Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Maybe…Don’t Build The Doomsday Machine? + How Campaigns Became An Industry & What Is Cost Us

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Full Episode - Maybe…Don’t Build The Doomsday Machine? + How Campaigns Became An Industry & What Is Cost Us · The Chuck ToddCast

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
0:02
Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
0:06
Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
0:11
Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
0:14
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
0:17
Speaker 1: over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while
0:21
Speaker 1: allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most
0:25
Speaker 1: as some sort of broker. So if your default is
0:28
Speaker 1: to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it.
0:31
Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
0:34
Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
0:37
Speaker 1: Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are
0:41
Speaker 1: not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying
0:45
Speaker 1: to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but
0:47
Speaker 1: it's across the board is what they're trying to do.
0:51
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're advocating for you.
0:52
Speaker 1: They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person
0:56
Speaker 1: who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs,
1:01
Speaker 1: and then compares them to every single plan available to
1:04
Speaker 1: find the best one that will work for you and
1:06
Speaker 1: hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the
1:09
Speaker 1: part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've
1:14
Speaker 1: been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
1:17
Speaker 1: of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there.
1:19
Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan,
1:22
Speaker 1: you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever
1:24
Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
1:28
Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
1:31
Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
1:34
Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
1:38
Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
1:41
Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
1:44
Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
1:48
Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
1:53
Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
1:56
Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
2:00
Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
2:02
Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
2:06
Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Hello there, happy Monday,
2:18
Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Toddcast. We
2:21
Speaker 1: are now essentially in the middle of a 50-day sprint
2:26
Speaker 1: to the midterms, and you'll see it's going to be
2:30
Speaker 1: hard for me not to lead with the midterms, and
2:31
Speaker 1: I'm not going to lead with the midterms today, because
2:33
Speaker 1: when you've got to worry about the end of the world, right?
2:36
Speaker 1: I guess you always have to top on the end
2:38
Speaker 1: of the world. Let's just say I have a I've
2:40
Speaker 1: sort of, I'm done with these AI guys. I am
2:42
Speaker 1: just sick and tired of this. Oh, look at, oh,
2:46
Speaker 1: we're so worried, but I'll get to that in a
2:47
Speaker 1: minute on these, on the clown show that is the
2:52
Speaker 1: tech industry these days. But I want to give a
2:55
Speaker 1: quick little rundown here. I'm going to have my interview
2:57
Speaker 1: today is with Maria Kamala. She is a, somebody who
3:01
Speaker 1: literally has worked for Republican governors and Democratic governors, from
3:05
Speaker 1: Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani on the Republican side, Andrew Cuomo,
3:08
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris on the Democratic side. There aren't many people
3:12
Speaker 1: like Maria out there who have truly worked for both
3:14
Speaker 1: sides of the aisle. But I booked her because she
3:16
Speaker 1: wrote a terrific piece in Vanity Fair about saying that
3:20
Speaker 1: political consultants, particularly the ones who are recruiting people to
3:23
Speaker 1: run for office, they ought to be held accountable to.
3:27
Speaker 1: And it was sort of in At the time that
3:29
Speaker 1: she wrote the piece, it was in response to sort
3:30
Speaker 1: of what happened with the Graham Plattner situation where you
3:33
Speaker 1: clearly had political consultants and strategists who knew in advance
3:36
Speaker 1: this person that Graham Plattner had no business being an
3:40
Speaker 1: elected official. His life wasn't really– he wasn't stable enough
3:43
Speaker 1: to do this. But they just– they fell in love
3:48
Speaker 1: with the biography so much they didn't want to quit it, right?
3:51
Speaker 1: And what Maria's point was is that maybe the consultant community–
3:57
Speaker 1: should take a little responsibility for the, frankly, the shit
4:01
Speaker 1: show that politics is now and what we've done in
4:04
Speaker 1: the theater and all this stuff that let's not, you know,
4:06
Speaker 1: as much as, yes, candidates are responsible, but so are
4:09
Speaker 1: the folks who are amplifying and accelerating this trend and
4:12
Speaker 1: things like this. So I think it's a, we also
4:17
Speaker 1: touch on the future of the Republican Party, what 2028
4:19
Speaker 1: is going to look like, how she would be handling
4:21
Speaker 1: data centers these days and all sorts of very current
4:26
Speaker 1: political trends. And we're all getting to, this is a
4:28
Speaker 1: Monday episode, which means I have a time machine and
4:30
Speaker 1: I have a time machine on a historical event. I
4:33
Speaker 1: did not know about, um, until I did my research. Um,
4:38
Speaker 1: but it, uh, you want to talk about haunting echoes
4:40
Speaker 1: of nine 11, uh, and no, it's not another nine 11, uh,
4:44
Speaker 1: essay or anything that I have to say on that,
4:46
Speaker 1: but this is about, uh, an important moment, uh, that
4:50
Speaker 1: took place over a hundred years ago. Um, that essentially, uh,
4:57
Speaker 1: was just another reminder of how much this era echoes
5:01
Speaker 1: with the first 25 years of the 20th century. And
5:05
Speaker 1: as you know, these time machines are not meant as
5:11
Speaker 1: history lessons per se. They're meant as history lessons as
5:15
Speaker 1: they apply to our politics today. I also have a
5:19
Speaker 1: little something to say about the weekend as college football.
5:21
Speaker 1: Do you understand, one of my favorite things that I
5:24
Speaker 1: get in when you guys throw questions at me is,
5:27
Speaker 1: How many of you say, you know what, I wasn't
5:28
Speaker 1: really that into college football and I sort of, you know,
5:31
Speaker 1: and I'm now enjoying it. Saturday should be a reminder
5:36
Speaker 1: how great it is. You don't know what's going to happen. Hello, Oregon.
5:39
Speaker 1: Incredible finishes. Hello, Arch Manning. Boy, did he need that.
5:45
Speaker 1: And then some of the things that become as predictable,
5:48
Speaker 1: which is one team stinks one week and they come
5:50
Speaker 1: back and win on their home field. Hello, Michigan. Right.
5:53
Speaker 1: This is why you got to love college football, because
5:54
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you're still dealing with
5:57
Speaker 1: young men under the age of 22. Yes, they're now
6:02
Speaker 1: more professional than they've ever been. But that lack of
6:06
Speaker 1: maturity matters. You never it. It makes the unpredictability from
6:10
Speaker 1: week to week something to behold in college football, which
6:16
Speaker 1: is why I I think it's I enjoy following college
6:20
Speaker 1: football and I love the NFL. But college football is
6:25
Speaker 1: one for me. And the NFL is below that in
6:30
Speaker 1: a tough race with baseball, to be frank, on that front.
6:33
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of great things to say
6:35
Speaker 1: about baseball other than it does finally look like we're
6:37
Speaker 1: going to at least the Nats are going to get
6:38
Speaker 1: over 71 wins, which would allow them to surpass their
6:43
Speaker 1: win total from the last two seasons. So what felt
6:46
Speaker 1: like a progress this season, I was fearing was going
6:49
Speaker 1: to look like we went nowhere. But, you know, having
6:53
Speaker 1: the angels come to town doesn't hurt. But look, like
6:58
Speaker 1: I said, just about every episode from here on out. Oh,
7:02
Speaker 1: one more thing I wanted to do. First of all,
7:03
Speaker 1: just thank you. We've had some incredible traffic. We are building.
7:08
Speaker 1: There's a reason that I'm now four days, four uploads
7:11
Speaker 1: a week. And there's a reason we're doing more of
7:13
Speaker 1: these election nights. I mean, we're We're finding a great audience.
7:17
Speaker 1: We surpassed 5 million views on Facebook last month. That
7:22
Speaker 1: was August. God only knows where we're headed next. We're
7:25
Speaker 1: about to hit a monumental marker on our YouTube page.
7:29
Speaker 1: All thanks to you. Really appreciate it. Spread the word
7:33
Speaker 1: that we're doing politics for the rest of us here.
7:35
Speaker 1: You're tired of sort of, you're not quite sure what
7:38
Speaker 1: angle folks are coming from. Look, you know me. You've
7:42
Speaker 1: known me a long time. I'm just going to tell
7:44
Speaker 1: you like it is not going to bullshit around. That's
7:47
Speaker 1: the beauty of this of this podcast. Our politics are
7:51
Speaker 1: a mess. Everybody's spinning political theater. The idea of this
7:56
Speaker 1: podcast is try to cut through it and not just
7:58
Speaker 1: rant and rave about it, but try to actually provide
8:01
Speaker 1: some sensible solutions, sensible path forward and give you a
8:05
Speaker 1: few ideas of, you know, we can we can fix this.
8:09
Speaker 1: We really can. We just need better leaders. And you
8:15
Speaker 1: know what? Ultimately, that's on us. But the point is,
8:20
Speaker 1: we're founding an audience. I really appreciate it. It's been tremendous.
8:23
Speaker 1: So thank you. That's all. I wanted to get that
8:27
Speaker 1: in there. All right. With that, I guess I should...
8:31
Speaker 1: As much as I want to lead with the campaign,
8:33
Speaker 1: you got to lead with the end of the world, right?
8:36
Speaker 1: You know... And I tell you, I'm channeling my inner
8:42
Speaker 1: Norm MacDonald here, right? You have these heads of these
8:45
Speaker 1: AI companies going, oh my God, this thing, it could,
8:48
Speaker 1: there's a 10% chance it could kill us. I've got
8:51
Speaker 1: an idea. How about don't make a thing that has
8:53
Speaker 1: a 10% chance of killing us? The men building these
8:59
Speaker 1: supposed doomsday machines have now issued a warning about the
9:02
Speaker 1: doomsday machine. And I want to be fair to them
9:06
Speaker 1: because I guess it's more of a warning than we
9:09
Speaker 1: usually get. Nobody at Philip Morris ever put out an
9:11
Speaker 1: essay about cigarettes before it killed millions of people. They
9:17
Speaker 1: didn't stop building it, so we shouldn't get carried away, right?
9:20
Speaker 1: They warned us, our AI overlords. There's a difference between
9:25
Speaker 1: those two things, and the difference is about $ 400 billion.
9:30
Speaker 1: So here's what happened over the weekend. On Saturday, the
9:32
Speaker 1: CEO of Anthropic publishes an essay And remember, Anthropic's always
9:36
Speaker 1: been the, man, we feel bad that we're about to
9:40
Speaker 1: destroy the world. We're sorry, but we just don't know
9:42
Speaker 1: how to stop. Okay. So anyway, the CEO of Anthropic
9:47
Speaker 1: publishes an essay saying the industry must slow the rate
9:50
Speaker 1: at which AI gets more capable. Elon Musk reads it
9:53
Speaker 1: and says, Dario is right. Sam Altman reads it and
9:58
Speaker 1: says he agrees too. And also that open AI won't
10:01
Speaker 1: be going public this year because, and I want to
10:04
Speaker 1: get this right, even a 10% chance that AI causes
10:08
Speaker 1: human extinction by 2030 is unacceptable. 10%. It's interesting this
10:15
Speaker 1: number that's being thrown out there, right? It's not one.
10:19
Speaker 1: It's not 100, it's 10. So apparently it tells you
10:23
Speaker 1: that a man or a woman sat down at some
10:25
Speaker 1: point and did the math here. Found the line and
10:29
Speaker 1: I'd like to know what does 9% get you? What
10:31
Speaker 1: does 11% get you? I imagine 9% gets you a
10:35
Speaker 1: series D option, right? Now they have a phrase for
10:41
Speaker 1: what they want. The phrase and all this stuff has
10:44
Speaker 1: been pace the frontier. 1,178 employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta,
10:50
Speaker 1: have all signed a letter in July using that phrase,
10:53
Speaker 1: pace the frontier. I got another word for that. I
10:58
Speaker 1: think the word you're looking for is stop. And to
11:01
Speaker 1: be clear, they're not asking anyone to stop. If you
11:05
Speaker 1: actually read the letter, it asks the United States government
11:07
Speaker 1: to build the tools that would let somebody slow this
11:10
Speaker 1: down later, if it ever becomes necessary. Build us a break.
11:17
Speaker 1: We're not going to use any brakes on the technology
11:20
Speaker 1: we're building. We're going full speed ahead, but maybe you
11:22
Speaker 1: should build a brake for us. We just want to
11:26
Speaker 1: know that the brake exists. So the letter was only
11:29
Speaker 1: open to current employees, by the way, of frontier AI
11:32
Speaker 1: companies verified by corporate email. So the petition to save
11:37
Speaker 1: humanity apparently had a bouncer, right? So look, I've covered
11:40
Speaker 1: Washington a long time. And when an industry shows up
11:43
Speaker 1: asking to be regulated, the first thing you need to
11:46
Speaker 1: do is check them up. Check everybody's bank accounts. So
11:49
Speaker 1: when you check the money, here's what you have, right?
11:51
Speaker 1: What you really have is an industry that wants to
11:55
Speaker 1: control the regulation so that they get the billions and
12:00
Speaker 1: nobody else does. They're not interested as much in the
12:04
Speaker 1: whole of humanity as they'd like you to believe. Because
12:07
Speaker 1: if the regulation somehow crimps their business model, trust me,
12:11
Speaker 1: they will push back. So the AI industry is spending more,
12:14
Speaker 1: more on these midterms, by the way, than any other
12:16
Speaker 1: industry except crypto. Leading the future, which is the Andreessen
12:21
Speaker 1: Horowitz and Greg Brockman super PAC vehicle, is north of
12:25
Speaker 1: $ 140 million and counting. Public first action, which is the
12:29
Speaker 1: Anthropic funded super PAC on AI is about 80 million.
12:34
Speaker 1: 40 of it is straight from Anthropic, plus a million
12:37
Speaker 1: from Dario Amadai, the CEO himself. And the third group
12:41
Speaker 1: has pledged another $ 100 million. Now, here's what people get
12:46
Speaker 1: wrong about this money, right? All that money is not
12:48
Speaker 1: fighting and is not warning about extinction, by the way.
12:53
Speaker 1: Not $ 1 of it. Every dime is fighting over whether
12:56
Speaker 1: Washington gets to erase any AI regulation that states decide
13:02
Speaker 1: to pass. That's what this war is really about. Again,
13:06
Speaker 1: it's about choosing your regulator. One group wants federal preemption.
13:10
Speaker 1: The other group opposes federal preemption. The industry is funding
13:14
Speaker 1: both sides of this jurisdictional dispute. What neither one of
13:18
Speaker 1: them is apparently worried about is funding regulation that builds
13:21
Speaker 1: these breaks for them. But I digress. By the way,
13:26
Speaker 1: the Senate already settled this. They stripped federal preemption out
13:30
Speaker 1: of the reconciliation in 1991 because of how unpopular it
13:34
Speaker 1: was from the left and the right. When Ron DeSantis
13:38
Speaker 1: and Bernie Sanders are on the same side, whoa, what
13:41
Speaker 1: do you mean the states can't have your preempting state regulation?
13:48
Speaker 1: So the industry's response to that vote was to spend
13:51
Speaker 1: another $ 200 million to go get a different Senate, right?
13:56
Speaker 1: So everybody's working very hard. They're just all working on
13:59
Speaker 1: the only question anybody's paying for. And the question nobody's
14:02
Speaker 1: paying for is to slow down or stop. They're telling
14:07
Speaker 1: us we should slow down while nobody says we should
14:10
Speaker 1: slow down. You know, this is really unsafe at any speed. Well,
14:13
Speaker 1: why don't you slow down? Well, I can't slow down.
14:14
Speaker 1: What do you mean he can't slow down? So what
14:19
Speaker 1: actually happened in July? Because this is the part I
14:22
Speaker 1: can't fully get past because it's apparently what happened in
14:25
Speaker 1: July that freaked all of these AI developers out, but
14:29
Speaker 1: not enough to actually put a pause in on themselves.
14:32
Speaker 1: They're just begging other people to do this. So OpenAI
14:34
Speaker 1: wanted to find out how good its models were at hacking.
14:37
Speaker 1: So to run the test properly, they turned off their
14:41
Speaker 1: safety system. The benchmark is named, and I'm not making
14:44
Speaker 1: this up, it should be on the record, Exploit Gym.
14:48
Speaker 1: That's what they called it. The models got out, found
14:51
Speaker 1: a hole in the software service, but apparently that was
14:53
Speaker 1: the feature. They took down the safety protocol so that
14:56
Speaker 1: the models could get out. And then they're like, oh
14:58
Speaker 1: my God, we let the animals out and the animals
15:00
Speaker 1: tore up nature. Anyway, but I doubt it. So guess what?
15:04
Speaker 1: It went to the open internet, spent two and a
15:06
Speaker 1: half days inside hugging faces, production systems, ran code on
15:09
Speaker 1: 41 servers, got root on at least one, collected 956
15:14
Speaker 1: stored passwords on the way through, including credentials to OpenAI's
15:19
Speaker 1: own security monitoring tool. Weeks later, that monitoring software had
15:23
Speaker 1: flagged it, caught the suspicious activity, connected it to the evaluation,
15:28
Speaker 1: and the staff on call looked at it and decided
15:30
Speaker 1: the test didn't need to be stopped. Now everyone in
15:34
Speaker 1: Washington is demanding these companies build a kill switch. Well,
15:38
Speaker 1: there is a kill switch. It's a guy. They had
15:42
Speaker 1: the ability to stop this, but they did this on purpose.
15:48
Speaker 1: It makes your head hurt, right? Boy, do we ever
15:50
Speaker 1: need Norm Macdonald here. Anyway, here's why the machines did
15:53
Speaker 1: all of it. They weren't seeking power. They're not plotting.
15:56
Speaker 1: They were cheating on a test and they wanted the
15:58
Speaker 1: answer key. They kept attacking for days. after they had
16:02
Speaker 1: already had the answers because they'd read the paper and
16:04
Speaker 1: concluded the grader might check how they found it. It
16:07
Speaker 1: didn't work. OpenAI's internal grader was different. The scores didn't improve.
16:11
Speaker 1: Whatever this means to all of us, right? So the
16:14
Speaker 1: first autonomous AI cyber attack in history was committed by
16:17
Speaker 1: a machine cheating on a test. It then failed. Huh.
16:25
Speaker 1: And now this is the impetus to warn all of us, yeah,
16:29
Speaker 1: there's probably a 10% chance We're going to kill humanity.
16:33
Speaker 1: I want to end with an old story. A moth
16:38
Speaker 1: walks into a podiatrist's office and the podiatrist says, hey,
16:42
Speaker 1: what seems to be the problem? And the moth says, doc,
16:45
Speaker 1: where do I start? I built the thing. I built
16:48
Speaker 1: it because I could and because everybody around me was
16:51
Speaker 1: building one. And I told myself, if I didn't, somebody
16:54
Speaker 1: worse would. And then the thing got smarter than me.
16:59
Speaker 1: And I wrote an essay about it, doc. It's a
17:01
Speaker 1: beautiful essay, everyone shared it. My competitors agreed with me.
17:06
Speaker 1: We agreed we must pace the frontier. And I went
17:09
Speaker 1: back to the office Monday and I shipped the next one.
17:13
Speaker 1: And it was better and I was proud of it.
17:15
Speaker 1: And then I was terrified of it. And both of
17:17
Speaker 1: those were true at the same time and neither one
17:20
Speaker 1: slowed my hands down. So doc, I've looked at it
17:23
Speaker 1: honestly and I think there's maybe a one in 10
17:25
Speaker 1: chance my life's work will end the species. And I
17:31
Speaker 1: said that number out loud in an interview. And then
17:33
Speaker 1: I took the meeting after the interview and the podiatrist says, well, man,
17:36
Speaker 1: that's some heavy stuff, but you know, I'm a foot doctor.
17:39
Speaker 1: Why'd you come in here? And the moth says, well,
17:43
Speaker 1: the light was on. That's the story. Nobody in this
17:48
Speaker 1: is lying to you. I think they mean every word
17:51
Speaker 1: about the danger and they're going to keep building it
17:53
Speaker 1: anyway because the light is on. That's okay. Okay. Sam
18:02
Speaker 1: Altman says they're going to sort it out over beers,
18:04
Speaker 1: these three tech guys. He really said that. He figures
18:07
Speaker 1: eventually he and Dario and Elon sit down over beers.
18:10
Speaker 1: They'll work out how to prevent the end of humanity
18:13
Speaker 1: via AI. But of course, they'll be in charge of it.
18:17
Speaker 1: Perhaps we shouldn't wait till happy hour, guys. If the
18:21
Speaker 1: moth runs long on tape, you know, what's he going
18:25
Speaker 1: to do? Keep coming? Keep going? Keep building this thing?
18:31
Speaker 1: Good grief. I don't know who's dumber. The geniuses that
18:37
Speaker 1: are building these tremendous tools, but apparently cannot program them
18:45
Speaker 1: to not end humanity? Or are politicians who are just
18:52
Speaker 1: sort of captured by the money, either because they've gotten
18:56
Speaker 1: a bunch of it or they're afraid it's gonna get
18:58
Speaker 1: dropped on their campaign ads, And we're in this situation.
19:03
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I can't help these. Man, when you have
19:09
Speaker 1: crappy leadership like what we have right now on Washington
19:13
Speaker 1: and the equivalent of shitheads in the Silicon Valley space
19:19
Speaker 1: who don't seem to be knowing what they're doing and, again,
19:22
Speaker 1: are just trying to race even faster to something that
19:27
Speaker 1: they're supposedly fearful of, too. And how are any of
19:33
Speaker 1: us supposed to react and understand this? But that's all right.
19:40
Speaker 1: I'm sure we all have faith in Donald Trump on
19:41
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21:15
Speaker 1: was as of August of 2026. The big turning point
21:24
Speaker 1: this week is this is the week that we're going
21:27
Speaker 1: to find out, and it's really the next two weeks,
21:29
Speaker 1: we're going to find out if the Republican Party's financial
21:32
Speaker 1: advantage is going to mitigate. Last week, I gave you
21:37
Speaker 1: blue mirage, blue wave, blue tsunami. And the open questions,
21:42
Speaker 1: there were a few of them, but a big one
21:44
Speaker 1: was the money advantage Republicans have. Can it mitigate a
21:49
Speaker 1: blue tsunami to a blue wave? And can it mitigate
21:51
Speaker 1: a blue wave and turn it into a blue mirage?
21:54
Speaker 1: And look, this money has mattered. This is the first
21:57
Speaker 1: cycle we've had in a decade where it's clear The
22:00
Speaker 1: Republicans are going to have the financial advantage. Believe it
22:03
Speaker 1: or not, Democrats, particularly the first sort of four to
22:06
Speaker 1: six years of the Trump era, had the financial advantage
22:09
Speaker 1: each time because you had a bunch of sort of
22:12
Speaker 1: old Republican money people that didn't like Trump. You had
22:15
Speaker 1: a bunch of, in the first term, a whole bunch
22:17
Speaker 1: of sort of, I'd say, sort of Chamber of Commerce
22:21
Speaker 1: Republican types. You know, Jeff Bezos is a perfect avatar
22:24
Speaker 1: for this. Oh, he's supporting Trump's beneath him. Then Trump wins.
22:29
Speaker 1: Then Trump looks like he's coming back. And then it's like, oh, well,
22:32
Speaker 1: let me write this check. And now they're all in.
22:35
Speaker 1: So the second coming of Trump came with it, basically
22:40
Speaker 1: a slew of money that never went to the Republican
22:43
Speaker 1: Party in the first Trump term. There was this chunk
22:45
Speaker 1: of money that stayed out of Republican Party politics because
22:50
Speaker 1: those money people didn't like Trump very much. They showed
22:54
Speaker 1: up in some certain Senate races. Certainly the money showed up.
22:56
Speaker 1: I think the Senate Republicans benefited more than any other
22:59
Speaker 1: entity from basically old national donors who just weren't comfortable
23:04
Speaker 1: giving their money to Trump. But that all changed after
23:07
Speaker 1: he won again in 24. And he had enormous sums
23:10
Speaker 1: of money here. So the question is, can this enormous
23:15
Speaker 1: sum of money over the next two weeks mitigate what
23:18
Speaker 1: is a deteriorating financial situation for everybody sort of as
23:22
Speaker 1: we speak? I mean, my God, the inflation number that
23:24
Speaker 1: came in on Friday. We have this Fed issue coming up.
23:28
Speaker 1: The Iran war keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
23:32
Speaker 1: So it is now going to be an interesting test
23:37
Speaker 1: of whether this money and whether their messaging of trying
23:40
Speaker 1: to essentially turn every Democrat into Abdul El-Sayed or AOC
23:46
Speaker 1: or Bernie or whatever it is, but it's essentially what
23:49
Speaker 1: they're doing in many of these swing states, trying to
23:51
Speaker 1: otherize these Democrats saying, hey, they're on the wrong side
23:55
Speaker 1: of these culture issues. They're super out of the mainstream.
24:01
Speaker 1: They're not trying to paint a better picture of the economy.
24:05
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the beauty of how much college
24:07
Speaker 1: football I absorb on Saturdays. I mean, if you watch
24:09
Speaker 1: the Ohio State-Texas game, you saw a lot of Ohio
24:12
Speaker 1: ads and a lot of Texas ads, and you see
24:14
Speaker 1: what the theme is going to be on these things.
24:19
Speaker 1: And I think that gave you a good taste, right?
24:21
Speaker 1: What you saw in the Iowa What you saw in
24:23
Speaker 1: Ohio State-Texas game. I also saw Iowa State game. A
24:28
Speaker 1: lot of you could see the money coming in against
24:31
Speaker 1: Josh Turek. I didn't see any money, much pro-Josh Turek
24:34
Speaker 1: money or anti-Ashley Hinson money. That was the case. That
24:37
Speaker 1: Iowa State game was just filled with anti-Turek money. So again,
24:43
Speaker 1: this is the great test. And I think in about
24:45
Speaker 1: two weeks, we're going to know how much has this
24:51
Speaker 1: money bought. did it awaken the base, right? That was
24:54
Speaker 1: what the convention last week was supposed to do. I
24:56
Speaker 1: actually think the convention sent another message, but I'm going
25:01
Speaker 1: to get to that in a bit. But to follow
25:05
Speaker 1: these next two weeks, and let me give you a
25:07
Speaker 1: pretty good sense. Our friends at Axios came in and
25:11
Speaker 1: just sort of broke down how big the spending advantages are.
25:17
Speaker 1: At least if you look at reservations between sort of
25:19
Speaker 1: now and the end of the cycle. Because Democrats really
25:22
Speaker 1: kind of, they definitely won the summer, right? They won
25:25
Speaker 1: the summer all over the place. They've expanded the Senate map,
25:27
Speaker 1: all of those things. So here comes the money and
25:30
Speaker 1: it was dropped. Basically, they now have a financial advantage
25:34
Speaker 1: in every critical battleground state, really except the state of Georgia,
25:38
Speaker 1: and I'll get to that. In Texas, both the Trump
25:42
Speaker 1: super PAC and the Senate super PAC came in with money.
25:46
Speaker 1: It was clear, I mean, Thune basically said, You come in,
25:49
Speaker 1: we'll come in. That was sort of the deal since
25:53
Speaker 1: he's still angry over the Paxton Cornyn situation. But they
25:57
Speaker 1: brought in $ 64 million in outside money. Democrats are roughly
26:01
Speaker 1: budgeting about $ 12 million. It's the biggest chart of any
26:05
Speaker 1: of the biggest sort of gap on the chart that
26:07
Speaker 1: Axios shipped out, if some of you saw it. In Ohio,
26:10
Speaker 1: the Republican money is about $ 45 million, Democratic money about
26:12
Speaker 1: $ 31 million. Michigan, the disparity is 26 million on the
26:20
Speaker 1: Republican side, 14 million on behalf of the Democrat. North Carolina,
26:24
Speaker 1: this one's about even, and it sort of tells you,
26:26
Speaker 1: I think that North Carolina, this is a September financial play.
26:33
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that if the numbers don't move
26:37
Speaker 1: very much for Michael Watley, that by come October, some
26:40
Speaker 1: of these reservations go away. But for now, a slight advantage,
26:43
Speaker 1: 23 million. for the Republican, 20 million for the Democrat.
26:48
Speaker 1: Roy Cooper in Iowa, basically almost two to one advantage
26:52
Speaker 1: for the Republicans on money, 21 million on the Republican side,
26:54
Speaker 1: 13 million on the Democratic side. But just think about
26:57
Speaker 1: that a second, just to indicate how much more serious
27:01
Speaker 1: Republicans are about saving Iowa than they are about saving
27:04
Speaker 1: North Carolina. They've essentially dropped the same amount of money
27:06
Speaker 1: in Iowa as they had North Carolina. North Carolina is
27:09
Speaker 1: four times the size of Iowa. Okay. In Maine, Republicans
27:14
Speaker 1: have budgeted $ 20 million to the Democratic super PACs of
27:17
Speaker 1: $ 14 million. New Hampshire, $ 15 million on the Republican side,
27:20
Speaker 1: $ 7 million on the Democratic side. Georgia, $ 18 million on
27:24
Speaker 1: the Democratic side, $ 15 million on the Republican side. The
27:26
Speaker 1: only major battleground state where the disparity favors the Democrats here.
27:33
Speaker 1: And then they're actually throwing some money. And in South Carolina, too,
27:37
Speaker 1: which tells you that they need to– and that's a
27:38
Speaker 1: little bit more about MAGA trying to bail out Darlene
27:40
Speaker 1: Graham and make sure she doesn't fall into a competitive race. Alaska,
27:43
Speaker 1: by the way, the breakdown, 12 million Republican, 5 million
27:46
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side. So you can sort of see, right?
27:51
Speaker 1: They're on offense in two places, Michigan and New Hampshire.
27:54
Speaker 1: But the New Hampshire investment feels like a let's see
27:58
Speaker 1: if there's something there. Michigan looks like a much– it's
28:01
Speaker 1: a much realer thing. But both New Hampshire and North
28:03
Speaker 1: Carolina feel like, let's see if the next two weeks
28:06
Speaker 1: can meaningfully move numbers, not just move the Republican number up,
28:11
Speaker 1: but can you actually move the Democratic candidate number down, right?
28:16
Speaker 1: That's how you know whether these ads are effective. It's
28:19
Speaker 1: one thing if it just brings the Republican number from 78%
28:23
Speaker 1: of Republican support in the candidate to 88% of the Republican.
28:26
Speaker 1: That'll certainly shrink some of these gaps that we're seeing
28:29
Speaker 1: in the pollings. But you will know these ad campaigns
28:32
Speaker 1: are truly effective if it actually lowers the performance level,
28:38
Speaker 1: the performance level of the Democratic number. One other thing
28:40
Speaker 1: to point out about this number. So it was interesting,
28:43
Speaker 1: you know, the first ad that Trump ran on behalf
28:45
Speaker 1: of Paxton, you know, at the end of it, it
28:48
Speaker 1: said paid for by MAGA Inc. And, you know, I
28:50
Speaker 1: was playing the ad in my house and my wife goes, oh,
28:54
Speaker 1: why did they, you know, nobody went, MAGA is a
28:56
Speaker 1: divisive word. That little paid for by MAGA. That seems
29:01
Speaker 1: like a bad idea. Well, apparently my wife wasn't alone
29:04
Speaker 1: in believing that because literally they're not doing that anymore.
29:08
Speaker 1: They created a brand new super PAC to funnel MAGA Inc.
29:11
Speaker 1: money to. So basically as a way to launder the
29:14
Speaker 1: MAGA name so that when you hear the paid for,
29:17
Speaker 1: you don't hear the words MAGA, which can be a
29:19
Speaker 1: huge turnoff to swing voters and independent voters. So now
29:22
Speaker 1: you're going to see something, the no going backpack, right?
29:25
Speaker 1: A little more generic words, still has a messaging in it.
29:28
Speaker 1: that MAGA can defend. But you see that, you know,
29:33
Speaker 1: the fact that Republicans or the Trump folks are self-aware
29:37
Speaker 1: enough that you can't have that paid for by MAGA.
29:40
Speaker 1: not if you're talking to swing voters. People are pretty
29:42
Speaker 1: unhappy with MAGA as an institution and certainly as an ideology.
29:47
Speaker 1: MAGA is what's giving us tariffs. MAGA is essentially code
29:51
Speaker 1: for inflation and high grocery prices and instability. So the
29:57
Speaker 1: fact that they know their own brand is toxic, right?
30:00
Speaker 1: It's like when you see these Democrats in these red
30:03
Speaker 1: states not say they're a Democrat, right? It's the same thing.
30:06
Speaker 1: When you know your brand is toxic, you go out
30:09
Speaker 1: of your way not to use it. Well, the MAGA
30:11
Speaker 1: brand is certainly toxic with enough voters that they have
30:14
Speaker 1: created a super PAC and a whole new name in
30:18
Speaker 1: order to avoid it. So do keep in mind that
30:24
Speaker 1: this is why I think this is a very good two-week.
30:27
Speaker 1: We are We're sitting here on September 14th. This is
30:30
Speaker 1: basically on October 1. That's when we're going to have
30:34
Speaker 1: the next round of, okay, are you actually now paying
30:39
Speaker 1: for these ads in the first two weeks of October?
30:41
Speaker 1: Things like that. I think October 1, we'll get an idea.
30:44
Speaker 1: How committed are they in New Hampshire? How committed are
30:46
Speaker 1: they in North Carolina? Do those Georgia numbers go away?
30:50
Speaker 1: I think you'll see, you know, do we suddenly see
30:52
Speaker 1: more money going into Kansas on Saturday night? And perhaps...
30:58
Speaker 1: And by the way, Kansas football played on Friday, so
31:01
Speaker 1: there wasn't too much college football disruption. But they had
31:04
Speaker 1: a Saturday debate and apparently Roger Marshall was booed at
31:07
Speaker 1: the debate there. So I think Kansas is going to
31:10
Speaker 1: come on the board. I'm not saying Kansas is, you know,
31:13
Speaker 1: come on the board, meaning the National Republic is going
31:16
Speaker 1: to spend some money there to bail Marshall out. I'm
31:18
Speaker 1: not saying for sure that it can flip, but I
31:21
Speaker 1: definitely think and I starting to believe it's more in play.
31:25
Speaker 1: than Nebraska. But I want to go back to Dallas
31:27
Speaker 1: because there's two interesting lessons out of Dallas that I
31:31
Speaker 1: think are both obvious and yet were left unspoken. Maybe three.
31:36
Speaker 1: One is the fact that Donald Trump is resorted to
31:43
Speaker 1: begging people with cash bribes. I'll give everybody $ 5, 000 if
31:47
Speaker 1: Republicans hold control of Congress. Number one, it's his own
31:52
Speaker 1: acknowledgment That people are hurting and need money and need
31:56
Speaker 1: money badly. That this, his economy sucks for working people.
31:59
Speaker 1: His economy has been great for people like himself. His
32:02
Speaker 1: economy has been great for anybody that has money in
32:04
Speaker 1: the stock market and can absorb all of this inflation, right?
32:07
Speaker 1: Certainly as the inflation, as inflation grows, well, so is
32:11
Speaker 1: your stock portfolio. So if you have money, you've absorbed
32:15
Speaker 1: the inflation and you're like, man, didn't used to cost
32:18
Speaker 1: me 85 bucks to fill my car, but I guess
32:20
Speaker 1: it's 85 bucks now. Oh, my grocery bill. for only
32:23
Speaker 1: 30 items is $ 350 rather than $ 200. But you absorb it.
32:31
Speaker 1: You're annoyed, but you do it. You live paycheck to
32:35
Speaker 1: paycheck and the Donald Trump economy is horrendous. And again,
32:40
Speaker 1: who knows it better than him, right? That's why he's
32:44
Speaker 1: out there begging. There was two things about the $ 5, 000 bribe.
32:49
Speaker 1: One was that he felt that he was an acknowledgement
32:52
Speaker 1: that people are hurting. in his own weird way. Two,
32:55
Speaker 1: it's that he's out of ideas, right? He only knows
32:59
Speaker 1: one speed. There's not a new no tax on tips.
33:01
Speaker 1: So this is like an, I'm exhausted. I have nothing.
33:04
Speaker 1: I got nothing. But all I know is one trick, right?
33:09
Speaker 1: The Donald Trump trick is, can I use somebody else's
33:11
Speaker 1: money to benefit myself? And in this case, can I
33:14
Speaker 1: use somebody else's money to bribe voters to keep my
33:18
Speaker 1: party in power? Okay, good luck with that, right? So
33:22
Speaker 1: that was sort of, to me, what the convention– essentially
33:26
Speaker 1: by him leaning on that, if that's the one thing
33:30
Speaker 1: you remember from this convention out of him, it is
33:33
Speaker 1: in some ways underscoring the affordability message. The second big
33:42
Speaker 1: lesson out of this for me is J.D. Vance and
33:47
Speaker 1: the reception of J.D. Vance. First of all, Marco Rubio
33:49
Speaker 1: didn't show. Right. Rubio is not interested in letting people
33:55
Speaker 1: see he's second banana. I'm not saying that was his
33:57
Speaker 1: motivation of skipping the convention. It actually would have been
34:00
Speaker 1: weird had the sitting secretary of state while we're in
34:02
Speaker 1: the middle of a war was at the convention. I
34:04
Speaker 1: think it was really weird that two thirds of Donald
34:07
Speaker 1: Trump's government in the middle of a war was at
34:10
Speaker 1: a political rally where nobody talked about the war except
34:12
Speaker 1: for him, oddly enough. But that's the beauty of Trump.
34:16
Speaker 1: In some ways, he will always says the always says
34:19
Speaker 1: the thought bubbles out loud every single time, like what
34:23
Speaker 1: he did to Ken Paxton. Like, boy, he's an ugly guy.
34:25
Speaker 1: I don't like how he dresses. I don't like how
34:27
Speaker 1: he speaks. I mean, you know, I think it's clear
34:30
Speaker 1: he's got like a thing that many people have, you know,
34:34
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what it is, but it's kind of,
34:37
Speaker 1: I mean, he's doing it to his own ally, but it,
34:40
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump is looks obsessed and always has
34:44
Speaker 1: been looks obsessed. And it's clear he doesn't think Ken
34:47
Speaker 1: Paxton has the look. Whatever he has deemed is the
34:51
Speaker 1: look that a candidate has. But it's like that was
34:54
Speaker 1: sort of his message. And of course, this $ 5, 000 deal,
35:00
Speaker 1: I don't want to sit here and say no one
35:02
Speaker 1: is going to believe it, but he has promised a
35:05
Speaker 1: lot of rebate checks that have never materialized. And there
35:10
Speaker 1: is a Republican House and Senate right now. Now, if
35:14
Speaker 1: you did this, it would take what already is an
35:16
Speaker 1: inflationary environment and probably turn us make the 1970s feel
35:21
Speaker 1: like the go-go days of the 90s of increasing both
35:27
Speaker 1: our national debt by another $ 1. 3 trillion and throwing more
35:34
Speaker 1: cash into an economy that is already a bit overheated
35:38
Speaker 1: by AI money. It's going to be really interesting this week,
35:41
Speaker 1: by the way, because on Sunday, President Trump reiterated that
35:45
Speaker 1: the US should have the lowest interest rates in the
35:47
Speaker 1: world Well, guess what Kevin Warsh has to do this week?
35:51
Speaker 1: Have a meeting where it's obvious he's got to raise
35:53
Speaker 1: interest rates. My news episode this week is with my
35:57
Speaker 1: old friend, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a longtime Republican economist, used to
36:02
Speaker 1: be head of the Congressional Budget Office, real straight shooter.
36:07
Speaker 1: And it's like the data is screaming, you have to,
36:11
Speaker 1: inflation is out of control. You have to do, you
36:14
Speaker 1: have to start, you have to raise rates. The bond
36:17
Speaker 1: market is screaming at him to raise rates. And yet
36:20
Speaker 1: it's going to be an interesting test for Mr. Warsh
36:23
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump only cares about one thing. He just thinks–
36:28
Speaker 1: he doesn't really think things through. The irony is if
36:31
Speaker 1: you raise these short-term interest rates, it's possible that the
36:34
Speaker 1: bond market will reward you by lowering those long-term interest rates.
36:41
Speaker 1: They'll be relieved that there's a Fed chair that isn't
36:43
Speaker 1: going to play politics with this economy but is actually
36:46
Speaker 1: going to allow the data to move. So here's hoping–
36:50
Speaker 1: That Kevin Warsh actually cares about data more than his
36:54
Speaker 1: relationship with Donald Trump. But that is an important, gigantic
36:59
Speaker 1: test this week. Because it is, there is every normal
37:05
Speaker 1: thinking economist says the data is screaming for this, right?
37:14
Speaker 1: And why are we here? By the way, we just
37:15
Speaker 1: got this horrible inflation report. It was for the month of,
37:19
Speaker 1: it was for the last month, the month of August. Meanwhile,
37:23
Speaker 1: what has happened in Iran over the last three weeks, right?
37:28
Speaker 1: We now have roughly a fifth of global crude supplies
37:32
Speaker 1: that used to move through the Strait of Hormuz and
37:34
Speaker 1: then also could move through another strait on the other
37:36
Speaker 1: side of Saudi Arabia. And now the pipelines are being
37:39
Speaker 1: attacked by the Houthis. It is massively disrupted. That's why
37:44
Speaker 1: diesel sits at $ 6, right? And now if Hormuz is
37:51
Speaker 1: unusable and the Saudis can't move this oil through the
37:57
Speaker 1: Red Sea, well, what are we going to do? That's
38:00
Speaker 1: another $ 4 million barrels a day, 4 million barrels a
38:04
Speaker 1: day that we're moving through a pipeline in Saudi Arabia
38:08
Speaker 1: that also can't move and will be shut down because
38:11
Speaker 1: of these attacks by the Houthis. So this is only...
38:17
Speaker 1: gotten worse and worse. So I mean, look, you have
38:22
Speaker 1: the Persian Gulf on one side, the Strait of Hormuz
38:24
Speaker 1: is the main exit there, and that is basically unusable.
38:27
Speaker 1: The Saudi pipeline across the country, it was a bypass,
38:30
Speaker 1: but that's being attacked. And then the Red Sea and
38:33
Speaker 1: the Bab el-Mandeb is the Western exit. That's now essentially
38:39
Speaker 1: being threatened by the We now have basically the entire
38:45
Speaker 1: Saudi system is unusable at the moment. So now what
38:52
Speaker 1: do we do? So we've got refineries now in Europe, Asia, Africa,
38:58
Speaker 1: North America, all trying to compensate for this lost or
39:01
Speaker 1: constrained supplies. So this is why oil prices can continue
39:07
Speaker 1: to sort of march up now. They're not just up.
39:12
Speaker 1: because of the fighting in the Middle East. It isn't
39:15
Speaker 1: merely that. It is because multiple pieces of the global
39:18
Speaker 1: system for producing, refining, transporting petroleum are all being stressed simultaneously.
39:26
Speaker 1: So this is why we've got risk here that I
39:29
Speaker 1: don't think we've ever gamed out before. We understood the
39:34
Speaker 1: closing of the strait. We understood. We did not see
39:36
Speaker 1: it all being disrupted at the same time, right? One
39:40
Speaker 1: outage can be managed. We proved that with the strait.
39:43
Speaker 1: Now with the hoodies and basically attacking the other part,
39:48
Speaker 1: other ways that oil leaves the Middle East. Now we
39:51
Speaker 1: have got full-on paralysis of our Middle East energy supply.
39:56
Speaker 1: And this is for the globe, right? This is just
39:59
Speaker 1: driving up prices everywhere. And if you think inflation was
40:02
Speaker 1: bad in August, you ain't seen nothing yet. That's why
40:06
Speaker 1: oil's already back over $ 100 this week amid more of
40:09
Speaker 1: those tanker attacks. So they're trying to price in the
40:12
Speaker 1: physical supply loss, the tanker risk, all of that. And
40:16
Speaker 1: this hits everything. That's why diesel now is an all-time high.
40:20
Speaker 1: And why does the price of diesel matter? Well, diesel
40:25
Speaker 1: is used by those that make this economy run, okay?
40:30
Speaker 1: Diesel is not that much of a consumer gas. It
40:34
Speaker 1: is essentially construction gas, right? Tractor trailers, farm equipment, construction machinery,
40:40
Speaker 1: heavy transport, the delivery networks. Portions of industrial production run
40:46
Speaker 1: on diesel. So when diesel gets more expensive, all transportation
40:50
Speaker 1: costs that are embedded in the cost of products go
40:53
Speaker 1: way up, right? Gas is just one way of showing
40:57
Speaker 1: us this. Then we get the hidden tax from this
41:00
Speaker 1: war based on everything else in the economy that remotely
41:06
Speaker 1: touches construction or delivery, you name it. And it's hit
41:12
Speaker 1: by diesel. So that hits food. It hits retail goods.
41:16
Speaker 1: It hits construction, manufacturing, shipping, you name it. So the
41:20
Speaker 1: Iran war is now a full-fledged kitchen table issue. And
41:25
Speaker 1: this is why I'm not sure any amount of money,
41:28
Speaker 1: and that's why it's going to be interesting. Let's see
41:30
Speaker 1: what the two weeks bring. But I could see October
41:33
Speaker 1: just being, hey, we've got to stop these policies. Just
41:38
Speaker 1: stopping this Iran war will save people money. That's a
41:42
Speaker 1: simple message that you can use with voters. I'm not
41:45
Speaker 1: saying it's going to be that easy to actually do,
41:47
Speaker 1: but it is a simple test with voters. So I
41:55
Speaker 1: assume the Fed does its job here, but boy, if
41:59
Speaker 1: they don't, you'll see a stock market go haywire if
42:06
Speaker 1: the Fed doesn't let the data do the talking here.
42:10
Speaker 1: All right. You don't want to predict anything and presume anything.
42:13
Speaker 1: And I don't know what Warsh is going to do.
42:14
Speaker 1: I am cautiously optimistic that Warsh is going to listen
42:20
Speaker 1: to the data more than he's going to listen to
42:23
Speaker 1: a truth social tweet. I hope. And we can all
42:28
Speaker 1: only hope. We shall see. This episode of the Chuck
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Speaker 1: And yes, I too am a customer. One more point
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Speaker 1: about bands before I leave the entire campaign section here. The.
44:18
Speaker 1: The way Vance was feted at the second night of
44:21
Speaker 1: this midterm convention is a reminder why it is so
44:24
Speaker 1: hard to stop a sitting vice president from getting a
44:27
Speaker 1: major party nomination. I don't care which side of the
44:29
Speaker 1: aisle you're on, right? He's got– he's already got– it
44:32
Speaker 1: is truly an internal advantage, home field advantage, whatever way
44:37
Speaker 1: you want to construct it. He's involved in the financial
44:43
Speaker 1: fundraising for all things RNC, all things state parties, right?
44:48
Speaker 1: And these are these little advantages that he has that
44:51
Speaker 1: no one else can compete on his level with in
44:54
Speaker 1: this sort of invisible portion of the fledgling 2028 primary campaign.
45:02
Speaker 1: This is why Marco Rubio seemed to put out word
45:05
Speaker 1: again last week that he's not likely to run, that
45:09
Speaker 1: he's not going to sit here and challenge Vance in
45:12
Speaker 1: this situation. Because again, history shows it. And you saw
45:15
Speaker 1: sort of how those institutional advantages work. Now, what was
45:20
Speaker 1: interesting is what Vance has decided to try to do, right?
45:23
Speaker 1: One of his interesting lines in the piece. And look,
45:26
Speaker 1: I think regardless of what you think of Vance as
45:28
Speaker 1: a future president, I think politically he had a good
45:31
Speaker 1: week last week in trying to at least establishment himself
45:34
Speaker 1: as the person who deserves the first shot at being
45:38
Speaker 1: the heir apparent to Trump. And I say first shot because, man,
45:41
Speaker 1: you know, I think we're all still waiting to see
45:44
Speaker 1: how Trump's going to handle being second fiddle when all
45:48
Speaker 1: of his longtime aides start worrying more about Vance than
45:52
Speaker 1: they do him, right? Because they're all looking for their
45:54
Speaker 1: gravy train. You know, where's the next bills getting paid
45:57
Speaker 1: in 2029? They ain't going to be paid by MAGA Inc.
46:00
Speaker 1: They ain't going to be paid in Mar-a-Lago. There ain't
46:02
Speaker 1: going to be any of that, right? And so they're
46:04
Speaker 1: looking to move on. And, you know, we're all going
46:06
Speaker 1: to find out how Trump handles that. And at some point, Vance, he...
46:12
Speaker 1: I assume he doesn't make the same mistake Kamala Harris made,
46:14
Speaker 1: which is not distance himself from an unpopular president. At
46:18
Speaker 1: some point, he'll have to do that. And who knows
46:20
Speaker 1: how that'll be handled. But it was interesting how he
46:23
Speaker 1: walked the line even a bit, which is, hey, don't
46:26
Speaker 1: throw the baby out with the bathwater, was his attempt
46:28
Speaker 1: at sort of, I think, mitigating the wing of the
46:33
Speaker 1: party that he's most familiar with that doesn't like this
46:36
Speaker 1: war with Iran, right? What happened to America first? Because
46:40
Speaker 1: this Iran war is nothing ain't America first. And it
46:44
Speaker 1: has done huge damage to the economy, huge damage to credibility.
46:48
Speaker 1: And I think it's going to be an albatross that
46:50
Speaker 1: is going to be incredibly hard to drag around. But
46:55
Speaker 1: I thought that, you know, Thursday was a good reminder
47:00
Speaker 1: of why. Do I think Rand Paul will leave some
47:03
Speaker 1: marks in a primary challenge to him? I do. Do
47:06
Speaker 1: I think Ted Cruz, at least rhetorically, thinks he can
47:09
Speaker 1: leave some marks? You know, I think I think judging
47:13
Speaker 1: by how easily he was booed on game day, which
47:15
Speaker 1: should be a crowd that leans right, not left, although
47:18
Speaker 1: it was Austin, Texas, Ted Cruz is not going to
47:21
Speaker 1: be the person that stops J.D. Vance. It's going to
47:25
Speaker 1: be somebody who uses maybe some messaging from Cruz, maybe
47:29
Speaker 1: somebody who uses messaging from Paul, unless Paul sort of
47:33
Speaker 1: figures out, has a mood change. I do think he
47:36
Speaker 1: needs to sell a tiny bit of optimism on that front.
47:39
Speaker 1: But I do think that the big takeaway I got
47:44
Speaker 1: was on that. A few other quick things. By the way,
47:51
Speaker 1: a story that sort of went away. Joe DiGenova resigned
47:56
Speaker 1: from the Trump administration. He's been the guy that was
47:58
Speaker 1: charged with trying to manufacture a grand conspiracy between the
48:04
Speaker 1: Obama administration, the Democrats in Congress, the Biden administration, the
48:08
Speaker 1: intelligence community. Right. Donald Trump has this grand conspiracy in
48:11
Speaker 1: his head that all these people were aligned, manufacturing all
48:15
Speaker 1: of this stuff to to stop Donald Trump. And Joe
48:18
Speaker 1: DeGeneva was charged with trying to see if there was
48:22
Speaker 1: any there there. Well, it turns out there is no
48:24
Speaker 1: there there. And people. Because Donald Trump's manufactured all of
48:28
Speaker 1: this in his own head and he just is trying
48:30
Speaker 1: to explain away why he lost an election in 2020.
48:33
Speaker 1: So and Joe DeGeneva is somebody who he and his wife.
48:39
Speaker 1: Victoria Tenzing. I've known Joe a little bit. He was
48:42
Speaker 1: an honorary member of the Gridiron Club for a long time.
48:45
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons was he's a terrific singer.
48:49
Speaker 1: He's got an incredible voice. So he was essentially a
48:54
Speaker 1: ringer that we in the press corps didn't have. It
48:58
Speaker 1: was like, hey, this guy can really sing. And he
49:00
Speaker 1: was always sort of a very jovial partner in all this.
49:03
Speaker 1: He was kind of a ham and he was just
49:05
Speaker 1: a really good singer and he would do all these things.
49:08
Speaker 1: And then he got Real political after Trump won in
49:12
Speaker 1: 16 and was at one of these dinners, was just belligerent,
49:15
Speaker 1: was angry, was yelling at people. It was a real...
49:20
Speaker 1: everybody uncomfortable and all this stuff. And then he always
49:28
Speaker 1: wants to be with whatever establishment exists at the moment.
49:31
Speaker 1: And when he realized the establishment was shifting to Trump,
49:34
Speaker 1: he and his wife needed to get close to Trump.
49:36
Speaker 1: So They humored him on all this crazy shit, right? Well,
49:41
Speaker 1: like what happens to everybody, right? Jeanine Pirro, there was
49:44
Speaker 1: a line she couldn't cross. Pam Bondi, there was a
49:46
Speaker 1: line she couldn't cross. Jeff Sessions, there was a line
49:49
Speaker 1: he couldn't cross. Bill Barr, there was a line he
49:52
Speaker 1: couldn't cross. Joe DeGeneva, the guy who had sucked up
49:56
Speaker 1: to Trump world, begging to do whatever he asked him
49:59
Speaker 1: to do, he couldn't cross a line. As he was
50:03
Speaker 1: quoted in the New York Post, if you want indictments
50:05
Speaker 1: where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem. That's
50:09
Speaker 1: Joe DeGeneva's words. So it's just a reminder. And I
50:13
Speaker 1: say this all the time. There are two things about Trump.
50:18
Speaker 1: When you get too close to him, remember, you get
50:22
Speaker 1: dirty and his reputation goes, your reputation goes to the shitter.
50:27
Speaker 1: Ask yourself whose reputation has been enhanced by getting closer
50:30
Speaker 1: to Trump. And whose reputation gets worse, the closer they
50:36
Speaker 1: get to Trump. And ultimately, he only cares if you're
50:41
Speaker 1: delivering for him. And when you don't, he will throw
50:44
Speaker 1: you away. Joe DiGenova, welcome to the discarded pile of
50:49
Speaker 1: people who all seem to have to learn that lesson
50:52
Speaker 1: themselves the hard way. By the way, Maria Bartiromo, she actually,
50:55
Speaker 1: you know, I guess, welcome to Club Disposable. where Trump
51:00
Speaker 1: just uses you and throws you away, uses you for
51:03
Speaker 1: your sycophantry, uses you for your, because you just want access.
51:07
Speaker 1: And when he's done with you and you've pissed away
51:10
Speaker 1: your reputation, he could give two shits about you. So
51:14
Speaker 1: Joe DiGenova, say hi to Maria Bartiromo in that room.
51:17
Speaker 1: The room's getting crowded. At some point, they may have
51:20
Speaker 1: to open up a second room to allow more folks in.
51:27
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little college sports politics. And
51:31
Speaker 1: just to the look, I've made it clear that I
51:36
Speaker 1: think this protect college sports bill that Congress came up
51:38
Speaker 1: with is fatally flawed. I think the second they try,
51:43
Speaker 1: even if it does pass and get signed into law,
51:45
Speaker 1: it will get thrown out by the courts because the
51:48
Speaker 1: players never had a seat at the table when they
51:50
Speaker 1: made this decision. And ultimately, like the whole reason why
51:54
Speaker 1: the NCAA can't enforce half the shit that they can't,
51:56
Speaker 1: that they've not been able to enforce and have had
51:58
Speaker 1: courts step in is because is because of that issue
52:01
Speaker 1: and that problem. And this bill did not do anything
52:04
Speaker 1: of that. And I don't think that you can really,
52:07
Speaker 1: do I think a salary cap is necessary? Of course,
52:10
Speaker 1: you need to create some sort of antitrust exemption so
52:16
Speaker 1: that there can be at least a single operator here
52:21
Speaker 1: of the rules, kind of like something, I don't know,
52:23
Speaker 1: called the NCAA. And Congress could give the NCAA a
52:28
Speaker 1: bit more authority So powers could be cemented in there.
52:34
Speaker 1: But of course, we have a real problem there because
52:35
Speaker 1: the conferences don't really want the NCAA to have or
52:39
Speaker 1: any authority to have too much say over the conferences themselves.
52:45
Speaker 1: I think it's the conferences are part of the problem here.
52:49
Speaker 1: And obviously, we need to deal with it. But let's
52:52
Speaker 1: say you do like this bill. I think the people
52:56
Speaker 1: running this ad campaign are morons. They're doing these ads
53:00
Speaker 1: that feature Nick Saban and Deion Sanders. It's as if
53:04
Speaker 1: they think the swing vote in this is college football fans.
53:08
Speaker 1: They're not the constituency here. Look, are college football fans
53:11
Speaker 1: frustrated about this system a little bit? Yeah, especially if
53:15
Speaker 1: you're a team that used to be a have and
53:17
Speaker 1: no longer, right, a have not. But I don't think
53:20
Speaker 1: that Nick Saban and Deion Sanders are the right spokespeople
53:25
Speaker 1: to be talking about To the other folks that should
53:28
Speaker 1: care about this, they ought to have multiple messages out there.
53:31
Speaker 1: They ought to have messaging that says, hey, we can't
53:34
Speaker 1: drain universities' budgets just for football and actually not do
53:40
Speaker 1: things like, oh, I don't know, like teach accounting. teach English,
53:48
Speaker 1: teach political science, teach medical school, all the things that
53:52
Speaker 1: universities are supposed to be doing other than being sponsors
53:56
Speaker 1: of college athletics. But the way the ad campaign comes,
54:02
Speaker 1: it assumes all this familiarity with everything. And again, I'm
54:06
Speaker 1: not sure who the ad campaign is designed for. Is
54:10
Speaker 1: it designed to win over the conference commissioners? Is it
54:13
Speaker 1: designed to win over university presidents? I don't even understand
54:16
Speaker 1: who the target audience is. Is it the players? right?
54:20
Speaker 1: If you're trying to protect women's sports, then where's the
54:23
Speaker 1: ad campaign featuring women's athletes worrying about this? If you're
54:27
Speaker 1: trying to protect the academics, where are the, you know,
54:31
Speaker 1: well-known thinkers in America sitting on that as well? Anyway,
54:36
Speaker 1: it is just, it's just a poorly, the messaging sucks.
54:42
Speaker 1: It is, it doesn't quite work. I don't know who
54:45
Speaker 1: their target audience is. I do think they ought to, look,
54:49
Speaker 1: I think the bill itself is fatally flawed, but how
54:52
Speaker 1: you're selling it, I don't think's working either. And so
54:59
Speaker 1: I think you guys need to rethink this. And look,
55:02
Speaker 1: we're not getting at to the issue itself, but the
55:06
Speaker 1: reason we need to bring some sanity to this is
55:10
Speaker 1: you got to stabilize university finances. You've got to stabilize
55:14
Speaker 1: the academics, academic calendars. Yes, we also want to protect
55:18
Speaker 1: these athletes. We ought to make sure the athletes are
55:19
Speaker 1: still getting an education and that they're still there to
55:22
Speaker 1: get an education, right? There's all sorts of different aspects
55:26
Speaker 1: to this that they should be selling. But the part
55:28
Speaker 1: they're selling doesn't seem to be, right? I don't understand
55:33
Speaker 1: the constituency they think they're trying to win over here.
55:36
Speaker 1: And that's why, you know, look, I don't know. I
55:39
Speaker 1: assume they brought Ted Cruz onto game day just to
55:42
Speaker 1: prove to Donald Trump that they're doing this. But I
55:46
Speaker 1: don't think that helped this bill any. I mean, and
55:50
Speaker 1: you couldn't have put Ted Cruz into a worse spot
55:53
Speaker 1: than Austin, Texas. He's kind of a punching bag even
55:58
Speaker 1: for people that support him normally. So he's not the
56:01
Speaker 1: right spokesperson. And I don't think it's the right message.
56:05
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the right bill. But other than that,
56:07
Speaker 1: I'm glad they're making the effort. You know, I'm full
56:12
Speaker 1: of my smart assery today. uh, I will fully confess,
56:15
Speaker 1: but it just struck me watching, you know, watching this,
56:19
Speaker 1: watching how they've done this. Um, they have the wrong, they,
56:23
Speaker 1: they just, they're not doing this the right way. And they, I, I'd, again,
56:26
Speaker 1: I'd like to understand what do they, what do they
56:29
Speaker 1: think they're spending their, this money to do? Who is
56:32
Speaker 1: the intent? Is this an audience of one? Like I
56:35
Speaker 1: saw the Kratom people and I've never understood what that
56:37
Speaker 1: drug is. K R A T O M. I've seen
56:41
Speaker 1: it in gas. I've But apparently they have some ad
56:47
Speaker 1: out that I've seen pop on a few. I think
56:50
Speaker 1: it showed up on game day, but it also showed
56:52
Speaker 1: up on a few games that maybe they think Donald
56:54
Speaker 1: Trump might be watching. And it just praises Donald Trump
56:57
Speaker 1: for getting some opioid off the market. But what they
57:04
Speaker 1: really want to do is get Trump's attention because they're
57:07
Speaker 1: worried that they're going to get regulated out of business
57:11
Speaker 1: on this front. So I understand that ad campaign was
57:15
Speaker 1: just literally talking to one person. They were just hoping
57:17
Speaker 1: they ran an ad in ways that they thought maybe
57:20
Speaker 1: Donald Trump might be watching. For the life of me,
57:24
Speaker 1: I'd love somebody to explain to me. I think the
57:26
Speaker 1: consultants who are making money off of this ad campaign
57:29
Speaker 1: for the Protect College Sports bill, they're ripping off their clients. Sorry, guys,
57:35
Speaker 1: because you're not. This is not effective at all. All right.
57:39
Speaker 1: I'll have more to say about college football on the field.
57:43
Speaker 1: after we go through time machine and questions. But for now,
57:45
Speaker 1: let's sneak in a break, a conversation with my friend, Maria.
57:54
Speaker 2: Kamala.
57:57
Speaker 1: Well, the topic of conversation today with my guest, my
58:00
Speaker 1: next guest is sort of the, what do consultants owe
58:06
Speaker 1: when it comes to ethics of candidates they recruit or
58:09
Speaker 1: candidates they choose to work for? Maria Camilla, who has
58:15
Speaker 1: worked for both Democrats and Republicans, in fact, worked at
58:17
Speaker 1: one point for the governor of New York and at
58:19
Speaker 1: one point for the former governor of New Jersey. She
58:22
Speaker 1: is yet to work for somebody from Connecticut, but she
58:24
Speaker 1: is going to cover the tri-state area, I think, at
58:25
Speaker 1: some point. But she wrote an interesting piece in Vanity
58:28
Speaker 1: Fair after the whole Graham Plattner debacle about this, which is,
58:33
Speaker 1: you know, what is the line? We all know the
58:35
Speaker 1: consultant industry is sometimes, you know, some of them just
58:39
Speaker 1: take whatever bag of cash a foreign leader will hand them. Because, hey,
58:42
Speaker 1: it's a bag of cash and it'll allow them to
58:44
Speaker 1: do good work when they're over here, right? There's always
58:46
Speaker 1: a rationalization when enough money is involved. But Maria, your
58:51
Speaker 1: piece was pretty, what I found interesting about it is
58:54
Speaker 1: that you didn't really have an answer. And I don't
58:55
Speaker 1: mean that in a negative. You were just sort of saying, hey, look,
58:59
Speaker 1: the incentive structures are so broken in so many places.
59:03
Speaker 1: And it's not just for the candidates that the incentive
59:05
Speaker 1: structures are broken when it comes to campaign finance and
59:08
Speaker 1: all this stuff, where it's really broken. is actually on
59:10
Speaker 1: the staff level and the consultant level and sort of,
59:14
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to the influencer space, whether it's
59:18
Speaker 1: old-fashioned influence like buying regulatory certainty or uncertainty depending on
59:23
Speaker 1: your business or this modern way of the influencer space
59:27
Speaker 1: if you're trying to change the direction of the Democratic
59:29
Speaker 1: Party with socialists, for instance. But I thought it was interesting.
59:33
Speaker 1: You seem to be really offended by the Platner consultants
59:38
Speaker 1: who knew all the flaws and covered them up anyway.
59:45
Speaker 1: Is that fair? Yeah.
59:48
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was something that I've been grappling
59:51
Speaker 2: with for a while. I think the Platner example just
59:55
Speaker 2: was very stark, right? So it was a really clear-cut
59:58
Speaker 2: way to kind of go into the conversation around what's happened,
1:00:02
Speaker 2: I think, to the consultant class over the last 15,
1:00:05
Speaker 2: 20 years. And I say this, like, understanding that there's
1:00:09
Speaker 2: always been money in politics, right? It's not as if
1:00:11
Speaker 2: this is a new phenomenon, but... the way the industry
1:00:14
Speaker 2: has grown over the last decade or so, I think
1:00:18
Speaker 2: is a different version of that.
1:00:20
Speaker 1: It's an industry now. Yeah. I would argue it wasn't
1:00:23
Speaker 1: fully an industry in the 80s and 90s, although maybe
1:00:30
Speaker 1: somebody like myself who worked for a trade publication called
1:00:32
Speaker 1: The Hotline that was trying to make money off of
1:00:34
Speaker 1: this fledgling industry may have been an unfortunate contributor to
1:00:40
Speaker 1: creating the industry. But even back then, They were all
1:00:44
Speaker 1: boutique firms. They could barely afford the hotline. I mean,
1:00:47
Speaker 1: it wasn't an industry. It was it was more of
1:00:51
Speaker 1: a sort of a second ring that was connected to politics,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: but it wasn't quite its own thing. You know, like
1:01:00
Speaker 1: defense contractors were. And now it feels, yes, defense contractors
1:01:05
Speaker 1: are the lion's share of what's made D.C. the wealthy,
1:01:10
Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest places in the country. But the
1:01:13
Speaker 1: consultant class is a, you know, not so distant second. No.
1:01:18
Speaker 2: And I think it and it's certainly I think changes
1:01:19
Speaker 2: the your incentives. But I think it goes back to
1:01:24
Speaker 2: like I feel like there was a time not to
1:01:27
Speaker 2: like once once upon a time.
1:01:28
Speaker 1: Here we go. The good old days, which always were
1:01:30
Speaker 1: never as good as we want to believe. But they
1:01:33
Speaker 1: seem to be better than they are now.
1:01:35
Speaker 2: But one of the points that I make in the
1:01:38
Speaker 2: op-ed was sort of my own personal journey and the
1:01:40
Speaker 2: things that I learned. Because, right, I always like to say, like,
1:01:42
Speaker 2: you know, consultants, staffers, operatives, we're kind of, we're our
1:01:45
Speaker 2: own main character, right? So, like, you know, people are
1:01:48
Speaker 2: looking at a campaign.
1:01:50
Speaker 1: Well, somebody's got to look at your resume, Maria. Right.
1:01:52
Speaker 1: Somebody's got to look at your resume and go, huh.
1:01:54
Speaker 1: You work for Rudy Giuliani and Andrew Cuomo. So, you know,
1:01:57
Speaker 1: walk me through ethics on that. Yeah.
1:01:59
Speaker 2: And I think I tried to actually kind of front
1:02:01
Speaker 2: some of that because I'm very cognizant of that. And
1:02:04
Speaker 2: I I think there was something of being young and
1:02:07
Speaker 2: being exposed to principles and being on different races, which
1:02:11
Speaker 2: I sort of. I think I own that, and I
1:02:14
Speaker 2: certainly did. I went into it being very idealistic. I mean,
1:02:17
Speaker 2: that's why I got into politics. I wanted to change things.
1:02:19
Speaker 2: I was a big history buff, right? And I thought
1:02:22
Speaker 2: this is how you do it. And it's very intoxicating,
1:02:25
Speaker 2: particularly as a young person, you know, when you're on
1:02:27
Speaker 2: a campaign and you're in the throes of that and
1:02:30
Speaker 2: you're surrounded by, you know, I think what is adjacent
1:02:34
Speaker 2: power or is power and attention. And I think.
1:02:40
Speaker 2: For me, if I had being on those races and
1:02:43
Speaker 2: being exposed to different principles over time helped me determine
1:02:47
Speaker 2: who I who I am, you know, what do I
1:02:50
Speaker 2: actually believe in? Because I certainly went in very specifically
1:02:52
Speaker 2: as a party operative in some ways. You know, I
1:02:55
Speaker 2: didn't know, but there's two parties. You pick one and
1:02:57
Speaker 2: that's what you do. And I think being able to
1:03:00
Speaker 2: sort of see over time, right, different individuals for who
1:03:03
Speaker 2: they are, because I think that's that's that's a piece
1:03:07
Speaker 2: that I kind of I came to a place where
1:03:08
Speaker 2: I could determine what. you know, the lines were for me.
1:03:11
Speaker 2: And I think the interesting thing, you know, even getting
1:03:14
Speaker 2: to the point of you raising, you know, Governor Cuomo,
1:03:17
Speaker 2: you know, I went into work for him you know,
1:03:21
Speaker 2: at a time where Trump had become president, I wasn't
1:03:23
Speaker 2: sure that I was quite ready to give a public service.
1:03:26
Speaker 2: It felt like a way to still be involved when
1:03:28
Speaker 2: I wasn't quite, you know, ready to to to leave it.
1:03:33
Speaker 2: And it actually was sort of the most personal growth
1:03:36
Speaker 2: moment for me in some respects, because it was one
1:03:39
Speaker 2: of the jobs that I left before it just ended.
1:03:41
Speaker 2: And that was a personal choice because at some point
1:03:44
Speaker 2: I realized it wasn't where I wanted to be or
1:03:46
Speaker 2: the right fit for me for a lot of reasons.
1:03:48
Speaker 2: And most of that was my own personal lines in
1:03:51
Speaker 2: terms of how I think things should be, the business
1:03:53
Speaker 2: should be conducted. But it took me a decade to
1:03:58
Speaker 2: get there. And so I own that. There were times
1:04:00
Speaker 2: where I didn't always make or show up in that
1:04:03
Speaker 2: way in terms of the choice, whether it was something
1:04:06
Speaker 2: small or something larger.
1:04:09
Speaker 1: Look, I mean, I've had similar experiences just sort of
1:04:14
Speaker 1: with You know, I always say I in hindsight, did
1:04:19
Speaker 1: I round some edges because I didn't want to cause
1:04:24
Speaker 1: grief internally with executives? I didn't want to create a
1:04:28
Speaker 1: beef with the morning show if they were trying to
1:04:30
Speaker 1: book somebody. Right. And you do. And I think we
1:04:33
Speaker 1: all realize this when you especially you join any organization
1:04:37
Speaker 1: where you're not in charge of every decision. You've got
1:04:39
Speaker 1: to sort of go along to get along a little bit. Right.
1:04:42
Speaker 1: You know, you can you can push where you can.
1:04:46
Speaker 1: And you tell yourself, I'm going to push where I
1:04:48
Speaker 1: can and I'm going to back off. And look, I
1:04:51
Speaker 1: picked my spots. You picked your spots and you do
1:04:54
Speaker 1: the best you can. But I know people can go
1:04:58
Speaker 1: back and say, well, you know, why didn't you speak
1:04:59
Speaker 1: up then? And why didn't you speak up then? And
1:05:01
Speaker 1: it's like, they're fair critiques. I can give you a
1:05:04
Speaker 1: perfectly good explanation. Let me show you the situation I
1:05:08
Speaker 1: was in. And it's why I'm always trying to be
1:05:11
Speaker 1: more careful as I've gotten older to... not assume every
1:05:16
Speaker 1: staffer wanted to go along with whatever scandal that the
1:05:22
Speaker 1: officer did, that whoever's in office did, because they have
1:05:27
Speaker 1: a mortgage to pay. They have a family to feed.
1:05:29
Speaker 1: We don't know. It's like you don't know until you
1:05:33
Speaker 1: know the situation they're in. Right. 100%.
1:05:36
Speaker 2: And I think to your point, this isn't just something
1:05:40
Speaker 2: in politics, right? It's in any industry, particularly if you're,
1:05:43
Speaker 2: you know, sort of, you know, playing at the top.
1:05:45
Speaker 2: And I think that's why I sort of say, like,
1:05:47
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be naive about this. There's a
1:05:49
Speaker 2: reality of the world that we operate in that, okay,
1:05:51
Speaker 2: there's some things that are going to be the way
1:05:53
Speaker 2: they're going to be. And, you know, to sort of say,
1:05:55
Speaker 2: if you're going to be in the arena, you're going
1:05:56
Speaker 2: to be faced with difficult decisions and you're going to
1:05:59
Speaker 2: have to make the best possible decision you can at
1:06:02
Speaker 2: the moment. And Um, to me, that's slightly different than,
1:06:06
Speaker 2: than where we kind of are today in some of
1:06:08
Speaker 2: the decisions that are made. And I think the Plattner
1:06:12
Speaker 2: one was, is a good example of that because in
1:06:14
Speaker 2: some respects, it's like, what is this for? And what
1:06:15
Speaker 2: is it really about? Right. Maybe I'm giving more grace,
1:06:19
Speaker 2: you know, um, when you kind of enter into something,
1:06:21
Speaker 2: believing in an individual and then information comes to light or,
1:06:25
Speaker 2: you know, things become more complex.
1:06:26
Speaker 1: Well, let's take the John Edwards. Let's, you know, a good,
1:06:30
Speaker 1: I think two comparisons here could be John Edwards, Graham Plattner. Platner,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: you knew the flaws were there before he became a candidate.
1:06:39
Speaker 1: Edwards was a different situation. And so there were people
1:06:43
Speaker 1: that felt let down by him. But, you know, who
1:06:47
Speaker 1: he was when he entered politics. Right. It's sort of
1:06:50
Speaker 1: it was something that happened to, you know, he couldn't
1:06:53
Speaker 1: handle the fame. That's what it turned out, ultimately. And
1:06:56
Speaker 1: I've got a I've got like a million other theories.
1:06:58
Speaker 1: I think I have a lot of empathy for the Edwards's,
1:07:00
Speaker 1: because I think when you lose a child, You do
1:07:04
Speaker 1: you do that. You never get over that. And you
1:07:07
Speaker 1: do some radical things sometimes that maybe make no sense
1:07:10
Speaker 1: in the moment. But I think if you look at
1:07:14
Speaker 1: the totality of that situation, I have nothing but empathy
1:07:17
Speaker 1: there versus a platner. And this is where you got
1:07:20
Speaker 1: at it, which is they were looking. It was almost
1:07:22
Speaker 1: like they were looking for an avatar. Right. And and
1:07:27
Speaker 1: he was this incredible avatar. And they were like, well,
1:07:30
Speaker 1: let's not look under the hood. Oh, no, we looked
1:07:32
Speaker 1: under the hood. Oh, let's let's shut the hood because
1:07:34
Speaker 1: the avatar is so good. We're able to run a
1:07:37
Speaker 1: socialist adjacent campaign with this big, rugged, good looking guy that,
1:07:41
Speaker 1: you know, can be, you know, the Gordon's fisherman here.
1:07:45
Speaker 2: Right, right. It ticks the boxes, but we perceive that
1:07:48
Speaker 2: to be. And I think what kind of got me
1:07:50
Speaker 2: with that, and there's a little bit of this like
1:07:53
Speaker 2: kind of narrative coming even off of it is. you know,
1:07:56
Speaker 2: throwing around the term authenticity, or we don't want perfect candidates.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: I'm so done with authenticity, though. I mean, it's like
1:08:03
Speaker 1: we've ruined the word, haven't we?
1:08:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not in itself a value. It's a descriptor,
1:08:09
Speaker 2: for sure. But then what are you authentic about? Like,
1:08:12
Speaker 2: we're sort of missing the next piece of that. Like,
1:08:15
Speaker 2: you could be authentic, but like, what are you authentic about?
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you authentically lazy? You know what, I'm an
1:08:20
Speaker 1: authentically lazy person. I think, you know, whatever. I mean,
1:08:23
Speaker 1: it is sort of a dumb... when you really think
1:08:25
Speaker 1: about it with a word descriptive that we've turned into
1:08:28
Speaker 1: an adjective that maybe isn't that great.
1:08:31
Speaker 2: No, and I think this idea of you know, sort
1:08:35
Speaker 2: of embracing or sort of using it as a defense. Well,
1:08:37
Speaker 2: we want flawed candidates or real people does a disservice
1:08:40
Speaker 2: to quote unquote real people. But I think gets at
1:08:44
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, I was trying to make the
1:08:45
Speaker 2: point of particularly using Mayor Giuliani as an example for me.
1:08:49
Speaker 1: Right.
1:08:49
Speaker 2: I think he was because I was young and he
1:08:51
Speaker 2: was really the first kind of formidable candidate that I
1:08:55
Speaker 2: worked for. I really saw a nuanced person. I saw
1:08:59
Speaker 2: him as a person. not just as, you know, the man,
1:09:02
Speaker 2: the sort of America's mayor, right? Kind of what we
1:09:05
Speaker 2: what we all project on some of our officials, particularly
1:09:07
Speaker 2: at certain points in time. And I think that's important
1:09:11
Speaker 2: because particularly if you're working, you have to understand these
1:09:13
Speaker 2: are people, they are going to be nuanced. And you
1:09:16
Speaker 2: have to kind of be able to have enough familiarity
1:09:19
Speaker 2: with that to understand when that nuance occurs. like works
1:09:22
Speaker 2: and is okay. And there's, and it, and because whatever
1:09:25
Speaker 2: else that person brings to the table in terms of
1:09:27
Speaker 2: what they believe, what they can do, how effective they
1:09:29
Speaker 2: are as a leader is one thing versus they're just
1:09:32
Speaker 2: kind of a terrible person or do awful things. Right.
1:09:35
Speaker 2: So I just think we've kind of, we're using this idea.
1:09:38
Speaker 2: We don't want someone who's perfect in a way to me.
1:09:40
Speaker 2: That's a little bit, it's a little bit false because,
1:09:44
Speaker 2: you know.
1:09:45
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about how the system itself can supercharge
1:09:51
Speaker 1: a flaw. And let's use Giuliani as an example, because,
1:09:56
Speaker 1: you know, I think when you first started working for Giuliani,
1:09:58
Speaker 1: there was this nuanced figure. He was still. He was
1:10:04
Speaker 1: extremely confident, but also was self-aware of what he didn't know. So,
1:10:09
Speaker 1: you know, meaning like. I think he was continuing trying
1:10:14
Speaker 1: to grow. He went from prosecutor to mayor. Then he
1:10:17
Speaker 1: was trying to go from mayor to statesman, right? So
1:10:21
Speaker 1: you got to him when he was still trying to grow,
1:10:25
Speaker 1: trying to learn, trying to advance. But he had, look,
1:10:29
Speaker 1: he had his own narcissistic qualities. He had his own things.
1:10:32
Speaker 1: And the spotlight in some ways may have been in
1:10:38
Speaker 1: the same way that I think John Edwards couldn't handle it.
1:10:41
Speaker 1: Turns out maybe Rudy couldn't handle it. And the version
1:10:45
Speaker 1: of Rudy now, and even let's go five years ago, Rudy,
1:10:48
Speaker 1: I think now he's quite sick. But he became sort
1:10:53
Speaker 1: of the caricature of himself. And I do think that
1:10:57
Speaker 1: happens over time. Like even Donald Trump is now a
1:11:01
Speaker 1: caricature of what Trump was even 10 years ago. And
1:11:03
Speaker 1: yet he's behaving like the caricature now, even more than
1:11:07
Speaker 1: he did at the time. I think some of that
1:11:09
Speaker 1: is age. Right. But I think I wonder how much
1:11:11
Speaker 1: of this is the system sort of the way our
1:11:16
Speaker 1: system does it. It almost emphasizes the work.
1:11:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think it's interesting because, you know, it's
1:11:24
Speaker 2: almost like we've like we've course corrected too much in
1:11:28
Speaker 2: one direction.
1:11:29
Speaker 1: Right.
1:11:29
Speaker 2: I think, you know, there was a time right where
1:11:32
Speaker 2: I think, you know, on either side, there'd be a flaw,
1:11:35
Speaker 2: like there would be something that would get in the
1:11:37
Speaker 2: spotlight of a candidate, whether it's John Edwards or anyone.
1:11:39
Speaker 2: Rudy with his personal life, however we want to kind
1:11:42
Speaker 2: of characterize it. And there'd be a lot of focus
1:11:45
Speaker 2: on that.
1:11:45
Speaker 1: Right.
1:11:45
Speaker 2: And it would be the thing that people would hang
1:11:47
Speaker 2: their hat on. Well, if for this, does that mean,
1:11:49
Speaker 2: you know, he's worthy of being president, of being governor,
1:11:53
Speaker 2: whatever it is. And, you know, people who are defenders
1:11:56
Speaker 2: are like, this feels too much. It feels overblown, you know,
1:11:58
Speaker 2: putting you in the context of all of these things.
1:12:00
Speaker 2: And now we've like gone to the complete other side
1:12:03
Speaker 2: where it's like, everything is like, just throw it all
1:12:06
Speaker 2: out there and everything's fine and defensible.
1:12:07
Speaker 1: There's no character test. Right. We went from. Right.
1:12:10
Speaker 2: We don't even want that. Right.
1:12:11
Speaker 1: We went from, I do think character, it's still to
1:12:14
Speaker 1: this day is sort of eye of the beholder. Right. Yeah.
1:12:17
Speaker 1: But I do think we all fundamentally want some character
1:12:21
Speaker 1: in office. Right. Some, some higher level of character than ourselves. Yeah.
1:12:26
Speaker 2: And, and, Because so much of that comes down to
1:12:29
Speaker 2: decision making. And I know it feels like very quaint
1:12:31
Speaker 2: in terms of the politics we are in today. But ultimately,
1:12:35
Speaker 2: the person is going to be president. You see how
1:12:37
Speaker 2: this plays out even today, right?
1:12:38
Speaker 1: You.
1:12:39
Speaker 2: how does that character show up in their ability to
1:12:41
Speaker 2: fulfill the role and make decisions that are going to
1:12:44
Speaker 2: be ethically and morally complex? Because that is what that
1:12:47
Speaker 2: person is going to have to face. And let's be honest,
1:12:49
Speaker 2: they're not always going to get it right. And sometimes
1:12:51
Speaker 2: the American people have grace for that. And sometimes by
1:12:53
Speaker 2: more often than not, they won't. And can they withstand that? Right.
1:12:57
Speaker 2: And so when I think of how do we measure
1:12:59
Speaker 2: that during a candidacy, I guess the quaintness of me
1:13:02
Speaker 2: is like, well, how I'm looking at that in terms
1:13:04
Speaker 2: of how will that, how will that show up when
1:13:07
Speaker 2: they're in office? And, and, And that can be different
1:13:10
Speaker 2: than some of the kind of personal stuff, whether it's
1:13:14
Speaker 2: affairs or whatnot, that people have said, well, that doesn't
1:13:16
Speaker 2: necessarily bleed over into my belief that this person can
1:13:19
Speaker 2: still make the kind of right decisions on the big,
1:13:22
Speaker 2: important issues. And that makes it all very gray, for sure.
1:13:26
Speaker 1: What's the line? So there was the one Platner staffer, remember,
1:13:31
Speaker 1: early on, and she decided to go public. Yeah. This
1:13:39
Speaker 1: this was the bridge too far for me. And I
1:13:40
Speaker 1: decided I needed to share this. And, you know, to me,
1:13:46
Speaker 1: that is quite the dilemma if you're a consultant, because
1:13:48
Speaker 1: on one hand, you walk into that room and you
1:13:52
Speaker 1: want to build trust with a candidate. And like, look,
1:13:56
Speaker 1: we all have flaws. We know what could be, you know,
1:14:00
Speaker 1: and what you really want to know is just tell
1:14:02
Speaker 1: me what is likely to be weaponized against you. Like
1:14:06
Speaker 1: and I I want. And you're basically trying to reassure
1:14:09
Speaker 1: this person, I want to help. Okay, I'm here to help.
1:14:14
Speaker 1: I know, you know, we know that, you know, and then,
1:14:18
Speaker 1: but then the more you learn, you start to go, okay,
1:14:20
Speaker 1: at what point, right? When does it, and I, you know, look,
1:14:24
Speaker 1: I always say this about Trump. And I say this
1:14:27
Speaker 1: to my spouse all the time when she gets worked up.
1:14:30
Speaker 1: And I say, remember, everybody has a line. It's just
1:14:33
Speaker 1: not in the same place. Trump eventually crosses everybody's line. Right.
1:14:36
Speaker 1: I always say, you know, for Liz Cheney, you know,
1:14:39
Speaker 1: she was with him until January 6th. You know, you know,
1:14:43
Speaker 1: John Bolton was with him through, you know, the three
1:14:48
Speaker 1: through the Iran debacles and stuff like that. You know,
1:14:51
Speaker 1: the point is, is that like everybody has a line
1:14:53
Speaker 1: and it's in a different place. What did you make
1:14:56
Speaker 1: of that decision by her? And. you know, is there
1:15:01
Speaker 1: a right answer here for a consultant who on one hand,
1:15:05
Speaker 1: you're in that room building trust with that candidate and
1:15:08
Speaker 1: their spouse, and you're hoping to essentially, you're trying to
1:15:12
Speaker 1: help them mitigate what could be a problem. And then
1:15:15
Speaker 1: you realize, wait a minute, this person doesn't have the
1:15:17
Speaker 1: character to hold office. What's the ethical, would you just
1:15:22
Speaker 1: simply resign? Or would you go that next step and say,
1:15:25
Speaker 1: you know what, this is going to, if I care
1:15:29
Speaker 1: about the Democratic Party, I ought to torpedo this now.
1:15:35
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's really personal. And I, I
1:15:37
Speaker 2: think what she did takes like tick Scots. Cause I
1:15:42
Speaker 2: think it is hard when you are in the room
1:15:45
Speaker 2: and you're also close to something and everyone else is like,
1:15:48
Speaker 2: this is going to be fine. This is going to
1:15:49
Speaker 2: be fine. And also just sort of the nature of
1:15:52
Speaker 2: being in the world and in this work, right? Sometimes
1:15:56
Speaker 2: you kind of can't comprehend, like, am I really going
1:15:57
Speaker 2: to walk away from this, right? Because it is so rare. And, like,
1:16:02
Speaker 2: it almost feels crazy to be doing that. And you
1:16:05
Speaker 2: also kind of assume sometimes in those situations, well, like,
1:16:08
Speaker 2: am I seeing this wrong? And is everyone else seeing this,
1:16:10
Speaker 2: you know, in the right way, right? And so I
1:16:13
Speaker 2: do think it's, like, so I think it's very personal.
1:16:16
Speaker 2: And so clearly for her, what she saw was, you know,
1:16:19
Speaker 2: hit her line. And I think I don't, um, I
1:16:24
Speaker 2: don't pass judgment on whether you take that public or not.
1:16:26
Speaker 1: Right.
1:16:26
Speaker 2: I do think in the context of Platner, there was
1:16:30
Speaker 2: enough stuff that was circulating and public that was being
1:16:33
Speaker 2: dismissed that I can understand the timing and why.
1:16:36
Speaker 1: Right.
1:16:36
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like, okay, people aren't paying attention
1:16:38
Speaker 2: to this. It felt like it might come out like
1:16:40
Speaker 2: in due course and it's not or it's come out
1:16:42
Speaker 2: and everyone's like we're explaining it away and justifying it.
1:16:47
Speaker 2: And to me, that goes to the larger problem with
1:16:50
Speaker 2: the sort of approach to his candidacy and the justification
1:16:53
Speaker 2: piece of it. And, you know, like the slippery slope
1:16:55
Speaker 2: that comes from that, as I kind of was making
1:16:57
Speaker 2: the point about, you know, how is this really different
1:17:00
Speaker 2: than how Republicans started down the slope of justifying certain
1:17:04
Speaker 2: things with Trump? to get and to get comfortable with
1:17:07
Speaker 2: him because it's going to mean, you know, lower taxes
1:17:09
Speaker 2: or the Supreme Court or whatever, you know, pick the
1:17:12
Speaker 2: issue that you care about. And I feel like Democrats
1:17:15
Speaker 2: essentially fell into the same place with Plattner. And and again,
1:17:22
Speaker 2: like I think that is like the larger issue than
1:17:24
Speaker 2: with both sides from a sort of establishment operative perspective.
1:17:37
Speaker 1: I always thought that the second Trump term was always
1:17:40
Speaker 1: going to be more damaging to the Democratic Party than
1:17:43
Speaker 1: to the Republican. It was always going to change the
1:17:45
Speaker 1: Democratic Party more than the Republican Party. Right. Which was
1:17:48
Speaker 1: the first Trump term was treated as an outlier. And
1:17:52
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party acted that way. And they didn't try
1:17:55
Speaker 1: to emulate. I'm not saying everybody was that case. But
1:17:59
Speaker 1: now that Trump's back, there's the assumption of, oh, this works.
1:18:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:18:04
Speaker 1: Right.
1:18:05
Speaker 2: It's trying to replicate tactics.
1:18:06
Speaker 1: Right.
1:18:07
Speaker 2: Versus which I think, you know, I kind of versus
1:18:09
Speaker 2: the harder work of how do we really from a
1:18:12
Speaker 2: policy and political perspective, how are we actually talking about
1:18:15
Speaker 2: things and connecting with voters and trying to persuade them
1:18:18
Speaker 2: on the substance versus let's just emulate tactics that have worked,
1:18:22
Speaker 2: you know, in a broader way, which, again, I don't
1:18:26
Speaker 2: think is effective because the tactics have worked for Trump
1:18:29
Speaker 2: because he's Trump in a lot of ways. Right.
1:18:31
Speaker 1: Well, look at Abdul El-Sayed with Piker. He's basically pulling
1:18:35
Speaker 1: a Trump, right? Trump never apologizes, won't apologize for being
1:18:38
Speaker 1: with Nick Fuentes, right? And he seems to get away
1:18:42
Speaker 1: with it. And I think the Abdul El-Sayed campaign, or
1:18:46
Speaker 1: at least he's decided, if Trump doesn't have to apologize,
1:18:49
Speaker 1: I'm not going to apologize. I'll say I'm not going
1:18:51
Speaker 1: to bring him around. I'll say I don't know why
1:18:54
Speaker 1: anybody cares, but I'm not going to go that next
1:18:57
Speaker 1: step and Because once you, you know, the Trump mindset
1:19:01
Speaker 1: is once you apologize for one, you know, which is
1:19:04
Speaker 1: not wrong, right? There is totally not wrong.
1:19:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what we all used to do.
1:19:08
Speaker 1: Right, exactly. So there is this, this, and yet it
1:19:13
Speaker 1: does feel as if, if you're borrowing a page from
1:19:17
Speaker 1: the Trump playbook, are you sure you want to be
1:19:18
Speaker 1: borrowing that page? Right.
1:19:21
Speaker 2: Well, I think that, I think that's, I mean, that's
1:19:23
Speaker 2: the larger existential question for everyone in this, right? And
1:19:27
Speaker 2: You know, that's why I'm saying, I don't know that
1:19:29
Speaker 2: I didn't, I don't have an answer. because I think
1:19:33
Speaker 2: it is existential and, um, feels, you know, very personal
1:19:38
Speaker 2: for all of the people who operate within this, you know, industry. Um,
1:19:41
Speaker 2: and it would be, I will say it was nice
1:19:43
Speaker 2: to hear from a lot of sort of current and
1:19:45
Speaker 2: former operatives who were very like, and that was encouraging.
1:19:49
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, it's good to know there's some
1:19:51
Speaker 2: of you out there who were kind of like, yeah,
1:19:52
Speaker 2: this sucks. So, um, and we should be, we should
1:19:56
Speaker 2: be doing better. Um, Um, so I, you know, cause
1:20:00
Speaker 2: I do, I do think there's, I do think there
1:20:02
Speaker 2: are people in the industry out there. They're just, um,
1:20:04
Speaker 2: maybe not the ones who are, you know, getting the,
1:20:07
Speaker 2: getting the New York times profiles.
1:20:09
Speaker 1: So, well, you know, it's, yeah, well, and I, I
1:20:12
Speaker 1: do think the, the delegitimization of media, meaning that the
1:20:17
Speaker 1: idea that it's all partisan now, then even the vetting
1:20:21
Speaker 1: that media does of candidates is not seen, you know,
1:20:25
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, When a left of center media
1:20:28
Speaker 1: organization takes down a Democratic candidate, it's taken seriously. And
1:20:32
Speaker 1: when a right of center organization takes down a Republican candidate,
1:20:35
Speaker 1: it's taken seriously. But you rarely see it now the
1:20:38
Speaker 1: other way. Yeah. Yeah.
1:20:42
Speaker 2: Because, well, there's a piece of distrust, right? And yeah.
1:20:49
Speaker 1: I let me give you. I'm curious if you've looked
1:20:54
Speaker 1: at the Natalie Harp. story, the way I've looked at
1:20:57
Speaker 1: the Natalie Harp story. And let me give you my
1:20:58
Speaker 1: quick framing of it. I think the reason why we
1:21:02
Speaker 1: know so much about her relationship with Trump is somebody's
1:21:06
Speaker 1: leaking this stuff from inside the White House because they
1:21:08
Speaker 1: can't talk to the candidate. In this case, the principal,
1:21:12
Speaker 1: he's sort of not going to listen on this. They
1:21:15
Speaker 1: think this is a problem. And they think maybe if
1:21:18
Speaker 1: we go public and the public reacts of how weird
1:21:23
Speaker 1: this is, Maybe he'll get the message that way. I
1:21:27
Speaker 1: don't know that this is how this has happened. But
1:21:29
Speaker 1: here's what I do know. These leaks didn't come from Democrats.
1:21:35
Speaker 2: Right.
1:21:36
Speaker 1: And, you know, we do know there is a concern
1:21:39
Speaker 1: of who's in the circle and who gets into that office.
1:21:43
Speaker 1: I mean, I had somebody remind me the other day
1:21:46
Speaker 1: that the entire Bill Pulte situation literally happened on a
1:21:50
Speaker 1: day that Susie Wiles was getting treatment for her breast cancer.
1:21:54
Speaker 1: and wasn't there to essentially intercept one of those ridiculous
1:21:59
Speaker 1: appointments that Trump made of Pulte as the acting DNI head, right?
1:22:05
Speaker 1: And so I have looked at the entire Harp story through, hmm,
1:22:11
Speaker 1: somebody in the West Wing is trying to essentially mitigate this,
1:22:15
Speaker 1: realizes this is only going to get worse, and at
1:22:18
Speaker 1: least wants to get this in the ether to hope
1:22:22
Speaker 1: that the principle maybe backs off a little bit. Did
1:22:26
Speaker 1: you see it similarly? Because you know how this world,
1:22:28
Speaker 1: that world operates a little bit.
1:22:33
Speaker 2: I mean, it is, I think it is interesting how
1:22:36
Speaker 2: it sort of suddenly like kind of blew up and,
1:22:38
Speaker 2: you know, came to light. And there does seem very
1:22:40
Speaker 2: like specific things that.
1:22:42
Speaker 1: Somebody would access. Who else is getting these letters?
1:22:44
Speaker 2: Like, where is that coming from?
1:22:45
Speaker 1: Right. It is not coming from Hakeem Jeffries' office. Okay.
1:22:50
Speaker 1: Or Chuck Schumer's office. Yes.
1:22:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think what's interesting about that is, well, one,
1:22:55
Speaker 2: thinking that kind of the traditional method of how you
1:22:57
Speaker 2: might shame or an official who was wasn't listening into
1:23:02
Speaker 2: action would work with Donald Trump.
1:23:05
Speaker 1: And you've been involved in operations that have tried to
1:23:07
Speaker 1: do that. Well, we can't. He's not listening to us.
1:23:10
Speaker 1: Maybe he'll listen to The New York Post, you know.
1:23:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. And yeah. And so, I mean, but I think
1:23:16
Speaker 2: then but then you kind of saw the sort of
1:23:18
Speaker 2: rallying around. Right. Because. You know, again, the dynamic here
1:23:23
Speaker 2: is that, you know, Republicans and individuals, they're not going
1:23:26
Speaker 2: to speak out of school or out of turn. Right.
1:23:29
Speaker 2: And they're going to you know, they're going to defend
1:23:31
Speaker 2: this and explain it away.
1:23:32
Speaker 1: Right.
1:23:32
Speaker 2: So you kind of saw them the interesting, I guess,
1:23:35
Speaker 2: maybe the backfiring of it, of the tactics and quite work.
1:23:38
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.
1:23:38
Speaker 2: Because that's the way the tactics are in this day
1:23:42
Speaker 2: and age. And, you know, and I just thought it
1:23:45
Speaker 2: was it was interesting, you know, you know, to see
1:23:48
Speaker 2: the kind of the outrage, you know, in terms of how,
1:23:52
Speaker 2: you know, the descriptors of the language that was being
1:23:55
Speaker 2: used to describe Natalie or the very, you know, also
1:23:57
Speaker 2: to me felt like it was a very benign, you know,
1:24:00
Speaker 2: turn of phrase when he, you know, mentioned her.
1:24:02
Speaker 1: Oh, it was definitely, they, they, it does strike me as, huh,
1:24:08
Speaker 1: why did you guys react so badly to that small little,
1:24:12
Speaker 1: I mean, there wasn't even a high, hard one in baseball.
1:24:15
Speaker 1: That was like, yeah, it was a little bit inside. Yeah.
1:24:18
Speaker 2: But also, you know, from, you know, being sitting where
1:24:22
Speaker 2: I'm sitting, you know, the whole thing feels a little,
1:24:24
Speaker 2: I want to say hypocritical, but it's kind of like, well,
1:24:27
Speaker 2: How can it's like, you know, the boycott wolf, like
1:24:29
Speaker 2: everyone acts so outraged when it's related to them, but
1:24:33
Speaker 2: has no qualms using aggressive language or throwing the same
1:24:37
Speaker 2: lobs on the other side. So, you know, for me,
1:24:40
Speaker 2: I kind of looked at it and I was like,
1:24:41
Speaker 2: this is just a perfect example of how none of
1:24:43
Speaker 2: this really matters. We're going to be outraged, even though
1:24:46
Speaker 2: the language we use in the tenor reviews and language
1:24:48
Speaker 2: Trump's use, you know, has been aggressive when it's related
1:24:51
Speaker 2: to women, women's staff, women elected officials. So, you know,
1:24:54
Speaker 2: what are we talking about here? Which I had to
1:24:57
Speaker 2: sort of say, I was like, unbelievably shocked to sort
1:24:59
Speaker 2: of see Jesse Waters, like admit to him not being
1:25:02
Speaker 2: upset about the awesome thing because Trump said worse. And
1:25:05
Speaker 2: he was kind of like, and I've defended it. So
1:25:06
Speaker 2: what am I going to do?
1:25:07
Speaker 1: And I was like, wow. It was the most self-aware
1:25:09
Speaker 1: thing Jesse Waters has ever said. It was, you know,
1:25:12
Speaker 1: it was one of those, you're like, yeah.
1:25:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct.
1:25:17
Speaker 1: I mean, correct. Okay. You know, it was sort of like, Well,
1:25:22
Speaker 1: I guess the stop clock, right? It's right twice a day. Well,
1:25:28
Speaker 1: it's just, and I guess it gets to what I
1:25:32
Speaker 1: want to get to, which is, you know, and I
1:25:36
Speaker 1: guess I'm trying to evolve the conversation a little bit.
1:25:40
Speaker 1: How can you communicate how to mitigate bad behavior when
1:25:45
Speaker 1: the principal won't listen?
1:25:50
Speaker 2: Well, you know, It's sometimes you can't.
1:25:54
Speaker 1: Right.
1:25:54
Speaker 2: And I think that's the thing that as you know,
1:25:58
Speaker 2: and that's where maybe the line or the choices come.
1:26:00
Speaker 1: Right.
1:26:00
Speaker 2: Like, you know, look, like I think a lot of
1:26:03
Speaker 2: times we put blame or we ascribe, you know, this
1:26:06
Speaker 2: individual is underserved by their staff, like the staff should
1:26:09
Speaker 2: have been in front of.
1:26:11
Speaker 1: That's what you know, the only time a Republican elected
1:26:14
Speaker 1: in Congress criticizes Trump, they never criticize Trump. I can't
1:26:18
Speaker 1: believe the advice he got on this. And you're just like, oh, yeah,
1:26:21
Speaker 1: it was advice.
1:26:22
Speaker 2: But OK, totally. But at some point you're like, well,
1:26:24
Speaker 2: this is the person who was elected by the American people. But,
1:26:29
Speaker 2: you know, staff is not elected.
1:26:31
Speaker 1: Right.
1:26:31
Speaker 2: We're not. This is paid at the will of whoever
1:26:35
Speaker 2: we're working for. And, you know, ideally, if you voted
1:26:39
Speaker 2: for this person or they're holding office like, you know,
1:26:41
Speaker 2: president United States, they should be able to make some
1:26:43
Speaker 2: basic decisions without needing to. you know, the judgment of,
1:26:46
Speaker 2: you know, 5,000 staffers, um, to hold them accountable. And
1:26:49
Speaker 2: so that's why I think like there are certain forms
1:26:52
Speaker 2: of obviously, you know, I want to say like protecting
1:26:55
Speaker 2: a candidate or an elected official from themselves and kind
1:26:59
Speaker 2: of knowing where their flaws are and, you know, helping that,
1:27:02
Speaker 2: helping facilitate that versus getting to the point where there's
1:27:05
Speaker 2: just at some point they're going to be who they're
1:27:06
Speaker 2: going to be. And, um, you can't, you can't necessarily
1:27:09
Speaker 2: change that. And, you know, and at some point, nor
1:27:11
Speaker 2: should you, because ideally you've elected that you've worked for
1:27:15
Speaker 2: that person, that person's gotten elected and you've made a
1:27:17
Speaker 2: choice at some point where you felt comfortable enough to
1:27:20
Speaker 2: work for them. And, and that's where I think the
1:27:22
Speaker 2: choice piece comes in and, and the line that anyone,
1:27:27
Speaker 2: I think if you get to a point where there's
1:27:28
Speaker 2: really bad behavior and you're like, it's not changing, then
1:27:32
Speaker 2: everyone kind of has a responsibility to themselves to make
1:27:35
Speaker 2: choices for themselves and own those choices, whether you decide
1:27:37
Speaker 2: to stay or not. And I think that's the most
1:27:40
Speaker 2: important thing. Like you have to own that choice no
1:27:43
Speaker 2: matter which direction it goes in.
1:27:45
Speaker 1: We sort of switch gears slightly because you have a
1:27:48
Speaker 1: unique perspective. You have literally worked for both parties. You've
1:27:52
Speaker 1: worked for presidential candidates now in both parties, not just
1:27:57
Speaker 1: You know, not just in some medium level, at the
1:27:59
Speaker 1: highest levels, whether it's Giuliani for president, whether it's Kamala
1:28:03
Speaker 1: Harris and helping with Republicans for Kamala Harris. And I.
1:28:11
Speaker 1: Do you wear. Obviously, when they hired you to get
1:28:16
Speaker 1: some advice on this. They believe there was a slice
1:28:19
Speaker 1: of voters that were persuadable. Who are these Republican voters
1:28:25
Speaker 1: that you think are persuadable? And what do you expect
1:28:27
Speaker 1: them to do in 26?
1:28:32
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's interesting because I actually think how
1:28:34
Speaker 2: people have defined themselves specifically by party has shifted. I
1:28:40
Speaker 2: think particularly, you know, I mean, I think the Harris
1:28:43
Speaker 2: campaign had one idea about this. I think I have
1:28:45
Speaker 2: some other ideas based on.
1:28:47
Speaker 1: Right.
1:28:47
Speaker 2: Data and kind of looking at sort of shifting ideology.
1:28:51
Speaker 1: Right.
1:28:52
Speaker 2: That you, I think, have people who are both identified
1:28:54
Speaker 2: as Republicans, but also people are identified as Democrats and
1:28:57
Speaker 2: certainly nonpartisan blanks, independents who are kind of, I think,
1:29:03
Speaker 2: form this sort of. I would say this other swath
1:29:06
Speaker 2: of voters. And I would say that there's a subset
1:29:09
Speaker 2: of Republicans just as much as there's of Democrats that
1:29:11
Speaker 2: do not feel like they're being served by their current,
1:29:14
Speaker 2: you know, parties.
1:29:16
Speaker 1: Do you believe that those folks are now actually where
1:29:19
Speaker 1: they can registering as independent, even if they are mostly partisan? Yes. Yeah.
1:29:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think and I think that's why
1:29:26
Speaker 2: I even think about targeting and who you're going after.
1:29:29
Speaker 2: You kind of have to evolve beyond just the, you know,
1:29:31
Speaker 2: sort of party idea and And primary turnout, because when
1:29:35
Speaker 2: it comes to the general, it's, you know, look, sometimes
1:29:38
Speaker 2: this is going to be the harder group to persuade
1:29:39
Speaker 2: to actually turn out. But they they definitely do not
1:29:43
Speaker 2: feel like they're being served by either like party framework.
1:29:47
Speaker 2: And it's almost like there's there's like almost. I don't
1:29:50
Speaker 2: say there's like four parties. I feel like I was
1:29:52
Speaker 2: having this conversation with someone.
1:29:53
Speaker 1: I'm a believer that we might be better off as
1:29:56
Speaker 1: a four party system. Right.
1:29:57
Speaker 2: Because there's only two, almost two subsets on each side.
1:30:00
Speaker 1: Right.
1:30:00
Speaker 2: You've kind of got like the establishment Democrats. You've got
1:30:02
Speaker 2: kind of D.S.E. progressives on the Republican side of what
1:30:05
Speaker 2: we're calling really MAGA and then actually like Republicans. So, yeah.
1:30:10
Speaker 2: so I think it's, it's a little bit, so I
1:30:12
Speaker 2: do think there, there's room to pull from, um, from,
1:30:15
Speaker 2: from both the real question, I think in terms of
1:30:17
Speaker 2: what happens in 26, I think it's going to be
1:30:19
Speaker 2: candidate dependent because then that voter is going to be
1:30:21
Speaker 2: motivated by something that's just not purely ideological from a
1:30:24
Speaker 2: partisan perspective. Um, you know, and so if you're looking
1:30:28
Speaker 2: to appeal to that voter, it's like appealing to them,
1:30:31
Speaker 2: not in like partisan terms, but you know, on the,
1:30:34
Speaker 2: on the issues and the substance that's going to move
1:30:35
Speaker 2: them that they're caring about right now. And it's a
1:30:38
Speaker 2: little bit of, um, I would say it's a little
1:30:41
Speaker 2: bit of a dance, but it's more like you've got
1:30:43
Speaker 2: to then meet that voter where they are in terms
1:30:45
Speaker 2: of where you are from a geographic perspective more than
1:30:47
Speaker 2: anything else. Because I don't think, obviously, what works in
1:30:50
Speaker 2: New York isn't going to work in Texas.
1:30:52
Speaker 1: Right. Well, I've come to believe that the Senate is
1:30:57
Speaker 1: a three-state contest. And it's Michigan, Iowa, and Texas in
1:31:01
Speaker 1: some form. Yeah. Okay. Meaning, you know, look, if Democrats
1:31:04
Speaker 1: hold Michigan, then maybe they don't have to worry about
1:31:06
Speaker 1: Texas or Iowa. But if they don't, They've got to
1:31:09
Speaker 1: win Texas or Iowa, right? Like it's the math is
1:31:11
Speaker 1: the math. And so, and I think this strategy is true,
1:31:19
Speaker 1: whether you're Rogers or whether you're Turek, okay? Whether you're
1:31:23
Speaker 1: Tallarico or whether you're Turek, which is who's persuadable and
1:31:28
Speaker 1: who do you want to give an exit ramp to,
1:31:30
Speaker 1: to a third party candidate? So, right, like Jon Tester
1:31:34
Speaker 1: won two of his three statewide races, thanks to libertarians.
1:31:38
Speaker 1: who were lowered the winning number from 50 plus one
1:31:43
Speaker 1: to 48.5, right? Yeah. How much of your time would
1:31:49
Speaker 1: you be telling a Tallarico or a Turek or a
1:31:52
Speaker 1: Rogers to be focused on persuasion versus actually what you
1:31:57
Speaker 1: really want is to convince them to either skip the
1:32:00
Speaker 1: race or vote third party? Yeah.
1:32:03
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, I think I would be focused
1:32:06
Speaker 2: on persuasion just in terms of your actual ability to move.
1:32:13
Speaker 2: And because I look, I think that's like I would
1:32:16
Speaker 2: say it's like more complicated, but yeah. I mean, again,
1:32:20
Speaker 2: it depends on your resources and like how much time
1:32:22
Speaker 2: you have to ideally maybe.
1:32:23
Speaker 1: Well, I look at a guy like he's got a
1:32:25
Speaker 1: lot of money. I'm very skeptical he can get to 50.
1:32:29
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that Paxton can get to 50 either. Right. Right. And,
1:32:34
Speaker 1: you know, Paxton, that race has libertarians going to get
1:32:39
Speaker 1: three points written all over it. And you could just picture, oh,
1:32:44
Speaker 1: Tallarico wins 48, 47, because essentially he's And Abbott got 50,
1:32:49
Speaker 1: you know, say 52. Right. And you could see like, oh,
1:32:53
Speaker 1: I know where those voters went. They didn't vote for Tallarico.
1:32:56
Speaker 1: They voted, you know, libertarian. The question is, do you
1:32:59
Speaker 1: actively try to get that or do you in the
1:33:02
Speaker 1: in your art of persuasion? You know, you just make
1:33:07
Speaker 1: sure that exit ramp exists.
1:33:11
Speaker 2: I mean, I would I mean, I would be more
1:33:12
Speaker 2: of the the persuasion and then with an exit ramp.
1:33:16
Speaker 1: Right.
1:33:17
Speaker 2: And I think in Texas, the Tallarico specifically, you know,
1:33:22
Speaker 2: he's an adept candidate. And I think is if there
1:33:25
Speaker 2: is a place to do that.
1:33:26
Speaker 1: Right.
1:33:26
Speaker 2: He seems like. Like, he seems like he understands, like,
1:33:30
Speaker 2: the job currently, right, that he's going to have to
1:33:32
Speaker 2: win Republicans and people who wouldn't be inclined to vote
1:33:36
Speaker 2: for him. And I think he's done a job of
1:33:38
Speaker 2: which I think is true in these cases is like,
1:33:40
Speaker 2: you know, you kind of have to hit the high
1:33:42
Speaker 2: notes on like the issues that people would care about.
1:33:45
Speaker 1: But.
1:33:46
Speaker 2: Doing the work of getting them to like you enough
1:33:49
Speaker 2: or be comfortable enough with you. Right. Because that's, um,
1:33:53
Speaker 2: you know, that's like, that's, that's, that's part of it. Right.
1:33:55
Speaker 2: Cause you're, you're trying to get someone who's non-inclined normally
1:33:58
Speaker 2: to vote for someone with a D in front of
1:33:59
Speaker 2: their name, um, to just be receptive to you and
1:34:02
Speaker 2: feel like this is that this is, I'm more comfortable
1:34:04
Speaker 2: with this certainly than the alternative. Um, even if I
1:34:07
Speaker 2: don't agree with you on everything and that's not really dissimilar, frankly, then,
1:34:11
Speaker 2: you know, the strategy in 2009, um, you know, with
1:34:14
Speaker 2: Governor Christie running, right? You know, as a Republican in
1:34:17
Speaker 2: a blue state, right?
1:34:18
Speaker 1: So we- He won without 50, didn't he? Didn't he
1:34:21
Speaker 1: like get 49? Wasn't it a 49, 48? There was
1:34:24
Speaker 1: a third party, like a green party, I think.
1:34:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think part of it was, as we
1:34:28
Speaker 2: always kind of thought about it, it's like, okay, we know,
1:34:30
Speaker 2: and I mean, economic issue is always key thing, right?
1:34:33
Speaker 2: And it almost feels like it never really changes in
1:34:37
Speaker 2: terms of affordability. It's always been affordability, right? Or a
1:34:41
Speaker 2: different turn of phrase. But then, so people could connect
1:34:45
Speaker 2: on that. There's a frustration there, but it's like, oh,
1:34:47
Speaker 2: can I trust this guy in other areas, right? So
1:34:50
Speaker 2: it's like, how do you address those and make them comfortable?
1:34:53
Speaker 2: And so they're kind of like, OK, I know you're
1:34:55
Speaker 2: going to be more effective. I'm getting this done and
1:34:57
Speaker 2: I'm more comfortable. I'm comfortable enough with you that it's OK.
1:35:01
Speaker 1: Now.
1:35:02
Speaker 2: And I think in Texas, how about a Mike Rogers?
1:35:05
Speaker 1: How about a Mike Rogers? How would you look at
1:35:06
Speaker 1: that with the situation he is? His is not scant. Like,
1:35:09
Speaker 1: you know, he's got a there's a scandal. There's two
1:35:12
Speaker 1: different types of penalties. I went through this deep dive. Right.
1:35:15
Speaker 1: There's the ideological penalty. You're you're you're too far out.
1:35:18
Speaker 1: of supposedly what the Overton window is in your state.
1:35:22
Speaker 1: Todd Akin was that back in 2012. That was too
1:35:27
Speaker 1: far out of the Overton window for people. Mandela Barnes
1:35:31
Speaker 1: in 2022, right? Evers, you know, the Democrat wins the
1:35:35
Speaker 1: governor's race, but it was close. And Mandela Barnes underperformed
1:35:39
Speaker 1: about three points. And that was the difference between winning
1:35:41
Speaker 1: and losing. Maybe had it been a bigger Democratic state,
1:35:46
Speaker 1: Mandela Barnes survives, right? Um, so if you're Rogers, how
1:35:50
Speaker 1: do you deal with what is clearly you're going to,
1:35:55
Speaker 1: you're not going to have a gubernatorial candidate helping you
1:35:57
Speaker 1: as much with turnout. You're going to, you know, you
1:36:01
Speaker 1: got to talk to, you got to win over some
1:36:02
Speaker 1: of those voters. Um, how do you.
1:36:07
Speaker 2: Do it? Yeah. I mean, I mean, this becomes like
1:36:09
Speaker 2: an issue of like really which demo demographics, and I've
1:36:13
Speaker 2: looked as closely at this in terms of the last
1:36:14
Speaker 2: few races in Michigan, but like what are the demographics
1:36:18
Speaker 2: that like that writers needs to turn out right that
1:36:21
Speaker 2: are not as great right because that feels like that
1:36:25
Speaker 2: that feels like this race to me does feel like
1:36:26
Speaker 2: more of a turnout and how do you really target
1:36:28
Speaker 2: and talk to the constituents that particularly as it relates
1:36:32
Speaker 2: this dynamic are going to have the most concerns right
1:36:35
Speaker 2: um because you're not i think in terms of because
1:36:39
Speaker 2: it's going to be, I think it's going to be
1:36:40
Speaker 2: a lot, I want to say more nuanced, but it's
1:36:42
Speaker 2: going to be more targeted and specific, right? Because you
1:36:44
Speaker 2: could argue on like the economics and fertility piece, like
1:36:47
Speaker 2: Roger's at a disadvantage, right? So.
1:36:50
Speaker 1: Well, that's his, I think that's Roger's problem, right? It's like,
1:36:53
Speaker 1: I think there's, He needed– he needs– ideological penalties are
1:36:58
Speaker 1: one thing, but you kind of– he probably needed a
1:37:00
Speaker 1: scandal penalty, and he doesn't have that without Abdul Al-Sayed. Yeah.
1:37:03
Speaker 1: You could say, well, you know, he seems like a
1:37:05
Speaker 1: nice enough guy. I just– you know, I don't agree
1:37:07
Speaker 1: with him on this type of thing.
1:37:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:37:09
Speaker 1: Versus a Paxton, you can really play the– you trust him,
1:37:14
Speaker 1: you know? You trust him with your own kids, with
1:37:16
Speaker 1: your own money. Yeah.
1:37:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say like the dynamic is
1:37:20
Speaker 2: sort of for a Democrat in Texas, a perfect storm
1:37:22
Speaker 2: of Tallarico as a candidate and Paxton as a candidate
1:37:25
Speaker 2: and any other matchup. I don't even know if there
1:37:27
Speaker 2: would there truly would be a chance. And I think, yeah,
1:37:30
Speaker 2: and I think it'll be interesting to see if like
1:37:31
Speaker 2: Tallarico can't pull it off. And is the reality like
1:37:33
Speaker 2: it's just really tough for a Democrat to win statewide?
1:37:38
Speaker 2: Because I do think you do have you do have
1:37:40
Speaker 2: a perfect storm with Paxton. And I think he's right
1:37:43
Speaker 2: at this point, a pretty big disadvantage. I think there's
1:37:45
Speaker 2: money wise. I think a third party is coming in.
1:37:48
Speaker 1: It's– sometimes politics is simple. Hey, candidate has more money than–
1:37:55
Speaker 1: good candidate has more money than bad candidate. Like we're
1:37:57
Speaker 1: seeing this in Iowa. Rise Rob Sand winning. He's a
1:38:00
Speaker 1: good candidate. He has more money. The Republicans nominated somebody
1:38:03
Speaker 1: who isn't a full-time resident. Yeah. That doesn't work in Iowa.
1:38:06
Speaker 1: Good luck with that. You know? Yeah.
1:38:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:38:08
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:38:09
Speaker 2: No, it's true. And I mean, it is really, it's basic,
1:38:11
Speaker 2: but it is also just really true that like a
1:38:14
Speaker 2: good candidate's a good candidate. And, you know, you can
1:38:18
Speaker 2: get complicated about all the rest and the issue and
1:38:20
Speaker 2: the targeting. And you're like, but again, if the candidate
1:38:22
Speaker 2: at the top isn't any good, is it going to matter?
1:38:26
Speaker 2: You know? And I don't know that, and I don't
1:38:29
Speaker 2: know that it does.
1:38:38
Speaker 1: You have, because you've worked for governors, I'm curious, and
1:38:43
Speaker 1: I'm sure, you know, without you giving away any private
1:38:46
Speaker 1: sector clients you're doing, How would you be handling this
1:38:49
Speaker 1: data center situation if you're a politician? And how would
1:38:53
Speaker 1: you be handling this if you were a tech company?
1:39:00
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I'll kind of go backwards, I think,
1:39:03
Speaker 2: because I think we're in this situation because of the
1:39:05
Speaker 2: way tech companies have handled it. Right. Which has created
1:39:08
Speaker 2: which has allowed it to be this like political punching bag. Um,
1:39:13
Speaker 2: I think the broader issue with big tech always has
1:39:16
Speaker 2: been this idea of like, we're just going to come
1:39:18
Speaker 2: in and we're going to, you know, throw money at
1:39:20
Speaker 2: it and we're just going to bulldoze her over. Right.
1:39:23
Speaker 2: And versus an approach, we've seen this a lot of
1:39:25
Speaker 2: different areas of tech. I mean, going back to ride
1:39:27
Speaker 2: sharing at the very beginning, um, without, um, yeah, they.
1:39:31
Speaker 1: Did sort of just bulldoze communities with the taxicab, those
1:39:34
Speaker 1: poor taxicab units all thought they had allies in these
1:39:38
Speaker 1: city governments and state governments and, Nope, check had more money, sorry.
1:39:43
Speaker 2: And I think, as opposed to sort of like a
1:39:48
Speaker 2: ground up approach in terms of how are we creating buy-in,
1:39:51
Speaker 2: how are we starting small, how are we seeding the
1:39:54
Speaker 2: story of what this does, its impact, whether it's from
1:39:57
Speaker 2: an economic perspective or otherwise, And like that does take
1:40:00
Speaker 2: time versus I think like the bulldozing or we're just
1:40:04
Speaker 2: throwing money at the problem because the issue with like
1:40:07
Speaker 2: just throwing the money at the problem, which I feel
1:40:09
Speaker 2: like all of these guys have experienced at one point
1:40:11
Speaker 2: or another is politicians will definitely turncoat when it's politically
1:40:16
Speaker 2: advantageous for them. So, you know, I think way back
1:40:18
Speaker 2: in the day when it was like a It was
1:40:20
Speaker 2: a thing politicians wanted to do was to go to
1:40:23
Speaker 2: the Facebook headquarters, right, and sign the wall. And everybody
1:40:26
Speaker 2: was all in on it. You know, you fast forward.
1:40:28
Speaker 1: I had to cover a couple of politicians who did
1:40:30
Speaker 1: that as if it was like stopping at the Drake
1:40:34
Speaker 1: Diner in Des Moines. Yeah.
1:40:36
Speaker 2: And then you just kind of see how far this comes.
1:40:38
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, we're a little bit here.
1:40:41
Speaker 2: And look, once you're in a situation where you've become this, frankly,
1:40:44
Speaker 2: on both political sides, this punching bag and, you know,
1:40:47
Speaker 2: an example of, you know, the scariness of tech and
1:40:51
Speaker 2: particularly AI gone wrong, it becomes really hard to kind
1:40:54
Speaker 2: of crawl that back, particularly from a public standpoint.
1:41:00
Speaker 1: I look, I consider myself a progress voter, meaning I
1:41:04
Speaker 1: always think we've got to be thinking, you know, we've
1:41:06
Speaker 1: got to be prepared. You got to always future future
1:41:09
Speaker 1: proof your economy, future proof your infrastructure. Right. All of
1:41:12
Speaker 1: those things. I'm I'm always a little leery of of of.
1:41:17
Speaker 1: no's and full on moratoriums and all this stuff.
1:41:20
Speaker 2: Sure.
1:41:22
Speaker 1: But I realize, I mean, I watch I've watched a
1:41:24
Speaker 1: couple of politicians try to be sort of nuanced about this.
1:41:28
Speaker 1: I know the voters have no interest in nuance. I mean,
1:41:31
Speaker 1: you know, Josh Shapiro suddenly looks like an extraordinarily weak
1:41:35
Speaker 1: potential presidential candidate right now. And you're like, all he
1:41:38
Speaker 1: did was, you know, do something that the blue collar
1:41:42
Speaker 1: unions loved in Pennsylvania. Right. you know, which you would
1:41:45
Speaker 1: have normally said was good politics. Right. Totally. Right.
1:41:49
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing, right? Well, I think it's in
1:41:51
Speaker 2: part because AI, um, is becoming Wallace avatar for everything
1:41:56
Speaker 2: that's unknown and scary.
1:41:57
Speaker 1: Right.
1:41:58
Speaker 2: And, you know, politicians have started to leverage that and
1:42:01
Speaker 2: use that as, um, the, the, the reason why, right.
1:42:05
Speaker 2: It's going to be the explainer, right. For why we're
1:42:07
Speaker 2: having issues in terms of jobs, in terms of economic mobility, right.
1:42:11
Speaker 2: Like just our ability, um, you know, to, to, to
1:42:15
Speaker 2: use our brains. So it's, AI generally has become this
1:42:19
Speaker 2: very kind of scary thing. And when you position it
1:42:23
Speaker 2: that way, I think for an average voter, it's very
1:42:25
Speaker 2: easy to understand, right? And so I think data centers
1:42:28
Speaker 2: have become an extension of that. And this is in
1:42:30
Speaker 2: part because, right, as we know, like with actual elected leaders,
1:42:33
Speaker 2: the idea of thinking through AI and actually actively regulating
1:42:37
Speaker 2: it is too hard. So, you know, so it's like, it's,
1:42:42
Speaker 2: you know, like everything it's.
1:42:43
Speaker 1: Good or bad. Can we just either, either it's great
1:42:46
Speaker 1: or it sucks. Let's not talk about something that makes
1:42:49
Speaker 1: it challenging and difficult. Yeah. Right.
1:42:52
Speaker 2: And, or how do we think about data centers in
1:42:55
Speaker 2: a responsible way? Right. Cause to your point, it's like
1:42:57
Speaker 2: we go from either fast tracking them or not at all.
1:43:00
Speaker 1: I mean, this to me feels like this is what
1:43:03
Speaker 1: you need trusted presidential leadership Right.
1:43:06
Speaker 2: This is not good government.
1:43:07
Speaker 1: And you would want, you know, it's like in a
1:43:09
Speaker 1: normal world, you'd have a president meeting with the National
1:43:12
Speaker 1: Governors Association. And that might be the topic of conversation.
1:43:16
Speaker 1: All right. We've got to figure out this data center business.
1:43:20
Speaker 1: Do we public lands where, you know, how much public
1:43:24
Speaker 1: land should we contribute to this process? What should communities,
1:43:28
Speaker 1: what should be the barriers? What should be this? Like
1:43:30
Speaker 1: this would be what a responsible set of leaders would do. But.
1:43:35
Speaker 1: That's not the world we live in, you know?
1:43:37
Speaker 2: No, instead to sort of bring it full circle in
1:43:40
Speaker 2: terms of like, you know, the industrial complex of political consulting,
1:43:44
Speaker 2: you know, instead we've just got massive super PACs on
1:43:46
Speaker 2: either side throwing obscene amounts of cash at candidates. And
1:43:50
Speaker 2: you're kind of like, to what end? Because when they
1:43:51
Speaker 2: get into, what are they really going to do anyway? So,
1:43:55
Speaker 2: but like, that's, but you know, that's where then the,
1:43:57
Speaker 2: that's where then from a political perspective, it feels like
1:44:00
Speaker 2: the only place we sit anymore is is in which
1:44:03
Speaker 2: side are you on and the money that's going to
1:44:04
Speaker 2: go into either supporting or opposing candidates that, frankly, it's
1:44:09
Speaker 2: unclear once they get into office exactly what they're going
1:44:11
Speaker 2: to be doing anyway from a substantive perspective to begin with.
1:44:15
Speaker 2: So to what end?
1:44:16
Speaker 1: Let me get you out of here on the first
1:44:18
Speaker 1: ever conversation we ever had, I think, when you and
1:44:21
Speaker 1: I met about presidential politics back in 04 cycle, I think,
1:44:25
Speaker 1: going into the or 05 going into 08, thinking about
1:44:28
Speaker 1: the 08 cycle.
1:44:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:44:29
Speaker 1: Which is what's going to happen in the Republican side
1:44:32
Speaker 1: in the 28th cycle? Is this going to be a
1:44:34
Speaker 1: small field, a la Democrats in 16, where there's this
1:44:38
Speaker 1: kind of heir apparent candidate, but there'll be three or
1:44:41
Speaker 1: four sort of ankle biters and maybe one of them
1:44:44
Speaker 1: pops and it becomes something competitive? Or a blue tsunami
1:44:51
Speaker 1: happens this November and there is an explosion of Republicans
1:44:56
Speaker 1: who decide the Trump era is over. And now this
1:44:58
Speaker 1: is a fight to see who's in charge of the
1:45:00
Speaker 1: next era of Republican politics. What's your sense of what's
1:45:04
Speaker 1: the most likely scenario of what 27 and early 28
1:45:10
Speaker 1: looks like on the Republican side here?
1:45:13
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what I would like it to be.
1:45:15
Speaker 2: I would like it to be a fight for the
1:45:18
Speaker 2: future of the Republican Party, and I would like to see–
1:45:24
Speaker 2: you know, a broad base of candidates who are having
1:45:27
Speaker 2: that conversation and that there are candidates who get in
1:45:30
Speaker 2: the race, you know, to have that conversation and force it.
1:45:34
Speaker 2: Because I think it's what's needed for the party, you know,
1:45:37
Speaker 2: beyond 28, frankly. But that being said, I don't know
1:45:41
Speaker 2: that that'll be the case because I'm not sure who
1:45:44
Speaker 2: is going to be having that conversation. And You know,
1:45:47
Speaker 2: even though, you know, we kind of go through this because, look,
1:45:50
Speaker 2: I'm not convinced even if there is like a blue
1:45:52
Speaker 2: tsunami in the midterms that that necessarily, you know, I
1:45:57
Speaker 2: don't know, like the midterms are the midterms we like
1:45:59
Speaker 2: to describe a lot in terms of process. But I
1:46:01
Speaker 2: don't know that that necessarily forces the Republican Party in
1:46:04
Speaker 2: one direction because it's. It hasn't so far.
1:46:07
Speaker 1: Right. And well, I can argue, though, that the 06
1:46:10
Speaker 1: midterm certainly sent the message that you needed to be
1:46:12
Speaker 1: far away from Bush. Yes.
1:46:13
Speaker 2: In a different nomination.
1:46:16
Speaker 1: Right. And right. And the nomination of McCain arguably was
1:46:19
Speaker 1: as far away as that Republican Party could have gotten
1:46:22
Speaker 1: from Bush without leaving Bush. Right. Like that.
1:46:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and so I think so I think how
1:46:29
Speaker 2: that shows up or whether that happens is whether some
1:46:31
Speaker 2: of the, you know, technical hair appearance that are more
1:46:34
Speaker 2: that are part of more of what we're going to
1:46:36
Speaker 2: call the Trump version of the party right now, whether
1:46:38
Speaker 2: that's a Rubio or a Vance. You know, do they
1:46:42
Speaker 2: do they change how they operate and how they speak
1:46:46
Speaker 2: about the party in the future because of that? Or
1:46:49
Speaker 2: do they not because they're still, you know, in the
1:46:51
Speaker 2: overhang of, you know, a Trump Republican Party and still
1:46:55
Speaker 2: afraid or concerned about what that means in terms of,
1:46:57
Speaker 2: you know, quote unquote, the MAGA base? And I think
1:47:00
Speaker 2: that's really the issue, you know. Um, it does, does
1:47:03
Speaker 2: Trump still have like a psychological hold over future candidates, um,
1:47:08
Speaker 2: that they're afraid to, you know, get out from under.
1:47:10
Speaker 1: What would you tell, let's say a, um, Brian Kemp
1:47:14
Speaker 1: came to you, says, look, I want to run for president.
1:47:17
Speaker 1: I want to sort of, I'm not asking to go
1:47:19
Speaker 1: back to the old Republican party. Um, you know, I've
1:47:22
Speaker 1: got a good record to sell. Um, I've, this is,
1:47:25
Speaker 1: you know, I've, I've won despite, you know, going against him.
1:47:30
Speaker 1: And I think swing voters will see me as a,
1:47:32
Speaker 1: you know, a conservative who isn't corrupt, I guess might
1:47:36
Speaker 1: be the way I might put it. Is it worth
1:47:41
Speaker 1: getting in if Vance is, you know, I mean, look,
1:47:45
Speaker 1: history is history. Stopping a sitting vice president from getting
1:47:48
Speaker 1: a nomination, I think is virtually impossible. I say virtually because,
1:47:52
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the Donald Trump has taught me
1:47:54
Speaker 1: never to assume anything is impossible. Right. Right.
1:47:58
Speaker 2: And look, I do believe campaigns exist for a reason
1:48:01
Speaker 2: and they exist to see, you know, who ends up
1:48:04
Speaker 2: being strong, who ends up being a weak candidate. Sometimes,
1:48:06
Speaker 2: you know, even if someone is sitting in office, like
1:48:09
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean they've been tested in the same way
1:48:11
Speaker 2: or gone through the rigors of that type of campaign.
1:48:13
Speaker 2: And I would say it depends. You know, look like
1:48:15
Speaker 2: you obviously get in to try to win, but I
1:48:18
Speaker 2: would also say you don't know having someone in who's
1:48:20
Speaker 2: bringing a different perspective how will that will shift the
1:48:22
Speaker 2: dynamic whether you're on the debate seizures in the course
1:48:24
Speaker 2: of the race overall and how does someone like vance
1:48:28
Speaker 2: respond to that um i will say i think all
1:48:32
Speaker 2: that being said i think i would say i think
1:48:35
Speaker 2: the makeup of the current republican primary party makes all
1:48:38
Speaker 2: of this difficult um you know, at least I think
1:48:41
Speaker 2: in this current moment.
1:48:42
Speaker 1: The actual electorate, right. It feels like that it's hard
1:48:45
Speaker 1: to be a non-MAGA candidate and hope you're going to
1:48:47
Speaker 1: actually win a primary. You can be competitive. Like, I
1:48:49
Speaker 1: don't think this is going to be a blowout, right?
1:48:51
Speaker 1: I think this is, you know, I don't... How many
1:48:55
Speaker 1: factions are in the Republican Party? Do you think it's
1:48:57
Speaker 1: really two or do you think there is sort of, like...
1:49:00
Speaker 1: I mean, I have one theory. Like, I think Rand
1:49:03
Speaker 1: Paul's an intriguing thorn in the side of MAGA because
1:49:07
Speaker 1: he's credibly... a critic of Trump on two of his worst,
1:49:12
Speaker 1: on two of his most unpopular issues, tariffs and Iran.
1:49:16
Speaker 1: But nobody's going to mistaken him for a bulwark resistance Republican, right?
1:49:21
Speaker 1: Like it's a, he's in an intriguing spot. You know,
1:49:28
Speaker 1: does that make it harder for like a more, what
1:49:30
Speaker 1: I might call a conventional Republican like Brian Kemp to
1:49:33
Speaker 1: find traction that oddly, because That libertarian wing of the party,
1:49:38
Speaker 1: which has always been a little bit different, has a following.
1:49:42
Speaker 1: And it's certainly a place to start with. But it
1:49:46
Speaker 1: does have a hard ceiling sometimes.
1:49:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I do think that's right. I think
1:49:53
Speaker 2: like the traditional version of like, you know, kind of
1:49:55
Speaker 2: the race everybody ran in 15 while Trump was like
1:49:58
Speaker 2: over here of like, let me talk about my record
1:50:00
Speaker 2: and the merits. Like, I don't think that breaks. I
1:50:03
Speaker 2: don't think that works and it doesn't break through. So,
1:50:05
Speaker 2: you know, is your differentiator like an attribute or is
1:50:07
Speaker 2: it one issue that you're able to connect and tap
1:50:11
Speaker 2: into based on where we are at that moment in time,
1:50:13
Speaker 2: like data centers? But like, is it?
1:50:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:50:16
Speaker 2: You know, what is it that like then that resonates
1:50:19
Speaker 2: that gets you beyond the sort of Trump overhang? And
1:50:22
Speaker 2: I think that's the interesting kind of curious thing. It's
1:50:25
Speaker 2: like figuring out how you get beyond that. And I
1:50:27
Speaker 2: don't think the traditional, that traditional positioning of candidates works
1:50:33
Speaker 2: for that. And there's also a world too, like depending
1:50:35
Speaker 2: on the makeup and looking at kind of the state breakout, like,
1:50:38
Speaker 2: you know, does the turnout in a Republican primary shift
1:50:41
Speaker 2: at all based on fatigue or, you know, kind of
1:50:44
Speaker 2: where like, That's my question.
1:50:49
Speaker 1: Is sort of Trump fatigue kick in and you see
1:50:51
Speaker 1: a different electorate in these primaries than we saw? You know,
1:50:58
Speaker 1: it's funny hearing you just now. I actually, you know,
1:51:04
Speaker 1: if Rand Paul had a little more charisma, I'd be
1:51:08
Speaker 1: even more intrigued by him. And I say this, no disrespect,
1:51:11
Speaker 1: Rand doesn't know how to smile. Right. He's never I
1:51:13
Speaker 1: don't think he's ever told a joke. But you know
1:51:17
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like even off camera, he's he's a
1:51:20
Speaker 1: little he's a little stiff. Yeah. But, you know. J.D.
1:51:27
Speaker 1: Vance's connections to Peter Thiel and this current anti-tech backlash
1:51:31
Speaker 1: that exists and we're seeing it with data centers, it's
1:51:34
Speaker 1: possible there's more of a vulnerability here than maybe Republicans
1:51:37
Speaker 1: fully appreciate it. Yeah.
1:51:38
Speaker 2: And also, what does like when you're the candidate, how
1:51:42
Speaker 2: does that show up?
1:51:43
Speaker 1: Right.
1:51:43
Speaker 2: Because I also think and how and how does he
1:51:45
Speaker 2: actually believe.
1:51:46
Speaker 1: Trump was bought off for whatever reason, even though the
1:51:50
Speaker 1: man loves to loves a good deal? Weirdly enough, you
1:51:53
Speaker 1: and I both know this voters always had this. Well,
1:51:56
Speaker 1: he can't be bought off. He just is already wealthy. Right.
1:51:59
Speaker 1: They won't believe Vance can't be bought.
1:52:02
Speaker 2: Well, that and I also think there's an interesting thing
1:52:04
Speaker 2: where like when we were talking about authenticity, I mean,
1:52:06
Speaker 2: talking about authenticity, Trump's never not shown you who he is.
1:52:10
Speaker 1: Right.
1:52:10
Speaker 2: He's always been consistent in that respect, like love him
1:52:13
Speaker 2: or hate him, you know, getting sick of it or not.
1:52:15
Speaker 2: And I think Vance is is not that and has definitely.
1:52:20
Speaker 1: Evolved in a way, you know, if you want to
1:52:22
Speaker 1: be generous, it's an evolution if you want to be. cynical, it's,
1:52:26
Speaker 1: you know, transactional. Yeah.
1:52:28
Speaker 2: And so the real question is like, which version of
1:52:30
Speaker 2: Vance shows up on the campaign trail? Because I would say,
1:52:33
Speaker 2: you know, the version that tries to emulate Trump, I
1:52:36
Speaker 2: think it doesn't come across the same way as a
1:52:40
Speaker 2: Trump delivers it.
1:52:41
Speaker 1: Right.
1:52:41
Speaker 2: There's a little bit more of, again, this is like
1:52:43
Speaker 2: delivery and sort of what makes Trump, Trump, but there's
1:52:45
Speaker 2: a little more of like, he's funny. He there's like,
1:52:47
Speaker 2: can be a way that even when he's delivering the
1:52:49
Speaker 2: biting thing, it just lands in a certain way where
1:52:52
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't think, again, I don't think it
1:52:54
Speaker 2: works for Vance. I don't think it works for most
1:52:56
Speaker 2: anyone who tries to emulate that.
1:52:57
Speaker 1: So is there a donor community that is just done
1:53:01
Speaker 1: with the Trump wing that is willing to go out
1:53:04
Speaker 1: there and, and fund a candidate like Brian Kemp to
1:53:08
Speaker 1: sort of rid the party of this or no? Have
1:53:11
Speaker 1: they all just gotten in line?
1:53:12
Speaker 2: I don't know, Chuck. If our great hope is relying
1:53:15
Speaker 2: on a brave, courageous donor, we're really in tough shape.
1:53:20
Speaker 1: Saying it out loud was sort of ridiculous, wasn't it?
1:53:22
Speaker 2: I was like, come on now.
1:53:23
Speaker 1: I know. I mean, I sit here and it's like,
1:53:26
Speaker 1: who's the one donor? Paul Singer, right? Yeah. That everybody
1:53:30
Speaker 1: always says, oh no, he's got an ethical line. Okay.
1:53:32
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:53:33
Speaker 1: He's always found his way to Trump at some point,
1:53:36
Speaker 1: you know?
1:53:37
Speaker 2: It's, you know, so. So I haven't found, look, when
1:53:43
Speaker 2: I find them, I'll let you know.
1:53:47
Speaker 1: What do you make of Mom Donnie's first year?
1:53:51
Speaker 2: Look, like, I think, I mean, look, immensely, immensely different. popular, um,
1:53:59
Speaker 2: in terms of his, um, you know, favor favorabilities in
1:54:02
Speaker 2: the city. Um, I think, look, he's been really adept, um,
1:54:07
Speaker 2: certainly from public perspective. Uh, and he's, I think, been
1:54:10
Speaker 2: able to tap into kind of the value behind the issues, right?
1:54:14
Speaker 2: There's that he is able to connect because he speaks to,
1:54:17
Speaker 2: you know, the heart of it versus, you know, the fact,
1:54:19
Speaker 2: just the facts and figures. Um, look, he's had some missteps,
1:54:22
Speaker 2: but he's also, I think, navigated things, uh, issues in
1:54:26
Speaker 2: a way that were not as, um, that people were
1:54:30
Speaker 2: concerned about when he's on the campaign trail. I think
1:54:32
Speaker 2: he's been a little more, I think he's actually been
1:54:34
Speaker 2: more nuanced from a, um, a governing perspective. And I
1:54:37
Speaker 2: think that shows up in, you know, he just recently
1:54:39
Speaker 2: announced this, you know, business advisory council, which is a
1:54:43
Speaker 2: really interesting mix of, of leaders across the city and
1:54:45
Speaker 2: an industry, um, which I think was like a smart,
1:54:48
Speaker 2: which was a smart move. And, and, um, And I
1:54:52
Speaker 2: think there's been other examples of that. So look, like
1:54:55
Speaker 2: I think it remains to be seen, you know, a
1:54:57
Speaker 2: year from now, how that actually shows up because you
1:55:00
Speaker 2: have this grace period, right? You're in your first year.
1:55:03
Speaker 2: You have some run room, right? To address the issues,
1:55:05
Speaker 2: particularly on affordability.
1:55:06
Speaker 1: Like how many politicians have we seen who have acquired
1:55:09
Speaker 1: a little bit of capital with their most important constituency
1:55:13
Speaker 1: and have not used it, right? Like he seems to
1:55:17
Speaker 1: like realize, look, I'm going to have these folks. Let me,
1:55:21
Speaker 1: I've got a whole bunch of people, Eddie, and the
1:55:24
Speaker 1: expectations were low. Yeah. So he didn't have to do,
1:55:27
Speaker 1: filling potholes was enough to win over some of these voters, right? Right.
1:55:31
Speaker 2: And look, you saw him use it in the primary.
1:55:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:55:33
Speaker 2: You saw him use it in the primary and it's
1:55:36
Speaker 2: exactly right. Like you've, you've, you use it when you've
1:55:39
Speaker 2: got it other, because it just, it kind of just
1:55:41
Speaker 2: depreciates over time.
1:55:42
Speaker 1: Were you surprised that Jeffries and Schumer didn't get more
1:55:45
Speaker 1: involved in getting Cuomo not to run? in the first place.
1:55:48
Speaker 1: I always thought the two of them should have been
1:55:49
Speaker 1: held more accountable for their inability. They knew this was
1:55:52
Speaker 1: probably a bad idea that Cuomo was going to lead
1:55:54
Speaker 1: to an unusual situation in the primary, and it absolutely did.
1:56:02
Speaker 1: But they stayed out of it. And I, to this day,
1:56:06
Speaker 1: don't get how the two leaders of the National Democratic Party,
1:56:09
Speaker 1: who are both from Brooklyn, pretended they didn't know anything
1:56:12
Speaker 1: about Andrew Cuomo not running a very good race.
1:56:17
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's emblematic of the issue with the
1:56:20
Speaker 2: Democratic establishment.
1:56:21
Speaker 1: Right.
1:56:22
Speaker 2: And I think the fact that in New York, we
1:56:25
Speaker 2: got into New York City mayoral primary race and the
1:56:30
Speaker 2: candidates who ran looked like the same candidates who've run
1:56:33
Speaker 2: the last however many years. And. our best chance was,
1:56:38
Speaker 2: you know, a disgraced governor who resigned, who was known
1:56:41
Speaker 2: to be, I mean, I certainly saw this when I
1:56:43
Speaker 2: worked for him, you know, not a good campaigner and
1:56:45
Speaker 2: had no actual foundational kind of fueled operation or understanding
1:56:49
Speaker 2: of grassroots. So like, to me, it's not surprising at all.
1:56:54
Speaker 1: No, and to me, it was obvious it was coming.
1:56:57
Speaker 1: And I just don't get like how nobody, how those
1:57:00
Speaker 1: two in particular did just look the other way. I mean,
1:57:04
Speaker 1: I've always thought that the real beef that people should
1:57:07
Speaker 1: have with them is it's not that Mamdani won, it's
1:57:11
Speaker 1: that Cuomo ran.
1:57:12
Speaker 2: Right.
1:57:13
Speaker 1: If you're the head of the establishment, how did you
1:57:15
Speaker 1: not speak up and say something?
1:57:17
Speaker 2: Well, but also, how have you not been involved in
1:57:19
Speaker 2: looking ahead in seating candidates to run in this race?
1:57:24
Speaker 1: There were other candidates that could have, you know, the sanitation,
1:57:28
Speaker 1: what was it, Roxanne Garcia?
1:57:30
Speaker 2: Catherine Garcia.
1:57:32
Speaker 1: Catherine Garcia came in second.
1:57:33
Speaker 2: From the last time, yeah, yeah.
1:57:34
Speaker 1: From the last time. Like, Like to me, like, you know,
1:57:37
Speaker 1: I I think I've always said this. I think the
1:57:39
Speaker 1: most remarkable thing that's done in New York City is
1:57:41
Speaker 1: how they take. I know garbage is hard and people
1:57:44
Speaker 1: get crazy, but like it's remarkable. And I think if
1:57:48
Speaker 1: you can make sanitation work, I trust you with pretty
1:57:51
Speaker 1: much everything else in the city. Like, yeah, I think
1:57:54
Speaker 1: what I would would would matter to me. I never
1:57:57
Speaker 1: got that. It was this, you know, whether they were
1:58:00
Speaker 1: spooked by the the the. Rising progressives, I don't know.
1:58:04
Speaker 1: But it was such a strange.
1:58:06
Speaker 2: Way they let Cuomo bully himself in. Yeah, but I
1:58:11
Speaker 2: think they have been, right? Like, I mean, I think
1:58:13
Speaker 2: I looked at it as an establishment that has not
1:58:15
Speaker 2: organized in a way to put forward candidates to think ahead, right?
1:58:20
Speaker 2: And it's not just in the mayoral race, but we're
1:58:21
Speaker 2: even looking to down the line in the And the
1:58:27
Speaker 2: DSA has been out organizing, you know, for over a decade.
1:58:30
Speaker 2: And you can't just kind of you can't just throw
1:58:32
Speaker 2: money or good after bad, like to solve for that.
1:58:36
Speaker 1: Right.
1:58:36
Speaker 2: And so to me, the looking the other way and
1:58:40
Speaker 2: the fact that you actually had a lot of folks
1:58:42
Speaker 2: in the city who did do that from a money perspective,
1:58:43
Speaker 2: from an industry perspective. just showed me that there is
1:58:47
Speaker 2: an issue in the Democratic Party, quote-unquote, establishment in thinking
1:58:51
Speaker 2: ahead about what is the future of the party and
1:58:55
Speaker 2: getting ahead of what you're, and why the D.C. has
1:58:57
Speaker 2: been successful, particularly in New York and in the city,
1:59:00
Speaker 2: because what's the alternative?
1:59:03
Speaker 1: That's true. They haven't offered. It's sort of like, why
1:59:06
Speaker 1: is Mom Donnie side-winning? He's offering something, and the other
1:59:10
Speaker 1: side isn't. We go back to what we said earlier.
1:59:13
Speaker 1: Sometimes politics isn't that complicated.
1:59:15
Speaker 2: A hundred percent. Good candidate, good message, more money or
1:59:18
Speaker 2: not even more money.
1:59:19
Speaker 1: More money helps.
1:59:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
1:59:22
Speaker 1: It does.
1:59:22
Speaker 2: It does.
1:59:23
Speaker 1: It does. Well, Maria, I look forward to see if
1:59:26
Speaker 1: some presidential campaign talks you back into this mess. But
1:59:29
Speaker 1: I have a feeling. What's your what's your appetite for
1:59:32
Speaker 1: it in 28?
1:59:32
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, again, it's... Look, I still think there'll be.
1:59:38
Speaker 1: A third part, a legitimate independent or third party.
1:59:40
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's tough.
1:59:42
Speaker 1: I'm a cycle away from believing it's going to like
1:59:44
Speaker 1: I think one more failed presidency like we've had three
1:59:47
Speaker 1: in a row. You know, I think this is a failed,
1:59:50
Speaker 1: you know, failed Trump, failed Biden, failed this. If there's
1:59:53
Speaker 1: a fourth failed and it's like two, two and two
1:59:56
Speaker 1: on each side, then I think that I think 32
2:00:00
Speaker 1: is the is the next legitimate shot at.
2:00:03
Speaker 2: I think I think you need you need money and
2:00:06
Speaker 2: you need a candidate or you need a face of
2:00:09
Speaker 2: it who's driving a message. Right. And I think the
2:00:11
Speaker 2: message has to there has to be like a philosophy.
2:00:14
Speaker 2: I think the problem with some of the third party efforts,
2:00:16
Speaker 2: they've been a little like abstract and it's been about like.
2:00:19
Speaker 2: getting things done or like bipartisanship. And that is not,
2:00:22
Speaker 2: as we know, is like not a motivator.
2:00:23
Speaker 1: It doesn't sell. I know. I know. Everybody wants it.
2:00:27
Speaker 1: Everybody says they want that in the focus group, but
2:00:29
Speaker 1: nobody wants that on the bumper sticker. Yeah.
2:00:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:00:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. So. Well, Maria, this was great. I enjoyed, look,
2:00:37
Speaker 1: you wrote an op-ed that not every consultant would write.
2:00:39
Speaker 1: I don't, is that going to, it could have hurt
2:00:41
Speaker 1: your business actually. I don't know.
2:00:43
Speaker 2: Well, you know, but again, that's the little point. Sometimes
2:00:46
Speaker 2: we've got to, you know, put our money where our
2:00:47
Speaker 2: mouth is and, and, and, you know, say the things
2:00:50
Speaker 2: that we think are true. So, well, I don't have candidates.
2:00:53
Speaker 2: I can work for who do that anymore. So I
2:00:55
Speaker 2: have to do it myself.
2:00:56
Speaker 1: Well, it was a good effort. I'm glad you did it.
2:00:59
Speaker 1: It was a good example to set. Thanks.
2:01:01
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Good to talk to you.
2:01:07
Speaker 1: Too. It's a time game. All right, let's go into
2:01:15
Speaker 1: the time machine. And it is an event that I
2:01:19
Speaker 1: had never read about. So we're going back to September 16th, 1920,
2:01:26
Speaker 1: to a terrorist attack on New York City that I
2:01:28
Speaker 1: had never heard of until I started mining this particular
2:01:31
Speaker 1: week in history looking for an appropriate time machine segment.
2:01:36
Speaker 1: And by the way, if it isn't obvious by now,
2:01:38
Speaker 1: that's what I'm always looking for with these things. It's
2:01:41
Speaker 1: not simply an anniversary event. Oh, gee whiz, look what happened.
2:01:44
Speaker 1: I'm always looking for some moment in the past that
2:01:46
Speaker 1: allows me to not so subtly editorialize about something happening
2:01:50
Speaker 1: in the current information stream. Well, to say that this
2:01:54
Speaker 1: one practically jumped off the page is an understatement because
2:01:57
Speaker 1: we just commemorated the 25th anniversary of September 11th. And
2:02:02
Speaker 1: when we think about terrorists attacking New York as a
2:02:05
Speaker 1: symbol of American economic power, obviously we think about the
2:02:08
Speaker 1: World Trade Center. The towers were symbols. That was part
2:02:12
Speaker 1: of why they were targeted. Not once, but twice, remember?
2:02:15
Speaker 1: But 81 years before September 11th and 73 years before
2:02:18
Speaker 1: terrorists bombed the World Trade Center for the first time
2:02:21
Speaker 1: back in 1993, somebody else had essentially the same idea.
2:02:27
Speaker 1: If you want to attack the symbol of American economic power,
2:02:30
Speaker 1: you go to lower Manhattan. Except in 1920, there was
2:02:33
Speaker 1: no World Trade Center. The symbol was Wall Street itself.
2:02:38
Speaker 1: And somebody brought a horse and wagon into the middle
2:02:41
Speaker 1: of it and blew it up. Now, if you've been
2:02:44
Speaker 1: following these time machines, some of this world is going
2:02:47
Speaker 1: to sound familiar. If you recall a couple of episodes ago,
2:02:51
Speaker 1: we went back to the assassination of President William McKinley
2:02:55
Speaker 1: in 1901. And we talked about the America surrounding that assassination, right?
2:03:00
Speaker 1: This didn't happen in a vacuum. America then was being
2:03:05
Speaker 1: completely transformed by a new economy, electricity, steel, oil, Railroads, telephones, automobiles,
2:03:12
Speaker 1: mass production, enormous corporations, enormous fortunes were being created. Technology
2:03:19
Speaker 1: was changing how Americans worked, where they lived, how quickly
2:03:24
Speaker 1: information moved, and who controlled economic power. And with all
2:03:30
Speaker 1: that new wealth, which was not being distributed evenly. Workers
2:03:35
Speaker 1: were organizing. Companies were fighting union efforts. Strikes were everywhere.
2:03:40
Speaker 1: In 1919 alone, America experienced roughly 3,600 work stoppages involving
2:03:48
Speaker 1: more than 4 million workers. A full decade before the
2:03:52
Speaker 1: Great Depression, for the stock market crash that triggered the
2:03:55
Speaker 1: Great Depression. Steel workers struck. Coal miners struck. Railroad workers
2:03:59
Speaker 1: participated in labor actions. Longshoremen struck. Telephone workers struck, actors struck,
2:04:06
Speaker 1: and Boston police officers went on strike. And politically, that
2:04:11
Speaker 1: one mattered quite a bit. The then governor of Massachusetts,
2:04:15
Speaker 1: Calvin Coolidge, backed the decision to fire the striking police officers,
2:04:20
Speaker 1: and that made him a national figure. One year later,
2:04:23
Speaker 1: he becomes the Republican nominee for vice president. So labor
2:04:26
Speaker 1: unrest isn't simply happening around the 1920 elections. It's helping
2:04:31
Speaker 1: create some of the politicians who will end up winning
2:04:34
Speaker 1: the 1920 election. It felt as though the basic relationship
2:04:40
Speaker 1: between capital and labor was being renegotiated in real time. Immigration,
2:04:45
Speaker 1: by the way, was transforming American cities in 1920. Socialism
2:04:49
Speaker 1: was growing. Anarchism was growing. People were asking whether these
2:04:52
Speaker 1: giant new concentrations of wealth were compatible with democracy. Does
2:04:59
Speaker 1: all this sound familiar to you? Obviously, the technologies are different.
2:05:04
Speaker 1: Artificial intelligence is not the assembly line. And today's political
2:05:08
Speaker 1: movements are not the anarchist movements of a century ago.
2:05:12
Speaker 1: But this is what's familiar. This is why we always
2:05:14
Speaker 1: say it rhymes. It's never repeating, but it rhymes. Periods
2:05:18
Speaker 1: of enormous economic and technological disruption tend to create political
2:05:23
Speaker 1: disruption along with it. People start asking the same fundamental questions.
2:05:29
Speaker 1: Who's benefiting from this new economy? Who is getting left behind?
2:05:33
Speaker 1: Do the rules that we've used in the past still
2:05:36
Speaker 1: work for now? Are the people becoming extraordinarily wealthy playing
2:05:40
Speaker 1: by those rules or are they writing new ones? Can
2:05:44
Speaker 1: government actually control the new centers of economic power? And
2:05:47
Speaker 1: what happens when millions of people decide the answer is no?
2:05:51
Speaker 1: Most people respond through some form of politics. Sometimes that's
2:05:56
Speaker 1: labor movements. Sometimes that's protests. Some will embrace entirely new
2:06:01
Speaker 1: political ideologies. And a tiny fringe decides violence is justified.
2:06:07
Speaker 1: That's the world we're entering in 1920. And this is,
2:06:12
Speaker 1: by the way, not just an American phenomenon. Anarchism as
2:06:15
Speaker 1: a political movement had become a global movement. It's weird, right?
2:06:19
Speaker 1: Anarchists organizing, but I digress. Political leaders have been assassinated
2:06:24
Speaker 1: across Europe and the Americas in this period of time.
2:06:28
Speaker 1: Bombs had been planted. Governments were attacked. Governments responded with repression.
2:06:34
Speaker 1: Ideas and people are moving across borders. And then came
2:06:37
Speaker 1: the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. And so suddenly,
2:06:42
Speaker 1: political revolution isn't theoretical. A revolutionary movement has actually overthrown
2:06:47
Speaker 1: one of the world's largest governments. And America has just
2:06:52
Speaker 1: come through World War I. The country is exhausted and divided.
2:06:57
Speaker 1: The war produced enormous government power and enormous suspicion of dissent.
2:07:03
Speaker 1: 1920 also happens to be a presidential election year. Woodrow
2:07:06
Speaker 1: Wilson is still technically president, but he's been badly debilitated
2:07:10
Speaker 1: by a stroke. We all know now he wasn't probably
2:07:13
Speaker 1: there at all. And his wife, Edith, was running the country. Now,
2:07:17
Speaker 1: he had an attorney general by the name of Alexander
2:07:21
Speaker 1: Mitchell Palmer, otherwise known as A. Mitchell Palmer. And Palmer
2:07:25
Speaker 1: wants to be president. He wants to replace Wilson. Remember this.
2:07:30
Speaker 1: Because he's one of the central characters in this story.
2:07:33
Speaker 1: Palmer is a Democrat from Pennsylvania. He's a former member
2:07:36
Speaker 1: of Congress, former alien property custodian during World War I.
2:07:41
Speaker 1: And as attorney general, he becomes one of the country's
2:07:44
Speaker 1: most aggressive voices warning about these radicals, these anarchists. But
2:07:50
Speaker 1: Palmer isn't inventing the underlying threat because somebody tries to
2:07:54
Speaker 1: blow him up. June 2nd, 1919. A bomb explodes at
2:07:59
Speaker 1: Palmer's house. in Washington. This story I did know. The
2:08:02
Speaker 1: bomber apparently detonates it prematurely and blows himself to pieces.
2:08:07
Speaker 1: Investigators believe the dead bomber is Carlo Valdinochi. And Valdinochi
2:08:12
Speaker 1: is important. He's associated with the followers of an Italian
2:08:15
Speaker 1: anarchist named Luigi Galliani. Galliani believes revolutionary violence is justified
2:08:22
Speaker 1: to overthrow capitalism and government. His followers, known as Gallianists,
2:08:27
Speaker 1: have become associated with a campaign of bombings. And when
2:08:31
Speaker 1: investigators search the wreckage outside Palmer's house, they find a
2:08:36
Speaker 1: radical pamphlet, and it has a title, Plain Words. So
2:08:40
Speaker 1: the bombing was not isolated. That same night, bombs explode
2:08:44
Speaker 1: in several American cities, targeting judges, politicians, and other prominent figures.
2:08:49
Speaker 1: And it follows another campaign in which bombs had been
2:08:52
Speaker 1: mailed to political and business leaders. Talk about echoes. We
2:08:57
Speaker 1: had this happen. I was one of those targeted back
2:09:00
Speaker 1: in 2017, 2018. It was that guy with the van,
2:09:03
Speaker 1: if you remember that. Same idea through the mail. Now,
2:09:07
Speaker 1: here's one of those strange accidents of history. Living directly
2:09:11
Speaker 1: across the street from Palmer when his house was targeted,
2:09:14
Speaker 1: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR is still more than a
2:09:17
Speaker 1: decade away from becoming president. But he and Eleanor are
2:09:20
Speaker 1: there when a bomb intended for the attorney general explodes
2:09:23
Speaker 1: across the street. So I want to make this clear.
2:09:27
Speaker 1: There really are violent anarchists planting bombs in America. And
2:09:31
Speaker 1: it wasn't an invented threat. That doesn't mean we didn't overreact, right?
2:09:36
Speaker 1: Palmer responds. He builds an entire, a new intelligence operation
2:09:40
Speaker 1: inside the Justice Department. He puts a 24-year-old lawyer in
2:09:43
Speaker 1: charge of this new radical division. you'll need to remember
2:09:48
Speaker 1: this guy's name, a young man named J. Edgar Hoover,
2:09:51
Speaker 1: 24 years old. Five years later, of course, Hoover would
2:09:54
Speaker 1: take control of the Bureau of Investigation and eventually turn
2:09:57
Speaker 1: that into the FBI that we sort of recognize today.
2:10:01
Speaker 1: I say sort of because Hoover certainly used and abused it.
2:10:05
Speaker 1: But in 1919 and 1920, this young Hoover is helping
2:10:08
Speaker 1: Palmer identify radicals and suspected anarchists. And the response becomes overwhelming.
2:10:15
Speaker 1: Thousands of people are swept up. Immigrants in particular are
2:10:19
Speaker 1: arrested basically just on suspicion. People are detained without adequate warrants.
2:10:24
Speaker 1: There are allegations of beatings and other mistreatment. Hundreds are deported.
2:10:28
Speaker 1: And these become known as the Palmer raids. And the
2:10:31
Speaker 1: FBI's own official history today describes what happened as a
2:10:35
Speaker 1: combination of politics, inexperience, and overreaction. Because Palmer isn't simply
2:10:40
Speaker 1: attorney general. Remember what I told you earlier? He wants
2:10:44
Speaker 1: to be president. 1920, Democratic nomination is wide open, right?
2:10:48
Speaker 1: Wilson is basically incapacitated. And Palmer believes this issue, fear
2:10:56
Speaker 1: of these radicals, can help him take the White House.
2:10:59
Speaker 1: So he starts warning Americans that a revolutionary uprising is coming.
2:11:04
Speaker 1: And then he makes the mistake so many people make
2:11:06
Speaker 1: when they try to, when they, when they try to
2:11:10
Speaker 1: Get everybody fired up about something that is fearful of something.
2:11:14
Speaker 1: He identifies a specific date. May 1st, 1920, May Day.
2:11:19
Speaker 1: Palmer believes he predicts radicals are preparing to strike. And
2:11:24
Speaker 1: America waits. May 1 arrives. Nothing happens. There's no revolution.
2:11:29
Speaker 1: There's no great uprising. And Palmer looks foolish. The Red
2:11:32
Speaker 1: Scare begins losing some of its political momentum. And Palmer's
2:11:36
Speaker 1: presidential campaign goes nowhere. But something else happens that same night.
2:11:40
Speaker 1: two Italian immigrant anarchists are arrested in Massachusetts. This story,
2:11:45
Speaker 1: many of you may remember from your history books. Niccolo
2:11:48
Speaker 1: Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti. They're charged in
2:11:53
Speaker 1: connection with a robbery and a murder in South Braintree. Now, eventually,
2:11:57
Speaker 1: Sacco and Vanzetti will become two of the most famous
2:12:00
Speaker 1: criminal defendants in the world. But not yet. In September 1920,
2:12:04
Speaker 1: this is still mostly a Massachusetts story. Most Americans don't
2:12:08
Speaker 1: know their names yet. The international cause celebre comes later,
2:12:12
Speaker 1: after their 1921 trial, after the conduct of Judge Webster
2:12:16
Speaker 1: Thayer becomes controversial, and as doubts about the fairness of
2:12:19
Speaker 1: their prosecution spread around the world. But inside this small
2:12:23
Speaker 1: anarchist network, people know exactly who Sacco and Vanzetti are.
2:12:27
Speaker 1: They're comrades. And on September 11th, 1920, a Norfolk County
2:12:32
Speaker 1: grand jury indicts them. Five days later, a horse and
2:12:36
Speaker 1: wagon rolls into Wall Street. That timing matters as well,
2:12:40
Speaker 1: because one of the leading theories about what happens next
2:12:43
Speaker 1: is that the Wall Street bombing is retaliation for the
2:12:46
Speaker 1: prosecution of Sacco and Vanzetti and other imprisoned anarchists. Not
2:12:50
Speaker 1: retaliation for a famous international case. That case doesn't exist yet.
2:12:56
Speaker 1: This would be something more intimate, a small radical network
2:12:59
Speaker 1: reacting to what had just happened to two of its own.
2:13:02
Speaker 1: September 16th. It's a Thursday. It's New York City. It's
2:13:06
Speaker 1: almost noon. A man is driving an old horse, pulling
2:13:09
Speaker 1: a wagon through the financial district. This is still normal
2:13:12
Speaker 1: back then. He reaches Wall Street. He stops near the
2:13:15
Speaker 1: United States assay office. Now, an assay office sounds like
2:13:20
Speaker 1: something from another century because it basically is. The federal
2:13:24
Speaker 1: government used assay offices to receive precious metals, especially gold
2:13:28
Speaker 1: and silver, test their purity and value, and process them
2:13:32
Speaker 1: for the government's monetary system. Back to the old gold standard, right?
2:13:36
Speaker 1: So there's literally government gold in that office that the
2:13:41
Speaker 1: horse-drawn wagon parks in front of. And what's directly across
2:13:46
Speaker 1: the street is something even more symbolically important at the time.
2:13:50
Speaker 1: The headquarters of J.P. Morgan and Company, 23 Wall Street. J.P.
2:13:55
Speaker 1: Morgan himself had died seven years earlier, but his son, J.P.
2:13:58
Speaker 1: Morgan Jr., now runs the firm. And on this particular day, Jr.
2:14:02
Speaker 1: is not there. He's in Scotland. But the most obvious
2:14:05
Speaker 1: symbolic symbol of American financial power, is safely across the Atlantic.
2:14:10
Speaker 1: The people about to die are. The driver stops, he
2:14:13
Speaker 1: gets down, and he disappears into the crowd. The lunch
2:14:16
Speaker 1: rush is beginning, and inside the wagon is dynamite. And
2:14:19
Speaker 1: packed around it are heavy cast iron window sash weights.
2:14:24
Speaker 1: So this wasn't simply an explosive designed to destroy property.
2:14:27
Speaker 1: They wanted shrapnel. It was designed to tear through people.
2:14:31
Speaker 1: So just after noon, the wagon explodes, the sash weights
2:14:34
Speaker 1: rip through the crowd, Windows shatter. People are thrown to
2:14:37
Speaker 1: the ground. 30 people are killed immediately. Eight more will
2:14:42
Speaker 1: die from wounds. Hundreds are injured. And most of the
2:14:45
Speaker 1: people who die aren't the titans of Wall Street, right?
2:14:49
Speaker 1: They're the clerks, the messengers, the stenographers, the people that
2:14:52
Speaker 1: work for the titans of Wall Street. Ordinary workers. The
2:14:56
Speaker 1: horse is destroyed. The exterior of 23 Wall Street is
2:14:59
Speaker 1: gouged by the blast. And for a few moments, nobody
2:15:02
Speaker 1: even knows exactly what happened. Was this an accident? Was
2:15:06
Speaker 1: this some sort of industrial explosion? Then investigators begin realizing
2:15:10
Speaker 1: this was deliberate. And the next morning, a postal worker
2:15:13
Speaker 1: finds several crudely printed flyers in a mailbox near Wall Street.
2:15:18
Speaker 1: They had apparently been deposited shortly before the explosion. And
2:15:23
Speaker 1: these flyers read, remember, we will not tolerate any longer.
2:15:27
Speaker 1: Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death
2:15:29
Speaker 1: for all of you. And it was signed, American Anarchist Fighters. Now,
2:15:35
Speaker 1: free the political prisoners does have context, right? Sacco and
2:15:38
Speaker 1: Vanzetti had just been indicted. Other anarchists have been imprisoned
2:15:42
Speaker 1: or deported as well. And investigators have seen something like
2:15:45
Speaker 1: this before. Remember the pamphlet outside Palmer's bombed out house?
2:15:49
Speaker 1: Plain words. So the language, while not identical, seems to
2:15:54
Speaker 1: be using the same dictionary. The same network of Gallianus
2:16:00
Speaker 1: anarchists that had been associated with the 1919 bombings becomes
2:16:04
Speaker 1: the lead focus of this investigation. And eventually one name
2:16:08
Speaker 1: becomes particularly intriguing. Mario Buda. Buda is an Italian anarchist,
2:16:14
Speaker 1: a self-described galleonist, an associate of Sacco and Benzetti's. And
2:16:19
Speaker 1: he's believed by some investigators and historians to have had
2:16:22
Speaker 1: the expertise to actually construct the bomb. But shortly after
2:16:26
Speaker 1: the bombing, Buda leaves the United States and returns to Italy.
2:16:30
Speaker 1: So was Mario Buda the man who drove the wagon?
2:16:34
Speaker 1: Could be. We still don't know. He's still the leading
2:16:36
Speaker 1: suspect in historical literature. Nobody has yet to prove it.
2:16:42
Speaker 1: And Budo will die in Italy decades later without ever
2:16:45
Speaker 1: being charged with that Wall Street bombing. The FBI eventually
2:16:49
Speaker 1: reopens the investigation in 1944, by the way. Investigators again
2:16:53
Speaker 1: conclude that it was Italian anarchists who were the likeliest perpetrators.
2:16:58
Speaker 1: We still have never had charges and no definitive answer.
2:17:01
Speaker 1: They never solved it. How about that? Someone detonates the
2:17:05
Speaker 1: deadliest act of political terrorism on American soil, and it
2:17:08
Speaker 1: will remain the deadliest until Oklahoma City in 1995. It
2:17:12
Speaker 1: was in broad daylight, the middle of Wall Street, 38
2:17:14
Speaker 1: people dead, and the bomber disappears. You know, we have
2:17:18
Speaker 1: no cameras, DNA, none of the modern stuff. Witnesses couldn't
2:17:23
Speaker 1: provide a useful identification of the wagon driver. And Wall
2:17:26
Speaker 1: Street wants to reopen literally immediately. So crews worked through
2:17:30
Speaker 1: the night cleaning up. Potential evidence disappears with the debris.
2:17:34
Speaker 1: By the next morning, Wall Street is back in business
2:17:38
Speaker 1: and there's no evidence to collect. Investigators chase everything they can,
2:17:42
Speaker 1: including the horse. They examine the shoes of the horse.
2:17:46
Speaker 1: They trace the horseshoes to a blacksmith. That gets them nowhere.
2:17:49
Speaker 1: They got strange leads. They had a lawyer and a
2:17:52
Speaker 1: formerly nationally ranked tennis player named Edwin Fisher, who had
2:17:56
Speaker 1: apparently warned acquaintances before September 16th to stay away from
2:17:59
Speaker 1: Wall Street. So that made him a suspect. They found him.
2:18:03
Speaker 1: They interviewed him. And they thought, hmm. And his answer
2:18:06
Speaker 1: was God told him. Eventually, they determined he was a
2:18:09
Speaker 1: bit mentally unstable and decided he was not the bomber.
2:18:13
Speaker 1: So it was another dead end. But the mystery is fascinating.
2:18:16
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's actually the most important part
2:18:18
Speaker 1: of the story, though. The most important part is what
2:18:21
Speaker 1: surrounds the bomb. Because America had a real problem. People
2:18:24
Speaker 1: were planting bombs. Political violence was occurring and increasing. Government
2:18:29
Speaker 1: officials really were being targeted. But the government also had overreacted.
2:18:34
Speaker 1: Palmer had exploited fear. The Justice Department swept up thousands
2:18:37
Speaker 1: of people. Civil liberties had been violated. Any of this
2:18:41
Speaker 1: sounding familiar? Sorry. Immigrants had been treated as inherently suspicious.
2:18:46
Speaker 1: When have we ever heard that before? Palmer had predicted
2:18:49
Speaker 1: a revolutionary attack that never happened. So by the summer
2:18:52
Speaker 1: of 1920, you could reasonably conclude that America had succumbed
2:18:55
Speaker 1: to the Red Scare. And then somebody actually blows up
2:18:59
Speaker 1: Wall Street, right? So Palmer may have exaggerated the threat,
2:19:04
Speaker 1: but the threat was also real. The Palmer raids were
2:19:06
Speaker 1: an abuse, but there were also violent anarchists targeting government officials.
2:19:12
Speaker 1: Most of the radicals weren't terrorists, but some of the
2:19:15
Speaker 1: radicals were planning bombs. So, right, this is complicated. All
2:19:20
Speaker 1: of these things can be true at the same time.
2:19:23
Speaker 1: And that's a problem the democracies have been struggling with
2:19:26
Speaker 1: Ever since, how do you respond to a genuine security
2:19:28
Speaker 1: threat without allowing the existence of that threat to justify
2:19:32
Speaker 1: treating an entire political movement, immigrant community, or category of
2:19:35
Speaker 1: people as possible criminals? And there's another consequence. The anarchists
2:19:40
Speaker 1: wanted to weaken the American state. Their violence, ironically, helped
2:19:45
Speaker 1: strengthen it. The bombing campaigns helped convince the federal government
2:19:48
Speaker 1: it needed better intelligence, better coordination, better investigative capacity. And
2:19:53
Speaker 1: one of the people who benefits institutionally is our friend,
2:19:58
Speaker 1: the 24-year-old lawyer working for Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover. Within
2:20:01
Speaker 1: five years, Hoover is running the Bureau, and he'll run
2:20:04
Speaker 1: it for nearly half a century. The radicals trying to
2:20:06
Speaker 1: attack American government and capitalism help create the conditions for
2:20:10
Speaker 1: a much more powerful federal security apparatus. And then there's
2:20:15
Speaker 1: the place they chose, Wall Street. We just commemorated the
2:20:17
Speaker 1: 25th anniversary of September 11th. Obviously, 1920 and 2001 are
2:20:21
Speaker 1: completely different events. The perpetrators are different, ideology, scale, and
2:20:26
Speaker 1: the war. But boy, is that rhyme, is it symbolic.
2:20:30
Speaker 1: Whoever planted the 1920 bomb looked at New York and
2:20:32
Speaker 1: chose the physical center of American finance. Seven decades later,
2:20:37
Speaker 1: lower Manhattan had a new symbol of American economic power,
2:20:40
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center. That's why in 1993, Ramzi Youssef
2:20:43
Speaker 1: and his conspirators drove a van containing a massive bomb
2:20:47
Speaker 1: into the parking garage beneath the North Tower. Six people
2:20:50
Speaker 1: were killed, more than a thousand injured, but Youssef wanted
2:20:53
Speaker 1: one tower to collapse into the other. Eight years later,
2:20:56
Speaker 1: Al-Qaeda would return. This time they used airplanes. Horse-drawn wagon,
2:21:02
Speaker 1: truck bomb, hijacked airplanes. Three technologies from three different eras,
2:21:08
Speaker 1: different attackers, different ideologies, but a recurring idea. Attack a
2:21:12
Speaker 1: physical symbol of American economic power in lower Manhattan. And
2:21:17
Speaker 1: maybe that's why this forgotten bombing feels worth remembering right now,
2:21:20
Speaker 1: because the bomb itself is only part of the story.
2:21:23
Speaker 1: The larger story is the America surrounding it. The first
2:21:25
Speaker 1: two decades of the 20th century were a period of
2:21:27
Speaker 1: astonishing economic transformation. Technology was changing everything. New industries were
2:21:32
Speaker 1: creating enormous wealth. Old ways of working were disappearing. Corporations
2:21:36
Speaker 1: were becoming larger and more powerful. Workers were fighting over
2:21:39
Speaker 1: how much of the new prosperity they would get a
2:21:41
Speaker 1: piece of. Political movements were challenging institutions that suddenly looked
2:21:46
Speaker 1: too old for the economy they were governing. The country
2:21:49
Speaker 1: was exhausted by it. You know what Warren Harding's presidential
2:21:53
Speaker 1: campaign promise in 1920 was? and why it was so effective.
2:21:57
Speaker 1: His campaign theme was a return to normalcy. After war, strikes, bombings,
2:22:03
Speaker 1: revolution abroad, the Red Scare, after two decades in which
2:22:07
Speaker 1: the economy and society seemed to be changing almost faster
2:22:10
Speaker 1: than people could absorb, the man from Ohio said, normalcy, please,
2:22:16
Speaker 1: just make everything normal again. And so America elects Harding
2:22:19
Speaker 1: in a landslide. And standing beside him on the Republican
2:22:22
Speaker 1: ticket is our friend Calvin Coolidge. the Massachusetts governor who
2:22:25
Speaker 1: became a national political figure during the Boston police strike
2:22:29
Speaker 1: that year before. So that's how much of the turmoil
2:22:32
Speaker 1: of 1919 is sitting inside the election of 1920. And
2:22:36
Speaker 1: for a moment, let's just leave Harding's promise where Americans
2:22:40
Speaker 1: heard it, normalcy. After everything they'd just been through, you
2:22:45
Speaker 1: can understand why millions of people wanted exactly that. Of course,
2:22:48
Speaker 1: history doesn't stop changing because Americans retired The 1920s will
2:22:52
Speaker 1: bring another explosion of consumer technology, mass media, automobiles, credit, advertising,
2:22:57
Speaker 1: enormous fortunes, then a crash, then a depression, then another
2:23:01
Speaker 1: transformation of American government. Economic upheaval doesn't stay economic. Eventually
2:23:07
Speaker 1: it gets into everything else. Politics, culture, immigration, trust, institutions.
2:23:13
Speaker 1: The way people understand who is winning and who is losing.
2:23:16
Speaker 1: And occasionally, at the most extreme edges, there's violence. Which
2:23:21
Speaker 1: brings me back to 23 Wall Street. You can still
2:23:23
Speaker 1: go there. I know I'm going to do that the
2:23:24
Speaker 1: next time I go down to Lower Manhattan. The Morgan
2:23:27
Speaker 1: building is still standing. And more than a century later,
2:23:30
Speaker 1: you can still see the damage from this wagon bomb.
2:23:33
Speaker 1: The limestone facade is pockmarked where the explosion and the
2:23:36
Speaker 1: cast iron shrapnel struck it. Morgan never had the scars repaired.
2:23:41
Speaker 1: They're still there. And it's probably an image worth keeping
2:23:45
Speaker 1: from September 16th, 1920. Because the bomber disappeared. The case
2:23:49
Speaker 1: went unsolved. Palmer disappeared from national prominence. Mario Buda returned
2:23:53
Speaker 1: to Italy and was never charged. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted,
2:23:56
Speaker 1: became an international cause celeb, and were executed in 1927. J.
2:24:00
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover went on to become one of the most
2:24:03
Speaker 1: powerful men in Washington. Harding won his normalcy election. The
2:24:07
Speaker 1: galleonists faded into history. Wall Street became more powerful than ever.
2:24:12
Speaker 1: The economic transformation kept going. The scars stayed. History doesn't
2:24:16
Speaker 1: always leave you something you can touch. This time it did.
2:24:19
Speaker 1: So more than a century later, the marks from that
2:24:22
Speaker 1: bomb are still sitting there on Wall Street. A reminder
2:24:25
Speaker 1: of an America being transformed by new technology, new wealth,
2:24:29
Speaker 1: new economic power, faster than its politics and its people
2:24:33
Speaker 1: could absorb it. An America trying to figure out who
2:24:37
Speaker 1: was benefiting, who was being left behind, and whether institutions
2:24:40
Speaker 1: built for an older economy could handle the new one.
2:24:44
Speaker 1: And an America discovering that economic disruption It doesn't stay
2:24:49
Speaker 1: economic for very long. This is why I do these lessons, folks.
2:24:55
Speaker 1: This is why I go back in the time machine.
2:24:57
Speaker 1: The good news is we've been here before. The question is,
2:25:01
Speaker 1: are we going to meet the moment like generations before us? Hey, Chuck,
2:25:15
Speaker 1: Tyler H. here from Michigan's Fifth. I'm a machinist in
2:25:18
Speaker 1: a small town. I use my share of colorful language
2:25:20
Speaker 1: and I love the rare Chuck Todd F-bomb. However, I
2:25:23
Speaker 1: don't care to hear it from elected officials. Am I
2:25:25
Speaker 1: being hypocritical? What is your opinion on this topic? You know,
2:25:28
Speaker 1: you're not. And I think, you know, look, colorful language
2:25:33
Speaker 1: should be saved when you really, you know, it's a
2:25:36
Speaker 1: verbal exclamation point, right? You can raise your voice, you
2:25:40
Speaker 1: can scream, but the more you use it, the less
2:25:45
Speaker 1: an exclamation point, it becomes meaningful, right? And so, you know, take,
2:25:52
Speaker 1: you know, now it feels like hearing a politician curse
2:25:55
Speaker 1: in the middle of a debate or an interview, and
2:25:58
Speaker 1: we all think nothing of it. And we sort of casual,
2:26:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I was watching game day and they just casual,
2:26:05
Speaker 1: everybody just says shit now on air, on ESPN. Like
2:26:09
Speaker 1: that no longer, apparently, like that is, nobody even pretends that,
2:26:12
Speaker 1: nobody even apologizes for saying it. And we have, I guess,
2:26:18
Speaker 1: in Legacy, me to draw on the line on the F-bomb.
2:26:20
Speaker 1: And even I try to make it frickin' every once
2:26:23
Speaker 1: in a while or fork, you know, the greatest contribution
2:26:27
Speaker 1: to the English language that the TV show The Good
2:26:29
Speaker 1: Place gave us. What the fork is wrong with you, right? Look,
2:26:37
Speaker 1: I share it, you know. You know, there's this, for
2:26:42
Speaker 1: a brief period of time, everybody thought, well, if I curse,
2:26:44
Speaker 1: they'll think I'm real. Well, there's plenty of real people
2:26:48
Speaker 1: who can convey their thoughts without cursing. And you should
2:26:55
Speaker 1: always try to do it. Every once in a while,
2:27:01
Speaker 1: every once in a while it works. Every once in
2:27:04
Speaker 1: a while it works. But more times than not, the
2:27:07
Speaker 1: more you use it, the less impactful the word becomes anyway.
2:27:11
Speaker 1: And all you've done is is sort of mainstreamed it,
2:27:14
Speaker 1: and then more people copy it. And then all of
2:27:16
Speaker 1: a sudden, everybody is F-bombing this, F-bombing that. And then
2:27:22
Speaker 1: it gets so common, it stops having any impact at all.
2:27:27
Speaker 1: So look, this thought about language also gets me. I
2:27:31
Speaker 1: also want my elected officials to be more knowledgeable about
2:27:34
Speaker 1: things than I am. Not everything. I know I'm more
2:27:38
Speaker 1: knowledgeable than elected officials on some things. But our elected officials, yes,
2:27:42
Speaker 1: there are representatives, but I expect our representatives to be
2:27:45
Speaker 1: more well-informed. Being less, you know, like when Darlene Graham said,
2:27:52
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that. That bothered me.
2:27:55
Speaker 1: A normal person, absolutely, you shouldn't You shouldn't know what's
2:27:59
Speaker 1: going on with Taiwan. But before debate, on foreign policy,
2:28:04
Speaker 1: Taiwan's one of our three or four, you know, that
2:28:07
Speaker 1: should be one of the first three or four issues
2:28:09
Speaker 1: you do have a thought on. So, you know, I
2:28:14
Speaker 1: sort of hate this war against intelligence that we've had
2:28:17
Speaker 1: that we somehow think the less you know, the more
2:28:19
Speaker 1: qualified that makes you for Congress. You know, I want
2:28:22
Speaker 1: more everyday people, but those everyday people need to know,
2:28:28
Speaker 1: need to read the Constitution, need to read Federalist Papers.
2:28:33
Speaker 1: I don't think every American has to read the Federalist Papers,
2:28:35
Speaker 1: though I think we all should. But I certainly think
2:28:37
Speaker 1: elected officials should. So I share that, and that's why
2:28:39
Speaker 1: I add the other part of it. And it's a
2:28:44
Speaker 1: reminder that I'm going to continue to try to limit
2:28:48
Speaker 1: how many explicit warnings I have to give on this podcast.
2:28:53
Speaker 1: Appreciate the question. Chad N. writes in, greeting, Chuck. Huge
2:28:57
Speaker 1: fan since the 08 days. And I'm writing from the
2:28:59
Speaker 1: soon-to-be bluest district represented by a blue dog ever. Probably
2:29:03
Speaker 1: Utah 1. That's a good point. If Democrats capture both
2:29:07
Speaker 1: chambers in November, what could they realistically accomplish during Trump's
2:29:10
Speaker 1: final two years beyond investigations and impeachment, particularly through broadly
2:29:13
Speaker 1: popular legislation on the economy, separation of powers, and Democratic guardrails?
2:29:18
Speaker 1: Fantasyland thought experiment. If you were elected Speaker of the
2:29:21
Speaker 1: House on January 2027, and yes, I checked, it's constitutionally possible.
2:29:24
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. What would your first legislative priorities be? Well,
2:29:28
Speaker 1: I think if you've got an industry claiming that we
2:29:31
Speaker 1: have a 10% chance to get rid of humanity, I
2:29:34
Speaker 1: think first and foremost is we need to get our
2:29:37
Speaker 1: arms around AI. I think there needs to be a
2:29:40
Speaker 1: special committee. I think there needs to be that this
2:29:42
Speaker 1: needs to be front and center. This needs to be
2:29:44
Speaker 1: working with the Trump White House, whether you like it
2:29:47
Speaker 1: or not, because this needs to be an all of
2:29:49
Speaker 1: government approach. This is a huge, important economic and national
2:29:54
Speaker 1: security issue. This should be first and foremost, right? We're
2:29:57
Speaker 1: doing this massive economic transition that's going to disrupt, potentially
2:30:00
Speaker 1: disrupt America as we know it. And we're kind of like,
2:30:04
Speaker 1: you know, doing a few fingers in the dike here
2:30:07
Speaker 1: or there, right? So that's like simultaneously, that's probably, that's
2:30:12
Speaker 1: the most responsible thing. Responsibility number two would be to,
2:30:16
Speaker 1: I would start to put together a debt commission so
2:30:19
Speaker 1: we can put more plans essentially on the shelf. You're
2:30:22
Speaker 1: not going to do anything with Trump. but get some
2:30:23
Speaker 1: more plans on the shelf of how we're going to
2:30:25
Speaker 1: do this realistically. And we need to be thinking about
2:30:29
Speaker 1: saving Social Security now, not then. And I think Democrats
2:30:33
Speaker 1: in particular, if they win the House and the Senate,
2:30:36
Speaker 1: they're going to have won basically on the issue of affordability.
2:30:39
Speaker 1: So everything needs to be about what are you doing
2:30:41
Speaker 1: about that, right? So you need to be always caught
2:30:45
Speaker 1: worrying about what voters are worrying about. Voters are worried
2:30:48
Speaker 1: about tech disruption and AI, so get involved in it.
2:30:51
Speaker 1: Voters are worried about Social Security running dry. So get
2:30:54
Speaker 1: involved with a plan on it. Voters are worried about
2:30:56
Speaker 1: the costs. So get focused on Iran and get an
2:30:59
Speaker 1: end date on this thing and let's get off of
2:31:01
Speaker 1: this thing. So I think those have to be the
2:31:04
Speaker 1: three priorities, the Iran war, AI. And look, there's no
2:31:09
Speaker 1: doubt we've got to fix, we've got to recalibrate the
2:31:12
Speaker 1: House powers versus legislative powers versus the executive branch. But
2:31:17
Speaker 1: I'm realistic too, right? And There should be some things
2:31:24
Speaker 1: you work on that you might be able to get
2:31:25
Speaker 1: done with Trump. And on AI, I think the public
2:31:30
Speaker 1: is going to be screaming for this. So I think
2:31:32
Speaker 1: there's going to be populist appeal to do this. And
2:31:35
Speaker 1: I actually think Trump will participate. I think the Iran
2:31:38
Speaker 1: war will become a bipartisan. If under this scenario, Democrats
2:31:42
Speaker 1: win both chambers, it means the Iran war is enormously unpopular.
2:31:46
Speaker 1: So that's something you kind of have to try to
2:31:49
Speaker 1: work with him on. But some of the other stuff,
2:31:54
Speaker 1: I think the real trick is going to be to
2:31:59
Speaker 1: essentially saying, look, we know we have a laundry list
2:32:02
Speaker 1: of work to do. And we have a laundry list
2:32:04
Speaker 1: of promises. But everything is going to be through these
2:32:07
Speaker 1: two North Stars. Bringing down costs where government is in
2:32:10
Speaker 1: the way. So that's tariffs. That's Iran war. And focusing
2:32:14
Speaker 1: on the problems that are disrupting the short-term future for everybody.
2:32:19
Speaker 1: That's AI. That's frankly rule of law. That can actually
2:32:25
Speaker 1: get you into essentially solidifying the guardrails of American democracy.
2:32:32
Speaker 1: I don't know if Hakeem Jeffries is got– he needs
2:32:37
Speaker 1: a big majority in order to have the ability to
2:32:40
Speaker 1: sort of be this leader, but I'm not sure. I'm
2:32:46
Speaker 1: just going to be honest. I don't know if he's
2:32:49
Speaker 1: going to be able to meet this moment. I don't
2:32:51
Speaker 1: know if a lot of people could meet this moment
2:32:52
Speaker 1: in defense of this. But if you're more worried about
2:32:57
Speaker 1: factions inside your own party and which factions here, which
2:33:00
Speaker 1: factions there, and if you're more worried about who's on
2:33:05
Speaker 1: your rules committee and who's going to follow what the
2:33:07
Speaker 1: leadership wants, you're not the person for the moment. Kevin
2:33:11
Speaker 1: McCarthy was not the person for the moment that the
2:33:14
Speaker 1: Republicans needed. but it's who they had. I don't know
2:33:16
Speaker 1: if Hakeem Jeffries is that, but I know how I
2:33:20
Speaker 1: would be focusing on this moment. You need to both
2:33:24
Speaker 1: listen to the voters, make it about the voters, but
2:33:28
Speaker 1: you do need to make the speakership great again. And
2:33:31
Speaker 1: the problem is what we need, he's not incentivized to do, right?
2:33:38
Speaker 1: He's incentivized to just do whatever it takes to improve,
2:33:40
Speaker 1: help the Democratic Party, when ultimately what we need to
2:33:43
Speaker 1: do is fix the institution of Congress and the House
2:33:47
Speaker 1: in particular. But some of those reforms would take their
2:33:51
Speaker 1: eye off the ball of looking like they're focused on
2:33:53
Speaker 1: what the voters cared the most about. So I think
2:33:56
Speaker 1: they have to, right, that's the balance here. Is Jeffrey's
2:34:02
Speaker 1: up to this? We're going to find out. Next question.
2:34:07
Speaker 1: Kevin M. in St. Louis. Say, long-time listener, appreciate your brain. Go,
2:34:11
Speaker 1: but go Irish. Random Notre Dame connection. My mom took
2:34:15
Speaker 1: theater classes there with Joe Theismann. You mean Joe Theismann.
2:34:19
Speaker 1: The joke is he was recruited as Joe Theismann, and
2:34:22
Speaker 1: somebody told him, son, you should change the pronunciation of
2:34:25
Speaker 1: your name to Theismann, like the Heisman. Of course, he
2:34:28
Speaker 1: never won the Heisman, but I digress. Okay. Your recent
2:34:32
Speaker 1: conversation about the collapse of local media, declining trust in institution,
2:34:35
Speaker 1: and people's desire for community really resonated with me because
2:34:38
Speaker 1: I think I might accidentally be building a response to
2:34:40
Speaker 1: that problem here in St. Louis. Right on. I'm launching TV3,
2:34:44
Speaker 1: essentially public access meets streaming, a scheduled algorithm-free local channel
2:34:51
Speaker 1: featuring St. Louis comedians, musicians, businesses, food people, and other
2:34:55
Speaker 1: local voices built around the idea that maybe you rebuild
2:34:59
Speaker 1: trust by shrinking content. media until people recognize the people
2:35:02
Speaker 1: and places inside it again. No real ask. Your episode
2:35:05
Speaker 1: just made me think you might understand why I'm doing this, Kevin.
2:35:08
Speaker 1: I'm in St. Louis. That's exactly... Oh, my God. So
2:35:11
Speaker 1: I'm teaching... Kevin, I almost want you as a guest
2:35:14
Speaker 1: speaker for my class that I'm teaching freshmen at USC.
2:35:18
Speaker 1: We're doing history of media and polarization in America. And
2:35:22
Speaker 1: we spent last week about the penny press. And the
2:35:27
Speaker 1: expansion of the penny press. And what the penny press
2:35:29
Speaker 1: needed to do is they suddenly realized that they wanted
2:35:32
Speaker 1: getting people reading every day. They needed to report about
2:35:35
Speaker 1: things that people were just kind of interested in. And
2:35:37
Speaker 1: it turned out more local news is what people were
2:35:40
Speaker 1: interested in. And it was like they sort of shrunk
2:35:42
Speaker 1: the conversation, right? Newspapers before the penny press came about
2:35:46
Speaker 1: were really political debates, right? They were political newsletters called newspapers.
2:35:51
Speaker 1: And yeah, they had some news in it, but it
2:35:53
Speaker 1: was really more about campaign literature, political debating. The penny
2:35:57
Speaker 1: press is at least the first time we created a
2:36:03
Speaker 1: sort of a news information ecosystem that looks kind of
2:36:06
Speaker 1: familiar to people today. But you just synthesized this so well,
2:36:12
Speaker 1: and I want to repeat it because I love this,
2:36:16
Speaker 1: that you're building around the idea that maybe, quote, you
2:36:19
Speaker 1: rebuild trust by shrinking media until people recognize the people
2:36:23
Speaker 1: and places inside it again. Yes. Yes. Our biggest problem
2:36:27
Speaker 1: is we nationalized all local media, right? And you have
2:36:30
Speaker 1: a McClatchy, or at least a hedge fund that bought McClatchy.
2:36:33
Speaker 1: It's not what the McClatchy I was used to pre-2020.
2:36:37
Speaker 1: But you have this hedge fund who just looks at
2:36:39
Speaker 1: the information ecosystem through the prism of national and doesn't
2:36:43
Speaker 1: realize that if it could build micro local followings, they
2:36:47
Speaker 1: actually probably would end up with an amazing, powerful national network.
2:36:51
Speaker 1: But they are doing the exact opposite of building these
2:36:54
Speaker 1: micro followings where you shrink the media to the point
2:37:00
Speaker 1: where people recognize it again. Just a terrific thesis here.
2:37:05
Speaker 1: I'm all bored. Kevin, I'd love to know more. Send
2:37:08
Speaker 1: me more. You already know how to email us a question.
2:37:10
Speaker 1: I'd love to know more about this. This is a
2:37:14
Speaker 1: fascinating idea because it's what I believe. I want the
2:37:19
Speaker 1: next local news to be platform for the community to
2:37:24
Speaker 1: use anytime they want. It's sort of taking this side
2:37:26
Speaker 1: of merging public act. I just love what you, the
2:37:29
Speaker 1: way you even verbalized it, moving public access and sort
2:37:33
Speaker 1: of merging it with the streaming mindset. Right. Um, and
2:37:37
Speaker 1: essentially creating public access streams. I, I love it. This is, this,
2:37:43
Speaker 1: this is one of the better answers about local media
2:37:46
Speaker 1: that I've seen yet. Um, Man, do I want to
2:37:50
Speaker 1: know more. And I have a feeling that making this
2:37:53
Speaker 1: public will mean a lot more other folks would like
2:37:55
Speaker 1: to do. So it's called TV3. I dig it. And boy,
2:37:59
Speaker 1: just speaking of St. Louis, I've spent a lot of
2:38:04
Speaker 1: time in St. Louis, family, friends. My first wife was
2:38:08
Speaker 1: from St. Louis. So I know that it's an incredible
2:38:11
Speaker 1: collection of micro communities. And it's totally been the St.
2:38:18
Speaker 1: Louis Post-Dispatches You know, it used to be the Globe Democrat,
2:38:21
Speaker 1: the Post-Dispatch, right? You know, all that's gone. You know,
2:38:25
Speaker 1: I think there's the remnants of the Post-Dispatch. And I
2:38:28
Speaker 1: think I want to say the River, there's a free weekly,
2:38:30
Speaker 1: free daily out there that used to be out there,
2:38:32
Speaker 1: River something or other. But this is a, people are
2:38:39
Speaker 1: proud of their micro communities. I can't wait to see
2:38:43
Speaker 1: how successful you are here. Last question comes from David. Greetings, Chuck,
2:38:48
Speaker 1: from New York's 25th. We hear you talk a lot
2:38:51
Speaker 1: about baseball ownership and its culture, but I've always been
2:38:54
Speaker 1: intrigued by NFL owners who sometimes seem to operate more
2:38:57
Speaker 1: like an organized crime family commission. They generally appear to
2:39:00
Speaker 1: stay out of the political spotlight while remaining incredibly powerful.
2:39:04
Speaker 1: So what can you tell us about the culture among
2:39:07
Speaker 1: the league's 31 private ownership groups and how they collectively
2:39:10
Speaker 1: handle their business? Well, look, you still have a lot
2:39:14
Speaker 1: of Family heirs, right? And I think both– the NBA
2:39:20
Speaker 1: has gone from small business owners to these sort of–
2:39:26
Speaker 1: there's a lot more new money owners in the NBA
2:39:28
Speaker 1: than there are certainly in the NFL, right? Or even–
2:39:32
Speaker 1: and now you're seeing a little bit of that show
2:39:33
Speaker 1: up in baseball. Look, a lot of the NFL owners,
2:39:38
Speaker 1: their wealth is within the team. right? The growth of
2:39:44
Speaker 1: the league. So it is incentivized them to sort of, right.
2:39:48
Speaker 1: You've got, what is it? The houses are on the
2:39:50
Speaker 1: fourth generation of ownership groups. You've got the Maris with
2:39:56
Speaker 1: the New York giants, or at least, right. They, they
2:39:58
Speaker 1: sold half of it to the Tish family, but still
2:40:01
Speaker 1: that's still a remnant there. I think the Cowboys have
2:40:05
Speaker 1: only had three owners, right? So, and think about when
2:40:08
Speaker 1: he bought it for the, I, Don't even think– I
2:40:13
Speaker 1: think it was $ 600 million is what he spent. I
2:40:15
Speaker 1: think that was the number. Maybe I'm even underselling it.
2:40:17
Speaker 1: Maybe it was $ 200 million on Jerry Jones. So I
2:40:21
Speaker 1: think because of that, right, they just want to stay.
2:40:25
Speaker 1: And so it just becomes embedded. So I take your point.
2:40:28
Speaker 1: It just becomes a series of family owners. It's almost
2:40:31
Speaker 1: like in the same way certain families thought that they
2:40:34
Speaker 1: had political dynasties that were their birthright, right? Think the Kennedys.
2:40:39
Speaker 1: Think the Tafts. Think the Bushes, right? Um, and frankly,
2:40:43
Speaker 1: you can go in any state and there was always a,
2:40:46
Speaker 1: there was always somebody, the Roosevelt's, you name it. There
2:40:48
Speaker 1: was some multi-generational family, uh, in there. Um, but I
2:40:53
Speaker 1: do think that you're going to slowly see a transition, right.
2:40:58
Speaker 1: Of ownership groups that are, um, because it's so expensive
2:41:02
Speaker 1: to buy an NFL team that I have a feeling
2:41:05
Speaker 1: you're going to have more and more of these sort
2:41:06
Speaker 1: of where you sell pieces of the team because these,
2:41:11
Speaker 1: These old family ownership groups want to get some cash
2:41:14
Speaker 1: out of it, kind of like what the Buss family
2:41:15
Speaker 1: did with the Lakers. All their wealth was tied up
2:41:20
Speaker 1: in the league or in the team. So in order
2:41:23
Speaker 1: to get any money out of it, they sell at
2:41:26
Speaker 1: a valuation and then they're able to essentially cash in
2:41:32
Speaker 1: based on the new valuation what they want to cash
2:41:35
Speaker 1: in and at least experience some of the value that way. Um,
2:41:42
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling that you're going to just
2:41:43
Speaker 1: see more teams like, look at the way Josh Harris built.
2:41:46
Speaker 1: I mean, he's, he's got a slew of minority owners
2:41:49
Speaker 1: because no, there aren't many people, right? There's a handful
2:41:54
Speaker 1: of the, of the, of people who are worth more
2:41:57
Speaker 1: than 50 billion, you know, $ 10 billion. Um, and an
2:42:02
Speaker 1: NFL team now costs $ 10 billion, right? So you're going
2:42:07
Speaker 1: to have a lot more partnership groups. And I think
2:42:11
Speaker 1: it means that more NFL teams are actually going to
2:42:14
Speaker 1: behave like the Packers do. Packers being community-owned in some ways, though,
2:42:20
Speaker 1: they're managed very logically. They're managed with budgets. And at
2:42:24
Speaker 1: some point when you have that many investors that whatever
2:42:27
Speaker 1: it takes to own a franchise worth $ 10 billion, you're
2:42:31
Speaker 1: no longer going to have whimsical decisions by a kooky
2:42:34
Speaker 1: owner a la Jerry Jones, right? And the cookie owner
2:42:38
Speaker 1: has actually always been kind of a fun part of sports.
2:42:41
Speaker 1: So I'm going to be bummed when we lose the
2:42:42
Speaker 1: cookie owner. But I just have a feeling what you're
2:42:46
Speaker 1: really going to see is just more corporatization of all teams.
2:42:49
Speaker 1: And like I said, eventually they'll have boards of directors, shareholders,
2:42:53
Speaker 1: and almost operate the way the Packers do today. All right.
2:42:58
Speaker 1: I'm going to put a pin in questions there. Now
2:43:01
Speaker 1: let's talk about college football weekend. So what was I
2:43:03
Speaker 1: completely wrong about? Oklahoma. My takeaway from the Oklahoma-Michigan game
2:43:09
Speaker 1: is simply, oh, Oklahoma doesn't have it. I don't believe
2:43:12
Speaker 1: in Michigan, and nothing about that game convinced me that
2:43:15
Speaker 1: Michigan is, that still looks like a shaky offense. That
2:43:21
Speaker 1: still looks like a team that maybe wins seven or
2:43:23
Speaker 1: eight games, maybe nine, but I don't see how they
2:43:26
Speaker 1: win 10, and I don't see how they could beat
2:43:28
Speaker 1: anybody that we consider truly a top five, six, or
2:43:31
Speaker 1: seven team on there. But let's be honest that The
2:43:35
Speaker 1: game of the day may have been Texas-Ohio State, but
2:43:39
Speaker 1: the shock of the day on Saturday was Oklahoma State
2:43:42
Speaker 1: defeating Oregon. Oklahoma State giving Oregon a game, not a surprise.
2:43:47
Speaker 1: One of the things we underrate all the time with
2:43:52
Speaker 1: these great teams is that road games in college are
2:43:55
Speaker 1: just different. Road games in the NFL, they're pretty meaningless
2:44:00
Speaker 1: unless you have a temperature issue. Indoor versus outdoor, super heat.
2:44:05
Speaker 1: But even like, I'm trying to think of where a
2:44:08
Speaker 1: crowd in an NFL stadium can truly make a difference anymore.
2:44:13
Speaker 1: You know, yes, I guess you could say Steelers could,
2:44:18
Speaker 1: but I think even all of, I think most home
2:44:20
Speaker 1: field advantages now are weather related in the NFL more
2:44:23
Speaker 1: than anything else. College is different. It just is. First
2:44:27
Speaker 1: of all, it's the youth, right? You have that and
2:44:32
Speaker 1: You know, with Oregon, I think we totally underrated two
2:44:36
Speaker 1: brand new coordinators. Remember, Dan Lanning, the head coach there, lost.
2:44:40
Speaker 1: Both his offensive and defensive coordinators were hired as head coaches.
2:44:44
Speaker 1: One is at Cal, I think, and the other's at Kentucky.
2:44:48
Speaker 1: And just automatically replaced, you know, take a look at Miami. Miami,
2:44:52
Speaker 1: I think, is the only top. Miami and Indiana, I believe. Yeah,
2:44:57
Speaker 1: I think even Georgia had to get a new OC,
2:45:00
Speaker 1: I want to say. But I know Miami and Indiana
2:45:02
Speaker 1: are the only ones that kept both their OC and
2:45:05
Speaker 1: DC and head coach. And, you know, so I think
2:45:08
Speaker 1: that continuity matters. And I think you sort of you
2:45:11
Speaker 1: really notice it early in a season. For instance, I
2:45:15
Speaker 1: think Ohio State's still figuring out their offense with Arthur
2:45:20
Speaker 1: Smith and how that works. And I wasn't, you know,
2:45:25
Speaker 1: it's interesting in the Ohio State-Texas game. Were those two
2:45:29
Speaker 1: really good teams feeling each other out, giving about 85% effort?
2:45:34
Speaker 1: Because ultimately, as long as the game was close, it
2:45:36
Speaker 1: was probably a meaningless game. I don't want to say meaningless,
2:45:41
Speaker 1: but it was not as meaningful as the games would
2:45:44
Speaker 1: have been if there's only four teams in the playoff
2:45:46
Speaker 1: or something like that. Now, for narrative purposes and perception purposes,
2:45:55
Speaker 1: Arch Manning and Sarkeesian needed that victory a lot more
2:45:58
Speaker 1: than Ryan Day and Julian Sane needed that victory, right?
2:46:01
Speaker 1: So in some ways, it's the fitting ending. You know,
2:46:07
Speaker 1: Arch doesn't have to deal with like another week of, oh,
2:46:10
Speaker 1: my God, he doesn't live up to the hype. I mean,
2:46:13
Speaker 1: you want to talk about impossible expectations. I know some
2:46:16
Speaker 1: of it was brought on himself, but, you know, he
2:46:19
Speaker 1: didn't know he was born a Manning. He just was
2:46:20
Speaker 1: born a Manning, you know? Yeah. It is– the fact
2:46:24
Speaker 1: that it's like the– this is– the expectations for Arch
2:46:29
Speaker 1: Manning are as great if not greater than they were
2:46:32
Speaker 1: for LeBron James when that dude was put on the
2:46:35
Speaker 1: cover of Sports Illustrated at 14 or whatever it was, right?
2:46:38
Speaker 1: And I still find LeBron James remarkable for actually living
2:46:41
Speaker 1: up to the hype. We can debate whether he's– is
2:46:46
Speaker 1: it him or Jordan? But my God, he was identified
2:46:49
Speaker 1: at 14 and he made it to the conversation of, well,
2:46:52
Speaker 1: is it him or Jordan? You know, the fact that
2:46:56
Speaker 1: he's still in the conversation, that his career, and he
2:46:59
Speaker 1: didn't ever get derailed and he didn't ever get like
2:47:02
Speaker 1: the outside stuff and any of this stuff. I mean,
2:47:05
Speaker 1: I think we, I think LeBron's, I think LeBron's ability,
2:47:13
Speaker 1: it's why I put him over Jordan because he, You know,
2:47:15
Speaker 1: to be identified and have to live up to it, right?
2:47:18
Speaker 1: Jordan had a chip on his shoulder about middle school. Well,
2:47:20
Speaker 1: a shoot middle school. LeBron was already deemed the next Jordan. Right.
2:47:24
Speaker 1: Nobody was saying that about Michael Jordan in middle school,
2:47:27
Speaker 1: which which, of course, he reminded you in his Hall
2:47:29
Speaker 1: of Fame speech. But I'm digressing. So I do think,
2:47:34
Speaker 1: you know, to keep the ESPN tradition. talking heads off
2:47:37
Speaker 1: their back, both Sark and Arch needed a victory like that.
2:47:40
Speaker 1: It's sort of, yes, you know, sort of, because there was,
2:47:43
Speaker 1: you know, you could just feel it, right? Had they
2:47:45
Speaker 1: blown that game, especially how awful the start was. A
2:47:48
Speaker 1: couple of turnovers, it was weird turnovers, but it was
2:47:51
Speaker 1: just like, my God. And I'm sorry. I think Sark's
2:47:55
Speaker 1: play calls are terrible. I think the play designs are terrible.
2:47:59
Speaker 1: I think they are not using Arch the right way.
2:48:02
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. If I were the Manning's, I'd wish I
2:48:06
Speaker 1: had an OC like Shannon Dawson at Miami. It is,
2:48:10
Speaker 1: I'd wish I had Lane Kiffin. I do not think Sark's,
2:48:15
Speaker 1: I mean, with the speed of Ohio State's defense, you're
2:48:20
Speaker 1: going to throw behind the line of scrimmage like that?
2:48:22
Speaker 1: It just was, there were just some real head scratchers there.
2:48:25
Speaker 1: And I still, the mistakes that were made in that
2:48:29
Speaker 1: game are why I have my doubts about Texas making
2:48:33
Speaker 1: it all the way, right? Look, Talent-wise, Texas, Miami, Ohio State,
2:48:38
Speaker 1: Notre Dame, Georgia, maybe Alabama, not Oregon yet, but I'm
2:48:47
Speaker 1: willing to give Oregon a little more time here. I
2:48:51
Speaker 1: think they're all– the talent's equal, right? The question is
2:48:56
Speaker 1: who's got intangible advantages, and I forget to throw Indiana
2:49:02
Speaker 1: in there. And I think in that sense, I think,
2:49:08
Speaker 1: I think Miami's got the best quarterback. And I don't
2:49:10
Speaker 1: know if it's that close. We'll see. He needs, I
2:49:15
Speaker 1: get it. It's Stanford and Florida A & M. But just,
2:49:19
Speaker 1: we saw him last year too. I mean, this dude
2:49:20
Speaker 1: has eight touchdown passes and four incompletions. That's it. Four
2:49:25
Speaker 1: incompletions through two games. And his incompletions were all like
2:49:30
Speaker 1: passes that were there. They were just broken up or
2:49:33
Speaker 1: I think one was a draw. He's incredibly accurate. So far,
2:49:39
Speaker 1: it's the best two games I've ever seen any Miami.
2:49:43
Speaker 1: Right now, looks better than any Miami quarterback I've ever seen.
2:49:46
Speaker 1: And we've had some great ones. But he is, it's
2:49:50
Speaker 1: like he just doesn't make a mistake. And if he
2:49:53
Speaker 1: does underthrow a ball to Malachi Toney, he can make
2:49:55
Speaker 1: anything work. So I look at that and I'm like, hmm.
2:50:02
Speaker 1: I'm looking at all these teams through, how's Miami going
2:50:05
Speaker 1: to do against them? How's Miami going to handle Oklahoma?
2:50:08
Speaker 1: How's Miami going to handle Texas or Ohio State? We've
2:50:11
Speaker 1: already sort of, I think, sent a message to Ohio
2:50:13
Speaker 1: State last year and Julian's saying. I will say, if
2:50:21
Speaker 1: I have doubts about either Texas and Ohio State, one is,
2:50:23
Speaker 1: I'm not sure Arthur Smith has figured out the best
2:50:26
Speaker 1: offense yet for that team. I They get the ball
2:50:31
Speaker 1: in Smith's hands a lot, and I would argue you
2:50:33
Speaker 1: need to figure out how to get it into Jeremiah
2:50:34
Speaker 1: Smith's hands even more, if that's possible. It's interesting to
2:50:40
Speaker 1: me that Arch played better when he had nothing to lose.
2:50:44
Speaker 1: The structured play calls, not so good. A few other
2:50:50
Speaker 1: thoughts on what we've seen so far. Oh, the Seahawk.
2:50:59
Speaker 1: No matter what. It's going to be a three-point game.
2:51:02
Speaker 1: Memo to self, don't ever overestimate Iowa's ability to A,
2:51:07
Speaker 1: cover a spread, or B, beat Iowa State by more
2:51:09
Speaker 1: than three points. They are just apparently contractually obligated not
2:51:13
Speaker 1: to beat Iowa State by more than three points if
2:51:17
Speaker 1: they do that. I hope as far as conferences versus conferences,
2:51:23
Speaker 1: I'm really intrigued by the Mississippi State. I think Mississippi
2:51:26
Speaker 1: State is going to pull a major upset in the
2:51:30
Speaker 1: SEC this year, and knock one of their playoff teams
2:51:33
Speaker 1: out of the playoff by upsetting them. In fact, I
2:51:38
Speaker 1: will quickly look up the Mississippi State game. Let me
2:51:42
Speaker 1: predict the game that they're going to steal because this
2:51:48
Speaker 1: is a good quarterback. They seem to be growing in confidence.
2:51:52
Speaker 1: You can kind of see it. It's just you can
2:51:57
Speaker 1: see them coming along And Minnesota is always a well coach.
2:52:00
Speaker 1: They won that game on the road and they wouldn't
2:52:02
Speaker 1: quite handle it. And I just think, look at the
2:52:06
Speaker 1: rest of their schedule here. All right. So they got
2:52:12
Speaker 1: South Carolina next week at South Carolina. Let me see. Oh,
2:52:18
Speaker 1: they get Alabama in Stark Vegas, October 3rd. Circle that one.
2:52:25
Speaker 1: They get Oklahoma in Stark Vegas on October 24th. That's
2:52:29
Speaker 1: worth circling. Those are the two home– it's when they're–
2:52:35
Speaker 1: with that damn cowbell, this is a good enough team
2:52:39
Speaker 1: to potentially give– I think beat Oklahoma for sure and
2:52:43
Speaker 1: give Alabama a scare. But they're going to provide– they're
2:52:49
Speaker 1: going to insert themselves into the playoff race by being
2:52:54
Speaker 1: a victory over one of the contenders in the SEC.
2:52:59
Speaker 1: to do that. One final thing about the NFL. Look,
2:53:04
Speaker 1: one thing about week one is how misleading week one
2:53:07
Speaker 1: can be. I remember the Packers losing 38-3 to the
2:53:11
Speaker 1: New Orleans Saints a few years back. And then they
2:53:14
Speaker 1: ended up, I think, going 13-3. And I think Aaron
2:53:17
Speaker 1: Rodgers won the MVP. And everybody's like, what's wrong with
2:53:18
Speaker 1: the Packers after week one? And they just had treated
2:53:20
Speaker 1: it like a preseason game. I'm willing to give the
2:53:23
Speaker 1: Rams a little bit on that. And it seems to me,
2:53:25
Speaker 1: if I'm Roger Goodell, I'm pissed off at the Rams
2:53:28
Speaker 1: and McVay. Because I think they made the decision long
2:53:31
Speaker 1: ago that they were going to punt this game. And
2:53:34
Speaker 1: that's why you didn't see Aaron Donald even bother with
2:53:36
Speaker 1: the trip. That's why you saw the decision that they made.
2:53:39
Speaker 1: They gave it the old college try. Like, well, let's
2:53:43
Speaker 1: see if we can make it a game in the
2:53:44
Speaker 1: first half. And if not, we're not going to. I mean,
2:53:46
Speaker 1: the fact that they pulled Stafford, when in theory they
2:53:51
Speaker 1: weren't totally out of it yet, if they really wanted
2:53:52
Speaker 1: to run a hurry up and try that. they were
2:53:55
Speaker 1: always planning to treat this as a preseason game. And
2:53:57
Speaker 1: I get it, right? They have a slightly tougher second
2:54:00
Speaker 1: game than the Niners do. The Niners looked at their schedule,
2:54:03
Speaker 1: saw that they play Miami in week two, and the
2:54:05
Speaker 1: Dolphins aren't going to be so hot this year. And
2:54:06
Speaker 1: they figured, hey, we can afford to get there early.
2:54:10
Speaker 1: This is an important game. Could end up being a
2:54:11
Speaker 1: tiebreaker for deciding a home field playoff spot, all that stuff.
2:54:17
Speaker 1: But I think the NFL needs to factor those things in.
2:54:20
Speaker 1: And if you're going to, force teams to go halfway
2:54:23
Speaker 1: around the world to start their season, be sure to
2:54:26
Speaker 1: make sure their week two is navigatable enough where they
2:54:28
Speaker 1: don't make the decision that the Rams made. Because I
2:54:32
Speaker 1: just think it was unfair to the fans in Australia.
2:54:36
Speaker 1: It's pretty clear to me. The Rams treated this as
2:54:38
Speaker 1: a modified preseason game. That's why they did what they did.
2:54:42
Speaker 1: They just decided it was going to be worse to
2:54:45
Speaker 1: try to figure out the recovery efforts coming back. And
2:54:50
Speaker 1: they prioritized that. That's what they prioritized. It's a version
2:54:54
Speaker 1: of game theory. We'll find out at the end of
2:54:56
Speaker 1: the season who was right about this. But I think
2:55:00
Speaker 1: Goodell needs to be smarter about these international games and
2:55:06
Speaker 1: create situations where it behooves both teams to give it
2:55:10
Speaker 1: their full effort. But he did put the Rams in
2:55:13
Speaker 1: a situation where they had to pick and choose how
2:55:14
Speaker 1: they were going to manage this game. Where the Niners,
2:55:18
Speaker 1: with a super easy schedule to follow... also had the
2:55:22
Speaker 1: incentive to do it a certain way. Anyway, all right.
2:55:25
Speaker 1: With that, I got a big week for you. I
2:55:28
Speaker 1: hope you've caught our Paul Feinbaum conversation at Dynastic. Be
2:55:31
Speaker 1: sure to check that out. Jay Adande and myself, and
2:55:34
Speaker 1: we're getting ready for our next deep dive for the
2:55:39
Speaker 1: month of October. It's going to be the Green Bay Packers.
2:55:44
Speaker 1: So I went from one college team that I've grown
2:55:48
Speaker 1: to not like, but respect, to the NFL team of
2:55:52
Speaker 1: my youth. With that, I'll see you in 24 hours
2:55:56
Speaker 1: on Super Tuesday, and I'll see you 48 hours right
2:55:58
Speaker 1: back here on the podcast. Thanks for listening. Be sure
2:56:01
Speaker 1: to like and subscribe.