutocracy or
1:05:26
Speaker 1: an oligarchy, if to borrow some language that are out there.
1:05:30
Speaker 1: I hate saying oligarchy because it sounds like I'm taking
1:05:33
Speaker 1: a political side, but we have The fact of the
1:05:36
Speaker 1: matter is the richer you are, the more access you
1:05:39
Speaker 1: have to political leaders hard stop. And that's a maybe
1:05:47
Speaker 1: that's never going to change. But we could put some
1:05:50
Speaker 1: more transparency and some more limits on how that works.
1:05:55
Speaker 1: But I'm not saying it should be this way. But
1:05:57
Speaker 1: you're asking why does this happen? Because my ability goes
1:06:01
Speaker 1: through money. Now, the good news is the Internet has
1:06:04
Speaker 1: been a bit of a leveler there. Act Blue and
1:06:07
Speaker 1: When Red both have found a way to take to
1:06:11
Speaker 1: allow at least grassroots donors to power candidacies. And you
1:06:17
Speaker 1: can now do that, right, Marjorie Taylor Green can do it.
1:06:21
Speaker 1: AOC can do it, and they've figured out how to
1:06:24
Speaker 1: tap into that. So the power of the small donor
1:06:26
Speaker 1: is not totally. In fact, in some ways, small donor,
1:06:31
Speaker 1: because of the collective nature of it, have become a
1:06:34
Speaker 1: more powerful as powerful of an entity at times that
1:06:37
Speaker 1: some of these corporate super PACs can be.
1:06:39
Speaker 2: So.
1:06:41
Speaker 1: But look, we do this in this case the system
1:06:44
Speaker 1: has broken. We have unregulated amount of money. I'm sort
1:06:47
Speaker 1: of a NASCAR person in this respect. Let's go full transparency,
1:06:51
Speaker 1: but you have to actually identify your major donors. If
1:06:55
Speaker 1: you made every person have to spell out the aims
1:07:00
Speaker 1: of donors who have given them, say more than one
1:07:03
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars or more, I promise you they'd never
1:07:05
Speaker 1: take a donation more than nine nine d and ninety
1:07:08
Speaker 1: nine dollars, right, whatever threshold we create, you know, like
1:07:13
Speaker 1: I'm all for you want to have unlimited funding in
1:07:16
Speaker 1: your elections, fine, but anybody that gives you more than
1:07:18
Speaker 1: ninety nine hundred dollars, you have to name them in
1:07:21
Speaker 1: every single app, and you've got to where their logos
1:07:25
Speaker 1: on your on your paraphernalia, if you will, right, That's
1:07:28
Speaker 1: what I mean by the nascarization of it. I think
1:07:33
Speaker 1: that if as long as people know who's behind things,
1:07:39
Speaker 1: then at least you're giving the voters a fighting.
1:07:41
Speaker 2: Chance to make their decision.
1:07:44
Speaker 1: All right, I'm mistaking one more question here, so I
1:07:47
Speaker 1: can say that at least knock out four today. This
1:07:49
Speaker 1: one comes from Sean McElroy Byfield, Massachusetts. Any writs, Hey, Chuck,
1:07:53
Speaker 1: why is it that corporation's going to absorb tariff costs
1:07:56
Speaker 1: for months but push back immediately when asked to raise wages?
1:07:59
Speaker 1: After COVID, we sow quick inflation tied to wage increases,
1:08:01
Speaker 1: but terror related price hikes seemed delayed. I've read that
1:08:04
Speaker 1: Costco expects tar free funds, that is, offering credit now
1:08:07
Speaker 1: to investors to soften consumer impacts while boosting future profits. Curiously,
1:08:11
Speaker 1: if you've heard more about that, Any thoughts on the
1:08:12
Speaker 1: disconnect between political focus and stagnant worker incomes?
1:08:16
Speaker 2: Well, look, I think.
1:08:17
Speaker 1: On the tariff, the reason some of this is you
1:08:19
Speaker 1: had a lot of companies stockpile, right. You know, Trump
1:08:25
Speaker 1: made it clear what he was going to do with
1:08:27
Speaker 1: this tariff, so you did have plenty of company stockpile
1:08:32
Speaker 1: inventory where you could, right you couldn't do it and
1:08:35
Speaker 1: food and fresh food and produce and things like that,
1:08:39
Speaker 1: but you could stock up on certain goods in your
1:08:43
Speaker 1: and essentially warehouse them. And a place like Costco is
1:08:46
Speaker 1: something that has the has the ability to do that,
1:08:50
Speaker 1: And so I think that's why they could quote unquote
1:08:54
Speaker 1: absorb some of it early because they had still had
1:08:57
Speaker 1: a majority of their inventory out there that they had
1:08:59
Speaker 1: perched without having to pay, without having to deal with
1:09:03
Speaker 1: extra tariffs. But look, you're you're you know, why do
1:09:07
Speaker 1: corporations constantly look for ways to show that they're saving money?
1:09:10
Speaker 2: Right?
1:09:10
Speaker 1: That might be another way that you ask that question, right,
1:09:12
Speaker 1: They they constantly It's why why are companies not hiring
1:09:16
Speaker 1: at the moment? They all want to see how many
1:09:19
Speaker 1: jobs can they replace with AI. They're not going to
1:09:21
Speaker 1: they know they can't replace all jobs with AI, but
1:09:24
Speaker 1: they want to know which ones they can, and before
1:09:26
Speaker 1: they replace anybody, they want to try to see if
1:09:29
Speaker 1: they can replace them with AI. Corp A publicly traded
1:09:33
Speaker 1: companies simply have a fudial responsibility for their shareholders, and
1:09:37
Speaker 1: their shareholders only reward cost efficiencies. That is, that is
1:09:42
Speaker 1: not good for rising you know, for the hopes of
1:09:44
Speaker 1: rising wages, and it is certainly makes UH stockpiling expensive
1:09:50
Speaker 1: inventory difficult as well if you're going to load.
1:09:53
Speaker 2: Them up with tariffs.
1:09:54
Speaker 1: So you know, this is why what Trump has done
1:09:58
Speaker 1: to this economy that the rise of terror costs also
1:10:00
Speaker 1: in it inadvertently end up costing working class people a
1:10:08
Speaker 1: chance at a raise. Right, If goods were cheaper, more
1:10:11
Speaker 1: people might buy them, and you might need more people
1:10:13
Speaker 1: to actually delve out that inventory. So you know, this
1:10:17
Speaker 1: is why this tariff policy of the presidents is so
1:10:21
Speaker 1: bad for the economy. It just simply shrinks our GDP
1:10:24
Speaker 1: shrinks in a way that will just hurt everything. Fewer
1:10:30
Speaker 1: people buy items, which means you'll have fewer employees, fewer wage,
1:10:35
Speaker 1: fewer people gaining a wage as it is, and fewer
1:10:37
Speaker 1: people getting higher wages. Bottom line is, tariffs are bad
1:10:42
Speaker 1: for everybody. There is no good that comes from these tariffs,
1:10:47
Speaker 1: hard stop. I don't know how many thousands of different
1:10:50
Speaker 1: ways we can vote that. There's a reason results matter
1:10:56
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Speaker 1: they win. Before we go a little uh, A few
1:12:04
Speaker 1: things in college football, and look, I don't want to
1:12:07
Speaker 1: I got a few emails about the mess in Michigan.
1:12:11
Speaker 1: And what's uncomfortable about the mess in Michigan is Sharon
1:12:14
Speaker 1: Moore and some in what happened, there is this uncomfortable
1:12:19
Speaker 1: truth there seem to be, you know, in the world
1:12:23
Speaker 1: of college sports right now, if you win, your behavior
1:12:28
Speaker 1: will get They'll find a way to bury your behavior,
1:12:31
Speaker 1: overlook it, or just suspend you a game or two,
1:12:33
Speaker 1: slap you on the wrist. But as long as you
1:12:35
Speaker 1: produce a national title, Jim Harball, nothing is going to
1:12:37
Speaker 1: go wrong. But when things don't go well then and
1:12:43
Speaker 1: and maybe your offense isn't going well, then suddenly people
1:12:47
Speaker 1: have decided that your morals or ethics are a problem.
1:12:50
Speaker 1: And we don't know the full story in Michigan, but
1:12:53
Speaker 1: let's just say I haven't I know enough people in
1:12:55
Speaker 1: the sports industry world, in the world of agents. This
1:13:00
Speaker 1: is not rank speculation, you know, there was there was
1:13:04
Speaker 1: a concerted effort that that more had to go. But
1:13:08
Speaker 1: they needed a reason, in a rationale, and they didn't
1:13:10
Speaker 1: want to spend on the buyout. Now that doesn't excuse
1:13:12
Speaker 1: his behavior. And he and I you know, for the
1:13:16
Speaker 1: life of me, you know, to me, if you're if
1:13:18
Speaker 1: you're going to sleep with an employee at a public institution.
1:13:22
Speaker 1: Your consequences any institution, and you know, you get caught,
1:13:26
Speaker 1: you're going to live with the consequences. And this has
1:13:28
Speaker 1: been a very expensive consequence for him.
1:13:31
Speaker 2: On that front.
1:13:32
Speaker 1: But we need to learn a lot more about when
1:13:37
Speaker 1: was this first known, how, what would this and when
1:13:40
Speaker 1: when did this investigation happen? Why was it cleared once?
1:13:44
Speaker 2: Right?
1:13:44
Speaker 1: Sounds like there was no they had no cooperating evidence,
1:13:47
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they did. Why did this person suddenly
1:13:51
Speaker 1: provide evidence to the school when they did, and why
1:13:53
Speaker 1: didn't they do it before? How is it that it
1:13:55
Speaker 1: conveniently happened after signing day? Anyway, The point is is
1:13:59
Speaker 1: that the corruption of college sports, right, we know, it's
1:14:03
Speaker 1: there's a a. It is a mess. It is ugly,
1:14:06
Speaker 1: it is scandalous, and even an elite institution like the
1:14:09
Speaker 1: University of Michigan is not immune from this. But the
1:14:12
Speaker 1: problem is we have no entity who's going to investigate
1:14:15
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan. Do the NC DOUBLEA have any
1:14:17
Speaker 1: credibility to do this? Will they even listen to the
1:14:20
Speaker 1: NC double A?
1:14:21
Speaker 2: Right?
1:14:21
Speaker 1: When when Michigan was sign stealing, you know they yeah, okay,
1:14:25
Speaker 1: they suspended somebody, they find somebody. But last I checked,
1:14:29
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan won a national title miraculously after
1:14:32
Speaker 1: they've suddenly figured out sign stealing seemed to improve. You know,
1:14:37
Speaker 1: Jim Harbaugh was having a hard time winning nine or
1:14:39
Speaker 1: ten games. Then suddenly they started sign stealing and everything
1:14:42
Speaker 1: got better. So it's a I'm singling out Michigan here
1:14:48
Speaker 1: because I think Michigan is you know, this is sort
1:14:49
Speaker 1: of like, boy, how many how much rotten fish is
1:14:52
Speaker 1: in this program on these different things. But it's really
1:14:56
Speaker 1: this is not about Michigan. This is about the entire sport, right,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: And you know I love it. I love college football.
1:15:01
Speaker 1: You guys know this. I ache for all this pain.
1:15:05
Speaker 1: And look, University Miami, we've been through this. We've had
1:15:07
Speaker 1: our own bad apples do some things in the past,
1:15:12
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong. So I'm not gonna you know,
1:15:14
Speaker 1: this is not a case we all the entire world
1:15:17
Speaker 1: of college football lives in not just a glasshouse. I
1:15:20
Speaker 1: would call it water for crystal houses, if you will, right,
1:15:24
Speaker 1: And there's our broken windows everywhere. But you know, ultimately
1:15:29
Speaker 1: the problem is the conferences have too much power, and
1:15:32
Speaker 1: we need a you need a singular commissioner of college football,
1:15:37
Speaker 1: a singular commissioner of college basketball, a singular commissioner of
1:15:43
Speaker 1: of sort of the for profit sports. Right, we probably
1:15:46
Speaker 1: have to separate it out a little bit, if you will,
1:15:49
Speaker 1: But this the.
1:15:51
Speaker 2: Amount of.
1:15:53
Speaker 1: Influence that agents and boosters now have over and above
1:15:57
Speaker 1: academic leaders or institutionally athletic directors, you name it. You know,
1:16:02
Speaker 1: the athletic directors are not in charge in most of
1:16:05
Speaker 1: these places. It's the person that runs the outside nil
1:16:10
Speaker 1: and raises the hundreds of the tens of millions of
1:16:13
Speaker 1: dollars at these major college institutions need to make payroll.
1:16:18
Speaker 1: They're in charge. The football coaches do not work for
1:16:22
Speaker 1: the university presidents. The football coaches work for the entity
1:16:27
Speaker 1: that has promised to give the most money. I saw
1:16:32
Speaker 1: that at my beloved institution, right some major donors were
1:16:35
Speaker 1: willing to give more money if a certain person was
1:16:38
Speaker 1: hired as coach. That's been true of a lot of institutions.
1:16:44
Speaker 1: So it is the system is broken. It is messed up.
1:16:51
Speaker 1: Perhaps you write rules that maybe allow for this in
1:16:53
Speaker 1: some form, but you've got to have an accepted, shared
1:16:56
Speaker 1: set of rules, and right now we really don't have
1:16:58
Speaker 1: any it is it is only media reports that at
1:17:04
Speaker 1: best create the opportunity for shame to kick in. But
1:17:08
Speaker 1: this is you know, Uh, there's the specifics themselves of
1:17:13
Speaker 1: what happened at Michigan, and then there's the So there
1:17:18
Speaker 1: really needs to be an investigation of how the initial
1:17:20
Speaker 1: investigation happened and how.
1:17:22
Speaker 2: New evidence popped up. That's all I'm going to say here.
1:17:25
Speaker 1: Okay, I I am, I've got I've got plenty of
1:17:30
Speaker 1: interesting sources that have that have told me some interesting
1:17:35
Speaker 1: things about this situation. But the reason it needs to
1:17:37
Speaker 1: be rooted out because it's this is again, Michigan is
1:17:41
Speaker 1: just an example of what is a larger, more broken
1:17:46
Speaker 1: and uh. And I don't think any of us would
1:17:50
Speaker 1: be comfortable finding out what our favorite schools were doing.
1:17:55
Speaker 1: I think there would be I imagine there's not a
1:17:58
Speaker 1: major college football program in America that does things that
1:18:01
Speaker 1: would make every single alum prout, every single fan proud.
1:18:06
Speaker 1: And it is I hate I hate having to defend
1:18:10
Speaker 1: the system at times as a fan because I'd still
1:18:13
Speaker 1: love it. It's still I think college football because of
1:18:16
Speaker 1: the unpredictability of what kid there's still kids, they're still
1:18:20
Speaker 1: growing up they're still learning. There's that unpredictability. There's the
1:18:24
Speaker 1: passion of fan bases, which other than the Steelers and
1:18:27
Speaker 1: the Packers, there's really no you know, maybe Eagles and
1:18:31
Speaker 1: Cowboys too, but there's really the pro fan bases are
1:18:35
Speaker 1: not like college fan bases. They're just different. Hanging out
1:18:39
Speaker 1: with drunk twenty year olds is better to watch than
1:18:41
Speaker 1: hanging out with drunk fifty year olds too, right if
1:18:44
Speaker 1: you're at an NFL game versus a college game. But ultimately,
1:18:50
Speaker 1: we're going to have to have Congress step in. They're
1:18:52
Speaker 1: going to have to give an anti trust exemption in
1:18:54
Speaker 1: some form because they're going to have to create we
1:18:57
Speaker 1: can't have small d democratic tools attempting to govern college sports.
1:19:01
Speaker 1: You're gonna need a commissioner aka some sort of almost
1:19:06
Speaker 1: authoritarian type of situation, chairman of the board, board of director, CEO,
1:19:12
Speaker 1: that sort of thing with some accountability because this is
1:19:15
Speaker 1: this is embarrassing the sport all the time, and there's
1:19:18
Speaker 1: too much money at stake, and we have that much
1:19:20
Speaker 1: money at stake, you're gonna have lawsuit, you're gonna have
1:19:21
Speaker 1: people being libel and all of that stuff. So you
1:19:24
Speaker 1: kind of need a structure and some sort of rule
1:19:26
Speaker 1: of law to govern college sports.
1:19:30
Speaker 2: That is fair. All right.
1:19:31
Speaker 1: I will stop with my rant there, but I felt like,
1:19:33
Speaker 1: as much as I want to celebrate, and I've got
1:19:35
Speaker 1: a lot, I'm going to celebrate on the later this week,
1:19:39
Speaker 1: I will share with you my favorite pathways for Miami
1:19:43
Speaker 1: and the different storylines on different potential matchups that.
1:19:47
Speaker 2: They can have in the college football playoff.
1:19:49
Speaker 1: Let's just say, boy, for Miami's own reputational sake, they
1:19:52
Speaker 1: better win one. They better win one. Uh, and we'll
1:19:59
Speaker 1: go from there. All right, I've gone on a bit now.
1:20:03
Speaker 1: This is a pretty thick Monday episode. We did some dark,
1:20:06
Speaker 1: some light, and everything in between. I really appreciate you listening.
1:20:10
Speaker 1: Our growth has been amazing. I know part of the
1:20:14
Speaker 1: why independent media is growing because you've lost so much
1:20:16
Speaker 1: trust in what's happened with the intimidated corporate owned media,
1:20:22
Speaker 1: which is sad. I have a lot of good friends
1:20:25
Speaker 1: over there who are fighting a good fight, but the
1:20:27
Speaker 1: institutions are just trying to trying to prevent them from
1:20:31
Speaker 1: doing the work that they want to do, which is
1:20:33
Speaker 1: a huge disappointment. But guess what, there are always alternatives,
1:20:37
Speaker 1: including right here, So thank you for listening.
1:20:39
Speaker 2: I appreciate it, and I'll see in forty eight hours.