Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Character Is Destiny In Politics + Iran Has Turned Into A Costly Stalemate

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Chuck’s Commentary - Character Is Destiny In Politics + Iran Has Turned Into A Costly Stalemate · The Chuck ToddCast

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• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to another episode of the check podcast. It is in
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: some ways, I've got a episode that has a ton
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of stuff that I'm gonna touch on. Right, I'll touch
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: on a ron. I'm gonna touch on main Senate and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: California governor and Texas governor and the presidency in America
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: to fifty and in many ways, I could sit here
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: and say I'm checklisting off of all these different topics
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and headlines and the bidens and all of this stuff.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: But I'd also argue I have one issue in some ways,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and in a few minutes it's sort of the larger
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: point I want to make. I'm going to get on
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: that in a minute, but let me give you a
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: complete rundown of today's episode, so you know what you're
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: getting yourself into. Like I said, I got there's a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: lot of things that have happened over the last seventy
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: two hours. I think they all think there's a big
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: there's a large theme to them that I want to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: get to about character in politics and whether it is
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the people with bad character, the people that defend the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: people with bad character that are the real problems in
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: American politics. And I'm going to get to that in
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a minute. The Iran stalemate. You know, we in some
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: ways the more things, the more this is delayed and baited,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the more likely the outcome that I've been outlining for
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: you for some time is going to come to fruition.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: It's just the question is how many stages does it take?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And we'll see where it goes. I do have a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: little riff about you know, we sit here and worry
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a lot. Where are the guardrails? The guard rails kind
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of work this weekend. I'll get to it. I'll get
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: to that in a few minutes as well. Plus we've
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: got the big, first big primary in June likely one
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: of the largest single days that people will be voting.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Given the size of California's population, it obviously punches above
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: above the average primary day. But we also have Iowa,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: South Dakota, and New Jersey that all have some interesting
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: races all happening. Obviously in the next thirty six hours
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: we'll have some signaling there. And I think actually one
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: of the more intriguing aspects is, after all this hand
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: ringing from Democrats that they could get shut out, there's
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: seems to be if we're we're we there's some pulling
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: out there indicating that the Republicans could get shut out
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: of the top two in California. So the point is
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of interesting headlines to talk about. Plus I've
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: yet to weigh in on the mess that the Big
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Ten and the SEC are making of college football. Uh,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: and of course we've got both the owners and the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: players have released their first UH. They're sort of their
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: their their dream scenarios, their dream pitches of how they
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: would solve baseball's labor and spending problems going forward, and
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: more of an equity issue that I think we know
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: baseball teams are dealing with. So it's a it's a
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: pact and busy show, and I'd like to think I'm
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: giving you guys everything you expect to come here for.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I want to just quickly deal with Iron here because
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: in some ways there is a there's quote I want
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: to share for my friend John Ellis, who if you
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: don't subscribe to news Items, it is a sort of
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a a really well curated news of the day with
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: a focus a bit more on international politics, some domestic,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: lots of market stuff, lots of science and tech as well.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I can't quite put my finger on exactly what I
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: would say is John Ellis's focal point, but I can
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: tell you it's a different type of aggregated newsletter, smart
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: news items things like this, and you know, you get
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: his smart takes. John Ellis, for those of you who
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: don't know, he's actually the first cousin of George W.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Bush and Jeb Bush. He is if he is part
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of the Bush family. He has been in and out
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of Republican politics, worked in media over time. I think
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: it's pretty safe to say he is a one of
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: those never Trump right leaning folks. But you know, I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: think his own politics is I don't think a clean
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: thing there. So point is Is. I think his newsletters
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: are outstanding, and news items is one of them, and
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I want to highlight a news item from the weekend
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: because it was just it was a very concise paragraph
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: that I think sort of sums up where we are
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: in Iran and is sort of almost the frankly, what
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I would just what I wanted to say is yeah,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: what he said. I want to quote this news item directly,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: but it was so good that it is also what
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: John Ellis did because it is the words of a
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Substack author named William Usher. He's a former CIA analyst.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: He's got this terrific newsletter on subsect that I'm not
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: a subscriber of what He's been quoted quite a few times,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: and John Ellis's newsletter seems to be maybe I ought
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to think about subscribing, So mister Usher, you can think
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: of mister Ellis for potentially another subscriber. But he quotes
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: he quotes him here, and I just want to do
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: it word for word here. This is where things stand
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: at the end of May twenty twenty six. A ceasefire
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: that neither side fully observes, a framework that neither side
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  Speaker 1: fully accepts, and a set of core demands that neither
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: side shows any willingness to abandon. The war has settled
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  Speaker 1: into a costly stalemate, military operations paused but not ended,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: economic damage compounding daily, and the political clock ticking in Washington. Realistically,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Trump now faces three options, the clear victory and walk away,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: cut a deal, or restart the war. Look, everything that
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: mister Usher wrote there is not is something that hasn't.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know, is something that I've been conveying.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It's something plenty of us have been conveying, I think
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: for some time really since the since since the ceasefire began,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: and one realized what little leverage that the United States
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: had and how much more leverage Iran and ended up
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: with after this war started, thanks to ignorance or something
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: by our war planners having to do with the straight
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: up war moves. Well, I just think it succinctly sort
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: of tells you where we are. This is where we are.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: We're in this stalemate. Here's what I can tell you.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: The Iranians will continue to keep negotiating. Donald Trump does
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: not want any sort of deal. He just simply wants
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the concepts of a deal so that he can essentially
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: declare some form of accomplishment. We need even call it victory, right,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: but some form of Okay, I've checked that off the list.
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  Speaker 1: I've got a plan to potentially implement a plan that
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Right, That
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: might be the best we can hope for here at
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  Speaker 1: this point. He's going to end up giving them money,
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  Speaker 1: But my guess is he'll do it in such a
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: way where he can claim he's not doing it the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: way Obama did it when sanctions relief came. It'll probably
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: go through some third party country. It'll be either Pakistan
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: or Cutter that ends up cutting the actual check or
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: whatever it is to Iran, so that he can look
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: like he's not capitulating in a way that he had
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: criticized Barack Obama from doing. Because, again, other than restarting
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the war, the only way out of this where they
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: where the United States can hope to save a tiny
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: bit of face here is to essentially create the USMCA
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: of Iran nuclear deals. And what am I referring to
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: when I say that, right, Trump, I ripped up NAFTA
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: only to renegotiate NAFTA. But ah, it's not NAFTA. I've
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: renamed it. It's USMCA, it's NAFTA zero. Right, So here's
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: so anyway, that's where we are. You know, we're at
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: this point. It's nothing but market manipulation. Every morning, right,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: we all wake up to see, how's he manipulating the
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: stock market today? Does the stock market thing? Things are
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: getting closer to a deal, Okay, then he has to
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: say nothing. If suddenly the markets are spooked, oh my god,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: he's got to let them know that a deal is
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: imminent or that oh they're they're exchanging paper, et cetera.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: So that's getting old, this market manipulation, which is really
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: what may has been about right since the seas fire.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: But the here's the real scary part that's coming and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: why we really do need a deal sooner rather than later,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: is if you've been paying attention, very close attention to this,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: most of the economists and experts on our oil markets
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: have set, including the conversations I've had with people like
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Daniel Jurgen and some poem. We had these conversations in
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: March and April, and all of them said, look, it's
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: going to be starting in June that we're going to
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: start to feel sort of the longer tail of this,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: right that in June is when you would see strategic
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: oil reserves start to be run down. It was in
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: June that you would start to see fertilizer inventories at zero.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: That it's in June that you would start to see
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the almost the you know, you've heard of the hockey
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: stick moment when you're examining, when you're watching a company
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: where you know, you're you know, things are going well,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you know, instead of you know,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: two million dollars in revenues, you have fifty million dollars
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: in revenues, and it all happens within like a six
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: month period. It's your hockey stick moment. Well, this is
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a negative version of that hockey stick moment, but it's like,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you know, we've been middling along and we've been surviving,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: and we can handle, you know, a six week disruption,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and we can handle a twelve week disruption, and then
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we can't handle that disruption, and
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: we go from handling it with a little increase in
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: costs and a little bit of this to suddenly the
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: hockey stick moment where it's holy s, we've got to
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: start rationing, and we've got to start doing this. And
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: all of the experts had pointed to the month of June,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: right that said, look, this needs to get done before June.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Well it's not before June anymore. Here we are, so
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: you know, every single day exponentially adds to the damage.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Like we are, we are in that period here, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I know that's that's frustrating to hear. It's very you
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: could say, hey, you know, the media needs to you know,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: go in. It is hard to it is hard to show, right,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: it's very hard to to competently predict catastrophe because you know,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: how people handle a crisis. Moment is uneven. You know,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: some people suddenly quickly want to hoard, right, Like the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: toilet paper situation we had at the beginning of COVID,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: where all of a sudden, eybody decided that they better
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: go grab the toilet paper now. Then all of a
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: sudden we had a run on toilet paper. We had
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: plenty of toilet paper, but people perceived that we wouldn't
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: and then everybody began hoarding. And I think that's the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: type of situations that's why you're it is you're never
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: quite sure it exactly right, there's sort of rationality to
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: this until there isn't. And the thing that we ought
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: to fear here is that we may hit an a
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: moment where the consumers started to behavior irrationally in their
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: own very rational ways, if that makes sense, you know,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like the hoarding of toilet paper. Like, they're not wrong
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: that we're going to have these supply chain issues, but
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: they were focused on the wrong thing. It turned out
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: toilet paper was going to be the least of our issues.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: It turned out we had other issues that we should
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: have been a bit more worried about, but it was
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: certainly symbolic. That's the situation we're starting to head towards
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: now and God forbid. By the way, speaking of June,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: that's also the start of hurricane season. As an East coaster,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: as a Florida boy, you know, June first means is
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: a big deal date on the calendar. It's when we're
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: all sort of every morning you wake up and you
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: start looking at the Horn of Africa, anything out there, right,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: God forbid, we have a natural disaster in the middle
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of this man made energy crisis that the world is experienced.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: We're already seeing what happens when you have a man
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: made aid crisis like in world health. With the United
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: States pulling out of the WHO no longer any expertise,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: we've now got one of the worst of Bola outbreaks
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: we've ever had to deal with in the United States.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: His expertise is essentially on the sidelines because of Donald
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Trump's personal war against international organizations, and that is having
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a potentially calamitous effect in the Congo. And it's certainly
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: something that you know, again, I go back to something
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: I mentioned last week, which is, you know, the United
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: States uses soft power not out of the goodness of
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: their heart, but also to protect ourselves. It's national security.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: It protects the health and safety of US citizens. And
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: pulling out of the WHO put human beings lives at risks,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: which of course puts the United States lives at risk.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: So you know, this is the These are the type
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of you know, this is why the damage that Trump
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: has done to the government, to our international relations. You
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: don't fully appreciate how bad the damage is until you
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: really until you hit some crisis. Right, Abola is suddenly
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: we're realizing this crisis that Trump and Kennedy have created
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: in public health is now. Is now you know, putting
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: pressure on the entire world and could could take something
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: that would have been that essentially, had Kennedy and Trump
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: not touched a thing, then we'd have probably a hell
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: of a lot more control over this outbreak than we
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: do at the moment and have a lot more experts
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: on the ground. Donald Trump's experiencing the same thing with
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: his inability to deal with the Iranians in the Strait
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: before moves. If he hadn't beaten up every American ally
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: that the United States has had other than Israel, if
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: he hadn't beaten up every ally in Europe that we had,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and maybe some of them would want to help us
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: out more. But alas this is what happens, you don't,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and this is what can be frustrating for those of
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: us that are in this space of trying to call bullshit,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: trying to call balls and strikes. Let you know, hey,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: this is what's happening. You need to need to worry
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: about around this corner. We need to worry about now
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: going around this corner. We can't tell you exactly, We
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: can't always tell you exactly how this is going to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: have a negative impact on us. We're just promising you Unfortunately,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: it's going to have a negative impact on us. Pulling
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: out of public health was going to do this, how
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: do we know it. We're now starting to experience what
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: this is with this, with the with the struggle to
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to try to contain the same ball out right. You
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: want to understand why multilateralism has been such a good
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: thing for the United States, just look at how hard
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: it is to go it alone in the Middle East
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: when you choose to go it alone. So it is,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it is, it is down the road that you sometimes
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: see these negativities, and it's it's it's unfortunate, but it
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: also is why Winston Churchill famously said you can eventually
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: count on the Americans after they've exhausted every other path.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: And that's why I have my own version of optimism.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: That's how I stay optimistic even in some of these
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: darker moments and darker days. This episode of the Chuck
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• 19:12
  Speaker 1: But I do have a larger topic I want to
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: hit on today, and it is about the issue of
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: character and politics. And if you think about it, there's
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of issues over the last
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: few over the last week which has sort of resurfaced.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: You know, to me, what is a constant in American politics,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: which is character is always destiny. The question is whether
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: everybody sees it at the right time to deal with it.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Whether it is the success of Ken Paxton and what
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: that says about our politics, the potential success of Graham
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Platner and what that says about our politics, the fact
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: that we should We knew in twenty fifteen that if
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump became president, he would somehow try to manipulate
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the government so that he could escape a tax audit
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: for the rest of his life, something which, by the way,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: we are now finding out is among the real motivations
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: of this slush fund, is him escaping accountability from the government.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: In a battle that he's been having with the government
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: for a couple of decades. There's the new revelations by
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden where she clearly was either lying in twenty
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: twenty four about concern about her husband's ability to run
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: for president, or she's lying now about her fears that
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: he was having a stroke at that infamous debate. It's
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: all about It all gets to this larger question, right,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and it's one of the oldest questions in politics and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: still one of the simplest right is how much does
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: character matter? It's not about policy, not ideology, not party affiliation,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: but character. Generation ends up having the same argument when
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: it comes to this issue of character and politics. Some
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: voters think personal conduct is highly relevant. Others think it's
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: a distraction. Some voters care more about what a politician
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: says they'll do, others care more about how they've lived
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: their life. There's no right or wrong way. It's called democracy.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Right in the words of Getty Lee, if you choose
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: not to decide, you've also you've still If you choose
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: not to decide, you still have made a choice. The
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: point is everybody has their own motivation for why they vote,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: why they don't vote and who they vote for, but
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: who they won't vote for, because in this country, everybody
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: gets to make that decision for themselves. Well, what I've
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: been thinking about lately, though, isn't whether character itself matters.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: It's something else. It's who ends up defending the character flaws,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: because the people who coume up our politics the most
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: are not always the people with the character flaws, to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the people who defend the people with the character flaws.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: We spent the better part of a decade having this
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: argument about Donald Trump. One of the great frustrations many
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Democrats had with Trump supporters was watching behavior that they
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: themselves found disqualifying for the last few decades, at least
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: if a Democrat did it. Democrats found were frustrated when
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: these Trump supporters would sort of excuse things that he
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: did or said that had any other politician said it,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't have allowed it to be explained away. The
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: argument was always some version of yeah, but right, Yeah
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: but he's fighting for us, Yeah but the economy, Yeah
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: but immigration, Yeah but the alternative is worse. This whole
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: flight ninety three mindset, it doesn't matter, right, And eventually
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of people stopped evaluating the behavior and just
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: simply started defending it. I'm old enough to remember when
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio had cared about character in politics.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: They have chosen to defend this bad character. Now, before
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: anybody misunderstands me, this isn't actually supposed to be a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump monologue. And no it's not really a Grand
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Platiner monologue either. But yes, what's been happening around him
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: and with him helped inspire this. But the reason I'm
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: interested in the Platiner story is because I think it
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: reveals something a lot bigger about what's going on in
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: our politics. Because what I've watched over the last few
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: weeks is a lot of people who spent years criticizing
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Republicans for enabling Trump suddenly sounding awfully familiar. Not because
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the conduct is the same. It's not. Not because the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: facts are the same. They're not. The reasoning is the same.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: The reasoning goes something like this, Yes there are concerns,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Yes there are warning signs, but that's what campaigns are for.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Yes there are things that make me uncomfortable. The cause
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: is too important, but the movement needs But the alternative
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: is worse that's the moment when political judgment starts getting clouded,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: because every political movement does this, and they've been doing
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: it since the dawn of time, every single one of them.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: When a movement finds somebody it wants to believe in,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: yellow flags become green flags, and red flags become yellow flags,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and anybody who points them out gets accused of helping
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the other side. Everybody thinks they're good at spotting enablers
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: do they just think the enablers live on the other
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: side of the political aisle. The deeper issue here is
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: one I don't think we talk about enough of why
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: do people run for office? We tend to assume everybody
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: runs for some form of the same reason, but they don't.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Some people genuinely want to solve problems. Some people have
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: ideas that they think are unique to them and that
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: they can solve a political conflict with a unique solution.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Some people just simply want to serve believe that hey,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: that's what citizenship's about. And there are plenty of people
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: that are driven by ambition they want a capstone on
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: their resume. Still others are driven by a massive ego,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and some people are searching for something purpose identity community, meaning, validation, redemption.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Politics can offer all of those things. If you're a
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: washed up actor and you haven't gotten work in a
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: long time, you can run for mayor of America's second
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: largest city. And maybe you're pretty good at this. We'll
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: find out. I don't know, but politics maybe the most
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: powerful identity building exercise available in American life today. Right,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: we've really sort of almost abused politics of this. Join
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a movement, find a tribe, find your mission, find people
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: who tell you you're changing the world. There's something incredibly
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: seductive about that. Sometimes it's healthy. Sometimes politics does give
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: people purpose. Sometimes public service brings out the best in people.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: But sometimes politics becomes therapy, and that's where trouble starts.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I've become increasingly convinced that some people use political campaigns
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and political movements in lieu of therapy. Maybe they're lonely
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: or washed up reality TV host and they don't know
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: what to do. They can't do business because they've scared
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: off everybody they've ever done business with, because they're a
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: bad businessman. Maybe that's why they try politics. Instead of
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: confronting problems in their own lives, they throw themselves into
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: politics instead. Of dealing with personal struggles, they seek validation
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: from a movement. Instead of figuring out who they are,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: They let politics tell them who they are, and for
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: a while it can work. Politics is a fantastic distraction.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: The problem is that distractions don't solve the underlying problems
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: that perhaps people did need therapy for. They just simply
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: postpone them, and eventually those problems show up again, only
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: now they're attached to public power. And that's why character matters,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: not because we're looking for saints. Politics has never been
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: populated by saints. Character matters because it is predictive. That's
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: why it matters. That's why the phrase character is destiny
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: has meaning. Character flaws rarely stay confined to a personal
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: life forever. Eventually they influence decision making. Eventually, they affect judgment.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Eventually they affect how somebody handles power. When people bring
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: personal baggage into politics, eventually that baggage influences their decision making,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: just as the Bidens who did preemptive pardons. We've seen
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: this over and over again. There's Donald Trump. How many
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: decisions of his presidency were influenced by personal grievances. How
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: many were influenced by his need for validation renaming the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Kennedy Center. Folks, how many were influenced by old scores
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: he wanted to settled. The character flaws did not stay private,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: they became public. You can make a similar argument about
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: John Edwards. This is one of the examples I use
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: quite a bit when talking about this, because I have
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a miss empathy for a mister and missus Edwards and
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: what the late Elizabeth Edwards went to. But they used
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: politics in lieu of dealing with a problem. Democratic Party
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: became enamored with a candidate who, in retrospect, was clearly
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: carrying around unresolved personal issues. A family that suffered an
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: unimaginable tragedy losing a child also threw itself deeper and
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: deeper into politics, and eventually the entire party paid the price.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: You can make a version of this argument about Andrew Cuomo.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: You can make a version of this argument about a
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: lot of politicians. Frankly, you can make a version of
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: this argument at the Biden's Joe Biden, Joe Biden, why
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: they ever run in the first place when their kids
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: were in crisis In twenty eighteen, one of the tragedies
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of Biden's political career is that the line between family
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: struggles and public responsibilities became increasingly difficult to separate the
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: deaths he endured. Nobody wishes that upon anybody, the burden
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: he carried, the challenges surrounding Hunter Biden, and no doubt,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: his own guilts or whatever you know that a parent
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: has when grieving both a dead child and trying to
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: parent a troubled living child. All of those experiences shaped him.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: He's an enormously empathetic figure because of it in some ways,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: and he knows how to give empathy. And of course
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: these tragedies shaped him. He's human. The question is whether
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: there were moments when family obligations began competing with presidential obligations.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Just A good example is the preemptive partons. As a father,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: I understand them completely. I have the power to make
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: sure my son is never touched by this mess again.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to use that power to protect my kid.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I get it. As a president, it's a huge mistake,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: such a terrible precedent, and might undermines the legitimacy of
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the rule of law. As a father, protecting your child
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: as instinctive. As a president, your responsibilities are broader than
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: your family. It's not an easy distinction. Again, that's why
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: we cared about character, but it's an important one because
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: democracy depends on public officials being able to separate personal
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: interests from public responsibilities. That's why the character discussion matters
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: so much. Not because we're moralizing, not because we're pretending
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: politicians should be perfect, but because power magnifies whatever is
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: already there. If somebody is running for something, power doesn't
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: fix it. If somebody is searching for validation, power doesn't
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: solve it. Somebody has unresolved personal baggage, power rarely makes
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: it disappear. Actually, it usually makes it more consequential and
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: ends up involving innocent people that had no part of
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: your personal issues. One of the things we've lost over
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the last few decades is an appreciation for why political
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: parties existed in the first place. They weren't just ideological organizations.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: They actually were vetting organizations. They weren't imperfect. They were imperfect.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: They weren't perfect. They made mistakes. Sometimes they protected the
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: wrong people and sometimes they kept out the right people.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: But they did ask hard questions before someone got too
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: close to power. Today, social media allows candidates to build
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: emotional relationships with supporters before they've been fully vetted. Movements
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: fall in love first. The movement progressives are just in
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: love with so no new information. It's got to be
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: explained away right. Questions come later, and by then it's
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: often too late, because once people become emotionally invested in
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a candidate, they stop evaluating. Then they just simply start defending.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: We've seen it with Trump, and that's the cycle I
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: worry about. And not just on the Rhine, not just
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: on the laugh this is everywhere. As we've seen, this
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: type of behavior is contagious. The lesson of the Trump
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: era wasn't that Republicans are uniquely vulnerable to overlooking character flaws.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: The lesson was that every political movement is vulnerable to
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: overlooking character flaws. When the cause feels important enough. The
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: ridiculous Flight ninety three defense the moment we convince ourselves
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: that the mission is more important than the flaws, we
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: do enter dangerous territory, and the Republic is put at
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: risk because the flaws don't disappear, they don't become less relevant,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: they don't magically stop mattering. Those flaws show up. They'll
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: affect judgment, they'll effect of other decisions, which then affects
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: all of us. That's why voters should pay attention not
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: just to the candidate with the baggage. They should also
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: pay attention to the people explaining why the baggage doesn't matter,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: because those are usually the first warning signs that a
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: movement has stopped asking questions and has started making excuses.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: So look on when it comes to what's going on
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: in main center. I don't want to also say, hey,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: this means that those that were advocating for Janet Mills
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: should be getting drunk and I told you so juice,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: because I'm not sure Janet Mills is the answer. That's
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: also misreading the moment. What has happened, though, is that
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and you see it. You see it when anybody that's
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: part of a certain wing of the party, when one
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: of their well known proponents gets accused of a character issue,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: there's this immediate rallying around them that they're just under
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: siege because of what they believe, not because of who
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: they are. Look, it's good, it's a good pr tactic,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: it's a good crisis management tactic. Deflect and blame, right,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I get it. But when you've spent when you've spent
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: a decade absolutely eviscerating one party for looking the other
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: way on character flaws that were so obvious. Even the
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: character himself admitted that he could shoot somebody and get
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: away with it. Right. That's when you know your movement
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: is no longer sober. They are high on their own
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: supply and the supply of others. And I think this
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: is where Democrats are now in a very difficult spot
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: here with Platter. I don't know what to make. I
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: think it's there's a lot of yellow flags here. There's
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of issues. These issues with him are not
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: from twenty ten. This isn't like George W. Bush in
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: two thousand and us arguing about his behavior in the seventies,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: which happened twenty five or thirty years, or the conversations
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: around Bill Clinton in the nineties, which were about his
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: behavior in the late sixties early seventies. He was accused
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: of sexty in twenty twenty three. Folks, just checked my
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: calendar again. Okay, it's twenty twenty six. This isn't a
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: youthful indiscretion. Now. I'm also aware that someone will say, well,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: he's been going through a lot of stuff. I get
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: that the question is whether politics should be used in
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: lieu of therapy and lou of dealing with your own problems.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: And this is what has bothered me. Right, so many
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: people have figured out how to use running for president
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: to profit or to launder their public image, and so
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: much so that that you've seen it sort of right.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know Eric Swollwell create you know, essentially
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: patted his resume by a useless case and paying for president,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: and it almost got him the nominee, almost got him
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: to the governor's mansion, until somebody decided those character flaws
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: were just too much to leave dead and buried. Mike
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Huckabee had no interest in being president when he ran
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the first time. He was just looking for a talk show,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: looking for money, and he got it. In fact, he
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: was almost too successful. He became a serious candidate for
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the nomination for a brief period of time, and I
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: remember they struggled with it because I don't think they
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: ever planned on being that successful. Donald Trump never planned
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: on being that successful. He was just doing it for ratings,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: for his own Q rating, hoping to make himself relevant.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And we've seen it. Gary Bauer, al Sharp, that Alan Keyes,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Mike Huckabee, Ben Carr's, Herman Kane, I mentioned Swallwell, Tulsa Gabbard, Right,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: we can keep Bobby Kennedy Junior. None of these people
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: were serious presidential candidates. None of them just wanted to
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: have a real job. They were looking for a shortcut
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: to the thanks to the celebrification of politics, right, which
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: really started to be an obvious career path when we
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: became a full three cable channel world back in the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: late nineties, early odds, and now with fragmentation. Right, Hell,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: look at what I'm doing. All Right, I'm an individual
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: creator in that sense, I don't even need a network.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: But I promise you I'm not going to use politics
• 39:52
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  Speaker 1: There's no doubt Susan Collins has worn out her welcome.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: She probably shouldn't have run again. And if Jared Golden
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: had agreed to run for the Senate seat, there'd be
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: no Graham Platner. Right, that was the ideal democratic replacement,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: but perhaps there should have been a bit more. I
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: mean it was folks were so you know, I think
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: progressives were so excited about having somebody who's charismatic who
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: didn't look like a stereotype of a progressive that they
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: may have put blinders on. We'll see. Maybe Platner has
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: figured all this out, and the decision to put it
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: all out there is part of it. The voters have
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Manald decide this. But i'd be you know, I'm watching
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of really, I'm watching a lot of people
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: who mocked, a lot of Republicans who rationalized Trump support
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: now using some of the same language and same defense
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: mechanisms to explain away any thing that's uncomfortable regarding Platner.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: As I said, with redistricting, and look, I don't I
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: wish I had a better answer here as to what
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the alternative way for the Democrats to behave other than
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: I just happened to think of you just sort of
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: behave in your principles. Eventually that might matter. But you
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: can see this mindset of if you can't beat them,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: join them tactics, use the same tactics. It's a bad
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: road to go down. If it was, if it was
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: the wrong road for Republicans to go down, why do
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: you think that's the right road for some Democrats to
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: go down. If it's wrong, it's wrong. The same criticisms
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: apply to the right the same things they say is wrong.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: If you're offended by Platner and you're on the right
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: and you look the other way on Trump or Paxton,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: you have no credibility, zero zilch. At some point, credibility
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: is going to matter to a majority of voters. It
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: does more than I think. I think our politicians have
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: such low disregard for you, the voter. They think they
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: can bullshit their way out of anything. Pay no attention
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: to the guy who doesn't pay his taxes honestly for
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: the last thirty years. So he's decided to try to
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: come up with some convoluted scheme to prevent the government
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: from ever looking at any taxes he has filed up
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: up to the point he leaves office. I'm referring to
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: what we're learning more about this, But this crazy defense
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: fund of Donald Trump's, the weaponization fund, by the way,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: is a reminder now that we have a judge sort
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: of reopening the case and the guardrails are working. You know,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes we think, oh, no, you know, nothing matters. Well enough,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Senate Republican squealed, his agenda got stalled. Guardrails are always
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: going to get dented. I've got a little area over
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: here near Glee Road and Chambridge that a guard rail
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: gets knocked over and gets reput back up all the
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: time because people take the curve too fast. The guardrails
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: there to minimize the damage, not to ever prevent any
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: damage ever, but it's to force it back on the
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: path if you can, and worst case scenario at least
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: just sort of end the destruction right there at the moment,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: mitigate the damage that's done so our guard the guard
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: rails are still working. I do think this weaponization Fund's
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: never going to see the light of day. It's such
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: a political liability that you have people leaking from the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: White House that they're looking for a way to kill it.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: And it's guardrails that got Donald Trump's name off the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Kennedy Center. A judge decided to read the Constitution and
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: realize what article won that it's Congress that named the institution,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: and it's Congress that has to rename the institution. Donald
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Trump can lobby Congress to add his name to the Institution,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: but he's got to have the votes. He won't have
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the votes because Donald Trump's alienated a third of his
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: own party, his own people aren't going to want to
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: give him this honor because of the way he's behaved.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Comes back to the irony I was painting earlier about
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: every decision comes with consequences. You just don't know when
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: you have to pay your consequences, pay that bill. Take take,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: for instance, you know the fact that every everybody that
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: was in just about everybody that was invited to participate
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: in the America two fifty, which was really being done
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: handled by the Trump super pac version of it. This
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Freedom two fifty, which is has you know, America two
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: fifty was a bipartisan organization passed by Congress. Freedom two
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: fifty is a slush fund for Donald Trump and his cronies. Well,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: it was Freedom to fifty that was inviting those artists.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: But here's the irony. And I know we can't create
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: a personality transplant of Donald Trump. But let's say Donald
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Trump had at least some check on his own ego.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: But let's say Trump really wanted a massive turnout of
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: great celebrities. A normal American president would have made all
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the living presidents the honorary chairs of America two fifty,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: and all of those presidents would have worked with this
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: president and had an array of artists get involved that
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: they all individually have relationships with and you would have
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: had a true celebration of America with cultures, with every
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: culture or every large culture in this country represented quite well.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: But Donald Trump's ego is such that he can't bring
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: himself to share anything, including the presidency, with which he
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: has shared with forty four other individuals. I guess technically
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: forty three other individuals, since he and Grover Cleveland are
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: both kind of twice. But he couldn't even share that distinction.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: And that's what I find sad about this whole America too.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: I want to celebrate America two fifty. Donald Trump is
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: making it very He's politicizing. He politicizes everything. The irony
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: is that he wrote to power by complaining that the
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: left politicized everything. All he does is politicize again. Two
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: rungs don't make a right. We have an entire right
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: wing political movement that is based on two wrongs make
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a right. I am. If the left behaves the same way,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: it's not good for any of us. Jokers to the left,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: clowns to the right, and here I am. Here we
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: are stuck in the middle with these guys, but we
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: can always do something about it. That's why character is
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: supposed to matter. Here's the thing. We knew all of
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's character flaws before he was elected president, and
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: everything that even his supporters don't like about it was
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: revealed before he ever became president. If you chose to
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: ignore those character warnings, you are now you know. Unfortunately,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: you alone don't get to play the consequences. We all
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: are paying the consequences for your decision to look the
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: other way, so we can't This is ultimately right. When
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: you know, last week I brought up and I spent
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of time on what the on the pope's
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: encyclical when it came on artificial intelligence. And the reason
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I did is because I do think that this is
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: American pope, because he doesn't just speak English, he speaks American.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: He is going to be a He's probably going to
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: be the moral leader. America's desperate for some new pulling
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: out last week that showed that a larger, growing chunk
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: of Americans are concerned about America's moral values. We've become
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Donald every Donald Trump is the north Star. This is
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: why I've talked about this when it comes to all
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: of this right, he is in charge. The American president
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: is in charge of America's thermostat, whether that's on whether
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: violence or a culture, or in anything else. His behavior
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: is a role model, whether he chooses to be the room,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: whether he wants to be a role model or not,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: people model it. It's why we need to get back
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: to character counting for a lot more than it has
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: in our politics for a while. And I get it right,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: you're a little nervous about institutions, you're a little miss
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: about group think, and look at you know these people
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: that were sorely good character people. Got it. Look, people
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: with good character have bad ideas. I'm not saying they don't.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: You vote them out. And when they're voted out, they
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: respect the decision. See George W. Bush. That's what you're
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: looking for. And a good character person, Barack Obama George W. Bush.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Two high character people. They accepted the premise of when
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: they were right or wrong. They listened to voters when
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: voters expressed concern, and they and they and they and
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: they calibrated. That's all we can ask from our leaders,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: and that's all we really can look look for when
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out whether you know we're the vetters.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Now there are no political parties vetting anybody. All parties
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: want to know is who gives them the fastest track
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: to power. Parties are no longer seems to be worried
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: about finding the responsible actors. And I know someone'll say, well,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer try to get Jana Mills. He didn't. He didn't. Really,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: he still misread the room. He was right about He
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: may have been right about Platner, but he may have
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: been right about Platter for all the wrong reasons. So
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: it's a It's funny, you know, I was tracking all
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: of these different stories and was thinking about doing them
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: as as sort of these separate things, and you realize
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: it's really sort of this larger crisis that we have,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: which is we stopped. We decided collectively not to value
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: character and morality, and that was a decision we made
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: with Trump. And now we're getting folks who have decided, well,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: this is what this must this must be better. So
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: now the Democrats are copying right in some ways. And
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: this is why I've said Plattner Collins feels like a
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: rerun of Trump Hillary from sixteen. Parties are in reverse
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: similar sort of mindsets, one side rationalizing their support, the
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: other side struggling to convey why status quo is changed.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: But I think this platinum election is going to teach
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: us a lot about where the Democratic Party is headed
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: and where twenty twenty eight is headed. It's also why
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: we're not one election away from sort of getting past
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: this moment we've been living in. We have a couple
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: more false starts, I think before we truly sober up
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: enough and realize that both parties have gone off the
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: deep end in different rays for different reasons. A few
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: other notes, a few other notes on the weekend, just
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: a few other things. Jill Biden, like I said, I
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: was part of the reason for my long monologue was over,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: you know, was this sort of changing explanation. You know,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: it's interesting the I don't you want to talk about
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: a group of people who have been totally insulated from
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: what the rank and file really thinks. I think it's
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: the bidens. I you know, I'll be curious. I'm not
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: sure people are going to want to read this book.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I maybe hate readers, angry readership, but that was it
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: was if you don't know the bidens. What she said
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: seemed like an empathetic spouse. But if you covered the
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Biden dis closely, you covered this story closely, it doesn't
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: ring very honest at all. And that's a shame, it is.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: You know, it's so funny. Before Biden decided to run
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: for president in twenty nineteen, I think that they probably
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: had the highest approval rating of any family in the
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. There was empathy for them, There was sort
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: of this he was sort of this beloved, sort of
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: wingman of the presidents, referring to President Obama. But you know,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: it's funny what ambition does to people. He wanted something
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: so bad that he ignored everything around him that was
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: going on, and they did enormous damage to their Their
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: own irony is that they did enormous damage to the
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party, enormous damage to their own legacy, and they
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: did some I think they did real harm to their
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: own family. And I'm sorry to think that is. Every
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: interaction I've had with every Biden living or dead, was
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: nothing but a good interaction. These are good people, and
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: good people can go down certain roads. That happens. Bad
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: people can do it too, so can good people, just
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: like you know, so I saw you know, I think
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: that that there was a lot of us that had
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of good will that overlooked some of these flaws.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: And I you know, when I when I heard this
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: interview again, I was just reminded, why did they run
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: in the first place? And the alternative would have been
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: probably Pete Pootage and Bernie Sanders fighting it out to
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: the end in twenty twenty and probably wouldn't have mattered,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Meaning COVID was going to elect the Democrats no matter what.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: So who knows where this would have had it. But
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: this is the world, this is the timeline we're on,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: this is the one we live in. Uh quick preview.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: I'm we're gonna have live coverage of the big primary
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: night on Tuesday night. The most interesting development over the
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: weekend has been in the governor's race. It shows polling
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: now Javier Bassa and Tom Steyer could both finish in
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: the top two slots, locking out Republicans from this, which
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: of course would be a nightmare for Besara or of
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: styr Right. They both want Hilton in the top two,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: and for a while Democrats are worried they'd get locked
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: out completely. The Trump endorsement of Hilton has sort of
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: prevented that, and now it's possible that this just ugly
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: race for governor, which you know, it's funny, with its
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: serial sort of front runners and constant searching for something
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: else and alternative and dissatisfaction with the candidates that are there.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Is this going to be a preview of the twenty
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: twenty eight presidential primary season, Because that's one theory I have,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: is that we could have a series of front runners,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: meaning that people are just constantly you know, they know
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: what they don't want, and they're going to keep trying
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: different trying on different outfits and seeing which one they
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: decide looks best. That's kind of what we've been watching
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: with California governor. Eventually, the primary comes and they have
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: to make a decision. But the lack of people turning
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: in their ballots and the fact that people are turning
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: in as late as they have is proof that they're
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. They don't love
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: their choices. They know they're settling. They're just trying to
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: decide is this the last thing they have to settle for? Anyway,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: It's just one way that I think you could watch
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: California governor and the other race that I'm intrigued by.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Of course, on Tuesday night, we've got Iowa Senate, a
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: little progressive versus establishment going on there between Josh Turrick
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: and Zach Wallas. I think in this case a lot
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: of money's been spent on behalf of Josh Turick, and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I certainly I think would rather be him than Walls,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: but we shall see. And then there's an LA Mayor
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: where Karen bass is playing an interesting game here. She's
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: not really responded much to Spencer Pratt, and people have
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: probably have been wondering how come she doesn't respond to
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: all this and how much is Spencer Pratt a right
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: wing fever dream that sort of doesn't really exist in
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the real world. Look, I think it's I think practic
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: certainly going to do better than you think, probably will
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: underperform the polling in general. LA Mayor polls usually you know,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: under under pole African Americans, So she's probably gonna be
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: a little stronger in this top two. But secretly she
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: wants to face Pratt. She wants Pratt finished second, not
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: the not the Democratic Socialist, not the mom Donni Acolyte
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: to finish second. That's a much tougher top two general
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: election for her. So if you're wondering why Bass has
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: been weirdly silent on Spencer Pratt and sort of the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: these Fox News manufactured this, this sort of AI campaign
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: for mayor that uh feels like more of us. I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: think this is a little bit more of a phenomenon
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: online than in real life. But we're going to find
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: out on Tuesday. But secretly, the Bass people, I think,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: are hoping for Pratt as their number two opponent as
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: they think that he he is somebody that won't wear one.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: They're probably right on that one, but hey, you know
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: this is a this is an angry electorate, especially out
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: in California, where it doesn't seem as if anybody is
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: satisfied with their current set of elected officials. Well, this
• 1:03:11
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  Speaker 1: it's time Machine time. Let's go one of the podcast
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  Speaker 1: time Machine. As you know, for those of you knew
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  Speaker 1: to this, I try to take something that's happening in
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  Speaker 1: the next week in history and do a deep dive
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  Speaker 1: on it. And this week we're going We're going back
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  Speaker 1: into the time machine on June fourth, nineteen eighty nine.
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  Speaker 1: It's a day that the future's split in two. Now
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  Speaker 1: when Americans think about June fourth, nineteen eighty nine, if
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: you go ahead and google it right, look it up,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: you'll usually think about one image the minute you realize
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: what anniversary I'm talking about. A lone man standing in
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: front of a column of tanks. Tank Man. It's one
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: of the most famous photographs ever taken. It was a
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: symbol of courage, a symbol of resistance, a symbol of
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: freedom standing up to oppression. Right, you know, the expression
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: of picture as it's worth a thousand words. I think
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: that's two volumes of books in that picture. But here's
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the thing that most people don't remember about June fourth,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. The most important thing that happened that
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: day may not have happened in Beijing. It may have
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: happened in Poland, because on the very same day, while
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: tanks were moving towards Tenement Square, Polish citizens were casting
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: ballots in their first semi free elections in the Soviet Bloc.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: On one side of the world, people voted for the
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: first time in decades in a free Ish election. I
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: had a little ish there. On the other, the government
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: prepared to send in the army. One communist system responded
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: to public pressure with elections. Remember the wall hadn't fallen yet, folks.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: Another responded with force. The world remembers the tanks, But
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: understanding both stories may be the key to understanding why
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the world looks the way it does today and why
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest assumptions of the post Cold War
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: era not to be wrong. Look, I remember those days vividly.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I was in high school. Like a lot of Americans,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: I became really fascinated by what was unfolding in China.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, This may not come as a
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: shock to you, but I was usually the student in
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: my group of friends that was paying a little bit
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: more attention to current events. So I got a bunch
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: of us to wear black armbands in solidarity with the
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: students at ten. In fact, I was pretty proud of it.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: I got, I think I got. I got folks from
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: all walks of mine I had. I had at high
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: school in Miami that was a third to third a third.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: And if you know, you know, the students, of course,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: looked familiar. That's they were easy to empathize with. They
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: looked like students anywhere. They weren't armed revolutionaries. They carried banners,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: they held vigils, They demanded reforms, They talked about corruption, accountability,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: political openness. When the crackdown came, I remember trying to
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: wondering something else as we were trying to organize global
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: empathy for these students. And it was this the overwhelming
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: assumption shared by almost everybody paying attention to world events
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: at the time. Man history all seemed to be moving
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: in one direction. Freedom was advancing, America was winning, We
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: were winning right, Communism was retreating, Democracy was spreading. The
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: future appeared obvious. Looking back, that confidence may have been
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: one of the great misreadings of modern history, because to
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: understand Tiana Men, you have to remember the broader context
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty nine. The protests were not happening in isolation.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: The entire communist world was under pressure. Across Eastern Europe.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Reform movements were gaining moment. The Soviet Union was still around,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: but it was weakening. Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing reforms. The
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: old order was clearly wobbling. And then came June fourth,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: because on that day, voters in Poland delivered a stunning verdict.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: What's often forgotten is that these elections were supposed to
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: be controlled. The communist government had negotiated what become known
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: as the Roundtable Agreement, allowing partially free elections while reserving
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: many seats for the ruling party. The idea was to
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: open the system without surrendering power. Instead, voters delivered a
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: political earthquake. The Solidarity movement, led by the now famous
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Lek Wallessa, once virtually every seat it was allowed to contest.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: The Communist government in Poland was humiliated. The results sent
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: shockways throughout the entire communist world. Five months later, the
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Berlin Wall would fall. Within two and a half years,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union itself, which ceased to exist, and a whole
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: bunch of US twenty somethings had to figure out what
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: the hell had to figure out the names of a
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of new countries on the map. What looked
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: like a carefully managed opening had become the beginning of
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: the end, and Chinese leaders were watching all of it.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: And this is the part of the story many Americans
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: either memory hole or forget, because the story of Tianaman
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: isn't simply a Chinese story. It's also a story about
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: how China's leaders interpreted what they were seeing elsewhere, because
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: while Europe was moving in one direction, China was debating
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: whether to follow. The protests themselves began after the death
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: of Hu Yaobang. He was a reform minded communist leader
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: who had become popular among students. What began is mourning
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: quickly evolved into something larger. Students gathered in Tanaman Square,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: then workers joined, intellectuals joined, journalists joined, ordinary citizens joined.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: The demonstrations grew into one of the largest protest movements
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: in modern Chinese history. At their peak, hundreds of thousands
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: of people filled Beijing streets. Some estimates, but participation at
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: more than a million, and the timing could not have
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: been worse for China's leadership. Because Gorbuschev was visiting Beijing,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the world's media had already arrived. Instead of covering a
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: diplomatic summit, cameras focused on the protests. The symbolic heart
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: of communists China had become occupied by its own citizens.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: The entire world was indeed watching. What many people forget
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: is that there was a real debate inside the Chinese government.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: History often gets simplified into students versus the Communist party.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: The reality was a bit more complicated because there were
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: some leaders who favored compromise. There were some who favored
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: dialogue with the students. There were some who believe reforms
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: should continue. Others believed the party itself was at risk.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: The road not Taken had a name, Zoxiyang. He was
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: China's General secretary. He was considered a reformer. He was
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: a believer in gradual political opening. In fact, a few
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: weeks earlier, on May nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine, he visited
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: the students that had gathered in Tenement Square. Many were
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: on a hunger strike. He spoke to them directly. We
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: came too late, was the quote that gets remembered the
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: most from his visit. It would be the last public
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: appearance that Zaoxiyang would ever have in his political career.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Within weeks he was removed from power. He would spend
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: the rest of his life under house arrest, dying essentially
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: in house captivity. In two thousand and five, every turning
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: point as a road not taken for China. In nineteen
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: eighty nine, that road was Zoxiyang. But there were others
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: inside the leadership who saw a different lesson. They had
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: just watched the events unfolding Poland, where a gradual political
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: opening turned into a nightmare for the powerty and power.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: They had watched a communist government attempt to keep some
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: control over free elections, and they had watched that opening
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: escape its control. To them, Poland was not an argument
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: for reform, it was an argument against it. The hardliners prevailed,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Martial law was declared, Troops moved toward Beijing, Residents blocked roads.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: For weeks, there was uncertainty where was this headed. Then
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: came the night of June third and the early hours
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: of June fourth, the military entered the city, live ammunition
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: was used. Civilians died, students die, workers died. To this day,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: no one knows precisely how many. The Chinese government has
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: never provided a full accounting. The death toll. May have
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: been in the hundreds, may have been in the thousands.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: The exact number remains one of the most disputed facts
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: in modern history. Perhaps it's something kind of like Chernobyl,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: where it's going to take the fall of the Chinese
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Communist Party for us to ever find out the truth.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: But then came the image that everyone remembers actually was
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: not on June fourth. It was on June fifth, the
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: morning after a lone man standing before a line of tanks.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Tank man. The photograph became the defining image of Tieneman.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: But in some ways the image has obscured the larger story,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: because while the world focused on the courage of one individual,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: a much bigger question was unfolding. What would happen next?
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: Most Western observers believe they knew the answer. China had
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: only delayed the inevitable. Maybe reform would take longer in China,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: but it would happen. Maybe democracy would arrive more slowly,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: but eventually economic modernization would produce political modernization. It was
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: inevitable because look that's what seemed to be happening everywhere
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: else Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. The
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: assumption was simple. Growing middle class would eventually demand political rights.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Markets would lead to democracy. Economic freedom and political freedom
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: were ultimately linked. It seemed obvious, and yet Tianeman should
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: have been the first warning that perhaps they weren't. At first,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: China's future was uncertain. The crackdown produced international condemnation. Reformers
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: were sideline, economic changes slowed. There was a genuine debate
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: about what came next, and in nineteen ninety two, Dang
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: Jao Ping settled the argument. Deng is one of history's
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: great paradoxes. He was the architect of China's economic transformation,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: and he was also the leader who ultimately backed the crackdown.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: The same hand that approved the tanks helped design the
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: system that followed. During his famous Southern Tour, Deng pushed
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: China back towards market forms and rapid growth, but political
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: liberalization would not return. That message became clear. Get rich,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: build businesses, invest innovate participating global markets, but do not
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: challenge the communist party. Political reform ended, economic reform accelerated,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: and that formula changed the world. In retrospect, Tieteman wasn't
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: simply a story of failed of a failed democratic uprising.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: It was the birth of a different model, a model
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: many Western leaders spent decades under estimating bipartisan mistake in
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: this country. The assumption in Washington remained remarkably consistent. As
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: China became wealthier, democracy would eventually follow. That belief helped
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: shape American policy for years. You can see it most
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: clearly in the debate over China's entry into the World
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Trade Organization back in two thousand and one. The logic
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: was straightforward. Trade would create prosperity. Prosperity would create a
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: middle class. A middle class would demand political rights. Political
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: liberalisation would eventually follow. That was the bet. But it
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: was a bet Tianamen had already called into question. Today
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: we live at the consequences. The defining geopolitical competition of
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: the twenty first century is increasingly between the United States
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: and China's unique system. We always wondered what happened if
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: a authoritarian communist regime would essentially dropped the ideological part
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: of communism shared everything and instead create open economic freedom
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: coupled with political repression. It's not simply two countries. It's
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: two models, one rooted in democratic governance and one rooted
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: in authoritarian control. Both claimed to be good for your
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: economic well being. One believes political freedom and economic freedom
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: reinforce one another, the other obviously believing they can be separated.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: And that's why I think June fourth, nineteen eighty nine
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: deserves to be remembered for a variety of different reasons.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: It's not simply as the day democracy was qrust in China.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: It's not simply as the story of tank Man. But
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: it's a day that the future split into two. It's
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: the birth of this sort of bipolar world would suddenly
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: have stumbled into. In Poland, voters use ballots to begin
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: dismantling communism. In China, leaders use tanks to preserve it. Now,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: that's a reminder nobody will if given the choice of
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: keeping communism or dumping it. If you have free will,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: you're going to dump it. That's the other lesson of Poland,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: and that's why the authoritarian leaders realized they needed tanks.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: One path led to the post Cold War Europe. We
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: know today the other led towards China that now stands
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: as America's principal rival. Back in night teen eighty nine,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: many people believed history had chosen its direction. Democracy was winning,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: Communism was collapsing. The debate seems settled. But on June fourth,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, two communist governments confronted the same challenge
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: and arrived at two very different conclusions. Poland chose the
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: ballot box, China chose a tank. Thirty seven years later,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: we're still living with the consequences of both decisions. There's
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: your history lesson for the day. Now, one other thing
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: to look for in June fourth. Now that there's supposedly
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: American control and ownership of TikTok, let's see what kind
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: of Tieneman Square remembrances show up on TikTok this year.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: I know we won't find them on we check ask Chuck.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: All right, let's take in this some questions. First one
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: comes from Jamie k hey check, long time listener, first
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: time writer. Hear me out. Would you ever consider running
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: for president? Maybe even a ticket with Stephen Colbert? You
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: have a way of dealing complex issues clearly and you're
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: not seen as a culture warrior. Plus you're willing to
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: call out both sides. Could you build a broader coalition?
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: What say you? It is? I guess you could say,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Right?
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: I certainly have plenty to say. I'm a pretty good
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: backseat driver, et cetera. Look, will I just I've never
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: had the ambition to personally run for office. I've not
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: wanted to deal with the sort of you know when
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: you're a quasi public figure, and I was for a
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: period of time. I guess I still am in some ways,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: you missed your privacy when you're not a public figure.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: You think you want the attention, uh, and then you
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: get the attention and you're like, oh, I want the
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: attention on mind because you never Here's what you learn
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: is none of it ever gets to be on your terms.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: And I think when you run for president. Now that said,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: I think I'm in a stage of life where it
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: is I'm in a better place to run for office
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: than when a lot of people choose to do it.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: You know, where what I think is wrong is running
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: for office because you don't know what to do with
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: your life. Running for office because your celebrity is wearing out,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: running for off is because you're you're just you know,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: putting off making you know, dealing with the with the
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: problems in your life, which is sort of the point
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: I was making at first. But I will say this,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: I've certainly been more empathetic of people that are trying
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: to challenge the system. And I do think the duopoly
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: has broken us. It doesn't, you know, And I do
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: think both parties need massive reform, and I think we
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: need to open up open up the system from more
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: or from more points of view, but have a system
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: that allows for it to work so that people can
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: be feel both heard represented at the table and realize
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: not everybody's gonna get one hundred percent of what they're advocating.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: So you're you're oddly not the first person to throw
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: that out there. But you know, I also feel like
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: a trader to journalism in some ways, like I'm happy
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: to help others figure out how to get into the
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: reform aspect of it. But you know, I was you know,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: if I ever did contemplate office, it wouldn't be with
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: either party, That's for sure. I would never feel comfortable
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: doing that to my fellow journalists at the end of
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: the day. But I will say this, whoever runs, I
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: think a little bit of an education component to running
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be such a bad thing. But I'm not sure
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: the constituency for that is as large as you may think.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: But who knows. All Right, we get fifty million subscribers
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: to this YouTube channel before the end of this calendar year,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: and then maybe I'll have to change my mind. That's
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: not a challenge, folks, that's just me being snarky. Jamie,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: thanks for the kind words. Paul k Right, Hey, Chuck,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: proud of you for the move into independent media. It's
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: great to see. I was struck by the recent Center
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: primary results and had a question, do you think Paxton
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: heads into the general election over confident or will you
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: lean more into a grassroots approach? Also curious how you
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: see the broader impact of negative campaigning and races like this. Paul, Kay, Look,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: I think packs you know, it's funny Paxton's never lost
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: a race, and you know, for the longest time, until
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, we had had an interesting We had had
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: an interesting list of presidents and presidential nominees whose hallmark
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: in many ways was an election defeat that helped make
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: them a better candidate. So I would say this meaning
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: I'm always when somebody's never lost a race, the possibility
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: of overconfidence is through the roof. When you've lost an
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: early race in your career, you just simply are usually
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: a bit smarter about how you go about things, and
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: you're a bit more I don't want to say you're
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: risk averts, but you're more aware of pitfalls. I think
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: that Barack Obama losing a race for Congress against Bobby
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: Rush was a huge lesson for him and how to
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: run the next time he ran. George W. Bush losing
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: a race for Congress in the seventies was incredibly helpful
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: that you know understanding that loss there. Bill Clinton lost
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: a race for Congress before winning his first race for governor.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter lost the campaign before he became governor of Georgia.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: Richard Nixon lost a campaign for governor before winning the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: presidency in sixty eight. The point is Ronald Reagan lost
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: a race for presidency in seventy six before successfully winning
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: an eighty George H. W. Bush lost a Racers say, anyway,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: do you see where I'm going here? Up until Bill
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: Clinton and then Bill Clinton. Up until Donald Trump, it
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: had been remarked me Milt Romney lost a race for
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: US Senate. John McCain lost that presidential primary in two
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: thousand before it became the nominee. John Carrey lost a
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: race for I think it was lieutenant. He ran early
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: in the in the eighties and lost, and it was
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: an important lesson to him. So it was there was
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: always I think that there's something that you learn that humility.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I prefer an elected official that's lost an election once
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: because I think that they understand that they have to
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: listen when the voters are speaking. And usually a somebody
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: who has lost once is more likely to pay attention
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: when poles turn against them versus somebody who's never lost. Now,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: you could say, just in theory, Donald Trump should have
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: learned a lot from twenty twenty. But if you refuse
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: to acknowledge that you lost, you learn nothing from it. Right,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: It's I think Paxton will be a bit overconfident. I
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: think that there will, and you know, my guess is
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: he's going to live more in his grassroots on this.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: But I also think we ought to be a bit
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: show some humility here. He clearly has a hold over
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: his constituents. A question I have is can he grow
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: his movement and how will he handle It's one thing
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: to be a Texas feeding frenzy to another thing to
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: get the national attention that he's going to get. Now.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: Maybe he thrives in it, but he couldn't melt down too.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: So if I were him, I'd lean into the movement
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: that got me there, and I'd be running as an outsider.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: I'd be portraying Tall, Rico and Cornyn as part of
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: the same movement in some form, and I'd be staying
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: the outsider. I don't know if he will. He's got
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: his own financial issues and then don't forget, he's got
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: his own court cases that are all starting to pile up.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: He's still got his divorce, all this stuff. So that's
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: why he probably needs to lean on those that have
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: stuck with him through all of this, because in some
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: ways they're a cocoon and there will be a bit
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: of a safety net for him and may be enough. Right.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think we've all underestimated Paxton's hold on
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: his on his voters. I know, I know I have,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: and I'm not going to underestimate them again. But you know,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: I will say this, I think the Paxton strategy. If
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: you're not for Paxton, but you're just want to stop
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Talla Rico, you're asking the broader impact of negative campaigning
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: and races like this, it will be a battle of
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: the bases. What you will likely see is that the
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: more the swing voters are going to be as likely
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: to skip the race as they are to pick aside.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: And I think that's why Paxton would prefer a just
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: a race to the bottom, because in a race to
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: the bottom, their base is slightly bigger than the Democratic base.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: Can Talla Rico keep his keep that sort of optimistic cheerfulness.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's its only path to victory is to
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: literally zag. If he if he sort of fights fire
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: with fire, it undermines whatever identity he has established for himself.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: By the way, that may not work either, But I
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: know just going negative ad for negative ad isn't going
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: to work because they're basic because because that is a
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: universal way that those campaigns play out. What we don't
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: know is does does running the turn the page? Aren't
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: you exhausted? I'm not going to respond to every negative
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: with a negative probably, I mean it fits his brand.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: You always should run the campaign that fits who you
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: are best, and I think that fits somebody who's who
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: fashions themselves A Sunday pastor, Brent and Phoenix, Arizona Rights, Hey,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: aspiring member the Five Question Club. Well, Brent, are we close? No,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: we're not. You said this is your second attempt. All right,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: two down, three to go. I agree with you on
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: expanding the House, but wonder if something like the Wyoming
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: rule might be more realistic path in today's environment. Do
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: you see that as a viable step towards better representation
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: or does it run into similar challenges? I don't know
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: if I've cut off your question by the time I
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: saw it. Of what you meant like the Wyoming rule? Like?
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: Is Wyoming the baseline? Like? Why you know? What are
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: you gathering? Like the Wyoming rule? You know, should we
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: set a bar that no state should have any more
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: than two and a f times the voting power of
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: any of any other state? You know, no state should
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: have more than two and a half times voting power
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: than any other state in the electoral college? Is that
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: what you mean by a Wyoming rule? Look, I do
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: think that the best argument I would come up with
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: for expanding the House is to that this is designing
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: political power to Texas, Florida, California, and New York. And
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: that's two blue states and two red states. It's just
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: simply denying political power for big states. And it's certainly
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: denying political power for medium sized states too. I mean,
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: this system is only good for small states. It is
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: not good for where everybody lives. So that's you know,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: but you're right, in these times, you've got to come
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: up with sort of an a political answer or a
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: nonpartisan answer. Right. That's why i'm you know, of look
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: that Texas and California both should share the same concerns,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: right that there this system denies them voting power in Washington.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: And that's in that there was a time that that
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: would have been enough. Maybe there needs to be more,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: but what you're talking about might Maybe that's where if
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: you had a constitutional amendment that stipulated then certain things,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: then it would force the hand of Congress to do
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: things like expand expand the size of the House, you know,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: say by ten members for every ten million, you know,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: for every ten million that the population expands, we had
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: to expand by ten members through a certain period of
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: time right, like you could do it that way. I mean,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of ways you could come up with
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: metrics that could could force the hand here. But if
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: I misread, if we shorthanded your question too much, if
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: you have a better explanation of wyoming role Brtt, please
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: please share. Andy from the Quad City's Rights. Hey, longtime listener,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: first time email aer here. I'm currently in a production
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: of seventeen seventy six Nice, which got me thinking about
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: how some founding fathers are portrayed versus their real impact.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: Do you have any lesser known figures from that era
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: you think deserve more credit or are often oversimplified? Best
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: Andy from the Quad Cities huh oh gosh. I mean,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: I think you know, the more I why watch the
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: Ken Burns Ben Franklin thing, the more you realize Ben
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Franklin's both over sort of an overrated and underrated founder
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: in different rays for different reasons. I think it's fair
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: to say all of our founders have been oversimplified and
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: undercomplicated a little bit. I need to put more thought
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: into that question. You know, I don't think John Hancock
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: is is. I don't know if everybody would align with
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: the character of John Hancock, the more they knew about
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: you on Hancock, right. But that is also why I
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: love the ken Burns American Revolution series because it it
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: just sort of noted that these were these were all
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: people that had a normal set of flaws like all
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: of us do. So I mean, look, I think that
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: I believe it or not. And this is going to
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: sound crazy when you say it, but if you spend
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: some time looking for scholarship on this person, you'll realize
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. I think we undervalue, under rate,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: and under examine George Washington. There is this, you know,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: there's this There's only been a couple of really good
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: books on him. And part of it is, you know,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: there's always been this quiet like, well, he wasn't he
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: wasn't his book smart as Jefferson, you know, or or
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: you know that you both Adams and Jefferson were more
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: intellects than Washington was, whatever that was supposed to mean.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: So there was sometimes a dismissiveness amongst some historians and
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: I think even among other others in the movement that
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: Washington was this great figurehead, but he really wasn't that smart,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: really wasn't that bright, and I just think that we
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: we sort of we both lionize him and certainly make
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: him this incredibly large figure when we're little kids, but
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: we don't spend enough time on him intellectually. And I
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: don't think we've you know, I think you know, I mean,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: his Pharaoell address is more brilliant than you know, get.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: It gets more brilliant to me the older I get,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: so you know, it's it's I know you may think
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: I'm doing a cop out here, but I really think
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: that Washington is sort of you know, the you know,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: the guy who you know, the actual founding father of
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: the of you know who many people would put in
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: the you know, literally on the Mount Rushmore right of
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: our founding president. He's I think the most famous person
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: people don't know a lot about. And I don't think
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: we weirdly enough study Washington enough. I feel like we
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: study Jefferson and Madison and Adams even and and I don't.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: And again, part of it is that the scholarship on
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: on Washington is I don't want to say it's simple.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: Simple is not the right word I'm looking for. It's
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: just it's it's not as rich and dramatic and as
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: controversial as Jefferson right and so right. Jefferson just has
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: a lot more interesting country. You know, we love contradict
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: It's more fun to write about contradictions than than to
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: write about somebody who was pretty easy to explain. And
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: I guess that's why we, in a weird way, have
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: fewer books on Washington than we do on Jefferson. Why
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: there's sometimes less debate about Washington than Jefferson. Anyway, there's
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: just a it is I've I've I've every time I
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: read a new Washington biography, IM always feeling like, is
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: there's something I and I guess it's it's that I hold,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: you know, It's like it's it's this this, what there
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: is everything we know about Washington, what there is right,
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: there's no hidden this hidden that. But I've always I've
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: always felt that Washington is both incredibly well known. You know,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: this used to be said about Harlely Clinton, the most
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: famous person nobody knows anything about. And I think George
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: Washington is this famous founding father that people know much,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: people know much less about than they realize. Next question,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: Ah Kevin rants Hey, I have a question about the
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church's role as a moral authority. Do you see
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: any real movement on issues like women in leadership, celibacy requirements,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: or recognition of same sex marriage. Curious how you think
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: about the church's influence on these debates today. Well, it's
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: a good question, and it may prevent the opportunity that
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: I think Pope Leo has in this moment. Now. I
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: think Pope Leo, because he sort of shares the moral
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: concerns that many other people have about the Trump era,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: that people will start looking to him and maybe overlook
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: some of these other issues that they have at the
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church. But it's pretty clear that both that Pope
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: Leo is going to be similar to Pope Francis, and
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: that he is trying to move the church from the
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: eighteenth century to the nineteenth century and some of these issues.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: I know, I'm being a little facetious here or maybe
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: trying to you know, Pope Francis, you know, in the
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: twenty first century, tried to get the church into the
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: twentieth century. And maybe the argument is, you know, can
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: they get the church out of the early twentieth century
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: and into the late twentieth century with women in leadership
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: or letting priests marry and we'll see. I mean, I
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: think it's a that is going to be the other
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: way that plenty will judge the papacy of Pope Leo.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: But if you're going to speak in basic human rights,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: then having women treated as second class citizens is a
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: tough place to keep hanging your hat on. And so
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: if I look at all of the things that the
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: church hasn't shifted on, that could I expect the church,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: maybe we'll see. I am I expect the church in
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: my lifetime to have women priests before they get there
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: on same sex marriage, before they get there on celibacy
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: or on priest marrying. I think some of it is
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: just going to be a numbers game. They need priests,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: and I think they will start to tap nuns, and
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: then that's where this comes. It's my own speculation. Everything
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: is always, you know, very much incremental steps in these
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: institutions that are hundreds of years old. But that would
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: be my guess is that they would move in that direction.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: Everything would be out of necessity, right, necessity of keeping
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: the membership going, necessity of right, different reasons. So that's
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: why I don't expect the movement on same sex marriage,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: given how you know, this is not something that the
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: continent of Africa is embracing in the way that Western
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: the Western civilizations are, So I don't know if they
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: make that they made that same movement towards recognition of
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: same sex marriage. I'm more inclined to believe that they
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: equalize women in the church before they take any of
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: those other steps. But you know, I will also confess
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: that it's hard enough for me to what I'd like
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: to think is correctly or coherently explain American politics. Trying
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: to decipher the future of the Catholic Church probably belongs
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: to my friend mister Weigel. George Weigel's somebody I am
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: a long time intellect about the about the Vatican here
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: in many American publications, and he's certainly somebody that I
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: may invite on this podcast very soon because I think
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: he does a good job of at least explaining the
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: internal machinations of the organization that is the Catholic Church.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: All right, last question, big fan, I've been listening for years, Yes,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: even the Meat the Press podcast. I'm in the early
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: I'm in my early forties, and my parents, now in
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: their seventies, have the news on constantly which seems to
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: be fueling a lot of anxiety. Do you have any
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: advice for helping people step back from the twenty four
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: to seven news cycle while still staying in form Thanks
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: for all you do, Lenny in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Well, yeah,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: you know, whether it's turn off the Fox or turn
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: off the MS. Right, we all have this conversation about
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: our parents or older relatives because they, you know, during
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: the day, they're looking for company. I get it. Look,
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: if they're sports fans, try to introduce them to the MLBP,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: especially during baseball season. They have a lot because I
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: think a lot of times people turn the news on
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: for company, a little noise in the house, and you
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: don't just want a boring TV show or just a
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: rerun of something. This used to be what you know,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: Oprah's popularity was sometimes just to have some noise on
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: instead of music in the house or whatever it is. Right, So, look,
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: there are other things there are you know, there's there's
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: sports podcasts, there's you know, now that all of us
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: have turned podcasts into video things, they can find something
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: on their interests that do this introduce them to these
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: ten and fifteen minute news, little updates that you get
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: from like, you know, whether it's a legacy news network
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: an independent news aggregator, you know, you can curate something
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: that can essentially place the cable news sort of vacuum filler,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: which is what I think cable news became in a
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: lot of households. You're just sort of filling the air,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: filling noise, keeping you company. There's a lot more interesting
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: people on YouTube, right, it can keep you a company,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: and there's a lot of other subject areas. When I
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: have a day off, I used to just you know,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: when I had one of those week days off and
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: I was at home and I was like, I will
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: I can keep up. I get enough of a news
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: feed on here and all the different things I get,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: and I don't need to listen to handwringing about the
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: headlines all day long. But I'm in the middle of it, right,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: I'm in the business. So I'm looking for in some
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: ways a palette cleanser. And so I've always used sports
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: talk as that. Although I can't stand these ESPN shows
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: in the daytime. I mean, the only you know, there's
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: PTI that's fantastic and everything else, the manufactured chat shows,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: they're sort of just trying to you know, that's that's
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: a little much for me, so not a huge fan.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: But that's what I would do, is if you've got
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: if your parents have another interest, well I promise you
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: there's a daily podcast that would scratch that interest. So
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: find them a couple. That's the best I can help
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: you with. Well, look, I've gone long on this one.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: I have a you know, I had a bunch to
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: say about the latest on on the mL, what both
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: the players and the owners are putting on about baseball.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: By the way, I have an interview coming up with
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: the owner of the Chicago Cubs later this week, Todd Ricketts.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: It's mostly about a new app that he's got out
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: that's a way to try to cut through the partisan
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: noise that's out there. It's a very interesting technology and
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: I think it's worth a look at. But we actually
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: spend a few minutes talking about, you know, the likelihood
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: or unlikelihood of there being a workstoppage in baseball in
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven. I just want to I don't I
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: will say this. I think a salary cap is coming,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: but how do you define salary cap? You know, we
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: could have this huge cap that eventually becomes relevant in
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: ten years down the road. That would be my advice
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: to the owners. You know, if you want to get
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: the players to agree to a cap, have the cap
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: be absurd for the next ten years. Then eventually you'll
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: value yourself closer to it, and then it might actually
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: be an acceptable cap. But it might be the best
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: of both worlds there for everybody. But that's thinking like
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: a compromiser and a rational or and a collaborator. But
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: who knows. And I don't want a twenty fourteen playoff.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: I can get behind a sixteen team playoff. I think
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: I've advocated for one. I think sixteen teams is the
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: perfect size. Any bigger and you get teams that don't
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: belong any smaller, and you will always leave out a
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: team or two that that would have been better In
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: the right twelve left out probably two teams that belonged
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: Texas and Notre Dame. Sixteen probably would have allowed one
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: more team in that shouldn't have gotten in, But you'd
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: rather have one, you know, that's probably the right twenty
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: four I don't want eight and four. We don't want
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: four loss teams in the playoff. You really don't want
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: three loss teams in the playoff, and that should be
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: the be the be the goal, because if the regular
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: season starts to get diluted and and and a third
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: loss is accepted, but a fourth loss and literally you
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: can get in with a fourth loss, then what are
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: we even doing here? What's the point of the regular season?
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: It just you know, it's sort of as bad as
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: the NBA. And again, nobody wants to become the NBA
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: regular season, right is there? Sick? It is all? It
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: is all it is. All it did was decided who
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: hosted Game seven in the Western Conference, and it turns
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: out that home court advantage didn't matter. So I'll admit
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: i had a lot more in both. But I'm mindful
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: of your time. I'm mindful of my own. I appreciate
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: how much time and devotion you do give to the
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: hard work that gets put into this podcast. And with that,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: I'll see you in forty eight hours with a new episode.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: But hopefully i'll also see you Tuesday night for our
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: live election coverage of the June second primaries. And this
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: is a big one, California. We're gonna be on for Atlite.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: We're gonna be on for a good four hours we're
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: gonna go past midnight on the East Coast. Trust me,
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: We're not gonna go days, which is how long it
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: actually will take the count all the ballots in California.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: But we're gonna go past midnight and then some and
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: have a nice good West Coast flavor to our election
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: life coverage on Tuesday. So if I don't see you
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night, then i'll see you Wednesday morning. But either way,
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: i'll see that. Thanks for listening, and until we upload
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: again