Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Kristi Noem Should Be Fired…But Will She? + The 1980s Blueprint for Today’s Culture Wars

Transcript

Full Episode - Kristi Noem Should Be Fired…But Will She? + The 1980s Blueprint for Today’s Culture Wars · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todcast is brought to you
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: frozen subscription box for sour dough breads, artisonal pastries, and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: fresh pastas, plus all the items conveniently baked in twenty
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: five minutes or less. Unlike many store brought options, Wild
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Grain uses some simple ingredients you can pronounce and a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: slow fermentation process that can be a lot easier on
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: your belly, little gut health there right, and richer in
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: nutrients antioxidants. There's also no preservatives and no shortcuts. The
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Wild Grain boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: variety box, they have a gluten free box, a vegan box,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and a new protein box. I will tell you I
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: have done the gluten free box. I have done it
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a second time. I have also used the code, the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: todcast code. If you use the promo code toodcast at checkout,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: you get thirty dollars off. I've already used it as
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a gift to somebody else who loves this bread. It
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: is hard to find good gluten free bread. It is fantastic.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: They give you step by step instructions. I really dig this.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: There is nothing like having an artesion bakery in your
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: freezer to chase away the winter chill. Now is the
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: best time to stay in and enjoy some comforting homemade
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: meals with Wildgrain. I obviously highly recommend it. It is
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: worth giving Wildgrain a try. Right now, Wildgrain is offering
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: my listeners thirty dollars off your first box plus free
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: croissants for life. Come on when you go to wildgrain
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: dot com slash podcast to start your subscription today. That's
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: thirty dollars off your first box and free croissants for
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: life when you visit wildgrain dot com slash podcast, or
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: simply use the promo code podcast at checkout. This is
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: a sponsor I absolutely embrace, so use that code. Hello there,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Happy Wednesday, and welcome to another episode of the check podcast. I.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: As you may see, I don't have my normal set
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: behind me. I am traveling this week. I'm all over
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the state of Florida for a variety of work related issues.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But obviously it's like I said, it's work, it's not play.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So I've been other than still recovering still, I think
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: my middle aged back is recovering from the snow shoveling
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and shall we say, trying to participate in the transportation
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: system in America after a big snowstorm is never the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: easiest thing to do. But I have made it to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: where I need to get in getting through as many
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: friendly skies as I can get through. But look, we
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: begin today with what was clearly what Tuesday turned into
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: for President Trump. You know, in the grand scheme of things,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Tuesday was supposed to be the day that Donald Trump
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: started to turn the page on this crazy, chaotic January
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: that's been into. They set up this big event in
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Iowa to focus on affordability and affordability, and the White
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: House focusing on affordability feels like we are reliving what
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: happened in the first term with in every week. This
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: was was going to be the week they focused on infrastructure.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Every week is the week that the White House is
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: going to turn its attention to affordability. And whether it's
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the President stepping on that message himself for a variety
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: of reasons, or events that like what's happening in Minneapolis
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: essentially start to consume the President. And it's pretty clear,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: as I sort of telegraphed for you on Monday, the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: walk back was coming and certainly, Tuesday was a lot
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of walk back. And let me just quote the President
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: in one of his interviews, including this one, was on
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Fox when he was talking about getting rid of Greg.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Greg Bovino is the guy that wears the long leather
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: coat that for whatever reason, is excited that people will
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: mistaken him for some nineteen thirties European thug. The first
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: move the President made was essentially getting rid of Bovino,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: pulling him out of Minneapolis. Greg Bovino, who was and
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I'll quote him as he said, well, I don't think
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: it's a pullback. I think it's a change. You know,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Bovino's very good, but he's a pretty out there kind
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: of guy, and in some cases that's good. Maybe it
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't good here. And that was sort of the president
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: all day on Tuesday. He was trying, on one hand
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to show some empathy to the situation, very awkwardly at best.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: He continues this weird during the interview, He's asked about
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Renee Good. We have Alex Pretty who died and Renee
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Good who died. That's about Renee Good. And he kept
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: bringing up the fact that Renee his parents were Trump supporters,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and he seems to seem to imply that he has
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a bit more empathy. It came across as if he
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: was basically saying, well, I have more empathy for Renee
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Good because her parents voted for me, and I think
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: we have an idea of what happened on this one, right.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Somebody was telling him this in a desperate attempt to
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: make sure he didn't trash her the way Christine Homan
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: others trashed her in his administration. And what does he do.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: He sort of turns it into a callous thing anyway.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: That so, no, he's not trashing her, but he's making
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: everybody uncomfortable by this advice, essentially implying that his empathy
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: only extends to her because her parents supported him. But
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: he clearly got the message that his own party. And
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: this was sort of the question, why did he send
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Tom Homan r Tom Hommes. And it's not somebody who's
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: going to reassure Tim Wallas or reassure Democrats, though plenty
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: of Democrats have a good relationship with Tom Holman. He's
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a veteran of DHS and of Border Patrol, somebody that's
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: worked with Jay Johnson and Ali may orcis the last
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: two Democratic heads of the Department of Homeland Security. So
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: he was somebody that's seen as sort of a professional.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Certainly he has his political leaning, but he was a
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: professional first, not like this Bovino character, or certainly not
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the way Christy Nome or Stephen Miller have been behaving.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: But what Homan was there to reassure Republicans who had
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: completely lost confidence? And how do we know that Republicans
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: clearly over the weekend had completely lost confidence because they
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: all finally said something today after the President sent Tom Holman,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: after the President pulled Bovino, and after essentially the President
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: gave a public permission slip to say what people wanted
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: to say. And so what did you have? You had
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a parade of Republicans who have been wanting to speak
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: out clearly we're afraid to get to do it before
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: they knew what the White House was going to do.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly you had it right, you had I
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: want to share a few share a few of these
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: quotes here Thun going on the Senate floor. You wouldn't
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: have You didn't see this with Renee Good, but you
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: saw it with Alex pretty and where John Thune is
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: saying the death of Alex Pretty was a tragedy and
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: there should be a full and impartial investigation into his shooting.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: And then he adds, I am glad that the President
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: has sent Tom Homan to Minnesota, and I hope his
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: arrival will help turn down the temperature and restore order.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And then you had it sort of seemed to almost
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: open the floodgates for more and more Republicans to feel
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: comfortable criticizing the situation. Ran Paul, calling for hearings, said
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: that Christy Noam had accepted to come. You even had
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Tom Tillis calling for Christy Nome to be five, Lisa
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Rakowski joining him right after. So, yes, Tillis is retiring.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Murkowski's not running in twenty six. So you know this
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: is not I wouldn't call this a break just yet,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: but you see the direction this is going. And while
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the President had a simple one word answer whether she
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: was still going to be there, referring to Christy Nomy
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: said if she was going to be out of a job,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: he said no, but he's known to change his mind
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: on those things, and I wouldn't I wouldn't assume anything
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: is done, but I do think reading Tillis's statement matters
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: because Tillis really put out a tough statement here. And
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: look the backstory in Tom Tillis. You know he was
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: going to run for reelection. He was focused on running
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: for reelection. He was sort of you know, if Bill
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Cassidy was supposed to be the Republican that was either
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: going to make or break RFK Junior, Tom Tillis was
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: going to be JOONI Earns were going to be the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Republicans that were going to make or break hag Seth.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: They both sort of blinked and they both end up retiring.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's an accident. I don't want to
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: put words in Tom Tillis's mouth. He's never said this,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: but I can just tell you there's a lot of
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: resentment amongst some Senate Republicans at haig Seth, at Christino,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: at RFK Junior, at Tulca Cavern. And so these are
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: probably the least popular of the cabinet secretaries from the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: very beginning, and suddenly you're seeing those that feel like
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: they can speak out are jumping on it. And I'll
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: just quote Tom Tillis. She's proven that she doesn't know
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: how to lead, how to de escalate. She's exposing ICE
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: officers to dangerous situations, she's exposing US citizens to deadly
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: situations again, Republican Senator Tom Tillis. And instead of actually
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: stepping back and being calm, she tells the President, as
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: did Stephen Miller, shortly after the shooting, before anybody could
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: have gotten any unseen information that he was a terrorist.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: What sort of judgment is that for somebody who's running
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: a very constant, quential, important organization. I haven't even talked
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: about the C and D in failing grades that she's
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: getting on Helene response referring to FEMA and the response
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: for that storm last fall. So the knives are out
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: there for Christino. And you know, look, Corey Lewandowski, her
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: chief political advisor, who is a special government assistant at
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: a DHS, has knows how to knife fight. And it's
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: not surprising to me that you start to see DHS
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: put out word that it was Stephen Miller who essentially
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: instructed Gnome to say what she said about Alex pretty
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: after the after the after the killing. Uh. And then
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you have Stephen Miller immediately calling up Axios and saying, well,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the protocol we gave them, they violated the protocol. So
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the point is, though you're you're you're seeing some public
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: in fighting and this can get contagious, and there's nothing
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: that Trump administration, And weirdly, we know the president doesn't
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: even mind it at times if people behind him are infighting.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: But it's bad politics. It doesn't help things, but it'll
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: be interesting. I don't think anything shakes the President from
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: trusting Stephen Miller. I think he views Stephen Miller as
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a loyalist of loyalists, so he will not dump him.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I don't think he feels that same attachment to Christino.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And the fact that you now have Republican senators speaking out, Yes,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: they're the ones retiring, and one's probably going to retire
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: before the next time she runs for reelection referring to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski. It's likely they're speaking for others who would
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: like to see that happen too, but they're not ready
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: to say that, right, They're not ready to go that far.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: But the point is is that clearly the president has
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: gotten the political message. Does it change policy? Do we
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: see any real changes in Minnesota? Do we see a
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: quiet sort of retreat? Right there's you know, it's interesting.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Walls was a bit more diplomatic about his conversations with
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the President and with Homan, the mayor. Certainly it was diplomatic,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: but let's shall we say less so, and wasn't ready
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: to be very cooperative at all. Certainly was diplomatic in tone,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: but things aren't you you're You're. I think I think
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: they sort of are now seeing the writing on the wall.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I think you throw in the fact that a Republican
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: guberatorial candidate decided to drop out because he was embarrassed
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to be associated with the party because of what was
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: happening in the in the killing of these two American citizens.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: So the the I think we now we see the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: President was trying to play clean up. I think he
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: did about a C plus job, if you want to
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: know the truth, I think the faster cleanup is firing
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Nome and turning the page. The fact that he can't
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: bring himself to do that is going to drag this out.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: We now have the report that it was two different
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: ice officers decided to shoot Freddy right, they had him subdued,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: they beat him up, and then two of them decided
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: to shoot him. You had to assume it was since
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: there were ten shots that it was likely more than
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: one person shot him, but that's so that reports out there.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: It is one of those things. If Christy Nome's not
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: fired in the next twenty four hours, then she's probably
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: not going to get fired, because this is one of
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: those things. If you're going to rip the band aid off,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you rip the band aid off, and you do it now.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And it's clear a whole bunch of people are trying
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: to get to him to do this. So I do
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: think the next twenty four to thirty six hours are
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: pretty probably means the way Trump world works, there are
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: those that are going to try to find a million
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: different ways to get to know. By the way, if
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: you tell me that the reason we all know about
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Tom Homan and his bag of cash is because Lewandowski
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: was trying to knife him, it would shock nobody in
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: how this world works. The point being is it's going
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: to be a messy thirty six hours in no world politically,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and we know the president has been not wanting but
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: at this point he's made it more than a year
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and he's only fired a national security advisor, right, so
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: at this point, look, will I think it's a giant
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: political gift to the Democrats if he doesn't fire her,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: her very presence, there, her everything. She has zero credibility.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Republican senators are now saying she has zero ability. I
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: says zero credibility right now, it doesn't make sense to
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: keep her. And so, you know, like I said, I
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I think I think this is uh. I think that
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: that her tenure is going to be measured in hours
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: not days. But if it's not, it might be quite
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the gift, uh to Democrats. And but but what did this?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: You know, if you think about how the month of
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: January is gone, if you're an elected Republican that's going
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: to be on the ballot twenty six and you're just
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: exhausted from all of this essentially chaos and instability that
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the president continues to introduce. Whether it's you know, we
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: still have no path at democracy in Venezuela. That's starting
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to get weird and odd are we We're just using
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it as as as some sort of oil depot. The
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: break with Canada. By the way, the Europeans and the
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Indians just did a massive trade deal. So the president's
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: trade policy is creating all sorts of of economic partnerships
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that do not include the United States that all of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: us are going to regret at some point, probably sooner
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: rather than later. But this incident might be the permission
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: slip that a lot of Republicans are going to use
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: to start to distance themselves from the from from the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: more unpopular things of the Trump administration, especially if he's
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: going to be completely sort of if he's going to
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: be completely oblivious to the reality on the ground on
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the economy. Because I do want to not lose sight
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: of why he went to Iowa, right he was there
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: to focus on affordability. I have to tell you he
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: couldn't have picked a worst state to try to highlight
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: his economic policies because Iowa has probably been at the
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: has been the punching bag to Trump's crazy tariff regime.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Iowa is now fiftieth. I was doing some research earlier
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: this week on this i was fiftieth in the nation
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: among fifty states in GDP growth in the last year.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: It normally was sitting in the middle. And why is that?
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: There's only one reason. This episode of the Chuck Podcast
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: is brought to you by Quints, and I love me
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: some Quints. New Year, Colder Days. This is the moment
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: your winter wardrobe really has to deliver. If you're craving
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: a winter reset, start with pieces truly made to last
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: season after season. Quint springs together premium materials, thoughtful design,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and enduring quality so you stay warm, look sharp, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: feel your best all season long. Quinn's has everything men's
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Mongolian cashmere sweaters. I have one. I have to say,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: really into it. They have wool coats, leather, and swed
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: outerwear that actually hold up to daily wear and still
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: look good. Their outerwear is especially impressive. Think down jackets,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: wool coats, and Italian leather outerwear that keep you warm
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: when it's actually cold. Each piece made from premium materials.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Quinces delivers the same quality as luxury brands at a
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: fraction of the price. The result is classic styles you'll
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: love that hold up year after year. You know me,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I love me my quarter zips. Quinn says, quite a
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: few of them. They're great. They're both light and warm.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: There's nothing harder than business casual. Right, you get these things?
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: What can I wear? What can you wear at the meeting?
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: What do you wear on a zoom? I have to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: say it's as if Quinn sort of says Hey, look,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: we've got the modern sort of working wardrobe ready for you,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: clothing that looks stylish, looks good, but is actually practical
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and isn't going to break the bank. So refresher winter
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: wardrobe with Quinn. Go to quins dot com slash chuck
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: for free shipping on your order and three hundred and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: sixty five day returns. And it's also available in Canada.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: That's qui nce dot com slash chuck, free shipping and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five day returns quints dot com
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: slash chuck. So now I want to pivot to where
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the President was trying to pivot today. Right today was
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: not supposed to be all about his ice operations in Minneapolis.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Today was the day he was supposed to pivot to
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: focusing on the economy, touting his economic record and essentially
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: asking for patients. And he chose the state of Iowa,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: which was a curious choice. On one hand, he should
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: be there. He's got some work to do in Iowa.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: He's got a lot of unhappy farmers. Iowa's economy not
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: in good shape at all, and at this very moment,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons, and I want to get
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: into that. But here he is going to Iowa today
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: to try to focus on affordability, and on the day
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: he leaves, this being Tuesday, and obviously you guys are
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: listening to this air. On Wednesday, we got some important
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: new information about consumers. And let's just say, consumers already
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: or behaving, are acting as if we're already in recession.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: So we had some January numbers that showed us. Now, look,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: there are two different surveys that came out on consumer confidence.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: One factor's employment prospects into it and one does it right.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: So on one side, yet the University of Michigan survey
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: that focuses more on pocketbook issues like gas prices and inflation.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: And on the other one that came out today it
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: was the Conference Board Index, which is much more sensitive
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: to the labor market and jobs, and one showed basically
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: stagnation with a tiny bit of relief. The Michigan survey
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: already those super low, but the Conference Board numbers that
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: fell through the floor. So let me start with that one.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: The Conference Sports Consumer Confidence Index just cub lapsed in January.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Top line number fell to eighty four point five, which
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: is down from ninety four point two in December. These
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: are their marks here. That doesn't mean it was a
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: bad month. This is the lowest reading on this measurement
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: on this scale since May of twenty fourteen, so it's lower.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: This confidence number is lower than during any moment during
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the pandemic, any moment during the pandemic. And even more
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: concerning is the expectations index in this measurement, which plungs
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: is sixty five point one. What does that mean? What's
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the expectations that things are not going to be good
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: in this labor market? Economists generally treat any number below
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: eighty as a warning sign that a recession is likely
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: within the next year. Well, this, this number was sixty five,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: so this isn't theoretical fear. There's already labor market and anxiety.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: This is what the public is feeling. This is not
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: about any measurement numbers. This is just public sentiment and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: obviously our economy and consumer confidence these things matter. So
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the share of consumers who say jobs are plentiful fell
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: to under twenty five percent, while those saying that jobs
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: are hard to get right now rose to twenty one percent.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: So that gap that is closing fast, and when that closes.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I means you're seeing more just as many
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: people say jobs are plentiful as they are hard to get.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: One number is going down and one number is going up.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: So consumers are now starting to worry about their job security.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: If they have one. Confidence doesn't bounce back quickly based
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: on that. No tax refund is going to make you
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: feel better about jobs. Because what's helping to underline this
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: issue of jobs, Well, there's all sorts of reasons. Right
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: when they asked respondents, they pointed to tariffs and trade policy,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: which is and I'm going to get to eye well
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: here in a minute, creates a lot of uncertainty, especially
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: if you're in if you're at all in the agricultural space,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: a ton of any of the rising cost of health
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: insurance that is leading to more anxiety. And then of
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: course there's ai job displacement fears. Now, the other survey
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: at the University of Michigan survey showed modest improvement, but okay,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: we're talking a January reading of fifty six point four,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: which is terrible, up from fifty two point nine in December,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: which was awful. Right, it's still twenty points lower than
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: it was a year ago. Consumer confidence was better at
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: the start of Trump's presidency than it is essentially now
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: one year in, and it is barely above historic lows.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So while you can say, hey, it ticked up, if
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: you wanted to really spin and lie to people, you
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: could say the consumer confidence survey at the University of
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Michigan ticked up from December to January. But what they
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: don't tell you is that it's near historic lows. So
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: inflation expectations for the year I head have eased a
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: little bit to four percent, but that's still above the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: two percent expectation. The longer term expectations ticked up to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: three point three percent. Again not good. It's a sign
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: that Americans don't fully trust the trajectory of inflation, even
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: though the President claimed on Tuesday they've already solved it.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: No more inflation, Inflation's over. That's not what the public
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: is feeling, and that's not what's actually happening. So and
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: guests who what's interesting here on this front, by the way,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: is that gen Z was actually the most optimistic about
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: finding a job than anybody older than that, and gen
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Z's pretty pessimistic about everything else. I don't know if
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: that's cause for comfort. But I want to focus on
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the Iowa story because you know what's unique of what's
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: interesting about this is one of the first states George W.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Bush would go to to tout the economy when he
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: was beginning his reelection was Iowa. One of the first
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: states that Barack Obama went to would be Iowa. And
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: here's Donald Trump, essentially his first foray in the campaign season.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: He goes to Iowa. You might argue, how Iowa goes
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: or how Iowa perceives the economy, so goes the perception
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: of America on this one. So let's go back to
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Iowa because the confidence gap explains the disconnect that we're
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: seeing on the ground there. So the presidents in clive
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Iowa talking about affordability and saying economy's great prices are
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: coming way down, that isn't what the data is showing.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: According to the Philadelphia Fed State Index, Iowa now ranks
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: fiftieth in the nation for economic growth dead frickin last
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: That hasn't happened since the farm crisis of the eighties.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Iowa was not just lagging, it is anchoring national growth.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: It is pulling us back. And you know what the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: you know what the reason is tars. It is teriffs.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: So when you combine collapsing labor confidence nationally with Iowa's
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: local economic stress, now you see the messaging problem this
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: White House has. On the farm front, Iowa corn is
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: still trading roughly forty four cents below the cost of production.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: So even though the administration is throwing twelve million dollars
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: in this bridge assistance program, it's not fixing it. It's
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: simply going to put off the financial reckoning that these
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: farmers are facing. And as the Farmers Union put it,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: using terraffs to fix trade is like quote, trying to
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: change a light bulb with a hammer. It doesn't work.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Then there's manufacturing, which also is not a great story
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: in the state of idle plants across the Cedar Rapids
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Waterloo Corridor. Waterloo's where my dad grew up, so I
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: always care about Waterloo a lot. They're stuck in low higher,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: low fire holding pattern. Right, all of these there's some
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: issues with manufacturing that a they're trying to wait for
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: some stability on the terraff front and anything you import
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: to manufacture things, And of course the other is AI.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: What is AI going to replace and so you don't
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: have a lot of people filling heads on this. But
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the tariffs on specialized machinery have pushed costs up ten
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: to fifty percent, depending on the machinery you have to import,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and so that kills any return on investment if you're
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: trying to expand your manufacturing. So, while the White House
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: wants to talk affordability, Iowa businesses are in a defensive crouch.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: They're just waiting for this storm to pass. They're not growing.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: So why is he there? Well, we know why he's there.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Iowa is home to three competitive house races, a competitive
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: governor's race, and a competitive center race. It is it's basically,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: if Iowa goes blue, the Democrats are going to win
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the House and the Senate. Right, and it's possible. You've
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: got a strong gubernatorial candidate. I'm saying, you've got an
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: open Senate. See, and you've now got one open House
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: seat and two three of the four are already super competitive.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: You have two open house seats total because the Randy
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Fiinstra is running for governor. So on the one hand,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Iowa is a place that needs a lot of help
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: if you're a Republican. On the other hand, Trump's messaging
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: is all over the map and it isn't working. And
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: on the economy, particularly on the farm economy, Trump's economic
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: policies have damaged, have hurt the average Iowa more than
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: in other places, and so it's a curious place for
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: them to go. Like I said, on one hand, it's necessary.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, I'm not sure his
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: personal popularity is going to overcome this economic angst that
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: is gripping Iowa and a lot of folks on this front.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: So look, I think he's trying to fix his trying
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: to do some damage control on Ice. I don't know
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: if he's moved fast enough, but it's clear a whole
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: bunch of people are getting in his ear and trying
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: to get him a fire. No, but the bigger problem
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: might be and the bigger issue is the fact that
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: their economic message is just not resonating, because how people
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: are actually feeling in this economy versus what they're saying
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: are two different things. And you see it, people do
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: not feel good about this economy. And ultimately, yes, I
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: think Ice and Greenland and all these foreign policy excapades,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: they're all adding to the feel of instability and I
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: think ultimately it's that instability that's gonna that could really
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: do sort of have sort of dual motivating factors. Right
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: one will demotivate his base vote who don't feel very
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: good about they don't know what they're fighting for at
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: this point, and it really will motivate those that want
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: to see a check on Donald Trump. One other point, boy,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: has Donald Trump messed up his gun politics? Now? Do
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I think that you're going to have suddenly the NRA
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: spending money on behalf of Democrats? Know? In fact, it's
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: been funny to watch the NRA. The NRA is the
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: only gun rights group that hasn't condemned the president's remarks
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: from earlier on Tuesday where he said that Alex Prenny
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have brought a gun there. What was he doing
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: bringing a gun there? And it was like, I mean,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: he was using what gun rights groups would say, was,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: you know, was not sort of accepting the premise that
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a constitutional right is a right and that you don't
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: get to be seen as suspicious just because you choose
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: to exercise a constitutional right. It's been funny to watch
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: gun right supporters just sort of panic about this. But
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: there's you know, this is a lesson for everybody that
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: signed up with Trump. Trump evenged Trump eventually will let
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: you down. He lets every one of his supporters on
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: something down eventually. And this was what his primary opponents
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen were going bonkers about and complaining about
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and frustrated about. Right the Ted Cruz. They were all like,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: going to these specific interest groups, including the NRA. You
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: can't trust him on guns, you can't do this yet.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: You can't trust him on any of these things. You
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: can't trust him on abortion, you know. And certainly he's
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: appointed judges that have made the NRA and the right
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: to life community very happy. But Donald Trump's never with anybody.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's with one person, himself, and he will throw
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: any supportive anybody he supports, or anybody that supports him,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: he will throw them under the bus to protect himself
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: from whatever he's got to protect himself. And what are
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: gun right supporters learning this week that he does not
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: really care about their issue, because if he did, he
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been saying what he's been saying about the
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: circumstances with Alex Brading. All right, So I want to
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: sneak in a break. But when we come back my
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: conversation with Heather Ann Thompson, she's author of a new book.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: She's an atorian, and she's author of a new book
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: that sort of essentially re explores Bernie Gets. For those
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: of you of a certain age, you'll know Bernie Gets
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: as the infamous or famous depending on your point of view,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: subway New York City subway vigilante of the eighties. And
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: what Heather Ann does is sort of trace that incident
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: and just say, you know, in many ways, this was
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: an early harbinger of what would animate parts of the
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: MAGA movement and Donald Trump. And it's obviously an important
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: incident that happens while Donald Trump, a young Donald Trump,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: is trying to become the King of New York and
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: in many ways, what he absorbs from Bernie Getz, you know,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: is what motivates him to jump the gun on the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Central Park five. And some of the conversations that took place,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: of those that supported Bernie Gets and those that didn't
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: are going to feel quite familiar with today's politics. But
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: what's really fascinating about the work that Heather End did
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: is how she went about it. She went back to
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: all sorts of source material. She did not go She
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: did not interview people today about their memory of that time.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: She instead went back and essentially recreated the situation, you know,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: dug into the first person accounts of what happened first
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: find out, you know, and it's not just what the
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: mainstream press did and what the New York Posts and
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: the New York Times did, but also what the black
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: press did, what the Latino press did, what some of
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the alternative press did, and she but she does it
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: all again without interviewing anybody who, including gets or any
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: of the victims' families today, and instead went back and
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: sort of essentially trying to paint the picture from scratch,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: if you will. I thought it was quite effective. And look,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: this is this is an historical event that still has
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: echoes in our politics today. So we'll speak in that
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: break when we come back, a deep dive into the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: one of the more infamous incidents in New York City history,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: which of course turned into American an American political an
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: American political dust uff as well. So it's Heather and Thompson.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: I'm burn Gates. Having good life insurance is incredibly important.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I know from personal experience. I was sixteen when my
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: father passed away. We didn't have any money. He didn't
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: leave us in the best shape. My mother, single mother,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: now widow, myself sixteen trying to figure out how am
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I going to pay for college? And lo and behold,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: my dad had one life insurance policy that we found.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a lot, but it was important at the time,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and it's why I was able to go to college.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Little did he know how important that would be in
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: that moment. Well, guess what. That's why I am here
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: to tell you about Etho's life. They can provide you
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: with peace of mind knowing your family is protected even
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: if the worst comes to pass. Ethos is an online
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy, all
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: designed to protect your family's future in minutes, not months.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: There's no complicated process, and it's one hundred percent online.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: There's no medical exam require you just answer a few
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: health questions online. You can get a quote in as
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: little as ten minutes, and you can get same day
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: coverage without ever leaving your home. You can get up
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: to three million dollars in coverage, and some policies start
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: as low as two dollars a day. That would be
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: billed monthly. As of March twenty twenty five, Business Insider
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: named Ethos the number one no medical exam instant life
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: insurance provider. So protect your family with life insurance from Ethos.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Get your free quot at ethos dot com slash chuck.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: So again, that's Ethos dot com slash chuck. Application times
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: may vary and the rates themselves may vary as well,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: but trust me, life insurance is something you should really
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: think about it, especially if you've got a growing family.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: So as we try to figure out right, it's a
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: question I get all the time about sort of the
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Trump era, how did we get here?
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And sometimes we begin with the financial crisis in nine
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: and sometimes some people say, well, it's the ball, you know,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: I've made a case about the fall of the Berlin
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Wall and sort of the end of the Cold War
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: that sort of certainly helped respark the rise of the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: sort of the political bases in both parties. But there's
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: always been another part of Trump that people, you know,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: why did Trump? You know, how did Trump form the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: ideology that he formed? Right? And understanding New York City
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, which shaped Trump's mind for
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: better or for worse, and the characters of that are
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily important. There's a new book, Fear and Fury by
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Heather and Thompson that focuses on a specific incident in
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the early eighties that became a massive national story and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: put the word vigil lante ism sort of front and center.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: I was twelve or thirteen at the time of this incident,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: but I remember it very clearly and how big of
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: a deal it was. And of course now I understand
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: it why it was a big deal because of all,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: our media is based in New York City, so of
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: course we were the entire country we's going to know
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: about this. But Heather An Thompson joins me now, author
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: of Fear and Fury, who takes basically is making an
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: argument that the Bernie Getz was sort of the first
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: sign of this sort of white rage that would incubate
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: and certainly help, I think, form much of Trump's ideology
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: over time, and it metastasized into something that we now
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: see nationally. So it's a fascinating argument. It's a terrific book.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Look New York City in the seventies and eighties is
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: an incredible landscape. To be thinking about, if you're an author,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: a screenplay writer, you name it. Let's get started, Heather,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: So glad to be here.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: So let me just start with. Look, you've done other
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: books that sort of explored sort of what's happened in
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: urban America urban decay. How long have you been thinking
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: about doing a Bernie Getz book.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Well, in some respects for a very long time, because
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: I remember the event and it always struck me as
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: such jarring thing to happen in the middle.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: We haven't talked about what the event is. Let's remind
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: people with the event Bernie gets is on a subway,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: take it away.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: So it's nineteen eighty four in New York City, and
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: New York City, if anyone was around or anyone remembers it,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: it was a pretty grim place to be in the
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: mid eighties. It was suffering greatly financially. If you were
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: to take this upway on a regular basis, which everyone did,
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: it was graffiti smeared, it was the streets were trash filled,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: and homelessness was on rise, and it felt very much
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: like a city in crisis. And on this one day,
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: three days before Christmas, kind of a loner white guy
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: named Bernie Getz gets on the train, and on that
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: train are already four young teenagers from the South Bronx,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: another place that had really been been decimated by the
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: economics of this period, and they end up in a
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: very very brief conversation a hello. One of the kids
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: asks him if he has five dollars, which, of course,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: in this time period of panhandling and everyone's asking everyone
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: for some money, it's not particularly unusual. But what is
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: unusual is this guy stands up as if he's going
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: to get some money and turns around, immediately assumes a
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: combat stance and guns down these teenagers. One he shoots
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: straight in the chest, the other in the back as
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: he's running away, the third also trying to run away,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: in the in the arm, and the fourth, who he misses.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: What was most staggering about this event, as he gets up,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: walks over to him, stands over him and says, you
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: look all right, here's another and shoots him at point
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: blank range, severing his final calmn. So it was this incredible,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: especially as you might imagine for the passengers on that train,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: really a horrific event that happens. The story I tell though,
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: is really about the thereafter, the fallout from this, which
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: is as stunning in many ways as the event itself.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: You know, think about though, you know, what's interesting is
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: you put together I think a very you really provided
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: some visuals that you did a terrific job just now
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: describing it. But we ought to remind folks there were
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: no cameras. That's right, right, this is all all putting together,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: all of the eyewitness accounts right in sort of sort
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: of consensus accounts, and this is the this is the
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: account I can only imagine, right, this is pre social
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: media and pre cameras everywhere. Right, something like this happens now,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: we would see the footage and every American would be
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: making up their mind on their own. In this case,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: we basically had the New York Post and the national
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: media right shaping the events, and it took a while
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: for people to know everything that happened on that what
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: you just said was not the first reports.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Well, that's actually that's so true. And what was really
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: remarkable is that after he shoots these, because he then
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: disappears into the subway tunnels, he is on the run.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: He's on the lamb for nine days and before so
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: many New Yorkers even know his name. They are celebrating him.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: He is the death Wish visual. He has taken out
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: these thugs, these animals. What is really amazing about this
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: story is that nobody, nobody knows what's happened, but so
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: many New Yorkers, I have to say, particularly overwhelmingly white
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: New Yorkers, have decided that they understand exactly what's happened.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: As this story unfolds. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and so in
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: so many respects, this story is ground zero, not just
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: for where we end up today with this unleashing of
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: kind of rage and violence and how it's vindicated in
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: the courts, but also this moment we're in where up
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: is down and down is up and even if you
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: see the video, you're kind of told, well, that's that's
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: not what happened. In this case. He actually will confess
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: on a lengthy video taped confession where he says exactly
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: what he did, and even then it's not going to matter,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: which is why this is such an interesting moment to
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: re visit. An unpack.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: You spent some time with one of the survivors of
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the shooting.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: No, I did not, So what is interesting. No, no, no,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: So this is the interesting story here. I am a historian,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: so I usually I just start back in the beginning.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: I'm doing the recovering everything that was written at the time,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: every confession. But the reason why I was not talking
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: to any of the present day survivors is because I
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: had to make a decision. Bernie gets the shooter. He's
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: still around, he's still talking very loudly about what he did.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: But when I realized I could not also talk to
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: his victims, I couldn't rescue their stories in the same way,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: I stepped away from that and I said, let me
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: just start from the beginning. Let me reconstruct this story,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: because the most amazing thing to me was the way
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: in which the victims were completely erased from this story,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: written out of it didn't matter. And so my journey
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: was really trying to reconstruct who were they?
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: How did you do it without talking to them?
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: You know, the one thing about being a historian is
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: we are pretty good detectives. We have to go back
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: to the beginning. I was looking at everything. I was
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: looking at every newspaper, counters, looking at original you know,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: the probation report of Bernie Getz himself, I was the details.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: They are depositions, court transcripts, and from one of the
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: really interesting pieces of information that gave me a lot
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: was these young men had applied for compensation, a few
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: of them from something that New York has, which is
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: called the Crime Victim's Board. And if you're a victim
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: of crime in New York City, especially in the eighties,
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: there was this provision you could apply for some funding
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: because of course people were you know, disabled or injured
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: from these horrific crimes. And when they try to do that,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: they are denied. They are decided to not be the victims.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: It was they that deserved what they got. And so
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: from there it was just kind of like whoa, we
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: got to start at the beginning, How is it? How
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: is it that this all happened? And so I take
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: you into their lives, into the cell.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: So I want to go back to because I see
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: what I see the distinction you're trying to draw here,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: which is you're trying in some ways not to pollute
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the moment with what could be what these folks could
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: believe they're telling you is truthful. But you know, the
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: brain misremembers right for some of it. By for survival reasons,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. And so do you feel like you
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: had a more pure sense of perhaps who they are
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: if you didn't talk to them in the present day?
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think so, I hope so. I mean,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: it's not that I would not have talked to everybody.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Perhaps it is that, you know, I realized, Look, I
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: mean two one of the victims ends up killing himself
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: on the anniversary of the event. Another dies very young.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's completely drug addicted after this. His life
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: is so much in shambles. One of them is who's
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: still alive, is paralyzed brain damage from this event. So
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: when I sort of realized that part of this story
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: was about the erasing of the costs of this unleashing
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: of vigilante violence, then I just wanted to say, look,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: let me, let me, let me go back, let me
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: reconstruct this. And you know, that is what I did
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: in my first book on the Attica Uprising. It's what
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I did in this one. It's a journey, I will convince,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: but it is one that I feel like I'm able,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: I hope, anyway, to take take readers there in that
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: moment on that subway train or in that project where
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: the teenagers lived or in Greenwich Village where Bernie Getz lived,
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: and was what he was experiencing.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I I've been thinking about after reading
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: your book, I've been thinking about what did I think,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: what was shaped? How was Bernie get shaped? For me?
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: And I vigilanteism? Right, And it was sort of this
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: idea that that New York was under policed, under protected.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: You know, I would go two years later, I would
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: go to the one hundredth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: I had an aunt that lived there and I wanted
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: to see all of that, and there was you know,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: you had to be careful when you went on the subway,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: and there was all these you know. So this was
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: a city where even the residents, it's not that they
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: lived in fear, they themselves were vigilant, constantly, right, There
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: was this feeling.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: And so.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say that Bernie gets was portrayed
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: as a hero in sort of the my memory, but
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it was more of like he had been pushed to
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: the like it was a he was the presentative of
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: a city that had been pushed to the brink.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. And what was interesting to
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: me was unpacking, not why people felt like that, as
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: if it were somehow illegitimate. I remember it as you say,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: people were vichelant.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Look I went to that. I was a young staffer
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two for a news publication and we
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: were covering the Democratic Convention and that was at Madison
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Square Garden and my job at four point thirty in
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the morning was to go to a newspaper sort of
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a place that got all the newspapers from the East Coast.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: And it was in Times Square, right off the Times Square.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: And the cab driver said he wouldn't wait. This is
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, you know, And you know this was
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: people that was like the turnaround in New York really
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: didn't begin until the mid nineties, and so the early
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: nineties really were more like eighties New York. And it's like,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: you know, that was the mindset. Cab drivers were afraid
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: of certain parts of Manhattan. You know, we're not talking
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: about the Bronx or Queens. I'm talking about Manhattan. Yeah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: And what was so interesting to me to kind of
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: reconstruct and I keep using that word because that's what
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: it felt like. It felt like kind of going back
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: to the beginning piecing it together was how did that happen?
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: How does New York City come to feel so under siege,
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: so abandoned, like everything is falling apart? And what people
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: remember and even what they were being told every time
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: they picked up the New York Post, every time they
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: picked up any kind of tabloid media was crime is
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: out of control, and there's a certain kind of predator
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: out there. It was not subtle. They were young, they
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: were black, they were poor, and you always had to
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: be on the lookout for that kind of a threat.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: But what was really interesting when I sort of went
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: back was the realization that there had been kind of
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: this political story behind this. One of the things that's
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: happening here is that it is the eighties and we
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: have had the election of a new president. This president
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: is Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan was determined to do
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: something that frankly, a lot of wealthy people had wanted
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: to do before they had not really been successful, which
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: was to dismantle the New Deal kind of liberal welfare
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: state in America. And so he sets about doing this
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: really effectively. So by the time we get to eighty four,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: the trash is piling up. The areas are feeling under police,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: they are feeling under siege. People have lost their jobs.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: The public sector is being decimated. There is the public schools,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: the public hospitals. Meanwhile, an AIDS crisis is developing that
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: is getting no care. And so in this context, it
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: was a possibility, right that people would say, wait a minute,
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: what's going on here? We don't actually want all these
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: resources taken away. But their attention is almost by kind
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: of you know, remarkably effectively directed towards people worse offt
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: than that. No, the wrong with New York City is
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: not that we don't have funding anymore for you know,
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: the public sector, for the social safety net for people.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: The problem is those people. It's a moral problem. It's
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: a problem of the underclass that kind of working that
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: out and seeing it in real time and actually seeing
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: how the media Rupert Murdoch's media that will become Fox News.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, he is a right hand guy in the
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: Reagan administration. They understand that he's promoting a message, a
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: kind of a conservative sensationaliste message that they want promoted.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: And so the book kind of, I mean, it lays
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: this bear, I think, and we get a different understanding,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: not that people weren't legitimately fearful, but that it was
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: kind of tragically misdirected, and consequences of that were vast.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: For So, do you did you did you feel like
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: you had to then go back to sort of you know,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: how did we go from let's just it's New York City.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you go back. I remember the
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: great tabloid headline that's like President Ford to New York
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: City dropped dead, right, which was over a funding funding dispute.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: But you know, to me, the the eighties New York
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: really was built in the seventies, right, Well, so that's also.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: Kind of a it was a surprise to me. I
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: think it'll be a surprise to some of the readers. Yes,
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: and no, the forties, the fifties, the sixties, this is
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: the prosperous time in America. This is when the American
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: middle class is built on so much of that social
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: funding that we came to depend on. The sixties become
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: very tumultuous, to be sure, as the discriminatory aspects of
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: this arch challenge. But the seventies will experience an economic
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: downturn that is actually global. It's a fiscal crisis. It's global.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Everywhere.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: That's all right, but it recovers, and it would have
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: recovered it we recovered around the globe. It actually recovered.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: But into this really interesting moment steps an opportunity, or
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: is an opportunity, i should say, for again for folks
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: who had long wanted to kind of dismantle attack structure
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: that felt burden some to wealthy people, and they actually
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: will take that kind of already very much struggling civic
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: infrastructure that you know, again was on the mend elsewhere,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: and will double down on this austerity. It happens here,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: it happens in the UK under Thatcher, and it's a
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: moment that we've kind of forgotten, and it is a
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: moment that every subsequent president will actually contribute to, including
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Clinton and everybody else, will continue to kind of road
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: at that social safety Now.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, but so how would you explain because you know,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: if you look at it right in the eighties, it
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: was the cities can't be helped, right, that was kind
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: of the mindset. It's too late for the cities. Everything
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: was moving to the burbs, right, malls all, you know,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: all the e commerce was moving out of the cities
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: left and right, you know, including basketball arenas and stadiums right.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Everything was going and then at some point in the
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: mid nineties we figured out, hey, that's a bad idea.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: We should invest in our cities again, which of course
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: gave us this sort of renaissance for a period of time. Yeah,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: that feels like we're in retreat again, you know, that.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Renaissance that what they would call at the time is
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: I know you remember, right, the Giuliani recle that happens
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: in a saying area.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: But is it I mean, every city experience You're right,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: downtowns every pretty much every city except the other one
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: you wrote about Detroit, right, Detroit, And in fact, I've
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: got a request. I'd like you to do Saint Louis next.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: But that's a that's a that's a separate because it's
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: very it's fascinating to me that Detroit is recovering in
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Saint Louis isn't. Yeah, which is which is? But I
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: don't want to distract this here from New York. But
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: you're right, like there's this you know, the broken windows mindset, right,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: that that's a part of scene as a part of it,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: and yet you know it wouldn't have mattered who was mayor.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Every city recovered was recovering by the turn of the Center.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that I think that you'll
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: see is that this is all connected to what we
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: were just talking about. So once we start to free
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: up taxes and we start to have this very popular
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: message that the problem is with people, the problem is
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: with the undeserving, the problem was with the criminal element.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: People like Giuliani are very savvy, right, He's part of
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: the Skeets story too, and they're very savvy. They understand
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: that this is a message that sells. But also when
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: you free up monies at the top, you can invite
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: businesses in, you can invite that kind of redevelopment, and
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: you touch off this kind of moment of gentrification, and
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: all of that feels really good when you're coming into
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: a city. Times Square, right, goes from feeling undersieged to
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: feeling a bit like Disneyland, and it does feel like
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: an economic miracle. But there is the other side of that, right,
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: which is the explosion and incarceration in New York City
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: and in New York and around the country, the hyper
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: policing that goes on that leads in New York City
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: to stop and frisk, tons of people being pulled over
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: with no criminal charges, and it leads to a pushing
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: out of that poverty into other boroughs, other neighborhoods. This happens,
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: of course, across the country. And so I think we're
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: seeing now, which is super interesting in a place like
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: New York is it's wearing thin. What's wearing thin is
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: this idea that the private sector can save everybody that
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: cutting taxes at the top, Well, it makes everything glitzy
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: and brings Gucci to your downtown, and it doesn't actually
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: make people more prosperous. Income inequality is more severe now
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: than it has been since the Gilded Age, and that's
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: kind of the story we tell. But also this is
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Trump's story, and Trump is kind of always ever president
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: here benefiting from this, navigating this and ultimately writing to
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: the White House as a beneficiary of this.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's funny. One of the jokes that
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: many of my political reporter friends and I always make this, like,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump's been stuck in the eighties, right, that
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: he never got out of the eighties. And part of
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: that is, you know, if you actually any elderly person, Right,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: any older person you talk with them, they'll always spend
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: more time in the era that was best for them, right. So,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump in the eighties was popular. Donald
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Trump in the eighties was interesting to people. Donald Trump
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: in the eighties was fun to watch on David Letterman, right,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: like he was. So I think, in a weird way,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: his obsession with the eighties is because it was the
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: last time he was liked, right, Like, he really has been, weirdly,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: you know, always searching for this. I think he's always
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: been in search of in his own life, heyday, Yes,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: trying to bring the eighties back, right, first, you know,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: in his own way in the nineties in the ox
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: and then obviously make America great. Really, in his own
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: head is about just making America the way it was
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: when I was interesting and popular to people. And so
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: talk about what Trump's experiencing in this moment.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So he is ground zero in the story as well.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: The eighties is on the one hand, completely falling apart
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: for so many, but he is navigating it. He is
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: part of this kind of group of very wealthy New
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Yorkers that see this as an opportunity to get wealthier,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: to build a real estate empire, really, but also to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: understand the importance of the media, the flashy media, the
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: New York Post is his friend. And ultimately, by the way,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: recognizing very savvily how powerful the fear mongering is, how
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: powerful the race baiting is, and really watching this so carefully,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: watching and benefiting from the Giuliani political experience in New
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: York and Trump himself. He tries to court the Reagan
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: White House. He's happy courting the Clinton White House. He
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: doesn't really care so much initially about what party he
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: wants to have power, and as this story unfolds, he
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: understands the formula he will once Rubert Mardach creates the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: Fox News, he will make that his platform deliberately again
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: having watched the New York story, but also right he
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: goes on The Apprentice, and he goes on Worldwide Wrestling
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: and things like that, because he is selling what the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: Reagan Revolutions sold, which is we're going to stay this
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: country with businessmen and the people who are going to
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: put us in office to do it, or working class
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: white guys. So he's really masterful.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Actually, you know, if Bernie gets doesn't happen, does he
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: insert himself into the Central Park five. Right, it's an
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: unknowable but you know, you can't help but wonder watching
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: the Bernie Gets story. Yeah, does that sort of why
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: he dabbles even more into some thing like that?
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: I think so. I think so. And actually, you know,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: turning the question slightly differently, I mean, you know, would
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: the Central part five have been quite the media inflammatory
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: episode that it was without the Guest story and without Trump?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is it's so interesting that this happens
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: quite a few years later, but it is. It is.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: It is absolutely unleashed on them in a way that
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: had just been building since eighty four, by the way,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: as did the mob of killings in Howard Beach, you know,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: in benson Hurst. Because the thing about the Guests case,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: and if you're if you're reading it, you're it's you know,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: day by day you're in the courtroom, you see that
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: there is a bloodthirst that is kind of being nurtured
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: and stoked. And when he is and this is the key,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: when he is vindicated in the courts, uh, it sends
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: a message. Uh. It sends a message to the NRA,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: for example, who has funded his his legal defense to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: come to New York guns are no longer about gun
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: you know, sportsmanship and hunting. They're about protecting your domain
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: from their stems so much. And I hope I connect
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: the dots for people.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: You really do see that is it's interesting the NRA
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: aspect to this, that it transforms the NRA from a
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: sportsman club to to what it became. Yeah.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, And by the way the media is transformed by
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: this moment, we've kind of begun at the end of
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: the story, which is that there is this tabloid sensationalist media.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: But but what we don't really understand is that that
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: media becoming mainstream. This is the moment when that kind
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: of starts to happen. So that even papers of the record,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: like the New York Times, which is you know, initially
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: a little sober in the reporting on this is and.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Typical Times fashion if I'm I mean, I'm sure this
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: must have frustrated you, you know, buried on the local section, right,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: probably never made it to the front section until it
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: became a thing versus the New York Post, which was
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: always front paging it every day.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Right, Absolutely, And then the repeating of the misinformation about
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: this story is so effective that it it is also
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: sending a message to the mainstream media. You want to
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: sell papers, you want to get an audience, you too
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: have to sell crime.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: And we're in the earlier stages of talk radio at
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: this point too.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, ab WABC in New York City. Curtis Leewa
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: who will of course recently tried to be the mayor.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: He is, he's ground zero of this case as well.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: He the Guardian Angel. Had he started like the timing
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: of Guardian Angels started yet or not yet?
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, and they they will go on the the
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: muscle to raise as much money for Bernie Yetz as
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: they can. And Curtis Lee was talk radio show which
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: was increasingly conservative and again kind of just really a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: side of misinformation just takes off as a result of
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: the Bernie Guests case. So you know, it's kind of funny.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: We don't want to put it all on one case.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: But I was myself, I'm rarely surprised. I was a
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: little surprised by how it all came together, you know.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Just to put this in context, how often were there
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: subway shootings?
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: I mean just didn't you know, rarely, That's what I thought.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: This was not This was a really unusual thing. Yeah,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: and it just you know, obviously was stuff people feared.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: But then you know here it was. This wasn't common
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: subway shootings.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: That's right. And if you've ever been on a subway,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: you know how tight that is, how confined it is, sure,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: And so for this to have happened, I mean, imagine
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: being that passenger while this is going down. People are running,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: you know, they're trying to get off this train, and
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: it is a it is a shock, even even in
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: an era of people feeling very unsafe.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: So let's peel back the public policy aspect of this.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: If one thing, if you could have changed one thing
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: on the public policy front in nineteen eighty one, right,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: what has the biggest impact in the positive for New
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: York City?
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I think what was most consequential on the ground
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: was the stripping away of resources that people desperately needed,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: which in turn led to, for example, people turning to
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: the illegal drug trade at a whole record level to
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: support themselves their families, which in turn also contributed to
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: the AIDS crisis, which in turn could not get the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: care and attention it needed without the public resources it needed.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: So if we are to really look at a kind
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: of a ground zero moment. The Reagan tax cuts starting
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: in eighty one actually and then getting doubled down on
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: in eighty three are monumentally important in a place like
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: South Bronx. Think about it. Most African Americans in places
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: like the South Bronx are dependent on public sector jobs.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Right working for the city, working for the state. They
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: are eviscerated. Teenagers got summer employment through something called SEDA
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: ceda jobs. Reagan eliminates them. Mentally ill people relied on
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: general assistance. It is gutted. And of course again it's
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: not just Reagan. It is a long Reagan revolution because
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: it will actually be Clinton. As I you know, am
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: not shied appointed.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: Shifted right on these issues. Yes, right, that's right.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: So the ground zero changing moment is really an economic
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: one from which the cultural, the racial, all of it
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: will get much tenser, much more exacerbated. But you know,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: but the flip side of that, and I just want
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: to go back to your point about Times Square, about
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: the Giuliani moment. The flip side of that is, if
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: you had means in this country, if you were wealthy,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: the tax burden just shifted dramatically for you in a
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: really wonderful way that we've also been doubling down on.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: So when Trump is elected, where our eyeballs are focused
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: on Denmark or we're focused on Minneapolis, But meanwhile, the
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: economic story of what's going on is just stunning. We
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: have concentrated wealth at the top in a way that
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: few have really paid attention to.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: No. I mean, it feels, you know, I've been obsessed
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: with the first twenty five years of the twentieth century
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: because it feels it feels like we're in a similar
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: moment where we're having this massive change in nightmare shifting
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: from a grarian too industrial and the industrialists basically think
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: they're such geniuses they should be in charge of everything,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: not just their little corner of what they've invented or
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: what they're profiting from. And then you see this, you know,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: massive gap, and then the people fight back, Right that's
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: when we get the direct We pass an income tax
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: constitution constitutional amendment to allow for an income tax, and
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: you know, which was at the time just designed because
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: people were fed up with the super rich, and the
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: only people actually got got taxed back then we're the
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: super rich, and so it does feel like we're we're
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: sort of stumbling back into that moment. It's a different
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: set of robber barons this time. They're all in Silicon
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: Valley and so and here we are in this an
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: economy that that right now, if you if you have
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: money Europe, you're you're okay. But if you don't, it's
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: times worse.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's it's the new Gilded Age. And
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: on the racial front, and on the kind of racial
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: violence front, it's the new Jim Crow. And so we
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: we are, I think, in a changing moment. But this
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: is where the misinformation media and that story told that
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: really locates in the eighties is so important because unlike
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: other moments, you know, we as a citizenry, we're just stabilized.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: What is the truth? What you know, up is down,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: down is up? And so I kind of wanted to
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: really elevate that as important to this story because yeah,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: we are in a terrible crisis right now and it
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: could go in any direction.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: But well, this is a great you're you're myth busting too,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: which is like, you know, back then there were actually
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: fewer media outlets, Yeah, and the ease to create misinformation
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: was actually easier right there, wasn't alternative. You know, maybe
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: you had a village voice. The New York Daily News
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't nearly what it was. Was sort of a different
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: vibe back then, for sure. It is, you know, I
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: think the when people talk about the good old days
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: of the media, I'm like, well, you have no idea,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: actually how poor those journalists were back then, and how
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: mona monoculture. The journalism was right, it only and it
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: was more group think you than you realize. In fact,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: the criticism of group think today is actually to me
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: more of a legacy issue. There was a ton of
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: group think in the eighties, which I feel like in
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: some ways that's what you're surfacing here. There was just
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: just massive mainstream media group think, which is why Bernie
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: gets gets off right.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And one of the startling things is the way
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: in which this at that time was absolutely about race,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: but it was racially coded in the way that today
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: is not. So it's not so much that, as you
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: say that the kind of group think is so different,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: It is that it has now been kind of unveiled
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: in a different way. And so in the eighties people
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: were not making always saying race has nothing to do
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: with this. Race has nothing to do with this. Even
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: while you know, Reagan is talking about the welfare queen
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: and this, and he's racializing all of it. One of
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: the things that happens is the Guests case kind of
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: allows for it, just peeling back. We don't need to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: pretend anymore. You know, these guys deserved it. They were
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: black thugs, they were. And of course the civil rights
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: movement is still around. They're pushing back. They're saying, look
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: the hypocrisy here. If a black guy would have gotten
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: on that subway and shot down for a white teenagers.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: They they gotten the death penalty then.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: But no one's hearing it, right, No one's hearing it
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: because there's this a denial that it has anything to
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: do that. I think that is different today. The decorum
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: of the decorum, maybe even of double speak, is we're
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: not there.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you say, you call it decorum. I
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: I've always said, you know, and I have confessed to this,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: meaning you sometimes when you're reporting for these big media companies,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: you round the edges. Yeah, yeah, I do that so
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: because you don't want to upset, you don't want to
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: create extra controversy in the coverage itself. Right, in the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: goal of being dispassionate in your reporting and detached from
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: the story personally, you end up putting a more too
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: sanitized of a version of events on the air, even
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: though that wasn't the intent.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: The intent actually was to just sort of not insert
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the media organization into the debate, right, And and that's
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: that's my guess of how the how the how the
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: major networks covered it versus how the media covered it.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: I think that's right. And so what is so striking
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: is the way in which the success actually of the
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: tabloids in this time period, the success of that more conservative,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: sensational and media is we've underestimated it actually as making
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: its imprint on journalism in general, I think, and you know,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: this is not to throw all mainstream journalism under the
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: bus by any means, but it is to say that
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: the culture shift that happens over the last fifty years
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: may be driven by politics and driven by the economic
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: agenda of you know, certain segments of the population, but
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: ultimately it has to be translated, and ultimately it has
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: to be either legitimated or seen as outrageous. And there's
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: something about this moment when again we first see that
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: up is down, down is up kind of moment that
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: we're in today, and no one set of hands is
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: dirtier than another. It's just more it's an ecosystem that
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: starts to get developed, which I personally just found fascinating,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: and you know, share a confession with you like I found. I,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: you know, try my hardest to kind of be well
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: informed and read and know what's going on in my world.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: And when I started this book, I was embarrassed to
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: admit internally, like I knew who Bernie Gets was, but
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: I had no idea the names of the people who
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: he had shot.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, what was the alternative media landscape back then?
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: In New York? You had the Village Voice about.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: News, Amsterdam News, Yeah, newspaper.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: How did they cover this story?
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Very differently, very differently? You know, of course, you knew
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: who those victims were, you knew what had happened to them,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: you knew the context.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: From Is that where you got most of the information
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: trying to fill out the paint the portrait of the
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: victory of the Gets victims. You got to get it
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: from the alternative press.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: I got a lot of it from there, and I
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: also got a lot of it because ultimately one of
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: the most severely injured victims. His mother is this kind
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: of diehard advocate on behalf of her son, Darryl kab
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: And there will be a civil case against Burnie Getz
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: where a jury will award him forty three million dollars.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: This is how kind of how obvious to them it
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: is the damage a bronx jury and that deposition that
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: trial trans so much came out and there that I
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: think was really blurred over in the criminal trial. I mean,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: you know, keats is he is unapologetic, and it doesn't
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: he's he says, you know, in this one of these moments,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: you know that surely KB Deryl's mother should have had
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: an abortion, she he should never have been born. He
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: ends up deposing the young man that he at actually
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: paralyzed in this civil case. I mean, it's just just
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: it's an unhinch story that you just kind of can't
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: believe until you walk yourself through it. And here we
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: sit today, and you know, even today, you know, Bertie
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: gets his still giving interviews on what he did, and
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: people still don't know who he did it to. And
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: so I'm hoping this is kind of shiny new light
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: on it, if nothing else, we take us through a
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: criminal trial with Barry Slotnick. Barry Slotnick is his lawyer.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: He is a you know, he's John Gottie's lawyer. So
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: you can imagine this trial is theater from start to finish.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: So it's a mix of taking you back there, but
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: also I hope kind of showing us I ouch, ouch,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: you know, this is how we ended up here.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: You know, what I was reading kinded of and reading
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: this book is how much this incident sort of clearly
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: was the inspiration for Bonfire the Vanities with Tumble right
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: like it's like obvious right that you know, which was
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: such you know, an early book that I you know,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: devoured back in the early nineties, the movie The Paper,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: which is my I think nobody captures a newsroom better
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: than that movie. It's one of to this day, I
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: think it holds it holds up in the in understanding
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: how journalists interact with each other really well. But people
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: forget that sort of the the backdrop of the of
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: the of that story is sort of a a fictionalized
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: version of of a racialized incident.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it is sort of Bike Lee, Spike Lee's
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: Do the right thing, right, all of this in some
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: ways that it goes back right, gats is the and
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: and this is what I you know, love about historical fiction.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: Sometimes there's an actual moment that actually helps shape the
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: historical fiction, that helps tell the story of America and
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: tell the story of New York City. I'm curious it
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: is so obvious now reading this book and watching the
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: divide over the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: the dividing the political dividing lines that immediately shaped I mean,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you watched this and thought this is my book,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: Sadly tragically that's right. You know, it plays out on
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: film as we begin the difference.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: That's the big distinction.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't matter at some level, right because because
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: it is a story, it's going to be a story
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: or it's trying to be a story of the self
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: defense of the shooter. And that is the ground that
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: is the ground zero of this book. I mean, as
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: is stuff that might surprise us. You know, back in
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: the day, you know, people watch the glitzy media shows, uh,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: television shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: and you know, Dallas and Dynasty and got swept away
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: by the magic of being wealthy. But but of course,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: meanwhile they're being kind of told that, you know, there
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: they should be Charles Bronson to protect themselves on the
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: real streets. Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry. And I feel like
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: we're in that moment again, right we we are. We
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: are meant to admire on social media the wealthy, the elite,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: But meanwhile we are meant to you know, arm ourselves
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: and and walk with severe suspicion on our city street.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: So it's it's alarming, you know, we uh, we can't
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: look at Minneapolis right now, I think and not feel alarmed.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: I want to pull back a little bit in your
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: journey here. You've done You've done these urban stories in
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: the past on Attica and then you did Detroit. You know,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: what's the thread that always seems to, you know, serve
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: as a magnet for you when you see something like
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta, I want to tell that story.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: You know, Usually it is there's something about the way
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: that I learned it, or it continues to be told
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: that just doesn't strike me as the full story. It
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: just doesn't bear the smell test. I'm always gravitating towards
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: these really powerful events that I know, or I suspect
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: very strongly have kind of shaped where we went, impacted
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: the direction the country took. But I'm also very persuaded
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: that we've only heard one side of it, usually the
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: side of the people with the most power in that story.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: So I'm always intrigued to kind of go back and
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: tell all of the stories and try to humanize the
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: experience of how it all all unfold it at the time.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: At Attica, for example, you know, we were told that
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: all these brutal, violent prisoners had killed hostages at Attica,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: and it kind of became this excuse for mass incarceration
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: and not caring about conditions behind bars, and lo and behold,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: I dig in and that's not at all what happened.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: And in fact, there's a massive cover up at Attica,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: which we don't say that word cover up lightly as
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: historians are as journalists, I mean, you have to have
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: real evidence to say that. And and this was a
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: slightly different approach in this book because I wasn't looking
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: for cover up, or I wasn't looking for you know,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: smoking gun. I was just looking to understand, like, how
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: did we end up here?
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: Where you know, our.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Eyes aren't to be believed, and decorum is out the window,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: and and and it feels like our democracy is in
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: real danger. And I wanted to understand how that could
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: have happened in such a short period of time.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: Really, are you convinced if it wasn't Bernie Getz it
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: had been another incident? I think just that this was
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: a moment that was going to it was inevitable, it
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: was going to happen. That they were just looking for
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: the star for their show.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't think the
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: world would have looked differently had Bernie Getz not lived
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: in New York City in nineteen eighty four. But I
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: do think that the way it all comes together was auspicious.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: It was an opportunity. It was It was a moment
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: that everyone understood the significance of it, as would be
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: the Central Park five and eventually exonerated five, that we
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: now even could understand that better. Right, how that all happened?
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you from the point of view
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: of a story, and I'm going to sort of get
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: you sort of land the plane this way. I had
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: Garrett Grafon, He's written some really good oral histories and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: he's put together and we were talking about the sweet
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: spot when you're trying to sort of find out what
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: really happened, and that you know, there's this point where,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: you know, do you want people who are around to
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: help you navigate what happened then? Or because of the
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: way memory works, it could be misleading? And is it
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: easier to get the truth after everybody dies? I'm curious
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: where you are and what does it take you know,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: when you feel like you can paint a complete picture?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: Is it fifteen years after an event? Thirty years? Is
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: five years? When is it? And when is it too
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: soon to try to unpack an event?
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: You know, I often wonder, you know, do we need
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: more time to truly understand nine to eleven? I don't know?
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: Right like it because you know it's often How often
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: is it the case that a book written forty years
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: after an event surfaces something that perhaps the popular memory
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: of it had completely erased, So you as in a story,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: that's what's your general like? When when is it too
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: soon to tackle to try to unpack an historical event
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: in your mind? And when is it too late? Well?
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: I certainly would not want to write I do write
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: about the present day, but always trying to do so
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: with some past context. But I wouldn't want to do
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: a book on that, because I do think you do
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: need time. I think you need a little bit of distance.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: But what is kind of stunning to me is doesn't
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: matter how much time has passed. If you're only going
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: to rely on kind of official sources, if you're only
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: going to rely on the print media to tell you
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: what happened, if you're only going to rely on people's
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: recollection of what happened, you're never going to really be
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: able to pull it back together or reconstruct it and
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: pull it back together. So to a pitch for being
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: a historian, believe it or not, you know, we start
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: at the beginning. We have preconceived notions. Everyone does, but
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: we are routinely surprised and routinely, you know, challenged by
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: what we in fact see in in the record. And
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: sometimes that's simple as seeing an original autopsy report, or
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: sometimes it's as simple as actually going and looking at
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: the context that no one ever bothered to look at.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: So I don't think it's about how much time. I
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: think it's about the sources that we get at and
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: that it's context. Context. Context matters, and frankly, we don't
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: have a lot of patience for context as a society.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: We don't.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: Context feels like it's a drag. And so when I write,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: I always try to like, it's still got to be
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: a narrative, right, we still got to move through it,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: We still got to put ourselves there. But context matters.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: How do you check your own bias? Right, like, and
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: your own and what I call present day bias? You know,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: for instance, right, you know, what can be offensive to you?
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: And I today was mainstream thinking at a certain period
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: of time in our history? And how do you correctly
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? It's like, how do you
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: weigh that when you're surfacing an historical moment?
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: Well, it interestingly, it goes back to this question of
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: both context but also sources. So the question of what
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: is normal in a given moment. Right, So people would
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: write back in the day about the you know, the
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: end of slavery, and you know how few people were
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: actually standing against slavery was kind of you know, everyone
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: was everyone kind of accepted slavery. But when you actually
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: go back and you look at the record, but it's
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: not true. Actually a lot of people were against slavery.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: There were there were sides to take even then. There
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: were there were positions to take even then, and so
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: you kind of test yourself always like, well, what would
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: the other side have said? And you try to find
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: that other perspective, and you try to make sure that
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: you are painting an accurate picture of the zeitgeist of
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: that moment by making sure you've heard from everybody. Frankly,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: like looked at all of the like you mentioned earlier,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: like there's the black press and there's the white press
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: in New York. Well, we need to look at both
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: if we want to have some sense of how this
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: case was being understood at the time. That's just an example.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: But I think that you know, you as a as
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: a journalist, myself as historian, we are constantly aware of
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: Oh let me, let me, let me stop, Let me
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: think about that. How am I writing that sentence? How
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: am I? How am I understanding what just happened? Because
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: if we stop doing that, then we're just plumbses, We're
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: just we're just we're.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Writing tracks, you know, I mean, it's this whole thing,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: you know, you want to what people want more than
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: anything I've at least. I think the people that gravitate
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: to what you do and what I'd like to think
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to do is they want clarity. Yeah, that's right,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: they definitely want clarity. Sometimes it's not there, and I think,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: you know, and that's the hardest thing to convey, is
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: I'm you know, I wish that were I wish that
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: was an easy step one, two, step three. That's how
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: we got here and that's how we'll get out right.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: And I think that even when you try to speak
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: with clarity and if you don't include the context, the
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: clarity falls flat.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: Well, and especially where we're going to go next. So,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: you know, we can speculate, we can hope, we can fear,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: but at the end of the day, we only actually
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: have our past as guide, and so yeah, we just
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: kind of cross fingers and through stories and through education
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: of what actually happened, perhaps bring some clarity on the present.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: But forward is the gamble, right, We can get a
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: whole lot worse before we get better, but we hope
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: we won't.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: So how many projects are you working on now?
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: I actually was meet Most historians have more than one going.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: I was knee deep in writing a whole other book
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: which I'm now going to return to, which is on
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: the move bombing in nineteen eighty five in Philadelphia, where
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on an urban black neighborhood
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: in Philadelphia where a black radical group resided and took
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: out incinerated to full city blocks of that city. And
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: it was one of these also dramatic moments that is
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: told very very differently depending on who you were and
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: what you thought about it. It's about the police, it's
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: about the city. It's about race again. So that's where
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: we're going next.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Oh if if Philadelphia in some ways was even more
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: divided on race.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, story, this story, I think you'll see, is really
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: ground zero of so much of why that was and
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: also it has scarred the city.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: To this day. It's interesting what you just said. I'm
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: going to go back to it. What it was guts
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: always out there or was this sort of a aha
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: moment for you?
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: So guesses, Yeah, that's what we kind of dropped that thread,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: guess is something that I remembered at the time I
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: was re reminded of it. I was working on Attica
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: because one of the lawyers that will defend one of
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: the boys is Bill Kunstler, who is a key lawyer.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: Oh my god in the right who you'd start to see.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: You know, all these lawyers from the eighties became TV
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: pundits during OJ and he was one of them. That's right.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: So Kunsseler was a lawyer at Attica, but he was
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: also a lawyer at Guests. So I was kind of
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: already reintroduced to Gainst working on the Attica book, and
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: then when Trump was gearing up for to likely win
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: a second term, I was just like, I just need
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: to stop. I need to pivot. I'm really interested in
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: this moment. I just want to go back and work
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: on that. So that's that. That was what happened.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: Look, I think this is an important piece of the story, right,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: Like with the trying to understand, I go back to
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: how I introduced you, which is, you know, there's a
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: constant the question I get all the times, how do
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: we get here? And you know, there's a lot of
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: ways we got here. There's no one way we got here.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: It's been there's a variety of ways that you know,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: it takes a village. It took a village in the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: negative sense too. But this is an important cog in
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: the story. I think you've I think you've surfaced an
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: important moment. So when is the when is the scripted
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: mini series come out? Well? These are stories. Look, I'm
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: a big believer in this. I think we need we
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: need to educate people better. And if you want, if
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: people want to watch something more than they want to
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: read something, I don't, as long as they want to
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: inform themselves, let's put it in every platform. Neutral this
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: screams episodic show.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: Well well, luckily, as with Attica, I am very much
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: need deep trying to get all of this out there
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: in a different platform like a television series. And so
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: you know, fingers crossed and and stay posted and but
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: you know, thank you so much for allowing me to
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: share this story with people. If nothing else, I think
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: it's you know, I hope it is going to get
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: people thinking and also and just treat intrigued by the
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: human beings that the of the story.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: So, I mean it's almost like a whole series. You
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: could read, right, the Bronx is burning, you read your
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: Bernie Gets book, maybe throwing a Roy Cone right, the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: one about I forget Zion is it? I can't remember
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: the guy who wrote it. You know, it was supposed
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: to be an autobiography and it turned into kind of
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: an antagonistic thing. Bonfire the vanities, right, you sort of
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: you get to you get New York City in the
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: seventies and eighties.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: Huh, that's right, that's right there. And I think there's
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: a reason we're going back to the eighties. I will
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: just leave us with that thought. I mean, I think
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: that was a decade that we either remember so fondly
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: as you know, it was Madonna, it was Neon and
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: it was it was great fun, or we remember it
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: as oh, that was a scary time. But either way,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: we got it, we got it.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: It depends on it depends who you were, right, by
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: the way, nineteen fifties have the same vibe to it. Yeah.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: For some people, the fifties were this amazing moment in
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: American history and the advancement of the you know, Superman America, YadA, YadA, YadA. Yeah.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: And that's if you were white, right, if you were
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: black in America in the nineteen fifties, year not, they
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: weren't happy days. Yeah. To borrow a to borrow a
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: TV show.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: Phrase, Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: Anyway, heyther and this is great, and congrats on the book.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I hope you enjoyed that history lesson on Bernie Getz.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: I guess I feel like I've become a bit of
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: an accidental history feed these days, and I that was
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: always the goal of what I wanted to do, is
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: can bring more context to many of the stories we're
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: covering every day. It's coverage that I would have loved
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: to have done in some of my previous stops, but
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you didn't have the time, didn't have the
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: bandwidth per se to do it. And that's the beauty
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: of this format. And that's the beauty of doing this
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: is it essentially we're weaving in current events in history
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: all at the same time, so that you can have
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: the full picture, the full context, the full nuance. All Right,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: it is Wednesday, which means I've got a new top
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: five list.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: To top five top.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: And while I am tempted to stick to sports themes again,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that. It's back to politics.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: So the top five list I owe you for this
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: week is Governor's and updating my Governor's list, And look,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: this isn't going to budge all that month throughout the year.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: But if it does, because basically I think there are
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: five governor's races that are really likely to flip, and
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: then there are another four or five that are going
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: to be really interesting but probably won't flip. And as
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: you know, my rankings are most likely to change party.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: That's what number one means. And if you know I
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: were ranking all the way to thirty six, there's thirty
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: six SCUBERNATORI elections. Thirty six would be least likely to
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: change parties. So I guess that would be Idaho right
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: is where you put that. Maybe you'd put Vermont right
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: right above Idaho. But this top five list, it is
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: interesting in the governor's front that you basically have five
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: that you know for sure are either already going to flip. Right,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: my number one, and it's been number one the last
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: couple of months that I've done this. The governor's seat
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: most likely to flip continues for me to be Kansas.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: Kansas is this is a red state that has just
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: wrapping up two terms of a democratic governor. Kansas has been,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: as I like to say, it's been a bit of
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: a windshield wiper when it comes to it's governors eight
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: years with one party, eight years with the next party,
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: eight years with the other. That's kind of what the
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: twenty first century has been about for Kansas, and well
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: it's what will be interesting here is that this moment
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: comes when it looks like the national environment and the
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: wind is going to be blowing in the direction of
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: the Democrats. Does that give Democrats a better shot? When
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: I it's been a to get a third straight term,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: that's been very difficult then to get so. But I
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: have to put just just playing the numbers game, most
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: likely seat to change parties at this point in the
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: governor's is Kansas at one. Number two you know I'm
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: going to continue is open seats are always more easier
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: to flip than incumbents. It's very rare. Single hardest thing
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: to do in politics is to oust and and comb
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: and president. And the second hardest thing to do is
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: to oust an incumbent governor. They very rarely get ousted.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: Voters usually if it's four year terms, want to give
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: at least you know, governors have to be just absolutely
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: debacles or in terrible political environments to not get a
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: second term. But in my top five list, I have
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: two incombent governors who I'm putting in there because these
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: are going to be coin flip races, but neither one
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: of them are in the second slot. In the second
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: slot is the state I profiled earlier. I'm putting Iowa
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: on that second slot after going through that economic and
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: I even went deeper. The good news for Iowa state
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: government is that they have a rainy day fund and
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: they've had a budget surplus. The bad news is it's
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: going to have to be depleted big time. Vouchers has
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: been costing the budget money. They are going to be
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: running a deficit this year. Vouchers is costing them money.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: The lack of these tariffs are costing them money because
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: they're just getting They're exporting less corn, exporting less soybean,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: so all of that is hurting the budget a little bit.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: They're going to have to do any cuts, but they're
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: going to have to tap in to this rainey day
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: fund and there they have voucherized their public school system
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: that has added costs to the system as well. So
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: I think the environment is is just in a really
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: bad place. The only thing going for Iowa Republicans as demographics,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: but the economic environment in the state. The perception of
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: the schools in the state is all of it is
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: in a bad place for Republicans, and they're the party
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: in power in the state. Right, They've kind of had
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: a recent juggernaut. This is a former swing state in
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: the frankly, most of my adult life it's i always
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: been the swing state. Since Donald Trump came on the scene,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: he's been a more it's been more red than purple.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I think this situation is and the
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: more I dug into it, Democrats have a very good
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: candidate here, one that's going to be very hard to
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: link to the far left. Rob saying I've said this before.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: He's been on this podcast, you know, he he I
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: think I can quote him as saying, the only reason
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: he's running as a Democrat is there was no he
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: didn't view another viable way to be on the ballot.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: So he is running a very sort of independent minded campaign.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: But he hasn't been He hasn't been shy about being
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: a partisan on this front. So with him leading the ticket,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: it's it's uh and the current economic conditions of the state,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: never mind the national climate. That's why I have Iowa
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: right now in the second slot, Number three is Michigan.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: Obviously the three way race, it's still there's been flying
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: a little bit under the radar, but polling consistently seems
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: to show and this is one where I mean that
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: the if there, I think the Republicans would have a
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: hard time winning this with out Mike Duggan running as
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: an independent. He's in the low twenties, which puts him
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: in third place. He continues to perform very well in
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: and around Detroit, much less well in the rest of
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: the state, while both the Republican and the dem likely
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee John James and Jocelyn Benson both do better
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: outside of Detroit, which is why their neck and neck.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: But the fact is their neck and neck because Dougan
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: is pulling from both parties. He is not just pulling
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: from the Democrats. But obviously if he can be in
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: if he's in the mid twenties, that's a big chunk
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: of Democratic vote coming out of Wayne County that's going
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: to Duggan. That puts Benson in a tough spot. So
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: you have to put Michigan in the in this very
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: turbulent top five. So I sit him at three, and
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: then at four and five, and you can interchange them.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: It's the two Southwest governors in the Swing States, Katie
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: Hodge Democrat Joe Lombardo Republican in Nevada Katie High in Arizona.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: Both narrowly one in twenty two. Both are already in
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: neck and neck races. Now. I think Lombardo, if I
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: were to, I probably put Hobbs as slightly more vulnerable
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: losing in Arizona than Lombardo and Nevada. I feel like
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: he's a slightly better political athlete. But the political climate right,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: You'd rather be a Democrat in this climate than a
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: Republican in this climate. And we know Nevada is super
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: sensitive to the economy. And as this consumer economy continues
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: to crash. And oh, by the way, a lot of
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: Canadians had been traveling to Las Vegas. There's been a
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: noticeable downturn in visitors to Las Vegas. Fewer international vitors
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: excuse me, visitors to Las Vegas becomes it can be
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: directly attributed to Donald Trump and his policies. I just
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: think this is this is like Iowa. I think Joe
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: Lombardo is trying to walk the line and he knows
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: he governs the state that that is, that's pretty purple.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: It's probably as swingy as you get in the country.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: There may be forces here that that make it very tough,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: and he's going to face the sitting a g all
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: the polling shows is gonna be one point race, is
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: gonna be really expensive race too, But there's no But
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: the point is those five Kansas, Iowa, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: I think those are going to be the most likely
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: to flip over over and above everyone. The other ones
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: that I'm watching that they could have could get competitive.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: Georgia could get competitive. I'm very curious to see how
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: that plays out. I just think that the Democratic grace
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: still need both both primaries need time to develop. Wisconsin
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: same thing again. I probably just leaned towards Democrats slightly
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: being favored there just because of the overall political climate.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: Then there's Ohio and Florida, where I think Republicans are
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: favored in both. But if you told me those races
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: got very competitive come October, those wouldn't, it wouldn't surprise
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: me at all. So I think that's how I'd put it.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: I think that you have sort of nine to ten
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: truly competitive d versus are races. You know, anything else
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: that pops on the radar, my guess it's because either
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: there's a really bad incumbent you know, scandal or something
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: that that that tags an incumbent or an incumbent party,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: or just the national climate collapses for one party or
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: the other. But for now, those five that I ranked,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: there those other four that I mentioned, and that's that's
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: that's the lion's share of how I'm watching governor's races
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: so far for twenty twenty six. All right, Before I
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: take some questions, I do want to spend a few
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: minutes about the about what's about to happen at the
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: Washington Post. Just look, as a Washingtonian the idea that
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: we're about to lose our local newspaper, and I say lose,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: it's I think we're I think if the cuts that
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: are coming that are rumored to be coming, essentially gutting
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: of sports, gutting of the international desk, gutting of local
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: which we've been watching. At this point, I don't know
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: what the Washington Post is anymore. If this is if
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: this what's happening, but this, I don't know why Bezos
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: has decided to just gut the newspaper. This is still
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: a rounding air for him financially, and I don't even
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: understand what the vision is, right will Lewis, the CEO,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: keeps describing we're gonna have a fundamental transformation of the paper,
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: But there's never been an articulation of what the transformation
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: means beyond layoffs, and all anybody has gotten out of
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: it is layoffs. Just to put some numbers to this,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: since will Lewis, since this new you know there already
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: the were two hundred and forty jobs were cut in
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: late twenty twenty three. Then they had another four percent
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: labor force cut in twenty twenty five. Now there's talk
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: of another three hundred staffers at this point. I don't
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: know how many. How many are left, but another ten percent?
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: This is a lot, you know. The it is for
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: those that have followed just sports reporting for decades, the
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: Washington Post has incubated pretty much, I promise you. So,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: somebody you liked in the national sports scene, the Washington
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: Post likely incubated that person, right, Whether it's Tony Kornheiser,
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: Michael Wilbond, you know it is David Aldridge. I can
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: you know there's I know I'm missing a whole bunch
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: of others. It's it's it's easily been one of the
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: most consequential and best sports pages in the country. And
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you stay a successful local or
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: regional paper if you don't want to cover the community
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: in addition to sort of covering the hard news. And
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: but that's apparently the decision that Bezos wants to make.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: I mean that they're if you're not going to let
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: Beat writers go to spring training to cover the Nationals
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: right or to do their job, You're not letting Beat
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: writers go to away games, Well, they're not going to
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: be able to cover the team. I can cover the
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: team watching them on TV. Anybody can cover the team
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: watching them on TV. That is an how journalism works.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: You've got to be there. You've got to be at
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: the hotels, you've got to be on the planes. When
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: you can get there, it's the same thing you can
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: you can do. You can cover eighty percent of what
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: Trump does in a given day just watching a c
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: Span feed or watching various TV feeds or social media feeds.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: But if you're not in the building, you're not getting
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: the nuance. You're not getting the asides. That's how these reporting,
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: that's how real reporting happens. But here's the weird. So
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: all this is happening, and you have social media has
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: been filled. You have various reporters directly addressing Jeff Bezos
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: on Twitter begging him, please don't do this, Please don't
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: cut foreign, please don't cut sports, please don't cut local.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: And so what's what's Jeff Bezos doing right now? Somebody
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: put some math together here? Okay, because while the Post
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: is reportedly losing one hundred million dollars a year and
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: cutting deeply into the must full of its newsroom, Jeff
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: Bezos doesn't mind flushing money down the toilet with some
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: of his other's adventures. Let me just pick one random
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: amount of thin air. The Amazon MGM Studios, which of
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: course mister Bezos controls, just approved a forty million dollar
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: deal to acquire a documentary about Millennia Trump. That's just
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: the licensing fee. On top of that, Amazon has committed
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: and estimated thirty million dollars for a global marketing push.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: This is just fallen flat. There's already reports that nobody's
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: going few people are buying tickets This is not something
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: that interests many people. He's very unpopular right now, so
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: nobody really cares about the Trump's at the moment. Right
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: this is not the best time to launch a movie
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: about about the first Lady when right now everybody's mad
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: at the president. These are the worst numbers he's had ever,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: So forty million plus thirty five million, right seventy's that's
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: just seventy five million. He's lighting that on fire. That's
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: seventy five million dollars just to genuflect for Trump. But
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: he's gonna gut the Washington Post forever because it's losing,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's losing money. He doesn't mind losing
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: money to make sure he gets his space contracts for
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: his space hobby, and I guess that's what he sees
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: that money as an investment for. But he's basically pissing away,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: just throwing away seventy five million dollars for this millennium movie,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: which would be almost the same amount of money that
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: would wipe out The Post's entire annual deficit. The point
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: is is that Jeff Bezos is making a choice. If
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: he wanted The Washington Post to succeed, he could have
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: invested in it, and in fact, for a while he did.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: And the Post Nate Silver did a pretty good piece
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: showing that, like, you know, when it came to sort
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: of relevance and how often they were cited and all
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: of this stuff, the Post and the Times were just
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: sort of neck and neck and so and the Times
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: decided that, okay, we've got more traffic, let's add more offerings.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: And so they went crazy with the bundles right with
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: the games, and they bought the Athletic. They decided to
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: you know, yes, people were upset that they got rid
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: of the Times sports bureau, but they bought the best
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: sports news organization that was out there in the Athletic.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: They've expanded their offerings, they've expanded their aperture, they've expanded
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: their bandwidth. Washington Post cut cut cut, got cut cut cut,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: and their traffic is collapsing. And outside of it right now,
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: their congressional team is still They have not, thankfully, they
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: have not gotten rid of their congressional team. It's an
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: A plus team, A man Paul Kaine and that crew.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: It's just an A plus team. Thank goodness. They haven't
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: wrecked that. But everything else they've wrecked. I mean, if
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: you're if you want to read the best of the
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: Washington Post, you subscribe to The Atlantic right now, because
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: they've got some of the or the Wall Street Journal.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: Both of them have have hired quite a few folks,
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: So it is it's been sad to see the basically
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: people that I've respected and read for years begging Jeff
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: Bezos not to do this. Right Ken Rosenthala, former Post
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: he who's a baseball guy. He put it pretty buntly.
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos's destruction of a great newspaper will be part
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: of his legacy. Another former Post sports reporter, Rachel Nichols,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: defended the sports desk. They thinking about gutting the sports desk,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: which was which was an engine to that newsroom, as
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: she called it, one of one of the best damn
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: reporting and right groups on the planet. Anyway, I wish
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: if he doesn't want the focus, if he doesn't want
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: the attention from the President for being an owner of
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: a news organization, don't got the news organization, don't do
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: a catching kill, which is what you're turning this into,
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: mister Bezos, meaning you're going to essentially strangle the Washington
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: Post so it can no longer be a relevant news organization.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: Sell it to somebody else who doesn't mind practicing journalism
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: without fear of favor, because you clearly don't want journalism
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: practice without fear of favor. You fear Donald Trump. How
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: do we know you spend seventy five million dollars on
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: a bullshit movie about Milaennia. That's how much you fear
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And you're choking the Washington Post and making
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: sure it's a less relevant organization, and never mind just
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: screwing the business of the Post. Who thinks it's a
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: good idea for the Washington Post to get smaller and
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: to shrink its footprint and to not cover one of
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: the most important communities in America and no longer cover
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: it as a as a member of the community. It's
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: a strange decision. Here's the good news. I've been in
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: this independent space now for about a year or so.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: There's going to be Here's here's what's said, is in
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: a you know, in about a couple of years, somebody's
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: going to realize what a disaster this was for the
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: Post and they're going to try to bring everything back.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: And I promise you there'll be some thriving, local independent
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: sports entity, just like Capital Weather Gang, which is really
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: it was its own entity, and then the Post brought
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: it in. You're going to see it there, You're gonna
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: see and and the Washington community will we'll support these things.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: They want a local community newspaper, and the Washington Post
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: still was that paper. But ever since they brought in
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: this Will Lewis he decided to turn it into some
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: cheap Fleet Street rag. I mean, the editorial page is
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: just a clown show. It is. It is sophomoric type
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: of editorials that are written. They're rarely intellectually challenging. I mean,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: basically the only people that feel like are left worth
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: reading are Karen Tumblety and George will And it's a
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: bummer because there's a lot of I mean, the Post
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: editorial page was one that wasn't always so predictable, and
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: yet Bezos has gutted it and has gotten some Like
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: I said, it feels like a parody at times, some
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: of the some of the ways that these editorials are written.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: There's it it's just I don't know how's to put it.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: It's just it just feels like like a bunch of
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: college Republicans getting high in a dorm and writing editorials
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: rather than you know, rather than having what the editorial
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: board was, which was, you know, yes, it may have
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: leaned left, but it was a pretty diverse editorial board
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: that certainly didn't lean left or right on national security
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: issues or international issues. Domestically, it definitely was politically in
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: one place, but not internationally and certainly not on some
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: of these other things. And it was it was a shame.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: But to go back to what he's doing to the Post,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: here's a guy that didn't mind losing money for years
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: on Amazon, knowing it eventually would be a great business.
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: Why he never tackled the information ecosystem the same way
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: as beyond me. I go back to what I said before.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: He bought the Post as a trophy, and then the
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: trophy became a problem. So then he decided instead of
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: just selling the trophy, he didn't have to own it anymore.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: There were plenty of people who would buy the Washington Post,
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: but he didn't. He chose to got it. I hope
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: all of these calls to him are heard and maybe
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: he changes, you know, they've relented a little bit. Instead
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: of sending nobody to cover the Olympics. They're going to
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: send four reporters to cover the Olympics. Maybe he relents
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't look like it because something. There's a
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: lot of smoke on this one. So it's sad. I
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: don't know any other way to put it. It's just
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: sad what's happening, and it's painful, and boy, if they
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: got sports and many of you know I'm pretty close
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: to Tony Cornizer, I just can't imagine. I just can't
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: believe they're going to do this. I hope the reporters want.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: Alight.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: Let me do a few questions, ask Chuck now right,
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do just three today. Part of its
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: traveling part of it. I don't want to go too
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: long here on this one. So first question comes from, Hey, Chuck,
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: my name is Emily and I am from Oakdale, Minnesota,
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: suburb of Minneapolis Ing. I think Paul, excuse me, Ice
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: is out here too. I have stories that would make
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: your stomach churn and your blood boil. Anyway, I think
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: I have a question that a lot of us have,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: how long is this going to last? But then it
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: gets me thinking how long have we actually been in
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: this already? When you look back at history, you hear
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: about regimes that lasted for decades or longer. I'm coming
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: to believe this is a great escalation of our freedom
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: slipping away for some time, with the majority of the
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: public myself included at times being the abs in the
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: crab pot. Is this the beginning or the beginning of
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: the end? Well, I'm a little more optimistic. You're in
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: a you're in a dark place, and I get it.
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: I think if I were witnessing what you're witnessing, I
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: might be there. I will just say, in our history,
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: American history, no, no political movement lasts more than about
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: a decade, you know, before it starts to wear thin,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: voters get exhausted from it, you know whatever. Everyone you know,
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: there's this saying you know, you know, you know, and
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: part of it, you know, the longer a political movement
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: stays in power, the more corruptickets, right, because suddenly people
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: get comfortable then they you know, start grifting. And this
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: has of course been a next level kleptocracy stuff. I mean,
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: it's just blatantly pay to play, right, But I I
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: think we're I think the worm's turning, and I know
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: it's it's sometimes hard to see the closer you are
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: to some of this stuff. But you look, he's got
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: the lowest numbers he's ever had as sitting president. The
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: economy is not in good shape, and people don't feel
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: like it's going to get better. At best, maybe we
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: sort of stumble into status quo, but that doesn't make
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: anybody feel better. You heard me talk about this at
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: the beginning of this podcast. But the confidence people have
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: about jobs being plentiful is cratering. Everything still feels like
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: it's going to cost more. The tariffs create more instability,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: more instability. So I think this is a krabby electorate
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: to borrow your you know, I think I think you
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: were going for the boiled frog metaphor, but I'm gonna
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna borrow the crab there that you cited. I
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: think the electorate's pretty crabby, and you know, you have
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of infighting in the president's base. You have
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: a party that's starting to uh, that's starting to question
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: its leader. Right we're seeing more of that. My confidence
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: in the Democrats as a governing entity is not great,
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: but they're not having to run to govern right now.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: They have the easiest message in the world to run
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: on provide a check on Donald Trump. It's a simple message.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: And any time, especially there's a whole There have been
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: books written about the so called six year itch, and
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: this is essentially our We're in our six year of
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: Trump in charge, and if you want to you know,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: and and he's certainly the four years of Biden was there.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: Trump was was sort of hovering over the entire right,
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: entire president and the entire four years of that presidency.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: But I think this is an electorate that's I'm somebody
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: who thinks this wave is building and that every month
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: it's going to look more obvious that a lot of
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: Republics are going to get fired this year. And that's
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: the way I'd still put it. I mean, we are
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: we are still in this era of we know what
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: we don't want, so we're going to keep firing, right.
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: We have yet to find what we like. But but
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: I think that this is this is how midterm elections
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: can usually are about that, and this one feels like
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: it's growing into a big time referendum on Trump and
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: that is not going to go very well. The only
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: thing is that that that gives them a boxer's chance.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: It's two things got that the repub that Trump has
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: gone for him the way these districts are drawn, and
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: Republican's got a small victory in Virginia today. We'll see
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: if that sets back the Virginia attempt to remap. And
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: just this cycle of Senate seats that are up, it's
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: not the easiest map for Democrats to pick up seats,
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: and it's not impossible, but it's not a very easy map.
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: That's it. Because the political environment, this is one of
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: those things it's getting it's getting more ominous by the
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: day for Republicans. We'll see what happens with tax season.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: A lot of Republicans are betting that tax refund season
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: is going to change enough perceptions about the economy that
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: it's going to give Republicans a fighting chance at getting
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: re elected to their majorities. I'm a bit more skeptical
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: that tax refunds are going to have that kind of
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: impact because they're immediately going to go to rising electricity costs,
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: rising health care costs, and rising food costs. So whatever
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: new money people it's going to go, it's in some
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: ways it could end up bringing more attention to inflation
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: and the rising cost of living because they'll think, oh,
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: I've got this extra money. Wait, it's already gone. Where
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: did it go? Rising electric bills, rising food costs, rising
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: healthcare costs? So there you go. That's so I think
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: we're I don't know if we're at the end of
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: the Trump movement, but I definitely think we're at the end.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: We're at the end of We're coming. We're winding down
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: the Trump era. That doesn't mean there might not be
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: a dead cat bounce in twenty eight maybe Democrats inviting,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: you know, hands the presidency to them. But I think
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: we're starting to see a slow rejection of Trump is.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Patrick from Waterford, Michigan, and he writes,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: at what point does a blatant, provable lie from a
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: politician amount to criminal fraud? That's interesting. I know that
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: Congress and the President are immune due to the Speech
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: and Debate Clause and the Presidential Immunity Ruling, respectively. However,
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: this does not cover the vice president, cabinet, governors, and others.
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: Does the First Amendment protect them regardless of the shamelessness
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: of their lives? Best regards? Well, it really does, I mean,
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: you know it in order to make now I mean
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: you could file some lawsuits if you want to try,
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: and they can become nuisance lawsuits. But this is where
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're a political if you're running against
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: these folks, you need to you need to let litigate
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: your case, and you need to say they told you this,
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: they lied to you. And I think that ultimately that's
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: it goes back to something that you got to go
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: win elections and the voters have to do this. The
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: voters have to reject if you try to do this
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: in any other way, if you look for a shortcut
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: bey of the courts, via impeachment, via any other way,
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: it isn't going to solve the larger problem. The voters
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: are the only ones that can solve this larger problem.
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: So make your case to the voters that jd. Vance's lying,
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: or that Christie Noman is lying. You know, make your
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: case to the members of Congress. If they lie, it's
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: up to Congress to hold them accountable. And this Congress
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: has chosen enough to do that. And this is where
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: I think this is going to be an easy you know,
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: a way to talk to voters of all parties is
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: simply say, don't you want to see Congress hold any
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: president accountable if they are violating the constitution, any cabinet
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: secretary if they're violating the constitution. So I just think
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: that I hear what you're saying. But ultimately, there's one
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: jury that matters more than any other, and it's the
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: It's the jury of registered voters. So make your case
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: to them. That last question for the evening is gonna
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: for now. It's going to come from Harvey r. He said,
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: you said in your last podcast that the Georgia Center
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: race is not really a race. I didn't say it
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: that way. I said, I have downgraded it as a
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: top tier race. What's the chance that asaspigwin catapults him
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: to the nomination. I think you mean twenty twenty eight.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: I just think that that it's pretty clear this is
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: a he's drawn a weaker field. And you know, Brian
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: Kemp was probably the only Republican and maybe even Brad
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: Raethensberger were probably one of the only two Republicans that
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: I think could have been ass off in this political environment.
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: And that's what you have to remember. This is going
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: to be a pretty good political environment for Democrats in
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: this midterm year. So I think, and you know this,
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: none of these candidates stood out. I think I've I
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: said an earlier podcast, I thought Derek Dooley if I
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: were to is if I think they are, He's a
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: potential tougher foe for ASoft than either of the two
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: members of Congress because their first name is Congress, right.
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: I don't think you want to be an outsider. Being
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: a former football coach might be better than being an
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: incumbent member in Washington. But I think when you start
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: to look at the amount of money osof has, how
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: how this primary is not producing a a a great candidate.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: Yet it still could and there's still plenty of time
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: for that to happen. But I do think both Osoff
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: and Warnock are you know, well, I don't know if
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: Asoff runs for president and I don't know if Warnock runs,
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: but you know, by the way our presidential candidate field
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: keeps getting bigger on the Democratic side, and so Mark,
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: I think Mark Kelly's definitely more likely to run to
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: not run now from Arizona, r'ben Diego wants to run
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: so already. I mean both of Arizona senators flirting with
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: presidential campaigns. Are both Georgia senators going to do this,
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: But I will say this, I think both Warnock and
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: Osof are on the short list for any for any
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: running mate. I mean at this point, I think you're
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: going to see, you know, a very simple running mate
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: selection this time in that just pick a state, look
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: at your map. What do you need double down on
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: one of those states? Right, is that Arizona's I mean
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: one of the two. I mean, I think that could
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: be Arizona, that could be Georgia, that could be North Carolina.
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: But I think that's what you're gonna say is a
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: little more simplified. Just do it the old fashioned way.
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: Just go pick somebody from a state you need to carry,
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: and in that sense, that could definitely put us off
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: and Warnock in the top tier of that. All right,
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put a pin in this episode since
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: we're gonna I'm gonna see it in another twenty four hours,
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: but it's a I will I will admit being a
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: little weary from my own travels and shoveling of snow.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to go make sure I get a
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: really good night's rest and I will see you on
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: this feed in twenty four hours.