Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Chuck’s Message To The Class Of 2026 + Trump Has No Way Out Iran War Without Humiliation

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Full Episode - Chuck’s Message To The Class Of 2026 + Trump Has No Way Out Iran War Without Humiliation · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: dot com use the code toodcast. Hello Aaron, Welcome to
1:54
Speaker 1: the Thursday episode of the Chuck Podcast. So a little
1:59
Speaker 1: little seam setter here as I was promoting to you
2:02
Speaker 1: on Monday, and I am continuing to wear today. I
2:06
Speaker 1: am in Miami because tomorrow my oldest graduates from college.
2:11
Speaker 1: It's very exciting. I have been here. We already had
2:16
Speaker 1: an evening events. My mother is a University of Miami
2:22
Speaker 1: graduate and soon her granddaughter will be one. So they
2:25
Speaker 1: had a nice little ceremony for students of legacies who
2:29
Speaker 1: either had parents or grandparents. So we were here for
2:33
Speaker 1: that we get the big commencement. Hopefully, as you're listening
2:36
Speaker 1: to this podcast, I get to watch my oldest daughter
2:42
Speaker 1: do that.
2:43
Speaker 2: So it is exciting times.
2:45
Speaker 1: I have a few more things to say about only
2:48
Speaker 1: a few things that I'd like to say to the
2:52
Speaker 1: class of twenty twenty six, And who knows, maybe my
2:55
Speaker 1: own member of the class of twenty six might listen
2:57
Speaker 1: to one or two pieces of those advice, pieces of
3:01
Speaker 1: the advice that I might have. I mean, I have
3:04
Speaker 1: to say one thing you got to know about this class.
3:08
Speaker 1: This is the COVID class. Right when we went on
3:13
Speaker 1: college tours when my daughter was a junior, everything was
3:16
Speaker 1: shut down. In fact, we toured six or seven different universities,
3:20
Speaker 1: and there was only one building we were ever allowed in.
3:23
Speaker 1: Not on the campus of UCLA, not on the campus
3:26
Speaker 1: of Two Lane, not on the campus of UC Santa Barbara,
3:29
Speaker 1: not on the campus of Occidental, of the I'm trying
3:36
Speaker 1: to think what other schools we looked at. Every school
3:37
Speaker 1: we looked at except one building, the Rosensteel School at
3:45
Speaker 1: the University of Miami, where my daughter's about to get
3:48
Speaker 1: her Bachelor of Science from. So it shows you that
3:51
Speaker 1: in that period when You could go to those universities,
3:55
Speaker 1: but you couldn't. You could peek into the doors of
3:57
Speaker 1: the buildings, but you couldn't go in anywhere. But think
4:00
Speaker 1: about this class has just been through the Ringer, right,
4:04
Speaker 1: They got high school life taken away from them. Now
4:08
Speaker 1: they're entering the real world, and it's about the toughest
4:11
Speaker 1: job market they've had well since. Frankly, since my generation
4:14
Speaker 1: entered the job market. We didn't enter the best job
4:16
Speaker 1: market in the early nineties either, but we didn't have
4:21
Speaker 1: to do with the COVID mess we were. Our coming
4:24
Speaker 1: of age was a time when it seemed like America
4:26
Speaker 1: was ascending. This is not the same coming of age
4:28
Speaker 1: period for my daughter's generation. But I really there's something
4:34
Speaker 1: about this class that gives me hope because of this resiliency.
4:39
Speaker 1: Everything they've had to go through already at twenty two
4:43
Speaker 1: in different ways, it has definitely shaped them. But there's
4:48
Speaker 1: something something tells me that this is going to shape
4:51
Speaker 1: them for good, all right, And I think we should
4:54
Speaker 1: all feel a little bit of hope.
4:55
Speaker 2: On that, all right.
4:57
Speaker 1: So let me give you a rundown of everything you
4:58
Speaker 1: should expect in this episode. My guest is a good one.
5:03
Speaker 1: It's Kevin Williamson. If you don't know him, you should.
5:07
Speaker 1: He's one of the lead columnists at The Dispatch. Before that,
5:12
Speaker 1: he was a writer for National Review. He is what
5:17
Speaker 1: he's been writing on Iran in particular, and sort of
5:20
Speaker 1: the lack of strategy, if you will, from this president
5:26
Speaker 1: on Iran, just how badly this has gone he has
5:31
Speaker 1: in many ways channeled. It will read familiar to some
5:34
Speaker 1: of you if you've been listening everything I've been saying
5:37
Speaker 1: about Iran, but it is I think it'll be an
5:41
Speaker 1: interesting conversation, definitely worth having. And the timing is perfect,
5:44
Speaker 1: considering that it looks like we are now coming to
5:48
Speaker 1: the end of this thing, and if you know, it's
5:51
Speaker 1: playing out pretty much exactly as we've been laying out
5:56
Speaker 1: here on this podcast. That he is. You know, he
6:02
Speaker 1: loves to talk about who's got the cards. Well, he
6:04
Speaker 1: knows he doesn't have many cards. And the big blow,
6:07
Speaker 1: another big blow just happened in the last twenty four hours.
6:11
Speaker 1: NBC News was reporting that the Saudis said no to
6:16
Speaker 1: the United States using their airspace to essentially conduct that
6:21
Speaker 1: operation in the Strait. Everybody who's trying to figure out,
6:24
Speaker 1: you know, Trumps announces this operation in the Strait that's
6:27
Speaker 1: going to escort these ships and promise that they're going
6:29
Speaker 1: to get through, apparently without consulting our golf allies first.
6:36
Speaker 1: So however that went down, The Saudis didn't like it.
6:39
Speaker 1: They said no. Despite apparently a couple of phone calls,
6:42
Speaker 1: it still was a no. And it is. They basically decided,
6:48
Speaker 1: you're not going to finish the job. And look, this
6:50
Speaker 1: is the part. I think we're not one hundred percent sure,
6:52
Speaker 1: because we know the Saudis would love nothing more than
6:55
Speaker 1: to see this regime go away and roll. But it's
6:58
Speaker 1: likely that they have decided this president isn't going to
7:02
Speaker 1: go all the way. They don't have the stomach for it,
7:06
Speaker 1: and I don't think he has the political room to
7:09
Speaker 1: do it. I think it's pretty clear now that the politics,
7:12
Speaker 1: you know, his political problems are not good. If he
7:15
Speaker 1: continues to pursue this war and it drags on, what
7:19
Speaker 1: it would take would take to ground troops, that would
7:22
Speaker 1: only make the political situation for his party that much worse.
7:25
Speaker 1: So it's pretty clear to anybody that follows US politics
7:29
Speaker 1: that he was not he was looking for an exit
7:32
Speaker 1: ramp and at this point, if you're you know, if
7:37
Speaker 1: you're sitting there from the perspective of Saudis, it makes
7:41
Speaker 1: percent like stop this, stop dragging it out, Just hurry
7:44
Speaker 1: up and get to the negotiating table. At this point,
7:46
Speaker 1: everybody knows how this is going to end, So just
7:48
Speaker 1: start the endgame sooner rather than later, which is now
7:52
Speaker 1: apparently where we are. And what is this endgame going
7:54
Speaker 1: to look like? Exactly as we've been outlining for the
7:57
Speaker 1: last three weeks. It's the nucle It's the Iran nuclear
8:02
Speaker 1: deal Part two. Is it going to be a palette
8:05
Speaker 1: of cash? Is it going to be a palette of
8:07
Speaker 1: Trump mean coins? That's the only thing we don't know here.
8:10
Speaker 1: But they are not going to permanently say no to
8:13
Speaker 1: having a nuke despite whatever he says. We'll end up
8:15
Speaker 1: finding this out. They'll be able to delay that again
8:20
Speaker 1: and essentially, whether he realizes he's doing this or not,
8:24
Speaker 1: when he eventually agrees to an agreement, that's, by the way,
8:27
Speaker 1: probably going to take months to actually get done. You know,
8:31
Speaker 1: they may have a handshake to at least stop hostilities,
8:34
Speaker 1: and it's going to be an agreement to continue to negotiate.
8:39
Speaker 1: I mean, the the actual deal that the last Iran
8:42
Speaker 1: nuclear deal took two years. Even after it looked like
8:45
Speaker 1: that there was that there was an agreement, it still
8:49
Speaker 1: took time to dot all the i's and cross all
8:51
Speaker 1: the teas, and so this is certainly going to take months,
8:54
Speaker 1: not days or weeks. But when you look at the
8:58
Speaker 1: sort of what happened over the line last forty eight hours,
9:01
Speaker 1: you had the Iranian foreign minister in China, you had
9:05
Speaker 1: the Saudi's doing what they did with the United States,
9:08
Speaker 1: the Pakistani's playing it almost feels as if the Americans
9:12
Speaker 1: were squeezed. It was sort of like, Okay, end this already.
9:17
Speaker 1: And it look it's not as if the Iranians didn't
9:22
Speaker 1: have a clock on their own. There's only so much
9:25
Speaker 1: money that they had. There's only so much that they
9:27
Speaker 1: could only so long that they could keep this going either,
9:31
Speaker 1: so they have to come to a deal. And there's
9:34
Speaker 1: no doubt the message the Chinese were sending to the
9:36
Speaker 1: Iranian foreign minister was just get a deal already, you know,
9:41
Speaker 1: get get to the negotiating table and let's get this
9:44
Speaker 1: straight of horror moves open. So but what's fascinating is
9:48
Speaker 1: how essentially outsiders squeezed both the Iranians. The Chinese squeezed
9:53
Speaker 1: the Iranians, and the Gulf States squeezed the Americans. On
9:58
Speaker 1: this the person that's uh and you can see this.
10:02
Speaker 1: There are there are those around the president very hawkish
10:05
Speaker 1: about this, who are not happy. They are trying to
10:09
Speaker 1: get him to at least take out more of their
10:14
Speaker 1: and this will do something to weaken them. But it
10:17
Speaker 1: looks like that ship has sailed this. This war has
10:24
Speaker 1: set us back.
10:27
Speaker 3: We did not.
10:27
Speaker 1: It is hard if you're trying to sit there and say,
10:31
Speaker 1: what did America get out of this war that was
10:34
Speaker 1: a net game? You could say a depleted Iranian military.
10:41
Speaker 1: I guess they certainly have fewer friends in the region.
10:47
Speaker 1: You know, their behavior and the in the decision to
10:50
Speaker 1: attack every American asset, no matter the country that that
10:54
Speaker 1: asset was in, has created more hard feelings with countries
10:59
Speaker 1: that they didn't have the best relations with. But they
11:01
Speaker 1: certainly had okay relations with Katar being the main one
11:05
Speaker 1: that I'm referring to there. But it's hard to find
11:10
Speaker 1: any net positive that came out of this. If anything,
11:14
Speaker 1: it exposed us a bit. You know. It's the question
11:18
Speaker 1: is and this would be my caution. I know there's
11:21
Speaker 1: many of you that are not big Trump fans, that
11:23
Speaker 1: are in some ways enjoying the shuldenfreud. But this is
11:28
Speaker 1: bad for the United States, you know. And this is
11:31
Speaker 1: the this is this is what frustrates me sometimes about
11:33
Speaker 1: our political debate. It's like, look, yes, he's made a
11:36
Speaker 1: bad decision. Yes this is bad for him politically, and
11:39
Speaker 1: if you want to see him lose politically, I understand
11:42
Speaker 1: why you're happy. This is bad for the United States
11:45
Speaker 1: long term. This war has handed China more leverage than
11:51
Speaker 1: ever before on a variety of things. They are now
11:55
Speaker 1: seen as the more stable economic partner to a lot
11:59
Speaker 1: of countries in the world. They are also going to
12:02
Speaker 1: be the resource for many countries that decide, you know what,
12:06
Speaker 1: given all the hostilities in the Middle East, maybe we
12:08
Speaker 1: need to do some energy transition and some energy diversity.
12:11
Speaker 1: And if you want to go to renewables, if you
12:14
Speaker 1: want to diversify your energy sources, you don't buy materials
12:18
Speaker 1: from the United States. You need to buy solar panels
12:22
Speaker 1: from China because they have cornered the market on that.
12:25
Speaker 1: Because we have an administration that so doesn't believe in
12:28
Speaker 1: it doesn't even want to have anything to do with it.
12:33
Speaker 2: So this is.
12:36
Speaker 1: At this point mitigate the damage. He is lucky the
12:41
Speaker 1: economy has not tanked on this. And there's only one
12:44
Speaker 1: reason the economy hasn't tanked because of this war, and
12:47
Speaker 1: that's thanks to the seven hundred billion dollar essentially private
12:52
Speaker 1: sector stimulus package that the four or five big tech
12:57
Speaker 1: companies have been spending on AI AI investments that alone
13:04
Speaker 1: has essentially served as a stimulus package. That's seven hundred billion.
13:08
Speaker 1: We learned about that total number over the last ten
13:11
Speaker 1: days during these earnings reports of of the big tech companies.
13:15
Speaker 1: That has essentially been a savior to the president on this.
13:20
Speaker 1: But the fact is, it's not as if this war
13:23
Speaker 1: ends in a week, and it's not like things are
13:27
Speaker 1: going to turn around right away. It's not like the
13:29
Speaker 1: price of gas is going to collapse and go down.
13:32
Speaker 1: It will gradually start to come down, but it is
13:34
Speaker 1: still going to be nearly a dollar fifty more than
13:37
Speaker 1: when he took office, and by election day, he'll be
13:40
Speaker 1: lucky if it's only a dollar more or seventy five
13:43
Speaker 1: cents more than when he took office. But the point
13:45
Speaker 1: is is that there's not going to be a story
13:47
Speaker 1: for him to tell that people have more money in
13:49
Speaker 1: their pocket at the halfway mark of his presidency than
13:52
Speaker 1: when this presidency started. And that's the biggest problem he's
13:57
Speaker 1: facing as far as the voters are concerned. But this
14:01
Speaker 1: thing has not gone well, and he was flailing there
14:05
Speaker 1: at the end. But this is what happens when you
14:07
Speaker 1: don't have a defined endgame. I mean, this seemed to
14:11
Speaker 1: violate every supposed lesson that was learned after Vietnam, every
14:16
Speaker 1: supposed lesson that was learned after the Iraq War. Apparently
14:19
Speaker 1: we're just never going to learn these lessons because you knew,
14:22
Speaker 1: who does learn the lessons from these war Everybody that
14:25
Speaker 1: we end up going to war with, they all have
14:27
Speaker 1: figured out asymmetric warfare is how you defeat these great superpowers.
14:32
Speaker 1: And I do think there's an entire you know, when
14:35
Speaker 1: we all step back here and you look at Russia's
14:37
Speaker 1: inability to win this war of Ukraine, the United States
14:40
Speaker 1: inability to essentially overrun the Iranians here. I do hope
14:46
Speaker 1: it's serving as a cautionary tale to the Chinese when
14:48
Speaker 1: they think about trying to grab Taiwan. Right, it has
14:52
Speaker 1: never been easier to engage in asymmetric warfare. It has
14:56
Speaker 1: never been easier for a small power to use drones
15:00
Speaker 1: to create big problems for big powers. And you know
15:06
Speaker 1: if if, unfortunately the United States had to learn a
15:09
Speaker 1: hard lesson in that again, given that we've supposedly we've
15:14
Speaker 1: we've had, we've we've had to learn these two lessons
15:17
Speaker 1: twice the hard way with Vietnam in the Rock. The
15:19
Speaker 1: Russians are now having to learn this twice first time
15:22
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. They're learning it again now with the Ukrainians.
15:26
Speaker 1: Hopefully this is good news for folks that live in Timewan.
15:31
Speaker 1: I'm as you can see, I'm desperate to find some
15:34
Speaker 1: sort of positive that may have come out of this,
15:38
Speaker 1: but it is hard. It is hard to find a
15:41
Speaker 1: lot of positives. And I know for some of you,
15:43
Speaker 1: the only positive you're going to take out of this
15:45
Speaker 1: is it's created enough political damage to the president that
15:50
Speaker 1: he is. It's only going to add to the political
15:53
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17:50
Speaker 1: Speaking of some domestic political problems, I do want to
17:55
Speaker 1: touch on a couple more things here. The running joke
17:58
Speaker 1: in Washington right now is that the leadership of the
18:02
Speaker 1: that John Thune and Mike Johnson must have big bats
18:06
Speaker 1: on Polymarket and Calshee, that the Democrats are going to
18:09
Speaker 1: win the House and Senate. And why do I say
18:10
Speaker 1: that so snarkily and cynically, because why else would they
18:14
Speaker 1: agree to greenlight a billion dollars of taxpayer funds to
18:20
Speaker 1: help build Donald Trump's East wing ballroom. I mean, if
18:26
Speaker 1: you could have designed. If you asked any Democratic strategist, hey,
18:31
Speaker 1: what's something that would be just like a layup for
18:34
Speaker 1: you to attack a Republican incumbent and Congress of it,
18:38
Speaker 1: they would say, boy, it'd be great if they somehow
18:40
Speaker 1: were using taxpayer dollars for one of these Donald Trump
18:44
Speaker 1: narcissistic monuments to himself. And sure enough, this Republican Congress
18:50
Speaker 1: has delivered. Dave Wigel treated this political reporter for some afore.
18:58
Speaker 1: He said it was. It was a pretty funny sweet
19:00
Speaker 1: he said, go pop an edible, Sit back and ask yourself.
19:05
Speaker 1: Imagine if Barack Obama in twenty eleven had asked for
19:10
Speaker 1: and received from the Democratic Congress controlled Congress a billion
19:15
Speaker 1: dollars to build a new East wing ballroom. What do
19:20
Speaker 1: you think the media coverage would look like for that?
19:22
Speaker 1: What kind of feeding frenzy would have started over at
19:26
Speaker 1: the network owned by the Murdox. The point is is
19:32
Speaker 1: that this when you give campaigns easy symbols to use
19:41
Speaker 1: to make a larger point that you want to make
19:44
Speaker 1: that hey, they're not looking out for you, they're looking
19:48
Speaker 1: out for him, and you need a simple example to show. Literally,
19:52
Speaker 1: the Republican Congress said, hey, guys, we know this is
19:55
Speaker 1: really we haven't given you an easy enough way to
19:59
Speaker 1: show how government has been used to enrich the Trumps.
20:03
Speaker 1: Let us give you an easier way for you to
20:06
Speaker 1: understand it. I mean, it is. It's one of those
20:10
Speaker 1: you're just like. I'll be honest. When I first saw
20:13
Speaker 1: the news, I thought, no, no, no, no, this has
20:15
Speaker 1: to be this has to be fake news. I mean,
20:18
Speaker 1: I can't think of a politically dumber idea than using
20:23
Speaker 1: taxpayer money to get involved with this ballroom mess. And
20:27
Speaker 1: lo and behold, this is what they do. This is
20:29
Speaker 1: what they're going to use a reconciliation bill for. It
20:33
Speaker 1: is shocked. Two things on a couple of investigations that
20:37
Speaker 1: sort of surfaced. One, look, I'm always very careful not
20:43
Speaker 1: to you should be very careful to presume you think
20:47
Speaker 1: you know what's happening when news of an FBI investigation breaks,
20:53
Speaker 1: and you know, the FBI has made it clear. Justice
20:56
Speaker 1: Partners made it clear that the investigation into Louise Lucas,
20:59
Speaker 1: the very powerful Democratic state senator who's basically the godmother
21:03
Speaker 1: of the redistricting effort in the state of Virginia, that
21:06
Speaker 1: this investigation was apparently an investigation that was started during
21:10
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. It doesn't mean it was that it
21:14
Speaker 1: is a clean We don't know. I mean, here's the
21:16
Speaker 1: unfortunate part. The credibility of this Justice Department is so
21:21
Speaker 1: low that I'm sorry, you need third and fourth sources
21:27
Speaker 1: to feel comfortable that you at least have an idea
21:31
Speaker 1: of what they're telling is the truth. And you want
21:33
Speaker 1: to see some of the evidence. I mean, we're already
21:34
Speaker 1: seeing their case against the Southern Poverty Law Center is
21:38
Speaker 1: falling apart, and it's possible that entire indictment falls apart.
21:44
Speaker 1: Now it's very possible that success wasn't the point. The
21:48
Speaker 1: point was to create such an ugly news cycle for
21:52
Speaker 1: the Southern Poverty Law Center that it would be incredibly
21:55
Speaker 1: damaging to their efforts. And it may very well be.
21:57
Speaker 1: I mean, this could still succeeded in doing the damage
22:03
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration intends to do to the Southern
22:06
Speaker 1: Poverty Law Center, But the actual case looks like it's
22:09
Speaker 1: going to fall apart that they don't. I mean, they've
22:12
Speaker 1: already had to admit that they've lied in one of
22:14
Speaker 1: the initial things. They've had to backtrack, and so it's
22:18
Speaker 1: very possible, the whole thing falls apart, but they've done
22:20
Speaker 1: a lot of pr damage to the organization and it
22:25
Speaker 1: trust me, I know people that have considered themselves long
22:27
Speaker 1: time sources. The initial narrative that the Justice Department is
22:31
Speaker 1: using has made a lot of supporters of the sbl
22:34
Speaker 1: S very uncomfortable. But the fact that the initial narrative
22:38
Speaker 1: is starting to erode you have to Unfortunately, with this administration,
22:43
Speaker 1: you can't take them at face value, and they haven't
22:46
Speaker 1: earned it right. They do not have credibility. I mean,
22:49
Speaker 1: you know you can if you're a partisan, you know,
22:52
Speaker 1: superpartisan supporter of theirs, you may think whatever they're saying
22:56
Speaker 1: is true and whatever anybody else says. You know, you're
22:59
Speaker 1: the one drink and the kool lady, YadA, YadA, YadA.
23:01
Speaker 1: But the fact is, anybody that isn't caught up in
23:04
Speaker 1: the partisan clap trap, you're like, Okay, you know, is
23:08
Speaker 1: there a there there? And I think there's some questions
23:11
Speaker 1: that there's there there with this SPLC case. So that's
23:14
Speaker 1: why I want to be a little bit cautious on this.
23:16
Speaker 1: But it may be a legitimate case. It may be
23:21
Speaker 1: that she's got real problems, but in the meantime, this
23:25
Speaker 1: looks very political. The fact is they have when you
23:29
Speaker 1: look at the you know, this is why their decision
23:33
Speaker 1: to do that trumped up charge against Callmi makes any
23:39
Speaker 1: other charges they bring against other people. It makes it
23:44
Speaker 1: easy for someone who doesn't want to believe the charges
23:47
Speaker 1: are true to say, well, we know you made up
23:49
Speaker 1: this stuff with callmy, so why should we take your
23:53
Speaker 1: word for it on this one. So she's going to
23:55
Speaker 1: get a benefit of the doubt from many members of
23:59
Speaker 1: her party and many people in Virginia, maybe not because
24:03
Speaker 1: they believe and trust her, but because they don't believe
24:07
Speaker 1: in trust this Justice Department. Meantime, one thing you need
24:10
Speaker 1: to understand about Louise Lucas is she's got she is.
24:14
Speaker 1: She is more than just a prominent African American politician
24:16
Speaker 1: in the state of Virginia.
24:19
Speaker 2: She's she's you know, she's she's she's.
24:21
Speaker 1: Got her own following, she's got her own iconic status
24:25
Speaker 1: in her community. In a way that you know, I
24:28
Speaker 1: will say that this this administration, you're throwing the Voting
24:32
Speaker 1: Rights Act decision by the Supreme Court, they are really
24:37
Speaker 1: poking the bear when it comes to African Americans, and
24:45
Speaker 1: it may turn out that these charges against Louise Lucas
24:48
Speaker 1: are legitimate and it's a legitimate investigation. But on top
24:54
Speaker 1: of every other way that it appears the Trump administration
24:58
Speaker 1: is targeting African American political power. I just don't think
25:03
Speaker 1: they realize what they may have awoken and this continue.
25:10
Speaker 1: This is an election year, there's a lot of people watching,
25:15
Speaker 1: there's a lot of it is so I would just
25:19
Speaker 1: I would just don't underestimate how what's been done over
25:26
Speaker 1: the last ten days to African Americans in power that
25:33
Speaker 1: is going to reverberate come election. This is why, and
25:36
Speaker 1: I firmly believe. I think whether it's Alabama governor, Mississippi Senate,
25:42
Speaker 1: all the races in Georgia, maybe even Florida governor, maybe
25:48
Speaker 1: these races in South Carolina. In general, you have a
25:53
Speaker 1: supercharged African American turnout that changes the calculus plenty of states,
26:01
Speaker 1: not just in Southern states. It's a benefit in Ohio
26:06
Speaker 1: to Democratic candidates, it's a benefit, it's a benefit in Nevada.
26:14
Speaker 1: So it's not just in southern states that this has
26:19
Speaker 1: potentially a huge impact. This benefits Democratic candidates in Michigan,
26:24
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, So I would just be I
26:31
Speaker 1: would just sort of just continue to keep an eye
26:36
Speaker 1: on that. I'm pretty convinced that this is going to
26:39
Speaker 1: have a massive impact on black turnout in the midterms.
26:44
Speaker 1: The other investigation that US journalists are very obsessed with
26:48
Speaker 1: is whatever the FBI is or isn't doing to the
26:52
Speaker 1: reporter at The Atlantic who reported about Cash Betel and
26:59
Speaker 1: his behavior. You're as FBI director, and the question is
27:04
Speaker 1: are they investigating the reporter? Are they investigating are they
27:08
Speaker 1: doing an internal investigation in search of leakers? What exactly
27:12
Speaker 1: are they doing? Well, this is where I find you know,
27:16
Speaker 1: sometimes a spokesperson accidentally tells you what they've done, and
27:23
Speaker 1: tells you what they are doing, and tells you what
27:24
Speaker 1: they aren't doing. And so Ben Williamson, who is the
27:27
Speaker 1: spokesperson for the FBI, gave a statement to ms NOW
27:30
Speaker 1: about the supposed allegations that they're investigating the reporter from
27:37
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. And here's what Ben Williamsy you say. He
27:41
Speaker 1: denied the existence of that investigation, and here's his full quote.
27:45
Speaker 1: This is completely false. No such investigation like this exists,
27:51
Speaker 1: and the reporter you mentioned is not being investigated at
27:54
Speaker 1: all all.
27:59
Speaker 2: Right, So let's unpack that sentence.
28:03
Speaker 1: The only investigation he denies is the investigation and the
28:07
Speaker 1: reporter when he says, and the reporter you mentioned is
28:11
Speaker 1: not being investigated at all. The first part of the sentences,
28:16
Speaker 1: no such investigation like this exists. So it's the description
28:22
Speaker 1: of the leak investigation that he's denying, not the premise
28:26
Speaker 1: that there is some investigation into who talked about cash
28:32
Speaker 1: Betel's behavior. And that's clearly what is bothered some FBI
28:39
Speaker 1: agents who on one hand feel like they have to
28:42
Speaker 1: follow orders or perhaps risk being fired, and at the
28:46
Speaker 1: same time fear that they're essentially violating the law or
28:52
Speaker 1: certainly crossing an ethical or moraln But I do it
28:59
Speaker 1: is one of those cases. I love to read statements
29:04
Speaker 1: from from government officials when they don't want to lie,
29:11
Speaker 1: and how they try to word a sentence so that
29:16
Speaker 1: they think that so that the average person just sees
29:18
Speaker 1: it as a full denial. But when you want to
29:21
Speaker 1: when you sit there and you parse every word, you
29:23
Speaker 1: realize they're not denying the entire premise of the question.
29:27
Speaker 1: They're denying very specific parts of the question. And that's
29:31
Speaker 1: what mister Williamson did there. So Hey, that's not you know,
29:34
Speaker 1: I'm not asking you to have to parse every every
29:37
Speaker 1: statement that you see from a from a government spokesperson.
29:42
Speaker 1: That's why you subscribe to people like me, right, all right, now,
29:49
Speaker 1: let me get to a little bit of let's get
29:53
Speaker 1: a little bit up beat here. It's it's look, it's
29:56
Speaker 1: we're we're not in. We're not in the glory days
29:59
Speaker 1: of American politics. I think a lot of us know that.
30:05
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to lie to you. I'm very
30:07
Speaker 1: nervous about this current world that my daughter is walking into,
30:17
Speaker 1: in this real world. I'm very worried about this class
30:22
Speaker 1: for all the reasons I discussed before. They've really taken
30:25
Speaker 1: it on the chin. In fact, if you told me
30:32
Speaker 1: that this class will be the heart of the pitchfork
30:35
Speaker 1: carriers when they're coming for the establishment at their frustrations
30:40
Speaker 1: of mismanaging this country and mismanaging this economy, and you
30:43
Speaker 1: told me it's this generation that didn't, I wouldn't be surprised, right,
30:46
Speaker 1: given what they had to go through in high school
30:49
Speaker 1: thanks to the decision making of the establishment, and what
30:54
Speaker 1: they've gone through, and what kind of economy and what
30:56
Speaker 1: kind of world they're walking into thanks to the leadership
31:00
Speaker 1: of this generation that is in charge. So I do.
31:07
Speaker 1: I uh, it does make it does make me concerned
31:11
Speaker 1: for this generation. But hey, I have a few things
31:15
Speaker 1: that I'd like to sort of. Here's the reality. When
31:24
Speaker 1: I was in my twenties, I probably listened to only
31:26
Speaker 1: half the advice my parents in their fifties were given me,
31:30
Speaker 1: my mother, or what other people that I looked up
31:32
Speaker 1: to were given me. I think I heard some of
31:34
Speaker 1: the advice, but I probably didn't hear all of the advice.
31:38
Speaker 1: But I know why we you know, the older you
31:39
Speaker 1: get why you want to get it because we're so
31:41
Speaker 1: desperate for our kids not to make the same mistakes
31:43
Speaker 1: we did. We're like, look, we've learned this really bad lesson.
31:46
Speaker 1: We don't want you to repeat it. And yet there's
31:49
Speaker 1: always part of me that understands it. You know what.
31:51
Speaker 1: Everybody sometimes has to make their own mistakes and need
31:53
Speaker 1: to learn lessons in their own time, and I get that.
31:57
Speaker 1: I guess that this could be best sum up as it.
31:59
Speaker 1: Here's here's the advice that I hope my daughter takes
32:02
Speaker 1: from me, But I don't know if I'm if she
32:06
Speaker 1: will ask every ask me enough to get all of this,
32:09
Speaker 1: but hey, it's on tape, so maybe she'll go grab
32:12
Speaker 1: it when she needs it. And you know what, at
32:16
Speaker 1: this point in time, and any of you that have
32:18
Speaker 1: had kids graduate college, I'm sure you've been the same way.
32:21
Speaker 1: You become a full time advice machine, which I feel
32:24
Speaker 1: like I have become. But we'll see, right, we know,
32:29
Speaker 1: twenty somethings you do absorb the advice, you just don't
32:33
Speaker 1: always follow it. Sometimes until it's ten years later, who knows.
32:38
Speaker 1: But I still want to share some of it because
32:41
Speaker 1: I think a lot of what young people are walking
32:43
Speaker 1: into right now probably feels pretty overwhelming. Right the job
32:46
Speaker 1: market looks very insecure, the economy looks precarious. Our culture
32:50
Speaker 1: is it feels like we're at war with each other
32:53
Speaker 1: over culture. There's social pressures that are greater than before.
32:58
Speaker 1: And then of course there's that feeling that every twenty
33:00
Speaker 1: something has, which is everybody else must already have their
33:02
Speaker 1: life figured out, so I've got a hurry up and
33:04
Speaker 1: do it too. Right. So here's the first thing I
33:07
Speaker 1: would say to the class of twenty twenty six. Adulthood
33:09
Speaker 1: is not a race, and it's advice that I didn't
33:15
Speaker 1: always take for myself. People think adulthood is a sprint
33:18
Speaker 1: of opportunity acquisition, right. If you get an opportunity, you
33:21
Speaker 1: better go and grab it, because sometimes you think it's
33:25
Speaker 1: not going to be there. And I think I was
33:28
Speaker 1: in a hurry. I was in a hurry. I was
33:33
Speaker 1: always worried about money, so I felt like I had
33:36
Speaker 1: a hurry up and make a living quickly, and hurry
33:38
Speaker 1: up and make it. I don't know why I had
33:40
Speaker 1: that in my head, but I just did. I wish
33:43
Speaker 1: I didn't treat life in my twenties as a race,
33:48
Speaker 1: because I think it's one of the biggest misconceptions right
33:50
Speaker 1: about adulthood is that it's a race. Everybody feels pressure,
33:53
Speaker 1: pressure to optimize immediately if you want to get the
33:56
Speaker 1: perfect first job, find the perfect city to live in,
33:58
Speaker 1: build a perfect resume, start the perfect career path. Social
34:02
Speaker 1: media can make it, I think, ten times worse because
34:04
Speaker 1: everybody else is presenting as if their life looks fully
34:08
Speaker 1: formed at the age of twenty three, right, And guess what,
34:11
Speaker 1: most lives are not straight lines, and I know mine wasn't. Right,
34:18
Speaker 1: So don't paralyze yourself searching for the perfect first job. Frankly,
34:22
Speaker 1: just get a job, take any job, and don't behave
34:26
Speaker 1: as if it's going to be the job that you
34:27
Speaker 1: have forever. But take a job, maybe take a job
34:31
Speaker 1: that you didn't think you wanted to take, because you
34:33
Speaker 1: need to figure out how the world works. You need
34:35
Speaker 1: to learn how offices work, You need to learn how
34:37
Speaker 1: people interact with each other. In jobs you know in
34:41
Speaker 1: some ways, you don't want to do that in your
34:44
Speaker 1: dream job, being your first job. You want to sort
34:47
Speaker 1: of get those get those hard lessons learned at maybe
34:51
Speaker 1: a job that you don't hope to have for the
34:54
Speaker 1: next thirty years. And if you stay in that first
34:57
Speaker 1: job for six months, that's okay. Movement teaches you things
35:02
Speaker 1: that perfection never will and don't confuse a setback with failure.
35:09
Speaker 1: Most setbacks become lessons later. And I know that sounds
35:13
Speaker 1: like I'm being you know, a phony Confucius or something, right,
35:17
Speaker 1: but it's true. You learn more lessons from failure than
35:21
Speaker 1: you do from success. A lot of times, when you
35:24
Speaker 1: get success, you forget about the mistakes you made to
35:28
Speaker 1: forget that success, But when you fail, you remember every
35:31
Speaker 1: little detail, right, which is why you end up learning
35:34
Speaker 1: more from failure than you do success. And then, of course,
35:40
Speaker 1: the thing that you can't really learn until you're in
35:43
Speaker 1: your fifties is that sometimes the thing that feels like
35:45
Speaker 1: bad luck turns out to be the thing that taught
35:48
Speaker 1: you how to navigate adulthood. Or another way that I
35:51
Speaker 1: like to put it is everything happens for a reason.
35:55
Speaker 1: You just haven't figured out what that reason is yet.
36:01
Speaker 1: Respect your elders and respect experience, because I promise you,
36:08
Speaker 1: everybody older than you know something you don't. Even when
36:15
Speaker 1: you think you're smarter than somebody that's older than you,
36:19
Speaker 1: especially when you think you're smarter than somebody's on you
36:23
Speaker 1: know that they probably know things that you don't. Anybody
36:27
Speaker 1: who's been on this earth longer than you have has
36:29
Speaker 1: survived something you haven't had to survive yet. They're resilient
36:33
Speaker 1: in ways you haven't discovered yet. Maybe they succeeded, maybe
36:38
Speaker 1: they failed. Either way, there's something to learn. You can
36:42
Speaker 1: learn from somebody else's failure. Don't mock it, don't avoid it,
36:48
Speaker 1: Empathize with it, and learn something from it. You can
36:53
Speaker 1: learn from what people did right, and you can learn
36:56
Speaker 1: from what people did wrong. But in both cases pay
37:01
Speaker 1: close attention, learn both lessons One of the best pieces
37:10
Speaker 1: of wisdom I ever got was from my wife. She
37:15
Speaker 1: likes to remind people that your problems are your problems,
37:20
Speaker 1: and what she means by it is this, just because
37:23
Speaker 1: something wouldn't bother you doesn't mean it isn't a real
37:26
Speaker 1: problem to somebody else. You know a lot of times
37:29
Speaker 1: we say things I wish I had their problems. Maybe
37:33
Speaker 1: it might be somebody who's wealthier than you are. Maybe
37:35
Speaker 1: it might be somebody you know who looks like their
37:39
Speaker 1: life is more successful than yours. It's an easy thing
37:42
Speaker 1: to say, but it's actually an impossible thing to know.
37:46
Speaker 1: If something feels overwhelming to somebody, then it's real to them,
37:50
Speaker 1: regardless of whether it would not be a problem to you.
37:55
Speaker 1: So don't be embarrassed by your struggles, and don't dismiss
37:58
Speaker 1: somebody else's. Again, these, in some ways are things that
38:03
Speaker 1: you you will realize or common sense over time. Here's
38:11
Speaker 1: another thing that nobody tells you. Life gets annoying, life happens,
38:19
Speaker 1: responsibilities pile up, and some things become harder later. So,
38:26
Speaker 1: as I told you before, I was in a hurry.
38:28
Speaker 1: I got a job before I finished college. I didn't
38:32
Speaker 1: want to borrow money at the time it felt necessary.
38:36
Speaker 1: Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But there were things
38:39
Speaker 1: I didn't do in my twenties, like finish a degree
38:42
Speaker 1: at GW that became much harder in my thirties. Because
38:47
Speaker 1: life happens. So if you want to travel, do it
38:53
Speaker 1: in your twenties. Travel. If you want to take a
38:55
Speaker 1: road trip, take it. If you wait for the perfect time,
38:59
Speaker 1: you may discover the perfect time never arrives. Priorities change
39:03
Speaker 1: because life changes. That's not failure, it's simply adulthood. And
39:08
Speaker 1: by the way, real When speaking of road trips, there's
39:13
Speaker 1: nothing better to learn about America than a good old
39:15
Speaker 1: fashioned road trip. And you are at your peak ability
39:20
Speaker 1: to handle road trips when you're in your twenties. I've
39:24
Speaker 1: been on every interstate from I five to ninety five,
39:28
Speaker 1: from EYE ten to I ninety and I love a
39:32
Speaker 1: good road trip. They're exhausting, but it's the best way
39:36
Speaker 1: to see America. And in some ways, you know, I
39:41
Speaker 1: know many of you want to see the world, but
39:44
Speaker 1: don't forget to see America. And in some ways, once
39:48
Speaker 1: you see America, it's going to make you appreciate what
39:52
Speaker 1: you see in the rest of the world. Speaking of
39:58
Speaker 1: your first job, my father had a rule when I
40:04
Speaker 1: was a kid. He would tell me stop saying yeah
40:07
Speaker 1: but so you know, he would ask me to if
40:14
Speaker 1: I was going to move on, or if I was
40:15
Speaker 1: going to do my yard work, whatever chore I had
40:17
Speaker 1: to do. I'd say yeah, but I've got it, and
40:19
Speaker 1: he just as soon as I was doing the Buddies
40:22
Speaker 1: no buttheads. Don't be a butthead no yeah butts. The
40:26
Speaker 1: answer is yes, I'm doing it, don't. You may have
40:31
Speaker 1: an explanation for why you haven't done it, don't burden
40:36
Speaker 1: your boss with your explanation. They don't need to know
40:38
Speaker 1: your explanation. They expect you to do or not do right.
40:44
Speaker 1: I know it's a little Yoda eat right, but if
40:47
Speaker 1: somebody asked you to do something, especially when you're in
40:49
Speaker 1: a first job, do it. Don't lead with excuses or explanations,
40:54
Speaker 1: don't negotiate before you start. Just get it done. And
40:57
Speaker 1: then you have to there's something that you think was
41:01
Speaker 1: sort of a bad order right after you've accomplished the job,
41:08
Speaker 1: then question it, but do it first. Young workers who
41:14
Speaker 1: become indispensable, who just get shit done, they usually aren't
41:19
Speaker 1: the smartest people in the office. They become the most
41:21
Speaker 1: reliable ones, and they're the ones who finish the assignment
41:25
Speaker 1: before complaining about the assignment. They also get the next
41:29
Speaker 1: good jobs. Responsibility creates opportunity, Reliability creates trust, and trust
41:36
Speaker 1: creates more opportunity. Again, none of this, none of this
41:44
Speaker 1: is sort of rocket science. A lot of this. You
41:47
Speaker 1: may say, hey, I've seen this in fortune cookies. You
41:50
Speaker 1: know why they're in fortune cookies because it's time tested
41:54
Speaker 1: advice one other thing, And I think this is a
42:00
Speaker 1: particularly big challenge in our era of sharing everything with
42:04
Speaker 1: each other. Life is not in competition with your friends' lives.
42:09
Speaker 1: Everybody's lane is different. Some people get lucky early, some
42:13
Speaker 1: people get lucky late. Some people look successful in twenty
42:17
Speaker 1: five and are miserable and in their third marriage by
42:20
Speaker 1: forty five. Some people look lost at twenty five and
42:24
Speaker 1: become a billionaire at forty. The point is hard work
42:29
Speaker 1: eventually looks like luck from the outside. But people see
42:32
Speaker 1: the breakthrough. They usually don't see the years before the
42:36
Speaker 1: breakthrough happens. You've always heard that, you know, why do
42:42
Speaker 1: you know? What does it take to get lucky? A
42:44
Speaker 1: lot of hard work. There's a lot of truth to that.
42:49
Speaker 1: And finally, and trust me, your parents always wants you
42:57
Speaker 1: to know this. It's okay to ask for help, particularly
43:01
Speaker 1: from family. Your parents are usually rooting for you harder
43:04
Speaker 1: than you realize. Sometimes we parents will overcorrect, we'll over advise.
43:12
Speaker 1: Sometimes we rescue when we should step back. But I'm
43:15
Speaker 1: always going to get caught rescuing. But most parents are
43:19
Speaker 1: not trying to live through their kids. They just want
43:21
Speaker 1: their kids to have opportunities that they didn't have themselves.
43:25
Speaker 1: My parents gave me opportunities that they didn't get to have,
43:30
Speaker 1: and I've given my kids opportunities that I didn't get
43:32
Speaker 1: to have. That's kind of It's kind of the isn't
43:34
Speaker 1: that the goal? Every generation hopes the next one just
43:39
Speaker 1: gets a little bit further And I'm you know, one
43:44
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I'm so proud of my daughter
43:45
Speaker 1: today is I feel like I think I might have
43:47
Speaker 1: done that. And that's all you can ask for, is parents.
43:52
Speaker 1: One thing I do worry about for your generation is
43:55
Speaker 1: you've inherited a very angry version of America. I'm sorry
43:59
Speaker 1: about that. Sometimes I'm not sure we taught you how
44:02
Speaker 1: remarkable this experiment actually is. America is one of the
44:05
Speaker 1: only places on Earth that's built around an idea instead
44:07
Speaker 1: of ancestry. That's unusual. And I'm sure some of you
44:13
Speaker 1: have made friends with kids who've grown up in other countries.
44:20
Speaker 1: You're luckier, trust me. But it's a fragile place and
44:24
Speaker 1: it's worth protecting. So try to remember talk to people
44:28
Speaker 1: who disagree with you. Life's just more interesting when you're
44:32
Speaker 1: talking to somebody you disagree with them when you agree
44:34
Speaker 1: with them. Go see the country. Like I said, there's
44:37
Speaker 1: nothing like a good road trip. It's the best way
44:42
Speaker 1: to find out what life is like. Because the more
44:46
Speaker 1: you see of America, the more you're going to understand Americans.
44:51
Speaker 1: And if you want to be a good citizen, find
44:55
Speaker 1: out how Americans live all over this country. Look, we're
44:58
Speaker 1: a loud country, where country. We're a frustrating country sometimes,
45:03
Speaker 1: but we're a remarkably connected country. And if you only
45:07
Speaker 1: experience America through digital algorithms, you're going to misunderstand it.
45:14
Speaker 1: Trust me, there's a lot of people grifting money off
45:16
Speaker 1: of you right now, intentionally misunderstanding America. Go see it
45:21
Speaker 1: for yourself, and don't worry if your life doesn't look
45:26
Speaker 1: finished yet. Some lives never get done. They just end.
45:31
Speaker 1: And that's the whole point. Life's about the journey, not
45:35
Speaker 1: the last chapter. So to my daughter, I love you,
45:40
Speaker 1: I'm proud of you. To the class of twenty twenty six,
45:44
Speaker 1: realize how resilient you've been. I think you're going to
45:48
Speaker 1: be a remarkable generation. And I'm going to be a
45:51
Speaker 1: little bit hockey. And if you guys don't like it
45:54
Speaker 1: and suck it right, I tease, all right with that,
45:57
Speaker 1: we'll sneak at a break. Then we're going to do some lifting,
46:00
Speaker 1: talk about American form policy, and a rod with Kevin Willimson.
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Speaker 1: And yes, I too am a customer. As many of
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Speaker 1: you know, I have clear that I think that the
47:50
Speaker 1: the president's situation, iron is he's in a no in situation.
47:54
Speaker 1: It's a no in situation he's put himself in. The
47:58
Speaker 1: Only way he can get out of it is probably
48:00
Speaker 1: either capitulation or some sort of escalation that would be
48:05
Speaker 1: likely politically intolerable. But as much as I think that
48:09
Speaker 1: I have done my best to convey this, I think
48:12
Speaker 1: nobody has written it better than my guest today, and
48:16
Speaker 1: it's Kevin Williamson. He is at The Dispatch, and his columns,
48:21
Speaker 1: in particular on a run over the last month have
48:23
Speaker 1: been one of those where I'm just sitting here nodding yes,
48:27
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I wish I could have articulated as
48:30
Speaker 1: well as he wrote it. But that is the beauty
48:32
Speaker 1: of reading Kevin Williamson, and is somebody I've read for
48:35
Speaker 1: a long time. It's first time I've spoken to him,
48:37
Speaker 1: so I'm looking forward to this conversation. Kevin, Welcome to
48:41
Speaker 1: the podcast.
48:41
Speaker 3: Thanks so much.
48:44
Speaker 1: Look, you've articulated in a way far greater than I've
48:49
Speaker 1: been able to convey about this just colossal mistake that
48:56
Speaker 1: he's made. I think he knows it, and he's desperate
49:02
Speaker 1: to find some sort of way out of it that
49:05
Speaker 1: isn't humiliation, And I don't know what that looks like.
49:08
Speaker 1: So as much as it can be fun to sort of,
49:12
Speaker 1: you know, point fingers and go, aha, this was a
49:14
Speaker 1: mistake a bunch of us told just so, et cetera,
49:18
Speaker 1: the question now is how do we get out of
49:19
Speaker 1: this with the United States not having its tail between
49:22
Speaker 1: its length?
49:24
Speaker 3: We don't. That's the short version, I think.
49:27
Speaker 1: Now.
49:27
Speaker 3: The irony of Trump being in a no win situation
49:30
Speaker 3: is that he got himself in there by trying to
49:31
Speaker 3: put himself into a no lose situation. So by going
49:35
Speaker 3: into this conflict without ever really defining what the mission was,
49:39
Speaker 3: what victory looked like, without going to Congress, without going
49:43
Speaker 3: to the American public, and so he didn't have any
49:47
Speaker 3: kind of you know, verifiable, quantifiable metric that he could
49:51
Speaker 3: fail to achieve and therefore be called a loser. And
49:53
Speaker 3: he does that a lot. That's kind of one of
49:55
Speaker 3: his things, Like, you know, he doesn't tend to endorse
49:57
Speaker 3: in races where he doesn't think he's going to win.
50:00
Speaker 3: If you look like the Texas Center race that's going
50:02
Speaker 3: on right now, the runoffs of Republican primary, he still
50:05
Speaker 3: hasn't touched it. And so one of the points that
50:09
Speaker 3: I try to make, not only in this context, but
50:11
Speaker 3: in lots of other context is a lot of things
50:12
Speaker 3: that we think of as being ethical questions or questions
50:16
Speaker 3: of norms, and you know, kind of tradition and things
50:19
Speaker 3: like that. We talk about these things like they're these
50:21
Speaker 3: kind of airy, fairy metaphysical things that are primarily of
50:24
Speaker 3: interest to the afterlife, but they have really important practical consequences.
50:30
Speaker 3: And one of the reasons you don't want to have
50:32
Speaker 3: a president who can just run off to war without
50:34
Speaker 3: going to Congress to get some sort of authorization is
50:37
Speaker 3: that you want to know what your goal is going in.
50:43
Speaker 3: You want to get a read from the people who
50:45
Speaker 3: have to get elected every two years about what they're
50:47
Speaker 3: willing to commit to that project and what they think
50:52
Speaker 3: that the American public is willing to invest and tolerate
50:55
Speaker 3: in the pursuit of that project. Because there are all
50:58
Speaker 3: sorts of different outcome and different goals that have been
51:01
Speaker 3: articulated about the campaign in Iran that are not the same.
51:05
Speaker 1: They change during the press briefings. Yes, I mean sentence
51:09
Speaker 1: at times. Yeah, So if you know if your goal
51:11
Speaker 1: is regime change. That's one thing that's a very that's
51:15
Speaker 1: a hard thing to do. It's a doable thing in Iran.
51:17
Speaker 1: We could do it if we wanted to, but it's
51:19
Speaker 1: it's a big investment.
51:20
Speaker 3: If your goal is to set back their nuclear program,
51:24
Speaker 3: well that's a different thing. You can probably do with
51:26
Speaker 3: air power and maybe some special forces stuff. If your
51:31
Speaker 3: goal is to have a much stronger conviction and evidence
51:35
Speaker 3: that their nuclear program is not functional and going to
51:38
Speaker 3: be functional in the short term, that's a much bigger commitment.
51:41
Speaker 3: And if your goal is to keep the Straight of
51:43
Speaker 3: Hormuz open to oil traffic and other trade, you could
51:46
Speaker 3: have just not done this in the first place because
51:48
Speaker 3: it was open. So right now the main thing they
51:50
Speaker 3: seem to be trying to ensures is going to be open.
51:54
Speaker 3: So they are really just trying to solve a problem
51:56
Speaker 3: that they created for themselves because the strait was was
52:00
Speaker 3: open before this. And one of the interesting things about
52:03
Speaker 3: this is that Iran has not won a battle with
52:06
Speaker 3: the United States. Iran is never going to win a
52:08
Speaker 3: battle with the United States. It's never going to get
52:10
Speaker 3: close to laying a glove on the United States. But
52:12
Speaker 3: it's essentially had its territory enlarged over this conflict because
52:18
Speaker 3: is an international waterway over which Iran has no legitimate
52:21
Speaker 3: sovereignty or right to control. But the Trump administration talks
52:25
Speaker 3: about it as though it were Ranian territory, and they're
52:28
Speaker 3: just out there begging them please, you know, you crazy bastards.
52:31
Speaker 3: As he put it, open the straight. And I would
52:34
Speaker 3: love to play poker with Donald Trump, because I'm not
52:36
Speaker 3: a very good poker player, but I think he would
52:38
Speaker 3: be worse. He's just the worst of this kind of.
52:41
Speaker 1: He's literally the cards are in front, are on his forehead,
52:45
Speaker 1: he doesn't look at them, and everybody else gets to
52:47
Speaker 1: see them. Yeah.
52:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's got a lot of money to lose too,
52:50
Speaker 3: so that would be that would be maybe a good
52:52
Speaker 3: good game.
52:53
Speaker 1: Remember he is the only guy to own a casino
52:55
Speaker 1: and somehow not make money.
52:56
Speaker 3: That's not actually true.
52:58
Speaker 1: But he was not good at it.
53:02
Speaker 3: No, he was terrible at it. And he's the only
53:04
Speaker 3: person I know that had a casino with a strip
53:06
Speaker 3: club in it who didn't make money. And now that's
53:09
Speaker 3: that's a much taller that's so much taller order. But
53:11
Speaker 3: a lot of people have lost their butts in the
53:13
Speaker 3: casino game over there. I used to live in Las Vegas.
53:15
Speaker 3: I followed the businesses just a little bit. I hate
53:17
Speaker 3: the gambling industry, by the way, and I'm always happy
53:19
Speaker 3: to see them. I'm happy to see them lose something,
53:23
Speaker 3: as long as it's not in Vegas or Atlantic City.
53:25
Speaker 3: We can have those two be that. But like when
53:27
Speaker 3: there's a casino on every street corner, not to go
53:29
Speaker 3: off on a tangent here. When you've got him at
53:31
Speaker 3: places like Valley Forge and rural Connecticut and places like that,
53:34
Speaker 3: there's too many casinos.
53:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I think that's the bigger problem, but we could.
53:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the word digress. That's a huge, huge issue.
53:40
Speaker 3: We'll talk about this some other time. Uh yeah, so's
53:44
Speaker 3: he's bad at this, and he tells the Iranians what
53:47
Speaker 3: his weaknesses and vulnerabilities are. He makes these ridiculous bluffs
53:52
Speaker 3: that they don't take seriously. You know, I'm going to
53:53
Speaker 3: destroy our civilian infrastructure. No you're not. Your whole civilization
53:58
Speaker 3: is going to end on Saturday night. Yeah, we don't
54:00
Speaker 3: think that's going to happen. We'll roll the dice on
54:02
Speaker 3: this because the Iranians know that they can take more
54:05
Speaker 3: pain than the Americans can because we're a free, happy,
54:08
Speaker 3: prosperous society where our government has to get re elected
54:11
Speaker 3: every couple of years, and they're not. They're used to
54:14
Speaker 3: being miserable, and if they're miserable, they don't have much
54:16
Speaker 3: they can do about it because the government's got all
54:18
Speaker 3: the guns, and that people don't have much of anything.
54:20
Speaker 3: So the Iranian regime is pretty confident in its place,
54:26
Speaker 3: and Trump is not so so far, they've been calling
54:30
Speaker 3: his bluffs one after the other, and they keep they
54:32
Speaker 3: keep winning it. And so now we've got this this
54:35
Speaker 3: ceasefire so called, which I'm kind of a language guy,
54:38
Speaker 3: you know, I'm presnickety about language stuff, and my understanding
54:42
Speaker 3: of a ceasefire.
54:43
Speaker 1: Which makes me enjoy reading you.
54:46
Speaker 3: Understanding of a ceasefire is that's what happens when the
54:48
Speaker 3: firing has ceased, and the firing has not ceased, so
54:52
Speaker 3: there is no actual ceasefire. But now conversations about.
54:56
Speaker 1: But did you hold it stops the clock too. I
54:59
Speaker 1: bet you didn't know, And I bet you didn't know
55:01
Speaker 1: that A when you execute a naval blockade, that that's
55:04
Speaker 1: not an act of war, so therefore it doesn't count
55:09
Speaker 1: against the war.
55:09
Speaker 3: Powers act wow or it is, depending on which which
55:13
Speaker 3: centensure you're getting out of them. Oh, my favorite thing
55:15
Speaker 3: about our blockade is we're blockading as straight because we're
55:17
Speaker 3: mad that the straight is blockaded. That's that's good, that's.
55:23
Speaker 1: Every I can't you know. I love one of my
55:25
Speaker 1: favorite just visuals and I'm guessing you're you're going to
55:28
Speaker 1: be a fan of This is from the movie Uh
55:34
Speaker 1: Blazing Saddles where he pulls the gun, where the sheriff
55:36
Speaker 1: pulls the gun on himself, right, And it feels like
55:39
Speaker 1: that's what Trump does all the time. He's constantly going
55:42
Speaker 1: to pull the gun on himself. Watch out, I might choot.
55:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, and well, and even that, like when he's doing
55:48
Speaker 3: this sort of you know, Richard Nixon Madman theory stuff
55:51
Speaker 3: and then he talks about it on social media that
55:53
Speaker 3: this is what I'm doing, and so like he's reading
55:56
Speaker 3: the stage directions and no one's buyings buying the performance.
56:01
Speaker 3: Something I do say from time to time that when
56:05
Speaker 3: I say this, people think that I'm just like trying
56:07
Speaker 3: to get a rise, or I'm just being tribalistic or whatever.
56:12
Speaker 3: But one of the most important things to keep in
56:14
Speaker 3: mind about the Trump administration that Donald Trump is not smart.
56:17
Speaker 3: He's kind of a dim guy. He wasn't that bright
56:19
Speaker 3: when he was in his forties. He hasn't gotten better
56:21
Speaker 3: here on the verge of eighty. He doesn't know it.
56:23
Speaker 1: But wait, he calls people low IQ, so it must
56:26
Speaker 1: mean he is. You're night saying he's projecting, are you No?
56:32
Speaker 3: I'm not saying he's projecting because I don't believe in
56:34
Speaker 3: that Freudian clap trap. He's just a liar, of course,
56:37
Speaker 3: and an insult artist. And so he's a guy who's
56:41
Speaker 3: not very smart and doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't
56:43
Speaker 3: know how stuff works, and he's surrounded by people whose
56:45
Speaker 3: metrics of success or not the nation's metrics of success.
56:49
Speaker 3: So there are people around whom who want to make
56:51
Speaker 3: money from the administration who weirdly enough, or like after
56:54
Speaker 3: social media clout and stuff like that, which is a
56:57
Speaker 3: really weird reason to be Secretary of Defense. But okay,
57:01
Speaker 3: because you want to do bench presses on short form
57:05
Speaker 3: videos and look weird with your hair and whatnot. But
57:10
Speaker 3: I'm not one of the lecture people about their hair.
57:12
Speaker 3: But it's it's a really weird administration. There aren't a
57:14
Speaker 3: lot of people in it who know what they're doing,
57:16
Speaker 3: who have much capability. It's interesting that Marco Rubio, who's
57:22
Speaker 3: outside of his campaigning ability, which I think is pretty formidable,
57:26
Speaker 3: is in my experience, my read of the guy, kind
57:29
Speaker 3: of mediocrity. He's not really a very interesting person politically.
57:32
Speaker 1: Do you think that's just a person in this administration?
57:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is the William Buckley would have said, he's
57:38
Speaker 3: the tallest building in Wichita. And and he stands out
57:42
Speaker 3: like he's Solon among these guys. You know, he is.
57:45
Speaker 1: He is Dwight Eyes right now, he is Kissinger, he
57:48
Speaker 1: is these guys. Yeah.
57:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, And but Rubyo can't do everything, including you know,
57:54
Speaker 3: I guess run Spirit Airlines or whatever else the administration
57:56
Speaker 3: is going to want him to do. And he's definitely
58:00
Speaker 3: out of his depth with this stuff. Rubio is fine
58:04
Speaker 3: as the Secretary of State doing Secretary of State stuff,
58:07
Speaker 3: which is you know, traditional kind of diplomacy and meetings,
58:10
Speaker 3: negotiation and that kind of stuff. Expecting him to figure
58:13
Speaker 3: out a way to bail the Trump administration out of
58:15
Speaker 3: this war that they've gotten themselves into because somebody probably
58:19
Speaker 3: convinced them, hey, we can do it, like Venezuela. It'll
58:21
Speaker 3: be like a long weekend and think of how cool
58:24
Speaker 3: you'll look. And then we'll move on to Cuba. And
58:26
Speaker 3: so you can say, look at all these people. You know,
58:28
Speaker 3: the Reagan administration couldn't deal with the ram but I did.
58:32
Speaker 3: All these American presidents going back to Jack Kennedy couldn't
58:35
Speaker 3: deal with Cuba, but I did. Everyone was mad at Venezuela,
58:38
Speaker 3: which I don't know that Venezuela was ever that big
58:40
Speaker 3: on our list, at least not for a long time.
58:42
Speaker 3: But okay, sure whatever.
58:43
Speaker 1: Really was only a priority of Marco Rubio's.
58:46
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and a lot of people in Florida that the.
58:49
Speaker 1: Trump is conn and he represents. I mean, I'm not,
58:51
Speaker 1: you know, but it was very much a local I'm
58:54
Speaker 1: from down there. They cared about it. I don't think
58:57
Speaker 1: anybody outside of Aide, Broward and Palm beached it.
59:02
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean I cared about you know, Venezuela.
59:05
Speaker 3: It wasn't in my top twenty. You know, it was
59:08
Speaker 3: tough to worry about. You don't cared a little bit
59:09
Speaker 3: about it. I think I cared more about it when
59:11
Speaker 3: Chavez was in power than Maduro years and thereafter but.
59:16
Speaker 1: So I feel like that the and the country that
59:22
Speaker 1: is going to bail him out of this eventually is
59:24
Speaker 1: going to be China, because China is going to sort
59:27
Speaker 1: of get they have the ability to tell Iran to
59:31
Speaker 1: back off and open up this straight and let's and
59:34
Speaker 1: that's the irony to this, is that we may need
59:37
Speaker 1: China to somehow convinced or convince Iran to cut a deal.
59:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, although the Chinese are willing to bear a good
59:45
Speaker 3: deal of pain too. I think if it if it
59:48
Speaker 3: disadvantages us, and they intelligently see us as the main
59:53
Speaker 3: constraint on their their power in the world. I mean,
59:55
Speaker 3: I worry about this in the sense that I mean
59:58
Speaker 3: Putin kind of needs a bail out too. And Iran
1:00:01
Speaker 3: is a country that's got two really irresponsible nuclear powers
1:00:06
Speaker 3: right there on its supporters, Russian and Pakistan. And the
1:00:10
Speaker 3: fact that Iran is no longer going to be able
1:00:13
Speaker 3: to enrich uranium or do all sorts of other things
1:00:16
Speaker 3: like that doesn't mean it's nuclear ambitions have gone away.
1:00:18
Speaker 3: I love Pete Hexath talking about bombing their ambitions until
1:00:21
Speaker 3: their ambitions aren't there anymore. That's that's an interesting metaphysical problem.
1:00:25
Speaker 3: But there's no reason to think they couldn't buy one,
1:00:28
Speaker 3: and that the Russians might not want to sell them one,
1:00:32
Speaker 3: or that the Pakistanis might not sell them one. You know,
1:00:35
Speaker 3: if I were if I were Putin, I think having
1:00:38
Speaker 3: the Iranians have one nuclear weapon or two might be
1:00:43
Speaker 3: a real good thing for me. That changes the math
1:00:46
Speaker 3: in the Middle East in a big, big way.
1:00:48
Speaker 1: All you need is not heard that like scenario. You
1:00:50
Speaker 1: think that's realistic or is that something we need to
1:00:53
Speaker 1: Is that one of those a little bit of failure
1:00:56
Speaker 1: of diplomatic imagination.
1:00:58
Speaker 3: Well, I think that there's no retire planned for gangsters,
1:01:01
Speaker 3: and that Putin knows that if he is unable to
1:01:04
Speaker 3: close the deal in Ukraine, eventually it's probably going to
1:01:08
Speaker 3: be the end of him, not just the end of
1:01:11
Speaker 3: his administration, if you want to call it administration, but
1:01:13
Speaker 3: probably the end of him. And is he a guy
1:01:18
Speaker 3: who's above rolling the dice that way and saying, well,
1:01:21
Speaker 3: the Pakistan.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: This has been the great fear of this war is that,
1:01:25
Speaker 1: you know, if he doesn't see a way out, he
1:01:27
Speaker 1: knows he's dead if he doesn't see a way out,
1:01:31
Speaker 1: So what does he have to lose? Yeah?
1:01:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, And uh, and again it's just you know, it's
1:01:36
Speaker 3: one or two. And then maybe he thinks he can,
1:01:39
Speaker 3: you know, exercise some influence over the way in which
1:01:42
Speaker 3: they use them, which he probably could. And it's something
1:01:47
Speaker 3: to keep in mind. There are ways for this to
1:01:49
Speaker 3: get worse that we haven't you know, thought about all
1:01:51
Speaker 3: that much. I mean, five fifty diesel. It's not very
1:01:54
Speaker 3: popular among my people down in Texas, and I'll f
1:01:57
Speaker 3: two to fifty drivers and f three fifty drivers and
1:02:00
Speaker 3: all that stuff. But there's there's worse things in the
1:02:02
Speaker 3: world than six or seven dollars diesel.
1:02:06
Speaker 1: Well he might have been, you know. Now the president
1:02:09
Speaker 1: is trying to claim, well, hey, it's a small price
1:02:11
Speaker 1: to pay. It's not like he prepared the country for this.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: It was the exact opposite. I mean, and then you
1:02:17
Speaker 1: go through you know, this is a time we could
1:02:20
Speaker 1: use some allies, but we have basically poked a finger
1:02:24
Speaker 1: in the and the eye of pretty much every ally
1:02:27
Speaker 1: we have, arguably other than Israel, and right now that
1:02:32
Speaker 1: alliance is politically problematic. Frankly for the president these days,
1:02:37
Speaker 1: you can see a little bit of it and breaking.
1:02:39
Speaker 3: Up to not to both sides this, but Trump of
1:02:42
Speaker 3: course has been uniquely bad in terms of our relationships
1:02:45
Speaker 3: with their European allies, and that's costing him right now
1:02:49
Speaker 3: because he would like to see them step.
1:02:50
Speaker 1: Up, and they would, I think in another scenario, would
1:02:53
Speaker 1: help with the strike.
1:02:54
Speaker 3: I think they might. But this is this is an
1:02:56
Speaker 3: ongoing problem for the United States. And as I was saying,
1:02:57
Speaker 3: not to both sides of it, but we had the
1:03:00
Speaker 3: Biden administration screwing the French pretty hard on you know,
1:03:03
Speaker 3: that submarine deal and all that. And you've had Biden
1:03:07
Speaker 3: administration and the Trump administration making pretty big decisions about
1:03:11
Speaker 3: things in Ukraine and other big geopolitical issues that touch
1:03:16
Speaker 3: Europe in a very direct kind of way without really
1:03:19
Speaker 3: even consulting them very much. And that's all fine when
1:03:22
Speaker 3: you want to laugh about, well, what's Belgium going to
1:03:24
Speaker 3: do about it? But you know what, it turns out,
1:03:26
Speaker 3: we do need these guys from time to time, and
1:03:29
Speaker 3: there are other reasons to want to preserve that relationship
1:03:32
Speaker 3: other than immediate short term concerns about the straight of
1:03:36
Speaker 3: horror moves. We have other long term strategic interests that
1:03:39
Speaker 3: having good operative relationships with our European allies would be
1:03:44
Speaker 3: would be a great help.
1:03:54
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that the eventual deal is the rand Nuclear
1:03:59
Speaker 1: Deal two point, because it's what the Iranians know. It
1:04:04
Speaker 1: is at least where there's some muscle memory and it's it,
1:04:11
Speaker 1: you know. I'm not sure where else they can go. Obviously,
1:04:15
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't want that to look like he's just doing that,
1:04:18
Speaker 1: So like NAFTA, if he renames it, then it's brand
1:04:20
Speaker 1: new and whatever. That seems to me the most realistic outcome.
1:04:26
Speaker 1: But I don't know if he knows how to do this.
1:04:30
Speaker 3: Well, obviously he does know how to do it. I
1:04:32
Speaker 3: think there's some questions about whether the Uranians would go
1:04:34
Speaker 3: for that. I think they're feeling like they've they've got
1:04:38
Speaker 3: us where they want us in some ways. I mean,
1:04:40
Speaker 3: they know they can't beat us militarily, obviously, can they
1:04:44
Speaker 3: outlast us in terms of what they're willing to endure
1:04:46
Speaker 3: in terms of damage to their economy and their polity
1:04:51
Speaker 3: and all that. Sure, I think they probably they're probably
1:04:53
Speaker 3: pretty confident that they are, so why not do what
1:04:57
Speaker 3: they've been doing? Which you say, here's list of demands,
1:05:00
Speaker 3: here's our fourteen point list. And Trump says, no, I
1:05:02
Speaker 3: don't like that, and they say, okay, well, here's our
1:05:04
Speaker 3: list of demands, and it's the same thing. And it's
1:05:06
Speaker 3: the same thing again, and it's pretty maximalist, and they're
1:05:09
Speaker 3: not seem to be backing off from anything. So I
1:05:12
Speaker 3: usually like to think the hopeful thing is that when
1:05:15
Speaker 3: you're dealing with people like this, that they can be
1:05:17
Speaker 3: bribed in some way, you know, there's some self interest there.
1:05:20
Speaker 1: Well, I think maybe they can't be I was just
1:05:22
Speaker 1: going to say, this is this to me was his
1:05:25
Speaker 1: biggest miss. He I think, assumes everybody's motivated by the
1:05:28
Speaker 1: exact same things he's motivated by, and it is always
1:05:32
Speaker 1: surprising to him when somebody isn't. And you know, for instance,
1:05:38
Speaker 1: I don't think he appreciates that the leaders he's dealing
1:05:41
Speaker 1: with in Iran don't care if the Iranian people suffer. Obviously,
1:05:46
Speaker 1: if they cared, they wouldn't have made the Iranian people suffer, right,
1:05:49
Speaker 1: this is not an entity. So his his those threats, oh,
1:05:54
Speaker 1: you know, they're not gonna be able to do this,
1:05:56
Speaker 1: they sort of don't. I think they fall on dewn fears.
1:06:01
Speaker 1: And then I guess the other other part of this
1:06:04
Speaker 1: is they're not as motivated I think by money as
1:06:10
Speaker 1: he is. And so when you take that off the table,
1:06:13
Speaker 1: it goes back to your simpleton analysis of him. He
1:06:17
Speaker 1: really is just very simple minded. And so we think, what, well,
1:06:20
Speaker 1: money doesn't work, Well, now what am I supposed to do?
1:06:23
Speaker 3: Yeah? If the Iranians were motivated by money, either just
1:06:26
Speaker 3: greed on the part of the rulers of the country
1:06:29
Speaker 3: to enrinch themselves, or by the prospect of economic development
1:06:33
Speaker 3: for their country, they would have been on this a
1:06:35
Speaker 3: long time ago. There's no reason that Dubai and Abu
1:06:39
Speaker 3: Dabi would have, you know, the huge leap on a
1:06:42
Speaker 3: city like Tehran in that part of the world. If
1:06:43
Speaker 3: the Iranians didn't want it that way, If that's what
1:06:46
Speaker 3: they were motivated by, they could certainly have that. They
1:06:48
Speaker 3: could be They really could be the you know, the
1:06:52
Speaker 3: thing that the United Airbormates really aspires to be in
1:06:55
Speaker 3: terms of being.
1:06:57
Speaker 1: I've had people say they could be India. What India
1:06:59
Speaker 1: is today should be a run had they never gone.
1:07:02
Speaker 3: Through this, they could be Switzerland, you know in some ways. Sure,
1:07:06
Speaker 3: And because they're a lot wealthier than India is for sure,
1:07:09
Speaker 3: and they've got more resources, and they're better positioned and
1:07:13
Speaker 3: a lot of other advantages as well. But they aren't.
1:07:16
Speaker 3: You know, nineteen seventy nine was a long time ago.
1:07:18
Speaker 3: They've had a lot of time to think this over,
1:07:20
Speaker 3: to change their minds, to reassess their priorities. They aren't
1:07:25
Speaker 3: doing it. And what that leads me to believes that
1:07:28
Speaker 3: they are true believers to some extent. They really believe
1:07:31
Speaker 3: in their revolution. They really believe in the superiority of
1:07:36
Speaker 3: their civilization and their way of doing things. They're contempt
1:07:40
Speaker 3: for their Arab and Suny neighbors is not feigned. It's
1:07:43
Speaker 3: a real thing. We do the same thing with China sometimes,
1:07:47
Speaker 3: where we assume that Chinese nationalism is this kind of artificial,
1:07:51
Speaker 3: synthetic construction of the Chinese Communist Party, which certainly contributes
1:07:55
Speaker 3: to it. But Chinese nationalism is also a real thing.
1:07:58
Speaker 3: It's a real organic thing among the China. These people,
1:08:00
Speaker 3: they really prefer their own country and their own civilization,
1:08:03
Speaker 3: their own language, their own way of doing things. And
1:08:06
Speaker 3: they don't look at Italy or France or the United
1:08:09
Speaker 3: States and say we wish we could be just like that.
1:08:13
Speaker 3: They say we wish we're that wealthy, We wish I
1:08:14
Speaker 3: had that kind of power. In some of that prestige
1:08:16
Speaker 3: and some of the options that we have for being
1:08:18
Speaker 3: the kind of country we are. But they don't want
1:08:20
Speaker 3: to be us. They want to be them. And Trump is,
1:08:24
Speaker 3: you know, he's an example of all liars think that
1:08:25
Speaker 3: everyone's a liar, all cheaters think everyone's a cheater, and
1:08:30
Speaker 3: all you know, shallow, low iq megalomaniacs think that the
1:08:34
Speaker 3: world is run by shallow, low iq megalomaniacs.
1:08:37
Speaker 1: Right, So ultimately it becomes who's got influence on Trump?
1:08:42
Speaker 1: And one group of people that has influence on Trump
1:08:45
Speaker 1: are the Gulf States. At some point, they're going to
1:08:49
Speaker 1: get tired of this too. They are tired of this,
1:08:51
Speaker 1: and they've been in this sort of I am. I
1:08:55
Speaker 1: think that there are some that wanted this, and I
1:08:58
Speaker 1: think there's some that didn't, but they were of the mindset,
1:09:02
Speaker 1: if you're going to do it, go all the way,
1:09:03
Speaker 1: don't do it the way you've done it, right, which
1:09:08
Speaker 1: I sort of, uh, I sort of respect that that
1:09:12
Speaker 1: mindset I think that, you know, which is don't do
1:09:15
Speaker 1: this half asked. Well, he did it half assed, and
1:09:17
Speaker 1: now they've got a worse situation.
1:09:20
Speaker 3: But they have enance percuture that of the UAE, you know,
1:09:24
Speaker 3: I think if you look at the UAE's recent decision
1:09:26
Speaker 3: to leave Opek, well they had.
1:09:28
Speaker 1: More to lose in this with with this straight shut down,
1:09:31
Speaker 1: more than anybody. I mean, Saudi's at least have other
1:09:33
Speaker 1: ways to sell their oil.
1:09:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, that gives you a real good indication I think
1:09:37
Speaker 3: of where their heads are at, and they're saying, our
1:09:39
Speaker 3: future is not with Saudi Arabia, and our future is
1:09:42
Speaker 3: not with being an oil dominated economy, which their GDP
1:09:47
Speaker 3: is less than fifty percent oil and petroleum these days anyway,
1:09:50
Speaker 3: so I think it's down to like twenty seven percent
1:09:52
Speaker 3: or something. So that's a pretty good number for that
1:09:55
Speaker 3: they're looking. They're looking away from that world and toward
1:09:57
Speaker 3: toward the future. That's it's a bit different. But then
1:09:59
Speaker 3: they've got the fanatical, you know, semi medieval regime across
1:10:03
Speaker 3: the water they've got to deal.
1:10:04
Speaker 1: With, and Abu Dabi's home to one of the largest
1:10:09
Speaker 1: Iranian diasporas outside of la really, so they have influence
1:10:14
Speaker 1: on Trump. What would that look like if they and
1:10:19
Speaker 1: and what at this point my guess is they will.
1:10:21
Speaker 1: They are now going to have to tolerate a regime
1:10:27
Speaker 1: that's essentially not friendly for the medium term, and I
1:10:32
Speaker 1: think that they thought, well, maybe this was going to
1:10:34
Speaker 1: come to an end sooner rather than later.
1:10:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that they probably in spite of direct experience,
1:10:43
Speaker 3: didn't expect the administration to be quite as irresponsible as
1:10:45
Speaker 3: it has been. I suspect that they thought there was
1:10:48
Speaker 3: more of a program there that I mean, maybe Trump
1:10:51
Speaker 3: couldn't spell it out because he's He's Trump, but that
1:10:54
Speaker 3: we had more of a strategy and an end goal
1:10:57
Speaker 3: in mind of what we wanted. And I suspect what
1:11:00
Speaker 3: they were really betting on was was regime change, because
1:11:03
Speaker 3: there have been these popular uprisings in Iran that have
1:11:07
Speaker 3: been crushed, but they seem to be getting stronger each
1:11:09
Speaker 3: time there's a new wave of them, and the response
1:11:11
Speaker 3: is necessary to stomp them back down have been more
1:11:14
Speaker 3: vicious and bloody and wide reaching each time. And I
1:11:19
Speaker 3: suspect that what they were thinking was that the United
1:11:21
Speaker 3: States was going to unleash this in some way. That
1:11:26
Speaker 3: was going to be our goal. We're going to take
1:11:28
Speaker 3: out the leadership, which we did take out of a
1:11:29
Speaker 3: lot of leadership.
1:11:30
Speaker 1: Well, it's certainly what it's certainly the case BB apparently
1:11:32
Speaker 1: made to Trump and Trump even though if you want
1:11:36
Speaker 1: to believe, and this is always one of those where
1:11:38
Speaker 1: it could be some cover your ass hindsight, But if
1:11:44
Speaker 1: you were to believe the New York Times reporting on
1:11:47
Speaker 1: this that our intelligence community did not buy what BB
1:11:52
Speaker 1: was selling, but Trump thought it anyway.
1:11:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and again I think that's you know, Trump
1:11:57
Speaker 3: expecting the other people to be like him. So if
1:12:00
Speaker 3: you're the number two guy in Trump's view of the world,
1:12:03
Speaker 3: what you're really praying for someone to take out the
1:12:04
Speaker 3: number one guy so you can step up, and he didn't.
1:12:08
Speaker 3: I think really consider the possibility that there is this
1:12:11
Speaker 3: religious and political movement in Iran that is very very
1:12:15
Speaker 3: deeply entrenched that makes the number two guy or the
1:12:18
Speaker 3: number three or whatever we're down to after that opening
1:12:21
Speaker 3: fusillade a lot like the guy you got rid of.
1:12:24
Speaker 3: You know, it's not going to be like Venezuela, where
1:12:26
Speaker 3: you're basically promoting some capo in a crime family to
1:12:32
Speaker 3: godfather's status and doing business with him. That you're going
1:12:34
Speaker 3: to get another guy who's a lot like the last guy.
1:12:35
Speaker 3: And if you killed this guy, you another guy who's
1:12:37
Speaker 3: a lot like him. And because it's a more legitimate
1:12:43
Speaker 3: if you understand what I mean by legitimate, not in
1:12:45
Speaker 3: the sense of democratic legitimacy, but it's a more real, organic,
1:12:50
Speaker 3: deeply planted, deeply rooted political movement. It's not, I think,
1:12:54
Speaker 3: a majority movement in Iran. From what I understand. I
1:12:57
Speaker 3: think that ideologically and philosophically speaking, their government is a
1:13:00
Speaker 3: minority government in most ways. But it's not a tiny minority,
1:13:04
Speaker 3: you know, it's a It's a large enough swath of
1:13:07
Speaker 3: Iranian society supports this regime largely, you know, religious people
1:13:12
Speaker 3: in economically undeveloped rural backwaters in Aram where their real
1:13:16
Speaker 3: basis support is, which makes it a lot luck the
1:13:18
Speaker 3: Trump administration. Actually, as I observed earlier that.
1:13:21
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, I mean, but the fact
1:13:23
Speaker 1: of the matter is this is true with Airdowan and Turkey,
1:13:26
Speaker 1: his basic supporters and the rural. It was true of Chavez.
1:13:32
Speaker 1: That's how we grabbed power was using basically running against Caracas.
1:13:36
Speaker 1: I mean, it is something that I've been concerned about.
1:13:39
Speaker 1: I've been concerned about with our country is that suddenly
1:13:42
Speaker 1: we look like a lot of failed states. We look
1:13:46
Speaker 1: like we're on our way to where the failed small
1:13:48
Speaker 1: de democracy states have looked like which is this massive
1:13:51
Speaker 1: divide between urban and rural develops into this angry movement
1:13:57
Speaker 1: that topples the wealthy.
1:13:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, in States, we have this tendency to
1:14:01
Speaker 3: want to compare ourselves to the other English speaking countries.
1:14:03
Speaker 3: So where's the US versus the UK or Canada.
1:14:07
Speaker 1: We don't want to pretend where we could we could
1:14:10
Speaker 1: become a Venezuela or a Turkey.
1:14:12
Speaker 3: Well yeah, if you think about American sort of society
1:14:15
Speaker 3: and politics and our kind of deep structure, we're a
1:14:19
Speaker 3: lot more like Brazil than we are like the UK
1:14:24
Speaker 3: or Australia or New Zealand or some place like that,
1:14:26
Speaker 3: these little countries. You know, We're a big, complicated, diverse
1:14:31
Speaker 3: country with a lot of very very lively social fissures.
1:14:35
Speaker 3: The urban rule one is a very very important one.
1:14:38
Speaker 3: And it's just not very much like being in Auckland,
1:14:42
Speaker 3: you know, or Toronto. It's a different world here. And
1:14:47
Speaker 3: you know, I began my career working in India, and
1:14:51
Speaker 3: there's a lot about American politics. He reminds me of
1:14:53
Speaker 3: Indian politics in a lot of ways. There's a kind
1:14:56
Speaker 3: of very messy politics.
1:14:57
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:14:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, the populations has the same kind of fla there's
1:15:01
Speaker 3: regional stuff. The regional stuff, of course, is a lot
1:15:03
Speaker 3: more complicated than ours. The urban rural stuff is a
1:15:06
Speaker 3: huge thing. The phenomenon of moneyed urbanites railing against the
1:15:11
Speaker 3: so called elites which they are is a good way
1:15:17
Speaker 3: to get ahead there. And so yeah, I don't see
1:15:21
Speaker 3: Mody and Trump as being two very radically different kinds
1:15:24
Speaker 3: of figures.
1:15:28
Speaker 1: Well, I think politically he's in such a bad place
1:15:35
Speaker 1: because of this war. Do you believe it's constraining it's
1:15:39
Speaker 1: constraining some of his decision making.
1:15:42
Speaker 3: I don't, actually, I think maybe three or four months
1:15:45
Speaker 3: ago it probably was, I mean, not the war, but
1:15:48
Speaker 3: his other sorts of more general political problems in his
1:15:51
Speaker 3: declining popularity were probably more on his mind then, I
1:15:55
Speaker 3: think than they are now. I kind of suspect, from
1:15:59
Speaker 3: my few conversations with people in that orbit have have
1:16:02
Speaker 3: given some support to this, that they've just assumed that
1:16:06
Speaker 3: a real, real, serious ass whipping is just baked into
1:16:10
Speaker 3: the cake. At this point, they're going to wipe out
1:16:12
Speaker 3: in the mid terms. They're talking about losing that Senate
1:16:16
Speaker 3: race in Texas possibly, and which I still don't think
1:16:20
Speaker 3: is very likely. But there are people in the Republican
1:16:23
Speaker 3: world who are seriously worried about that kind of thing.
1:16:26
Speaker 1: And I think Republicans a lot more money of Paxton's
1:16:30
Speaker 1: the nominee than of.
1:16:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that they just have
1:16:34
Speaker 3: decided that, Okay, well, we're screwed on this one already,
1:16:36
Speaker 3: so we don't really have to worry about it anymore
1:16:38
Speaker 3: because there's nothing we can do about it. It's just
1:16:40
Speaker 3: going to be a whipping and that's going to be a.
1:16:43
Speaker 1: Well, if that is the case, then he he ought
1:16:46
Speaker 1: to be using more tools than he's using.
1:16:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't well, I think their math, probably Trump's math,
1:16:53
Speaker 3: I think looks like this. He thinks you're going to
1:16:55
Speaker 3: lose the House, which they probably are, and they're going
1:16:58
Speaker 3: to get some a worse performance in the Senate then
1:17:00
Speaker 3: they expect it. But it's not going to be the
1:17:03
Speaker 3: case that there's going to be enough votes in the
1:17:04
Speaker 3: Senate to remove him from office if he's impeached, which
1:17:07
Speaker 3: you will be impeached again when there's the Democratic majority
1:17:09
Speaker 3: in the House and should be by the way, I
1:17:11
Speaker 3: will say, there's ten different good reasons to impeach the guy,
1:17:15
Speaker 3: just from this time around.
1:17:16
Speaker 1: Okay, let's let's pause right here. Is not going to
1:17:19
Speaker 1: get removed, Okay. I don't think it's if you don't
1:17:23
Speaker 1: have the votes. I don't think you should do it.
1:17:26
Speaker 1: And I've actually had it. It's funny. You're going to
1:17:28
Speaker 1: get some out of boys from some of my some
1:17:31
Speaker 1: of my audiences who I've been getting a lot of
1:17:33
Speaker 1: questions and been pushing back on it. They're like, you,
1:17:35
Speaker 1: you make the case for him to be impeached, but
1:17:37
Speaker 1: you argue against it. And I'm like, well, don't do
1:17:39
Speaker 1: it a third time if you don't have the votes.
1:17:41
Speaker 1: And I would argue, don't do it until you've got
1:17:44
Speaker 1: Republicans wanting to do it first. That if you pursue
1:17:47
Speaker 1: a third one, you know, you get defined by this,
1:17:51
Speaker 1: and I don't think it does you any good if
1:17:55
Speaker 1: you care about winning in twenty eight.
1:17:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not much of a political calculator. I'm dumb
1:18:00
Speaker 3: enough to think that you should just do what you
1:18:01
Speaker 3: think is the right thing.
1:18:02
Speaker 1: I hear you, I know, and damn you with you
1:18:05
Speaker 1: in your right thing to do well?
1:18:07
Speaker 3: You know, I mean. Luckily for me, I'm a journalist
1:18:10
Speaker 3: and an opinion writer. I don't have to run for
1:18:12
Speaker 3: office or organize campaigns or do things like that. And
1:18:16
Speaker 3: so I have the luxury of being able to say,
1:18:18
Speaker 3: I think you should just do what you think the
1:18:20
Speaker 3: right thing is. And I've a little sidebar here, but
1:18:25
Speaker 3: we have a real plague of cleverness in our politics.
1:18:28
Speaker 3: You know, all of us expensively educated people with liberal
1:18:32
Speaker 3: arts backgrounds and kind of a high degree of verbal dexterity.
1:18:36
Speaker 3: We put such a huge premium on this kind of
1:18:39
Speaker 3: very shallow form of cleverness and trying to think three
1:18:41
Speaker 3: steps ahead about what's, you know, politically good practice and
1:18:44
Speaker 3: what's not. And I think we defeat ourselves very very
1:18:48
Speaker 3: often in doing this. We get worse outcomes than we would.
1:18:51
Speaker 3: I think people in Congress should vote for what they
1:18:52
Speaker 3: think is right and say the right things, say what
1:18:55
Speaker 3: they actually believe in, and let people vote for them
1:18:57
Speaker 3: or against them. And most of them have the opportunity
1:18:59
Speaker 3: to go all sorts of other good jobs. They want
1:19:01
Speaker 3: to do something else in life, probably not cash, but
1:19:03
Speaker 3: tell but maybe everyone else, and just go do what
1:19:07
Speaker 3: you think is right and let the chips for all
1:19:09
Speaker 3: m It's not that hard. Occasionally I'll write a column
1:19:13
Speaker 3: where I write a speech for a politician where this
1:19:15
Speaker 3: is what you should actually say if you were willing
1:19:18
Speaker 3: to go out and tell the truth about things. And
1:19:20
Speaker 3: I think in almost every case, every time I've written
1:19:23
Speaker 3: in that column, the speech I wrote for them would
1:19:26
Speaker 3: have been politically better than the one they ended up giving.
1:19:29
Speaker 3: Not only would it be them telling the truth about
1:19:31
Speaker 3: things and saying what they actually think. I think ultimately,
1:19:33
Speaker 3: politically that's probably easier too, because we're not as clever
1:19:36
Speaker 3: as we think we are. I know a lot of
1:19:38
Speaker 3: political speech writers. I've known a lot of political speech
1:19:40
Speaker 3: writers over the year. Some of them are great people, very
1:19:42
Speaker 3: smart people, as smart as they think they are. My
1:19:47
Speaker 3: father this expression not a very nice expression, but I'd
1:19:50
Speaker 3: like to buy him for what he's worth and sell
1:19:51
Speaker 3: him for what he thinks he's worth. And that has
1:19:54
Speaker 3: been my voice a lot of Washington life.
1:19:58
Speaker 1: Yeah you'd make a fortune that Trump. Yeah, well, I
1:20:04
Speaker 1: I look, I don't I go back to let's let's
1:20:07
Speaker 1: go back to the political constraints. If he's not allowing
1:20:11
Speaker 1: his the political constraints to constrain him, then what is
1:20:16
Speaker 1: constraining him? Because arguably the way out of this is
1:20:20
Speaker 1: to get control of the strait send in some ground
1:20:25
Speaker 1: troops on those islands, not all the way into the country,
1:20:27
Speaker 1: but enough to secure the coastline and secure the straight
1:20:31
Speaker 1: and essentially say and yes, it would probably mean more
1:20:36
Speaker 1: body bags, it would probably mean trips to Dover. It
1:20:39
Speaker 1: is not without a huge cost and probably worse politics,
1:20:44
Speaker 1: probably another Senate seat. You know, maybe it's it's four
1:20:48
Speaker 1: or five or six instead of three borderline four. But
1:20:55
Speaker 1: he might actually accomplish something.
1:20:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the what's constraining him. And again, I
1:21:01
Speaker 3: promise I don't say this stuff to get her eyes
1:21:03
Speaker 3: out of people. I just think it's where things are
1:21:06
Speaker 3: that in addition to being dumb, he's also lazy, and
1:21:08
Speaker 3: he's also a coward, and he's just afraid of taking
1:21:11
Speaker 3: the risk of doing the things that you that you
1:21:12
Speaker 3: need to do.
1:21:13
Speaker 1: He cares a lot about I've always that's how I
1:21:15
Speaker 1: reassure some of my worried friends. I'm like, he's too
1:21:18
Speaker 1: lazy to be Hitler.
1:21:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, as Jonah Goldberg always says, Hitler could have repealed
1:21:22
Speaker 3: Obobacare you know.
1:21:24
Speaker 1: But remember is that too soon? Are we allowed to
1:21:27
Speaker 1: laugh at that?
1:21:28
Speaker 3: Yeah? I don't know, but you know, because he doesn't
1:21:32
Speaker 3: want to have people on whatever his social media thing
1:21:34
Speaker 3: is looking at videos of a ten thousand dollar mind
1:21:36
Speaker 3: destroying a billion dollar warship and it's sinking into the
1:21:40
Speaker 3: into the strait and having to explain that. So, I mean,
1:21:46
Speaker 3: the stupidity and the laziness and the cowardice were really
1:21:49
Speaker 3: his saving grace in the first administration. It is what
1:21:51
Speaker 3: kept him from being worse than he was. He was
1:21:53
Speaker 3: just simply not that ambitious, and to the extent that
1:21:55
Speaker 3: he was ambitious, he didn't know like where the keys
1:21:57
Speaker 3: to the executive restroom were, so it took him a
1:21:59
Speaker 3: long time to pick your step out.
1:22:10
Speaker 1: I always said, Mike Penson writes, previous actually didn't give
1:22:13
Speaker 1: him the keys to the restaurant. They actually, in some
1:22:16
Speaker 1: ways proverbially, they at least stock the administration with semi
1:22:20
Speaker 1: competent people.
1:22:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna go on my whole Mike Pence thing here.
1:22:25
Speaker 3: But he did manage to grow a conscience in the
1:22:27
Speaker 3: last eight minutes he was in office or whatever it was.
1:22:29
Speaker 1: You know, again, it's the it's the tallest person in
1:22:33
Speaker 1: the little people room.
1:22:34
Speaker 3: But yeah, but yeah, I think Trump is worried about
1:22:40
Speaker 3: what that kind of encounter would look like. He also
1:22:43
Speaker 3: doesn't want to have to suffer the low to his
1:22:46
Speaker 3: vanity of essentially doing all the things he said he
1:22:50
Speaker 3: would never do, which is getting us involved in an
1:22:52
Speaker 3: open ended engagement in the Middle East. It amounts to
1:22:56
Speaker 3: an occupational that it would be a kind of naval
1:22:57
Speaker 3: occupation rather than a ground occupational. There'll probably a round
1:23:00
Speaker 3: occupation too in some ways, and casting a tremendous amount
1:23:04
Speaker 3: of money with no obvious benefit insight. And he can't say, well,
1:23:08
Speaker 3: we took the oil because you're not going to be
1:23:10
Speaker 3: able to take the.
1:23:10
Speaker 1: Oil, right, Well, why do you think this will eventually
1:23:19
Speaker 1: fracture his coalition or not?
1:23:26
Speaker 3: No, I don't, And I think that the reason for
1:23:29
Speaker 3: that is but that the Trump movement is essentially a
1:23:31
Speaker 3: personality cult, and they have the cultist's ability to create
1:23:40
Speaker 3: new stories for themselves in which the good guys and
1:23:42
Speaker 3: the bad guys always say the same. So I went
1:23:44
Speaker 3: down to Texas a couple of months ago, a couple
1:23:46
Speaker 3: of month and a half ago, to write about the
1:23:49
Speaker 3: Senate race down there, the Democratic and Republican primaries, and
1:23:52
Speaker 3: I talked to some soybean farmers. Soybean farming is not
1:23:55
Speaker 3: huge in Texas, but I've been writing about soybean farmers
1:23:57
Speaker 3: for a while since the last Trump and at Trump
1:24:00
Speaker 3: they should be they end up in there. Nope, we
1:24:03
Speaker 3: like the guy. We think he's trying to do the
1:24:04
Speaker 3: right thing. Yes, it stinks for us that our exports
1:24:07
Speaker 3: have been so messed up when we really blame the
1:24:09
Speaker 3: Chinese and not Trump so much. And if it means
1:24:12
Speaker 3: supporting someone like Kamala Harris or or someone like that instead,
1:24:16
Speaker 3: they're just not going to do it. And you know,
1:24:19
Speaker 3: we've got little I don't like the whole rhetoric about
1:24:22
Speaker 3: you know, little family farms versus big, terrible, great, big agribusinesses,
1:24:26
Speaker 3: because agribusinesses where the values really created in farming. But
1:24:30
Speaker 3: we've got a lot of little family farms around the
1:24:32
Speaker 3: country right now that are closing up operations and getting
1:24:34
Speaker 3: ready to build condos or whatever they're going to do
1:24:36
Speaker 3: on their land because fertilizer prices have doubled or tripled
1:24:40
Speaker 3: in some places, and they consume a lot of fuel.
1:24:43
Speaker 3: You know, it takes a lot of gas and stuff
1:24:44
Speaker 3: to run those irrigation systems. And there's pretty good story
1:24:48
Speaker 3: in the New York Times other day about was this
1:24:49
Speaker 3: farm called butter Ridge or something like that, a little
1:24:51
Speaker 3: family owned dairy that just you know, they started losing
1:24:54
Speaker 3: one thousand dollars a day that they were in operations,
1:24:57
Speaker 3: largely having to do with trade disruptions and then around
1:25:00
Speaker 3: and they should be a little bit about this stuff.
1:25:03
Speaker 3: But it's just not the case. We always assume this,
1:25:05
Speaker 3: but there's really no good evidence for the proposition that
1:25:08
Speaker 3: people actually vote in a calculating way that alliance with
1:25:11
Speaker 3: their short term economic interest. That's not how people vote.
1:25:14
Speaker 3: Voting is a cultural thing. It's a matter of sort
1:25:17
Speaker 3: of social affiliation, and it's much more like choosing a
1:25:22
Speaker 3: church than it is like filing your taxes. It's it's
1:25:27
Speaker 3: it's a sense of who they are.
1:25:31
Speaker 1: I and maybe I was. I grew up with in
1:25:33
Speaker 1: a weird household which was mixed politics, so it was
1:25:37
Speaker 1: always sort of encouraged that, you know, you sort of
1:25:41
Speaker 1: could be you know, at a conservative father and a
1:25:43
Speaker 1: liberal mother, and they talked about it. You know, it
1:25:47
Speaker 1: was just sort of a fairly normal that's what I
1:25:50
Speaker 1: thought was normal. But I never I never thought of
1:25:53
Speaker 1: in the eighties of politics as religion the way it
1:25:57
Speaker 1: is now in the twenty first.
1:25:58
Speaker 3: Century, because religion isn't religion anymore.
1:26:01
Speaker 4: You know, if you look at what I say that
1:26:04
Speaker 4: this idea in church evangelicals that we have as we've
1:26:08
Speaker 4: lost faith literally as a society, we've clung to our
1:26:13
Speaker 4: political parties.
1:26:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're not a real good substitute, as it.
1:26:17
Speaker 1: Turns out, terrible. Yeah, they are least religion tried to
1:26:20
Speaker 1: teach a moral code. What moral code do you get
1:26:24
Speaker 1: from politicians?
1:26:25
Speaker 3: Well, the Republican Party used to be a pretty morally
1:26:27
Speaker 3: based party. What was it against polygamy and slavery? I mean,
1:26:30
Speaker 3: that's really why you got a Republican Party back in
1:26:32
Speaker 3: the day. Granted that's been some time. They've gone through
1:26:35
Speaker 3: some iterations since then. And but they were a party.
1:26:40
Speaker 3: They're a party of New England Puritans. They had a
1:26:43
Speaker 3: profoundly moralistic streak in them, and.
1:26:47
Speaker 1: They left because the Whigs weren't moral enough. Yeah, on
1:26:50
Speaker 1: the on the most important question of the day.
1:26:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh and now look at God. I'm just
1:26:58
Speaker 3: so I'm one of the things in life I'm embarrassed
1:27:01
Speaker 3: about is I didn't have a real long period in
1:27:03
Speaker 3: my life when I had like a really strong sense
1:27:05
Speaker 3: of Republican partisanship. I think, I want to say it
1:27:08
Speaker 3: lasted from about maybe nineteen ninety four in the Gingrich
1:27:11
Speaker 3: election to about two thousand or so. And I remember
1:27:16
Speaker 3: I quit the Republican Party over Arlen Spector, which now
1:27:19
Speaker 3: in retrospect just seems quinet.
1:27:21
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like small what So explain, explain,
1:27:25
Speaker 1: explain your journey away from the GOP that this Specter was. So.
1:27:28
Speaker 3: I knew him a little bit because I was a
1:27:30
Speaker 3: newspaper editor in Pennsylvania and his daughter in law, I guess,
1:27:33
Speaker 3: was the chairman of my local Republican Party there in
1:27:35
Speaker 3: Montgomery County in the Philadelphia suburbs. And he was just
1:27:38
Speaker 3: such an obvious, neolistic, self serving weasel who didn't believe
1:27:43
Speaker 3: in anything and would say or do whatever he thought
1:27:45
Speaker 3: it would take to you know, move him one degree
1:27:47
Speaker 3: up the ladder. And then you had challenge to him
1:27:52
Speaker 3: from to me and the Republicans just you know, they
1:27:57
Speaker 3: would not get on board with it. Now, I remember,
1:27:59
Speaker 3: of all people, and this is something else they feel
1:28:02
Speaker 3: kind of guilty. But I remember talking to John Cornyn
1:28:04
Speaker 3: about it when corn I Guess was the chairman of
1:28:06
Speaker 3: the National Republican Senate Committee or whatever, and he was saying,
1:28:11
Speaker 3: you know, I get mad at Arland too. I find
1:28:13
Speaker 3: him very frustrating in all this. And I said, well,
1:28:16
Speaker 3: are you mad enough to back to me in a
1:28:17
Speaker 3: primary challenge? And he said, well, he got real weasily
1:28:20
Speaker 3: about it, and he said, well is he going to run?
1:28:22
Speaker 3: It's before he's in the race. And I was like, okay,
1:28:25
Speaker 3: that's the only answer I need, you know, That's all
1:28:27
Speaker 3: I need to hear from you. And so I was
1:28:29
Speaker 3: one of those people who thought that John Cornyn wasn't
1:28:31
Speaker 3: hardcore enough back in the day. And now, of course,
1:28:34
Speaker 3: even though he's pretty trumping and pretty awful in a
1:28:36
Speaker 3: lot of ways, he is kind of a semi responsible,
1:28:38
Speaker 3: grown up, halfway patriotic, halfway decent human being that the
1:28:42
Speaker 3: Republican Party could desperately use more of. So I was
1:28:45
Speaker 3: part of the problem. I probably am still part of
1:28:47
Speaker 3: the problem in some ways, but I'm not part of
1:28:49
Speaker 3: the Republican problem because I haven't been affiliated with that
1:28:52
Speaker 3: party in more than twenty years.
1:28:53
Speaker 1: Now, do you want to you consider yourself a what
1:28:58
Speaker 1: kind of conservative would you call yourself?
1:29:02
Speaker 3: Just you know, conservative is a good word, I think,
1:29:04
Speaker 3: I mean, if I'm talking about people sort of understand,
1:29:06
Speaker 3: you know, political terminology a little bit. I would describe
1:29:10
Speaker 3: myself as a liberal, but you know, a liberal in
1:29:12
Speaker 3: the in the Adam Smith right economist.
1:29:15
Speaker 1: This is what frustrates me about labels, because I consider
1:29:18
Speaker 1: myself a liberal as far as rite political debate and pluralism.
1:29:25
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm an incrementalist, which some people would
1:29:27
Speaker 1: describe as a conservative.
1:29:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe time to describe myself as an Eisenhower
1:29:33
Speaker 3: anarchist in the sense that I have. I have sort
1:29:36
Speaker 3: of abstract policy views that are pretty radically libertarian on
1:29:39
Speaker 3: some things, although maybe getting a little less so as
1:29:42
Speaker 3: I come to trust the American people less and less
1:29:44
Speaker 3: as the days go by. But if you ask me
1:29:46
Speaker 3: about you know, what do I think about drugs? Or
1:29:48
Speaker 3: what do I think about prostitution? Or what do I
1:29:50
Speaker 3: think about education or social security? I'm still apt to
1:29:53
Speaker 3: give you some pretty hardcore libertarian answers. Driver's license no
1:29:59
Speaker 3: if you want in the West, though, it's Dwight eyes now.
1:30:03
Speaker 3: And because I want that sort of incrementalist slow let's
1:30:07
Speaker 3: not get carried away with ourselves. We like ideas, but
1:30:11
Speaker 3: we also live in a world that's not dominated only
1:30:13
Speaker 3: by ideas. So let's deal with the stuff we actually
1:30:16
Speaker 3: have in front of us. We have a country that
1:30:18
Speaker 3: seems to work pretty well most of the time. It's
1:30:20
Speaker 3: produced a pretty good life for a lot of people.
1:30:22
Speaker 3: Maybe don't go, you know, knocking down Cheshington's fence before
1:30:25
Speaker 3: you figure out what it was built for in the
1:30:27
Speaker 3: first place. And so I do like incrementalism, I do
1:30:31
Speaker 3: like slowness. I am anti revolution I do not like
1:30:35
Speaker 3: all of the revolutionary rhetoric you get in the Republican Party.
1:30:39
Speaker 3: One of the places where I really party company with
1:30:41
Speaker 3: with Bill Buckley, who was one of my heroes, would
1:30:43
Speaker 3: he would he would refer to himself as a radical
1:30:45
Speaker 3: conservative a lot of the time, And I don't think
1:30:48
Speaker 3: there's any such thing as a radical conservative.
1:30:49
Speaker 1: It can't be both. I agree, Yeah, I.
1:30:51
Speaker 3: Understand what he meant by it, but I don't think
1:30:55
Speaker 3: there's any such thing as a radical conservative. So if
1:30:57
Speaker 3: I'd been around, you know, for the Goldwater elect and
1:31:00
Speaker 3: I'm sure probably would have been a gold Water guy.
1:31:03
Speaker 3: If I've been around active in politics in seventy nine eighty,
1:31:06
Speaker 3: I'm sure I would have been a Reagan guy. But
1:31:10
Speaker 3: if I'm looking back on it from the point of
1:31:12
Speaker 3: view of where we are now, and being a little
1:31:14
Speaker 3: older and a little less, I have to get carried
1:31:17
Speaker 3: away with things. I might feel a little guilty about
1:31:19
Speaker 3: some of that stuff. Do you also dan billboards? If
1:31:23
Speaker 3: I could, I hate billboards. That's my least libertarian position.
1:31:28
Speaker 3: She could rid of billboards? Well, I live in town.
1:31:32
Speaker 1: But when do you see billboards when you're on the interstates?
1:31:35
Speaker 1: I mean, in a weird way. It's what keeps like
1:31:39
Speaker 1: a good I like a good lung drive. We drive
1:31:41
Speaker 1: to Florida quite a bit from Virginia, and I find
1:31:45
Speaker 1: the billboards. I mean, first of all, I love I
1:31:47
Speaker 1: love seeing the more unique ways trial lawyers try to
1:31:51
Speaker 1: get you to call up their number, or how many
1:31:55
Speaker 1: different ways they can tell you that Jesus is going
1:31:57
Speaker 1: to save you, or how many I mean, I find
1:32:00
Speaker 1: billboards weirdly telling about what people are seeing. And I
1:32:07
Speaker 1: don't know. I I think I get something from them
1:32:10
Speaker 1: when I'm on the interstate. But maybe I'm a weirdo.
1:32:13
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, if I ever win, like a billion dollar
1:32:16
Speaker 3: power ball or something, I will I live in a
1:32:18
Speaker 3: pretty small little town, and I will buy every marijuana
1:32:22
Speaker 3: dispensary and vape shop in my town and just turn
1:32:24
Speaker 3: them into bakeries or something, and I just hate having
1:32:27
Speaker 3: them around. I've got little bit of kids I don't like.
1:32:29
Speaker 3: I don't like having that out there. So yeah, I'm
1:32:31
Speaker 3: getting to be a crusty, old, get off my lawn guy.
1:32:34
Speaker 3: I think fatherhood has done that to me as well
1:32:36
Speaker 3: as age.
1:32:37
Speaker 1: So if you're a conservative without a home and without
1:32:41
Speaker 1: a party, sure, I look at the and you we
1:32:46
Speaker 1: just got done talking about how we do not compare
1:32:49
Speaker 1: well to the countries we like to compare ourselves to,
1:32:52
Speaker 1: for instance, the UK. But I'm obsessed with what's going
1:32:56
Speaker 1: on over there in their politics and the fact that
1:32:58
Speaker 1: the two major parties are about to become minor parties.
1:33:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:33:03
Speaker 1: Now, obviously we have a system that makes that much
1:33:05
Speaker 1: harder here. But I do believe if six major figures
1:33:10
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party all left together and said we're
1:33:15
Speaker 1: starting a new party, the Democrats would disappear the next day.
1:33:19
Speaker 1: And I think it's that. I think the brand is
1:33:23
Speaker 1: that fragile, and I think it's that potentially, And if
1:33:26
Speaker 1: Donald Trump said he was renaming the Republican Party, you know,
1:33:29
Speaker 1: the Trump Mega Party, I'd say seventy percent of elected
1:33:33
Speaker 1: Republicans would switch their party affiliations. Point being is, I
1:33:36
Speaker 1: don't think either party has that much of a weirdly,
1:33:42
Speaker 1: even though they're sort of we're stuck with them. This
1:33:45
Speaker 1: duopoly and ballot access make them sort of feel necessary.
1:33:51
Speaker 1: Yet I feel like they could disappear tomorrow if a
1:33:55
Speaker 1: bunch of people held hands and left.
1:33:58
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, Trump's one really smart political thing he
1:34:00
Speaker 3: ever did was that he ran the Ross Pero campaign
1:34:03
Speaker 3: inside the Republican Party rather than his a third party candidate.
1:34:06
Speaker 3: That's what he did. He ran the Paro campaign. He
1:34:08
Speaker 3: was his one great political inside. But the parties really
1:34:11
Speaker 3: don't matter very much. They matter less than they did
1:34:14
Speaker 3: before Trump was elected in twenty sixteen.
1:34:18
Speaker 1: Celebrity goals right now, right.
1:34:20
Speaker 3: Celebrity is a very very powerful thing in American life.
1:34:23
Speaker 3: And Trump's a real celebrity. He's not like I used
1:34:25
Speaker 3: to be on Fox News guy. You know, he's not
1:34:27
Speaker 3: Pete Hegseth. He's a real celebrity. And that's a huge thing.
1:34:30
Speaker 3: It's bigger on the Republican side than it is on
1:34:32
Speaker 3: the Democratic side because Democrats are more used to being
1:34:34
Speaker 3: around celebrities than Republicans are. Because they've got like you know,
1:34:37
Speaker 3: Pat say Jack and Scott Bao and Kid Rock and
1:34:40
Speaker 3: Ted Nugent and that's pretty much the end of their
1:34:42
Speaker 3: celebrity list. But I think the Democrats could be celebrity
1:34:47
Speaker 3: dominated to if Taylor Swift decided to run for president. Yeah.
1:34:50
Speaker 3: The decline of the parties has been a huge loss.
1:34:52
Speaker 3: You know, from a small R Republican point of view,
1:34:55
Speaker 3: you want these mediating institutions. You know, the death of newspapers,
1:35:00
Speaker 3: the death of political parties has made it very, very
1:35:03
Speaker 3: difficult to maintain the institutions of a country that is
1:35:09
Speaker 3: really founded in eighteenth and early nineteenth century political norms
1:35:12
Speaker 3: when things were run by political parties and newspapers, you know,
1:35:15
Speaker 3: the two big national institutions that mattered most to keeping
1:35:19
Speaker 3: our politics sort of orderly, to keep the aclocracy out
1:35:23
Speaker 3: of the democracy. Right.
1:35:24
Speaker 1: They weren't Qite gatekeepers, but they certainly were. They were
1:35:29
Speaker 1: people that at least stood in front of the openings
1:35:31
Speaker 1: that you had to build those over if you wanted
1:35:33
Speaker 1: it to break through the.
1:35:34
Speaker 3: Gate Yeah, and they mattered in subtle ways and in
1:35:40
Speaker 3: bigger ways, you know, And that's maybe a long conversation
1:35:44
Speaker 3: for another time. But not having those things, Well, what
1:35:48
Speaker 3: has gone into the void to fill that space? Well,
1:35:51
Speaker 3: it's been celebrity, like Donald Trump. It's been social media,
1:35:54
Speaker 3: which is kind of a minor mutant form of celebrity.
1:35:57
Speaker 3: It's it's Andy Warhol's Everyone's famous for fifteen in the
1:36:00
Speaker 3: future thing kind of made almost literally true. Literally Yeah,
1:36:05
Speaker 3: and like, as someone who was once the big trending
1:36:09
Speaker 3: topic on Twitter for twenty four hours, it's not that great,
1:36:14
Speaker 3: but some people really want that, and some people really
1:36:17
Speaker 3: care about that sort of thing.
1:36:17
Speaker 1: I can I can tell you trending on Twitter is
1:36:19
Speaker 1: never a good thing.
1:36:20
Speaker 3: Really.
1:36:20
Speaker 1: I don't ever think I've ever trended for a positive reason.
1:36:24
Speaker 3: Not usually. You know, I got a pivot ay and
1:36:27
Speaker 3: I don't use social media, but I saw that on
1:36:30
Speaker 3: I guess I use LinkedIn, and I saw that on
1:36:32
Speaker 3: LinkedIn someone a couple of tributes to James Baker that
1:36:35
Speaker 3: had been posted, and I thought, oh, no, James Baker
1:36:37
Speaker 3: has died, because that's the only time people do that.
1:36:39
Speaker 3: It was this his birthday. He was his ninety sixth birthday,
1:36:41
Speaker 3: I want to say, or something like that, ninety fourth birthday.
1:36:44
Speaker 3: And so every now and then, when you're the subject.
1:36:47
Speaker 3: It's okay because you've had an unusual birthday. Share will
1:36:51
Speaker 3: trend here in a little bit. When she turns eighty
1:36:53
Speaker 3: or whatever, it still looks like she's fifty years old. Yeah.
1:36:56
Speaker 1: No, I saw today Kurt Loder turned eighty one, and
1:36:59
Speaker 1: did hear That's amazing?
1:37:01
Speaker 3: Look that guy.
1:37:02
Speaker 1: That's one of those if you're of a certain generation,
1:37:04
Speaker 1: you're like, oh no, he's eighty one. Yeah, what does
1:37:06
Speaker 1: that mean for me?
1:37:08
Speaker 3: Nothing good.
1:37:09
Speaker 1: Let me get you out of here on this because
1:37:11
Speaker 1: I had a guest last week who floated progressive strategist,
1:37:15
Speaker 1: who floated Stephen Colbert for president, And there was a
1:37:19
Speaker 1: part of me that said, you know, Stephen Colbert versus
1:37:22
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlston, maybe the presidential campaign we deserve.
1:37:27
Speaker 3: You know, it's a shame that twenty sixteen Donald Trump
1:37:30
Speaker 3: versus Hillary Clinton was not a race for mayor of
1:37:33
Speaker 3: New York City. That would have been a good race.
1:37:36
Speaker 3: Either one of them might have been a pretty good
1:37:37
Speaker 3: mayor of New York, might have enjoyed the job, might
1:37:41
Speaker 3: have been good at it. I don't think Colbert is
1:37:46
Speaker 3: the celebrity likely to carry the progressive banner anytime in
1:37:50
Speaker 3: the near future, because he is too old, too white,
1:37:53
Speaker 3: and he's kind of yesterday's news ten years ago. Maybe
1:37:57
Speaker 3: he would have been a more formidable kind of character.
1:38:00
Speaker 1: I hear where you're going. I'm not sure I agree
1:38:02
Speaker 1: with you on that. I think progressive so badly want
1:38:05
Speaker 1: to win, they'll take almost any vehicle that would give
1:38:08
Speaker 1: him power. And I say this is not progressive, not
1:38:12
Speaker 1: Democrats generally. I'm talking about the progressive wing of the Democrats.
1:38:16
Speaker 3: I bet if I thought about it for a few minutes,
1:38:18
Speaker 3: I could think of celebrities who would be better at that.
1:38:20
Speaker 3: And I wasn't joking about together. Swift, Alic Swift could
1:38:22
Speaker 3: be president. She wanted to Yeah, there's she could. She
1:38:26
Speaker 3: could win forty states.
1:38:28
Speaker 1: Well, I just I guess to just wonder if this
1:38:30
Speaker 1: is our natural because if you actually look and not
1:38:32
Speaker 1: to and I want to land this plane here so
1:38:34
Speaker 1: I know you've got we both have other things to
1:38:36
Speaker 1: do with our lives. You could argue Eisenhower was sort
1:38:41
Speaker 1: of the first celebrity president, right, he was saved the world,
1:38:44
Speaker 1: and we brought.
1:38:44
Speaker 3: Him in and then literally wanted to nominate him.
1:38:47
Speaker 1: That's right, TV and celebrity, and then we basically celebrified
1:38:51
Speaker 1: the presidency all the way through, right, we were always
1:38:54
Speaker 1: looking for the next leading man, the next person in
1:38:58
Speaker 1: it was. It was a role almost we were looking for,
1:39:00
Speaker 1: and communication suddenly was a priority rather than the ability
1:39:06
Speaker 1: to do the job, rather than having any other skill set.
1:39:08
Speaker 1: Just simply having the ability to communicate is everything. And
1:39:13
Speaker 1: I feel like now we've taken that even further. There
1:39:17
Speaker 1: used to be some skill set that mattered. Oh, you
1:39:19
Speaker 1: need a governor, because at least a governor knows how
1:39:21
Speaker 1: to deal with legislatures. So that's what made Reagan work,
1:39:23
Speaker 1: and that's what made Clinton work, and that was the
1:39:26
Speaker 1: case for w and then it's like, now all you
1:39:29
Speaker 1: need is a communicator now, and if you get your
1:39:32
Speaker 1: majority in Congress, you can jam through whatever you want
1:39:35
Speaker 1: to get through. You can feel like you accomplished something
1:39:37
Speaker 1: until there's a revolt. The other party comes in undoes
1:39:40
Speaker 1: ninety percent of what you did and they try to
1:39:43
Speaker 1: do the same thing. I do fear that we are
1:39:47
Speaker 1: getting more efficient with our decision making when it comes
1:39:50
Speaker 1: for presidential politics, where ability is out the window. It
1:39:54
Speaker 1: is all going to be about who communicates and organizes
1:39:58
Speaker 1: the best. That's it.
1:40:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've for years, I've been trying to finish this book.
1:40:02
Speaker 3: I've been writing on idolatry and the American presidency. And
1:40:05
Speaker 3: there's a reason that kings are just the normal state
1:40:08
Speaker 3: of affairs everywhere in the world in human history. And
1:40:11
Speaker 3: there's the reason that king warship was widespread throughout the world,
1:40:15
Speaker 3: across different times, different civilizations, different continents. I think that
1:40:20
Speaker 3: the desire to look toward one person, this sort of
1:40:23
Speaker 3: father figure, to be the personification and embodiment of your
1:40:27
Speaker 3: nation and its ambitions and its moral values and its
1:40:31
Speaker 3: greatness and all the rest of that stuff is just
1:40:33
Speaker 3: kind of hardwired into people. It's cultures that don't have
1:40:38
Speaker 3: that are by far the exception rather than the rule.
1:40:41
Speaker 3: And we have to fight our way out of this
1:40:44
Speaker 3: primitivism every generation. You know, we're made of the same
1:40:48
Speaker 3: stuff that the first anatomically modern Homo sapiens were three
1:40:52
Speaker 3: hundred thousand years ago or maybe million years ago, depending
1:40:55
Speaker 3: on which dating system you're going off of.
1:40:57
Speaker 1: That we might be a little more muddish like than
1:41:00
Speaker 1: some of the previous iterations.
1:41:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're still barking at the moon though. And if
1:41:04
Speaker 3: you don't have you know, the uh it's it's the
1:41:08
Speaker 3: famous Hannah or rent Line about every civilization being invaded
1:41:11
Speaker 3: by barbarians every generation in the form of their children.
1:41:14
Speaker 3: It's it's true, and that's just that's that's who we are.
1:41:17
Speaker 3: We don't I don't believe that there's you know, progress
1:41:20
Speaker 3: in that sense. It's why I'm not a wig and
1:41:24
Speaker 3: we have we start from scratch every time there's a
1:41:26
Speaker 3: new person I've got. I've got four kids under the
1:41:30
Speaker 3: age of four, and they all started from scratch. They're
1:41:32
Speaker 3: all uncivilized little monsters when they come into the world,
1:41:35
Speaker 3: and you have to whip them into shape. And that's
1:41:38
Speaker 3: just how things are. And uh, we're not going to
1:41:40
Speaker 3: grow out of that. We have to have institutions and
1:41:43
Speaker 3: a sort of national memory and a civic memory and
1:41:46
Speaker 3: uh and a shared civic philosophy that elevates us out
1:41:49
Speaker 3: of that. You know, every successful country has an idea
1:41:53
Speaker 3: of itself and what it's about and what it's there for.
1:41:56
Speaker 3: We're different for most and that ours are really spelled
1:41:58
Speaker 3: out in these documents because not you know, kind of
1:42:01
Speaker 3: ethno state, we're not you know, the American race. But
1:42:07
Speaker 3: even countries that don't have that kind of literary aspect
1:42:10
Speaker 3: to their national history and their national founding and their
1:42:12
Speaker 3: founding story. And also we're a very modern country. You know,
1:42:15
Speaker 3: France has been around for a long time and we haven't.
1:42:20
Speaker 3: That idea has to be refreshed and renewed every generation.
1:42:23
Speaker 3: And if you lose it just having the words on
1:42:25
Speaker 3: the page, hanging on a hall, on a document in Philadelphia,
1:42:28
Speaker 3: it's just not going to not going to do it
1:42:30
Speaker 3: for anybody. It's not going to work. I have been
1:42:33
Speaker 3: losing that because we're postliterate, and because we're rage addled
1:42:37
Speaker 3: and bored, and we're maybe too rich for our own good.
1:42:39
Speaker 1: I would argue a majority of our voters have really
1:42:42
Speaker 1: only known to presidents Obama and Trump, who were both
1:42:49
Speaker 1: built to be larger than life figures built.
1:42:51
Speaker 3: I think American politics changed radically for the worse after
1:42:54
Speaker 3: nine to eleven because of the kind of psychic trauma
1:42:57
Speaker 3: associated with that event. But now we've got generation of
1:42:59
Speaker 3: people who grown up never knowing what life was like
1:43:01
Speaker 3: before that, and pretty soon we'll have a generation of
1:43:05
Speaker 3: people who've never really known life before social media and smartphones,
1:43:10
Speaker 3: and that's going to be difficult to bounce back from.
1:43:14
Speaker 1: All Right, give me one reason why you're optimistic that
1:43:18
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with having young kids.
1:43:22
Speaker 3: I know that my redeemer liveth fair.
1:43:27
Speaker 1: How about optimistic for the country.
1:43:30
Speaker 3: I've often described myself as being short term pessimists long
1:43:34
Speaker 3: term optimist, and my pessimism has become, if not more pronounced,
1:43:39
Speaker 3: my imagination for what the downside could look like and
1:43:41
Speaker 3: how intense the dip might be and the bad effects
1:43:44
Speaker 3: that go along with it. It's more intense now than
1:43:46
Speaker 3: it was. Well, when I wrote the book The Engineering
1:43:49
Speaker 3: It's going to be Awesome, that said, I.
1:43:53
Speaker 1: Think we're going to hit a low, and I don't
1:43:55
Speaker 1: think we have any idea how bad it's going to ban.
1:43:57
Speaker 1: Like I Americans, I'm borderline upper for that stuff.
1:44:02
Speaker 3: Americans don't want to be poor. We don't want to
1:44:03
Speaker 3: be miserable, we don't want to be vulnerable. We're smart,
1:44:05
Speaker 3: we have a lot of resources, we have a lot
1:44:07
Speaker 3: of assets, We're very creative. We have this culture of
1:44:10
Speaker 3: innovation that you don't really have anywhere else in the world.
1:44:13
Speaker 3: You know, Germany's got lots of really really smart people
1:44:15
Speaker 3: and good engineers and technicians and stuff. But there's a
1:44:17
Speaker 3: reason that, like all the Internet companies essentially come from
1:44:20
Speaker 3: the United States and why we have things like venture
1:44:23
Speaker 3: capital that they don't really have in Europe in the
1:44:25
Speaker 3: same kind of way. I've often said we have our
1:44:28
Speaker 3: murder problem for the same reason we have our venture
1:44:30
Speaker 3: capital industry, because we're just not people who process risk
1:44:33
Speaker 3: the same way the rest of the world does. We're
1:44:35
Speaker 3: very aggressive and assertive and willing to roll the dice
1:44:37
Speaker 3: on things, and that will ultimately service well, I think,
1:44:41
Speaker 3: because capital wants to go to the places where the
1:44:43
Speaker 3: best use can be made of it unless we really
1:44:45
Speaker 3: really set our minds about destroying our country and our
1:44:48
Speaker 3: institutions in a very programmatic kind of way, which you know, Germany,
1:44:52
Speaker 3: arguably the most civilized country in the world in the
1:44:54
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties, did there is president for this, which China
1:44:58
Speaker 3: did to itself, and revolution in the mal years, which
1:45:01
Speaker 3: Russia did, although it was still a pretty backward country
1:45:05
Speaker 3: when it went through those things. Although we're very civilized
1:45:08
Speaker 3: and cultured backward country in many ways, So we we're
1:45:12
Speaker 3: our own best hope and our own worst enemy, I suppose,
1:45:15
Speaker 3: is what I would say. And I'm still slightly more
1:45:18
Speaker 3: than fifty percent of the view that the better version
1:45:22
Speaker 3: of that wins out. In the long run. But I
1:45:25
Speaker 3: do have a suitcase full of a shoebox full of
1:45:29
Speaker 3: Swiss Franks with a forty five sitting on top, and
1:45:31
Speaker 3: on the shoe box let it says plan B.
1:45:36
Speaker 1: Look and look I am. I share with you short
1:45:39
Speaker 1: term pessimism, long term optimism in that the next election
1:45:44
Speaker 1: isn't going to solve this problem. We've got it from.
1:45:48
Speaker 1: We've probably got another half generation of this before we
1:45:52
Speaker 1: I subscribe to what Churchill said about America. We'll eventually
1:45:56
Speaker 1: do the right thing after we've exhausted every other essentially
1:46:00
Speaker 1: every other path.
1:46:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we're well on our way.
1:46:04
Speaker 1: That's right. Hopefully we're almost done exhausting all the bad paths. Kevin.
1:46:08
Speaker 1: I enjoyed this a lot. I appreciate it, and we
1:46:12
Speaker 1: could have gone a couple hours. We'd gone down other
1:46:14
Speaker 1: rabbit holes, but I appreciate the ones you let me
1:46:15
Speaker 1: go down.
1:46:16
Speaker 3: Well, feel free to invite me down the rabbit hole
1:46:19
Speaker 3: anytime you like.
1:46:20
Speaker 1: I will do that and enjoy fatherhood. It seems like
1:46:25
Speaker 1: you went from zero to that is zero to four
1:46:28
Speaker 1: nineteen months. That is something else. That is that is
1:46:32
Speaker 1: changing your life.
1:46:34
Speaker 3: Starting at age fifty. That was smart.
1:46:38
Speaker 1: You know what, get into coach. Wait do you do that?
1:46:41
Speaker 1: You haven't even gotten to the weekend youth sports marathons.
1:46:46
Speaker 1: Just wait, just wait, and I'm sure you think, oh
1:46:49
Speaker 1: not my kids. Oh you wait, you just wait, that'll
1:46:52
Speaker 1: be You'll be driving all over southwest Virginia.
1:46:56
Speaker 3: Looking forward to the station wagon. Yeah.
1:46:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks Kevin, appreciate the time.
1:47:01
Speaker 2: Thank you, ask Chuck.
1:47:13
Speaker 1: First question comes from Jared F. For Dodge, Iowa. I
1:47:17
Speaker 1: love it. After years teaching high school history and government,
1:47:21
Speaker 1: I recently transitioned to the community college level and have
1:47:23
Speaker 1: been rethinking my approach since these students have already seen
1:47:27
Speaker 1: much of this material. I'm torn between covering a broad
1:47:29
Speaker 1: timeline for general knowledge or focusing on fewer topics with
1:47:32
Speaker 1: more depth and nuance. How would you approach that balance,
1:47:35
Speaker 1: especially knowing these courses still need to transfer to for
1:47:38
Speaker 1: your schools. Jared F. For Dodge, Iowa. Ps. I start
1:47:42
Speaker 1: each of my political science courses with your quote about
1:47:44
Speaker 1: politics as being a way to solve problems without beating
1:47:47
Speaker 1: each other up. I appreciate. I think sometimes we have
1:47:50
Speaker 1: to remember that. I think the I think the quote
1:47:52
Speaker 1: I usually lose is like, you know, why did why
1:47:54
Speaker 1: did we Why did we Human beings invent politics was
1:47:57
Speaker 1: to resolve disputes without violence. And that's the point, right.
1:48:02
Speaker 1: The point isn't to find a way to force somebody
1:48:05
Speaker 1: to agree with you one hundred percent of the time.
1:48:06
Speaker 1: It's about figuring out how to live with each other
1:48:08
Speaker 1: even if we don't agree on how to do it. Look,
1:48:13
Speaker 1: I I will tell you this, The success I've had
1:48:20
Speaker 1: in teaching political science courses has always been to grounded
1:48:24
Speaker 1: in the current events right as best as you can.
1:48:27
Speaker 1: And it sounds like that that's and I think, you know,
1:48:30
Speaker 1: going to community college in some ways it is probably
1:48:36
Speaker 1: you know, look, there's nothing like having students who are
1:48:42
Speaker 1: intentionally wanting to be in your class, right, versus high
1:48:46
Speaker 1: school where they kind of have to be there. Right,
1:48:50
Speaker 1: So number one, just sort of really just sit back
1:48:54
Speaker 1: and appreciate that you've got people who want to be there.
1:48:57
Speaker 1: Maybe they don't want to be in that specific class,
1:48:59
Speaker 1: but they really want to be at the school because
1:49:01
Speaker 1: they want to get to that next step. Right they
1:49:03
Speaker 1: they're so I I think you you know, you're already
1:49:08
Speaker 1: dealing with uh, a quality, a high quality student, right,
1:49:15
Speaker 1: somebody who is aspirational or they wouldn't be spending their
1:49:19
Speaker 1: own money to be there. So I do think, you know,
1:49:23
Speaker 1: And so I say this, I haven't taught high school,
1:49:29
Speaker 1: and I think that's I think, you know, I think
1:49:30
Speaker 1: it's much harder than teaching college kids because again it's
1:49:34
Speaker 1: choice versus versus really not having a choice. But I try,
1:49:41
Speaker 1: you know, I think trying to take the same lessons
1:49:46
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to use the current And it's
1:49:49
Speaker 1: always tricky, right because because you know, I even though
1:49:53
Speaker 1: many people think I want to you know, push things
1:49:56
Speaker 1: in a certain way politically or something, I don't want
1:49:58
Speaker 1: that in the classroom, right. I want people to sort
1:50:01
Speaker 1: of understand the why why is this happening and sort
1:50:06
Speaker 1: of explaining how to do it and all that stuff.
1:50:09
Speaker 1: But if you could sort of ground it in current
1:50:10
Speaker 1: events while you're sort of using historical examples to connect
1:50:15
Speaker 1: with the current events, I think, I think it just
1:50:21
Speaker 1: allows you to be flexible in how much you you know.
1:50:26
Speaker 1: But again, the one thing I don't know, right is
1:50:28
Speaker 1: are there certain checks you have, certain sort of markers
1:50:32
Speaker 1: that you have to you know, that you have to
1:50:34
Speaker 1: teach them in order for them to qualify, you know,
1:50:37
Speaker 1: to get that credit. So that they don't have to
1:50:39
Speaker 1: take the course again. So you know some of these
1:50:42
Speaker 1: specifics you know better than I do. But if you,
1:50:46
Speaker 1: if you can, you will have a more engaged student,
1:50:50
Speaker 1: especially a college student. I have found if they feel
1:50:53
Speaker 1: like what they're paying attention to in the day to
1:50:59
Speaker 1: day next with what they're learning in the class. I
1:51:04
Speaker 1: hope that was helpful. And if it wasn't, i'm you know,
1:51:09
Speaker 1: if there's more detail you can give, I'm happy to
1:51:12
Speaker 1: talk further. Next question comes from I think it's it's
1:51:17
Speaker 1: my man, Adam from Davy, Florida. I always, I always,
1:51:24
Speaker 1: I think, I always make a reference to Davy, and
1:51:26
Speaker 1: I'm curious and Adam, the next time you write, tell
1:51:28
Speaker 1: me if I'm right about this. I've always thought of
1:51:30
Speaker 1: Davy as sort of the most southern of communities in
1:51:36
Speaker 1: Broward County. Broward County is not much of a southern county,
1:51:40
Speaker 1: if you will, but Davy is about the closest you
1:51:44
Speaker 1: can get to the south in South Florida. But I
1:51:51
Speaker 1: digress anyway, Adam who is? He says he's a five
1:51:54
Speaker 1: time er extraordinaire, which means I think he's gotten more
1:51:58
Speaker 1: than five questions right. Anyways, Hello, check love the pod.
1:52:01
Speaker 1: Would it not be in everyone's best interest to pay
1:52:03
Speaker 1: executive style wage to our senators and house reps? No
1:52:07
Speaker 1: wonder so many house reps leave for corporate lobbying gigs
1:52:09
Speaker 1: when making about one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year.
1:52:11
Speaker 1: Would we not get better talent and avoid the backdoor
1:52:13
Speaker 1: bribing of big paying lobbying jobs if we paid our
1:52:16
Speaker 1: congressional members the same as a fifth round NFL rookie
1:52:19
Speaker 1: about a million dollars a year. Maybe the Congress has
1:52:21
Speaker 1: such low approval because you get what you pay for. Well, look,
1:52:25
Speaker 1: I am somebody who believes that members of Congress are underpaid,
1:52:29
Speaker 1: and good luck trying to make that case to people
1:52:32
Speaker 1: it is, but I would probably I think the more
1:52:36
Speaker 1: politically easier thing to do is to look, what makes
1:52:44
Speaker 1: the salary seem low is the idea of having two
1:52:48
Speaker 1: households right, one in the nation's capital, one in your district.
1:52:53
Speaker 1: I think instead of paying them more money, I would
1:53:01
Speaker 1: I would give them housing. I think we should have
1:53:08
Speaker 1: some sort of housing, not just a stipend, actual housing,
1:53:12
Speaker 1: And I would frankly force them to have to live
1:53:15
Speaker 1: in these nice dormitories because I think having them be together, right,
1:53:21
Speaker 1: having them live together while they try to figure out
1:53:26
Speaker 1: how to run the country, while they hopefully try to
1:53:29
Speaker 1: figure out how to improve Congress, our broken branch, would
1:53:33
Speaker 1: be a good thing. So, look, I do agree that
1:53:37
Speaker 1: it is. I think that, Look, there are some people
1:53:42
Speaker 1: in Congress who it's the best job they'll ever have,
1:53:45
Speaker 1: and they're the exact like the sort of the implication
1:53:48
Speaker 1: you're making that we're getting what we pay for. And
1:53:51
Speaker 1: there are quite a few, and there is an argument
1:53:54
Speaker 1: to be made that it is the salary isn't high
1:53:56
Speaker 1: enough to encourage some of our best and brighters to
1:53:59
Speaker 1: actually give up their day jobs to serve in Congress.
1:54:06
Speaker 1: And we certainly don't want to have Congress only be
1:54:09
Speaker 1: you know, certainly it feels like you have to be
1:54:12
Speaker 1: a millionaire to have a chance of being a senator.
1:54:14
Speaker 1: That seems to be not a good thing. But I mean,
1:54:20
Speaker 1: let's be politically realistic, right, it is going to be tough,
1:54:24
Speaker 1: too tough to to get them to vote themselves to
1:54:30
Speaker 1: pay rights. It's just such bad politics, right, But you could,
1:54:37
Speaker 1: like I said, the things that they have done in
1:54:39
Speaker 1: the last decade that have that have been attempts to
1:54:43
Speaker 1: try to make it easier for less wealthy people to
1:54:47
Speaker 1: run for Congress. You can now draw a salary. You know,
1:54:51
Speaker 1: it's legal to essentially pay yourself to be a candidate
1:54:56
Speaker 1: if you're running for Congress. So that way, if you
1:55:00
Speaker 1: have to quit your job, you can at least pay
1:55:02
Speaker 1: your bills while you run for Congress. So I think
1:55:06
Speaker 1: it's things like that is probably a better way to
1:55:09
Speaker 1: go to make this a more doable thing for somebody
1:55:14
Speaker 1: who is in a multimillionaire But the fact is, right,
1:55:17
Speaker 1: if we're asking them to have two households one hundred
1:55:20
Speaker 1: you know, tell me where you go in America to
1:55:24
Speaker 1: support two households one hundred eight thousand dollars a year, right,
1:55:28
Speaker 1: and let alone one of the two places being one
1:55:32
Speaker 1: of the most expensive places in the country to live, Washington, DC.
1:55:39
Speaker 1: Katie writes, thank you for sharing your experience from the
1:55:41
Speaker 1: Correspondence dinner, so honestly it really resonated with me. I'm
1:55:44
Speaker 1: a city council woman in Dubuque, Iowa, and after a
1:55:46
Speaker 1: recent incident where someone attempted to enter chambers with a
1:55:48
Speaker 1: loaded handgun, safety.
1:55:50
Speaker 2: Has been on my mind.
1:55:50
Speaker 1: In a very rare way. Given challenges across the country
1:55:53
Speaker 1: with recruiting and retaining local law enforcement, what do you
1:55:55
Speaker 1: think can be done to make it more viable in
1:55:57
Speaker 1: an appealing career path, especially as public safety concern and
1:56:00
Speaker 1: grow love your perspective and how communities and leaders can
1:56:02
Speaker 1: address this moving forward. Well, Look, we definitely need more
1:56:05
Speaker 1: law enforcement. But I also don't believe that the more
1:56:09
Speaker 1: security we add, the safer will be. I think we
1:56:13
Speaker 1: have to de escalate, right, We need to do both.
1:56:18
Speaker 1: First of all, we need more. I don't know a
1:56:21
Speaker 1: community that isn't short on police officers. I mean in Washington,
1:56:25
Speaker 1: d C. Mario Bowser literally, I think at one point
1:56:27
Speaker 1: was wearing a sign around her neck that said, please
1:56:31
Speaker 1: apply to be a police officer. You know, we are
1:56:34
Speaker 1: accepting applications now. It is in DC is not alone.
1:56:40
Speaker 1: I mean there are many of these communities need more.
1:56:43
Speaker 1: And look, it's been it is. Look I've always thought,
1:56:50
Speaker 1: and unfortunately there's been this. I always thought that our
1:56:52
Speaker 1: public servants, police, firefighters, teachers who essentially agreed to sort
1:57:01
Speaker 1: of be the community's workforce, you know, law and order protectors, teachers, educators,
1:57:10
Speaker 1: that the fair deal is Okay, you're going to make
1:57:14
Speaker 1: a decent, a livable salary, but we're going to make
1:57:18
Speaker 1: sure you have a really good pension in retirement. And
1:57:22
Speaker 1: so it always is. I've always thought that that was
1:57:24
Speaker 1: sort of the trade off, right. The trade off is
1:57:26
Speaker 1: they they're going to get this guaranteed pension that many
1:57:29
Speaker 1: of us won't get, but they've agreed to put their
1:57:32
Speaker 1: life on the line for you and me, and they've
1:57:34
Speaker 1: agreed to essentially hold back their earning power in order
1:57:42
Speaker 1: to serve the public. Many of these folks, whether they're cops, firefighters, teachers,
1:57:47
Speaker 1: could go into the private sector and likely make more
1:57:49
Speaker 1: money if they chose to do it, but they've chosen
1:57:54
Speaker 1: to be public servants. And so I think that, you know,
1:57:56
Speaker 1: I've always been you know, I know there's this debate
1:57:59
Speaker 1: about power. Always thought this is this is a this
1:58:03
Speaker 1: is a pretty fair deal. They're agreeing to sort of
1:58:06
Speaker 1: limit their earning power to serve the public in exchange
1:58:10
Speaker 1: for a guaranteed retirement that I may not get, but
1:58:15
Speaker 1: I have, I have the opportunity potentially to earn more
1:58:21
Speaker 1: in my job, so then I will, you know, be
1:58:25
Speaker 1: in charge of my retirement. You know, I've always thought
1:58:28
Speaker 1: that was kind of. And my point is is that
1:58:30
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, the last thing we need
1:58:33
Speaker 1: to do is is is jeopardize that deal. And I
1:58:37
Speaker 1: wonder if in so many communities that deal seems jeopardized,
1:58:40
Speaker 1: so you've had fewer and fewer people wanted to go
1:58:42
Speaker 1: into these key public service jobs, whether it's teaching by
1:58:48
Speaker 1: h firefighters, first responders, or police officers. So you know,
1:58:56
Speaker 1: whether it's you know in this see this is where
1:59:02
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan. I think one of the ways
1:59:04
Speaker 1: we could bring the country together is to have mandatory
1:59:07
Speaker 1: national service. I know there's some people don't like the
1:59:10
Speaker 1: mandatory anything. I'm not saying reinstitute the draft, but mandatory
1:59:15
Speaker 1: national service and whatever that might mean. But I think
1:59:19
Speaker 1: this would be a good way to recruit. You know,
1:59:21
Speaker 1: we've had teach for America. It's a good way to
1:59:23
Speaker 1: recruit young police officers. Could be a good way to
1:59:25
Speaker 1: recruit young firefighters. Could be a good way to recruit
1:59:28
Speaker 1: more young public school teachers. And you know, those are
1:59:33
Speaker 1: the three big public service jobs that I'm highlighting here,
1:59:39
Speaker 1: but there are others that matter a lot. Whether you
1:59:42
Speaker 1: work at the Department of Natural Resources in a given community,
1:59:46
Speaker 1: which is an important aspect in every community, or you
1:59:51
Speaker 1: work at the Department of Taxation or the Division of
1:59:55
Speaker 1: Motor Vehicles. So I do think we need to respect
2:00:02
Speaker 1: some of these public service jobs a little bit more.
2:00:04
Speaker 1: And if we show more respect for me, you're going
2:00:05
Speaker 1: to have more people that want to be in them.
2:00:09
Speaker 1: And I know that seems a little pollyannish, but I
2:00:13
Speaker 1: think you know some combination of that. But the biggest
2:00:16
Speaker 1: thing we have to do on this safety stuff is
2:00:18
Speaker 1: just de escalate the leaders at the top of the
2:00:21
Speaker 1: food chain here right, our national political leaders, starting with
2:00:25
Speaker 1: the president. As I always say, it is president's control
2:00:29
Speaker 1: the thermostat of politics in the country, all right. It
2:00:33
Speaker 1: isn't a speaker of the House that doesn't It isn't
2:00:36
Speaker 1: some loudmouth influencer that does it. It is the president
2:00:41
Speaker 1: that does it. He's got to take the temperature down.
2:00:44
Speaker 1: He's got to he's got his hand on the thermostat.
2:00:48
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we all don't play a role too,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: but this is much harder to do if you don't
2:00:53
Speaker 1: have a president willing to do it. Thank you for
2:00:58
Speaker 1: your service. My grandmother is buried in Dubuque, so I
2:01:03
Speaker 1: have Dubuque's was her hometown. My grandmother is my daughter's
2:01:11
Speaker 1: namesake anyway, so when I see anything from Dubuque, it
2:01:15
Speaker 1: makes me smile. Katie drew A writes, he really appreciate
2:01:18
Speaker 1: the pod and all the work you and the team do.
2:01:20
Speaker 1: With Trump, the typical lame duckt dynamic doesn't seem to apply.
2:01:23
Speaker 1: He's already taken major, high risk actions earlier than expected.
2:01:26
Speaker 1: So how do you see the evolving this evolving from here?
2:01:29
Speaker 1: Does he follow a more traditional path of losing influence
2:01:32
Speaker 1: or could it look more like unpredictable moves to stay
2:01:34
Speaker 1: central and maintain control of twenty twenty eight approaches? Well,
2:01:39
Speaker 1: drew as I shared with you the last time, and
2:01:41
Speaker 1: as a friend of mine likes to put it, the
2:01:44
Speaker 1: biggest mistake we make with Trump is failure of imagination.
2:01:48
Speaker 1: So I think you are right to at least point
2:01:53
Speaker 1: out that wet we auto not assume every he does
2:01:59
Speaker 1: what most sort of fading leaders do, which just just
2:02:02
Speaker 1: start fading away, right, just start doing the Homer Simpson
2:02:06
Speaker 1: and backing into the bush. Right. However, he's not well right.
2:02:13
Speaker 1: He is definitely getting very old before our eyes. His
2:02:17
Speaker 1: hair is thinning dramatically. I don't know how much many
2:02:21
Speaker 1: of you have noticed this, but he's going bald. Looks
2:02:27
Speaker 1: he's slowed it down pretty well. He's I know, he
2:02:32
Speaker 1: took I don't know if he still does, but at
2:02:33
Speaker 1: one time he was. He took propecia, and wean pretty
2:02:39
Speaker 1: clear he had transplants at some point, which means he
2:02:42
Speaker 1: was probably he probably should have a head of hair
2:02:45
Speaker 1: that looks closer to mine than when he's got. But
2:02:50
Speaker 1: you can kind of tell it's really thinning now more
2:02:53
Speaker 1: than ever. And look, I think his health issues are
2:02:57
Speaker 1: catching up to him, and he's clearly taking a variety
2:03:00
Speaker 1: of medicines that give him some bruising that he doesn't
2:03:03
Speaker 1: always want to that. He's clearly, you know, doesn't like
2:03:06
Speaker 1: the cameras to notice. I don't think he realizes how
2:03:09
Speaker 1: easily we all notice all the makeup he puts on
2:03:11
Speaker 1: the bruises. But he might be better off just letting
2:03:13
Speaker 1: the bruises show. But it's just a side effect from
2:03:16
Speaker 1: the medicine he's taking to keep a circulation flowing. I'm
2:03:20
Speaker 1: actually sorry he wants to hide it. He ought to
2:03:24
Speaker 1: make other members of his generation feel better that hey
2:03:27
Speaker 1: they're not alone. See it even happens to him, but
2:03:31
Speaker 1: that is not who he is. But I point that
2:03:34
Speaker 1: out is that there think that if he does end
2:03:37
Speaker 1: up looking like a traditional name duck president Allah George W.
2:03:41
Speaker 1: Bush for instance, or even the last year of Bill Clinton,
2:03:44
Speaker 1: the last year of Barack Obama and just sort of
2:03:45
Speaker 1: pulling the Homer Simpson right fading into the bushes, I
2:03:49
Speaker 1: think it would be just energy. Right, there are a
2:03:51
Speaker 1: lot more low energy Trump days than there have been
2:03:54
Speaker 1: in the past. That said, there's nothing he hates more
2:03:57
Speaker 1: than when people like me say, oh, look, he's got
2:03:59
Speaker 1: low energy. Looks like he's he's done. It looks like
2:04:02
Speaker 1: he's a lame duck. Right, She's going to want to
2:04:04
Speaker 1: prove that he's not. So I do think there'll be
2:04:07
Speaker 1: some unpredictability. But and I do think what you know,
2:04:13
Speaker 1: what he did Forestall with his success in the Indiana
2:04:17
Speaker 1: primaries was looking weak enough where Republicans felt comfortable backing
2:04:22
Speaker 1: away publicly. And the fact that that you know, that
2:04:25
Speaker 1: is the longer you know, as long as that doesn't happen.
2:04:30
Speaker 1: I actually think he doesn't lash out too much when
2:04:33
Speaker 1: that's if and when that starts to happen. I happen
2:04:36
Speaker 1: to think it will. Maybe it's you know, maybe it's
2:04:39
Speaker 1: before these midterms, or maybe it's you know, in twenty
2:04:43
Speaker 1: seven is people start to really realize that they may
2:04:47
Speaker 1: have to start to run away from him a little bit.
2:04:50
Speaker 1: He may lash out initially, but what does he want? Right?
2:05:01
Speaker 2: You know?
2:05:02
Speaker 1: Is there something else he wants that he can't have?
2:05:08
Speaker 1: And so it's very possible he himself decides to feel
2:05:12
Speaker 1: stated and does it. Maybe I'm maybe I'm the one
2:05:17
Speaker 1: that's under underreacting on this one, but I think I
2:05:23
Speaker 1: think the combination of his health, he just doesn't have
2:05:26
Speaker 1: the energy he once had. I think there, you know,
2:05:31
Speaker 1: I think it's at least a fifty to fifty chance
2:05:33
Speaker 1: it's a traditional name in that simply because he just
2:05:37
Speaker 1: peters out. All right, last question, and then I'm going
2:05:44
Speaker 1: to get to my full on celebration with my family.
2:05:49
Speaker 1: Michael and Long Island City Rights.
2:05:50
Speaker 2: Hey.
2:05:51
Speaker 1: On a recent episode, you suggested that rulings on jerry
2:05:53
Speaker 1: mandering and the voting right tech coulds for voter backlash,
2:05:55
Speaker 1: particularly in the South, But after Dobbs, it seemed like
2:05:57
Speaker 1: even a major Supreme Court decisions won't always translate in
2:06:00
Speaker 1: to sustain voter mobilization. What makes you think redistricting could
2:06:03
Speaker 1: be a stronger motivator given that it's more a technical issue,
2:06:06
Speaker 1: and how much do voters really engage with or respond
2:06:08
Speaker 1: to Scota's decisions overall. Well, first of all, Michael, I
2:06:11
Speaker 1: would sort of disagree with you about Dobbs. Dobbs did
2:06:14
Speaker 1: have a backlash in twenty twenty two. It just did
2:06:17
Speaker 1: not continue in twenty twenty four. But I mean, you
2:06:22
Speaker 1: saw the big referendums in Kansas, you had the big
2:06:25
Speaker 1: referendum in Michigan, And I think we are forgetting that
2:06:30
Speaker 1: Democrats had as good of a bad midterm as they
2:06:34
Speaker 1: could have had, right you know, they yes, they lost
2:06:37
Speaker 1: the House, but they barely lost the House. Why because
2:06:42
Speaker 1: voters were upset and engaged on Dobbs. So, you know,
2:06:46
Speaker 1: I think because Democrats didn't dominate the twenty twenty two midterms,
2:06:51
Speaker 1: that there's a narrative that's set in that somehow, oh well,
2:06:55
Speaker 1: Dobbs wasn't a motivating force. I think to the contrary,
2:06:59
Speaker 1: Democrats should have gotten Salact in twenty twenty two. It
2:07:01
Speaker 1: should have been a big red wave. I think the
2:07:04
Speaker 1: reason there wasn't a big red wave was because of dobs,
2:07:07
Speaker 1: but because there was. You know what happened in twenty
2:07:10
Speaker 1: twenty two is you basically had almost equal enthusiasm. We've
2:07:13
Speaker 1: rarely had that for a midterm. That doesn't happen very often,
2:07:17
Speaker 1: where both parties are about equal by election day in
2:07:21
Speaker 1: interest and motivation in the election. And the only reason
2:07:27
Speaker 1: that Democrats were just about on par with Republicans was Overdobed.
2:07:35
Speaker 1: I agree with you about jerrymandering. I think on the
2:07:40
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act that this is one of those where
2:07:45
Speaker 1: I think, if you know, you know, I think this
2:07:51
Speaker 1: is going to that this is this is not a
2:07:54
Speaker 1: story being ignored or glossed over in the black community.
2:07:58
Speaker 1: So I think there is real engagement on this, just
2:08:02
Speaker 1: like there was real engagement among women on the DOPS issue.
2:08:05
Speaker 1: I think there's real engagement on this. I think the
2:08:08
Speaker 1: outrage is real. I think the ability to mobilize voters
2:08:14
Speaker 1: is going to be there, and then I think you're
2:08:16
Speaker 1: going to see a lot of money used to make
2:08:20
Speaker 1: sure that the black community is engaged on these issues.
2:08:24
Speaker 1: But I take your point on the idea of jerrymandering,
2:08:27
Speaker 1: and I agree on jerrymandering. But if it's about again,
2:08:31
Speaker 1: I go back to sort of how I phrased it before.
2:08:37
Speaker 1: When the messaging, which I think is going to be
2:08:41
Speaker 1: quite easy, whether you're in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia.
2:08:45
Speaker 1: But let's just take the states that are rushing to
2:08:48
Speaker 1: redistrict now. They are so excited to take political power
2:08:55
Speaker 1: away from you that they are going to make sure
2:09:01
Speaker 1: they are not going to allow for two more years
2:09:04
Speaker 1: of an African American member of Congress to represent the
2:09:07
Speaker 1: state of Mississippi, or to represent the state of Alabama,
2:09:10
Speaker 1: or you get fill in the blank. I think the
2:09:14
Speaker 1: urgency that Republicans are engaging and in these state legislatures
2:09:22
Speaker 1: is just it is it is. It is like it's
2:09:27
Speaker 1: taunting African American voters.
2:09:32
Speaker 2: So I'm.
2:09:35
Speaker 1: I understand your skepticism. I get sort of how you're
2:09:39
Speaker 1: viewing Dobbs and using that as a but I guess
2:09:43
Speaker 1: where I don't accept the premises. I actually think Dobbs
2:09:47
Speaker 1: did motivate Democrats. It's just it happened to help Democrats
2:09:51
Speaker 1: neutralize a Republican advantage. Let me put it in another way,
2:09:57
Speaker 1: had Dobbs happened while there was well, well, well there
2:10:00
Speaker 1: was a Republican in the White House. It would have
2:10:04
Speaker 1: been a massive blue wave and then the narrative would
2:10:07
Speaker 1: have been, oh, Dobbs motivated voters. Look, ultimately, hold me
2:10:14
Speaker 1: accountable this way in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida,
2:10:29
Speaker 1: and let's throw in Georgia. If one of those five
2:10:33
Speaker 1: states has a democratic governor, you can thank the Supreme
2:10:38
Speaker 1: Court and these and these and these aggressive redistricting efforts.
2:10:43
Speaker 1: If it doesn't happen, write me again and remind me
2:10:48
Speaker 1: it didn't happen. And I will, I will, uh, I will,
2:10:55
Speaker 1: I will see the point, all right, everybody, as they
2:11:02
Speaker 1: say down here in Coral Gables, it's great to be
2:11:05
Speaker 1: a Miami Hurricane. Thanks for letting me share my excitement
2:11:10
Speaker 1: about my daughter's graduation with you this week. I don't
2:11:13
Speaker 1: normally like to get that personal on this podcast, but
2:11:17
Speaker 1: you know, I'm pretty proud of her, and it's an
2:11:22
Speaker 1: exciting time. And you guys have been terrific as it is,
2:11:27
Speaker 1: and very supportive, and the fact that this has been
2:11:30
Speaker 1: a successful venture has given me the opportunity to enjoy
2:11:35
Speaker 1: this experience that I'm enjoying this week with my daughter,
2:11:38
Speaker 1: so I thank you for that as well. I'll see
2:11:40
Speaker 1: in seventy two hours