Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Trump Is The Worst Role Model President Ever + The Sharp Contrast Between Trump & Obama

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Chuck’s Commentary - Trump Is The Worst Role Model President Ever + The Sharp Contrast Between Trump & Obama · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: and rates may vary. Hello, They're happy Monday, and welcome
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: to the Day after Father's Day edition of the Chuck Podcast.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I give you that because I do have a little
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: bit of a parenting theme to discussing the Trump presidency here,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: a little bit, especially the near term, because there's no
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: doubt the reflecting pool right perfect metaphor for the Trump era,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: right and the Trump administration. I mean it is you know,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: it's funny, right. Is it the serious stuff that's going
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to take him down, like mismanagement of the Middle East
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and making around stronger not weaker? Or is it that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: more people discover what a BS artist he actually is
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: due to the reflecting pool? Nonsense? Right? And in some ways,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: maybe it is the reflecting pool that ultimately is the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: thing that takes him down right. Maybe it should be
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the graft, and it should be all of these other things.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: But in some ways, when you're a presidency that is
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: sort of manufactured BS, then it isn't a moment where
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the a moment like the reflecting pool, which is the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: ultimate the wizard, you know, who is this man behind
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the curtain mindset? Maybe that is what should take him
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: down right and talk about something that just sums up everything.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: There's a tweet out there and my apologies, I am
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: yes ripping off this tweet and I no, I cannot,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I like cut and paste. I couldn't find the person
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: who said it, so my apologies to you. But it's
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: been making the round. But it really is. This reflecting
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  Speaker 1: pool is sort of the perfect metaphor for the Trump presidency.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Ignore experts in science overspend declare early in historic victory. Right,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: you know the left's gonna hate this, so make it
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: some sort of left right manufactured nonsense. It actually ends
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: in total failure. Then the unfounded conspiracies about sabotage and
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: bikers get arrested because you know, now he claims some
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: massive knife was somehow brought into the reflecting pool under
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: dark of night, and nobody you know, of course, there
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: was no witnesses to any of this, And now his
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: closest supporters are going, why does the mainstream media keep
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: bringing this up, ignoring the fact that the only reason
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: this is a story is President has been manufacturing it.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: I've always thought you've seen that chart where he wanted
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to make sure people understood that the reflecting pool was
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  Speaker 1: somehow taller than all of the tall buildings in America. Now,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know why we're laying flat any of the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: tall buildings to measure against the reflecting pool, but imagine
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: being the poor staffer who had to make that chart.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: There was a pre made chart. We do need a
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: lot more stories about the chart makers that have to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: manufacture his reality in order to make him happy. And
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: this clearly is one of them. So look, I yes
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: to say that there is a parenting connection today is
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  Speaker 1: an understatement. I also want to tackle the Obama legacy
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit. We had that and in some ways
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: we have seen in the last week both America is
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: on display and Obama and are very much the IDs
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: of both Americas, and I want to tackle that. Then
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I want to do a little bit of preview of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the Tuesday primaries and the coming I think it is
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: fair to say there is now three distinct factions inside
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party fighting for control of the Democratic Party,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and the Socialists are the ones that are going to
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: be on the march on Tuesday, at least in New
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: York City. We saw the big win for the Socialist
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: in Washington, Washington, d C. And the question is what
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: more is this going to pop? And it's sort of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: a storyline that I'm trying to give you guys a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: heads up on that is coming and that is going
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: to be a driving narrative going forward. Of course, this
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: is Monday, which means we do a little history lesson
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and I will I'm going to give you this clue
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: about the topic. I'm going to give you four numbers.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Four oh seven seven. That's all I'm giving you. Most
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: of you have a certain age'll figure that out. Those
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: of you a little less than that may struggle with
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: that one. Now, before I get to my little parenting
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: metaphor that I want to share with you another way
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  Speaker 1: of looking at Donald Trump, I do want to get Look,
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  Speaker 1: the Ron story is moving. The question is we've got
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: these talks. JD. Vance is going. There was a time
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  Speaker 1: where I thought he was going to try to find
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  Speaker 1: his own distance from this. Marco Rubio is still Mia
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  Speaker 1: as you can tell on defending this. He did not
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: go out on the Sunday shows to defend this. They
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  Speaker 1: sent the former National Security Advisor currently Ambassador of the
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  Speaker 1: United Nations, Mike Waltz, went out to defend this deal.
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  Speaker 1: But they did not. And obviously Jadie Vance has been
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: out there a lot defending this deal while he's also
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: been on book tour about his book on converting to Catholicism.
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  Speaker 1: And uh, look, I think we are seeing You know,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: there's always been one there. You know, as the Pew
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: typology taught us, there are two wings to the Mega movement.
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  Speaker 1: Wing one was the no apologies, the true core maga
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  Speaker 1: that is JD. Vance. That is the populace that is
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump Junior, Right, they're the adjacent group of people
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: who are extraordinarily supportive of Trump. Are those that are
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: that ground their beliefs as much in religion as they
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: do in politics. And these folks are pretty pro Israel
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and pretty entire round. This was the one And if
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: there is a distinguishing characteristic between the two factions inside
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of MAGA, it is support for Israel. Right. The pure
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: MAGA are not supportive of Israel in the way that
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the religious wing of MAGA is supportive of Israel. Right.
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  Speaker 1: They view it as their motivations for being pro Israel
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  Speaker 1: have always made me a little uncomfortable as someone who's Jewish,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: because it was based it seems to be the wishes
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  Speaker 1: that we do is all get sent back to Israel
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  Speaker 1: for the second coming. This belief, so the preservation of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Israel and the support of Israel I never found to
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: be very comforting because their motivation was to eventually ship
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: me out of the United States. At least that's that's
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: if I were accepting their premise all the way through.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: But I say that that's my own thing, and you
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: know me, I do try to separate my own personal
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: views from my observations of this political situation. And the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: fact is you do have a divided maga here and
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: we're seeing this, right, you saw a very aggressive JD
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Vance pushing back at Israel. You now see there is
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: you know, there a lot of these folks that rationalize
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: their support for Trump over their belief that somehow he
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: was going to be tough on Iran, that he would
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: let Israel do what Israel needed to do. As always,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: everybody who counts on Trump to support whatever it is
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: that they care about the most, and they think Trump's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: on their side, or they think they've written a big
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: enough check to guarantee that Trump is on their side. Right,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you realize He's always going to
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: walk away from you on this front. It is notable.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: And you're already seeing these little interesting narrative fights back
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  Speaker 1: and forth between each faction. Right, you have this one
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  Speaker 1: faction that's ready to call out anybody that is critical
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  Speaker 1: of this disastrous mammum of under memo of understanding that
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  Speaker 1: the United States has already agreed to. Right, that literally
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  Speaker 1: capitulates to Iran things that Barack Obama never did in
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  Speaker 1: any part of his JP JPCOA nothing that comes close
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  Speaker 1: to this, you know, And so that the fact that
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  Speaker 1: they're saying, if you criticize that, you're somehow they're trying
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: And you saw this with the White House spokesperson sort
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  Speaker 1: of aggressively pushing back. I think it was through axios
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  Speaker 1: or through playbook, letting it be known. Anybody that criticizes
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: this deal now going forward is going to be, you know,
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  Speaker 1: called out by the President. It's going to be attacked
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: by the president, is going to consistently be seen as
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: somehow a trader to the movement. So they're going to
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: try to purge these folks. But in some ways, if
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: you want to look at the Trump administration now is
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: sort of divided into two, I think it's pretty fair
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: to see it right in Vance and Rubio in some ways,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: or the symbol or the symbols of the two wings,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: if you will, of Trump's coalition. And what's interesting to
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: me is in the first Trump term you had more
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: staffers and more senior officials that were part of the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: part of the more pro Israel wing of the MAGA movement.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: In this second term, it's almost the exact opposite. Right,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: there's Marco Rubio, who yes, has a huge portfolio, and
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: so somebody who the establishment wing or the neo conservative wing,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: whatever wing you want to call that they could feel
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: comforted by Rubio being both Secretary State National Security Advisor.
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  Speaker 1: And yet the staffing within the White House and the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: staffing all over the place outside of the State Department
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: very much is more of the Vance advanced style populism. Right.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Haig Seth comes from Vance, sort of the Vance wing
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of the party. He certainly doesn't come from the Ruvio
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: wing of the party. So I do think what we've
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: learned here is that the president is surrounded by people
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: that are more right. It's I interviewed Mike Pence earlier
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: this week and we have this astonishing exchange on character,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: because he writes about the importance of character. The character
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: for him does stop at the party's edge. Right, character
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: is not a big enough deal for him not to
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: support Ken Paxton, and we had this back and forth
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: about it. I appreciate his honesty on right. He didn't
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: he didn't try to pretend he wasn't drawing a different line.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: That he saw a political outcome is more important than
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: characterist destiny argument that he does make it in his
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: own book, which is clearly a shot at Donald Trump.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: But I bring this up because, you know, it is
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: interesting how Donald Trump has essentially we know that there
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: is He's a blank canvas. He is whoever his supporters
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: want him to be at any given moment in time.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: And in his first term he let Mike Pence put
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: together his administration, and in his second term in some
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: ways he's let jad Vance and Donald Trump Junior put
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: this together. Right, they have more of that purest maga
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: wing isolation. His view of the party Israel skeptic view,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: eurosceptic view, China skeptic view, right skeptic all over on
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: that front versus you know, Mike Parents who clearly believes
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: that the United States should be the leader of the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: free world. Yes, they're the world's beat cop. Because if
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: you're not the world's beat cop, somebody else is going
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: to be, and you're not going to lie who the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: somebody else is. And that you know, by the way,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: that divide exists in both parties. And I think the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: scary thing for those of us that believe that America
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: has no choice but to be the world's beat cop
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: is that both parties that view is a is not
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: an ascension at the moment, right, there isn't it. There
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: is a growing movement in both parties of an isolator,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: of being more isolationists and of only and frankly, what
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: you see and to me, that's both dangerous in the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: progressive socialist wing and this sort of nationalists populist ring
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: on the right is both of them view form policy
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: through their ideological end goals. Right, whether it's Mom Donnie
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: wanting to meet with the president of Columbia or whether
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: it's Trump wanting to take signs in the Brazilian election, right,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: that is what weakens America. Right, that is what makes
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: us be seen more as as as a as a
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: negative for people in this in the world, rather than
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: as a net positive, not as always just us standing
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: up for democracy. No matter which direction of population chooses
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: to go, if they choose to go socialists or they
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: choose to go capitalists, if they're holding free and fair elections,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: our attitude had always been to support them, and we're
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: obviously there's always been exceptions, because that's what that's what
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: makes the United States, the United States a walking contradiction
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: at times. Right, what we what we espouse ours our
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: north star, and sometimes how we go about it is
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: two different things. But I do think right, look, we'll
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: see how these our negotiations go. The fact is, here's
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: my concern about Iran at the moment, is that I
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: think the Iranians have learned from Donald Trump how to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: manipulate the markets. And what's really scary is, you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's mismanagement of this war, handing control of the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Straight of Hormvees to the Iranians. Make no mistake, they
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: have control of this. We do not because he is
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: not willing to commit the level of troops and military
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: that's necessary to keep the Straight open. So he's essentially
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: allowing the Iranians to dictate whether the strait is open
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: or closed. And the fact is, the Iranians, you think
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: they're not they didn't learn from how Donald Trump and
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: his cronies gained the market over the last sixty days
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: during this Oh no, no, no, we're really close to
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: a deal. Up, We're really close to a deal. No
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: we're not. We're really close to a deal. Meanwhile, somebody's
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: gaming the markets and making and making billions. Well, the
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Iranians are going to do the same thing, and they're
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: going to open and close the Straight whenever they need
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: extra cash. You think they're not playing the markets on this.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So this is the point is is that this isn't
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: going to get better. There is not going to be
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a grand deal. No matter how big a check Trump
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: promises to write the Iranians to keep the Straight open,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: They're always going to be looking for other angles to
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: make more money off of their control of the Straight.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So this is this is why this is I think
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: it's a doomed policy. The Iran war is not going
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: to end up like Korea in some sort of where
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: you can say, well, there was positives and negatives, O
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: do it looks like it's all negative. And it's The
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: frustrating thing is that he may be leaving the next
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: president no choice but to have to do something, especially
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: if the Iranians continue to open and close the Straight
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: of Horn moves that will and that's where if the
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: United States wants any more credibility around the world at all,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: at some point they're going to have to step in.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: But especially with the fact that if you just follow
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the party barn rules, we're the ones that broke it,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: that ended up closing the sucker and so soays were
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: responsible for this, and so the next president has to
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: deal with this in a lucid, sober way. And unfortunately
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump may have committed somebody else to have to
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: take military action because of his complete and utter carelessness
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and half assery in how he managed this war. And
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: now we're trying to celebrate a humiliation and he's going
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to demand I mean, the question is going to be
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: how many how many Republicans are going to suck up,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: suck it up and just pretend that he's a genius here,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and how many of them are going to start speaking out? Look,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I think, as we've learned, it's never a flood of
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: new people that break from him, but it's never he
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: never his coalition always gets smaller when he does these things,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and there will be more that break, and it's only
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: going to make his ability to be the governor that
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: much harder in the next six months. While he still
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  Speaker 1: has control of Congress, let alone, what would happen if
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  Speaker 1: iron that you could get to. We've talked about the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: reflecting pool and the Kennedy Center silliness, but I do
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: think the silliness sometimes is the story, because at some
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: point he's going to break, you know, his hold on
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: whatever chunk of the electorate he has that keeps him
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: politically relevant is going to break. And it's interesting, you know,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: on Mother's Days and Father's Days, but particularly on Father's Day,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: you can't help but constantly look at the role model
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has become and absolutely fear what young
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: men and young boys think is someone to emulate, because
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: there is no more, no worse figure that if any
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of our kids behave the way Donald Trump behaves as
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: an adult, if they behave that way as an adolescent,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: we probably would be like Fred Trump and would have
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: sent our kid to military school, which turned out not
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to work for him. But that's the thing that I
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: want to focus on it because if you talk to
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: parents right now, there is a distinct, almost nonpartisan exhaustion
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with marginal tax rates or
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: executive orders. It's the basic, baselineer character that we're trying
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: to instill in our kids versus what we're being forced
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: to normalize on the national stage. Charles Barkley said he
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: didn't ask to be anybody's role model, and I agree
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: with him, but he's not a bad role model. We
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: want our presidents to be role models, and Donald Trump
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: is the single worst role model as president we have
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: ever had. Plenty of other presidents have got bad character traits,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: but nobody with as many as Donald Trump. And you know,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: any parent knows this drill. You teach a kid the fundamentals.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Don't bully, don't take things that aren't yours, own up
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: to your own mistakes, and if you break something, you
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: clean it up. But if you look at the mechanics
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: of the Trump administration, you can't really tell the whole
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: story using a political science textbook. In some ways, the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: elementary school playground playbook actually tells the Trump story of
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the Trump presidency better than any political science textbook because
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: it is a masterclass in the exact low character behavior
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: that would end a kids afternoon in the principal's office.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to break down this report card on
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: this day after Father's Day, because we parents have never
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: had a greater challenge to use the present. The good
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: news is the presidency is sitting there as an example
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: for us to parent against. The bad news is that
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the presidency is an example that we have to parent against.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: But we can see that behavior doesn't get rewarded. Let
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: me show you how. So we're going to start with
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: the lunch table and his lunch table tax another way
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: that I will speak of self enrichment. We all know
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the kid who tries to charge classmates, you know, fifty
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: cents or a dollar to sit at the cool table.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: But the second the recess monitor walks over to bust him,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: maybe he slides the monitor a candy bar. And the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: investigation of After Rights well in Washington. That candy bar
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: is a billion dollar transaction. Right, Crypto dot com, they
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: were facing a massive existential sa SEC enforcement action. At
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: what happens. They hire a Trump linked lobbyist, pour eleven
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: million dollars into Trumps super PACs, and suddenly the federal
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: investigation is dismissed with prejudice so they can't bring it
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: back up. Months later, Crypto dot Com commits roughly at
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: billion dollars into a joint venture with the president President's
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: private media company. So the bribery is complete. How about
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the UAE. Four days before inauguration, at Abu Dhabi Royal
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Fund quietly buys a forty nine percent stake in the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Trump family's private crypto venture, World Liberty Financial for five
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: hundred million dollars, wiring one hundred and eighty seven million
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: dollars in cash immediately to Trump entities. Shortly after, the
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: administration shreds years of strict bipartisan national security controls to
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: approve of exporting America's most advanced AI trips to the UAE,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: despite warnings that exporting to the OUE could end up leaking.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Seeing those chips leak straight to China in middle school,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that extortion and bribery. Here in the United States. Thanks
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: to Trump's presidency, it's being treated as the cost of
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: doing business. This is wrong, people. How about paying off
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: bullies or rewarding bad actors. You don't cheer on the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: kids who beat up the hall monitors. You don't tell
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: them they did a great job, and then try to
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: raid the school's charity fund or the PTA fund to
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: give them an allowance for their actions. But on day one,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump granted mass clemency to over fifteen hundred January
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: sixth defendants. This wasn't a blanket pardon for people holding signs.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: It included full commutations for oathkeepers and Proud Boys convicted
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of seditious comparacy. More than six hundred of them have
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: been charged with assaulting or obstructing police officers. And then,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: of course comes the kicker. The administration actually tried to
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: create a slush fund to reward these rioters and bullies
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: for their actions. The Proud Boys leader en Rico Terio,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: not exactly a pro American person, literally went on the
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: record saying he would definitely apply for the cash. Even
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Mike Penn said anyone who assaulted the cop that day
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: shouldn't get a pass. But playground logic dictates that if
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you don't punish the bully, you put him on retainer. Apparently,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: then there's the blank check, no consequences for friends. You
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: don't let your buddy off the hook just because he's
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: your buddy. That's one of the lessons you try to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: teach our friends. Why, because when you teach a kid
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: that rules don't apply to their closest friends, they then
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: guess what. They won't stop breaking the rules. They just
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: start to break, bigger ones and bigger ones. Predictably, the
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: pardon pattern has already collapsed into a repeat offender loop
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: here in the Trump administration. Since being let off the hook,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: at least forty pardon January sixth, defendants have already faced
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: entirely new, unrelated criminal charges. At least a dozen of
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: allegedly reoffended after their pardons, including arrests for illegal weapons,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: home invasion, and impaired driving offenses, two of which were fatal.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: To make it all worse, the Justice Department actively stretch
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: those pardons to cover separate gun and drug charges that
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: just happen to turn up during the initial searches. When
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you teach a child that a powerful friend is a
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: get out of jail free card, you aren't saving them.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: You're just subsidizing their next crime. How about straight up
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: punching down with a tank. This is the biggest kid
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: in the fifth grade marching into the kindergarten playground with
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: a group of older kids to quote restore order. Completely
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: ignoring the kid are iron teachers or other safety patrol
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: folks who tell them that they have no legal right
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: to be there and there's no problem. While the administration bypassed.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: State governors entirely deployed thousands of National Guard troops and
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: marines and do only Democratic led cities like La Chicago,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and Portland under the guise of halting an invasion. Federal
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: courts repeatedly stepped in, ruling the deployments flatly illegal under
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the Posse Commitatus Act, the law that explicitly banns using
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: the military for domestic police. Troops were forced into total
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: withdrawal by January of this year, and the irony crime
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: was already dropping significantly in those cities before the troops arrived.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Memphis was at a twenty five year low. It was
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: never about public safety. It was the ultimate act of
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: playground intimidation, until the courts finally sent Donald Trump to
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: the principal's office. How about stealing homework or not double
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: checking your work right? In some ways, this is the
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: kid who never does the homework but is desperate to
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: get the credit. The kid who didn't look at the
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: science project until Sunday night, refused to read the manual
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: about what he was supposed to do because he already
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: knew how to do it right, He's a genius, And
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: then try to slap his own name in gold sharpie
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: over the smart Kids poster board right before the Science
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Fair was to begininn So, when deep insecurity drives a kid,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: two things happen. They try to steal other people's achievements,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: and they break their own toys because they're too proud,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: perhaps to measure twice. Look at two iconic landmarks right
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: here in Washington, DC. First, the homework steeling. For months
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the administration demanded credit for the massive, highly praise structural
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: expansion and capital upgrades at the Kennedy Center. They went
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: so far as to pack the board and try to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: legally plaster Donald Trump's name across the front of the building.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: The problem, the actual heavy lifting, the planning, the funding,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: the architecture work was locked in years ago under the
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: previous administration. A federal judge finally stepped in, ruled the
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: renaming illegal and ordered the letters stripped off the facade.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Guess what it turns out you can't get an A
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: plus on a test that was taken by somebody else.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: But it gets worse when he actually tries to build
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: something himself. Right, take the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. He
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: decided entirely for cosmetic reasons. That the historic gray Stone
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: looked filthy on television. By passing the engineers, he boasted
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: he could bring in a commercial pool builder from his
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: real estate days and fix it in one week for
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: about one point eight million by coding it in a
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: vivid backyard he called American Flag blue. He didn't do
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the research, he didn't wait for environmental studies, or he
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: didn't look at the underlying water infrastructure. He just eyeballed
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: it because she's a genius, right. The result, the rush
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: no bid paint job completely failed. It's a laughing stock.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Paint is literally peeling off the bottom of the pool.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Within days, a massive algae bloom turned his American Flag
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Blue into a murky pa green soup. When they threw
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: chemicals at it to kill the algae, the industrial coating
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: began to peel off the concrete. I mean, you can't
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: help but laugh at the incompetency. I mean, I'm sorry.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: The pictures of the cott no bin contractor that he got,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: I mean it looks like a kind of a Dick
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Tracy movie. It's a ridiculous caricature of who these people
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: are and what's the kid's excuse when the project falls apart?
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: He blames mysterious vandals. He claims invisible saboteurs sneaked onto
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: the National Pall poured secret chemicals into the water to
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: ruin his beautiful work. Meanwhile, the price tag is ballooned
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: from that promise one point eight million to dial over
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: fourteen million dollars of attack fare money to clean up
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the mess. Look, if your eight year old brought home
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: a report card like this, you wouldn't just ground him.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: You'd worry about them. You'd realize that your kid has
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: deep in security issues and it's making him a clearant
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and present danger in his own surroundings. Literally, you would
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: probably think about a private school. I mean, it's understandable
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: what the Trumps had to do with their adolescent. The
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: problem is they just hoped somebody else would take care
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: of the problem, and they weren't there to parent themselves.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: They shipped them off, and we see what happened. Arrested
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: development has been just you know, look, I empathize with
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: parents that have a kid like Donald Trump. Okay, it is,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you know, it is. It is not easy, but clearly
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: this is a kid that was not parented at all,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: was not given given any character tests. I mean This
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: is literally I mean, and this is where I am
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: careful not to mock his kids. His kids weren't raised
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: by him. If they were, they'd probably be in federal prison.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So it is. But I also understand that we all
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: want to love our parents and love our fathers and
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: want something out of this. But it is it is
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: befuddling to me that we let we look the other
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: way at a president of the United States doing things
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: that would have us looking if this were happening with
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: our eight, nine, ten year old. We're behaving the exact
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: same way. We would look for help to figure out
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: how to intervene, to figure out how to deal with
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: this better because we know that this was you were
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: creating a future adult monster. Which is actually a good
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: way to pivot to the issue of Barack Obama and
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And every time there is a development in
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: sort of the Obama library or Obama becomes front and center,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I inevitably get a question from somebody close to me
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: that says, how are we supposed to assess Trump, the
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Trump presidency the Obama legacy when Trump is the president
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: that was elected after how much a part of Obama's
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: legacy is that so I think this is worth chewing
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: on because, look, I think there's multiple ways you could
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: look at the Obama presidency. You know, it was a
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: solid presidency on the stewardship front, and it was a
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: failure on the political front as a leader of his
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: party right. And I could argue the Presidential Library ceremony
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: was the reminder of Obama at his best and what
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the best part of his presidency was. Like Reagan, he
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: had a way to make folks feel better about our
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: place in the world. He was comforting. Frankly, just like Reagan,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: what he failed at was being a good political leader
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: at a moment that his party needed good political leadership.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: And so the Obama Library dedication got me thinking about
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: two images from the last week. One was Barack Obama
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: standing in front of his Presidential Library talking about citizenship, democracy,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: institution's character, and our obligations to one another. The other
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: was a UFC event on the South lawn of the
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: White House. And I couldn't help but think those are
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: two very different visions of the American presidency. And in
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: some ways, there are two very different visions of America.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: One is the presidency that we want to believe in.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: The other may be the presidency we actually have. Now, Look,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make a partisan point here. I
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: don't think characters should be partisan. I'm trying to make
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: an observational one, because if you listen to the to
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Obama at that library dedication, you heard almost everything Americans
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: claim they want from their leaders. Character, integrity, humility, discipline,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: a belief that public service is actually service to the people,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: whether you agreed with its policies or not. Barack Obama,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Michelle Obama, Michelle Obama embodied something that most Americans say
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: they admire. Polls have shown ordinary people with extraordinary abilities
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: who found their way to the highest office in the land.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: That's the story we believe in and we want to
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: believe in. That's the American meritocracy story. And yes, the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: meritocracy doesn't always work the way it should, but it's
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: a hell of a lot better than it works in
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: most other countries. The American dream story, same thing. Now,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: that's the story we tell our ourselves about what this
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: country is supposed to report. And then there's Donald Trump,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: a man who was born on third base and it's
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: spent his entire life trying to steal home handed wealth,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: handed connections, handed advantages, and yet somehow still perpetually dissatisfied,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: perpetually searching for more attention, more power, more validation. Perhaps
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: it's his own way of knowing he hasn't accomplished a
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: single thing, and he's desperate for a single accomplishment.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: This episode of the Check Time tast is brought to
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• 36:35
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• 38:56
  Speaker 1: But here's the uncomfortable thing. Both stories are American stories.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Obama is the America we aspire to be, the more
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: perfect union. Trump may be the America that we actually
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: are in the moment. That doesn't mean we can't be both.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: One story celebrates achievement, the other story simply celebrates winning
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: almost at any cost. One story says character is destiny,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: the other says the ends justifies the means. And before
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Trump's supporters get angry with me, let's be honest here.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: The lack of character is obvious. If you try to
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: claim he's a high character individual, just stop. If you
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: want to make the low character argument to me, I
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: will actually listen to that, because only the truly devoted
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: don't see his low character. My guess is most of
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Trump's supporters see the low character. They simply rationalize it.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: The left is worse. This is an existential moment, the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: media is unfair, the system is corrupt. The ends justifies
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the means. Maybe that's true, me that isn't I know.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: It makes it a lot harder to raise our fricking case.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: It's with role models. This grotesque, But the rationalization itself
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: proves the point. Nobody is defending the Trump's behavior on
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: its merits anymore. They're defending it only as a necessity,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: if you will, Which brings me back to Obama's legacy,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: because the more times passes, the harder it becomes to
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: separate Obama from Trump. Right. You know, there's the conventional
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: wisdom that says, hey, they were both elected by the
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: same forces. There's some truth to that. You know, one
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: is you know, one is the angel, one is the devil,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: but both are there to do change right. One is
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson from a few good men, and the other
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: is Tom Cruise from a few good men.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: In fact, Trump's presidency may ultimately become one of the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: defining lenses through which Obama's presidency is judged, and that's
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: not going to be entirely fair. Well, Obama was, by
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: almost every conventional measure, a successful president. Right, economy was
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: better every know, the economy was better when he left
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: it then when he got it. The country was more
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: unified when he left and we got it. Although I
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: guess you could say the sixteen presidency disproves that that's
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: an interesting debate we could go about he wound down wars,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: he didn't ramp a mom But the thing that I
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: think is the fairest demerit on the Obama presidency is
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: that he was a far less successful steward of his party.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: He may have been a really good steward of the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: country and may have been the sober driver of the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: country needed in the moment that we got him, but
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: he was not a good leader of the Democratic Party.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: And this is the part Democrats don't like discuss it much.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: There really isn't a measure of Democratic Party strength that
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: improved during the Obama years. Governorships, state legislatures, congressional seats,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: local office. The party weakened across the board of Obama
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: himself remained enormously popular, his brand floor, the party's brain
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: did not. And that leads to the question that hangs
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: to me over his legacy. Knowing what we know now,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: what could Obama have done differently? Essentially, to prevent the
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: emergence of Donald Trump. So I've come up with three possibilities,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: but I'd love to hear more from you. The first
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: is the financial crisis. You know, rom Emmanuel has always
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: said that was his biggest regret as chief of staff,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: not fighting hard enough for what he called old Testament justice. Yes,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the Obama administration stabilized the economy, but it never satisfied
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the public's desire for accountability. Millions of Americans watched powerful
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: people escape consequences while ordinary people literally paid the price
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: for closures things like that. That feeling never really went away,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and that's something that you know, what does that look like?
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Who is it that we would have put behind bars?
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I think that's it. But the fact that it was
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: never it was never thought of. I'm not saying it
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't thought of, but they just was not a priority.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Now you could say, hey, he was looking at the
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: biggest of all pictures, and I think that's a that's
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: a fair statement. Again, good steward of the country. Now,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the second possibility of how things could have been different
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: is succession. Obama won because he represented change, but after winning,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: he spent surprisingly little time building the next generation inside
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. What if he had chosen a younger
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: running made twenty twelve. What if he had spent his
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: second term identifying an air a parent from a younger generation.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: What if he had remembered the lesson of his own
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: success in two thousand and eight. People weren't looking backward
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, which is why he won
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and why Clinton lost. They were looking forward. By twenty sixteen,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Democrats were asking voters to look backward. Obama won as
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: a change agent, Hillary Clinton ran his continuation, those are
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: not the same thing. And maybe Obama's biggest political mistake
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: was forgetting why he won in the first place. Then
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: there's the third possibility. My friend Mark Murray's brought this
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: up to me and wondering if the twenty second Amendment
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: was a stake and that it actually damaged the power
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: of both parties. And I know to some of you
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: this may sound crazy, but what if Obama had been
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: allowed to run again? What if the amendment itself is
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: part of the problem. Would the Democratic Party be healthier
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: today if Obama had served a third term. Then again,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: wouldn't Bill Clinton have won a third term in two thousand?
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Would the transition from the Clinton generation to the next
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: generation have happened more naturally. Three terms of Clinton. Republicans
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: probably went in O four. You know, who knows? Right
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: would the party have avoided the ugly internal revolution it
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: is experiencing now? I don't know. Maybe Trump was inevitable.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe the forces that produced Trump were bigger than Obama,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: bigger than the Democratic Party, bigger than anyone politician. But
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I do know this, The Obama presidency cannot be fully
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: understood without understanding the Trump the rise of Trump, because
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Obama's greatest accomplishment was building a movement around himself, and
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: his greatest failure may have been leaving behind a coalition
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: that couldn't survive without him, Which brings me back to
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: those two images. Obama is Library Trump at the USC
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: fight on the White House salon the presidency. We want
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: to believe in the presidency we have. The question isn't
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: which one is real, The question is whether they're both
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: real and what that says about ourselves, which then brings
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: me to a quick preview of this week's primaries. Because
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: this week's primaries, on Tuesday, we will have Election Night
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Live Election Night live stream. Myself, Chris Eliza Jeffrey Scaley
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: over decision to sk HQ. It is a huge story
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: that is going to get even bigger if things go
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: a certain way. So Tuesday, New York is one of
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the states that's holding its primary, and I want to
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: spend some real time on it to get you prepared
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: for Tuesday night, because there's a fight building inside the
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party that even those of you who follow this
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: stuff for a living probably haven't been tracking as closely
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: as you should. You may track progressive versus establishment, but
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: this is going to perhaps look different in about seventy
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: two hours. So let me set the table because this
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: is about to matter well beyond New York. So over
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: the last decade, there's been an actual organized faction that
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: has grown up inside the Democratic Party calling themselves the
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Democratic Socialists of America the DSSA. This is not a mood,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: it's just not a hashtag. It's an actual dues paying
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: membership organization with a platform and a candidate recruitment operation.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: It really is what the DLC was that the Democratic
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Party in the Clinton years. I think the DSA is
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: what Bernie Sanders would like to see happen inside the
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. So what DLC did to shift the party
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: to the right. The DSA wants to be the entity
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: that shifts the party to the left, and he got
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: its first Joel from Bernie Sanders in twenty sixteen. It
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: grew under Trump, and last year it got its breakout
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: star when Mom Dannie won the mayor's office in New
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: York City. Now here's the part you need to hold
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: on to, because it's the key to everything that's coming.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I think the Democratic Party is not splitting into two camps.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: It's actually splitting into three. You will have your sort
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: of establishment, pro business center left. That's Jeffreys Schumer, It's Obama. Frankly,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: it's the Clinton. It's the people whose whole job is
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: simply winning majorities, who treat the word socialist like a
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: lit match near a gas camp. Then there are the progressives,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: the big government liberals who want to hold ambitious policy,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: but who've spent the better part of a decade carefully
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: insisting better part of a decade carefully insisting they are
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: not socialists. And then there's the DSA, the actual card
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: tearing socialists, organized, growing and increasingly done pretending the distinction
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: between progressive and socialism matters. Now, for years, the middle
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: group was the cover. Progressive was a big enough tent
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: that a socialist and non socialist could stand under it
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and never have to say out loud which one they were.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Tuesday is the day that that tent starts coming down.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Because if Mom Donnie's socialists win, and I mean they
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: beat sitting Democratic incumbents not just grab open seats, but
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: be Democratic incumbents both on the legislative level on the
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: congressional level, then the question every Democrat has been ducking
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: will get asked in the open, are you with the
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: socialists or aren't you? And a three cornered fight that's
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: been quietly running in city council races and low tenot
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: primaries becomes the defining story of where this party goes next.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: You know, we've seen a piece of this a little
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: bit in that Michigan Democratic Senate primary, where you've had
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the sort of the Chambers commerce left in Haley Stevens,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: You've had the progressive Bernie Sanders, socialist leaning in Abdullah
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Lsi Ed. Then you've had Malloy McMorrow, who's tried to
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: be a foot in every camp and who's support is
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: the fastest over the last three months. Mcmorrows right, And
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it's a reminder sometimes it's tough to be half in,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: half out of anything, right. You have to be all
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: in or all out. I sometimes, at least in primary politics,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: you want to be one foot everywhere. When you're running
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: in a general election, it's not as healthy of a
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: place to be in primary politics. So those are the stakes.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Watch what mam Nani's actually doing, because it tells you
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: he doesn't think he's joining a coalition. He thinks he's
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: leading a movement. He went after his own parties incumbents.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: He backed primary challengers against sitting Democratic congressman. He forcing
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: the man who wants to be the next speaker to
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: spend money defending his own people. And he and Alexandria
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: o Casio Cortez, they carved up the map between them.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: He took the congressional races, she took the legislative races.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: She doesn't have the awkwardness of having to come out
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: against colleagues, but she's doing the state legislative front and
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: together they cover almost the entire DSA slate that is
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: not a faction asking for a seat at the table.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: That's an operation trying to take the table and be
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: in charge of it. And if you think this is
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: just a generational story young progresses elbowing as side the
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: old guard, look at what was on his calendar earlier
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: this month that got canceled. Mam Donnie scheduled to sit
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: down with Gustavo Petro. He's the outgoing president of Columbia
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Democratic elected socialists who shares Mam Donnie's politics, and they
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: were they were going to be together at a gathering
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: of the global left. Would have been the first time
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: this mayor formally received a head of state. Mayors negotiate
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: garbage contracts. Mom donnie was conducting foreign policy. It was
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: extraordinary enough that the Trump administration reached in, warned it
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: would violate Petro's US visa terms, and got the meeting
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: called off. I sort of politically, I found it, you know,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: I actually think Trump did the Democratic Party of favor.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: For what it's worth, this would have elevated Mom Donnie
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: even to a bigger figure, which some Republicans would love
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: that to happen, and they think that would help them
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: with swing quarters. We'll find out. I'm not one hundred
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: cent sure in either direction, but it doesn't matter. It
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: didn't need to happen to make the point. The fact
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: is it was ever on the calendar tells you everything.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Mam Donnie does not see himself as the next generation
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. He's trying to convert it, and
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: he's already looking for allies well beyond it. He's trying
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: to remake the Democratic Party in his own image in
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: a way that Barack Obama never did, and he had
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: the presidency. Now, look, there's something real underneath all of it.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: New York elected a Democratic socialist, Washington just likely elected
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: their own Democratic Socialists to be mayor. La has won
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: in a runoff against a city Democratic mayor, and the
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: biggest bluest cities in America. The energy has left the
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: establishment and moved to the left of the left. So
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: here's the only question that matters Tuesday, and it isn't
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: who wins, because Mam Donnie's candidates will win plenty Tuesday.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: These June primers are super low turnout in New York.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: The question is whether the thing that wins in the
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: city can survive at the trip to the suburbs, whether
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: the S word is marketable past the Five boroughs. I'm skeptical,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: but we'll see recent history says it's a huge problem.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: The tell isn't a Republican attack at it. Democrats themselves,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: when Mandani won the househld a vote condemning socialism, and
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: a big block of Democrats in tough districts crossed the
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: out of vote for it. Their own leader are keing.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Jeffreys waited until the day before early voting to manage
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: a lukewarm endorsement of Mamdanni because he knew he was
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: going to win anyway, then set out loud that he
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't see Mamdani as the future of the party. Schumer
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: didn't endorse at all. Obama called privately and stayed quiet
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: in public and didn't appear, didn't do anything with him
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: until after he won. That's not how a party treats
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: an asset. It's how it treats what they think is
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: a liability that all of these people believe they can't
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: afford to be photographed next to him if they want
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: to win general elections. The numbers tell them why socialism
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: is the one word in American economic life that a
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: majority have rejected for fifteen straight years. Thirty nine percent
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: positive fifty seven percent negative among independents, the people who
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: decided to swing district. It's thirty eight percent mong voters
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: over sixty five the people who actually show up in midterms.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: One Fox boll found three quarters of them calling a
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: move towards socialism a bad idea. It sells in one
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: place with Democrats in the city, which is precisely the trap.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Now I'm going to be honest about the other side here,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: because the socialist boogeyman has a losing record. Republicans ran
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: radical socialists who want Venezuela in twenty eighteen, and Democrats
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: flip forty one house seats. Right, they ran San Francisco
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: values before that, and that flightened right. When voters are
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: determined to throw people out, they're going to throw people out.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: And this year the contrast is muddier than the GP
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: would like because Donald Trump's out there tapping credit card
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: rates and taking government ownership stakes at private companies, making
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: socialism look cool to the right. The same night, Mom
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: downe Hey won New York two moderates Mikey Cheryl and
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Abigail Spamberg are won governorships running straight down the middle.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: So the label is not automatically fatal. It is missed before.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: But here's who Tuesday really puts in a box. And
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: it's not the establishment, and it's not the socialists. It's
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: that third group. It's the liberals or progressives. Aren't socialists.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: For a decade, they've had it both ways. They've ridden
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the less energy. It's volunteers, it's small dollar money, it's
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm with that ever having to wear the socialists label
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: that scares the suburban voter. A win from mom Nani
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: Slate takes that option away because once the socialists are
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: beating incumbents, every progressive in the country gets the same
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: question with nowhere to hide from it. Are you one
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: of them? Aren't you so yes and you pick up
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: the baggage that loses a general election. Say no, and
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: you're a sellout to the only voters who turn out
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: for you in a primary. There's no comfortable answer. That's
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: the box that Tuesday could be building for Democrats. And
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: here's why the establishment should be more worried than its own.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Polling makes it fit. You don't need a national majority
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to take over a party. You need its machinery, the money,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: the media, the donors, the turnout and the talent and
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: all of it lives in the cities. This is the
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: exact move. The right just ran on itself the Tea
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Party and then MAGA never won. A majority of America
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: still have it. They won the primaries, they took the base,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: they seized the apparatus, they hijacked the entire party based
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: on a faction of supporters. John Corny just lost his
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Senate seat to that dynamic pocratic establishment is now staring
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: at its own version of it, and it's coming from
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: the left. So that's what's on the ballot Tuesday, not
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: a mayor, a direction, and the gamble underneath it all
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: is a brutal in its simplicity. When the five boroughs
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: lose the four suburban seats that flop the House and
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: you haven't built the majority, you've potentially built a new
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: political target. So the point is tune in Tuesday night.
• 55:23
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  Speaker 1: ties anymore, thankfully, because I'm going tieless on here, but
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: I'm getting some nice quinch shirts, even some ta sh
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: I've even thrown it into the workout gear. I can't
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: recommend it enough. So elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: quints dot com slash chuck for free shipping for your
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now
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• 57:18
  Speaker 1: chuck for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: day returns. Quints dot com slash chuck. Use that code.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: We are going to June twenty fifth, nineteen fifty. That
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: anniversary will be one that is notable this week, the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: seventy sixth anniversary to the start of the Korean War.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: It's a war that never ended. You probably know somebody
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: who fought in Korea. Maybe it was a grandfather, maybe
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: it was a great uncle. In my case, it was
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: a great uncle. Like a lot of men of that generation,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: he didn't talk about them much, and if I'm being honest,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know nearly as much about his experience as
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: I wish I did, which is strange because the Korean
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: War is an ancient history. It's actually not even settled history,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: and in a very real sense, it's a war that
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: has not yet ended. For a certain generation of Americans,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Korea may actually be more familiar through Mash the TV
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: show than through history class. And even that is revealing
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: because Mash was set during the Korean War, but it
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: was really speaking to Americans about the Vietnam experience. That's
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: part of Korea's strange place in our national memory. Right.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Even the cultural aspect is somehow more rooted in Vietnam
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: than Korea. Even our most famous cultural memory of the
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: war was about another war. The Korean War is known
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: as the forgotten War. By the way, one of the
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: probably the second most moving memorial in Washington, DC, is
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: the Korean War Memorial. It's haunting. It depicts ice at
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: the ice patty, that rice patties, excuse me, the soldiers
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: having to walk through that, those muddy waters. It's eerie,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: especially at night in and around the Lincoln Memorial. Is
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: it is? It says something that I think our two
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: most consequential war memorials of the two that we didn't win,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Vietnam and Korea. But I digress. The question about the
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Korean War being the forgotten war is why is it forgotten?
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Because more than thirty six thousand Americans died there, millions
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: of Koreans died China entered the war. In fact, it's
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: the first time the United States faced off against China
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: a war. Because the United States also ended the war.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: The future of Asia has been shaped by the Korean War,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: and yet for many Americans, Korea occupies little more than
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: a footnote somewhere between World War Two and Vietnam.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: So.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: The Korean War began on June twenty fifth, nineteen fifty,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: when North Korean forces crossed the thirty eighth Parallel and
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: invaded South Korea. You've probably heard the thirty eighth parallel.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: Within day, South Korean forces were collapsing. Within weeks, American
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: troops were arriving, and within months, what began as a
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: civil conflict on the Korean Peninsula had become one of
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: the first major confrontations of what was now known as
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the Cold War. Most Americans do know some version of
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: this story. What many don't know is that the war
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: produced a world we're still living in. Modern North Korea
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: begins here, Modern South Korea begins here. The US China
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: rivalry begins here. The modern American military presence in East
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: Asia begins here. Even the modern presidency's approach to military
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: intervention begins here. So for a forgotten war, it left
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: an awfully large footprint. Now. One reason we struggled to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: remember Korea is that we made up our minds about
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: it way too early. When the armistice was signed in
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, Americans looked at the map. The border
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: hadn't moved very much. North Korea still existed, China still
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: exis that American troops are coming home. The war seemed
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: to end roughly where it began, and so we filed
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: it away. Stalemate, draw, move on. The problem is history
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: kept going and the most important consequences of the war
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: had yet to happen. Consider South Korea. In the late
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. South Korea was one of the poorest countries
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: in the world. Its economy looked more like many struggling
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: developing nations than the technological powerhouse we know today. A
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: person standing in Soul in nineteen fifty five would have
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: had a difficult time imagining Samsung, Hyundai, k Pop, or
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: one of the world's leading technology economies. Yet that's exactly
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: what happened. South Korea's economic rise is one of the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: most remarkable development stories in modern history. Forget Japan, South Korea.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: It's an unbelievable thing that justified the sacrifice wasn't visible
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: though in nineteen fifty three it emerged over decades. There
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: was no surrender ceremony attached to it, no famous photograph,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: no victory parade, just a poor country gradually becoming prosperous.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: And because the payoff arrived slowly, the war itself never
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: got reclassified in the public mind. Americans remembered the stalemate
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: in history kept writing the story. But that's not the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: whole story, of course, because the Korean War didn't just
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: preserve South Korea and show what small d democratic, free
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: market capitalism could do for a poor nation. The war
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: also preserved North Korea, and this is where the story
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: gets uncomfortable. Today, North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: cyber warfare capability, a growing defense industry, military relationships with
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Russia and other adversaries of the West. It exports weapons
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: and military technology. It remains one of the most repressive
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: states on Earth. So if your objective in nineteen fifty
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: was eliminating the North Korean threat. That objective was clearly
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: not achieved. The threat survived. In some ways, it became
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: more dangerous, which is why Korea remained so difficult to categorize.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: The armistice preserved one of the world's great success stories.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: It also preserved one of the world's most persistent security threats.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Both things are true at the same time. And that's
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: another detail many Americans don't know. The Korean War has
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: never actually ended. This is another one of Donald Trump's fantasies.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: He'll be the one to end the Korean War. That's
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: somehow this will force him forced us to recognize his
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: name and history, hence his beautiful love letters with Kim
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: John Nutt. But of course the fighting stopped, even though
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: the war has never ended. The agreement signed in nineteen
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: fifty three was simply an armistice, not a peace treaty
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: kind of maybe you might call it a memo of understanding.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: The guns largely fell simon, the conflict remained. Seventy three
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: years later, North and South Korea remained separated by one
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: of the most heavily fortified borders on Earth. The DMZ
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: still exists, The armies still exists. The political conflict. This
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: most wars become history. Korea simply became geography. The war
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: transformed China's role in the world. Before Korea, Communist China
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: was a new regime still consolidating power. Then now intervened.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops entered the conflict. American
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: forces suddenly found themselves fighting not just North Korea, but China.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: It's all. It's difficult to overstate the significance of that moment.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: The first shooting conflict between the United States and Communist
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: China occurred in Korea in nineteen fifty. The strategic rivalry
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: we're still talking about today has its roots in that war. Again,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: for a forgotten war, it's a remarkably long shadow. Korea
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: also changed the presidency. Congress never declared war, so the
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: first one of these. In fact, Truman didn't even seek
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: congressional authorization. Instead, he relied on executive authority in the
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: United Nations Resolution World Government Alert. A reporter famously described
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: the conflict as a police action. Believe it or not,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: that labels stock. The president did too. Future presidents would
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: generally seek congressional authorizations, not declarations of war. Authorizations, But
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Korea established the modern president that a president could commit
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: American forces to a major conflict without a formal declaration
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: of war. After Korea, we'd get Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: of course much of what we've done in the Middle
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: East over the last quarter century. The roots of that
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: argument run through Korea. So it's another enormous consequence that
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: rarely enters public memory. You want to know why the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: War Powers Act is not clear to this day. It
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: was in response to Vietnam at the time, but it
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: really was in response to Korea, and we still haven't
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: resolved that responsibility, which brings me to the reason why
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: I think Korea still matters today. The Korean War may
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: have been America's first modern forever war, not because American
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: troops stayed forever, but because the conflict did. And once
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: you start looking at Korea through that lens, it begins
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: to feel surprisingly contemporary in some ways. Korea was the
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: first chapter of modern warfare in the post World War
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: II era. A lot of modern American form policies debates
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: now sound familiar when you look at it through that prism.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: What does success look like? When does a war end?
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: How long do you stay right? We've had these questions
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, you name it. What if the
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: best achievable outcome is in victory but stability? What if
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: your objective shifts from transformation to containment. Those are Korean
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: War questions, and there are questions we've been asking repeatedly
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: ever since. It's one reasons the debates over Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: broader Middle East often feel so unsatisfying. We Americans. We
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: like our endings. Clean history never provides a clean ending.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the outcome is in victory. Sometimes it isn't defeat.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it is simply management, containment, persistence, living with a
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: problem rather than solving it, getting a prescript to live
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: with a disease rather than curing it. That's not especially
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: inspiring slogan now isn't. But you're still alive and you're
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: still thriving. But it describes more of modern history than
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: we often admit. And that's why I think Korea remains relevant,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: not because it offers easy lessons, but because it doesn't.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: It actually is the first chapter in our debate over
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: today's foreign policy. The war preserves South Korea and also
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: preserved North Korea. The war contained communism, but it didn't
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: eradicate it. The war created a nuclear armed rogue state.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: The war prevented catastrophe, it never produced resolution. These contradictions
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: are why this war is difficult to remember. They're also
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: why it's worth remembering, because Korea may have been the
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: first American war that actually look like the future. Not
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: a clear victory, not a clear defeat, a conflict that
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: created long term commitments, long term threats, long term arguments
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: about what success even means. So maybe the Korean War
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: is the forgotten war because Americans reached a verdict quickly.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: We looked at the armistice and at the map, and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: we saw our border hadn't moved very much, and we
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: followed away as a draw. The problem is history kept going.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: South Korea became one of the greatest economic success stories
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: in modern the modern era, so you can't say that
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: the war was a total failure. North Korea became one
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: of the world's most dangerous rogue states, so you can't
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: say the war was a total success. The argument never
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: ended in nineteen fifty three, which means the verdict shouldn't
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: have either victory and defeat are easy to remember. Stalemates
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: are harder, especially the ones that never really end, and
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: we may be just dealing with a new stalemate in
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: the Middle East. Ass Chuck, let's do some ass Chuck.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: We're gonna do. I'm gonna do. We'll do five or
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: six on this one. See how long I go? All right?
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: First question comes from Connor, who's in Morocco but originally
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: from Oklahoma City, and he says, hey, Chuck, new dad
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: here after a four am diaper change. I was wondering
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: where's the best place to start with civics education and
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: home for kids? And you go to resources or ways
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: to introduce early Also random question to all presidents use
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: those oversized markers when citing things or is that just
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: a Trump thing? Thinks as always Connor M and Robot, Morocco,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. All right one, Yes he is the
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: sharpy guy. Nobody else. Now. I do think when you're
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: a president you learn to sign larger it somehow, in
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: larger type, right, I mean, my goodness, Barack Obama's signature.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: But you know this is something to think about. The
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: less we actually do the written word, the less we
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: handwrite all the time. Ask yourself if you're of a
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: certain age when you sign a credit card slipt, what
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: did your signature look like when you're in your twenties,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: and what does your signature look like in your thirties
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: and your forties, in your fifties. I literally am like
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: scribbling that. Every once in a while, I try to
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: do my thorough name if I think it's like a
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: piece of paper that might be referenced again, So I'm like, well,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: I better have a recognizable signature. But I often wonder
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: that the less hand physical handwriting we do, if that's
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: going to be a skill that's so atrophies that the
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: presidential signatures going forward are going to look less and
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: less ornate. But anyway, I digress. You're looking for go
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: to resources. Look, I'm gonna give you a few that
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: I've enjoyed. I'll tell you the one that's fantastic for
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: teaching the electoral college. It's I think it's Duck for
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: President and it is. It is a way to just
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: teach how we how the electoral college works. Doesn't sit
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: here and it doesn't have a point of view on
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: whether it should work or not. It just is, you know,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: sort of. I think it's a farm decides to run
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: an election, and you know, Duck runs for president type
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: of thing. But U and Grace for President. So you
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: have Duck for President and Grace for President. Both of
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: them are very good children's books, perfect for single digit age. Obviously,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: Grace for President's about electing a girl class president. It
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: also does a good job of teaching the electoral college.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think Grace for President is a little
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: bit more detailed about it. But those were my Those
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: were put it this way. Anytime I had a new
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: staffer have a kid, this would sort of this would
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: be missus Todd, and I's kind of go to go
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: to first children's books, you know, the political your political friends,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: got your Grace for President or Duck for President or both.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: I just like I said, go check out both books.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Okay they did. It is literally civics civics y without
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: any partisanship at all whatsoever. So UH highly recommend them.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: And I love them both because they you know, I
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: had a boy and a girl and I made sure
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: they both read both books. So it's it's I love
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: them both. Next question comes to Mark A. H Allen, Texas.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: He goes, hey, if you thought about creating an election manifesto,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: a set of rules or signals you rely on for
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: predicting outcomes. Maybe a top five of the key indicators
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: or patterns you trust most but love to hear. What
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: makes your list? It's an interesting thought, I think as
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: I get closer, you know, what I want to try
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: to categorize, you know, is always the things that data
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: doesn't quite capture, right. You know, some of it could
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: be historical. Some of it could be, you know, very
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: specific to a given region or a given state. You know,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: some of it could be you know, look, forty five
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: percent means one thing if it shared brown, forty five
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: percent means another thing if it's Josh Turic. What do
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: I mean by that? Well, one is a semi incumbent
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: that if they're still struggling to get to fifty percent,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: you wonder whether how much if they really have any
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: room to grow versus Josh Turk if you know, he's
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: got a much lower name idea, and if he's sitting
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: at forty four or forty five, then you're like, oh,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: he's got real room to grow. So it's little things
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: like that, right, And there's these little nuances where not
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: every forty five percent is the same, even if it's
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: both Democratic numbers both in red states, right, depends on
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: who's running things like that. So look, I am a
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: I'm a enough believer in data that that every every
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: everything has a data driven answer to it. We just
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: haven't always found the piece of data that explains it yet.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: That's sort of my mindset, and so there are things
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: that I use to sort of like you know, you know,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: like take take what's happening in Texas. It's pretty clear
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: that the Republican campaign is to turn Tallerico into a weirdo.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: He's not one of us. It's a classic he's not
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: one of us. But it's a different way of doing it.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: It's not doing it in a cookie cutter way. It's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: actually being it's being more specific to him, which can
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: be very effective versus you know how much you know, hey,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton's a bad guy. You know. Can you introduce
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: new information? Right? This is this is sometimes in campaigns,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: the campaign with more new information to introduce and sometimes
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: have a greater impact. Then again, old baggage can linger. Right,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: Just ask you know, the Clinton Trump race of sixteen
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: was new baggage versus old baggage. What would voters care
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: more about. And I think that's a that's going to
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: be sort of the Texas Center race. So you're sort
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: of saying, the question is how much of that's an
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: intangible how much of that could be data driven and
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: data tested and all of that. But those are I will,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: I will take your suggestion and I will try to share,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: you know. And then there's certain quirks I have about
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: certain posters. Oh if you you know, I'm always you know,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: And I say this not that these pollsters do bad polls.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: These pollsters are regularly the ones that will allow that
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: will have data for public release, whether it's the McLoughlin
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: brothers on the right, I think they're very good pollsters.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: But I think what you see publicly is not always
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: the process of their best work. It is more of
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: the pr I think that way of PPP and change
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: on the left very similar. You know, here's what you
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: won't see. You rarely see a public opinion research poll
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: use that way. You rarely see a heart research poll
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: use that way. And there's other posters in that same category.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: So those are the type of like little tiny things
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: that I use for various ways of trying to determine
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: why am I more bullish here than I am here?
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, the point is is,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: I will I will take your in starting in the fall.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: Try to put some metrics around what you're asking. Next
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: question comes from Brian in Massachusetts. He's been asking, Hey,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: I have been following your take that Democrats could retake Congress,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: but I'm curious about the broader implication. Do you see
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: any realistic scenario where presidential powers could be used to
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: influence or limit electoral outcomes? What guardrails exist to prevent that?
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: Are they strong enough? Thanks Brian and Massachusetts. Well, look,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: I think I've expressed this before, but I'll express it again,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: which is, if you're asking me, where is their vulnerability
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: in the system where Trump could exert certain powers? And
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: it's in the House. But the power exists before January
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: third seven. It's with the old Congress still in charge.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Believe it or not, the House of Representatives can decide,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: can sort of supersede a certification in another district. Ultimately,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: the House has the ultimate authority over House elections. That
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: is not the case with the Senate, but it is
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: the case of the House they literally can adjudicate things
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: differently regardless, and so that is they have the power
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: to decide who's in and who's out. The power of
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: the majority in theory, if we're looking at a very
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: single digit gain for the Democrats, that would change majority.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: There are things that an outgoing majority could do to
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: maybe disqualify, you know, create a situation where they're not
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: where they would not accept the results of certain elections
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: that were certified. Now it's an extreme, you know, it's
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: an extreme measure. But if you're looking for where there
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: really technically is in a guardrail, it is in the House.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: That it is in the fact that the House, that
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: minute the way the House, the power the House of
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: Representatives has over the administration of elections for the House
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: of Representatives, in theory, creates a lot of loopholes here
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: that could that could favor undemocratic means. I don't given
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: the disunity and the Republican coalition, given all of the
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: enemies Donald Trump has made inside the Republican Party with
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: his I just don't think this current Congress is loyal
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: enough congressional set of Congressional Republicans, well, the House leadership
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: may be loyal enough to him to attempt to do
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: his bidding. Look at how much they struggle just to
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: get you know, they couldn't even force Congress to give
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: him his slush fund on January sixth. They couldn't force Congress.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: So I so maybe I'm being Pollyannish here, but you know,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: he couldn't get that stuff done. I don't know, literally
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: sabotaging democratic elections in the House of Representative for the
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: House of Representatives, I just don't imagine he's got a
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: majority in the House to do that. For him to
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: do that bidding for him, I don't. I know some
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: of you are going, oh, you know that. I just again,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: he couldn't. He hasn't been able to get you know,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: he's got these majorities, he can't get them to put
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: his name on the Kennedy Center. By the way, the
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: fact that he is so humiliated by this that he's
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: refusing to let the public see that that his power
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: is not that he's not all powerful. I mean the
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: fact that there have not been you know, if these
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: vandals existed, they would have already taken down the shroud,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: the shroud of Trump, which I guess is what we
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: have to start calling the scaffolding shroud to prevent the
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: public from seeing that he actually followed the law and
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: took his took his name off of building that it
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: never belonged on in the first place. All right, James
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: E writes, borrowing a question from Washington Week, if you
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: could go back and warn the founders about one flower
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: blind spot in the constitution or structure of government, what
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: would it be? What do you think they couldn't have
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: possibly foreseen? Curious for your take on. I think it's
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: an easy answer. It's the pardon power. It was. It
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: is a massive loophole, not a small loophole. It's a
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: big loophole. Why it exists, why it was given in
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: the first place, is beyond me. I think it's a
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: simple answer. And if this isn't the one reform we
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: don't make it the constitution, then we learn nothing from
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: these Trump years. But I think it's, like I said,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: the part the power of the pardon, I mean this
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: has been. This is the amount of I think financial
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: financial gains that Trump and his cronies have made selling pardons.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is you know, it's like there's so
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: many scandals in playing sight, whether it's the buying off
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: of his kid's crypto companies and all of that business.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: The selling of pardons and the fact that this is
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: kind of done on a weekly basis, like it's you know,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: like it's meeting payroll is is like among the where's
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: the outrage moments? My you know, my homage to Bob
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: Dole during the ninety six campaign was frustrated that his
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: character attacks weren't sticking to Clinton. I think there's a plenty,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: plenty of of like where's the outrage here? On something
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: like this? I think the I think the pardon power,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, like Donald Trump has shown that you cannot
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: there is no there is no upside to giving a
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: man of his character this part, this kind of power part,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: and there has to be a check on that in
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: some form. I think the founders assumed that if a
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: president abused the pardon process, that Congress would do its
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: job and he eliminate and impeach and convict the president
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: and kick him out of office. But look, I think
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: the power of impeachment turned out to be a total
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: and complete failure. It didn't work. Now I don't I
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: actually don't know what else I would have done. I
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: think the founders were right about that. I'll give you
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: one other and that is and that is I think
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: we could have done a hybrid parliamentary system that probably
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: would have opened the door to more political parties, but
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: instead going to this system that we did almost force,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: this binary two party system. The structure did create the
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: two sides, the two factions, and I think not anticipating
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: that better I would have been. But I think the
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: biggest thing, it's not even close, calls the part of
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: power never should have. The whole point of the revolution
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: was to not was to not allow our executive to
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: have the powers of a king, and that is the
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: one place we decided to give made no sense. It
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: made no sense at the time, and it certainly looks
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: like an error in judgment in hindsight. Next question my
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: man from Davy, Florida, Adam b Any Wrights. Hey, there
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: was a high profile walk off on a long running
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: news show other than the other weekend That got me
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: curious what actually happens in these moments? Are they dramatic
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: exits or more awkward behind the scenes. Any good walkout stories?
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: Adam being the vendor ps Seth McFarland's The rivill is
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: fantastic way more hard than I expected. Yes, I love
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: The Orvile, and I think The Orvile deserves a second look.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: When you realize that it's not meant to be a
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: spin off of the Family Guy and instead it's meant
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: to be an homage to Star Trek, it becomes exponentially
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: more interesting and better. Okay, Adam, we're vibe. Put us there. Look,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: the goal of news organizations is to not allow this
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: stuff to lead into the public reporting, right. I never
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: happened to be part of any entity that was either
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: dealing with a walkout at the time. I certainly have
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: been adjacent to walkouts, meaning, you know, we had certain
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: parts of MSNBC and NBCU had was sort of trying
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: to unionize, but not all parts of it. So you know,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: I was never a part of any teams that were
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: fully union shops. There would be different teams. There are
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: different union shops involved with the Sunday Show. There were
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: a handful of other union shops that sort of grew
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: as MSNBC grew. I assume that was one of the
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: other reasons why and comcasts wanted to sort of get
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: rid of MSNBC. I think it sort of got rid
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: of some extra unionization efforts that Comcast wasn't in favor
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: of back in the NBCU days. And look, I'm of
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: two minds. I'm you know, I'm not I'm not sure.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not a. I don't think it's a I think
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: it's a close call about whether journalists need unions. I'm a.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: I am pro union for physical for the for the
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: physical jobs more than anything else. I think the desk
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: jobs in unionsation for me is up debate. I'm not unpersuadable,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: but I'm skeptical. I just set that over here. I
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: mean that, you know, and I think I'm not alone here.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I think there's always been a that there's a healthy,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: healthy debate about that. But no, I've not I could
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: just tell you that I know how the Washington Post
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: handle to walk out, I know how the New York
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Times did. Sometimes you go without bylines, but you know,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: sort of there there is this mindset of the show
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: must go on. You know, there's still news to report,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: and you don't want your labor disputes to get in
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: the way of supposedly reporting the news. And that's the
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: mindset that everybody has. But the fact is it's distraction
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: whenever it happens, and less stuff gets done. And I
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: think walkouts are really effective for what it's worth in
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: my experience. But you asked, I just thought i'd give
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: you my honest answer on that. One last question come
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: from Peter, and he writes from Washington eight. First, thanks
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: for the Washington State shout out. My question is about Venezuela.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: Washington eight is the one time swinging one of the
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: swingings districts in the Country's pretty deep. I think it
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: now leans d This is one of those suburban districts
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: that used to be a swing district, but Donald Trump
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: turned it into a blue district. He goes, I keep
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: hearing Trump that Trump solved the Venezuelan in issue of
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: Manduro's removal, But what has actually changed on the ground.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Has there been meaningful political economic progress or is tensions
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: simply shifted elsewhere because of other news. Thanks for all
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: you do, go Koogs, Peter. It's a little bit of both.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: But the fact is that this Delca Rodriguez has released
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: political prisoners, there has been a little bit less repression,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: there has been zero repression, and there's no plan for
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: new elections. This feels more like a a American puppet state.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that for just shock value. I
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: mean it is Delcea Rodriguez works for the United States.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: It's more akin to if you want to you know,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: I've always said Donald Trump views himself as sort of
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: a TV mobster, not how the real mob works, but
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: how he thinks what what television and movies depict the
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: mob ass And he sees himself as sort of He's
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: now acquired new turf and territory, and Delsea Rodriguez is
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: one of his new copos. And I think that's how
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: he views Venezuela and is certainly how he hopes to
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: deal with Cuba. And he's trying to show and in
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: his own bizarre way, he thought Aaran would behave the
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: same way. This is a case where he didn't, you know, look,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: there there were it was clear that the people running
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: Maduro's regimes were a bunch of It was a kleptocracy,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump knows how to speak the language of leptocracy.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Aron's not a cleptocracy, right, Aran is a real theocracy.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: And Trump struggles with people that have that actually have
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: a grounded set of beliefs. It's always been a struggle
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: for him right, and the Cubans may be more devout
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: about their beliefs than the Venezuelan government ever was, So
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: I think there's something to that as well. But what
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: you're asking is no. I mean, I think I think
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: that certainly Venezuela is stable, but it is not a
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: democracy at the moment. It is a puppet state and
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: it is not quite on you know, it's it's it's
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: almost like the the United States is treating it almost
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: the way probably the UK treats Bermuda. Doesn't really belong
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: to the UK, but it's still part of the Commonwealth,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: and I think that's how Trump uws it. But at
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: some point we you know, we cannot judge Venezuela's success
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: unless free and fair elections are held and that government
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: is able to transition to another free and fair election
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: like to me, what he did in Venezuela. We cannot
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: decide is a success until we have two elections in
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: a row that are peaceful, and that are and and
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: and are handed off between entities. That's when we can
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: deem ben as well as success or not. With that,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a pin in this episode appreciate you
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: as always. Thanks for listening, thanks for liking and subscribing.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you supporting our sponsors as well. This is how
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: I keep this free for you guys. I never want
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: to go behind a paywall because we are not here
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: to narrow cast. We are here to broadcast and with
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: that I'll see it forty eight hours