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Full Episode - Biggest Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries + The Summit That Almost Ended Nuclear Weapons Forever · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Hello, They're happy Thursday,
2:18
Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. Look,
2:23
Speaker 1: we've got a lot to get to. I want to
2:25
Speaker 1: unpack more about Tuesday. It's not just Michigan. I could
2:28
Speaker 1: argue that the most Michigan was the Marquee Race. Kansas
2:36
Speaker 1: is the underrated story of the night, and we're going
2:38
Speaker 1: to get to that in a moment. We've got Groundhog
2:42
Speaker 1: Day in Iran, which feels like something I've said before
2:45
Speaker 1: about groundhog Day in Iran and more groundhog Day in Iran,
2:48
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, So we will get to that
2:51
Speaker 1: as well. My guest is it's a pretty good movie
2:56
Speaker 1: that's coming up, called Brink of War, and it is
2:59
Speaker 1: a This is not a boutique film. This is a
3:02
Speaker 1: mainstream film about basically the last set of Reagan Gorbachev's summits,
3:08
Speaker 1: the famous Rekivic Summit, and they got really close to
3:14
Speaker 1: agreeing to get rid of nuclear weapons, closer than sometimes
3:17
Speaker 1: people realize. This says a very well researched movie. I
3:21
Speaker 1: have the writer and director Michael Russell gunn On and
3:25
Speaker 1: he is terrific. And if the movie is debuting next week,
3:29
Speaker 1: so it is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Brinkle War.
3:33
Speaker 1: Jeff Daniels as Reagan. JK. Simmons is Schultz, So it is.
3:42
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward that it's
3:45
Speaker 1: out and I don't know, it's nice to have some
3:50
Speaker 1: historical drama out there back when we didn't have the
3:57
Speaker 1: absurdities that we see that are politics is filled with
4:01
Speaker 1: these days. But there, you know, it is what it is.
4:06
Speaker 1: But look, we've got a lot to get to and
4:09
Speaker 1: you know, many of you, you know, the thing that
4:11
Speaker 1: I have made a living on for over thirty years
4:15
Speaker 1: is elections and campaigns and what this all means. And
4:18
Speaker 1: you know, I have to tell you the Michigan this
4:21
Speaker 1: Michigan Democratic primary in the Senate, this is going to
4:24
Speaker 1: be a data set that will keep delivering. What we
4:27
Speaker 1: have learned this week in Michigan is going to inform
4:30
Speaker 1: the presidential primary season in twenty twenty eight. In fact,
4:34
Speaker 1: this may be the best piece of new information we
4:37
Speaker 1: have going into twenty twenty eight, at least understanding how
4:40
Speaker 1: big is the electorate, how big is the progressive electorate,
4:43
Speaker 1: how big is the resistance to the progressives. So there's
4:48
Speaker 1: just a lot of to unpack, and I want to
4:50
Speaker 1: slow down and spend a few minutes with it with
4:53
Speaker 1: you here, and of course I'll have my top five
4:55
Speaker 1: list after the interview, and of course we will take
4:59
Speaker 1: some of your questions. Boy, there's a part of me
5:01
Speaker 1: that would like to mourn the end of my baseball season.
5:05
Speaker 1: You may not realize this, but apparently the Washington Nationals
5:08
Speaker 1: have decided to stop competing for the rest of the season. Unfortunately,
5:12
Speaker 1: they no longer even score runs. The team that had
5:15
Speaker 1: the best lineup in baseball all year long, the single
5:18
Speaker 1: best lineup in baseball all year long, has been now
5:21
Speaker 1: completely dismantled. And as my friend Tony corn As like
5:26
Speaker 1: to say, hey, look, I understand we're trying to build
5:28
Speaker 1: for tomorrow, but at some point, well tomorrow ever come
5:32
Speaker 1: And this season was such a tease for all of
5:35
Speaker 1: us Nats fans and then literally yanked the carpet right
5:39
Speaker 1: from under us. I mean, it's this is what I
5:42
Speaker 1: thought they weren't going to do to us again. And
5:44
Speaker 1: they didn't even give us five months to enjoy the
5:47
Speaker 1: Nats and here they go screwing the fans again. It's
5:52
Speaker 1: a bummer. And come on, guys, I at least would
5:59
Speaker 1: like to hear you explain yourself and explain why you
6:03
Speaker 1: traded Luis Garcia for nothing, for almost nothing. Okay, I
6:08
Speaker 1: hope I'm wrong. I hope you guys prove me wrong.
6:11
Speaker 1: I hope there's a cy young candidate that you've acquired.
6:14
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a bummer. And I say it because
6:18
Speaker 1: I've told you this. My evenings with the Nats are
6:22
Speaker 1: sacred to me for that six months a year, and
6:24
Speaker 1: it's been such a joy for half this season to
6:28
Speaker 1: have something to look forward to, to realize that we're
6:31
Speaker 1: going to be competitive in every game. And then what
6:34
Speaker 1: did they do? They rip this apart again from the fans, guys,
6:38
Speaker 1: you are testing the patience of the fans at some point.
6:43
Speaker 1: Build a winner for today and maybe try to win
6:45
Speaker 1: today instead of always searching for tomorrow that may never come.
6:50
Speaker 1: All right, Van rant aside, Let's get to the topics
6:56
Speaker 1: for why you tune into the Chuck Podcast, which I
6:58
Speaker 1: of course advertise as politics for the rest of us.
7:01
Speaker 1: So let's get to it. So, look, it's been a week,
7:03
Speaker 1: and I'll mean that in a way where you I
7:06
Speaker 1: looked up I've looked up later this week, like is
7:09
Speaker 1: it Friday yet and we're not even you know, we're
7:11
Speaker 1: not even. We're just over the hump on the halfway part,
7:14
Speaker 1: and you realize you may have even lost track of
7:17
Speaker 1: what happened on Tuesday. So, like I said, we're going
7:20
Speaker 1: to go deep on the primaries, particularly Michigan, Kansas, and
7:24
Speaker 1: a little bit in Missouri. There's something you know, Yes,
7:26
Speaker 1: Virginia and Washington State had some primaries too, but realistically Michigan, Kansas,
7:30
Speaker 1: and Missouri are where there are stories that are worth
7:34
Speaker 1: knowing about. In fact, I think you know, obviously most
7:37
Speaker 1: of the mainstream press and correctly so, should be focused
7:42
Speaker 1: on the fallout of Michigan and what's happening out of there,
7:44
Speaker 1: because this is certainly a more competitive general election now
7:48
Speaker 1: than it would have been had Hailey Stevens been the nominee.
7:50
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean I think I'll do a LSI. I
7:52
Speaker 1: can't win this race. In fact, I still think you
7:55
Speaker 1: have to make him this slight favorite. But we do
7:58
Speaker 1: know that the Republicans are going to go full ISLAMAFA
8:00
Speaker 1: beyond this, and the question is it going to work?
8:03
Speaker 1: You could look at what happened in the Republican primary
8:06
Speaker 1: where somebody with a perhaps Muslim sounding name, Imre Nissan
8:11
Speaker 1: in the in that Republican House primary, who ends up losing.
8:15
Speaker 1: He was the Trump endorsed candidate, and he loses to
8:17
Speaker 1: a candidate who dropped out because he didn't get the
8:19
Speaker 1: Trump endorsement, but he didn't have a Muslim sounding name
8:24
Speaker 1: or what could be confused for that. And it's just
8:27
Speaker 1: a it's a real warning for vivik Ramaswami, who hopes
8:31
Speaker 1: to do something that no person of color has done
8:34
Speaker 1: in Ohio, particularly for the governorship in Ohio. So it's
8:38
Speaker 1: just a there's, like I said, there's a lot of
8:40
Speaker 1: little lessons out of here, even as everybody focuses on
8:43
Speaker 1: the one big story out of Michigan. And of course
8:47
Speaker 1: we've got a primary in Wisconsin in six days from
8:50
Speaker 1: now that I think is perhaps the next big test
8:52
Speaker 1: to find out about this divide in the Democratic Party,
8:58
Speaker 1: if you will. And of course there's over while you
9:00
Speaker 1: were sleeping. It looks like this administration is going to
9:04
Speaker 1: accept an outcome in the straight of horror moves that
9:06
Speaker 1: I think we're going to have to be honest about
9:08
Speaker 1: and say we it's a form of surrender. We are
9:11
Speaker 1: surrendering control of the Straight of Horror moves to Iran,
9:14
Speaker 1: something we did not It did not happen before we
9:18
Speaker 1: started this war. It's quite frustrating, but it's funny. You know,
9:23
Speaker 1: the President of the United States is having to deal
9:26
Speaker 1: with this debacle that self made in the Middle East,
9:30
Speaker 1: and yet it leads to the question, why is the
9:32
Speaker 1: leader of the free world, with a war going sideways
9:34
Speaker 1: and an economy understrained, spending his energy on a reflecting
9:39
Speaker 1: pool in Washington, DC. Well, let's just say I've got
9:42
Speaker 1: a theory, and it's the theory that will tie much
9:45
Speaker 1: of this hour together, and I will get there a
9:47
Speaker 1: little bit. Plus the twenty fifth anniversary of September eleventh,
9:54
Speaker 1: it comes up very soon, and I fear that it's
9:58
Speaker 1: going to be one of the ugliest ones we've ever had.
10:01
Speaker 1: That the weaponization of it, the politicization of it, the
10:04
Speaker 1: attempt to single out to you're going to see it
10:09
Speaker 1: with Mamdanie in New York, with abdul Lsied in Michigan.
10:15
Speaker 1: That's going to be I think we're not going to
10:18
Speaker 1: have a unifying nine to eleven anniversary On the twenty
10:20
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary. I think I fear that this is going
10:24
Speaker 1: to be one of the uglier weeks we've had in politics,
10:27
Speaker 1: and to think it's a moment like a nine to
10:29
Speaker 1: eleven anniversary that it comes, and you know, I think
10:34
Speaker 1: we know what's coming when we've seen that the we've
10:37
Speaker 1: already seen that the Republican campaign against Abdul Sied decided
10:40
Speaker 1: to add yet another middle name and added Muhammad. They're
10:44
Speaker 1: wanting to do everything they can do make him sound
10:46
Speaker 1: as Muslim as possible. There certainly is a theory of
10:50
Speaker 1: the case of how Republicans think they can win the
10:53
Speaker 1: Michigan Center race. We shall see. The best thing that
10:57
Speaker 1: may have happened to abdue L Sied is he almost
11:00
Speaker 1: Why do I say that, Well, he was getting a
11:02
Speaker 1: little cocky in the last week. They were dunking on
11:05
Speaker 1: the establishment, and then he almost lost this primary and
11:09
Speaker 1: he realized, hey, it's going to take a village if
11:12
Speaker 1: they want to actually win the Senate seat. And so
11:13
Speaker 1: the fact that you have a little bit of a
11:16
Speaker 1: of an Abduel Siad with a little bit of humility,
11:18
Speaker 1: which we hadn't seen in a while, might actually be
11:21
Speaker 1: the best thing for him had he won this race.
11:24
Speaker 1: Sort of the way all the supposed poles set, he
11:26
Speaker 1: would fifty five to forty five. He might he might
11:31
Speaker 1: have been a little cocky, and he might have not
11:35
Speaker 1: He might end up positioning himself in a way that
11:37
Speaker 1: would make this race even harder. But I promise you
11:40
Speaker 1: this is going to be extraordinarily close race. Republicans don't
11:43
Speaker 1: have many pickup opportunities anymore in Senate races. Basically, you know,
11:48
Speaker 1: on paper, they had Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, in New Hampshire, right,
11:51
Speaker 1: three of them are open seats, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Minnesota,
11:55
Speaker 1: and then you had Georgia. Georgia now looks done. You know,
11:59
Speaker 1: they don't have a shot there. Their nominee is imploding
12:03
Speaker 1: in Ike Collins, New Hampshire. I'm a skeptic of but
12:09
Speaker 1: it's still a you know, you got two former senators
12:11
Speaker 1: running against each other, and Johnny sun Nunhu and Scott Brown,
12:13
Speaker 1: with Sununu being the endorsed candidate of Donald Trump, and
12:19
Speaker 1: then and of course brother of Chris Unu, wh who's
12:21
Speaker 1: still quite popular in New Hampshire. But Chris Poppas has
12:23
Speaker 1: been running a very disciplined campaign, hasn't has has not
12:27
Speaker 1: tried to be, as my friend Charlie Cook likes to
12:30
Speaker 1: call it, an exotic candidate, if you will. And then Minnesota, look,
12:35
Speaker 1: the pillow Man has totally ruined the Republican Party's chances
12:39
Speaker 1: of any statewide. You know, I think the Republicans actually
12:42
Speaker 1: have potentially a good candidate in Michelle Tafoya, former USPN sportscaster,
12:47
Speaker 1: and in fact, I expect her a in twenty twenty
12:51
Speaker 1: eight to possibly run. There's going to be a special
12:53
Speaker 1: election to fill the remainder of Amy Klobshar's term, because
12:58
Speaker 1: I don't think Aba Clovershart is going to be to
13:00
Speaker 1: Mike Lindell or whatever comes out of that Michigan Republican primary.
13:04
Speaker 1: But what could have been an opportunity because there is
13:08
Speaker 1: a same sort of movement versus governing wing of the
13:12
Speaker 1: party split in Minnesota that we've seen in Michigan. In theory,
13:18
Speaker 1: there's an opportunity to exploit that. But I think that
13:21
Speaker 1: Mike Lindell, mister Pilloman, is going to make it where
13:23
Speaker 1: the Minnesota Republican Party just can't can't get out of
13:27
Speaker 1: its own way. But I want to start in Michigan,
13:30
Speaker 1: and I want to start frankly with the part of
13:34
Speaker 1: the story that most people haven't focused on. It appears
13:40
Speaker 1: that Abdul al Sayad's winning margin is going to be
13:44
Speaker 1: under twenty thousand votes. Last time I checked, it was
13:47
Speaker 1: of right around fifteen thousand votes. What's remarkable about Abduel
13:53
Speaker 1: Sayad's victory in the Democratic primary in Michigan is he
13:56
Speaker 1: didn't carry a single county in the Detroit In that
13:59
Speaker 1: Detroit media right, Oakland and McComb the two most famous
14:02
Speaker 1: suburban counties in America, ann Wayne County, which is home
14:05
Speaker 1: to Detroit. Those three counties, you know, a huge chunk
14:08
Speaker 1: of the Democratic primary vote. Haley Stevens carried all three counties,
14:11
Speaker 1: not by a ton, She didn't win any of them
14:13
Speaker 1: by double digits, but she carried all three counties. And
14:17
Speaker 1: you would think if I told you that, I'm sure
14:19
Speaker 1: most of you would go, well, if you can't win
14:21
Speaker 1: those three counties, how do you win a Democratic primary. Well,
14:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you how abdu Alsaied won the Democratic primary.
14:27
Speaker 1: He woned thanks to Grand Rapids. He won it thanks
14:30
Speaker 1: to Gerald Ford Republicans. Because the real story of this
14:34
Speaker 1: election is what is not what happened with the uncommitted
14:39
Speaker 1: vote from twenty twenty four, or the Arab American vote
14:42
Speaker 1: in Dearborn, or the African American vote in Detroit and
14:45
Speaker 1: Wayne County, or the suburban vote all over Oakland. Abdu
14:53
Speaker 1: Al Saied won Kent County, home of Grand Rapids, by
14:56
Speaker 1: just under thirty thousand votes, two times his winning margin statewide.
15:03
Speaker 1: So when you're looking where did out duel El Sayed
15:06
Speaker 1: win this Senate race, he won it in Gerald Ford's
15:11
Speaker 1: home town. Stick with me a minute. It was somewhat
15:19
Speaker 1: surprising to me the turnout in Kent County. By the
15:22
Speaker 1: way I went through this, You see, I know some
15:25
Speaker 1: people use AI. I am a database nerd, and I'm
15:29
Speaker 1: sitting here doing all my little notes here and all
15:31
Speaker 1: this stuff. Only two times in primaries going back freely
15:37
Speaker 1: for most of the twenty first century, because the data
15:39
Speaker 1: on the Kent County website goes back to two thousand
15:41
Speaker 1: and two, the Democrats have only outpolled the Republicans in
15:47
Speaker 1: competing primaries, whether it's for the US Senate, governor or president,
15:52
Speaker 1: where more total vote was Democratic primary vote versus Republican.
15:56
Speaker 1: It has only happened twice this century, and it happened
16:00
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty in the primary between Joe Biden and
16:03
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders. By the way, Joe Biden carried the Grand
16:06
Speaker 1: Rapids County here I'm talking about by two points. And
16:12
Speaker 1: this last time where Abduelsei ed defeated Ailey Stevens by
16:17
Speaker 1: nearly thirty points, he got sixty one percent of the vote,
16:20
Speaker 1: He got a net He netted twenty eight thousand votes
16:23
Speaker 1: out of this county again basically double his overall statewide
16:30
Speaker 1: margin of victory. Now, look, let me give you a
16:32
Speaker 1: little history about Kent County. Kent County was slid Republican
16:36
Speaker 1: for decades. Nixon beat McGovern there almost sixty forty. Ford,
16:42
Speaker 1: the hometown guy, doubled up Jimmy Carter in Sex with
16:46
Speaker 1: sixty seven percent. Republicans held it through the eighties, the nineties,
16:51
Speaker 1: the two thousands, George W. Bush won fifty nine percent
16:54
Speaker 1: of the vote in Grand Rapids. By the way, which
16:57
Speaker 1: if you go to downtown Grand Rapids, half of it
16:59
Speaker 1: is funded by the Devas family, one of the famous
17:01
Speaker 1: Republican donor families there is the family behind Amway and
17:08
Speaker 1: then Barack Obama two thousand and eight cracked it in
17:12
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, he carried Ken County, first time
17:14
Speaker 1: a Democrat had done it in a generation, by just
17:16
Speaker 1: two thousand votes, right the last time a Democrat carried
17:20
Speaker 1: Ken County, which, of course back in they used to be, Oh,
17:23
Speaker 1: it must be if it wasn't Jimmy Carter, and it
17:26
Speaker 1: was not, it must be LBJ ad sixty four. Yes,
17:28
Speaker 1: it's LBJA had sixty four. Now what's interesting is Obama didn't.
17:35
Speaker 1: Obama may have cracked it and showed that there was
17:37
Speaker 1: a certainly a moderate voter in Michigan that was opened
17:41
Speaker 1: to Obama style of politics, But four years later, Obama
17:46
Speaker 1: didn't carry Grand Rapids that Romney did. He won it
17:49
Speaker 1: by eight points. Even while Obama carried the state of Michigan,
17:54
Speaker 1: Trump carried Kent County in twenty sixteen by three points,
18:00
Speaker 1: and then Biden wins it in twenty twenty by six,
18:04
Speaker 1: and Kamala Harris carried it basically by about the same margin,
18:08
Speaker 1: slightly less than six percentage points. By the way, Gretchen
18:13
Speaker 1: Wimmer carried it by over ten in twenty twenty two,
18:16
Speaker 1: and that was twice her margin than what she got
18:19
Speaker 1: there in twenty eighteen, and of course, Democrats picked up
18:22
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Speaker 1: we've been tracking this all over the country, right, these
20:21
Speaker 1: these sort of Chamber of Commerce Republicans, the Bush, the
20:24
Speaker 1: moderate Bush Republicans. Not every Bush Republican has become a Democrat.
20:28
Speaker 1: But that moderate Bush Republican wing of the party is
20:32
Speaker 1: not voting Republican anymore. Right, I've sort of made that
20:35
Speaker 1: case here, right, the gerald Ford Republican is not doing that.
20:42
Speaker 1: But here's the thing that I think may surprise some
20:47
Speaker 1: of you. Is it the moderate Republican of two thousand
20:50
Speaker 1: and four that voted for George W. Bush here two
20:53
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, that voted for Obama, but twenty twelve
20:56
Speaker 1: voted for Romney and even sort of sucked it up
20:58
Speaker 1: and did and voted Trump one since sixteen. Because they've
21:01
Speaker 1: been Republicans their whole life, they haven't become moderate Democrats.
21:07
Speaker 1: Because you would think, oh, this must mean you know,
21:11
Speaker 1: if Joe Biden beat Bernie Sanders here by two points, right,
21:14
Speaker 1: if I told you that's what happened in twenty twenty,
21:16
Speaker 1: you think, okay, this is going to be Hailey Stephens territory.
21:19
Speaker 1: Maybe abdul Lsied will be very competitive here. This was
21:22
Speaker 1: a close, you know, forty eight forty two Biden v. Sanders.
21:25
Speaker 1: That that tells you something. But we've seen this, right,
21:28
Speaker 1: we know that there's this growing white progressive vote. Now
21:34
Speaker 1: does it mean these white voters are progressive? Are these
21:36
Speaker 1: white voters voting for progressives for protest reasons, et cetera.
21:41
Speaker 1: That's something we're still learning, right That's you know, at
21:44
Speaker 1: the end of the day, how they vote is all
21:46
Speaker 1: we know. And these folks are now they're not looking
21:50
Speaker 1: for the going from center right to center left. This
21:53
Speaker 1: electorate has moved from center right to progressive left. It's
21:59
Speaker 1: an im important development that I think none of us
22:03
Speaker 1: national folks. I know some Michigan folks informed us of
22:06
Speaker 1: this during the live stream on Tuesday night, but I fully,
22:09
Speaker 1: fully confessed that I did not realize it. I knew
22:12
Speaker 1: Kent County. Look, it's it was one of the key
22:14
Speaker 1: counties that I helped lead coverage to when we had
22:19
Speaker 1: our county to county coverage at NBC News the first
22:22
Speaker 1: time we did it. Kent County was one of our
22:25
Speaker 1: five most important counties in the country because we knew
22:28
Speaker 1: it was it was this home of sort of this
22:30
Speaker 1: traditional moderate Republican What were they doing? What was happening there?
22:35
Speaker 1: But I think that is the shock here. It's not
22:39
Speaker 1: just you know, this wasn't a low turnout situation where
22:43
Speaker 1: somehow are progressive. You know, did surprisingly well in this
22:46
Speaker 1: in this neighborhood. This is over one hundred and two
22:48
Speaker 1: thousand total vote in Kent County. It was you know,
22:52
Speaker 1: so like I said, this is only the second time
22:55
Speaker 1: ever when there were competitive primaries in both both parties
23:01
Speaker 1: that more people from Kent County chose to participate in
23:04
Speaker 1: the Democratic primary than the Republican primary. Just so you know,
23:07
Speaker 1: Michigan is one of these states where you can you know,
23:10
Speaker 1: it's it's this is why it's such a difficult state
23:12
Speaker 1: to poll. It's all party registrate. You know, you don't
23:15
Speaker 1: have to it's not registered by party, so you just
23:19
Speaker 1: it can be very fluid. And if you for those
23:22
Speaker 1: political junkies in the audience, if you remember the Michigan
23:25
Speaker 1: primary between Rick sant Torment met Romney that got surprisingly close,
23:29
Speaker 1: or if you want to go the way back machine,
23:31
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson winning the shocking the world in I think
23:35
Speaker 1: it was eighty eight winning the Michigan presidential primary, and
23:38
Speaker 1: at the time it was the first time he'd won
23:40
Speaker 1: I think any state in the North, in any primary
23:43
Speaker 1: state back then. So it is we have seen and
23:49
Speaker 1: even that Sanders Clinton primary and sixteen where Sanders carried
23:53
Speaker 1: all these rural counties. Now it turned out to be
23:54
Speaker 1: an anti Clinton protest vote by basically a bunch of
23:58
Speaker 1: future Trump voters who just voted Bernie to be anti Clinton.
24:02
Speaker 1: I think, frankly, some progressives over read that, thinking Bernie
24:06
Speaker 1: had actually traction with those rural voters. What Bernie was
24:09
Speaker 1: was a protest vehicle against Clinton, which of course we
24:12
Speaker 1: would learn later when Donald Trump ended up defeating her.
24:16
Speaker 1: But the fact that this was a blowout, and I
24:18
Speaker 1: think that's just it is. So I want to say
24:20
Speaker 1: it as plenty as I can't. He won Kent County
24:23
Speaker 1: by twice the number of votes he won the entire
24:26
Speaker 1: state by, and I think the fact that this became
24:29
Speaker 1: a progressive stronghold is going to be fascinating to watch
24:33
Speaker 1: come presidential primary season, because again, I think the conventional
24:38
Speaker 1: wisdom was, well, how do you appeal to Kent County? Well,
24:40
Speaker 1: you've got to be moderate, right, It's because Chamber of
24:42
Speaker 1: Commerce Republican. You know, one of the things you've discovered,
24:46
Speaker 1: whether it's in northern Virginia where we've seen the former
24:49
Speaker 1: moderate Republicans become resistance democrats, Kent County moderate Republicans resistance Democrats. Shoot,
24:55
Speaker 1: we've seen it in Johnson County outside of Kansas City
24:59
Speaker 1: on Missouri, which Johnson County is in Kansas is in
25:01
Speaker 1: the Kansas part of the Kansas City area. Again, voters
25:04
Speaker 1: who traditionally were very soft ours who are anti Trump,
25:09
Speaker 1: left the party over Trump. And in some ways, you
25:11
Speaker 1: know what I call the reform smokers, right, who are
25:14
Speaker 1: the most anti smoking zealots in your life. During the
25:18
Speaker 1: day and age when people started to quit smoking, it
25:21
Speaker 1: was the former smokers, right, they were the most anti smoking.
25:25
Speaker 1: It's intriguing to me that we're seeing that develop here,
25:29
Speaker 1: you know, in the influencer space. In some ways, this
25:33
Speaker 1: is the Bulwark voter, right, These are the folks that
25:37
Speaker 1: you know, It's like my friends at the Bulwark who
25:38
Speaker 1: are all recovering Republicans who have become strong resistance Democrats.
25:46
Speaker 1: I don't know if they would call themselves democrats. I
25:48
Speaker 1: don't know if they're ready to call themselves democrats, but
25:50
Speaker 1: they're certainly anti Trump, and I don't think they call
25:53
Speaker 1: themselves Republicans anymore. But now in Kent County they are
25:57
Speaker 1: progressive Democrats. That's that's a big deal, and it's a
26:06
Speaker 1: it's a it's a development that I think will even
26:09
Speaker 1: be more important come the presidential prim racing. So where
26:17
Speaker 1: are we with? By the way, I one of the
26:21
Speaker 1: one of the struggles I've had is over the years
26:25
Speaker 1: is is and it goes back to my hotline days,
26:28
Speaker 1: is I'm somebody who wants to identify factions inside a
26:34
Speaker 1: political party, or factions inside political movements by how they
26:37
Speaker 1: want to be described. So, for instance, at the Hotline,
26:41
Speaker 1: we on the abortion issue, the pro life those that
26:46
Speaker 1: were anti abortion rights, they want to be called the
26:48
Speaker 1: pro lifers, we call them pro lifers. At the time,
26:50
Speaker 1: those that were pro abortion rights want to be called
26:52
Speaker 1: pro choices, so we use the phrase pro choice and
26:54
Speaker 1: pro life at the Hotline. Are my friends at the
26:56
Speaker 1: Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, you know, their
26:59
Speaker 1: style guide always was pro abortion rights, anti abortion rights.
27:05
Speaker 1: So I've always been you know, And it's in this
27:08
Speaker 1: vein when we political analysts have struggled to talk about
27:12
Speaker 1: the factional fights that are taking place in both parties, right,
27:16
Speaker 1: this this sort of center right versus the base, and
27:19
Speaker 1: this sort of center left versus the base. And you've
27:23
Speaker 1: heard me say, is it now? You know what do
27:24
Speaker 1: you call it the pragmatic wing versus the progressive wing,
27:27
Speaker 1: the socialist adjacent, populist adjacent, nativists, nationalists, right. You know, well,
27:34
Speaker 1: I want to introduce a couple of very neutral terms,
27:37
Speaker 1: and I'd love your feedback on it. But I what
27:40
Speaker 1: I'm going to do for the rest of this episode
27:41
Speaker 1: at least is refer to this divide inside both parties
27:45
Speaker 1: as sort of the movement Democrats versus the governing Democrats.
27:50
Speaker 1: And I have helped do Alsiet as part of the
27:52
Speaker 1: movement Democrats. Haley Stevens is part of the governing Democrats.
27:56
Speaker 1: And the same thing. Really, it's, you know, John Thune
27:59
Speaker 1: is the governing Republicans versus Donald Trump, who is part
28:03
Speaker 1: of the movement Republicans. Right, those that believe this is
28:06
Speaker 1: an existential fight to the death right, that's your Movement
28:10
Speaker 1: Democrats versus movement Republicans. And then there's the get shipped
28:14
Speaker 1: done folks, the ones that believe they're elected because people
28:17
Speaker 1: want them to to just sort of make sure the
28:20
Speaker 1: trains don't go off the rails. Not necessarily ready, they
28:24
Speaker 1: want to make sure the trains run on time, although
28:26
Speaker 1: that would be nice, but make sure things don't go
28:29
Speaker 1: off the rails. So I am I'd love to hear
28:33
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that, on this idea of using movement
28:36
Speaker 1: versus governing, because again I'm not I'm not here to
28:39
Speaker 1: insult either faction. I certainly have my opinion of which
28:42
Speaker 1: ones I think are more electable to general elections, but
28:46
Speaker 1: that also depends on the state, and it can depend
28:48
Speaker 1: on the situation. But it feels like the most neutral
28:53
Speaker 1: way on that. So I throw that out there. A
28:56
Speaker 1: couple more a couple more things I want to take
29:00
Speaker 1: away from Michigan. One is the power of money. Look,
29:06
Speaker 1: money makes races more competitive, but money doesn't always guarantee victory.
29:11
Speaker 1: Haley Stevens had more money got her really close, but
29:14
Speaker 1: she didn't win. Shre Fender, the UH now soon to
29:21
Speaker 1: be former Member of Congress representing Detroit, lost his race.
29:24
Speaker 1: And you know, some will say this was a progressive,
29:27
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a movement versus governing wing. Shre
29:30
Speaker 1: Dander wasn't part of the governing wing of the Democratic Party.
29:32
Speaker 1: He was just sort of He was one of those,
29:34
Speaker 1: as Charlie Cook would call him, exotic candidates. But he
29:37
Speaker 1: was a self funder and he spent outspent his opponent
29:40
Speaker 1: and he lost. And even in the Republican primary for governor,
29:45
Speaker 1: where you had John James, the the sort of the
29:48
Speaker 1: governing wing's choice, and Perry Johnson, the more odd self
29:55
Speaker 1: funding businessman who you know, self funded his own presidential
29:58
Speaker 1: campaign back in twenty two twenty four, ran in the
30:01
Speaker 1: Iowa caucuses and a few other states. Frankly, every time
30:05
Speaker 1: I say it, I can't tell it that he's had
30:07
Speaker 1: too much plastic surgery or there's something odd with the hair.
30:12
Speaker 1: I can't quite figure it out. I'll let others decide there,
30:15
Speaker 1: but I don't know if that money has served him well.
30:19
Speaker 1: But the point being is he spent the most money
30:21
Speaker 1: and he lost by double digits. So what we saw
30:23
Speaker 1: in Michigan is I'm not going to sit here and
30:27
Speaker 1: say money is overrated. Money is never overrated. But money
30:32
Speaker 1: only takes you so far. Candidates still matter at the end.
30:36
Speaker 1: Perry Johnson wasn't a good candidate. Shrethander wasn't a good candidate,
30:39
Speaker 1: and Haley Stevens was not the best candidate. And in fact,
30:43
Speaker 1: the fact that she came within fifteen or twenty thousand votes,
30:47
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that there's going to
30:49
Speaker 1: be plenty and you're seeing sort of the Mallory McMorrow
30:54
Speaker 1: crowd is quietly wondering, hey, did did the did the
30:59
Speaker 1: govern wing and the Democratic Party picked the wrong candidate
31:02
Speaker 1: that they forced the wrong Democrat out of the race.
31:06
Speaker 1: But we do know this consolidation does matter, right, if
31:10
Speaker 1: the governing wing wants to defeat the progressive wing in
31:13
Speaker 1: a primary, you can't have a splintered field, right, And
31:17
Speaker 1: if you're on the progressive side of things and you
31:21
Speaker 1: want to see the progressives control and win the Democratic
31:25
Speaker 1: nomination in twenty eight, you better hope for a crowded
31:28
Speaker 1: primary because forty forty five, forty six, forty seven percent,
31:33
Speaker 1: that's probably looks like it's the ceiling in primaries. The
31:38
Speaker 1: fact that I do Elsia couldn't get the fifty and
31:41
Speaker 1: we've seen this, there is a hard ceiling here, right.
31:44
Speaker 1: African American voters are just not comfortable yet pulling there,
31:48
Speaker 1: very skeptical of these socialists and socialist adjacent candidates. We
31:53
Speaker 1: have seen this and it's real, right, that seems to
31:57
Speaker 1: be the wall that I've do lsiad ran into. It's
31:59
Speaker 1: the same wall we've seen time and time again, but
32:01
Speaker 1: where progresses. When they have succeeded, they have succeeded in
32:05
Speaker 1: splendid primaries. In fact, the seventh, the Michigan seventh Congressional district,
32:09
Speaker 1: had a three way primary where they had the founder
32:12
Speaker 1: of the Sunrise Movement, a very progressive organization focused on
32:15
Speaker 1: climate change. He wins with forty four percent of the vote.
32:19
Speaker 1: Two more sort of traditional governing wing Democrats cannibalized each other.
32:26
Speaker 1: Combined their vote added up to fifty six percent, but
32:30
Speaker 1: they both ran and they both each got about twenty
32:33
Speaker 1: eight percent. So that is an interesting potential foreshadow for
32:39
Speaker 1: the Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic primary next week. Why do I
32:43
Speaker 1: say that, because the governing side of the Democratic Party
32:47
Speaker 1: decided to consolidate. Right the lieutenant the sitting lieutenant governor
32:53
Speaker 1: quit the race. The former lieutenant governor, Mandellen Barms got
32:56
Speaker 1: out of the race. David Crawley, who is the Milwaukee
32:58
Speaker 1: County executive, was in it, got out. Now he's back
33:04
Speaker 1: in with the outgoing governor, Tony Evers essentially being his
33:07
Speaker 1: chief surrogate. And it is now Tony Evers versus Francesca
33:11
Speaker 1: Hong in that primary. And based on what we saw
33:14
Speaker 1: last night, I wouldn't assume that Hong is going to
33:18
Speaker 1: run away with us, because we saw there was a
33:20
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of misleading polls. And the question
33:24
Speaker 1: is were these intentionally misleading in Michigan or is Michigan
33:27
Speaker 1: uniquely hard to poll? The answer is Michigan's uniquely hard
33:30
Speaker 1: to poll. Because of that electorate I told you about,
33:32
Speaker 1: there hasn't been a lot of model Democratic electorates to
33:38
Speaker 1: use to at least, and I think people mistakenly. It's
33:42
Speaker 1: possible that too many pollsters mistakenly modeled the twenty sixteen
33:47
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders map and overestimated I'll do LSI ed's ability
33:52
Speaker 1: to win in some parts of the state that he
33:54
Speaker 1: turned out he can't win in those parts of the state.
33:59
Speaker 1: But the good news is the fact that we've had
34:03
Speaker 1: this very competitive Democratic primary for Senate in Michigan. It
34:06
Speaker 1: means at least Michigan Democratic primary voting going into the
34:10
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight primary season should be more accurate. Because
34:14
Speaker 1: you can start with this model, this baseline. You can
34:17
Speaker 1: go to the voter file. I promise you at least
34:20
Speaker 1: eighty to eighty five percent of Democrats have participated in
34:22
Speaker 1: this Senate primary are going to be likely voters are
34:29
Speaker 1: going to be likely voters in the White House primary.
34:33
Speaker 1: So if that is the questions, like, what you know,
34:37
Speaker 1: one of the things before I leave Michigan and get
34:40
Speaker 1: to Kansas. Here a second. One of the things about
34:43
Speaker 1: Michigan that in some ways we the big piece of
34:50
Speaker 1: news that I learned is what's happened in Grand Rapids.
34:52
Speaker 1: This is a much more progressive community than I think
34:55
Speaker 1: anybody imagine, and it has certainly changed the nature of
34:58
Speaker 1: how you should look at Democrats primary voters going forward,
35:01
Speaker 1: because this is now two competitive Democratic primaries in a row,
35:04
Speaker 1: where the Democrats are now the dominant party in Kent County,
35:10
Speaker 1: not the Republicans. And more importantly, it's the progressives that
35:14
Speaker 1: are now the dominant faction of the Democrats in Kent County,
35:18
Speaker 1: which is a huge, gigantic development there. But to quickly
35:27
Speaker 1: sort of put it a bow, here, what this means
35:29
Speaker 1: for Wisconsin, right, you know the hand right we're going
35:31
Speaker 1: from Let's see if I get this right, right, we
35:34
Speaker 1: had the Michigan primary, and now we're going to have
35:35
Speaker 1: the Wisconsin primary, or is it the Michigan primary. Now
35:38
Speaker 1: we're gonna have the Wisconsin primary. I'll let you guys
35:40
Speaker 1: decide which side of the hand is it, But either way,
35:42
Speaker 1: you got to talk to the hand on this one.
35:45
Speaker 1: Pun intended. But here's a question that's worth trying to
35:50
Speaker 1: figure out going into next Tuesday. You know, can Francesca
35:54
Speaker 1: Hang win this primary on Dane County, which is the
35:57
Speaker 1: county that encompasses Madison. Can you do it on Dane
35:59
Speaker 1: County alone? And white progressives in Milwaukee the African American
36:04
Speaker 1: vote in Milwaukee, will it consolidate against Francesca Hong? And
36:07
Speaker 1: then what about the rest of the state. You know,
36:09
Speaker 1: is there a grand rapids that we're going to underestimate
36:13
Speaker 1: here where there's another part of Wisconsin where progressives have
36:16
Speaker 1: more of a stronghold than maybe people realize and maybe
36:20
Speaker 1: even frankly, Wisconsin Democrats aren't fully aware of. I think
36:25
Speaker 1: that's the open question for what it's worth. It was
36:27
Speaker 1: interesting to watch the prediction markets on all things Francesca
36:31
Speaker 1: Hong as Stevens was closing in and it was obvious
36:35
Speaker 1: that she was winning the African American vote about seventy
36:38
Speaker 1: to thirty. And it's yet another confirmation that progressives are
36:45
Speaker 1: going to have problems winning over a significant portion of
36:49
Speaker 1: the African American electorate. Well, that's a Milwaukee County's a
36:53
Speaker 1: big chunk of that. The Milwaukee City votes a big
36:55
Speaker 1: chunk of African Americans there. So it's going to be
36:58
Speaker 1: interesting to see if you tell me that next Tuesday,
37:03
Speaker 1: Wisconsin takes a little bit longer to call than we thought.
37:07
Speaker 1: Let's just say I'm not going to be surprised one bit,
37:10
Speaker 1: but that's next Tuesday. This episode of the Chuck Podcast
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Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer. Now from a
38:54
Speaker 1: state where nothing is settled to a state where everything
38:57
Speaker 1: supposedly is, let's go to Kansas. Kansas had a couple
39:01
Speaker 1: of results that I think are worth pointing out. First,
39:03
Speaker 1: there's the the referendum that the Republican legislature put on
39:09
Speaker 1: the ballot to essentially try to change the procedure of
39:13
Speaker 1: how state Supreme Court justices are selected. In Kansas. Republicans
39:18
Speaker 1: in the legislature are frustrated that a majority of the
39:22
Speaker 1: justices on the Kansas Supreme Court have been appointed by
39:26
Speaker 1: Democratic governors, right because six essentially we're at sixteen of
39:30
Speaker 1: the last twenty four years in Kansas have been governed
39:34
Speaker 1: by Democrats. And so that of course, just like we've
39:39
Speaker 1: seen what happens in the US Supreme Court, right. You know,
39:42
Speaker 1: when you've had that kind of you know, over time
39:44
Speaker 1: you're going to have more dominance. And this is what
39:47
Speaker 1: this referendum is about, is yet another referendum that is
39:51
Speaker 1: about the issue of abortion, right. And what apparently what
39:57
Speaker 1: Republicans were hopeful is that if they could change the
40:01
Speaker 1: Supreme Court selection process to direct elections like they have
40:04
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, like they have in quite a few states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Alabama.
40:08
Speaker 1: There's it is. You know how I feel about this.
40:11
Speaker 1: I've said it before Alexander Hamilton in Federalist seventy two.
40:14
Speaker 1: I believe it is came out stridently against the idea
40:18
Speaker 1: of electing judges. That is, you're asking a judge to
40:22
Speaker 1: interpret a dispute at times between the legislative brand and
40:25
Speaker 1: the executive branch, both of which are are put there
40:28
Speaker 1: by the voters. Your umpires can't be subject to the
40:31
Speaker 1: voters too. If you want your judges to be umpires,
40:35
Speaker 1: you don't want them subject to political campaigns, taking donations,
40:39
Speaker 1: creating quid pro quos that just make adjudicating in any
40:43
Speaker 1: sort of fair way possible. So it was interesting when
40:49
Speaker 1: given that choice, what was this wasn't even a close vote.
40:53
Speaker 1: This is still a Republican leaning state, and the last
40:55
Speaker 1: thing they wanted was to hand the Republican legislature power
40:59
Speaker 1: like this to do this. Now, the other big race
41:09
Speaker 1: in Kansas is now a Senate race, and with look,
41:14
Speaker 1: let's be realistic, the Michigan Senate race is going to
41:17
Speaker 1: be very, very close. The amount of money that is
41:20
Speaker 1: going to make its way into Michigan and on behalf
41:22
Speaker 1: of Mike Rogers is huge. Now, I think in a
41:26
Speaker 1: in a national environment where Democrats are are sort of
41:29
Speaker 1: overperforming by five to seven points, you know, I still
41:34
Speaker 1: think I'm dol Saya wins that now, is it a
41:37
Speaker 1: one point race, two point race? Yeah, it's going to
41:39
Speaker 1: be super close. And given if it's going to be
41:41
Speaker 1: that close, it means we're going to be waiting for
41:42
Speaker 1: Wayne County at the very end, and it's probably going
41:45
Speaker 1: to be, you know, either that or the Alaska Senate race.
41:48
Speaker 1: That are the final races that we may call. That's
41:51
Speaker 1: how close I expect this to be. But I do
41:53
Speaker 1: think you will see more money spent on Rogers than
41:56
Speaker 1: he would have gotten had Hailey Stephens been the nominated.
41:58
Speaker 1: And it's going to be vicious. It's going to be ugly,
42:00
Speaker 1: and it's going to be uncomfortable. And I have a
42:03
Speaker 1: feeling that, you know, we just look at Day one.
42:06
Speaker 1: Right Day one, Republicans decided to go lean lean in
42:12
Speaker 1: on trying to turn him into a Muslim. That scares people. Uh,
42:19
Speaker 1: it's a full on Islamophobia campaign. I am I think
42:30
Speaker 1: that the I don't think there you know, I don't
42:35
Speaker 1: think if you were doing it subtly, I could I
42:40
Speaker 1: could see it possibly work and I you know, and
42:43
Speaker 1: there may be a point here, a point there where
42:46
Speaker 1: it matters. But the more aggressive this is, and already
42:50
Speaker 1: they've signaled that this isn't this is going to be
42:53
Speaker 1: very aggressive. I think the likelihood of this boomeranging is
42:57
Speaker 1: greater than Republicans realize. And that's why, you know, i'm i'm,
43:03
Speaker 1: I have so much trepidation now about the nine to
43:06
Speaker 1: eleven anniversary and about about how this is going to
43:08
Speaker 1: get weaponized politically, and it's going to be uncomfortable. But look,
43:13
Speaker 1: if Democrats have to you know, they expected to be
43:16
Speaker 1: defending at least one of their open seats in a
43:17
Speaker 1: tough race. They thought it was going to be Georgia.
43:19
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of us thought it was going
43:21
Speaker 1: to be Georgia. And John Ossoff has once again proven
43:24
Speaker 1: to be a much better at this than I think
43:26
Speaker 1: many people give them credit for. But if you're the
43:30
Speaker 1: good news for Democrats is they keep putting more Senate
43:33
Speaker 1: seats in play. And the big addition is Kansas. And
43:36
Speaker 1: let me tell you about the new Democratic nominee in Kansas,
43:39
Speaker 1: because I think I think this is a race that
43:42
Speaker 1: if you're screwing around with prediction markets, go buy some
43:45
Speaker 1: abb in Adam Hamilton stock. Right now. I'm not saying
43:49
Speaker 1: he's going to win. I'm saying I think this is
43:51
Speaker 1: going to be closer, as close as Iowa or Kansas.
43:58
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about it. Adam Ham since the
44:00
Speaker 1: founding senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the
44:04
Speaker 1: Resurrection in Leewood, Kansas. This is the largest United Methodist
44:09
Speaker 1: congregation in the country. It is something like twenty five
44:12
Speaker 1: thousand people a week. He's also if you're in this community,
44:16
Speaker 1: I am not. I'm learning about his influence in this community.
44:21
Speaker 1: He has written a shelf full of books. You know,
44:25
Speaker 1: I have a friend of mine says that you know
44:26
Speaker 1: if you you know his who's a Methodist, and he's
44:29
Speaker 1: like his pastors like, oh, I've got this guy's books.
44:32
Speaker 1: I use his books to develop some of my sermons.
44:37
Speaker 1: He preached the sermon at Barack Obama's inaugural second inaugural
44:41
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen. He's a fifth generation cancer, been married
44:45
Speaker 1: forty four years, and for two decades he has been
44:48
Speaker 1: one of the most recognizable moderate voices in mainline American Protestism.
44:56
Speaker 1: He's not a political figure. He's been a religious one,
44:58
Speaker 1: somebody who spent years. Ghiblie is a bridge builder inside
45:01
Speaker 1: a denomination that had been tearing itself apart. Now he'd
45:06
Speaker 1: beat ten other Democrats on Tuesday eleven candidate field, which
45:09
Speaker 1: by itself tells you that Kansas Democrats spelled something. Roger
45:13
Speaker 1: Marshall does not scare people in Kansas. And in the
45:18
Speaker 1: first two months as a candidate race three point six
45:20
Speaker 1: million dollars he outraised Roger Marshall in the quarter. It's
45:25
Speaker 1: the biggest launch in the history of Kansas Senate campaigns.
45:30
Speaker 1: So why do I think it's a real race? A
45:31
Speaker 1: couple arguments, and I'll make them carefully. One is he's
45:34
Speaker 1: going to be very hard to create a caricature out of.
45:37
Speaker 1: They're gonna have a heart. They can't turn him into
45:39
Speaker 1: some woke socialist lefty right right, the standard playbook. Why
45:45
Speaker 1: why Kansas Democrats have not been able to break through
45:48
Speaker 1: in Senate races in the recent history is they've been
45:51
Speaker 1: able to, you know, maybe tack them on as some
45:55
Speaker 1: some sort of carpet bag or you know, they've been
45:59
Speaker 1: financed by the coastal elites. They're not a real Democrat.
46:04
Speaker 1: They're not you know, they can't even use the godless
46:07
Speaker 1: playbook on this guy, right, trying to call him coastal
46:12
Speaker 1: radical or godless right. That's not going to survive contact
46:16
Speaker 1: with a Methodist pastor from Leewood, Kansas. And he's going
46:21
Speaker 1: to arrive with a constituency that's never been assembled for
46:24
Speaker 1: political purposes on the Democratic side like this in recent history.
46:29
Speaker 1: So whenever you have a nominee who's got a constituency
46:33
Speaker 1: that doesn't normally show up in that side of the aisle,
46:39
Speaker 1: well that's additive, right. And if you look at the
46:41
Speaker 1: numbers in Kansas, right, a Democrat can't win with a
46:45
Speaker 1: conventional coalition, right, the Democratic the left side coalition isn't
46:52
Speaker 1: big enough yet to win center ate. They're going to
46:54
Speaker 1: have to win over some center right, perhaps some religious
46:58
Speaker 1: moderates who may don't like the character of Donald Trump.
47:02
Speaker 1: And maybe you're frustrated that a guy like Roger Marshall
47:05
Speaker 1: just looks the other way all the time. Then there's
47:09
Speaker 1: Roger Marshall himself. He's never really been stress test in
47:13
Speaker 1: a competitive general election. Now. Look, he's had some contested
47:17
Speaker 1: primaries one in sixteen one and twenty and Democrats tried
47:23
Speaker 1: when they recruited Barbara Bullier, they tried to who did
47:27
Speaker 1: raise a decent amount of money for a Senate candidate
47:30
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty, but he won by double digits.
47:34
Speaker 1: It just you know, they didn't really go all in there.
47:39
Speaker 1: But you know, Kansas is still it still has a
47:43
Speaker 1: Republican lean to it. And he's never really had a
47:47
Speaker 1: tough race in a general election in November, so and
47:51
Speaker 1: he's never really had to defend a record against an
47:53
Speaker 1: opponent that he couldn't define conventionally. So we'll see. But
48:01
Speaker 1: you know, if you're going to defeat a sitting senator,
48:03
Speaker 1: one that hasn't you know, he's not a professional politician, right,
48:07
Speaker 1: he had a career in the medical field. So you know,
48:13
Speaker 1: I'm going to be curious, sort of like what we
48:15
Speaker 1: saw with deb Fisher, who never really had gone through
48:17
Speaker 1: a trial by fire in a tough general election. Dan
48:20
Speaker 1: Osbourne came awfully close in Nebraska, and it was like
48:24
Speaker 1: she hadn't faced major league pitching before. And you know,
48:28
Speaker 1: to beat up a baseball metaphor here, I think this
48:31
Speaker 1: is the first time Roger Marshall's going to face major
48:33
Speaker 1: league pitching. And you know, then you throw in the
48:36
Speaker 1: larger environment, right, which is the AG community has been
48:40
Speaker 1: hammered by these Trump tariffs coupled with the aggressive deportation
48:44
Speaker 1: on immigration, which is hammered the labor force in these
48:49
Speaker 1: ag communities. And this is Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota. Now, look,
48:54
Speaker 1: South Dakota is the longest shot of these four states
48:57
Speaker 1: that are all you know, connected here, all sort of
48:59
Speaker 1: hit our by these tariffs. But there's the independent candidate,
49:04
Speaker 1: Brian Begs who they finally got the Democratic nominee to
49:09
Speaker 1: get out. Now he got out, but he said he
49:12
Speaker 1: got out because he was tired of his family getting
49:14
Speaker 1: threatened for not getting out. So it wasn't the best
49:17
Speaker 1: exit that Brian Banks could have hoped for when the
49:20
Speaker 1: Democratic nominee decided to take a knee. But just like
49:23
Speaker 1: we saw in Idaho, just like we've seen in Nebraska,
49:25
Speaker 1: we now have three races where there are essentially the
49:28
Speaker 1: Democratic candidate is running as an independent or the not
49:31
Speaker 1: Republican candidate is running as an independent. Osborne feels a
49:35
Speaker 1: little bit more of a conventional sort of labor union
49:39
Speaker 1: Democrat than either Todd Achilles in Idaho or Brian bangs
49:44
Speaker 1: Is in South Dakota. But they're all hoping to benefit
49:48
Speaker 1: from sort of frustration that these Republican senators have just
49:51
Speaker 1: looked the other way on these terrible Trump tariff policies
49:54
Speaker 1: and things like that. I will just give you my
49:57
Speaker 1: two cents about those four races in this respect if
50:00
Speaker 1: you were to ask me which of these four. First
50:02
Speaker 1: of all, if Democrats win get the majority in the Senate,
50:05
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that they win two of these four. I
50:08
Speaker 1: think the math has to work out that way, and
50:12
Speaker 1: I think the two most realistic are Iowa Kansas. I
50:16
Speaker 1: think that I know polling shows the Nebraska race has
50:21
Speaker 1: been a one point race. One point race. Obviously. First
50:24
Speaker 1: of all, everybody's going to be more skeptical of any
50:26
Speaker 1: polls released by any candidates these days, but particularly ones
50:29
Speaker 1: using these progressive pollsters, who I think have all had
50:32
Speaker 1: very shall we say, optimistic electorates that they create hoping
50:38
Speaker 1: that this is what the electorate looks like, versus maybe
50:40
Speaker 1: creating a poll that has the electorate what it actually
50:43
Speaker 1: is going to look like. But there's another reason why
50:46
Speaker 1: I'm ske I think both the incumbents Pete Ricketts and
50:49
Speaker 1: Nebraska Mike Rounds in South Dakota are going to be
50:52
Speaker 1: tougher to beat than the Republican nominee in Iowa, Ashley Hinson,
50:56
Speaker 1: or the Republican incumbent Roger Marshall. Both Ricketts and Rounds
51:01
Speaker 1: were governors before they were senators, and governor's former governors
51:05
Speaker 1: are less likely to have lost touch with the rank
51:08
Speaker 1: and file, particularly in the rural parts of their state,
51:10
Speaker 1: than senators have. So if I were to bet on
51:12
Speaker 1: those four, e leen, And that's why I'm like, hey,
51:15
Speaker 1: if you really are into investing in these prediction markets,
51:19
Speaker 1: the best buy on the board right now, I think
51:23
Speaker 1: is Adam Hamilton. Is there a few more things doing
51:28
Speaker 1: my little primary dance Missouri. There's two things happening in
51:32
Speaker 1: Missouri that I want to point out. One happened on
51:34
Speaker 1: the ballot, and that was their decision to reject this
51:37
Speaker 1: idea of essentially scrapping a state income tax in exchange
51:41
Speaker 1: for a high sales tax. And it got killed. It
51:44
Speaker 1: wasn't even close. And the reason I wanted to single
51:47
Speaker 1: this out is because I think I've hinted at this before.
51:52
Speaker 1: Donald Trump sort of hinted what his obsession with tariffs is.
51:56
Speaker 1: He likes this idea of creating I think he joked
51:59
Speaker 1: he wants to call it the External Revenue Service, and
52:02
Speaker 1: he wants to get rid of and essentially get rid
52:04
Speaker 1: of income taxes and go to some form of a
52:07
Speaker 1: consumption tax. Tariffs essentially how we funded our government pre
52:14
Speaker 1: passing the constitutional amendment to legalize the income tax. And
52:18
Speaker 1: the reason we passed that constitutional amendment is because trying
52:21
Speaker 1: to fund a government via tariffs, you couldn't guarantee consistent revenue.
52:26
Speaker 1: It was no way to fund a government, and it
52:28
Speaker 1: was no way to try to have any medium or
52:30
Speaker 1: long term planning, which is why many folks decided that
52:35
Speaker 1: an income tax would be a much fairer way to
52:40
Speaker 1: try to fund government. But what was interesting is that
52:43
Speaker 1: Missouri voters, when given this choice of you know, and
52:45
Speaker 1: we've seen this, Rhonda Santis in his own way, is
52:47
Speaker 1: hinted at getting rid of essentially trying to get rid
52:50
Speaker 1: of some parts of the property taxes, and he sort
52:54
Speaker 1: of admits that in lieu of it, counties would likely
52:57
Speaker 1: raise sales taxes. So again trying to try transition away
53:02
Speaker 1: from a income tax revenue system that to funds government
53:07
Speaker 1: to some sort of consumption tax that does, and voters
53:13
Speaker 1: don't like it. And there's always there's been this obsession.
53:16
Speaker 1: There's a faction of the conservative movement that continues to
53:19
Speaker 1: try to push this. A lot of them get elected
53:23
Speaker 1: to state legislatures. Sometimes it's called the fair tax, right.
53:26
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of different ways they do it. It is.
53:29
Speaker 1: I don't know why this hasn't gone away, because every
53:32
Speaker 1: time it gets put in front of voters, voters don't
53:35
Speaker 1: reject it by a little, they reject it by a lot.
53:37
Speaker 1: They reject candidates that come out for it, they reject
53:40
Speaker 1: these referendum ideas that come out for it. They just
53:44
Speaker 1: don't like it. By the way, one other thing before
53:47
Speaker 1: I left Kansas, I forgot to talk quickly about the
53:49
Speaker 1: Democratic primary for governor there because what was interesting is
53:52
Speaker 1: that the governor, outgoing governor or Kelly Democrat, her big
53:57
Speaker 1: legacy project this year was luring the Kansas City Chiefs
54:00
Speaker 1: out of Kansas City, Missouri and getting them to build
54:03
Speaker 1: their stadium in Kansas City, Kansas, basically the suburbs of
54:07
Speaker 1: Kansas and she threw a bunch of tax credit. It's
54:11
Speaker 1: a huge subsidy that the state of Kansas is giving
54:14
Speaker 1: to the Kansas City Chiefs. Well, the woman who won
54:18
Speaker 1: the Democratic nomination for governor essentially ran against data centers
54:23
Speaker 1: and giving money to the billionaire owner of the Kansas
54:27
Speaker 1: city chiefs, and she defeated the Democrat that the city
54:34
Speaker 1: governor had endorsed and arguably was over this. So I
54:38
Speaker 1: don't know how many times many people have to remind it.
54:41
Speaker 1: Guess what voters don't like. Voters don't like subsidizing rich people.
54:46
Speaker 1: They don't like they don't like this idea that these
54:48
Speaker 1: data centers are subsidizing the big tech companies, and they
54:52
Speaker 1: certainly don't like it when their tax dollars are subsidizing
54:55
Speaker 1: rich sports owners to build sports stadiums. So if you
54:59
Speaker 1: needed another reminder there that we had him, all right,
55:13
Speaker 1: a few other topics I wanted to hit on. Let's
55:14
Speaker 1: talk about men behaving badly here. We've obviously had a
55:18
Speaker 1: run of stories about these three House Republicans and their
55:21
Speaker 1: personal conduct. What's been interesting has been the reaction inside
55:25
Speaker 1: the party. You know, you've got it's clear that Republicans
55:32
Speaker 1: want to get rid of Max Miller, right, whether it's
55:35
Speaker 1: Bernie Marino, his now former father in law, and his
55:40
Speaker 1: decision to come out publicly saying he thinks Max Miller
55:42
Speaker 1: should resign a seat. After he came out, a whole
55:45
Speaker 1: bunch of Republicans followed his lead. It's no doubt a
55:48
Speaker 1: whole bunch of House Republicans would like to see him leave.
55:51
Speaker 1: I think the Speaker of our House was about to
55:52
Speaker 1: do it until Donald Trump stepped in. And one of
55:55
Speaker 1: the things we know about Donald Trump is how much
55:57
Speaker 1: he ends up defending any Republican that is accused of
56:02
Speaker 1: some sort of misconduct with women, whether it's sexual assault, whatever,
56:08
Speaker 1: some form of misconduct with women. Donald Trump always believes
56:11
Speaker 1: the accused he is. You could say he's being very consistent. Right.
56:16
Speaker 1: He doesn't believe the attacks on him were true or fair. Right,
56:20
Speaker 1: He is full denial on all this stuff. So he
56:23
Speaker 1: accepts the premise when one of these men behaving badly
56:26
Speaker 1: says the same thing. And it has put the Republican
56:30
Speaker 1: Party in a terrible spot because Max Miller, who clearly
56:35
Speaker 1: is somebody who's got some serious issues, who the last
56:39
Speaker 1: thing he needs to be as a public servant. But
56:43
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be honest, he strikes me as somebody
56:46
Speaker 1: who who has tried to use his personal relationships to
56:50
Speaker 1: climb up the political adder. When you look at the
56:53
Speaker 1: and you can't help but wonder did he court Bernie
56:59
Speaker 1: Marino's daughter simply because he was hoping Bernie Marino would
57:03
Speaker 1: finance his political career, because that's exactly what Bernie Marino
57:05
Speaker 1: did for the first term. I know a lot of
57:10
Speaker 1: people think some nefarious conspiracies, but why didn't Bernie Marino
57:15
Speaker 1: speak out sooner? I think we don't sometimes give enough
57:19
Speaker 1: grace anymore. I think it's not only perfectly reasonable, but
57:22
Speaker 1: most likely the real reason is. Remember when you've got
57:27
Speaker 1: a situation like this, where your daughter is his to
57:35
Speaker 1: co parent with with somebody who you think can harm you,
57:44
Speaker 1: you know, it's not easy to just cut them loose, right.
57:49
Speaker 1: You've got to worry about the child that you have together,
57:54
Speaker 1: You've got to worry about your personal safety. So I
57:56
Speaker 1: think that I think we I know, we look at
58:00
Speaker 1: everything through a political prism sometimes and we forget way
58:04
Speaker 1: too often that these if everybody in politics is a
58:07
Speaker 1: human being too, and I think this is one of
58:10
Speaker 1: those that has probably got a lot more personal details
58:14
Speaker 1: to it that none of us are privy to. But
58:17
Speaker 1: if anybody has got a all of us have large
58:22
Speaker 1: enough families where I'm sure there's an example that's similar here,
58:27
Speaker 1: And so I hope, I hope some folks. I hope
58:34
Speaker 1: and folks and do that. Let me get to the
58:37
Speaker 1: by the way, the thing. The other shock in the
58:40
Speaker 1: morning while we were waiting for the confirmation about the
58:42
Speaker 1: Michigan Center primary is House Republicans did successfully push Chuck Edwards,
58:47
Speaker 1: who is the North Carolina Congressman who remember he was
58:51
Speaker 1: the guy that they found to get rid of Madison
58:54
Speaker 1: Cawthorn if you remember him, the one term sort of
59:00
Speaker 1: dream maga Republican who sort of won an accidental primary.
59:04
Speaker 1: I think he replaced Mark Meadows if I'm not mistaken
59:06
Speaker 1: in the House, if you remember him, Madison Cawthorne, by
59:09
Speaker 1: the way, on the ballot in a couple of weeks
59:11
Speaker 1: in a trying to replace Byron Donald's in Congress down
59:15
Speaker 1: in southwest Florida. He's not even the only disgraced former
59:19
Speaker 1: member of Congress in that primary. Chris Collins of Western
59:21
Speaker 1: New York, who is also in that is in that primary.
59:24
Speaker 1: It's one of the looney Tunes primaries of the season
59:27
Speaker 1: that's coming up. But Chuck Edwards, remember was the Republican
59:33
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be more normal to replace the
59:36
Speaker 1: disgraced Madison Cawthorne. Well, he turned out to be this
59:40
Speaker 1: kind of creepy older guy and how he dealt with
59:43
Speaker 1: his female staffers. Complaints went to the Ethics Committee. The
59:46
Speaker 1: Ethics Committee came out with a pretty scathing report, and
59:50
Speaker 1: I guess, to Edwards's credit, he accepted the premise that
59:54
Speaker 1: he was no longer a Republican that could actually win reelection,
59:58
Speaker 1: and he quit in time for them to find a
1:00:00
Speaker 1: replacement candidate. But it may not work. I mean, one
1:00:02
Speaker 1: of the things we've learned is the scandal tax is real.
1:00:07
Speaker 1: And you know, whether even if Max, even if they
1:00:10
Speaker 1: somehow find a way to replace Maximiller in the ballot.
1:00:12
Speaker 1: Although he seems pretty defined about this, there's always this
1:00:18
Speaker 1: three to five point sort of penalty that the party
1:00:23
Speaker 1: that has that got rid of its scandal tard nominee
1:00:26
Speaker 1: and replaced him with somebody new. It can have a hangover,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: especially if the replacement is with an incumbent politician, like
1:00:33
Speaker 1: I think it's more likely that this is more of
1:00:34
Speaker 1: a hangover in that race with Chuck Edwards then, for instance,
1:00:38
Speaker 1: like I don't think Troy Jackson is acquiring any Grand
1:00:41
Speaker 1: Platner baggage right because Graham Plattner was never in office,
1:00:45
Speaker 1: and I think in some ways I'm sure this is
1:00:48
Speaker 1: me saying Graham Platner's first time you've heard his name
1:00:50
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks, right, you know, I don't
1:00:52
Speaker 1: think it has that. I think but if you actually
1:00:55
Speaker 1: held office and then you were sort of the disgrace
1:00:58
Speaker 1: candidate pushed out a lot of chuck edwards that that
1:01:02
Speaker 1: sticks a little bit. And that brings me to the
1:01:09
Speaker 1: reflecting pool and the strait of hormones. And I'm going
1:01:11
Speaker 1: to go back to the question I asked at thought,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: why would the leader of the free world, with a
1:01:16
Speaker 1: war going sideways and an economy understrain spend his energy
1:01:20
Speaker 1: on the reflecting pool? And I think, in one form
1:01:25
Speaker 1: or another, it's the question we've all been asking ourselves.
1:01:27
Speaker 1: What's with his obsessions over this small stuff when he
1:01:32
Speaker 1: can't get the big stuff right? So let's start with
1:01:35
Speaker 1: Jennine Piro. As I said earlier, there's always a line
1:01:41
Speaker 1: that some people get to when it comes to Donald Trump.
1:01:45
Speaker 1: All these folks, we've seen it, right, I've watched this
1:01:47
Speaker 1: over over a decade now. Everybody I've always said, there's
1:01:53
Speaker 1: everybody has a line they won't cross when it comes
1:01:55
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump. Just everybody's line is in a different place, right,
1:02:00
Speaker 1: And I think that's what we saw with Pierro here.
1:02:01
Speaker 1: We never know when it is until it actually hits.
1:02:06
Speaker 1: I think Pierro believed she could say whatever she wanted
1:02:09
Speaker 1: outside of courtroom and still follow the rule of law.
1:02:13
Speaker 1: Inside a courtroom, she had two separate compartments. Well, Donald
1:02:18
Speaker 1: Trump didn't want that, and so she couldn't do it right.
1:02:22
Speaker 1: She had to risk potentially losing her law license, maybe
1:02:25
Speaker 1: getting disbarred, maybe getting you know, sanctioned by the court
1:02:30
Speaker 1: for lying to the court, for lying to a grand jury. Right,
1:02:34
Speaker 1: and she wouldn't do it right. She's she's an experienced
1:02:39
Speaker 1: government prosecutor, so she knows the rules and she didn't
1:02:43
Speaker 1: want to risk it. It's exactly why Pam Bondi is
1:02:45
Speaker 1: not Attorney General anymore. There were things she wouldn't do that.
1:02:48
Speaker 1: Todd Blant said, Okay, I'll do it. You know. Donald
1:02:54
Speaker 1: Trump said she choked. Sure, Pierro choked. She choked on reality.
1:03:00
Speaker 1: Now you gotta look at it from Trump's perspective. Trump
1:03:02
Speaker 1: has no respect any for the law at all. Right,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: this is a guy who regularly files frivolous lawsuits and
1:03:09
Speaker 1: who believes any charges against him are frivolous, so of
1:03:13
Speaker 1: course he would. He sort of conflates a civil suit
1:03:16
Speaker 1: that you just throw out there just to keep lawyers busy,
1:03:22
Speaker 1: and a you know, maybe a criminal indictment or a
1:03:25
Speaker 1: potential criminal indictment. He doesn't care that there were the
1:03:30
Speaker 1: facts didn't meet, that didn't match the indictment that they
1:03:33
Speaker 1: were trying to seek against this former olympian. He just
1:03:37
Speaker 1: wanted the headline. He doesn't care if the indictment doesn't stick.
1:03:43
Speaker 1: He doesn't care if the charges eventually get dismissed. He
1:03:46
Speaker 1: just wants the indictment so he can say he got
1:03:49
Speaker 1: an indictment. And I do wonder if his obsession over
1:03:54
Speaker 1: this and why he's so angry at Puro is because
1:03:58
Speaker 1: he's lost control of everything else in his presidency. Right
1:04:03
Speaker 1: because it looks like the United States is going to
1:04:04
Speaker 1: accept an outcome in the straight off hor move. Then
1:04:07
Speaker 1: let's be plain and simple about it. Means Iran won
1:04:10
Speaker 1: this war strategically the straight, which is where this whole
1:04:14
Speaker 1: thing started. We didn't have a problem with the straight.
1:04:17
Speaker 1: The straight was fully navigable before this war of choice
1:04:23
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump. And if you suddenly now are essentially
1:04:29
Speaker 1: surrendering control of the Strait to the Iranians, then you
1:04:34
Speaker 1: have lost ground. Does it mean we lost the war?
1:04:43
Speaker 1: We certainly didn't win anything, did we? Who won? Who's surrendering?
1:04:50
Speaker 1: How desperate is Donald Trump to get out of this war? Fine,
1:04:53
Speaker 1: let the Iranians control the straight think about that. By
1:04:59
Speaker 1: the way, his words in Iran right completely meaningless, And
1:05:02
Speaker 1: if you've noticed right, nobody takes any of his words
1:05:05
Speaker 1: seriously except Wall Street, who wants to make positive bets
1:05:08
Speaker 1: on it. So who knows, I know, is a deal
1:05:12
Speaker 1: coming in the next hour? Are you going to get
1:05:14
Speaker 1: this breaking news alert from my friends at Axios who
1:05:17
Speaker 1: have sources that are telling him something is coming, Which,
1:05:19
Speaker 1: by the way, I don't think they're making stuff up.
1:05:22
Speaker 1: This is what their sources are out there telling. And
1:05:25
Speaker 1: I don't criticize other news organizations for reporting what they've
1:05:30
Speaker 1: learned from the administration. But I think at times what
1:05:35
Speaker 1: the administration puts out there is hopefulness, not reality, and
1:05:42
Speaker 1: that may be why the deal is coming any second now,
1:05:45
Speaker 1: and I think that's why nobody listens anymore. But here's
1:05:49
Speaker 1: what we do know. Donald Trump has no interest in
1:05:52
Speaker 1: trying to escalate this war. And I have to tell
1:05:54
Speaker 1: you it's something I've said before. We should be thankful
1:05:57
Speaker 1: for that, because he doesn't know how to manage war.
1:06:01
Speaker 1: And if he did decide to escalate, at the possibility
1:06:07
Speaker 1: that this spirals into something a lot more global than
1:06:11
Speaker 1: it should be is much higher risk than I think
1:06:15
Speaker 1: we all appreciate. And if you listen back a couple
1:06:17
Speaker 1: of podcasts ago, already we have thirty countries sort of
1:06:22
Speaker 1: already kind of that has been touched by this war.
1:06:25
Speaker 1: As it is. The ability for this to get out
1:06:28
Speaker 1: of control if we somehow escalated with ground troops and
1:06:30
Speaker 1: all this now I've brought up, you know it sort
1:06:34
Speaker 1: of If Trump wants to win anything in this, his
1:06:36
Speaker 1: only choice as ground troops, and that's a losing strategy.
1:06:41
Speaker 1: So at this point, the question is do you want
1:06:45
Speaker 1: to be completely humiliated or just somewhat humiliated and handing
1:06:50
Speaker 1: temporary control of the strait? I think Trump has decided
1:06:53
Speaker 1: to at least only somewhat humiliating. But what do you do?
1:06:58
Speaker 1: This is why be so angry and focused on the
1:07:01
Speaker 1: reflecting pool because he's lost control. Right, when a man
1:07:07
Speaker 1: loses grip on things that matter, you tighten the grip
1:07:12
Speaker 1: on the things that don't matter but that you think
1:07:15
Speaker 1: you can control. It's not just a Trump observation. That's
1:07:19
Speaker 1: a human observation. You've probably seen it in your own family.
1:07:22
Speaker 1: When things get out of control for somebody in crisis,
1:07:25
Speaker 1: they cling to something they think they have control over.
1:07:29
Speaker 1: So you may think it's ridiculous that the President of
1:07:31
Speaker 1: the United States is more focused on pool Liner than
1:07:35
Speaker 1: on Iran. But it's not ridiculous. It's diagnostic. This is
1:07:41
Speaker 1: his form of bizarre therapy. And here's the other tell
1:07:44
Speaker 1: from this week. He also had an endorsed candidate who lost.
1:07:50
Speaker 1: So he's now realizing and he's facing this idea that
1:07:55
Speaker 1: Republican voters, you know, are not is his grip on
1:08:00
Speaker 1: them is not as tight as it once was. His
1:08:03
Speaker 1: poll ratings continue to go downward. And you know, we
1:08:07
Speaker 1: had a terrible economic report right the economy, the growth,
1:08:11
Speaker 1: the growth has slowed down to a trickle. We just
1:08:14
Speaker 1: got a we just got a new report from the
1:08:20
Speaker 1: Cato Institute about just how much the tariffs have cost
1:08:25
Speaker 1: America in foreign tourism, at least a billion dollars a week.
1:08:29
Speaker 1: They asked to me, think about that. Trump's Liberation Day
1:08:33
Speaker 1: last April costs the American economy a billion dollars a week,
1:08:38
Speaker 1: just in the tourist industry. Just ask our friends in Vegas,
1:08:42
Speaker 1: they missed the Canadian visitors. Ask our friends in Orlando,
1:08:46
Speaker 1: they missed the Canadian visitors. And as I said recently,
1:08:49
Speaker 1: when I happened to spend a little bit of time
1:08:51
Speaker 1: in the Bahamas over the last winter holidays, I ran
1:08:55
Speaker 1: into a ton of Canadians who loudly and has said,
1:09:01
Speaker 1: we're here because we don't want to spend our money
1:09:03
Speaker 1: in America. So with that, let's sneak at a break,
1:09:07
Speaker 1: and when we come back by conversation with Michael Russell
1:09:10
Speaker 1: Gunn about a time in our politics, at our diplomacy
1:09:17
Speaker 1: where America was universally seen as the good guys. And
1:09:23
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I'm nostalgic for those days.
1:09:28
Speaker 1: All right, let's sneak at a break and the interview
1:09:30
Speaker 1: on the other side. Well, as many of you know,
1:09:42
Speaker 1: one of my favorite sort of debates is this idea
1:09:46
Speaker 1: of when is the perfect time to revisit an historical event?
1:09:52
Speaker 1: And what do I mean by that is, which is
1:09:53
Speaker 1: that you can get to a point where it's too soon,
1:09:56
Speaker 1: where there are too many people who maybe have their
1:09:58
Speaker 1: own who aren't ready to tell the full story, aren't
1:10:01
Speaker 1: ready to tell everything they know because maybe they're protecting
1:10:04
Speaker 1: future job prospects, maybe they're protecting politics, whatever it is.
1:10:07
Speaker 1: And then there's that sweet spot where you're past the
1:10:11
Speaker 1: sort of political part of things, but people are there's
1:10:14
Speaker 1: still enough people alive that have first person accounts. So
1:10:17
Speaker 1: it's somewhere, I think, in the various conversations I've had
1:10:21
Speaker 1: with historians, somewhere between twenty five and forty years is
1:10:25
Speaker 1: sometimes you can get the perfect window. I say this
1:10:30
Speaker 1: because my next guest, Michael Russell Gunn, is about to
1:10:34
Speaker 1: debut a terrific movie. That is, it's not a documentary,
1:10:40
Speaker 1: this is a I think a certainly a I would
1:10:44
Speaker 1: call it dramatic account of basically the last meetings between
1:10:50
Speaker 1: Reagan and Gorbachev. And when you look back in hindsight,
1:10:54
Speaker 1: here were two men, in their own ways, at the
1:10:57
Speaker 1: sunset of their political careers, at the sunset of their
1:10:59
Speaker 1: political influence. And it starts with Rekuvek and that nuclear summit,
1:11:04
Speaker 1: and it gets into a couple of others. Michael Russell
1:11:06
Speaker 1: Gunn is both the director, the writer and my guest
1:11:10
Speaker 1: right now, and he is tackling this historical event which
1:11:14
Speaker 1: at this point, let me do my math. Here were
1:11:17
Speaker 1: forty years and I do October, Yes, I and I
1:11:21
Speaker 1: do it. Let me start there. You've been researching this
1:11:25
Speaker 1: idea for a while, thinking about how you would put
1:11:28
Speaker 1: this into a major motion picture, which you'll be doing
1:11:31
Speaker 1: August fourteenth, so mark your calendars on that. What do
1:11:37
Speaker 1: you believe is the ideal sort of when you know,
1:11:40
Speaker 1: I think about you know, people are going to compare
1:11:42
Speaker 1: this to thirteen days, you know, the Cuban missile crisis movie,
1:11:45
Speaker 1: for instance, is probably the probably the best comparative. I mean,
1:11:50
Speaker 1: I'm curious. You probably have your own, your own movies
1:11:53
Speaker 1: that you'd like to see this compared to. And when
1:11:56
Speaker 1: that was made, we were in the approximately forty year window,
1:12:00
Speaker 1: there were still people alive who were there, et cetera.
1:12:05
Speaker 1: What's your sense do you feel like you now have
1:12:07
Speaker 1: the complete story? You've been You have every transcript you
1:12:10
Speaker 1: could find, You interviewed first person accounts George Schultz before
1:12:13
Speaker 1: he died. What say you do you feel like you
1:12:16
Speaker 1: have the complete story now of these nuclear summits? Of
1:12:21
Speaker 1: the second Reagan second term. Well, boy, I hope I
1:12:26
Speaker 1: have a certainly a story, Chuck. I mean I think
1:12:29
Speaker 1: that the complete story, Boy, I need like a mini series,
1:12:32
Speaker 1: a limited series. We'll have to talk to HBO.
1:12:34
Speaker 2: But I think that this film, I think encapsulates the
1:12:40
Speaker 2: turning point in the Reagan and Norwich off legacy, I think.
1:12:44
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that was most shocking to me
1:12:46
Speaker 2: when I started the research it. Like you said, it
1:12:48
Speaker 2: went on for years and years, went down a rabbit
1:12:51
Speaker 2: hole with George Schultz, you know, who's very generous with
1:12:53
Speaker 2: his time, and I think, you know, what surprised me
1:12:56
Speaker 2: was that it had never really occurred to me that
1:13:00
Speaker 2: two leaders would get in the room without their staffs
1:13:03
Speaker 2: and without the press and with all all these things
1:13:05
Speaker 2: and just have a conversation for two days. You know,
1:13:08
Speaker 2: they talked for that long, and I think it built
1:13:11
Speaker 2: the trust and the friendship that then led to everything else.
1:13:15
Speaker 2: So I think that's the really shocking and dramatic thing
1:13:18
Speaker 2: to me about the film. And I think that the
1:13:20
Speaker 2: rest of it, everything else that flowed from that, the
1:13:22
Speaker 2: Washington Summit, you know, Geneva, all these other you know
1:13:26
Speaker 2: summits that they had all were basically encapsulated in that
1:13:30
Speaker 2: relationship form.
1:13:31
Speaker 1: And Ricky Dick all right, so we just did our teaser.
1:13:35
Speaker 1: Now let's bring people back to the subject at hand. Yeah,
1:13:39
Speaker 1: So this is a movie. It's called Brink of War.
1:13:41
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest the movie title didn't I think
1:13:45
Speaker 1: back to Rekivic, I think back to and this was
1:13:48
Speaker 1: my own coming of age of paying attention to politics.
1:13:51
Speaker 1: This was around this time I became sort of becoming
1:13:54
Speaker 1: obsessed with it. My memory of it wasn't that this
1:13:58
Speaker 1: was a do or die moment in that it felt
1:14:01
Speaker 1: more like and I, like I said, I grew up.
1:14:05
Speaker 1: I grew up in a household big fans of Reagan.
1:14:07
Speaker 1: My dad was a huge fan of Reagan. And I
1:14:09
Speaker 1: think it's certainly my memory of it is this is
1:14:12
Speaker 1: his second term legacy achievement. He wanted to do this.
1:14:16
Speaker 1: That's my memory of all of this. Yeah, And what
1:14:20
Speaker 1: I think we what I'm guessing I misremember, is the
1:14:26
Speaker 1: perception of weakness or strength with Gorbacheff in that moment.
1:14:30
Speaker 1: Where were we in the Peristroika timeline? Yeah, so taking
1:14:34
Speaker 1: me back to where this movie is.
1:14:36
Speaker 2: So there, you know, there's obviously a bunch of different
1:14:38
Speaker 2: You mentioned thirteen Days, you know, the Cuban missile crisis
1:14:42
Speaker 2: and things like that, and Able Archer in eighty three
1:14:46
Speaker 2: obviously a huge dangerous moment where we misunderstood what their
1:14:51
Speaker 2: intentions were, they misunderstood ours.
1:14:53
Speaker 1: That was a real like yeah, I mean, and it's
1:14:55
Speaker 1: a crazy story, you know, basically a couple of just
1:14:59
Speaker 1: mid level people going, I don't know if this is real? Now, yeah,
1:15:03
Speaker 1: it would, I mean.
1:15:03
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the things that I think
1:15:06
Speaker 2: is a legacy of the Cold War, and to me now,
1:15:09
Speaker 2: especially now looking back on it, that's quite frightening is
1:15:12
Speaker 2: how many times we were saved by relatively junior people,
1:15:17
Speaker 2: you know, Able Larger being the perfect example. This wasn't
1:15:19
Speaker 2: like we picked up the red phone, you know, in
1:15:21
Speaker 2: the open office and we you know, this was a
1:15:24
Speaker 2: couple of dudes at the lower level who were like,
1:15:27
Speaker 2: this doesn't sound right. I don't think America is actually
1:15:29
Speaker 2: going to attack us, you know, or whatever. And you know, so,
1:15:33
Speaker 2: I think the one of the legacies of the Cold
1:15:35
Speaker 2: War and that we have all kind of collectively forgotten it.
1:15:38
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I wanted to.
1:15:39
Speaker 2: Make this film was because you know, at time and
1:15:46
Speaker 2: again we came this close to armageddon. And so what
1:15:50
Speaker 2: was going on in eighty six when they when Reagan
1:15:52
Speaker 2: and Gorbachev met, was all these Soviet premiers had died
1:15:57
Speaker 2: before Reagan could meet them, could meet them. They were
1:15:59
Speaker 2: all older, they passed away before we could meet them.
1:16:01
Speaker 2: And remember, I don't know you remember, but people of
1:16:04
Speaker 2: a certain age will remember. It was like, hey, they're
1:16:06
Speaker 2: playing classical music in Moscow. It must mean somebody died.
1:16:12
Speaker 2: Like that used to be this signal. You're like, wells
1:16:14
Speaker 2: and drop off dead is left dead? Well, they're playing
1:16:18
Speaker 2: classical music. So the assumption is, yes, that that was
1:16:21
Speaker 2: my memory of those days. Well, you know it just
1:16:26
Speaker 2: well and this happened but three times, I think, you know,
1:16:29
Speaker 2: just and you know since in nineteen eighty and so
1:16:31
Speaker 2: he so he had been wanting to meet and by
1:16:34
Speaker 2: the way, we had the old president living there, right, Yes,
1:16:38
Speaker 2: And I think that was a piece of it. I think,
1:16:41
Speaker 2: you know, you know, cort Shop was reallyatile to young.
1:16:43
Speaker 2: You know, we all think think of him as older.
1:16:44
Speaker 2: At least certainly I do, because I didn't grow up
1:16:47
Speaker 2: in that era as much, and so I think of
1:16:49
Speaker 2: him and I think the old guy, and you know,
1:16:52
Speaker 2: the guy who's Michael.
1:16:53
Speaker 1: I will tell you that he was the first. Look,
1:16:55
Speaker 1: he's the first one I remember. You know, Look, we're
1:16:58
Speaker 1: all I'm I will confess to having a lot my
1:17:03
Speaker 1: father having been very influential on me. But I remember
1:17:05
Speaker 1: him being a little nervous about Gorbachev because he say, oh,
1:17:08
Speaker 1: he's the first one without a memory of World War Two.
1:17:10
Speaker 1: Like I remember, you know, my father was of this
1:17:13
Speaker 1: belief that the Soviet leaders that have memories of World
1:17:17
Speaker 1: War Two and the slaughter and the importance the Americans
1:17:20
Speaker 1: had that, like there was always a level of comfort.
1:17:23
Speaker 1: They're not they know how bad war was. The Russians,
1:17:25
Speaker 1: the Soviets experienced the worst part of World War Two,
1:17:29
Speaker 1: and so there was this comfort. And here was Gorbachev,
1:17:32
Speaker 1: a young leader, and you were like, he didn't have
1:17:35
Speaker 1: the memory of World War Two that these older leaders had.
1:17:38
Speaker 1: So you're right, we now think of Gorbachev as this
1:17:43
Speaker 1: as this you know glassnow spats strike those things, and
1:17:47
Speaker 1: instead at the time, there was a lot of uncertainty
1:17:49
Speaker 1: and a little bit of nervousness or were we gonna
1:17:51
Speaker 1: have a young buck is he going to frankly, everything
1:17:55
Speaker 1: that Putin is is was the fear that Gorbachev could
1:17:58
Speaker 1: be I.
1:17:59
Speaker 2: Think I think that's one hundred percent right. I think
1:18:01
Speaker 2: we view him now through the lens of history, especially
1:18:03
Speaker 2: in the West. Is this saint correct? And nobody really
1:18:06
Speaker 2: knew he was young that you know, the Soviet system
1:18:10
Speaker 2: was a closed box, so we didn't have the intelligence.
1:18:13
Speaker 1: The usual for somebody this young to suddenly get in line,
1:18:17
Speaker 1: but they they were tired of leaders dying, and that was.
1:18:22
Speaker 2: And I think he also came from a little bit
1:18:25
Speaker 2: outside of the you know, he came from the agricultural world.
1:18:29
Speaker 2: He came from you know, he was, you know, famously
1:18:32
Speaker 2: and you know, working to increase agricultural output and things
1:18:35
Speaker 2: like that. And I think, you know, to your point
1:18:37
Speaker 2: about this kind of last living memory of the Great
1:18:41
Speaker 2: Patriotic War, right as they called it, they lose twenty
1:18:43
Speaker 2: million people, that he brought the last Soviet marshal to
1:18:49
Speaker 2: rickyvic Akramayoff to do the overnight negotiation. So we depict
1:18:53
Speaker 2: in the film, you know, the Americans, you know, Paul
1:18:56
Speaker 2: Knitzi and cannatam on, some of these lions of American
1:18:59
Speaker 2: foreign policy. He comes into the room and they're all,
1:19:02
Speaker 2: they're all stupefied to see him. It's imagine if we
1:19:05
Speaker 2: brought our joint chiefs of staff, you know, Chairman and
1:19:08
Speaker 2: joint chiefs of staff to this negotiation and they're all
1:19:10
Speaker 2: looking at each other like who is going to lead
1:19:13
Speaker 2: this thing now that we're going to engage with this guy.
1:19:16
Speaker 2: But you know, this is one I'm speaking now as
1:19:19
Speaker 2: a filmmaker that you know, one of the devastating things
1:19:21
Speaker 2: to me as a filmmakers. You've got to sometimes you
1:19:23
Speaker 2: gotta make cuts, chuck, And one of the things that
1:19:25
Speaker 2: I had to cut for time was this incredible thing
1:19:28
Speaker 2: that happened overnight between Akromayev and Nitsi where Akramyov talks
1:19:34
Speaker 2: about exactly what you're saying, which is, I'm the last
1:19:38
Speaker 2: general in the General Staff the Soviet Army that remembers
1:19:41
Speaker 2: World War Two, and so he says that his connection
1:19:44
Speaker 2: to Gorbachev is because Gorbachev wants to change and engage
1:19:49
Speaker 2: in a way that they haven't, and so that it's
1:19:51
Speaker 2: a really powerful moment, and it was powerful in the
1:19:54
Speaker 2: true history. I wish that we didn't have to cut it,
1:19:56
Speaker 2: but I think your your point is well taken that
1:20:00
Speaker 2: that you know, nobody really knew, and there were a
1:20:02
Speaker 2: lot of hardliners that were on the other side of Gorbachev,
1:20:05
Speaker 2: and we didn't know that either. We didn't know that
1:20:07
Speaker 2: years later there'd be a coup against him, that we
1:20:10
Speaker 2: didn't know how much pressure he was under. But the
1:20:12
Speaker 2: Red Army was absolutely saying this program that Reagan wants,
1:20:17
Speaker 2: this SDI thing, we're gonna have to go to war
1:20:19
Speaker 2: to stop it, and so you better figure it out
1:20:21
Speaker 2: or we're going to get rid of you and then
1:20:23
Speaker 2: we're going to attack.
1:20:24
Speaker 1: You know. The thing that we always forget, and that's
1:20:27
Speaker 1: why it's great when someone like yourself who tackles something
1:20:30
Speaker 1: through historical lenses is that it's to We're not the
1:20:36
Speaker 1: only society that's divided politically every entity, you know, we
1:20:41
Speaker 1: you know, we always paint our adversaries as if boy,
1:20:45
Speaker 1: they have unit beliefs, you know, the Chinese, even the
1:20:49
Speaker 1: Russians now and it's like, oh no, and or the Iranians,
1:20:52
Speaker 1: as we're coming to find out, right, you know, every
1:20:55
Speaker 1: society has its moderates. You know, maybe they they're still
1:20:58
Speaker 1: radical looking in comparison, but every society is it's moderates,
1:21:03
Speaker 1: it's hard liners, and somewhere in between.
1:21:05
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, you look at what g is doing
1:21:08
Speaker 2: right now. It seems like every week he wipes somebody
1:21:10
Speaker 2: else out of the pollen bureau or the you know,
1:21:13
Speaker 2: the Chinese military structure, and it's.
1:21:15
Speaker 1: I think we ought to be a little more concerned
1:21:17
Speaker 1: about what's happening over there than we are. Considering when
1:21:19
Speaker 1: you see a leader purging that is, that's always a nervousness.
1:21:25
Speaker 2: A hundred percent agree I I you know, he's surrounding
1:21:29
Speaker 2: himself with who knows, you know, or just not having
1:21:32
Speaker 2: not feeling positions at all. It's it's it's eerie to watch.
1:21:37
Speaker 1: So eighty six is the recum gets considered a failure
1:21:41
Speaker 1: and a success, right, Yes, that's very well said.
1:21:45
Speaker 2: I think you know, the thing that was quite striking
1:21:48
Speaker 2: when I went to talk to Schultz was that, you know,
1:21:53
Speaker 2: it was us, It was the Americans who misunderstood Ricky Bay.
1:21:57
Speaker 2: It was we that thought it was the failure. And
1:21:59
Speaker 2: that that was very humbling, I think in a kind
1:22:02
Speaker 2: of beautiful way to Schultz, because you know, they have
1:22:07
Speaker 2: this agreement. It's a you know, crazy true story. I
1:22:11
Speaker 2: hope your listeners go out and see it. It's they have.
1:22:14
Speaker 2: They have a deal at one point to get rid
1:22:16
Speaker 2: of every nuclear weapon on Earth, and it falls apart
1:22:19
Speaker 2: over one word. And you know, to find out the
1:22:23
Speaker 2: one word, Jackie, you got to go to the theater
1:22:24
Speaker 2: and I go. But you know, it's this crazy deal.
1:22:29
Speaker 2: It falls apart, and Schultz and Reagan think, oh, this
1:22:33
Speaker 2: was it, this was the this was the greatest deal
1:22:35
Speaker 2: we're ever going to have. And it's a failure. So
1:22:38
Speaker 2: the Americans think, oh, wait a second, it's a failure.
1:22:41
Speaker 2: But Gorbachev and the Soviets. Gorbachev immediately goes and does
1:22:45
Speaker 2: a press conference in Russian where he says, this was
1:22:48
Speaker 2: great we did and.
1:22:50
Speaker 1: We had a great talk.
1:22:52
Speaker 2: And even years later, you know, Schultz gets back to Washington,
1:22:55
Speaker 2: he starts to you know, come around and realize something
1:22:58
Speaker 2: was really made in Ricky Big and then there's the
1:23:01
Speaker 2: narrative starts to turn. But even fully he doesn't understand
1:23:05
Speaker 2: it so much so that years later the wall falls.
1:23:08
Speaker 2: Gorbachev comes out to Stanford and he said, when we met,
1:23:11
Speaker 2: it was at his coldest point, and then three years
1:23:13
Speaker 2: later it was over.
1:23:14
Speaker 1: What happened?
1:23:15
Speaker 2: And Gorbachov just answers him one word. He just says
1:23:17
Speaker 2: Ricky Pick And I think that goes to the fact
1:23:20
Speaker 2: that they got in a room together, they formed a relationship.
1:23:24
Speaker 2: They realized they could trust because it takes two to tango, right.
1:23:29
Speaker 2: You can't just say you get one, you gotta have both.
1:23:33
Speaker 2: And they figured out a way to build a relationship
1:23:35
Speaker 2: that led to the end of the Cold War. And
1:23:36
Speaker 2: I think it's profound. I think it's to me as
1:23:39
Speaker 2: a as a history undergrad, you know, just a young
1:23:42
Speaker 2: history undergrad. You know, it's shocking that I didn't know
1:23:46
Speaker 2: about this. It's one of the biggest diplomatic achievements in history.
1:23:50
Speaker 2: To me, now looking back on it.
1:23:53
Speaker 1: Did we we considered it a failure because we didn't get
1:23:56
Speaker 1: a deal and were they coming because they were just
1:23:59
Speaker 1: they viewed it as they viewed it as step one,
1:24:03
Speaker 1: and we went in there thinking of a five step
1:24:05
Speaker 1: process and we were thinking we were at step five already.
1:24:08
Speaker 1: Is that the miscommunication? Basically, I think it's. I think
1:24:11
Speaker 1: it's that.
1:24:11
Speaker 2: I also think it's the American tendency to think of
1:24:15
Speaker 2: things in game theory. I think, you know, one of
1:24:17
Speaker 2: the things that was most striking to me was Jared Harris,
1:24:20
Speaker 2: British actor plays Gorbachev and he came in and he's
1:24:25
Speaker 2: you know, he's ultra prepared. You know, his performance is
1:24:28
Speaker 2: obviously incredible, but he comes in he's read every transcript,
1:24:30
Speaker 2: he's read all the books. He obviously's memorized the script,
1:24:33
Speaker 2: and he's off book with the script. But one of
1:24:35
Speaker 2: the first things he said to me was he's like,
1:24:38
Speaker 2: you Americans, he said, you know, you're always talking in
1:24:41
Speaker 2: sports terms, right. He reads all the you know, the
1:24:44
Speaker 2: commentary that the advisors are making, and he's like, they're
1:24:47
Speaker 2: all talking about you know, Gorbachev came to play.
1:24:49
Speaker 1: That's a line we put in the film.
1:24:51
Speaker 2: He's like, you know, they're always talking in sports analogies,
1:24:54
Speaker 2: and he's like, it's almost you thought that he's either
1:24:57
Speaker 2: win or lose. And from Gorbachev's PERSPECTI from the Soviet perspective,
1:25:01
Speaker 2: like you said, this was one point on a arc
1:25:05
Speaker 2: that they were trying to accomplish and a thing that's
1:25:08
Speaker 2: really profound. I also think it's profound from Grbachok's perspective,
1:25:11
Speaker 2: because that's why he goes into a press conference and says,
1:25:14
Speaker 2: for the KGB to hear, for the Red Army to hear,
1:25:17
Speaker 2: we had a great meeting.
1:25:18
Speaker 1: It was great. Don't worry, We're going to figure it out.
1:25:32
Speaker 1: Does this movie get made if you don't have those
1:25:34
Speaker 1: transcripts of Reagan and Gorbachek, it's just.
1:25:39
Speaker 2: Much hard would have been a hell of a lot
1:25:40
Speaker 2: harder to write the script. I can tell you that much.
1:25:42
Speaker 1: I think.
1:25:42
Speaker 2: Does it get made? You know, it takes a lot
1:25:44
Speaker 2: to make a movie. I would say that certainly. Being
1:25:47
Speaker 2: able to point to those and say to the cast,
1:25:50
Speaker 2: to the financiers, this is real. You know we're not
1:25:53
Speaker 2: making this up. You know it's it's real, I think
1:25:57
Speaker 2: certainly that helps.
1:25:58
Speaker 1: I think about Oppenheimer and how Nolan did such a
1:26:01
Speaker 1: great job of turning a transcript, yes, into this dramatic
1:26:06
Speaker 1: you know, arguably it was the backbone of the entire movie. Yes,
1:26:10
Speaker 1: and it is a committee transcript. And I remember I
1:26:13
Speaker 1: interviewed Nolan for that and how important it was that,
1:26:17
Speaker 1: you know, as great as the Ki Bird book was,
1:26:19
Speaker 1: that he based it off of the book, did not
1:26:22
Speaker 1: have this transcript. Yes, right, this was different. Tell me
1:26:26
Speaker 1: about getting this transcript and when I don't Is this
1:26:30
Speaker 1: something that has was released about a decade ago? When
1:26:33
Speaker 1: did when did this become available. Yeah.
1:26:36
Speaker 2: So, I mean, well, thank you for referencing Nolan Oppenhegger
1:26:39
Speaker 2: because that was that's maybe one of my maybe my
1:26:42
Speaker 2: favorite film of his impact.
1:26:43
Speaker 1: I will tell you we've you know missus podcast that
1:26:46
Speaker 1: I have seen them both how to see it and look,
1:26:49
Speaker 1: the Odyssey is terrific. It's great. Oppenheimer was much harder
1:26:54
Speaker 1: to do what he did. It's a greater achievement to create,
1:26:59
Speaker 1: to do what he did with that material. The Odyssey. Hey,
1:27:03
Speaker 1: it gave you great material you had you know how
1:27:05
Speaker 1: to execute. And I say this with no dis it
1:27:08
Speaker 1: was amazing with Oppenheimer in some way. When you think
1:27:12
Speaker 1: about the the level of difficulty to turn that into
1:27:18
Speaker 1: major cultural touchstone, right, you know that's not easy. I
1:27:23
Speaker 1: totally agree with you.
1:27:24
Speaker 2: It's such an it's it's such an engagement in the
1:27:26
Speaker 2: material that you can't imagine in the true history. And
1:27:30
Speaker 2: so I think, yeah, I mean, so to answer your
1:27:34
Speaker 2: question about Ricky Vic and the transfers there, you know
1:27:37
Speaker 2: what happened to me was I had written a different project.
1:27:41
Speaker 2: It was a book that had optioned from former sectif
1:27:44
Speaker 2: Ash Carter and Bill Perry, and unfortunately that project didn't
1:27:48
Speaker 2: work out.
1:27:49
Speaker 1: It was on nukes right their books. It was also
1:27:52
Speaker 1: it was about the non Lugar Amendment.
1:27:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you know, I was really disappointed, and
1:27:57
Speaker 2: I you know, that was about you know, Sam, Sam
1:28:00
Speaker 2: and Dick Luger, a Republican and a Democrat. I wanted
1:28:03
Speaker 2: to do a story about us coming together. You know,
1:28:05
Speaker 2: I think we've gotten so darn good at yelling at
1:28:08
Speaker 2: one another that we've gotten how to talk to one another.
1:28:10
Speaker 2: And I think that I wanted to do a story
1:28:12
Speaker 2: about coming together. That didn't work out. Participant bought it.
1:28:14
Speaker 2: It went away, a very Hollywood story. And so then
1:28:19
Speaker 2: I was talking. I was lamenting this to Bill Perry,
1:28:21
Speaker 2: and you know, very generously, he said, oh, you got
1:28:23
Speaker 2: to come up to the Hoover Institute in Stanford and
1:28:26
Speaker 2: talk to George Schultz. And so I said, well, I'm
1:28:28
Speaker 2: not going to turn that down, you know, another one
1:28:30
Speaker 2: hundred percent of American foreign policy. And so I went
1:28:33
Speaker 2: up and met Schultz and he was very grandfatherly.
1:28:36
Speaker 1: You know.
1:28:36
Speaker 2: He showed me around and he he takes me in
1:28:39
Speaker 2: this conference room and he shows me this oil.
1:28:41
Speaker 1: Tell me when this was just give me a time space.
1:28:43
Speaker 1: This is this is the team about nine years ago.
1:28:47
Speaker 1: Now okay, yeah, I'm doing the math in my head.
1:28:49
Speaker 1: It's probably probably nine years ago. Yeah, and he was
1:28:51
Speaker 1: in the middle of he had a cooperative biography being
1:28:54
Speaker 1: done with him too, so he was in a you know,
1:28:56
Speaker 1: everything you hear about him, he was very being, very generous.
1:28:58
Speaker 1: He wanted to tell his story. He was he wanted
1:29:00
Speaker 1: to tell he was. He wasn't keeping anything secret anymore. Yeah,
1:29:03
Speaker 1: not at all. He's very reflective in that time.
1:29:06
Speaker 2: And he he came, you know, he brought me to
1:29:09
Speaker 2: the conference room and there's this oil painting I think
1:29:11
Speaker 2: it's oil of the Rikivick room Reagan and garbigehop sanding
1:29:15
Speaker 2: and across from another. And you know, as a filmmaker,
1:29:19
Speaker 2: I was struck by that visual that here's these two
1:29:22
Speaker 2: people in a room, a tiny, tiny room in Iceland.
1:29:25
Speaker 2: He started to tell the story and I just fascinated.
1:29:27
Speaker 2: I went back to see him again and he you know,
1:29:30
Speaker 2: you know, I told you he was grandfatherly to me,
1:29:32
Speaker 2: but he you know, I had a very very young
1:29:34
Speaker 2: baby at the time, and he was like, well, how
1:29:36
Speaker 2: are you going to how are you going to do this?
1:29:38
Speaker 2: How are you going to make money while you write
1:29:39
Speaker 2: this movie? Like he didn't believe me. In his economics background,
1:29:43
Speaker 2: He's like, go home and talk to your wife, you know,
1:29:45
Speaker 2: go home and talk to her, and if she says
1:29:46
Speaker 2: it's okay, then we'll do it. So I go home.
1:29:48
Speaker 2: I call him back and I said, yeah, I s
1:29:49
Speaker 2: don't want to do it. So he brings me back
1:29:51
Speaker 2: and he gives me, you know, hand scribbled on copies
1:29:57
Speaker 2: of the transcripts still stamp classified, and he gives them
1:30:02
Speaker 2: to me.
1:30:03
Speaker 1: And they were those still classified at the time, or
1:30:05
Speaker 1: had they been classified.
1:30:08
Speaker 2: They certainly he was very very you know, uh strict
1:30:12
Speaker 2: about you know, with himself and all that stuff. I
1:30:13
Speaker 2: can't imagine they were still classified, but you know, they
1:30:16
Speaker 2: but I don't know when they were. Now they're online,
1:30:18
Speaker 2: you know, now you can go to the National Security
1:30:21
Speaker 2: Archived website. But at the time they were not when
1:30:23
Speaker 2: you know, they weren't anywhere.
1:30:25
Speaker 1: I couldn't.
1:30:25
Speaker 2: I couldn't find them at all. So he luckily gave
1:30:27
Speaker 2: them to me. And that was the basis of the script.
1:30:29
Speaker 2: You know, the very first scene between Ringing and Gorjov
1:30:31
Speaker 2: is nearly verbatim, you know, from this from this transcript,
1:30:35
Speaker 2: and so you know, just like you were talking about
1:30:37
Speaker 2: with Oppenheimer. Yeah, to bottom line it, the film wouldn't
1:30:42
Speaker 2: exist from a resource standpoint at all.
1:30:45
Speaker 1: With that, I just I love. I mean, to me,
1:30:49
Speaker 1: this is the best use of film. This is like
1:30:51
Speaker 1: it is taking something and you know that this is
1:30:54
Speaker 1: the transcript. Look where this is a dramatized reading of it,
1:30:59
Speaker 1: but the words are not changed. You didn't have to
1:31:01
Speaker 1: be a script writer here. The words are the words.
1:31:06
Speaker 1: So you know, it's interesting on this, which is does
1:31:12
Speaker 1: do personal relationships matter in foreign policy? Right there? This
1:31:16
Speaker 1: I actually think is more There's always been a debate
1:31:20
Speaker 1: about this how personal, how important is that relationship and
1:31:25
Speaker 1: how important is the structure of a country's relationship with
1:31:31
Speaker 1: another country? And is that ultimately matter more than not?
1:31:34
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm guessing coming away from this film,
1:31:39
Speaker 1: the message you're sending is no personal relationships matter, even
1:31:43
Speaker 1: among two superpowers. Yes, I think so.
1:31:48
Speaker 2: I think the thing that I learned was very much
1:31:51
Speaker 2: that I think that I probably came up Like I
1:31:55
Speaker 2: mentioned history undergrad.
1:31:57
Speaker 1: You know, I see I see the.
1:31:58
Speaker 2: Hurricanes, I see the canes the background, chuck, like I
1:32:01
Speaker 2: went to Clemson undergrad. We'll talk about that later different podcasts,
1:32:05
Speaker 2: but you know, I think that I probably came from
1:32:08
Speaker 2: a system's idea, from a historical suite, but you know,
1:32:13
Speaker 2: there was something really profound about these two and their
1:32:18
Speaker 2: willingness to engage. I don't think things change without that.
1:32:22
Speaker 2: And I think that the lesson for me and the
1:32:24
Speaker 2: humbling lesson for me was that just how important that is.
1:32:28
Speaker 2: And so it became this larger theme of the movie,
1:32:32
Speaker 2: which is just that we have to engage with one another.
1:32:35
Speaker 2: If we want to figure our stuff out, We're going
1:32:37
Speaker 2: to have to engage, because we're never all going to agree, right.
1:32:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will tell you this. I just think, you know,
1:32:43
Speaker 1: it's funny the the there's one version of history that
1:32:48
Speaker 1: has always characterized Reagan as a vessel, yeah, rather than
1:32:55
Speaker 1: a leader. And you know when I have read his diaries,
1:33:00
Speaker 1: which that came out in the seventies, you know that recently,
1:33:03
Speaker 1: but it was sort of the things he was thinking
1:33:06
Speaker 1: about as he was preparing to run for president, and
1:33:09
Speaker 1: then stories like this you realized this, you know, there
1:33:12
Speaker 1: there is if if there is been a miss framing
1:33:19
Speaker 1: of a history of a recently historical figure, particularly probably
1:33:23
Speaker 1: in academia, it is it is sort of the discounting
1:33:27
Speaker 1: of Reagan, the intellect, discounting Reagan the sort of the
1:33:33
Speaker 1: true sort of world leader here. And it seems as if,
1:33:37
Speaker 1: I mean, let me put it this way, imagine the
1:33:42
Speaker 1: reaction if we found out Donald Trump and Plutin had
1:33:44
Speaker 1: a one on one without anybody in the room. Yeah,
1:33:47
Speaker 1: it would be shocking, right, I mean, it would be shocking,
1:33:51
Speaker 1: and it'd be nervousness, you know. And I don't think
1:33:54
Speaker 1: there was no I am curious. Was there nervousness on
1:33:57
Speaker 1: both sides of having both these men alone and run?
1:34:01
Speaker 1: I think enormously so.
1:34:03
Speaker 2: I think enormously so, and and and quite frankly, to
1:34:08
Speaker 2: look back, if you imagine if you were, you know,
1:34:11
Speaker 2: sitting in the Pentagon with Chairman of the Joint Chief
1:34:14
Speaker 2: on the Armed Services Committee. You know, you're in the
1:34:17
Speaker 2: Red Army headquarters back in Moscow. You know these guys
1:34:22
Speaker 2: were negotiating one on one, and you didn't have any
1:34:24
Speaker 2: part in that.
1:34:26
Speaker 1: You know.
1:34:26
Speaker 2: I think that there's an enormous kind of concern, I
1:34:30
Speaker 2: guess I would say, and you know it comes up
1:34:33
Speaker 2: in the transcripts that comes up in the film that
1:34:35
Speaker 2: all these different interested parties have this kind of uh
1:34:40
Speaker 2: you know, uh, vested interest, I guess is the word.
1:34:45
Speaker 2: But one of the things that was I think surprising
1:34:49
Speaker 2: at least from your point on the Reagan side of it,
1:34:52
Speaker 2: was it's hard to it is hard to underestimate the
1:34:57
Speaker 2: good will that was born by the American people to him.
1:35:02
Speaker 2: You know, when I looked back, and you know, again,
1:35:05
Speaker 2: I was very very young, but like I didn't know
1:35:08
Speaker 2: he won forty nine and fifty states. You know, when
1:35:11
Speaker 2: I go and read that, I think, wait, a second,
1:35:13
Speaker 2: forty nine and fifty states. That sounds like not just
1:35:16
Speaker 2: another time period, It sounds like an alternate history, you
1:35:19
Speaker 2: know what I mean. And so I think that in
1:35:22
Speaker 2: the same way that Gorbachev existed in a certainly an autocracy,
1:35:28
Speaker 2: if not a dictatorship, he was able to speak in
1:35:31
Speaker 2: one voice. And I think Reagan carried an immense amount
1:35:34
Speaker 2: of good will into Rickuvic and was able to speak no.
1:35:38
Speaker 1: And look, the lack of this gets at too, you
1:35:41
Speaker 1: know that when you when there's no when there's not
1:35:44
Speaker 1: another political campaign, you know, does you know there's this
1:35:48
Speaker 1: famous Obama quote with Medvedev where he's on a hot
1:35:52
Speaker 1: mic and he says, you know, after my reelection I'll
1:35:54
Speaker 1: have more flexibility, which was one of those things you
1:35:58
Speaker 1: never want to have out loud. But what he said
1:36:00
Speaker 1: was absolutely true, like it's true of every American president, Like, hey,
1:36:05
Speaker 1: when set, when I'm when I'm not, when I don't
1:36:07
Speaker 1: have to run again, Yeah, I can take more risk essentially,
1:36:12
Speaker 1: or I can I can you know, have uh, I
1:36:15
Speaker 1: can maybe expand the aperture of the conversation we're going
1:36:18
Speaker 1: to have. And that was Reagan reco wasn't it. And
1:36:22
Speaker 1: it sounded like they wanted a big deal going in.
1:36:24
Speaker 1: They were looking for Now. People do need to remember
1:36:28
Speaker 1: the political environment It wasn't the best domestically at that
1:36:30
Speaker 1: moment for Reagan. You had Iran contra that was sort
1:36:33
Speaker 1: of percolating, you had a political situation that was sort
1:36:39
Speaker 1: of growing. You know, the six Ure itch is a
1:36:41
Speaker 1: real thing in American politics, and we were at the
1:36:43
Speaker 1: secure itch of Reagan. So they did they were looking
1:36:47
Speaker 1: for a political outcome short term.
1:36:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I think they definitely were. And I
1:36:53
Speaker 2: think that I think certainly the people around him were,
1:36:57
Speaker 2: you know, And I think that in the same way
1:36:59
Speaker 2: that on this Soviet side you had you know, you
1:37:03
Speaker 2: had Schever Nazi who supported him, Akromayov, who supported Garbuach.
1:37:06
Speaker 2: If you had those people desperate for a political solution
1:37:09
Speaker 2: to this thing, and they think that there was so
1:37:12
Speaker 2: there were a lot of hopes writing on the on
1:37:14
Speaker 2: the big guy in both cases. And in Reagan's case,
1:37:16
Speaker 2: I think, you know, he I think he was well
1:37:21
Speaker 2: aware of the clock ticking, you know, probably more than
1:37:24
Speaker 2: a lot of people, and they think, you know, so,
1:37:27
Speaker 2: I think there was a lot writing on that and
1:37:29
Speaker 2: there was not just that, I would.
1:37:31
Speaker 1: Say for the whole world.
1:37:32
Speaker 2: You know, that's one of the things that I think
1:37:34
Speaker 2: is underestimated when we talk about Ricky bick is the
1:37:38
Speaker 2: whole world is standing there, you know, watching this door.
1:37:43
Speaker 2: They literally filmed that they called the most famous doorknob
1:37:45
Speaker 2: in the world, but they filmed a doorknob for two
1:37:48
Speaker 2: days because they couldn't get into the room. So you know,
1:37:51
Speaker 2: the whole world's waiting to find out what's going to happen.
1:37:56
Speaker 1: So, I mean, this has always been the question, how
1:37:58
Speaker 1: close who are we to agree to get rid of
1:38:01
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons? It was really one word, very believable. I
1:38:05
Speaker 1: believe it.
1:38:06
Speaker 2: I think we're very close, and I think and I
1:38:09
Speaker 2: think that that this view it comes back to your
1:38:12
Speaker 2: question about the failure.
1:38:13
Speaker 1: Give me for my cynicism. I don't know if I
1:38:14
Speaker 1: believe it, but I mean, you know, sort of make
1:38:17
Speaker 1: the make the case to a cynic like me on this.
1:38:19
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think two things were going on.
1:38:22
Speaker 2: You had the willingness to change on the Soviet side
1:38:25
Speaker 2: for the first time possibly ever. That's number one. I
1:38:29
Speaker 2: think you had a duopoly in global politics. You didn't
1:38:35
Speaker 2: have China, China's expanding its arsenal now you know, you know,
1:38:38
Speaker 2: you didn't have saudiing around all these kind of you know,
1:38:41
Speaker 2: bubbling up crises, and so I think you had a
1:38:45
Speaker 2: structurally a duopoly of a world geopolitically in a lot
1:38:48
Speaker 2: of ways. And you had therefore a lot of pressure
1:38:52
Speaker 2: from those two entities on allies. So you could go
1:38:56
Speaker 2: to the Brits of the French and say, look, if
1:38:58
Speaker 2: we give them up, you got to give them up too.
1:39:01
Speaker 2: And so I think that that moment in history probably
1:39:05
Speaker 2: got us the closest ever. And I would say that
1:39:08
Speaker 2: the success and the bearing out of my argument on
1:39:11
Speaker 2: this would be that we did end up producing them
1:39:14
Speaker 2: by ninety percent. I think if you had told Schultz
1:39:17
Speaker 2: or anybody else in that room. You know, as we
1:39:19
Speaker 2: depict in the film, Schultz opens with this gambit of like,
1:39:22
Speaker 2: let's reduce them thirty percent, and the Soviets immediately come
1:39:25
Speaker 2: back with fifty percent. And it's a shocking moment to
1:39:28
Speaker 2: Reagan into Schultz. And I think that the argument that
1:39:33
Speaker 2: I would make is that this was the moment, if
1:39:35
Speaker 2: ever it was going to happen, this was the moment.
1:39:39
Speaker 1: So tell me about the cash. You talked about Jared
1:39:41
Speaker 1: Harris and just how haired he was. What did Jeff
1:39:45
Speaker 1: Daniels do to become to study Reagan? What we're saying, Well, he.
1:39:49
Speaker 2: Spent months and months working on the accent, you know,
1:39:53
Speaker 2: working on the working through the script. He I mean,
1:39:56
Speaker 2: you know, he's he's obviously spent some time with Sorkin
1:40:00
Speaker 2: s working, you know, kind of we met on the newsroom.
1:40:02
Speaker 2: Jeff and I met on the newsroom.
1:40:04
Speaker 1: Was my hero and mentor.
1:40:06
Speaker 2: So I knew he could do the twelve and fourteen
1:40:08
Speaker 2: page days on set if he had to with the script.
1:40:11
Speaker 2: But he was off book by the time he landed,
1:40:13
Speaker 2: which was incredible, And he spent all this time and
1:40:16
Speaker 2: then spent you know, just like Jared two hours Jared's case,
1:40:20
Speaker 2: three hours a day in the makeup chair to get
1:40:22
Speaker 2: the look right. And you know, part of the part
1:40:26
Speaker 2: of the growing up I think that every filmmaker has
1:40:30
Speaker 2: to go through is learning who you can trust with
1:40:32
Speaker 2: a performance. And you know, with Jeff I my first
1:40:39
Speaker 2: show was the newsroom with him and with Aaron and
1:40:43
Speaker 2: watching him was watching this guy who I knew from
1:40:47
Speaker 2: Dumb and Dumber in Arachnophobia and all these other things.
1:40:50
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't yet skilled in the ways of
1:40:53
Speaker 2: you know, Purple Rise of Cairo and these, you know,
1:40:55
Speaker 2: other films that he had done. And I knew him
1:40:58
Speaker 2: most on the comedic side, but then see him on
1:41:00
Speaker 2: the dramatic side, I was like, this guy can do anything.
1:41:03
Speaker 2: I was like, this guy's incredible. So the first thing
1:41:06
Speaker 2: with Reagan was, you know, does he want to do it?
1:41:09
Speaker 2: I wanted him to do it. Does he want to
1:41:11
Speaker 2: do it? And I think he pulled it off in
1:41:14
Speaker 2: an amazing way. Both of them are incredible to walk.
1:41:25
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, tell.
1:41:26
Speaker 1: Political history is hard to get mainstream actors to participated.
1:41:31
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what I'm most impressed with is
1:41:34
Speaker 1: you came up with a script, You've got clearly sold
1:41:38
Speaker 1: it in such a way that you got mainstream by it.
1:41:42
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm it always, you know, look to me,
1:41:44
Speaker 1: this is educated. This is an opportunity for people to
1:41:47
Speaker 1: get educated. And if you know, I don't. I don't
1:41:49
Speaker 1: want to force people to read the Economist, you know,
1:41:53
Speaker 1: you know that's okay. Everybody learns different ways. We've got
1:41:56
Speaker 1: different methods. And if you learn to be a podcast,
1:41:58
Speaker 1: you learn be a movie. You'll learn to be a documentary.
1:42:01
Speaker 1: I don't care, just learn, just learn history. Yeah, it's
1:42:05
Speaker 1: an accomplished that's an accomplishment all in the mint itself.
1:42:08
Speaker 1: That you were able to get a mainstream budget and
1:42:12
Speaker 1: mainstream actors. And again, this is not easy. It's a
1:42:15
Speaker 1: handful of times that you see this. How'd you pull
1:42:18
Speaker 1: it off? What? What? What was this? Is this? This
1:42:21
Speaker 1: is a big, big win before the movie even gets out. Well,
1:42:25
Speaker 1: thank you, and I agree with you. It is.
1:42:28
Speaker 2: It is huge. It doesn't happen a lot these days.
1:42:31
Speaker 2: The first thing is that that it came with a script.
1:42:34
Speaker 2: You mentioned the transcripts and the script, that it was true.
1:42:37
Speaker 2: The script was you know, as good as I could
1:42:39
Speaker 2: possibly write it. And I think that so that started.
1:42:44
Speaker 2: You know, JK and Jared and Jeff all signed on
1:42:47
Speaker 2: due to the script, and I think the other.
1:42:50
Speaker 1: People is that what you pulled off? I mean, you know,
1:42:52
Speaker 1: you and I have a mutual friend that i've you know,
1:42:55
Speaker 1: like every every every recovering reporter, we all think we
1:42:58
Speaker 1: have a screen player TV idea, so we get real
1:43:01
Speaker 1: writers to help us and and stuff. But I have
1:43:06
Speaker 1: learned that there are various ways. Sometimes you studio says yes,
1:43:09
Speaker 1: or sometimes you get actors to buy in, and then
1:43:11
Speaker 1: you go to the studio. In this case, you got
1:43:13
Speaker 1: the actors first.
1:43:14
Speaker 2: We got the actors in this case went to them
1:43:17
Speaker 2: with the script said you know, I wrote fan letters
1:43:21
Speaker 2: and said please and.
1:43:23
Speaker 1: Take a look.
1:43:24
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, yeah, please take a look.
1:43:26
Speaker 1: I got I know that letter.
1:43:28
Speaker 2: No, yeah, And like, you know, how do you how
1:43:31
Speaker 2: do you feel JK. Simmons about spending a month in
1:43:35
Speaker 2: Iceland for no pay? You know, how do you feel
1:43:37
Speaker 2: about indie movies and the cold and winter? And so
1:43:41
Speaker 2: you know, it's you know, the fun thing I think
1:43:44
Speaker 2: about each one of these guys is that they've been around,
1:43:49
Speaker 2: they've all, they've all, they've seen everything, and so each
1:43:52
Speaker 2: one of them in their own way, I think said
1:43:55
Speaker 2: to me in an individual way. Both JK, Jeff certainly
1:43:57
Speaker 2: and also Jared said they were looking for child don't Yeah,
1:44:01
Speaker 2: they were looking for something to challenge they had.
1:44:02
Speaker 1: Guys are pros. I mean, you know, I think about JK. Simmons,
1:44:06
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's the happy, go lucky guy on
1:44:09
Speaker 1: TV commercials selling insurance or the scary guy on eyes.
1:44:13
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he's just I love the guy.
1:44:16
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny. I I don't remember who came
1:44:20
Speaker 1: up with this expression. I think it's I think I
1:44:22
Speaker 1: heard an actor one say this, which there are two
1:44:24
Speaker 1: types of actors. They're aliens and humans. And JK. Simmons
1:44:28
Speaker 1: is definitely a human. Like he's always JK Simmons, Like
1:44:31
Speaker 1: you know who it is. But he his range is amazing.
1:44:35
Speaker 1: Oh it's you know, for for being you know, for
1:44:39
Speaker 1: being such a familiar actor to so many of us.
1:44:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he you know, if I can nerd out
1:44:44
Speaker 2: with you for a look for a split second with JK.
1:44:48
Speaker 2: You know, I wrote in this letter to play Schultz.
1:44:51
Speaker 2: I really believed in Schultz's legacy. You know, he was
1:44:54
Speaker 2: a marine. He's one of only two people to serve
1:44:56
Speaker 2: in four different cabinet positions. He really believed in public service.
1:44:59
Speaker 1: He's there's he's one of that. He's on the mount
1:45:01
Speaker 1: rushmore of unelected best politicians in our nation's history, right.
1:45:07
Speaker 1: You got maybe Lea Panett is on there. He was elected.
1:45:10
Speaker 1: But there's a couple of these guys that are like
1:45:12
Speaker 1: the the unsung heroes who were never elected but were
1:45:16
Speaker 1: incredible partners with.
1:45:18
Speaker 2: Electeds and they just believed in public service. You know,
1:45:21
Speaker 2: they they weren't asking for money. They Baker might be
1:45:24
Speaker 2: another one, Jim Baker, great example, you know, and and
1:45:28
Speaker 2: I think you know, the film is dedicated to him
1:45:30
Speaker 2: for that reason. You know that it was in my
1:45:32
Speaker 2: contract that that memoriam was for Schultz because I believed
1:45:35
Speaker 2: in it. I wanted to start this conversation inspire public
1:45:39
Speaker 2: service and they and so you know, I wrote to
1:45:41
Speaker 2: JK you know, I wrote that love letter, fan letter,
1:45:44
Speaker 2: whatever we're gonna call it, and I said, look, this
1:45:46
Speaker 2: is the film is going to be dedicated to him.
1:45:47
Speaker 1: This is so important to me.
1:45:49
Speaker 2: And he, you know, he came to set and the
1:45:54
Speaker 2: first take I like audibly gasped, and my script supervisor
1:46:00
Speaker 2: I was like, what's wrong, Like what's wrong. I call cut,
1:46:02
Speaker 2: I go in and I thank him because he was
1:46:04
Speaker 2: doing Schultz's accent. Schultz isn't famous, Schultz doesn't break, and
1:46:08
Speaker 2: he's not Gorbachev. Nobody's gonna know but me. But he
1:46:11
Speaker 2: was doing the Schultz accent and he's I said, thank
1:46:15
Speaker 2: you so much. It means so much to me. And
1:46:16
Speaker 2: he was like, I was always going to do it, man,
1:46:18
Speaker 2: what do you think? And like it turned out he'd
1:46:19
Speaker 2: been talking to my co producer about, you know, getting
1:46:21
Speaker 2: footage of Schultz, and he was like, yeah, I was
1:46:23
Speaker 2: always going to do it. It's just a consummate craft
1:46:25
Speaker 2: and pro of these guys. And he kind of chuckled
1:46:29
Speaker 2: and said I was always going to do it. And
1:46:30
Speaker 2: then we get in post production and chuck. My sound designers,
1:46:34
Speaker 2: who do all of Jk's movies say, what's wrong with
1:46:38
Speaker 2: his voice? He's got like a he's got a thing
1:46:40
Speaker 2: with his voice. That's that's not JK. And I said,
1:46:42
Speaker 2: he's doing Schultz and it's so subtle and so beautiful
1:46:46
Speaker 2: and it'll, you know, it'll disappear into the film in
1:46:49
Speaker 2: a beautiful way. But it's just that kind of professionalism
1:46:52
Speaker 2: and that kind of craft I think is a tribute
1:46:56
Speaker 2: to every one of these guys.
1:46:57
Speaker 1: So this is our first movie. You've done plenty of
1:47:00
Speaker 1: TV shows, So what's the What was the biggest learning
1:47:07
Speaker 1: curve for you?
1:47:09
Speaker 2: Biggest learning curve was the uhh, the shortness of time.
1:47:14
Speaker 2: You know, you know television, well, television production, you know
1:47:18
Speaker 2: is very fast paced. You know, you turn around an
1:47:20
Speaker 2: episode between seven and twelve days depending on your budget,
1:47:23
Speaker 2: so it's really fast.
1:47:24
Speaker 1: So the newsroom, each episode was was basically just over lead.
1:47:29
Speaker 2: You know, you're just cranking every single second R and so.
1:47:33
Speaker 2: But but in film, you you you're given slightly more
1:47:38
Speaker 2: breath to figure things out, but you're not really given
1:47:41
Speaker 2: more time. As strange as that sounds, what it means,
1:47:43
Speaker 2: what it translates into is that, you know, in features,
1:47:49
Speaker 2: unlike in television and television, you could be an episode
1:47:52
Speaker 2: you know, three of season five and everybody it's kind
1:47:55
Speaker 2: of everybody knows what they're doing.
1:47:57
Speaker 1: The crew work.
1:47:58
Speaker 2: In features, you come in and everybody's got to get
1:48:01
Speaker 2: to work together really quickly, and it's all got to work.
1:48:03
Speaker 2: And every day you get up and this was a
1:48:06
Speaker 2: you know, I think we had nineteen days on this.
1:48:08
Speaker 2: Every single day you got to get up and pray
1:48:11
Speaker 2: that the cinematographer and the ad and everybody's gelling and
1:48:13
Speaker 2: you're gonna get the shots and you're gonna get it
1:48:15
Speaker 2: all done. There's no there's no do overs, there's no
1:48:18
Speaker 2: coming back. So the real work is before your schedule.
1:48:22
Speaker 1: You know, you've got to because if you're not, like,
1:48:26
Speaker 1: if you don't have everything lined up right, if the
1:48:28
Speaker 1: planes aren't ready to take off, you haven't prepared the
1:48:31
Speaker 1: plane to take off, you win.
1:48:34
Speaker 2: You're gonna lose your window. You're gonna lose you You're
1:48:36
Speaker 2: going to absolutely lose it. And Schultze had a phrase
1:48:39
Speaker 2: called best prep wins. He was the one that put
1:48:42
Speaker 2: all the advisors on the airplane when they thought it
1:48:44
Speaker 2: was just a weekend with with Breagan and Gorbachaw. He's like, no,
1:48:47
Speaker 2: I'm just just in case. I'm gonna bring all my guys. Oh,
1:48:50
Speaker 2: so best prep wins. And I repeated that over and
1:48:53
Speaker 2: over in prep and our prep and on production, and
1:48:56
Speaker 2: our ads came to love it.
1:48:57
Speaker 1: They were like, yeah, why aren't we using this. We're
1:48:59
Speaker 1: going to steal this. You joked at one point, Well, look,
1:49:04
Speaker 1: you have to make some cuts when you're making a
1:49:07
Speaker 1: devastating chuck. And you know, is I like to remind
1:49:12
Speaker 1: myself when I'm writing twenty five hundred and three thousand
1:49:16
Speaker 1: word substacks. Hey, everybody needs an editor. Not everything needs
1:49:19
Speaker 1: to be twenty five hundred words. Not everything needs to
1:49:21
Speaker 1: be a mini series or or sort of or or
1:49:25
Speaker 1: limited series. I guess is the is these days. And
1:49:30
Speaker 1: yet when I think about historical events, you know, I'm
1:49:37
Speaker 1: as a history buff, I'm always lamenting what didn't get done,
1:49:43
Speaker 1: and so I would prefer I mean, I'll give you
1:49:47
Speaker 1: an example recently. This is it. It's a sore spot
1:49:51
Speaker 1: for me, and it's a source part for our mutual
1:49:52
Speaker 1: friend that you brought up earlier. When Netflix did the
1:49:56
Speaker 1: Garfield mini series, they did it, they did They did
1:50:00
Speaker 1: it in four episodes. It's pretty clear to me that
1:50:02
Speaker 1: the original intent was eight or ten and the Netflix
1:50:06
Speaker 1: executive said, there's no appetite for this, you better do
1:50:08
Speaker 1: it in four and they were wrong. There was an appetite,
1:50:12
Speaker 1: and they were and they were wrong, and that it
1:50:14
Speaker 1: should have been eight. And there's just way too many missoppors.
1:50:18
Speaker 1: And it really bums me out that people think no
1:50:21
Speaker 1: Garfield's been done. No, it hasn't. But that's that's another
1:50:25
Speaker 1: that I set that aside. What is the better format
1:50:29
Speaker 1: to tell a story? And how often is it the
1:50:32
Speaker 1: movie and how often is it the limited series. I
1:50:38
Speaker 1: am aware that I am a fifty something and probably
1:50:41
Speaker 1: prefer more not less. At the same time, I want
1:50:45
Speaker 1: you educating twenty somethings. What is the best way to
1:50:48
Speaker 1: tell a story? You think when it's historical event like this.
1:50:52
Speaker 2: Well for twenty something, I'm excited to report the twenty
1:50:55
Speaker 2: something are going back to the movies. We can thank
1:50:57
Speaker 2: Neon and A twenty four to you know, have raised
1:51:00
Speaker 2: this young generation to go to the cinema for the
1:51:02
Speaker 2: first time and be're here at least a decade or two.
1:51:04
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled, to be honest with you, because I thought
1:51:06
Speaker 2: it was all gonna be tiktoks.
1:51:07
Speaker 1: But it's it's a great news.
1:51:09
Speaker 2: We we in the industry owe a great debt to
1:51:11
Speaker 2: these young distributors who are bringing you know, young you know,
1:51:15
Speaker 2: and we've got new movie stars, you know, Shalomagns and
1:51:17
Speaker 2: diets and.
1:51:18
Speaker 1: Then also you know, make the experience of going to
1:51:21
Speaker 1: a movie and event. I'll hard to pursue a little bit.
1:51:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and they managed to do this, and
1:51:27
Speaker 2: I think in a great way. And I think on
1:51:29
Speaker 2: you know, for movies that tend to skew older, whether
1:51:31
Speaker 2: it's you know, Neuremberg or Pressure or whatever, those kind
1:51:35
Speaker 2: of most for historical things, those are back too.
1:51:37
Speaker 1: And so I'm very excited I found out being an
1:51:40
Speaker 1: empty nester, I'm back in the movie demo. There's two
1:51:43
Speaker 1: movie demos, right, there's basically twelve to twenty, and then
1:51:47
Speaker 1: there's fifty five plus the eptystery. Right, so it's uply
1:51:51
Speaker 1: I've been a targeted demo. I had no idea. No,
1:51:53
Speaker 1: it's it's great.
1:51:54
Speaker 2: It's great news, and so I think, you know, I
1:51:57
Speaker 2: think that's that's a component of it.
1:51:59
Speaker 1: I think that is.
1:52:00
Speaker 2: And in terms of your question about the structure in
1:52:03
Speaker 2: the medium, whether you know it's the Garfield Limited on
1:52:06
Speaker 2: Netflix or what have you, it's you know, I can
1:52:09
Speaker 2: speak only from the creative side, which is for me.
1:52:12
Speaker 2: You know, my agents give me a hard time sometimes
1:52:16
Speaker 2: because they say, well, what if it's a play instead
1:52:18
Speaker 2: of a movie or whatever. And I think for me personally,
1:52:22
Speaker 2: the way the story comes to me in the medium
1:52:25
Speaker 2: that it comes to me in is how I lock
1:52:27
Speaker 2: in and so I really personally struggle with Like if
1:52:31
Speaker 2: you had said, hey, Michael, here's triple the money, go
1:52:35
Speaker 2: make the limited series version of Rickyvick, I would have
1:52:37
Speaker 2: personally really struggled with that from the creative side. But
1:52:40
Speaker 2: what I can say in terms of the business right now,
1:52:44
Speaker 2: I think that the audience is hungry and thirsty for
1:52:50
Speaker 2: these kind of histories, whether it's the Garfield thing or
1:52:52
Speaker 2: pressure like we talked about Neuremberg Oppenheimer. I think there's
1:52:55
Speaker 2: this hunger in the audience for these true histories and
1:52:58
Speaker 2: it's not going away.
1:53:00
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds that I look at your career and
1:53:04
Speaker 1: the shows you've worked on, even in the TV space,
1:53:07
Speaker 1: and I'll just get an audience a quick rundown newsroom
1:53:09
Speaker 1: designated Survivor, Billions, the Taie Cave Rescue. Yeah. And I
1:53:15
Speaker 1: know you've worked with my friend Adam Perlman on Billions, Yes,
1:53:18
Speaker 1: and he's very similar. You are drawn to the real yes,
1:53:23
Speaker 1: more so it feels as if you know you're willing
1:53:26
Speaker 1: to dramatize real events and maybe yes there's maybe there's
1:53:30
Speaker 1: dialogue that you don't know existed or not, but you
1:53:34
Speaker 1: want to make the best guess of what that dialogue
1:53:36
Speaker 1: might have been versus you seem drawn to this. You're
1:53:40
Speaker 1: not a fiction guy, are you? Yeah? Not as much.
1:53:44
Speaker 2: I mean I would say that I like to stretch.
1:53:46
Speaker 2: I mean, Universal recently gave me an opportunity to write
1:53:48
Speaker 2: a fiction script, completely fictional script, and so that was fun.
1:53:52
Speaker 2: But I do tend to lean more of the true stuff,
1:53:54
Speaker 2: and I get brought that. You know, a lot of
1:53:56
Speaker 2: your things are how much opportunity you have? You know,
1:53:58
Speaker 2: I did Cave Rescue, right, and you mentioned that, and
1:54:02
Speaker 2: the financing company on that liked what I was doing.
1:54:05
Speaker 2: They I was the show runner. They in Thailand. They
1:54:07
Speaker 2: liked what I was doing. We're on set in Thailand
1:54:09
Speaker 2: and they said, what do you want to do next?
1:54:10
Speaker 2: And I was like, I want to make this crazy
1:54:12
Speaker 2: movie about these two guys arguing about nuclear policy. And
1:54:15
Speaker 2: they're like what. So that's how that came about. You know,
1:54:19
Speaker 2: sometimes it's just what you what you can grab ahold of.
1:54:22
Speaker 2: And I'm very fortunate that they were into that idea,
1:54:26
Speaker 2: that they thought it to it.
1:54:27
Speaker 1: Seriously, all right, look, we all any of us in
1:54:31
Speaker 1: this creative space generally, Yeah, you have something that you really,
1:54:36
Speaker 1: really really want to make But you know, you've got
1:54:38
Speaker 1: to continue to earn the trust of studios, continue to
1:54:41
Speaker 1: earn the trust. Right where all right, we're going to
1:54:44
Speaker 1: give you that chance. Right. I always joke with Nolan
1:54:47
Speaker 1: he doesn't get to do Oppenheimer if he didn't do
1:54:49
Speaker 1: Dark Knight, like you know, you know you sometimes you do. Yeah,
1:54:54
Speaker 1: I'll do a superhero. So here I'll do I'll prove
1:54:56
Speaker 1: to you I can do the SUPERO. Want me to
1:54:58
Speaker 1: do that? Fine, yep, give me Oppenheimer. That doesn't happen
1:55:02
Speaker 1: in the reverse, correct, What are you building towards? What's
1:55:05
Speaker 1: the dream project?
1:55:07
Speaker 2: The dream project is probably another true historical story. But
1:55:13
Speaker 2: just like you referenced, it's something I say to my
1:55:15
Speaker 2: reps all the time. I probably got to go do
1:55:17
Speaker 2: the you know, the prove you can do it movie
1:55:20
Speaker 2: in order to get the budget for the other one.
1:55:22
Speaker 2: So yeah, Oppenheimer doesn't happen without Dark Knight. I'm very
1:55:24
Speaker 2: aware that the thing that I probably want to do
1:55:26
Speaker 2: next doesn't happen without me going to do the other thing.
1:55:29
Speaker 2: And so right now, if you're asking me honestly, you know,
1:55:32
Speaker 2: I'm writing a video game adaptation for Universal, right, Like
1:55:35
Speaker 2: that's that's the job.
1:55:37
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to laugh at that. I will
1:55:39
Speaker 1: tell you the most impactful new TV show I've watched
1:55:43
Speaker 1: in the last two years is a video game which
1:55:46
Speaker 1: I had no idea until I sort of got into
1:55:48
Speaker 1: it realized it was Fallout. Oh yeah, Fallout. I'm like,
1:55:54
Speaker 1: I didn't realize video games could be this interesting. And
1:55:57
Speaker 1: I'm sure the game itself it is not quite as interesting.
1:56:01
Speaker 1: But well about I'm not gonna sneeze at that. I mean, no, no,
1:56:05
Speaker 1: and it's all that is a very important TV show,
1:56:08
Speaker 1: by the way, all I mean essentially the we could
1:56:14
Speaker 1: call it this sort of what if reci even had
1:56:16
Speaker 1: gone the wrong way, we might be living Fallout.
1:56:19
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's one hundred percent right, and I'll and
1:56:23
Speaker 2: I'll double down on it and say for me at
1:56:25
Speaker 2: least and or in the Star Wars Universe, one of
1:56:29
Speaker 2: the best spy shows in the last ten years up
1:56:31
Speaker 2: there with the Americans and here's Tony Gilroy and they
1:56:34
Speaker 2: just say, here's the keys to the Kingdom, go do
1:56:36
Speaker 2: what you're gonna do. And so I think, you know,
1:56:38
Speaker 2: if somebody came to me and said, do you want
1:56:40
Speaker 2: to do a spy show in the Star Wars universe.
1:56:42
Speaker 2: For sure. You're gonna let me do that for sure.
1:56:45
Speaker 2: Like that's that's the thing.
1:56:45
Speaker 1: I think.
1:56:46
Speaker 2: We've got to be careful not to turn up our noses.
1:56:48
Speaker 2: No one didn't turn up his nose. He made Memento,
1:56:51
Speaker 2: he goes to make the Dark Knight, he gets to
1:56:52
Speaker 2: do Open Hunter.
1:56:53
Speaker 1: You know, he proves he and it's but it also
1:56:56
Speaker 1: this is something that my journalist friends also have to learn,
1:56:58
Speaker 1: which is there's not one way to teach correct and
1:57:03
Speaker 1: you know, you can take a you know, you could
1:57:06
Speaker 1: take a Star Wars spy thriller and teach people about
1:57:11
Speaker 1: depolarizing and why you need sort of a form of
1:57:14
Speaker 1: political moderation and why ultimately, as I always say, we
1:57:18
Speaker 1: invented politics so that we could settle disputes without killing
1:57:21
Speaker 1: each other. Then ultimately you may hate politics, but thank
1:57:25
Speaker 1: god we have it, or where we'd all be, you know,
1:57:28
Speaker 1: if any of us are left, we'd be undergrounded in
1:57:31
Speaker 1: some like crazy ass shelter. So, I mean, this has
1:57:36
Speaker 1: got to be You've just got to be absolutely to
1:57:40
Speaker 1: the moon excited about the fact that this is hitting
1:57:43
Speaker 1: major Moser picture release.
1:57:44
Speaker 2: I'm I am over the moon, over the mean for
1:57:47
Speaker 2: a first film to get a theatrical release. I'm over
1:57:50
Speaker 2: the moon and the fact that it's going to get
1:57:52
Speaker 2: a wide release, that we're you know, my home state
1:57:55
Speaker 2: of South Carolina. I live in Los Angeles, nown but
1:57:57
Speaker 2: my home state of South Carolina is going to get
1:57:58
Speaker 2: the film. You know, it's a it's a dream come true.
1:58:01
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, it's also a testament to
1:58:05
Speaker 2: these actors who signed up. It's a testament to this
1:58:07
Speaker 2: tributor who signed up, you know, to do it. It's
1:58:10
Speaker 2: we're really fortunate nobody made Dark Knight money, you know
1:58:14
Speaker 2: what I mean. Sure everybody made you know, Memento money
1:58:17
Speaker 2: at best. And so I think that's really where we're
1:58:19
Speaker 2: at is if you have that passion and people join
1:58:22
Speaker 2: you on that journey, it's a it's a collaborative business,
1:58:25
Speaker 2: you know, Chuck. If you and I get in a
1:58:27
Speaker 2: room and write a play or write a book, there's
1:58:29
Speaker 2: only one or two of us, but this is a
1:58:31
Speaker 2: collaborative business.
1:58:32
Speaker 1: You need everybody, all right, let me get you out
1:58:35
Speaker 1: of here. On career advice, there's a young twenty something
1:58:38
Speaker 1: reporter maybe listening to this who has it, you know,
1:58:43
Speaker 1: who has a bunch of ideas in their head. Right,
1:58:45
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ex journalists who do incredible creative
1:58:48
Speaker 1: My friend Daniel Silva, yeah, you know who you know, thought,
1:58:52
Speaker 1: how do you become a novelist? Well, he was a
1:58:53
Speaker 1: journalist first, you know. I mean, you know, learn how
1:58:56
Speaker 1: to write, you know, learn to write at a wire
1:58:58
Speaker 1: service and you'll really have to write. I meanway, Graham Green,
1:59:02
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. Like you know, so how did you
1:59:05
Speaker 1: break in? You know, what was your big break? And
1:59:08
Speaker 1: how would you tell somebody perseverance matters? But what what
1:59:14
Speaker 1: is that? Well, you know, I say this myself, like
1:59:19
Speaker 1: you you have to learn how to get rejected a
1:59:22
Speaker 1: lot in this business. Yeah, and take it right, Yeah,
1:59:26
Speaker 1: you you do.
1:59:27
Speaker 2: You know it's a it's a I I used to
1:59:29
Speaker 2: call it the centrifuge, you know, the centrifuge. You can
1:59:32
Speaker 2: have a you know, alumni connection, you can have a
1:59:37
Speaker 2: friend of a family member, you can do you could.
1:59:39
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people who will help you get
1:59:42
Speaker 2: your your first step. But to survive and to thrive,
1:59:47
Speaker 2: it's absolutely perseverance.
1:59:49
Speaker 1: It's a lot of no'se.
1:59:50
Speaker 2: It's believing in the thing that you're doing and being
1:59:54
Speaker 2: passionate about it, but more so than those practical things
1:59:58
Speaker 2: of just you know, sticking with it. I think one
2:00:02
Speaker 2: of the things that I underestimated was when the things
2:00:07
Speaker 2: don't work out. You know, my first job was porking,
2:00:11
Speaker 2: and he said to me, he told this story about
2:00:15
Speaker 2: a play that he had ready after a few good men,
2:00:17
Speaker 2: a few good men happens. It breaks him out. He
2:00:20
Speaker 2: becomes a superstar, he is super nova in the business.
2:00:23
Speaker 2: And he has this other play and it doesn't work out,
2:00:26
Speaker 2: and he thinks, this is crazy. Why I'm you know,
2:00:29
Speaker 2: a few good men and the second place should be
2:00:31
Speaker 2: a slam dunk. But then he goes back to look
2:00:34
Speaker 2: at it years later and he thinks, and I don't
2:00:35
Speaker 2: even know what it was. He never told me, but
2:00:36
Speaker 2: he said, I thank goodness it didn't work out. And
2:00:39
Speaker 2: so the things that you don't get are sometimes even
2:00:42
Speaker 2: more important than the things you do get.
2:00:44
Speaker 1: And I think that's one.
2:00:45
Speaker 2: Of the things that I take with me when I
2:00:48
Speaker 2: when I get upset that something doesn't work out.
2:00:50
Speaker 1: I lived my life with through the motto of everything
2:00:53
Speaker 1: happens for a reason, you just don't know what that
2:00:55
Speaker 1: reason is yet. Yeah, here here, Hey, Michaels is great
2:00:59
Speaker 1: to get to know. I'm just super excited for you
2:01:02
Speaker 1: about this because and just I wanted to succeed for
2:01:06
Speaker 1: all the reasons we've discussed. It's we we you know,
2:01:10
Speaker 1: the more you know, hey, we can we can teach
2:01:13
Speaker 1: history and throw a little sugar on it if you
2:01:15
Speaker 1: need here here, Yeah, yeah, congratulations August fourteenth major pretty much.
2:01:21
Speaker 1: You know there'll be two odysseies and one brink of war,
2:01:25
Speaker 1: all right, you know, so that's okay, right, Thank you, Chuck,
2:01:29
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
2:01:37
Speaker 2: The topcast Test Top five, Top top Test Top.
2:01:44
Speaker 1: Well, we are back my top five list, of course,
2:01:47
Speaker 1: brought to you by my friends at FANDLE. So this
2:01:49
Speaker 1: is what I've decided to do this week. With Michigan
2:01:51
Speaker 1: Senate now fully in play as a Senate race, and it's,
2:01:54
Speaker 1: as I said before, it is the only Democratic Health
2:01:58
Speaker 1: Senate seat that I think is now trulyulnerable. Look, weird
2:02:02
Speaker 1: stuff could still happen in Minnesota, Newmpshire, Georgia. I'm not
2:02:04
Speaker 1: going to sit here and rule it out right. And
2:02:06
Speaker 1: maybe there's something we've not heard of that some comment
2:02:08
Speaker 1: that we haven't even been talking about, like has some
2:02:11
Speaker 1: scandal we've never even thought of right, but in reality land,
2:02:16
Speaker 1: which is where I live, only Michigan Senate is vulnerable now.
2:02:22
Speaker 1: So you know, as I said before, I think it's
2:02:24
Speaker 1: important that Democrats have more than you know that their
2:02:27
Speaker 1: path to trying to win four seats, you know, puts
2:02:30
Speaker 1: them in six or seven or eight different states, which
2:02:33
Speaker 1: they have done. But in that spirit, because Michigan clearly
2:02:39
Speaker 1: now is a real vulnerability for Democrats for a state
2:02:42
Speaker 1: wide held office, the seat that they could lose, I
2:02:44
Speaker 1: thought i'd come up this week's Top Top five lists
2:02:48
Speaker 1: the top five most vulnerable either Senate or GOV seats
2:02:55
Speaker 1: that currently are in the Democratic column. You know, we're
2:02:58
Speaker 1: in a year that is a that appears, frankly every week.
2:03:01
Speaker 1: It looks like there's a chance that republic Democrats could
2:03:06
Speaker 1: truly catch the so called wave and win control of
2:03:11
Speaker 1: both the House and the Senate. Yes, you know, everything
2:03:14
Speaker 1: that has gone against the Democrats has been technical, but
2:03:17
Speaker 1: not atmospheric. What do I mean by that? Right, the
2:03:20
Speaker 1: redistricting rulings have gone against them, Right, the Voting Rights
2:03:23
Speaker 1: Act stuff has gone against them. That stuff is not
2:03:26
Speaker 1: worked for them. This Senate map isn't the easiest map,
2:03:29
Speaker 1: but the environment only gets better for them, right, The
2:03:32
Speaker 1: corruption issue has only become easier for them. Donald Trump
2:03:36
Speaker 1: has only become more unpopular. People's frustrations about big tech
2:03:41
Speaker 1: and the economy, things that sort of help the party
2:03:44
Speaker 1: out of power in theory have been going against them.
2:03:47
Speaker 1: So the atmospherics are getting it's like the weather's getting worse,
2:03:53
Speaker 1: but the Republican House is really good. Hurricane shutters, right,
2:03:57
Speaker 1: so we shall see. So it's in that spirit that
2:03:59
Speaker 1: I want to go through because we actually had primaries
2:04:03
Speaker 1: on Tuesday that featured two Democratic held seats that are
2:04:08
Speaker 1: on this vulnerable top five list. So number one on
2:04:11
Speaker 1: the list of a Democratic held statewide office, either governor Senate.
2:04:15
Speaker 1: I'm just doing those two them, not going down down
2:04:17
Speaker 1: into the down ballot statewide races that are the most
2:04:21
Speaker 1: vulnerable to Republicans flipping. So number one on the list.
2:04:24
Speaker 1: Kansas Governor Tim Masterson is a Republican nominee. Now look,
2:04:27
Speaker 1: he is from the more conservative faction inside the Kansas
2:04:32
Speaker 1: Republican Party. The recipe for Democrats has been when the
2:04:37
Speaker 1: Republican nominee for governor is seen as two outside the mainstream,
2:04:41
Speaker 1: and the Democratic candidate for governor is seen as closer
2:04:44
Speaker 1: to the middle, well, the Republican nominee and Masterson, he's
2:04:49
Speaker 1: the Senate president. Definitely a bit further to the right
2:04:52
Speaker 1: than maybe where the median voter in Kansas is. But
2:04:57
Speaker 1: as I told you about the Democratic primary the governors,
2:05:02
Speaker 1: the governor's preferred candidate, Ethan Corson, lost to a state
2:05:09
Speaker 1: legislature named Sidney Holtscher. They're both from the Johnson County area,
2:05:13
Speaker 1: which is the Kansas City, Kansas part sort of the
2:05:16
Speaker 1: Kansas side of the Kansas City media market, and she
2:05:18
Speaker 1: won essentially running against the governor's plan to bring the
2:05:21
Speaker 1: Kansas City chiefs from Missouri to Kansas. So I means
2:05:26
Speaker 1: you have potentially a divided Democratic Party. And while she didn't,
2:05:31
Speaker 1: this wasn't a traditional left versus governing, you know, sort
2:05:34
Speaker 1: of progressive versus the governing wing of the party. Certainly
2:05:37
Speaker 1: coming in from the outside. I'm not convinced that the
2:05:40
Speaker 1: National Democrats are going to put a lot of money
2:05:42
Speaker 1: in this. I think they're whether it's fair or not
2:05:45
Speaker 1: to Sidney Holtscher. We'll see, maybe she can raise a
2:05:48
Speaker 1: ton of money on her own, but I think it's
2:05:50
Speaker 1: pretty clear this is probably the single most vulnerable Democratic
2:05:55
Speaker 1: held statewide seat in a major office that is likely
2:05:58
Speaker 1: to flip. So that's number one. Kansas Cup. Number two
2:06:02
Speaker 1: on this list is now Michigan sentate. I think that
2:06:06
Speaker 1: you will see an enormous amount of money. When I
2:06:08
Speaker 1: said before, I think the uh, the identity politics that
2:06:12
Speaker 1: the right is going to play here. They're going to
2:06:14
Speaker 1: play the Muslim card, the nine to eleven card, the
2:06:19
Speaker 1: Islamophobia card, the anti Semitism card. You're going to see
2:06:24
Speaker 1: a lot of this. A lot of this has already
2:06:27
Speaker 1: been thrown at him in some ways, He's comfortable handling
2:06:31
Speaker 1: that campaign. I kind of think this is going to
2:06:33
Speaker 1: be a strategic mistake that they do because they may
2:06:37
Speaker 1: I think I think there's a I think you the
2:06:40
Speaker 1: likelihood of this boomer ranging because they overdo it is there.
2:06:45
Speaker 1: But I think you have to respect the enormous amount
2:06:47
Speaker 1: of money that's going to come in, and we saw
2:06:49
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of money is going to make this
2:06:51
Speaker 1: race very very close. You know a couple of questions,
2:06:56
Speaker 1: how will will Democrats consolidate? And you know around I'll
2:07:00
Speaker 1: do al saied. I think the fact that he had
2:07:04
Speaker 1: a little humble pie, right he didn't win by the
2:07:06
Speaker 1: double digits that his super pack would flaunt and claim
2:07:10
Speaker 1: might be the best thing that happened to his candidacy
2:07:12
Speaker 1: and the best thing that happened to Senate Democrats because
2:07:16
Speaker 1: he's not trashing Hanley Stevens anymore. He didn't trash her.
2:07:19
Speaker 1: Even before the before the polls closed last night, somebody
2:07:23
Speaker 1: told him, Hey, you need these voters. You're going to
2:07:24
Speaker 1: need African American voters, and you're going to have to
2:07:27
Speaker 1: You're going to have to h You're going to have
2:07:31
Speaker 1: to have a bigger tent. But it's definitely number two
2:07:33
Speaker 1: in the list. Number three on the list is a
2:07:35
Speaker 1: race I've brought up before and in his Oregon governor,
2:07:42
Speaker 1: the incumbent uh Tina Kotek is essentially in a rematch
2:07:47
Speaker 1: with the Republican Christine Drazen. Look she she was vulnerable
2:07:51
Speaker 1: the last time. There's been some frustration at how at
2:07:56
Speaker 1: essentially capital d democratic governance. Right there been unhappiness with
2:08:01
Speaker 1: the governance in Portland, the City of Portland. There's been
2:08:03
Speaker 1: unhappiness with the governance of the state. And you know,
2:08:08
Speaker 1: Oregon is one of the longest streaks in the in
2:08:11
Speaker 1: the nation for for how long a Democrat has held
2:08:15
Speaker 1: that gubernatorial seat, it is the only thing working against
2:08:20
Speaker 1: Republicans is the national environment. But in governor's races, you
2:08:25
Speaker 1: can overcome a national environment if people, because in governor's
2:08:28
Speaker 1: races are more likely to personalize things. And you know,
2:08:31
Speaker 1: it's interesting in these in rematches, in governor's races, you
2:08:36
Speaker 1: sometimes do see this where the second time, if especially
2:08:39
Speaker 1: if the if the if the governor, if the sitting
2:08:42
Speaker 1: governor's is popularity is waning a little bit, in Tina
2:08:45
Speaker 1: Coote's popularity is waning a bit, you can see them
2:08:49
Speaker 1: have success. So I think number three on my list
2:08:52
Speaker 1: is Oregon govern and then number four and we'll see
2:08:55
Speaker 1: this could go up its Wisconsin governor. I want to
2:08:57
Speaker 1: see what happened. But if I think if Francisca Hang
2:09:00
Speaker 1: is the Democratic nominee, I don't think she can win.
2:09:03
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical. It's not that I don't think a progressive
2:09:08
Speaker 1: can win in Wisconsin. That's not it. I don't think
2:09:10
Speaker 1: she can win. I think she's just going to be
2:09:13
Speaker 1: seen as to Madison. If you can make a Democrat
2:09:15
Speaker 1: seem too much of a Madison Democrat, which is code
2:09:18
Speaker 1: for you know, basically socialist and socialist adjacent and she's
2:09:23
Speaker 1: of course a member of the DSA. Just to let
2:09:27
Speaker 1: you know how how far to the left there are
2:09:31
Speaker 1: some voters are in Madison. In two thousand in Madison,
2:09:38
Speaker 1: Ralph Nader carried a couple of precincts in Madison in
2:09:41
Speaker 1: Dane County. That's how far to the left there are
2:09:47
Speaker 1: some voters in Madison. So she's going to do quite
2:09:50
Speaker 1: well there. But to voters in Wisconsin know what that means.
2:09:55
Speaker 1: And I'm very skeptical that a very you know that
2:09:59
Speaker 1: a that a that somebody that far to the left
2:10:01
Speaker 1: can win statewide. Look, Tom Tiffany is probably is definitely
2:10:05
Speaker 1: further to the right than the median voter. The question
2:10:08
Speaker 1: is is he further to the right than she is
2:10:11
Speaker 1: to the left? And the question we dealt with a
2:10:16
Speaker 1: lot during our live stream was is Tom Tiffany further
2:10:19
Speaker 1: to the right than Ron Johnson? Because Ron Johnson's been
2:10:22
Speaker 1: able to win midterms and presidential years even in the
2:10:26
Speaker 1: Trump Borough. So that's why I have number four and
2:10:30
Speaker 1: number five I don't have one, And that might be
2:10:36
Speaker 1: the most important piece of analysis in my top five list. Yes,
2:10:43
Speaker 1: could I find a you know what would be next
2:10:45
Speaker 1: on the list. These four seats are seats that I
2:10:49
Speaker 1: could see Republicans winning even as Democrats win control of
2:10:53
Speaker 1: the House and Senate, even as the national environment is
2:10:57
Speaker 1: D plus seven. That's how vulnerable I think Democrats are
2:11:00
Speaker 1: losing these four seats that I highlighted Kansas Gov. Michigan Senate,
2:11:03
Speaker 1: Oregon Gov. Wisconsin GOL. But if that's what the environment is,
2:11:08
Speaker 1: I can't find it a fifth race that would fall
2:11:10
Speaker 1: into that category. It isn't Georgia Senate, it isn't New
2:11:13
Speaker 1: Hampshire Senate. I've given you all the reasons why it's
2:11:16
Speaker 1: not Minnesota Senate or Minnesota Governor, which maybe in theory
2:11:19
Speaker 1: it could have been had Tim Wallas tried to run
2:11:22
Speaker 1: for a third term, or had Amy Klobeshar not said
2:11:25
Speaker 1: yes to rescuing the Minnesota Democratic Party in their time
2:11:30
Speaker 1: and need. But when you look around, it is hard
2:11:34
Speaker 1: to find. I mean, I'm you know, there aren't any
2:11:39
Speaker 1: light blue Democratic health seats that look very vulnerable this cycle.
2:11:47
Speaker 1: And I think that alone tells you the atmospherics the
2:11:51
Speaker 1: national environment only gets better for Democrats. It's only gotten
2:11:55
Speaker 1: better even as the party is infighting. There's no doubt
2:11:58
Speaker 1: these divides could very well. They've nominated it very well.
2:12:01
Speaker 1: We may say they nominated the wrong They nominate cans
2:12:04
Speaker 1: that couldn't win statewide in Michigan or couldn't win statewide
2:12:07
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. That's very possible. And if they come up
2:12:10
Speaker 1: short and not able to win the Senate and it's
2:12:13
Speaker 1: one seat short and it's Michigan, you know that will
2:12:16
Speaker 1: be a huge black mark on the progressive scorecard as
2:12:21
Speaker 1: they want to as they make their case to basically
2:12:24
Speaker 1: be the leading faction inside the Democratic Party. But the point,
2:12:30
Speaker 1: but the larger point I want to drive home here
2:12:32
Speaker 1: is atmospherically, this is how much the landscape has shifted
2:12:39
Speaker 1: towards the Democrats that realistically you can really only find
2:12:45
Speaker 1: four Democratic held combined Senate or gubernatorial seats that you
2:12:50
Speaker 1: could truly say are at risk at this point in time,
2:12:54
Speaker 1: less than one hundred days ago before election day. This
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Speaker 1: in order to get some help with any gambling concerns. Finally,
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2:14:40
Speaker 1: zero seven eight six seven if you're in Louisiana ask Chuck.
2:14:47
Speaker 1: My first question today comes from Matt J. In South Windsor,
2:14:49
Speaker 1: Connecticut aka Slizza Land. So, Matt, did you go to
2:14:55
Speaker 1: the Loop Loomis Chafey School for Ordinary Men? What a
2:15:00
Speaker 1: the hell it's called? Anyway, here's your question. You've said
2:15:03
Speaker 1: you don't think the administration is being completely for worthcoming
2:15:06
Speaker 1: about Trump's health, but it got me wondering. Washington leaks
2:15:09
Speaker 1: almost everything, yet the full picture of the of a
2:15:11
Speaker 1: president's health, whether Biden's or now Trump's, really seems to
2:15:14
Speaker 1: come out. Does that mean the concerns are often overblown?
2:15:17
Speaker 1: Or is presidential health one of the few things an
2:15:19
Speaker 1: administration can actually keep under wraps. If so, why I
2:15:23
Speaker 1: think it's the latter. I mean, you know, you go
2:15:27
Speaker 1: back to Reagan, you know, even after he died. You
2:15:31
Speaker 1: didn't see some like, well, here's what people were really
2:15:35
Speaker 1: saying about what was happening in that last year and
2:15:38
Speaker 1: a half. And you know, there was certainly your level
2:15:41
Speaker 1: of Washington gossip of you know, different you know, Ken
2:15:44
Speaker 1: Duberstein was the last chief of staff. He was the
2:15:47
Speaker 1: deputy under under Howard Baker there at the tail end
2:15:53
Speaker 1: of Reagan. And there's certainly you know, anybody who knew Ken,
2:15:57
Speaker 1: you know, you knew there were issues, but it wasn't
2:16:00
Speaker 1: It didn't sound like they were hiding health issues. But
2:16:03
Speaker 1: I think what you have in the case of both
2:16:05
Speaker 1: Biden and Reagan were spouses that were incredibly protective of that.
2:16:15
Speaker 1: And so I think in both the case of Biden
2:16:17
Speaker 1: and Reagan, the circle of people who actually knew the
2:16:20
Speaker 1: health situation was very very tight and very very small.
2:16:23
Speaker 1: You bring up a fair point on Trump, right. The
2:16:26
Speaker 1: one thing about Trump is eventually everything leaks, So it is.
2:16:35
Speaker 1: But it's one of these things where it's obvious what
2:16:40
Speaker 1: Trump's health issues are. They're not what he has are
2:16:43
Speaker 1: the health issues that are frankly common for somebody who's
2:16:49
Speaker 1: kind of out of shape, doesn't eat well and never
2:16:52
Speaker 1: has eaten well. And has never stayed in shape. Right,
2:16:55
Speaker 1: he's got you know, he's got the fluid in his ankles.
2:16:58
Speaker 1: You know, he's got the sort of you know, so
2:17:01
Speaker 1: he's got those kind of ailments. But he's so vain
2:17:07
Speaker 1: he doesn't want any of it out there. And that's
2:17:08
Speaker 1: what you have. In this case. It's Trump's vanity that
2:17:15
Speaker 1: I think, the fear of God, of leacoln that stuff.
2:17:17
Speaker 1: They know that you know, he'll he'll be in a
2:17:22
Speaker 1: tie rate about it because creating the image of virality,
2:17:27
Speaker 1: of vitality with him and virility both is so important, right,
2:17:32
Speaker 1: His image is so important, right that you know how
2:17:35
Speaker 1: we all know how long he spends with his hair.
2:17:37
Speaker 1: Usually doesn't get going about ten thirty eleven in the
2:17:39
Speaker 1: morning in public, because he's always you know, he wants
2:17:42
Speaker 1: to make sure that and he's so worried about he
2:17:45
Speaker 1: always wants to almost always look the same no matter
2:17:48
Speaker 1: where he's at. Right, it's the same sort of suit
2:17:51
Speaker 1: with the red tie and all that stuff. So I
2:17:55
Speaker 1: think it's it's the vanity. But in the case of
2:17:57
Speaker 1: Biden and Reagan, who are two of the presidents in
2:17:59
Speaker 1: my lifetime, move clearly had health issues that weren't being shared.
2:18:02
Speaker 1: I think you had spouses that were just incredibly protective
2:18:06
Speaker 1: on that one. Next question comes from Bob Prairie Village, Kansas,
2:18:10
Speaker 1: and you're right, hey, Chuck, Greetings from Kansas's third District.
2:18:14
Speaker 1: I have two questions. First, what have you made of
2:18:16
Speaker 1: the sportsmanship, camaraderie, and postmatch rituals we've seen during the
2:18:19
Speaker 1: FIFA tournament? Second? Did anything meaningful come out of the
2:18:22
Speaker 1: Fauci hearing or hearings like it? More generally? I found
2:18:25
Speaker 1: myself feeling sympathetic towards Fauci despite the harsh questioning, which
2:18:28
Speaker 1: made me wonder why I reacted differently to beat Heigsa's
2:18:31
Speaker 1: recent hearing. Thanks appreciate you, Bob and Prairie Village, Kansas. Well. First,
2:18:37
Speaker 1: on the sportsmanship, I think one of the reasons you
2:18:38
Speaker 1: saw so much of it is remember a lot of
2:18:40
Speaker 1: these guys play together on professional teams in Europe. So
2:18:45
Speaker 1: even though you know, you know, with the exception of
2:18:49
Speaker 1: what we saw with the sort of clearly a bit
2:18:52
Speaker 1: of unsportsmanlike conduct, if you will, when it came to
2:18:57
Speaker 1: sort of Argentina versus Spain there. But you're right, right,
2:19:00
Speaker 1: but I think that's almost almost all have to do
2:19:04
Speaker 1: with how many of those players are teammates on other teams,
2:19:10
Speaker 1: and whether it's in the Premier League, you know, the
2:19:15
Speaker 1: Bundesliga wherever, you know what I mean. I just I
2:19:17
Speaker 1: think that is what explains the sportsmanship with than anything else.
2:19:20
Speaker 1: It's just how familiar they all, particularly those the final
2:19:24
Speaker 1: eight teams, right, the final even sixteen, right, those final
2:19:28
Speaker 1: sixteen teams. Look, I'm no expert on soccer, but I
2:19:32
Speaker 1: think even a caveman like me knows that if you
2:19:35
Speaker 1: made it to the round of sixteen in the World Cup,
2:19:37
Speaker 1: you probably have at least two or three players that
2:19:40
Speaker 1: are playing in the professional side of things in Europe.
2:19:43
Speaker 1: And I think that that probably is what explains explain
2:19:47
Speaker 1: to that. As for these hearings, look, I will let
2:19:51
Speaker 1: me go to my first sort of the first villain here,
2:19:56
Speaker 1: which is the television camera. Right. You take away a
2:20:01
Speaker 1: television camera and suddenly a hearing produces real information. Right,
2:20:07
Speaker 1: the Intel Committee when it goes into quote unquote close session,
2:20:10
Speaker 1: which is code for the public, doesn't get to hear it,
2:20:15
Speaker 1: and there are no cameras, and there is no transcript
2:20:19
Speaker 1: that's even released. You never hear about explo You know,
2:20:24
Speaker 1: it's rare that you hear about partisan bickering back and forth. Right,
2:20:27
Speaker 1: it only happens when the cameras are rolling, because there
2:20:32
Speaker 1: is there's always somebody who thinks they have to score
2:20:35
Speaker 1: points with their political base by dunking on whoever it
2:20:39
Speaker 1: is that's there, right, and frankly, the risk of not
2:20:42
Speaker 1: doing it it it can. You know, if it looks
2:20:45
Speaker 1: like you're being due too chummy with some member of
2:20:48
Speaker 1: the other administration, it you know, gets held against you.
2:20:51
Speaker 1: Darling Graham is having to almost have to apologize for
2:20:54
Speaker 1: the fact that her brother would vote to confirm Democratic
2:20:58
Speaker 1: appointed Supreme Court justices. That was seen as a send
2:21:01
Speaker 1: to some voters, Republican voters in South Carolina. So the
2:21:04
Speaker 1: point being is that I think that that the cameras
2:21:07
Speaker 1: forced the performative. As for the Fauci hearing specifically, I
2:21:12
Speaker 1: think I said this before and I want to I
2:21:15
Speaker 1: want to share with you. You know, my son got tuned
2:21:21
Speaker 1: into the Fauci hearing because as Packer fans, he still
2:21:25
Speaker 1: seems to care what Aaron Rodgers has to say, and
2:21:27
Speaker 1: so he caught what Aaron Rodgers said on McAfee show,
2:21:31
Speaker 1: and he goes, why did Fauci plead the fifth right,
2:21:36
Speaker 1: He's not And I said, well, I said, because he
2:21:39
Speaker 1: got risk he got overly cautious advice from his lawyer.
2:21:45
Speaker 1: Fauci has that preemptive pardon from Biden, but he chose
2:21:50
Speaker 1: not to use it. With his decision to do that,
2:21:54
Speaker 1: I think his lawyer told him that, Look, they're going
2:21:57
Speaker 1: to trying to They're going to do anything they can
2:21:59
Speaker 1: to find any reason at all to find a way
2:22:02
Speaker 1: to indicte you. Regardless of that part. They just want
2:22:07
Speaker 1: the They want the headline. They don't really care if
2:22:10
Speaker 1: it actually sticks. So they decided they didn't want to
2:22:15
Speaker 1: risk that and they didn't want to the headline. I
2:22:17
Speaker 1: think it was a mistake. I'm sorry it did it
2:22:20
Speaker 1: because I think it created the impression that Fauci had
2:22:23
Speaker 1: something nine. I understand that, yes, this administration is filled
2:22:29
Speaker 1: with retribution, but I guess I wanted it. Look, I
2:22:36
Speaker 1: called it, you remember what I called I called it
2:22:38
Speaker 1: elder abuse. Right, he's an eighty five year old man.
2:22:40
Speaker 1: It seems ridiculous. And what really sort of is a
2:22:43
Speaker 1: head scratcher to me, is this faux anger that Josh
2:22:47
Speaker 1: Holly and Bernie Marino and Rand Paul performatively showed in flex.
2:22:53
Speaker 1: You know, Anthony Fauci had none of this power. You know,
2:22:58
Speaker 1: you know who had the power to make all these
2:23:00
Speaker 1: decisions was Donald Trump. It's fascinating to me that none
2:23:04
Speaker 1: of these individuals are angry that Donald Trump fell under
2:23:08
Speaker 1: the spell of Tony Fauci. Again, let's accept every put yourself.
2:23:15
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and accept the premise that all the
2:23:17
Speaker 1: criticism that Rand Paul has set is valid. Then a
2:23:24
Speaker 1: question I would have for him is, what do you
2:23:26
Speaker 1: make of the fact that Donald Trump was duped by
2:23:30
Speaker 1: Tony Fauci. Again, I'm not saying he was, but let's
2:23:34
Speaker 1: accept this premise. Right. So I'm I'm I'm sorry that
2:23:44
Speaker 1: he pled the fifth I get it. I understand the advice,
2:23:50
Speaker 1: and you know what, he's tired and he doesn't want
2:23:52
Speaker 1: more legal headaches and he just wants to be left alone.
2:23:55
Speaker 1: He's done with her. I get it. But it does
2:24:05
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I'm with you. It left a bad
2:24:07
Speaker 1: taste in my mouth too. I don't like anything about it.
2:24:10
Speaker 1: I'm and you know I've said this before. I'm somebody
2:24:16
Speaker 1: who thinks that you know, in the gang of one
2:24:17
Speaker 1: hundred of one hundred senators. I think the ideology, the
2:24:24
Speaker 1: belief system of ram Paul's is something that should be
2:24:27
Speaker 1: representative of one of the one hundred, should should come
2:24:30
Speaker 1: from that faction of the parties is a bit sort
2:24:32
Speaker 1: of a unique form of libertarianism, and a lot of
2:24:39
Speaker 1: times is counter is sort of counterintuitive ways I think
2:24:44
Speaker 1: can sometimes help tackle some issues from a different angle
2:24:49
Speaker 1: that deserve to be tackled. But this came across like
2:24:57
Speaker 1: a vendetta, came across as vindictive, was oddly personal for
2:25:02
Speaker 1: reasons that make no sense. And again is this frustration
2:25:05
Speaker 1: by Republicans that that they can't attack Donald Trump, so
2:25:10
Speaker 1: they're going to go after the eighty five year old
2:25:13
Speaker 1: former government official. I mean that was the part of
2:25:17
Speaker 1: this hearing that bothered me the most, which is Tony
2:25:22
Speaker 1: Fauci had no constitutional authority whatsoever. It was Donald Trump
2:25:26
Speaker 1: that did. It was the governors that did. By the way,
2:25:31
Speaker 1: Ryan DeSantis during the during his brief challenge to Donald
2:25:34
Speaker 1: Trump in the primary in twenty twenty four, tried that
2:25:37
Speaker 1: line of attack it and it just didn't hit right.
2:25:40
Speaker 1: He tried to hit he goes well, Trump was dumb
2:25:42
Speaker 1: enough to follow Fauci and all this stuff. He went
2:25:45
Speaker 1: out and it never landed, it never hit. It was
2:25:47
Speaker 1: amazing how Republican voters decided to get angry at Fauci
2:25:54
Speaker 1: but never punished Trump for his horrendous erratic leadership, if
2:26:02
Speaker 1: you want to call it that, during COVID. So they
2:26:06
Speaker 1: decide to take out their frustration on Fauci. So, anyway,
2:26:10
Speaker 1: that bugged me a lot. And the hag Seth hearings. Look,
2:26:13
Speaker 1: Hank Set's not a serious person, so it's hard to
2:26:17
Speaker 1: get a serious hearing. You know. I hope he's better
2:26:20
Speaker 1: behind the scenes when they go into closed door session,
2:26:22
Speaker 1: which a lot of times with the Defense Secretary they will.
2:26:26
Speaker 1: But yeah, the performative aspect, you know, his behavior only
2:26:31
Speaker 1: encourages the performative on the left, and it's just it deteriorates.
2:26:36
Speaker 1: And this is why everybody finds Congress to be a
2:26:38
Speaker 1: laughing stock right now, because it is, let's be honest,
2:26:46
Speaker 1: it is. Next question comes from Vin B Pennsylvania, Wan.
2:26:49
Speaker 1: He goes, hey, my Congressman pab Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican
2:26:53
Speaker 1: who survives in the Trump era by trying not to
2:26:55
Speaker 1: vote with Trump. He goes He regularly highlights bipartisan letters
2:26:59
Speaker 1: he and other members of Congress end to the president
2:27:01
Speaker 1: or Cabinet secretary's urging action. Man Brian Fitzpatrick is always
2:27:05
Speaker 1: mindful of who of the makeup of his district. From
2:27:10
Speaker 1: your experience covering Washington, do you do these letters actually
2:27:13
Speaker 1: influence policy or are they mostly symbolic to show constituents
2:27:16
Speaker 1: that members are engaged. Is there any process for tracking
2:27:19
Speaker 1: whether they receive responses or lead to action. There's not
2:27:23
Speaker 1: a good that's a good idea of coming, you know,
2:27:26
Speaker 1: finding an organization to keep track of those. I'm sure
2:27:31
Speaker 1: that you know the Congressional Research Service. There's probably a
2:27:35
Speaker 1: way to track these things. But I will say this,
2:27:38
Speaker 1: bipartisan letters are more likely to get a response from
2:27:41
Speaker 1: these agencies than partisan letters. Right if you're, particularly if
2:27:45
Speaker 1: you're a Democrat trying to get some action and out
2:27:48
Speaker 1: of a Republican department, you're going to have a better
2:27:51
Speaker 1: shot if there's a Republican co signer to your letter,
2:27:54
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get something out of one of
2:27:55
Speaker 1: the cabinet departments. So, in that sense, it I do
2:28:00
Speaker 1: think it has some it has some impact. And then
2:28:05
Speaker 1: obviously if you're a member of the same party that
2:28:09
Speaker 1: the cabinet's secretary is, they're going to be more responsive
2:28:12
Speaker 1: because if they're not, they know you're likely to immediately
2:28:17
Speaker 1: go to go to, you know, one of the leaders
2:28:19
Speaker 1: of the same party and complain. Might be the President,
2:28:22
Speaker 1: might be the speaker, might be the Senate leader. Whatever
2:28:25
Speaker 1: it is. So, but no, those bipartisan letters, it staffers
2:28:32
Speaker 1: are sensitive to it. And if it when when there
2:28:35
Speaker 1: is a when it really looks bipartisan, they're more likely
2:28:40
Speaker 1: to give a less political response that they're more likely
2:28:45
Speaker 1: to give a more professional response. So, in fairness to
2:28:48
Speaker 1: Congressman Fitzpatrick, yes, look, is it some of it? You
2:28:51
Speaker 1: could say is it performative? Sure, but we live in
2:28:55
Speaker 1: a performative era of politics. So he's got a show
2:29:00
Speaker 1: his middle of the road constituents, right, He clearly has
2:29:03
Speaker 1: voters who vote Fitzpatrick Harris, who voted Fitzpatrick Biden. He's
2:29:10
Speaker 1: got to show them that he hasn't changed his stripes.
2:29:14
Speaker 1: So I do think he probably, there's no doubt he
2:29:16
Speaker 1: goes out of his way to do more of them.
2:29:17
Speaker 1: But they land better than you think. I get your cynicism,
2:29:21
Speaker 1: but they land better than you think. Next question Jed
2:29:23
Speaker 1: d He goes, Hey, I'm listening to your discussion about
2:29:26
Speaker 1: why we know so little about the shooter, and I
2:29:28
Speaker 1: wonder if there's a simpler explanation. I think you're having
2:29:30
Speaker 1: to do with the Butler assassination attempt. Earlier reports suggested
2:29:33
Speaker 1: he had looked up the travel schedules of both Biden
2:29:35
Speaker 1: and Trump, which made me think he may have been
2:29:37
Speaker 1: seeking notoriety more than targeting one specific person. I think
2:29:40
Speaker 1: you're right about that. Do you think politics has discouraged
2:29:43
Speaker 1: a fuller investigation or public discussion because that conclusion doesn't
2:29:46
Speaker 1: fit either site's preferred narrative. Well, that there's no doubt
2:29:50
Speaker 1: if the right thought they could paint the narrative of
2:29:54
Speaker 1: crazed left wing lunatic take shot at Trump, or the
2:29:59
Speaker 1: left could say hey crazy, you know, anti semi lunatic
2:30:05
Speaker 1: or anti emeric whatever. Sure, I think you're right. I mean,
2:30:09
Speaker 1: if either party thought there was a clean narrative here,
2:30:12
Speaker 1: and there's certainly I think you're right that the initial
2:30:15
Speaker 1: background of there's it doesn't He doesn't appear to be
2:30:18
Speaker 1: a ideologically driven or sume he's dead. He didn't appear
2:30:25
Speaker 1: to be an ideologically driven shooter. That he was more
2:30:31
Speaker 1: of the crazy person aspect of things. But that was
2:30:41
Speaker 1: so was John Hinckley. And John Hinckley is a is
2:30:46
Speaker 1: a name that a lot of people, right, You don't
2:30:47
Speaker 1: have to explain who John Hinkley is, certainly to people
2:30:50
Speaker 1: of a certain age. So and he became notorious, I guess,
2:30:55
Speaker 1: is one way of putting it on that. But yeah,
2:31:01
Speaker 1: I think that's as good of a theory as any
2:31:03
Speaker 1: on that that there is. That there is some that
2:31:07
Speaker 1: there was no clean political narrative, and because there was
2:31:11
Speaker 1: no clean political narrative, it sort of went a way.
2:31:16
Speaker 1: And you could also argue the timing of it, right,
2:31:20
Speaker 1: so this took place two days before the start of
2:31:23
Speaker 1: the Republican Convention. Certainly the Republican Convention was about that.
2:31:26
Speaker 1: I think the fact that the he survived contributes to it.
2:31:30
Speaker 1: I think the fact that Republican voters themselves sort of
2:31:34
Speaker 1: instead of reacting angrily, reacted more of like, oh, he's
2:31:38
Speaker 1: been chosen, right he was that was the that was
2:31:41
Speaker 1: God's hand, right, So it became in some ways. I
2:31:46
Speaker 1: think it definitely had a There are some people who
2:31:52
Speaker 1: believe that Trump won the election right there that that
2:31:56
Speaker 1: moment won of the election. I think you could. I
2:32:06
Speaker 1: think you could make a persuasive case that was true,
2:32:10
Speaker 1: because it's certainly rarely has Trump been humanized, and that
2:32:17
Speaker 1: was that was the most humanized version of Trump that
2:32:21
Speaker 1: we've had in the in this political era that Trump
2:32:25
Speaker 1: has dominated that week, so I I you know, Plus,
2:32:33
Speaker 1: that was the week that Elon Musk decided he was
2:32:35
Speaker 1: all in and he seemed to whether he was looking
2:32:39
Speaker 1: for a moment or it did inspire him. Whatever it
2:32:42
Speaker 1: was that had obviously had a huge financial asset to
2:32:47
Speaker 1: the campaign as well, So I think all of that
2:32:50
Speaker 1: contributed some to the limited beating for let me put
2:32:55
Speaker 1: it in another way, had this assassination attempt happened in
2:32:58
Speaker 1: an odd numbered year where we weren't in the middle
2:33:00
Speaker 1: of a campaign and there wasn't Essentially wasn't something else
2:33:05
Speaker 1: driving coverage, i e. The presidential campaign? Maybe more maybe
2:33:11
Speaker 1: maybe there's more time where media sort of sits on
2:33:15
Speaker 1: this story and just sort of, you know, sits on
2:33:18
Speaker 1: it and sits on it and sits on it and
2:33:20
Speaker 1: it gets some tracks in that way. So all right,
2:33:27
Speaker 1: and the last question for the week return questionnaire here
2:33:31
Speaker 1: Chase c Little Rock, Arkansas. Hey Chase, see what I'm wearing?
2:33:35
Speaker 1: Brother got the hog got some hogswag on this week.
2:33:41
Speaker 1: First off, thanks for the great podcast recommendations. I finally
2:33:43
Speaker 1: made it back to DC for the first time since
2:33:44
Speaker 1: college and love checking out the Einstein memorial Sitting at
2:33:48
Speaker 1: off the record behind the heavily barricaded White House perimeter
2:33:50
Speaker 1: got me wondering does the growing physical separation between our
2:33:53
Speaker 1: leaders and the public reinforce the Washington bubble? Or is
2:33:56
Speaker 1: heightened security unintentionally undermining the accessibility it's meant to So
2:34:01
Speaker 1: I hate art security minded culture, right, and I've watched
2:34:05
Speaker 1: this grow. When I first moved to Washington, you could
2:34:08
Speaker 1: parallel park, probably illegally. You'd probably get ticketed eventually, but
2:34:12
Speaker 1: you could parallel park on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of
2:34:15
Speaker 1: the White House. Now there's you know, it's a pedestrian
2:34:20
Speaker 1: walkway if you're lucky, and usually they guide you to
2:34:23
Speaker 1: Lafayette Park. And if Donald Trump has his way, they
2:34:26
Speaker 1: want to make this perimeter. Now go on the other
2:34:28
Speaker 1: side of Lafayette Park, which, for those of you that
2:34:31
Speaker 1: know DC's geography, would mean the closest sort of the
2:34:35
Speaker 1: average non credentialed person might be able to get to
2:34:37
Speaker 1: the White House, might be H Street or on the
2:34:41
Speaker 1: other side, E on the other side, which is I,
2:34:44
Speaker 1: and then you have all this. You know, you can
2:34:47
Speaker 1: maybe get some pedestrian walkway. But I think the security, Look,
2:34:54
Speaker 1: the heightened amount of political threats is heightened security in general.
2:34:58
Speaker 1: And we've seen it first the bubble around presidency. My
2:35:01
Speaker 1: concern is that we're going to start to see a
2:35:02
Speaker 1: growing separation between the public and members of Congress. Right.
2:35:06
Speaker 1: Congress is not supposed to have that kind of separation.
2:35:09
Speaker 1: They're they're elected, they're of the people. But the amount
2:35:15
Speaker 1: of of threats that come into Congress now has gone
2:35:20
Speaker 1: up big time. We've seen the amount of attacks on
2:35:26
Speaker 1: politicians go up. We've seen state legislators killed in their
2:35:29
Speaker 1: home in Minnesota. So, you know, and always when you
2:35:35
Speaker 1: have when you have moments like that, the immediate priority
2:35:39
Speaker 1: becomes security. And you know, look we've seen it. Look
2:35:43
Speaker 1: look at our sporting events right when I've you know,
2:35:47
Speaker 1: it used to be if if you had mags show
2:35:49
Speaker 1: up at a game, I mean, oh, the President's coming,
2:35:52
Speaker 1: you'd only get like magn You only went through a magnetometer.
2:35:55
Speaker 1: If somebody that big was going to visit the ballpark.
2:36:00
Speaker 1: Now it's just sort of we all go through you know,
2:36:03
Speaker 1: everybody goes through a magnetometer. So we've been creating security
2:36:12
Speaker 1: bubbles around our celebrities, around our athletes, around our politicians.
2:36:17
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think it's only going to make politicians
2:36:20
Speaker 1: look more out of touch, feel more out of touch.
2:36:24
Speaker 1: And I will say this, if you're an elected official
2:36:26
Speaker 1: who is afraid of the public, please leave the profession,
2:36:31
Speaker 1: get out of politics. If you are afraid of the public,
2:36:36
Speaker 1: then you shouldn't be in politics. If pure and simple,
2:36:40
Speaker 1: and I understand, I get the threats, I understand it,
2:36:44
Speaker 1: and you know, I've made it very clear, right I'm
2:36:47
Speaker 1: not going to get near certain officials who seem to
2:36:49
Speaker 1: almost invite chaos close to them. I'm not putting myself
2:36:55
Speaker 1: unnecessarily in harm's way. But I also don't have I
2:36:59
Speaker 1: also have not gone out there and asked for the
2:37:02
Speaker 1: taxpayers to give me a job, pay me, and then
2:37:06
Speaker 1: suddenly not be around, not be able to talk to them,
2:37:09
Speaker 1: not be able to be seen by them. So you know,
2:37:13
Speaker 1: I do think if you're a politician and you're afraid
2:37:16
Speaker 1: of if you want to be in public office, There's yeah,
2:37:20
Speaker 1: there's going to be risk. There's risk everything in life.
2:37:24
Speaker 1: But if you want to be an elected official and
2:37:26
Speaker 1: you're afraid of the public, and if you're if you
2:37:30
Speaker 1: fear the public, it's likely that you have said words
2:37:35
Speaker 1: or behaved in a way that it has incited the
2:37:38
Speaker 1: public in a way. I'm not sitting here, I'm not
2:37:40
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and say I'm gonna
2:37:41
Speaker 1: blame the victim. But in politics, you know, if if
2:37:46
Speaker 1: the people that usually are fearful of the people and
2:37:50
Speaker 1: are afraid of interacting with folks because of quote unquote
2:37:53
Speaker 1: security threats are the ones that have gone out of
2:37:56
Speaker 1: their way to taunt political opponents, and almost it's almost
2:38:00
Speaker 1: like they're inviting this. I think what we all know
2:38:08
Speaker 1: is ninety nine percent of Americans embrace the Golden rule.
2:38:14
Speaker 1: They will do unto others as you do unto them.
2:38:18
Speaker 1: You go out of your way to meet people, You
2:38:20
Speaker 1: go out of your way to be accessible to people.
2:38:23
Speaker 1: People aren't going to punch in the face, and people
2:38:25
Speaker 1: aren't going to take shots at you. You go out
2:38:28
Speaker 1: of your way to dehumanize people. You go out of
2:38:31
Speaker 1: your way to attack other people. Simply for who they are.
2:38:39
Speaker 1: I'm not again, I don't think it's justified to punch back,
2:38:46
Speaker 1: but you did seem to be inviting the retribution since
2:38:50
Speaker 1: you went out and decided to deliver it first. As
2:38:57
Speaker 1: the expression goes, it takes two to tango. But I
2:39:01
Speaker 1: do worry about this. I worry about this quite a bit.
2:39:06
Speaker 1: All right. I'm not going to go deeper into my
2:39:10
Speaker 1: NAT's anxiety. You heard it at the top of this podcast,
2:39:13
Speaker 1: but it's a bummer and a message to the new
2:39:19
Speaker 1: front office of the Nats and to the Learner family again,
2:39:23
Speaker 1: you have this has been a This has been a
2:39:25
Speaker 1: very damaging week to the fan base, more so than
2:39:28
Speaker 1: you realize. It's a very damage because we took to
2:39:34
Speaker 1: It was an amazing start, and you gave us a
2:39:37
Speaker 1: lot of hope and then literally you got rid of
2:39:42
Speaker 1: the hope for nothing that anybody can say. And I
2:39:49
Speaker 1: think one of my frustrations with teams with with with
2:39:54
Speaker 1: these major league teams is the arrogance they have and
2:39:57
Speaker 1: how they treat their fans. They would have zero value
2:40:00
Speaker 1: if the fans didn't care about the team. And when
2:40:04
Speaker 1: you don't appear to care about the team as much
2:40:08
Speaker 1: as the fans do, and just trading away the third, fourth,
2:40:11
Speaker 1: and fifth best players for a return that nobody, nobody
2:40:16
Speaker 1: of note thinks is a great return, with the exception
2:40:19
Speaker 1: of what you got back for Curtis me. That's how
2:40:26
Speaker 1: you you know, and I would just say is is
2:40:28
Speaker 1: think about the thirteen year old, the fourteen year old,
2:40:31
Speaker 1: the fifteen year old fan who was getting excited about
2:40:35
Speaker 1: this lineup, the best lineup in baseball by the numbers
2:40:41
Speaker 1: for four months, and you took it all away from them.
2:40:47
Speaker 1: And there's no explanation, there's no plan, there's no super
2:40:53
Speaker 1: return where you can say, yeah, but we have the
2:40:54
Speaker 1: number one draft pick, or we've got this guy, or
2:40:57
Speaker 1: we've got that guy. None of that. And all fans
2:41:01
Speaker 1: are hearing is that the second best player in the
2:41:03
Speaker 1: team is going to get traded in a couple of months,
2:41:08
Speaker 1: an MVP candidate at the moment in c J. Abrams,
2:41:13
Speaker 1: you know, you tested our patients quite a bit over
2:41:15
Speaker 1: the last three years, and the learners have just Look.
2:41:21
Speaker 1: Most Nats fans don't hate this ownership, but we're frustrated
2:41:24
Speaker 1: with you guys, and to do this again, you yank
2:41:28
Speaker 1: the rug out from under us again. All right, I
2:41:31
Speaker 1: said I wasn't going to repeat the rant from the
2:41:33
Speaker 1: top of the episode, but right, priorities listen. We're at
2:41:39
Speaker 1: the beginning of what's going to be a crazy, monumental
2:41:43
Speaker 1: August set of Primary, So I will finally put a
2:41:46
Speaker 1: pin in this one, and I will see you in
2:41:48
Speaker 1: seventy two hours. As always, thanks for listening, and until
2:41:51
Speaker 1: we upload again,