Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump’s Destruction Of America’s Military Culture + A Spy Novelist's Threat Assessment of the Real World

Transcript

Full Episode - Trump’s Destruction Of America’s Military Culture + A Spy Novelist's Threat Assessment of the Real World · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
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  Speaker 1: When I like about these Chapter folks, I've spent time
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  Speaker 1: three four three nine eight five. Hello there, Happy Monday,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Welcome to I don't want to call it a super
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: sized episode. I don't want to fear that somehow it's
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: super long, but I'm going to get into a lot
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of topics. Obviously, man, did a lot happen over seventy
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: two hours, let alone ninety six hours. When you start
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: to put things together, I'm going to try to deal
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: with what I think are the stories worth focusing on,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: including one the issue of how alarmed should we be
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: by the president and what happened last Thursday night. Let's
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: just say I'm in a calibrated place that probably many
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of you aren't, and i'll explain on that. What to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: expect with a run is on the agenda, the latest
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: on ICE, which frankly only reinforces, and the reason I
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: want to get to this Ice story what I presented
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: to you on Thursday, which is the initial problem with
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: ICE was how they recruited their agents, and sure enough,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: a massive this is clearly a massive recruiting problem in
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: the incident in Maine. So we'll have more on that,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and let me tell you, we're going to go to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the toodcast campaign notebook and focus on all things Wisconsin.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: To just put it real simply before I get to
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the details. Take the California gov Panic right after x
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Swallwell had to drop out. Combine it with the Grand
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Platner panic that took place in Maine, and put it
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: together and you get the mess that is Wisconsin, Governor.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It is not a Wisconsin story. This is a story
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party of the last ten years all
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: coming to a head in Wisconsin. Today's Monday, which means
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: we go back in the Toodcast time machine. We're going
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to go back to the late fifties and the most
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: amazing televised debate between two world leaders that we'd ever seen.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to make the case for how that
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: debate is actually still taking place right here.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: In the United States. And we'll do some questions.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: But look, I'm going to start with many of you
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: know I sort of look. I'll be honest. I dance
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: around my second headquarters here. I if for those of
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you who don't know, I spend a lot of time
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: in Pensacola, specifically Pensacola Beach. Why do I bring this up?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Because the pride of Pensacola Beach is the Blue Angels,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: and this past weekend was Blues weekend Blues Week, as
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: it's known here. Why is it known as Blues Week
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: because it is an entire week's worth of events for
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: the locals to celebrate the Blue Angels. Pensacola is the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: home of the Blue Angels. This is their home base,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Pensacola Naval Air Station, and this is always the last
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: stop on the tour, right before they take a break
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and then restart their tour of the country and frankly,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: of the world. Right the Navy has the Blue Angels,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the Air Force has the Thunderbirds. I have had the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: privilege of seeing both over the years. I obviously am
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: partial to my home, my my adopted home of Pensacola
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Beach and the Blue Angels. But considering that what happened
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: during Blues Week became a bit of a meme, I
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: thought I would do a little bit of a of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: a of a fact check here for you, because you've,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: if you've paid it all attention to the Blue Angels
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: this weekend, you paid attention to one issue, this low
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: flyover that one of the h that one of the
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Blue Angels took over Pensacola Beach, and of course sort
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: of got immediately tied to the flyovers, the illegal flyovers
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: that have been taking place by various pilots in the Pentagon,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: where Pete eggs Seth is not only not disciplined, he
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: is you know, remember Kid Rock got a flyover which
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: again probably should have.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Led to either.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Firings or you know, some sort of actual punishment, and instead,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: So there's been this assumption that this is all part
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: of Pete eggs as destruction of the American military. And yes,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: let's be honest, what he's doing, I'm going to get
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: into the low tee and a little bit as well.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: His leadership of the Pentagon is just awful. What he's doing,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the way he is trying to essentially reimagine what the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: American soldier looks like for the American people and for
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the world, it's pretty un American decide. I mean, we've
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: had some bad defense secretaries. Pete egg Seth Is basically says,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: hold my beer, I'm going to be the worst of
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: all time. And just little things that he does. These
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: guys are the gang that can't shoot straight. Thank goodness,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: we have enough generals that know what they're doing so
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: that at least we're not having war crimes being committed
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: on our behalf. But I want to point that out
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: because Pete Hegseth didn't bother to find out what actually happened.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: He just immediately assumed that he was just going to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: quote own the libs and if you're complaining about low flyovers,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: you know, get a grip, right, we're going to keep
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: agreeing to this to But he actually didn't find out
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: what happened. Thankfully a member of Congress did and spoke
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: to the actual pilot. And I want to set this up.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: The reason we call it Blues weeekaren Pensacola Beach is
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: because on Wednesdays you get breakfast with the Blues. What
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: does that mean, Well, there is a whole bunch of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: locals come here because it's a practice session, and so
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: this low pass took place during a practice session. That's
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: number one. What we come to find out is the
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: pilot said, yeah, he messed up, he missed, he he
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: he sort of didn't have the right caliber and he
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: ended up going making the turn much lower than he
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: intended to do. The point is is that the fly
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: that close fly over to the beach where it did
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: feel like you could touch it right and that's what's
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: so amazing. Even when they're flying, you know, carefully low,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: it's still it's amazing how close they get. And it's
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: so much fun. Look, just as an aside, I was
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: on the you just go on the water and enjoy
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the show from the bay, from the sound is what
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I do. And I get to do this every year.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It's been doing this now for almost a decade and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it is fantastic. It is a very pensacle of thing.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: But the point was this was number one. Happened during
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: practice where these guys are trying to get a sense
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: of the airspace. That's why they do practices on Wednesday,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: they do a full dress rehearsal on Friday, and then
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Saturday you get the main event. So if you're a
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: local like I get to be during the during the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: summer months, aventually get three Blue Angels show for free
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: right in my essentially backyard. And it is fantastic and
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: everybody here in Pensacola there's Look, the Blue Angels are
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the symbol of Pensacola sort of the thing, you know,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the cultural thing that really unites the community. Everybody. Nobody's
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: ever going to say a bad thing about the Blue Angels.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: It really is something that unifies the community. But the
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: point was what you saw here is it a super
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily online story where the online left immediately assumed this
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: was some pete hegseth ordered irresponsible behavior of the military,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and he immediately essentially confirms that fear by not finding
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: out the facts, by not finding out what happened. To
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: see was, Hey, guess what this happened during a practice session.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Why do you practice to make sure you don't do this,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and why do they do it on Wednesday morning? Fewer
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: people on the beach there actually are concerned that they
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: may make some mistakes, trying to have as few of
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the crowds as there as possible. So the point is
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: this happened during practice. That's why you practice number one.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And yet the world of online, whether it's the online
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: left or the outline right, everybody is so consumed with
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: proving their point that the other side is full of shit. Congratulations,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: you both proved your point. You're both full of shit
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: on this one. You know, come talk to people that
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: are actually here, Come talk to people who are actually
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: on the ground, Go find out the facts. But it's
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: one thing that we have a bunch of irresponsible influencers
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: or just trying to make money abusing you know, the
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: anger on the left or the anger on the white
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and trying to weaponize it. But when our own defense
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: secretary can't bother to find out the facts that instead
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: he essentially excuses irresponsible behavior. It turns out this wasn't irresponsible.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: This was a mistake. This was essentially an accident. And
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: by the way, the Blue an Angels. If I trust
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: anybody to do a low flyover, it's the Blue Angels
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: because they train for these things. What I don't want
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: is other pilots doing it because you don't train for
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: these flyovers like that. The Blue Angels are you know, simple. Now,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: to me, it's not surprising that the Blue Angels pilot
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: himself felt terrible about the thing, because these are high
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: character people. Despite what Pete Eggsett is trying to do
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to the military, and due to the military what's been
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: done to ICE, which is recruit low character people, our
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: military is great because it forces high character. Right. Boot
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: camp is about as much a physical test as it
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: is a character test, And sadly, what Pete haig Set
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: is thinking about doing is creating a low character military force.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: And if you want to know what happens when you
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: recruit low character people, you get the force that we're
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: dealing with internally right now in America called ICE. So anyway,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: it's like I said, I normally don't like to share
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: as much of my personal Maybe I should more. I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: know that's the literally the thing we're all we're all doing.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And I think many of you, I think over time
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: do know me on this. But yeah, I'm giving a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: little bit more. I was here, I'm here in Petsicola Beach.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I love this community. It is an adopted home, uh
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: for me, I care about it a lot. I care
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: about the Blue Angels. It is. It is something very
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: important in this community. And the more it is it
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: is such you know, pet what Pensacola without the military
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: would feel like its identity was missing when it comes
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: to the Navy. And I'm sorry that those of you
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: online were so essentially easily abused, essentially by the weaponization
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: that takes place from the only LIBS crowd on the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: right that Pete Haigseth tries to cater to, or the
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: alarmist crowd on the left that just assumes everything is
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: part of some you know that everybody has been magnified,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: if you will, already inside these institutions. All right, I
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: want to move to the Thursday speech a little bit. Obviously,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time on in my last podcast,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and I think it's it's worth spending a little bit
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: of time here, and I want to deal with it
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: this way. I want to explain why I'm not alarmed.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I'm certainly vigilant about our current threats to the democracy,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: but there's a difference between vigilance and alarmism. And I'll look,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I got a ton of questions. I get questions from listeners, readers, friends,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: even members of my own family that basically asked this
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: same question quite a bit throughout the various ways as
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Trump has tried to deny reality when it comes to
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: his electoral successes and failures. You know, how come you're
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: not as alarmed as everybody else? Why are you so
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: sure this isn't a huge threat? And look, it's a
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: fair question. And you see Thursday night speech and then
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of course January sixth, and We've had essentially a decade
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in which Donald Trump has tested political and constitutional boundaries
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: in ways no modern president has. But I want to
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: answer why I am not alarmed. I know there's a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: lot of people out there, some of them are truly alarmed,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and some of them want to keep you alarmed in
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: order to get you to continue to subscribing to their
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: newsletters and etc. Right, as you know, since I'm not
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: trying to make you be my financial my financial lifeline here,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I think I can sit here and tell you what
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: is right.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I am not.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: The easy way to make money off of you is
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: to exploit exploit fears, and I refuse to be somebody
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: that exploits fears. As I keep telling you, my goal
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: here at the check cast is to essentially explain politics
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: to the rest of us. Right, it's politics for the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: rest of us, and explaining politics to the rest of
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: us because the extremes are dominating this conversation in ways
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: that's manipulative and warping reality. So let me get to
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: this issue. I'm not going to sit here and say
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I am comfortable with where the state of the democracy is,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: So don't get me wrong there, and I don't. And
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the answer isn't that I don't think there are risks
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: to the democracy. The answer is that I think there's
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: an important difference between vigilance and alarmism. And I do
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: think we've gotten a little too comfortable confusing the two.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Before Thursday night's speech, I said something that thankfully turned
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: out to be right. There was all this anticipation, we
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: were told to expect newly declassified intelligence, foreign interference, election vulnerabilities, bombshells. Right,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: And I said, if you wanted to know what the
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: speech was going to be, you didn't need to wait
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: until Thursday night. Just look at what Donald Trump had
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: done the day before. Right, he endorsed Mike Lindell for
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: governor of Minnesota. Right, the pillow guy. Right, the man
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: whose election claims have collapsed in courtroom after courtroom, a
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: jury verdict against them, a judge ruling need to fame,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a voting technology company, sanctions for privileged can't claims, years
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: of legal battles that never produced the evidence he always promised.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: So to me, the endorsement told you everything you needed
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: to know. Donald Trump wasn't moving towards stronger evidence. He
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: didn't have it. He was returning to the same cast
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: of characters that have been making the same allegation for
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: six years. On his behalf, the crazy Sydney pals of
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the world. Shoot, we would have seen Rudy Giuliani had hit.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Health not been so bad.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: And Thursday night speech turned out to be exactly that,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: which brings me to something else. I said before the speech,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I thought the network should carry it. Now it was
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a fifty one to forty nine position that I came
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: down on you if you caught my video on that,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: because I don't think you carry it uncritically. You don't
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: give him a free campaign commercial, but you carry it
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: as what had become known as a truth sandwich. Right,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you tell viewers what the evidence actually says before the speech,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: you let the president make his case, then you come
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: back afterward and explain what was true, what wasn't, and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: what remains unproven. I'll be honest, I've never understood the
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: instinct to hide Donald Trump from the public, to deny
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: those that sify the election in January sixth, why you
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: shouldn't interview them. You know, it's not the media that platforms,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: it's voters that platform. Voters elected these people. Our job
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: is to find out why and what they're going to do,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and pretending they don't exist doesn't get you anywhere. And
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: in fact, ignoring him, I think gives him more power.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It creates the mythology that what he's about to say
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: is simply too dangerous for ordinary Americans to hear.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: I don't buy that.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I think sunlight is always the single best disinfect.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: That you can find on Earth.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And the irony is that had more people actually watch
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Thursday night speech with the proper factual context, they probably
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: would have reached the same conclusion I've released. This was
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a big, fat, calorie free nothing burger, a long speech
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: built around allegations we've heard before, presented as though they
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: were new discoveries. Sometimes the best antidote to hype is
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: simply letting people watch the hype fail to deliver. Now
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: here's where I part company with someators. One of the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: biggest lessons I took away from January six wasn't just
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: about our institutions. It was about Donald Trump himself. January
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: six taught us a lot about how he individually operates.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And I want to be careful here because I want
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to make a very narrow point, not a broad one.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump shows he's perfectly willing to take political risks.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: He'll fire people, he'll pardon people, and he will use
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: aggressive executive authority. Pretty aggressive. That's not what I'm talking
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: about here. I'm talking about where the It's about the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: moment where the legal responsibility falls squarely on his shoulders,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: and his shoulders alone. Go back to twenty twenty. He
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: wanted Mike Pence to reject the electoral votes. He wanted
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Clark to use the Justice Department to interfere with certification.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: His allies drafted an executive order directing the military to
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: sasee voting machines in order.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: He never had the guts design.
• 19:00
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• 20:41
  Speaker 1: rates may vary. He wanted state officials to find votes
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: on his behalf. He wanted the crowd to stop Congress.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: You notice the pattern here. At every critical moment, Donald
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Trump was looking for or someone else to take the
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: decisive step. While he enjoyed the political benefits, he didn't
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: want to get his hands dirty. The man's a coward.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: He's a coward on a number of levels. But he's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: also a coward on this, which weirdly gives me comfort.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: And it's important distinction because if you convince yourself Donald
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Trump is capable of literally anything at any moment, you
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: stop analyzing what he's actually likely to do. You become
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: reactive instead of analytical. And that's where alarmism can actually
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: make us worse analysts. Now let me make another point
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: that struck me from Thursday night. Let's assume, just for
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the sake of argument, that Donald Trump genuinely believed everything
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: he was saying. Let's assume he sincerely believes China or
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: another foreign power did what he alleged. Then I have
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: a simple question, where's the policy response, where are the sanctions,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: where's the diplomatic crisis? Where's the economic retaliation for getting
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: involved in our elections? Exactly what we did after sixteen?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Even Donald Trump signed off on some of these sanctions
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: against the Russians because we did prove that they interfered
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: in our election. There were senators like Marco Rubio who
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: are truly alarmed by what the Russians have done. But
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: everything that he claims to have found, no economic retaliation
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: against China, no executive action directed at Beijing. Instead, so
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: far the consequences have been aimed somewhere else. Congress is
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: being pressed to change election laws. American intelligence officials are
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: being accused of hiding information with no proof. Domestic investigations
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: are being demanded. Notice who isn't the immediate target was
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: who he claimed was the one interfering China? If the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: central allegation is that China attacked American democracy, why are
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the only people facing immediate consequences fellow Americans. There's one
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: more irony here. The document's his own administration. He classified
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: before the speech largely reaffirmed intelligence community's long standing conclusion
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: that yes, it did not attempt to alter the mechanics
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: or outcome of the twenty twenty election. Now, did they
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: scoop up all public data available, just like the United
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: States does in China? Yes? Did that include voting roles
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: which are publicly available. Of course they did so to
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: the Russians, Iranians, you name it now. To be fair,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and I think this is important, there was a minority
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: into the intelligence assessment. One senior intelligence official concluded with
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: moderate confidence at China preferred Trump to lose and try
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: to influence the political environment through messaging and official statements.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Now that's a legitimate analytical disagreement, but that's a very
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: different claim from saying China hacked voting machines or changed
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: election results. They're not the same thing. By the way,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: these same intelligence reports noted the Russians preferred Trump to
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: and yet the documents presented to support the speech wound
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: up reinforcing the broader consensus far more than they actually
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: challenged it. So to me, that's what happens when an
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: investigation works batards. Good investigations begin with evidence and follow
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: it wherever it leads. Bad investigations begin with a verdict
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: and then ask everyone to go find supporting exhibits, which
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: is exactly how they tried to manufacture this with complete
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: with a lackey like Bill Poulti temporarily in charge of
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the Office of Director of National Intelligence, where he had
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: access to cherrypick intelligence and to create a mythology out
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: of cherry picked facts. And so maybe Donald Trump doesn't
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: actually believe all of these allocations. Maybe he does believe them,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: but isn't willing to jeopardize trade negotiations or a broader
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: relationship with the very government he says attacked the American democracy. Right,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: either explanation is possible, but either way there's a disconnect
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: between the gravity of the accusation he made and the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: actual policy response. So if you tell me a foreign
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: government attack the foundation of American democracy, I expect your
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: first target to be the foreign government who attacked the democracy,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: not a workers, intelligence officials or members of Congress. Now,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: before anybody hears what they want to hear, let me
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: be equally clear about something else. None of this means
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I think there aren't dangers. I think quite the opposite.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump has been an MRI. He's exposed weaknesses in
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: our constitutional system that absolutely need fixing. He didn't invent
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: all those weaknesses, he just found them. He showed us
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: how much executive power has already been accumulated, and how
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: easily he could accumulate more. He showed us how dependent
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: our system is on these unwritten norms that clearly need
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to be codified into actual laws. He showed us how
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: much Congress is weakened itself and has become an institution
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: no longer capable of what the founders intended. He showed
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: us how vulnerable we are to a political culture that
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: rewards performative outrage over institutional responsibility. These are real problems.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: These deserve serious reform efforts. One of the most fascinating
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: experiences I've had over the last few years was participating
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: in a constantution tutional crisis simulation. And one thing those
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: exercises have taught me, and they will teach you very
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: quickly if you ever get to do one, is how
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: difficult it actually is to overturn an American election. Hollywood
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: makes it seem like one villain flips one switch, or
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: you just start a fire in Milwaukee, like succession. It's
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: not our system. States administer elections, counties count ballots, local
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: officials certify results, governor's c statewide results, courtier challenges, Congress
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: council electoral votes. You don't need one institution to fail.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: You need a cascade of failures across a dozen independent
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: actors essentially to hijack this democracy. Now here's the fair rebuttal.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Those are the institutions of twenty twenty. Some of the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: people who said no have been replaced, right, like Mike Pennce,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: like Mark Esper, like Jeffrey Rosen. Some guard rails are
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: weaker than they were in twenty twenty. That's worth worrying about.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: But it's also it's so true that the constitutional architecture
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: hasn't changed. The election system is still decentralized, power is
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: still dispersed. Multiple institutions still have to fail all at
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the same time. So that's why you have to remain vigilant,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: which you don't have to be alarmed, don't be complacent, vigilant.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Now here's what actually worries me. Now, Donald Trump suddenly
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: becoming someone he's never been, I'm not worried about that.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: What worries me is Donald Trump with more compliant people
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: around him or some future leader who is more disciplined
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: that worries me. Imagine a more patient version of Donald Trump.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Imagine a more knowledgeable Donald Trump about constitutional pressure points.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Imagine him being more willing to accept the personal legal
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: risk instead of constantly searching for someone else to assume
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: that right. He didn't have the guts to fire the
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: acting Attorney general on January sixth. He didn't have the
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: guts to go down to the Capitol. Remember he's a
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: capital C cowardy. Now, Donald Trump didn't right the Owner's
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: manual for authoritarianism, but he did identify some of our
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: stress fractures in our constitutional system. So I don't think
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the lesson of the Trump years is the panic, but
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: we better have we better learn from what is.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Look, nobody followed Trump.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: There was no The Republican Party literally wants to ignore
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: it because everybody knows he's just full of He's just
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: sort of a tired old man desperate to prove he
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: didn't lose an election he clearly lost, And of course
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: he fails to realize that he actually accumulated more power
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: in a second term by losing that election, rather than
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: if he had actually won it. So what is the
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: lesson we have to learn. We've got to strength in Congress.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: We got to modernized representation, we got to clarify congressional
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: constitutional ambiguities. We got to repair these structural weaknesses that
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: we've now all seen with our own eyes. Because vigilance
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: isn't about assuming the worst every single day. Vigilance is
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: understanding how the system actually works, recognize where it's vulnerable,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: fixing those weaknesses before someone smarter successfully exploits them. And
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: that's the distinction that I've tried to make, certainly over
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: the last few years. It is it is that. Look,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: he is singularly, you know, thankfully he's impatient. As I said,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: he's too lazy to be Hitler or mau or Putin or.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Somebody like that.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: He is la z y, right, and he's also a coward.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Those two things, his laziness and the fact that he
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: doesn't have the guts to own these things. Now, I'm
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: mindful that the more you taunt him, the more he's
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: likely to yolo this all right, And I'm you know,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: there's a part of me that says, yeah, I don't
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: want to taunt Trump here. You coward, you you you're
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: lazy or coward, but ultimately he is. And the fact
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: that you don't have a party wanting to go after
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: they're not really following them. He's got his handful of
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: sick of fans, right, But they all fear jail too,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: they all fear losing too. And I think that's why
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not. I mean, what would have worried me is
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: if you'd had John Thune and Mike Johnson like the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: next day putting together suddenly, you know, trying to create
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: a crisis.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: If you had like.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Actual sanctions being leveled based unsupposedly this right, if you
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: had if the apparatus of the federal government that Donald
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Trump controls were actually put to work to reinforce his
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: allegations and to try to get then that would be
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: something that would be like, all right, we've got to
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: be alarmed. Now we've got a real constitutional crisis here.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: But he has tried. He doesn't have the guts to
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: actually start what right he is. He wants somebody else
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: to do the work, so he benefit this is how please, right,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: here's a guy does it. He calls himself a builder.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: He's built I think one actual building to Trump Tower, right.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Everything else he's just licensed his name so somebody else
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: does the work. In some ways, that's the Donald Trump.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: That's all you need to know. He licensed his name
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: out so that people will do do all the work,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: do all the risk, and he gets all the benefits. Right.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: If the building is a success, his name's on it
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and he looks like a success. And if he gets
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: to remain in power because others were willing to violate
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the constitution, all the best. But this is why you
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: need to pay attention to how he actually has behaved. Right,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I understand the mythology that gets created the fears. I'm
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: not telling you to be complacent. I'm not telling you
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: to be in denial about these things. Yes, be vigilant
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the panic cloud's judgment. Vigilance will sharpen it. And if
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: we're going to preserve this constitutional republic, okay, we need
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: to be a bit more vigilant and reality based in
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: our concerns. And think about again, I say it, I've
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: said before, We're someday going to be thankful that the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Trump presidency happened because it gave us time to essentially
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: plug the holes that make us vulnerable to somebody who
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: might be a lot savvier than Donald Trump, a lot
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: less lazy than Donald Trump, and a lot less impatient
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: than Donald Trump. All right, now, let's move on to
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the biggest broken promise of the Trump presidency that will
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: likely haunt him in the history. Boots, we are welcome
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: to America's next forever war. That's what it looks like.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know what else to call it.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I may be exaggerating that forever wre mindset a bit here,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: but let's be real. We're on the road to one
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: and looking at the headlines over the last forty eight hours,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: there's clearly no strategy from Washington beyond just hoping that
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: sheer devastation and Iran will create some kind of vacuum
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and magically sparkle the uprising inside Iran. That's it, that's
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the whole plan. We're just throwing kinetic weight at them
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and hoping the regime collapses under pressure. At this point.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: They don't have a plan outside of this. But what
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: we've continued to do over and over again, it's completely
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: underestimate Iron's ability to wait asymmetric warfare. And right now
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: they have our partners in the Golf States directly in
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: their sites. Look at what happened over the weekend. Two
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: US service members were killed in hostile fire, another still missing.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: It officially shatters the truce that everyone was celebrating just
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: last month at his remember when he signed the deal,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: He signed it at the UFC fight on the White
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: House lawn. Boy, it was a long time ago now,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: and yet it.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Was just a few weeks ago.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Now. The US is immediately going to the default playbook,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: launch massive air strikes against Iranian surveillance and air defense targets.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: But watch how Iran response. They don't just trade shots
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: at the US military. They go completely asymmetric. They launch
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: missiles and drones directly at Kuwait, hit a massive power
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: and water desalination plan. Quite the warning. That wasn't an accident.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: It was a warning to the rest of the Gulf States.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: The more the US does this, you better let them
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: know who's going to get punished. And this is the
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: part a lot of people are missing. We're measuring that
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: We're used to measuring conflict in the Middle East by
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the flow of oil. But as political scientist Robert pay
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: put out in a brutal reality check on this strike,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Iran is moving the goalpost to civilian survival infrastructure, and
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: that's which we should fear here. Kuwait relies on just
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: eight major desalination plans for ninety percent of its drinking water.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: They're not the only country in the Gulf that relies
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: on desalination plants. They all sit right on the coast,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: by the way, the ones in Kuwait, they're barely one
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: hundred miles from Ron. And the data shows that if
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Iran knocks out just two or three of the biggest ones,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: they instantly freeze up to eighty percent of Kuwait's water supply.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: And if they hit the core steam turbines or distillation towers,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: well those are customs built. You can't just buy them
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: off a shelf and just turn the water back on.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: That's going to take years to get them back online,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: not months. Years. By the way, only five days of
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: emergency water storage. So think about the leverage that gives
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Iran and Kuwait. It's a very important part. In the
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: United States, they house a lot of US military assets.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: They are effectively telling this is what Iran's trying to
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: do is send a message to Saudi Arabia, the ue
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: in Oman and Qatar, if you let the US use
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: your basis or your airspace to bomb us. We aren't
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: just going to fight their jets. We are going to
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: turn off the drinking water to your cities. And what
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: is our response to this kind of terrifying asymmetric leverage.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: More the same, our friends at Axios is reporting that
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Trump's situation room is looking to just expand the offensive massively,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: sending dozens of refueling planes to Israel, eyeing a deep
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: strike at Pickaxe Mountain to try to Essentially, they know
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: they're not going to get a deal with this Iranian regime,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: so they figure, we're not going to put in ground
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: troops and try to deal with the regime, change ourselves.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: That's a mistake. Look what happened in Iraq. We're not
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: going to repeat that. So the best outcome we can
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: have in this terrible outcome is to just bury every
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: piece of nuclear material as deep into the ground and
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: under rubble as we possibly can. Right, So, Pickaxe Mountain
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: is basically this massive underground nuclear facility. It's buried deep
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: in the Zagros Mountains. The talking heads and Washington love
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: to talk about taking it out, but if you look
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: at the actual geology of this, it's buried under about
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: one hundred and forty five meters of solid granite. It
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: is literally deeper than our heaviest conventional bunker buster bombs
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: can reach. So what is striking it actually mean? Well,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: it means collapsing tunnel entrances, destroying international oversight, driving them
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: entirely into the dark, and guaranteeing a massive, unrestricted ballistic
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: missile retaliation across the entire region. Look, I don't know
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: how many different ways I can tell you that he
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: has mismanaged this seven ways from Sunday, and it goes
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: all the way back to getting rid of the nuclear
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: deal in the first place. Right this, you reap what
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: you sew, and he created this mess, put himself in
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: this box. This is the very definition of strategic clicks.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: And we aren't dropping bombs to force them to the
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: negotiating table. We are now dropping bombs because we don't
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: have a plan. Bait. When you threaten the regime's ultimate
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: nuclear deterrent and you hold their neighbor's water supply hostage
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: at the same time, you're not going to get a
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: peace deal. You're gonna get a permanent, open ended regional
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: war of attrition. And we're trapped in this loop again,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: just like we were at the Taliman and right now
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: no one in Washington seems to know how to break it.
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• 39:26
  Speaker 1: you're in Louisiana. Speaking of the military, I want to
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: focus a little bit on Pentagon. I told you I
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about the low T thing,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: but it's actually a shiny metal object, the low T
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: issue a little bit though. It's concerning. But there were
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: two pronouncements out of the Pentagon this past week, and
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I want to spend time on both of them because
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: together I think they do tell you more about where
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: this Administration's national security thinking is headed than any speech
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: or strategy.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Document will tell you.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Now one of them. Everybody's heard about it because it's
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: already a meme. Pete Haig says war on low t
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: And this guy's got some serious self esteem issues, doesn't he. Anyway,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: The Secretary of Defense is now and I know he
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: has a little little title he gives himself Secretary of
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: War right because it makes him feel tougher. I mean,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: just the whole premise of it, right, like they've they've
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: they've ejected testosterone into the name of the Defense Department
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: to make themselves feel they're fighters. And this guy is
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: really just a clown. Gosh anyway, Sorry, I really don't
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: like to be that kind of it, but Haig Seth
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: is one that makes me nuts because this is it
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: is a full on embarrassment of what is one of
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: our best.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Assets in the United States military.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: So it is I am absolutely sickened by how this
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: horrible fake soldier because he thinks he's some you know,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: just a just such this guy's got serious self esteem
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: issues and he's in charge of our military. It's just gross.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: So yeah, the testosterone levels of American troops this is
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: something we should be more concerned about for a variety
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: of reasons, and I'm going to get there, and I
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: promise you it's both dumber and more serious than the
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: joke version you've seen. But the other proclamation that came
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: out of the Pentagon last week is one you probably
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: missed because it didn't come from the Secretary because he's
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: really just he's not a figurehead per se, but he's
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: basically like the chief cheerleader of this you know, faux
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: warrior culture, but he's not really a policy brain. There
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: are some deputies that are the brains behind the Pentagon,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: and in fact, it's one of those deputies I want
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to focus on because he did a seven part tweet
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: thread this undersecretary, and I know undersecretary tweets thread is
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: not exactly a stop the presses moment, except this particular
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: undersecretary might be the most consequential form policy intellectual in
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: this entire administration. And what he posted last week is
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: the closest thing we have to a doctrine statement in
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: writing from an official government account about how this government
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: views America's allies. So I'm going to start with the
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: one you missed first. The author of this tweet threat
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: is Elbridge Colby. Friends call him Bridge, you'll hear both.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Same guy.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: He's the Under Secretary of Defense for policy. That's the
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Pentagon's number three job. He's the person in charge of
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: briefing the Secretary in all defense policy. And before you
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: dismissed the tweets of a number three, let me give
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: you the resume because it matters. Elbridge Colby is the
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: grandson of William Colby, who was Director of the CIA
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: in the seventies. This is a hereditary national security family,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: so he's kind of a nepobaby in this Harvard Yale law.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Then a career in defense strategy that produced one genuinely
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: important thing in the first Trump term. Colby was the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: lead author of the twenty eighteen National Defense Strategy. Now,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: if you don't follow defense documents, and you know, God
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: bless you if you don't. That was the document that
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: officially ended the War on Terror era at the Pentagon
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and reoriented the entire American military around great power competition
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: with China. Arguably, it's the most influential defense document of
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the last two decades. And here's to tell that it
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: wasn't just partisan positioning. The Biden administration largely kept its
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: core logic, this is a bipartisan consensus, essentially, this pivot
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: to Asia, if you will. And Colby then wrote a book,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: The Strategy of Denial. He co founded a think tank
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: called the Marathon Initiative, and he became the intellectual author
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: of what people call the prioritizer or restrainer school on
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the right, the argument that America is overstretched, that Europe
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: in the Middle East are distractions, and that everything should
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: be subordinated to deterring China in the Pacific. Frankly, it's
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: very similar to how Obama ended his presidency with his
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: own pivot to China. But of course the greatest mistake
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: we made in our attempts to check China was to
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: get rid of the TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: was really an economic trade is defense trade pack that
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: was under the umbrelevant economic trade packs. Just Bernie Sanders
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump what they have done to weaken America
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: collectively on that one, it says something, But I digress.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Now the politics, this is the part I really want
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: you to file away. Colby's confirmation fight in early twenty
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: twenty five was really a proxy war for the soul
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: of the Republican Formed Policy movement. Who showed up to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: personally introduce him at his Senate hearing, the Vice President.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Of the United States, JD.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Vance. He called Colby a friend, said Bridge saw around
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: corners that very few other people were seeing. Around His
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: backers were the whole New Right constellation. So it was Vance,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Don Junior, Tucker, Carlson, Charlie the Lake, Charlie Kirk, and
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: who was the lone Republican no vote on Colby, Mitch McConnell,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: who put on a statement calling Colby's worldview quote geo's
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: strategic self harm and Vance's response to the longest serving
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Republican Senate leader history. He called McConnell's vote quote one
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: of the greatest acts of political pettiness I've ever seen
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the sitting Vice president torch Mitch McConnell in public over
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: this guy. So here's the shorthand eight off of you.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: If you want to know what a Vance form policy
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: looks like in twenty twenty nine, don't read Vance's speeches,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: read Colby's tweets to understand what Colby was swinging at.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: You need the backstory, and it all starts in Davos
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: back in January, Mark Carney. You remember that speech, Prime
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, right, you remember him. He's
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the guy who's basically rescued the left in Canada. He's
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: become the pragmatist. If you're wondering if the Democrats want
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: to copy a successful transition, they might want to look north.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: But I think those in the progressive movement don't want
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: to look north because the answer was a center left government.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: But I digress. The point is Mark Carney. He gave
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: a very famous speech about the Middle Powers starting to
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: you realize you couldn't count in the United States anymore. Now.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: The man is not a radical, right, This is basically
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: a former banker. Okay, he was a banker. Bankers are not,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of radical radicals. He's not a You
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: don't expect a central banker to give a revolutionary speech.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: But if you call it Davos, this past January, Carney
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: delivered what is now being referred to by some it's
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the Carney doctrine, right, this middle powers argument right, and
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: was stripped down to this, all three great powers in
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the United States, China, and Russia are failing the world.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: The rules based order that middle sized countries like Canada
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: thought protected them never fully existed and certainly doesn't now.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: So countries like Canada had to stop pretending that the
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: US is going to be there. They need to build
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: strength at home, form flexible coalitions of other small, d
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: democratic middle powers to resist coercion and he meant explicitly
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: coercion from the United States. His line, if we're not
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: at the table, we're on the menu. And remember his closer,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: which I want to read it because it's genuinely striking
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: coming from a central banker turned world leader. Carne said,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: the powerful have their power, but we have something to
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality and to
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: build our strength at home and act together. That is
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Canada's path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: is a path that is wide open to any country
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: willing to take with take it with us. The idea
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: was that middle powers put together, right, your India's, your Canada's,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: your Japans. You just can't trust the United States anymore,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: and you certainly can't trust Jada. So remember that context.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: You gave that speech while the President was musing about
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: making Canada the fifty first state trying to acquire Greenland,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: essentially take Greenland from Denmark. And this wasn't a one
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: off applause line. Canada's foreign minister calls it the anchor
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: of their foreign policy. Now. Carneia has spent months since
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: signing agreements around the world specifically designed to reduce Canadian
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: dependence on the United States. So when a mild Mannard
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: ex bank banker is the one saying the quiet part
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: are allowed, something has shifted. Radical saying radical things is noise.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Institution was saying radical things is a signal. So you
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: needed to know that backdrop to understand what Colby is arguing.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Six months after Davos last Tuesday, the Pentagon's chief strategist
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: essentially responded to Mark Carney. And he didn't do it
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: in a speech, probably because he didn't think he'd be
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: allowed to. He didn't do it in a white paper.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: He did it in a tweet thread on X seven parts.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read you some key lines because the
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: wording is the story. Colby writes that there's quote a
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: great deal of hubbub about a collective middle power strategy
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: these days, and that the Department of War is not
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: concerned that this is a serious possibility. Rather, they're concerned
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: that quote a few allies and partners will think it
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: is and waste valuable time, money, and political capital on
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: a distraction. Middle powers, Colby says, don't have a coherent
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: basis for alignment. No country can compete with the American
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: defense industrial base in quantity or quality. And then the
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: line that's going to end up perhaps in books down
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: the road about this administration one way or the other,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: access right to the American defense industrial base is a privilege,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: not a right. Colby argues, Now, let's be fair to Colby,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: because he's not wrong on the merits, and pretending otherwise
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: is how you lose an argument. Nobody replicates the American
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: defense industrial base. That's true. Nobody has this decade, not Europe,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: not anybody, and middle power coalitions have a genuinely lousy
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: historical track record. Ask the Unaligned movement how that went
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: during the Cold War. So if the question is can
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Canada and Germany and Australia build an alternative arsenal by
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: twenty thirty, Colby side wins that argument. But that's not
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: the question. And here's the turn. Weapons procurement is a
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: thirty year bet, not on the seller's factories, but on
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: the seller's politics. When a country buys American fighter jets,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: it's buying three decades of spare parts, software, update munitions
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: from whoever happens to be sitting in the White House.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: The product America has always sold isn't the F thirty five.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: It's American reliability. Where the United States you can trust us,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: and reliability is precisely the thing that's now in question
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: thanks to Donald Trump, and thanks most definitely this bizarre
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: defense department that's been put together a privilege extended by
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: an administration that changes his mind by tweet, is from
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: a procurement officers standpoint, a pretty high risk right. And
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: that's Mark Carney, the banker realizing this. That's not anti Americanism,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: it's just reality. And notice the structural tell confidence sellers
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: don't argue with their customers. You do not publish a
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: seven part thread from an official government account about something
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: you are generally not worried about. As Colby claims, this
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: threat exists because the thing it dismisses is actually materializing.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: These middle powers are looking for an alternative and are
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: trying to avoid the United States. Colby's own brand new
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: defense National Defense Strategy describes China as the most powerful
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: rival America has faced since the nineteenth century, which rather
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: concedes the point the unipolar world. His threat depends on
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: the world where allies have no choice? Is this the
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: world his own strategy document already says, is gone. So
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: there's your pairing. Carney says middle powers have a choice.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Colby says, no, you don't, and one of them is
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: describing the world that actually is. I'll let you decide
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: which one it is. But it ain't the guys on
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: our side, all right. So that same week, the very
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: same week, the Pentagon's chief strategist was reassuring the world
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: that America is the indispensable, irreplaceable, essentially defense contractor for
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the free world. The actual Secretary of Defense again who
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: calls and gives himself his little funny name Secretary of War,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: was worried about hormone levels. So here's here's the policy.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not exaggerating here, straightforward policy. Pet EXSITS announced that
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: every service member aged thirty and older will now be
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: screened annually for testosterone deficiency as part of their regular
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: health assessment. Under thirty you can volunteer for if a
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: doctor recommends it. Testosterone replacement therapy TRT is then on
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: the table at the option of the service member. Hesith
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: framing troops need the quote biological foundation to fight, and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: this keeps them on the quote leading edge of lethality.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: This guy really does want to create some sort of
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: super trooper using human beings as experiments. This is really
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: sick stuff and we ought to be looking at it
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: this way. Ask what research supports screening an entire fighting
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: force for a home Loann condition that Benagon pointed back
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: to a video. Ask whether women in uniform get any
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: equivalent screening. We've yet to get an answer from the
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: PENTAGONA now one, So how's this landing in the President's
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: favorite media ecosystem? I want to describe a segment from
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: The Five on Fox last Thursday, And you know, I
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: normally don't take specific shots at idiot members of the press.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I just think that that's wasted time. The issue are
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: our political leaders, You'll let you know. Usually I've always
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: thought anybody attacking a member of the press who is
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: a who thinks they too are a member of the press.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: It's a business decision.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Right. I mean Fox attacked mainstream media just to build
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: a business. You know, none of the people actually believe
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: half the shit that they were character assassinating folks like
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: me with, but they just did it. It was a
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: business decision, right. It was a way to keep an audience,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: and it was a way to try to to try
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: to create a brand to.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Build an audience.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: But what was said by Jesse Waters is what made
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: this even more alarming. And look, I watched this segment.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I still can't quite believe I have to say this
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: out loud. But here's what the Chiron onscreen was, and
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: I'm quoting the Chiron directly. It reads no low t
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: in military he except the test testosterone levels of troops.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: Then Jesse Waters, grinning to the camera, says, this is
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: direct quote women on base, you better be careful. Port
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: calls women in Asia, you better be careful because these
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: guys are going to be wild animals and you better
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: watch out now. I know. Oh, come on, Chuck, can't
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: you take a joke. Yeah, let's joke about sexual assault
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: and rape. That's hilarious. The most watched network in cable
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: news at five o'clock in the afternoon, laughing about what
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: women service, women on American bases, women in Allied countries
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: where our sailors take port calls should fear from American
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: troops on hormones. Now, let me tell you why that
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: isn't funny and why no, I can't take this joke.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: And I mean that clinically, not as a school. The
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: United States military spent two decades trying to dig out
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: of sexual assault crisis so severe that Congress only stripped
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: prosecution decisions for those cases away from military commanders over
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon's objections. That reform happened because the institution could
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: not police itself.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: And now you think.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: This secretary's going to police this stuff. And now the
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: secretary's friendliest network, the former place of employment where he
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: built up his qualification, so apparently be the head of
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: our military, is marketing his new policy on air approvingly
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: as a warning to women. And as far as I
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: can tell, nobody at the Pentagon said a word or
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: were upset about what jesse Water said. I'm sure they'd
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: laughed along with it. When your allies joke that your
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: policy is a threat and then you don't correct them,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: that's not a gaff.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: Becomes a sales pitch.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: And there's one more layer to this, and this is
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the public service portion of the program, because millions of
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: young men are being marketed testosterone right now by an
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: entire influencer economy, and now apparently their own government is
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: doing it. So let's do a reality check and what
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: actually happens when a healthy thirty three year old decides
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: to go and agree to testosterone replacement therapy. First, testosterone
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: does decline about one percent a year after thirty that's
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: not a disease, it's called aging. Genuine clinical deficiency hypogonadism
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: is real, but it is not common at thirty three,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: and the symptoms it gets blamed for fatigue, low mood,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: weight gain, low drive are far more often caused by
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: bad sleep, stress, alcohol, and just simply being out of shape,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: which I not describes military life pretty well. The honest
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: prescription for most of these guys is sleep, not syringes. Second,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: and this is what the infomercial never tells you. When
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: you begin to take testosterone from outside sources instead of
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: using your own body, then your own body shuts down
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: its own production completely. Your testees, yes, those stop making testosterone,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: and they stop making sperm. TRT functions for many men
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: as a contraceptive. So for a thirty three year old
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: soldier who wants kids someday, that is not a footnote.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: That is the headline. Testicular atrophy isn't a rare side effect.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: It is the standard mechanism. It is the side effect
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: that you have to live with. You aret become permanently
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: in need of replacement testosterone. Third, if you try to
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: come off and you crash because your natural production takes months,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: sometimes a year to recover. If ever, then you're signing
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: up for a lifetime prescription of this stuff. And then
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: you have to add other monitorings because this stuff thickens
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: your blood. It's a big you know. And the big
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: NIH funded safety trial while reassuring on heart attacks, found
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: elevated rates of essentially a FIB and blood clots which
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: can lead to strugs. So this is a serious medication
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: for a diagnosed condition. It is not a lifestyle upgrade
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: or a tool to build super soldiers. And you know
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: who knows this. The military themselves know this because the
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Navy started drug testing seals for exactly these substances after
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: years of performance enhancement scandals in that special ops community.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: So the Pentagon currently tests elite operators to keep them
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: off of testosterone are best soldiers, while this secretary of
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: a made up title, the Secretary of Defense, builds a
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: program to help everyone else get on it because clearly
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: he wants it and he wants the government to pay
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: for his That contradiction hasn't been resolved, It's just been institutionalized. Huh,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: do you trust your penningon these days? I know I'm
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: struggling with it. And this is the real damage that
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Trump is doing. He's doing other damage to our institutions
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: and making us fearful of some things that we don't believe.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: But boy, the stuff he's done to what it was
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: essentially our greatest gift of the world, all voluntary military force,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and we're going to ruin the reputation of that globally
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: heck of a job. All right, Last Thursday, I'm going
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: to move on to ice here. Last Thursday I laid
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: out a thesis on this show. You get who you recruit,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: you get what you trained for, and you get what
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: you demand. And I told you the violence we saw
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: this month wasn't an anomaly. It was predictable due to
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: the machine that had been built to recruit ice officers.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: But I actually did something else on Thursday that now
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: I hedged because I didn't know all the facts. I
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: told you the officer in the main shooting. We didn't
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: know yet much about him, but we didn't think he
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: was a mean, pilled gamer with a badge. He actually
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: had been a career law enforcement officer with nearly a
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: decade of federal look experience. Well, once again, it turns
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: out you can't give DHS any You can't assume they
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: tell you anything is factually correct.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: You could technically come up with that description based on
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: his resume, But it was DHS's own framing of this officer,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: and I'm sorry I gave it the benefit of the doubt,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: and I shouldn't have it, because what we've learned over
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the weekend is truly astonished, and we've learned it from
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the Polton Press, Harold Washington Post. Have been a couple
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: of reports on the DHS still hasn't publicly named the officer,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: but two of his ex wives say that the officer
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: is David Brulette because he apparently told his two ex
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: wives on the phone that he's the one who shot
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: and killed Johann Sebastian Duran Guero in Biddeford.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Pain.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: And about that nearly decade a federal law enforcement experience
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: at DHS put up.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: He's he served nine months at the main Department of Corrections,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: less than a year as a child support enforcement agent.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: He had a resign from that. He had stints of
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: the a police officer. He was a small town cop,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: a truck driver, a DoorDash driver. By last year he
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: was a struggling real estate agent whose driver's license had
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: been revoked over unpaid child support. That's not a career
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: in law enforcement. That is a resume that should have
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: set off every single alarm in the functioning background investigation
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: to decide whether to end this guy. Badge and a
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: gun on behalf of the federal government. And the alarms weren' hidden.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: They were all in court records. Two ex wives, protective orders,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: allegations of boiling water thrown at a woman holding an inofant,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: a gun pointed at his first wife in the shower,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: a child dragged out of bed by her feet, and
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: this one will stop you cold. The same day he
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: told his ex wife he join eyes. She says he
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: left her a voicemail saying her throat should be slipped.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: She gave the tape to the post. Now, these are
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: all allegations. He hasn't been charged with anything, but they
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: were sitting in mail, main court files, on paper for years.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: Any frankly in turn to a background investigator who wanted
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: to find them could have found them. The question was
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: whether anyone was looking. And here's what I think. I
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: don't think anyone was. He was hired in November. It's
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: the exact window when ICE basic training had been slashed
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: forty percent from seventy two days to forty two And
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: because he had quote prior law enforcement experience, he likely
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: qualified for the accelerated track, which is which a former
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: ICE instructor described to Congress as self certified, self paced
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: online course. Can you believe this shit? That same instructor
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: testified that cadets were finishing the academy unable to demonstrate
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: a solid grasp of tactics for the law. Now look
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: to be fair. The new Secretary of Homeland Security, Mark
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: Wayne Mullen, did reverse the shortened training earlier this year,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: but more than nine hundred officers went through the short
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: version before the change was made, the training got fixed.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: The officers it produced were already on the street. And
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: when reporters asked Mullen on Friday, I brought Brulette's documented history,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: he said, of course he hadn't heard about it. You know,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: he's used to the senator answer of I haven't seen
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: it yet. He claimed he learned about his own officer
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: from the newspapers after the man was dead, after another
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: man was dead. So last week I asked, what happens
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: to the experience hires this machine choose through. Turns out
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: I asked the wrong question. Machine never even checked whether
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: the experience was real. I said on Thursday that tragedy
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: and this system wasn't a risk. It was a statistical guarantee.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: The way they recruited ice agents, they were looking for goons.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: They weren't looking for fellow American citizens, to care about
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: fellow Americans. So it turns out, though I was wrong
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: about one thing, I was too generous. This system didn't
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: fail to catch David Brulette. It was never built. Actually
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: look to see if they could catch him all. Right now,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: before we get to my interview today, it's Daniel Silva,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the great thriller writer. You know Gabriel Alan, his sort
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: of character that he's now written twenty six books. He
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: turns him out. This one's fantastic. We don't spend a
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: lot of time talking about the book itself. We spend
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of time because my friend Danny Silva is
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: a former journalist and his stuff is always historically accurate,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: factually sort of in the moment, And this caper takes
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: place in Europe at a time when European allies are
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: questioning their very relationship with the United States. So basically,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Danny and I spent a lot of time worried about
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: America's place in the world, as much as we talk
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: about his fantastic new book with mister Allan. But before
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: we get to that interview, I want to spend a
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: few minutes on a governor's race. Then, on the surface,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: this is going to sound like pure inside baseball Wisconsin
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Democrats primary candidate's dropping out, candidate's jumping back in campaign
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: finance problems. If you're not a political junkie, you might
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: have already changed, you know, scrolled up or fast forward.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: But please stick with me here, because what this race
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: is telling us is something important about where this Democratic
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Party is headed right. This is another one of these
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: larger fights. As I joked, if the California governor's race
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: on the Democratic side and the main Senate race out
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of Baby, it would be this Wisconsin governor's mess. So
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: you've got the California dynamic, an establishment desperately trying to
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: figure out who its candidate is, and you've got the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Main dynamic, a growing fear that the party's activist wing
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: could nominate someone who makes the general election much harder
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: than it has to be. Now, before I explain today's
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: specific mess in the Badger State, you have to understand
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: how Democrats got here. Tony Evers is leaving office after
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: two terms as Wisconsin's governor. He chose not to run
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: for a third. He wasn't terming with, and in fact,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Evers was exactly the kind of candidate Democrats needed in
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, and they've got it. Frankly, both twenty eighteen
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: and twenty twenty. You're very so smilar vibes inside the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. Find people like Joe Biden and Tony Evers,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: people that don't scare the middle right. Because remember when
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the party was back then, Donald Trump had just been
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: elected in Wisconsin, Scott Walker had become one of the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: defining Republican governors in America. Democrats weren't looking for a superstar.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: They were simply looking for somebody who could simply win
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: in this environment. And Tony Evers fit the bill. Former
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: state superintendent, soft spoken, competent, not very political, not flashy,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: not polarizing. He was the school's guy, right and he
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: beat Walker, and he got reelected four years later, and
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: by any reasonable measure, it's had a fairly successful governorship.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: But there's an important difference between being a successful governor
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and building a political organization. Look around the country that
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: same year, in twenty eighteen, Gretchen Wetmer immediately became the
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: face of Michigan Democrats. Josh Shapiro quickly became synonymous with
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Democrats. They didn't just win office, They built an
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: infrastructure around themselves. They developed some benches, they cultivated successors. Well,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: we don't know yet with Shapiro, we do know with Whimper.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Tony Evers never really did that. And it's not I'm
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: not This is not a criticism. Some governors like governing
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: more than politics. But eventually everyone leaves office and when
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: Evers announced he was stepping aside. Democrats discovered something. They
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: didn't have an obvious air. Instead, they had some chaos.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: The sitting lieutenant governor looked like the establishment choice. Remember
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: now just give you Tony Evers. First lieutenant governor in
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: his first term was Mandela Barnes, who was the Democratic
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: nominee for Senate, lost around Johnson. He is thought of
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: as be the perception as he lost because he was
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: perceived as too far to the left. Ironically, Mandela Barnes
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: now is not the candidate furthest to the left in
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: this primary, but he is one of the candidates running
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: for governor. The second lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez, was considered
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: a little closer to Evers than Barnes was political and
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: so that's why she looked like the establishment choice. Then
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: her campaign ran into some serious financial reporting problems. It
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: looks like someone stole money. Right what they were it
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: is having and when they actually had were two different stories.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: So campaign staff were fired, questions piled up, and she
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: had to drop out. Meanwhile, the Milwaukee County executive David Crawley,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: he had entered the race, then he left the race,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: endorsed the lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez. Then she exits, he
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: jumps back into the race, which he did this weekend.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: And then even Tony Evers, who had largely played neutral
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: he'd stayed out of the primary, he decided to weigh
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: in behind Crawley. So what's this all about. Well, there's
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: fear of one candidate whenever you see an outgoing governor
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: abandoned neutrality to rescue a succession fight, kind of like
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: what we saw Gray Davis FORREDI and slip on that
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: one Gavin Newsom in California, right when he finally came
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: in and endorsed Basera. That's usually a sound that party
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: leaders are nervous. So here's the interesting part. While all
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: this was happening, one candidate simply kept campaigning. Francesca Home.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: She's running unapologetically from the left. She's not interested in
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: reassuring moderates, she's not interested in softening our image. She's
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: essentially saying the Democratic Party should stop apologizing for progressive politics.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: That's her basic message. And because everybody else has been
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: busy fighting each other, she's suddenly become one of the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: strongest candidates in the field. Now I want to be
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: careful here. This isn't yet a story about Frince Sesska Han.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: It's a story about the Democratic establishment. Because this keeps happening,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: the party establishment increasingly finds itself asking who can we
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: rally around instead of who have we spent the last
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: eight years developing? What have we done to the party
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: to respond to all parts of the base, all parts,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: all little facets, all the different factions inside the party,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: And it's all a very different question. And of course
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: you know why Wisconsin matters so much, right, And I'll
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: say this about Wisconsin. It's probably the most misunderstood swing
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: state in America. People hear swing state and they imagine
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: neighborhoods full of swing voters who vacillate back and forth.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: That's not what Wisconsin looks like. Wisconsin is one of
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: the most evenly divided states in the country, but it's
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: made up of increasingly unequal pieces. There's really no swing
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: county in the state anymore. Republicans dominate much of rural Wisconsin,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: Democrats dominate Milwaukee, and of course really dominate Madison. And
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: you know, when I first started, Brown County, home of
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Green Bay, used to be a swing County. Yeah, the
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: labor members would vote Democratic. Now those guys are voting Trump,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: and now Green Bay is no longer a swing area anymore.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: Really is just sort of a battle of turnout. And
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: so what you have is very red places and very
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: blue places whose votes almost perfectly cancel each other out statewide.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: And it's what makes Wisconsin the most fascinating polarized state
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: in America.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: That's what I've done.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: If you go on YouTube, you can find some specials
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: I did with Meet the Press reports just about Wisconsin.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Here's a purple state with no community that's actually purple, right,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: It's a bunch of red and blue communities that are
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: almost exactly the same size come election day. So it
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: creates a different kind of challenge for Democrats. Madison is
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: unquestionably the of today's Wisconsin Democratic Party. It's where all
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the energy is, it's where all the activists are, It's
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: where all the progressives are. But Madison has always been
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: more complicated, a bit more of a complicated brand to
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: sell statewide. Historically, Democrats have won statewide when they convinced
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: suburban and independent voters they were pragmatis first, and not Madison.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: Democrats Tony Evers looked like a school administrator. Jim Doyle
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: projected competence. Even Tammy Baldwin, unquestionably progressive, has always wrapped
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: herself in a very Wisconsin first identity. The successful state
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: wide candidates don't necessarily govern from the center, but the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: campaign in a way that makes the center comfortable. They
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: don't come across as radical. And that's the debate Democrats
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: are having right there. The active as doing argues voters
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: want more authenticity. The establishment argues Wisconsin still rewards reassurance
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: and competency.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: Who's right.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: We're going to find out. Don't overlook the Republican side.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: This isn't a race where Democrats can assume they win.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: No matter what.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin is a swing stay. Every state wide race is
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: super competitive, and the Republican nominee, no matter the year,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: starts with a legitimate chance to win. That's why Democrats
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: are so nervous. They don't dismiss this as another So
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: don't dismiss this as another messy primary. What you're watching
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: is a party trying to answer a much bigger question,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: what comes after the Biden generation? Because Tony Evers is
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: really sort of a microcosm of Biden, except he actually
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: won real mention right, Biden never did, but it was
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: a placeholder. The party is still unformed around him, and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: that's what we're seeing now with Biden. So can the
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: establishment still shape nominations or is that power slipped the
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: way completely. California's wrestling with this question. Maine is by
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: the way, it looks like Troy Jackson's going to be
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: that nominee. He's seemed to dominate the weekend caucuses. Now
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin's wrestling with it too, because Wisconsin remains perhaps the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: premier battleground state in America. Whatever he answered, Democrats arrive
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: at here probably won't stay here, right. If Francisca hang
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: gets the nomination and wins, it's another reminder. It's just
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: like with Platner, just like with abdual Site. If those
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: candidates can win state wide in these swing states, it
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: will define twenty eight one way. If these candidates get
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: nominated and lose in a good Democratic year, it will
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: get to find another way. Speaking of campaign politics, Arizona
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: primary is on Tuesday. We'll have a live election stream
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: from ten to midnight Eastern time. Myself, Chrys Jeffrey Skelly.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: This is SHQ one big race there by the way,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: it's a reminder. Arizona is a reminder what everything I
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: just described about Wisconsin. That's the Arizona Republican Party. It's
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: a total mess. Their most electable candidate for governor is
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: going to get trounced in the primary thanks to an
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: election denier more trumpy candidate than Andy Biggs. So be
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: sure to tune in for special coverage Tuesday night. And
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: with that, I'll sneak at a break and we'll come back.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: My friend Danny Salton.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Well joining me now is somebody who is I guess
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: almost a semi regular. I at least try to have
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: him on once a year when he has a new
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: book out. And almost actually it is clockwork. I don't
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: think we should say it's almost like clockwork. It is clockwork.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Daniel Silva is out with his latest book, Another Adventure
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: by mister Milan Gabriel Lan and this one takes place
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: in the English countryside. This is number twenty six for
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: Gabriel twenty six.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: I guess the most interesting part of that is that
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: there was always supposed.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: To be one. There's supposed to be one.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: How old is he How old was he when he started?
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Have you aged a moment on this years?
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: Or do you know what? He's ageless at this point?
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: You know, And.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: People always ask me, well, if you'd known you were
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: going to write about him for so long? God knows
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: how old Aircule Poirou was at the end of it.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: Younger, I don't understand.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, right, and so so one of
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: the things that I tried to do with him, I
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: gave him a subtle makeover.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: You know. I always knew that this is sort of.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: The where I wanted the series to end, that this
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: is the kind of stories that I wanted to write
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: with him.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: I wanted to coming in for the landing. Are you
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: trying to say that Gabriel's coming in for the landing? Here?
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: He's he is? The way we see him now is
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: how is he's going to be?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: I think, and I tire more often than Tom Brady.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: Right, He's he is retired, but he just does little
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: little jobs. I'm working on the I have in my
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: hot little hand here in the first pages of the
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: next book, and you know he'll be working with the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: Italian police again. He's the thing about Gabriel is he's
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: incredibly versatile, and so he can do lots of different things.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: But andally what.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: He's got to be perpetually young enough to physically do stuff,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: and old enough to have all of these friends and
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: courses and experience so correct.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: And I froze him in place. I froze him in place.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: I buffed a few years off of him. I dwell
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: less on some of his his backstory and the exact
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: dates of it. And I'm trying to do it a
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: little sleight of hand with the reader. He is married
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: to a younger woman, and he has two young kids,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: and he presents on the page a little a little
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: young to is in dog years.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: And very well. I mean, look, let me, we're dancing
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: around this. How much how much of you do you
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: put yourself? How much of yourself do you feel like
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: you put into Gabri.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: I think that that a novelist, if he's being honest,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: and will be little litter bits and piece to ourselves
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: all through it. And so Gabriel and I have lots
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: of things in common. I wish I could paint like him.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: I can't.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: I wish I had a a you really had a
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: love of painting or he wouldn't have been an expert.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: Correct, correct, correct. I love art.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: My mother took me to uh to see the Van
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: Go exhibit when it came to San Francisco when I
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: was a kid. There's this big touring exhibition of Vango's works,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: and I was just blown away from.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: That moment on But but yeah, I love of art.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, he is.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: He does allow me to pursue things that I'm interested in.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: Art history, history of the Second World War, the history
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: of the Holocaust, all kinds of things.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: Gabriels, you know, a lot of stuff flows through.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: The guy, and so I get to I get to
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: explore things that I want to write about.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: You bring back a character. I guess that was a
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: kid that is now an adult. And I was just thinking,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: do you have some tree character tree that you keep
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: track of?
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: Twenty six novels, Like I'd be like, oh wait a minute,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: we had a kid, Let's try that, right.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: You know, he was a very special character because he
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: was he was exactly the age of Gabriel's child. I
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: actually met the real version of this kid one day
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: when I was just just the way Gabriel did. I
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: was a friend of mine had a house on the
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: Helford Passage in Cornwall, and took me out Sailine on
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: his catch one day, and there's this little kid waiting
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: for us when we came back to the k and
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: and and you know, don't don't be around me when
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: I'm working, because you're going to end up in.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: The book, in your book. Yeah and so, but.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: I always wanted to bring that character back. And what
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: you know, what would he be?
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: What? What do he grow up to be? He grew
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: up to be a Cornish policeman.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: I I tell you I have given serious, serious thought
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: to spinning off that character into his own series.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: I just I love him. Yeah, his own serious.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Well, that's another way to come character. To get a
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: little younger too.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not I don't give any thought to it in
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: terms of his age. It just is what he is.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: I'm writing it the books a little differently now, and
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't worry about it.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: So I read you wrote this one partially in Cornwall.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: I did not get to write this one, I wrote,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: I wrote the first one in Cornwall.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: You wrote the first one.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Regrettably, I was not able to go back.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: And I keep trying to.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: My wife, as you know, is a it's a hot
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: shot reporter overt CNN and and can we go can
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: we just you know, spend the autumn and Cornwall let
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: me work there, No have to work. So I wish
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: I hadn't been able to, but no I didn't. I
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: didn't go back for this one. I know, I know
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: i'd like the back of my hand.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: Though I was just gonna say, you're very I mean,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: I feel like you you you spend a lot of
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: time in a handful of places with these books, definitely, definitely,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I've sent him to some some ugly places
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: now and again.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: But I think the the five of the series is
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: is European art and European art and elegance, and those
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: are the settings that I like.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: And so it's basically.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: The he lives in Venice, he has a summer house
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: in in in the English countryside. You got to get
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: out of Venice in the summer. Too many tourists and
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: too too much humidity. And so those are sort of
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: with the dual settings for the for the for the series.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Right now, boy, this book is very feels very visual,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: like it's a very it's it's a ransom. How look,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: you're a former reporter, which means you're still a reporter
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: when you're doing so. Definitely, Tom, walk me through how
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: you learned about sort of modern kidnappings and modern negotiation.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: I've read and studied about the techniques as as much
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: as I could in terms of the negotiating techniques and
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: how these these they're called K and R kidnapp and ransom.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: You know, these are a select group of individuals who
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: get hired by big insurance companies. You know, if you
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: have if you're a business executive or a famous person,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: you most of them carry this knows K and R
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: insurance kidnapp and ransom insurance. And when you know business
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: executives or whoever kidnapped here, you bring in these guys
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: and they negotiate a deal. And so I applied their
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: techniques for negotiation to Gabriel, and he's he's actually a
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: pretty damn good K and R specialist, and he knows
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: how to negotiat a deal with him. I think that
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: that chapter I can't remember what which what number it is,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: but I tried to do the negotiations like almost like.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: A work of art.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: So I think it's it's very tense, but it's actually
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: a rather beautiful chapter. With the way he does those negotiations.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: It seems as if you were creating visuals. I mean,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: you know, look, this is this is one. I mean,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: I keep waiting for my limited suits. I know somebody
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: owns owns the rights to this and hasn't made these
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: movies yet or TV shows or limited series were very
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: We could discuss that later. We can discuss that later.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: I know, I don't I'm going to whine about it.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: I'm you're you're, You're just going to keep producing more.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: It is visual. It is visual. But but if you
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: look at you, if you analyze the text, though, this
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: is something that I say, if you analyze the text,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: I am not actually describing things in great, great, great detail.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: I'm writing it in a way with proper point of
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: view that tricks you into seeing it for yourself.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: And and and.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: I'm also cognizant of the fact that that these days
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: most people sit with a with a book with their
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: bone or their laptop, and they're going and they're finding
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: every place that.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: You assume that they may. I want to see what
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: that looks like. I want to see that visual in
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: my head, interesting sure people not that I with a
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: second screen.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: I I assume they do. I know they do.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: But but at the same time, you wouldn't want me
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: to try to describe every single building, every street in
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: in minute detail. What I'm doing is a it's a
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: it's a sleight of hand. It's parlor trick to make
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: you I think you see it, and that's the way
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: I go about it.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about drones because.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: You look I I issued a warning that that I
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: you sort of were being a You're gonna sound prophetic
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: and none of us want you to be. Which is
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: we're going to have a major incident that's going to
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: be triggered by drones. There's no doubt we aren't. Which
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: are how what is going to look like? Is it?
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Is it a political assassination? Is it a bombing of
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: some sort? Is it? You know? I don't want to
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: sit here and idly speculate, because it feels like you're
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: you're you're somehow wishing it or trying to put put
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: it in there. But it is pretty clear a technology,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: and this is a reminder about all sort of new technology,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: is that the people that invented think they can keep
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: it from from bad people using it.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: And yeah, looks that you have two ground conflicts that
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: we've had our two wars.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: One of the mother the mother of invention is necessity,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: right of course.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, so the Ukrainians were had their backs against
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: the wall and they devised a way to fight back.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: Now they are the drone specialists.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: They have have Ukrainian advisors working with golf countries and.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: To astonishing industry that Ukraine created here.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Chinese are preparing the drone swarms and the ability.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: We're going to have.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: Grounds drones for lack of a better word, robotic soldiers.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: Were a visual of Star Wars, those prequels, and they
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: have the the clone armies coming at us. You know.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: But but in terms of of being able to deliver
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: explosives to a target, there's there's no question that in
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: my mind that we're going to have a serious drone
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: incident and whether it's an assassination or a mass casualty event.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: And so I you know, I had to kind of
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: become an expert in drones and then talking to people
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: who I couldn't identify in my in my acknowledgments, who
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: were actually have been working with the Ukrainians and and
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: and trying to do that explain to me the various
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: types of drones that we have, various ways of guidance systems,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: and and and the and the countermeasures that are available,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: and then try to pick and choose what I wanted
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: to get the ending that that that I wanted for
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: the novel. It's without giving too much away, it's it's
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: an exciting finish. I will say that it takes place
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: in London during a very high stakes diplomatic meeting, and
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: it was a lot of fun to write.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when you say a lot of fun to write,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: but it was also did you feel any trepidaty, like
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: some trepidation like such an I might happen? You know?
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: Gosh, if I did that, I wouldn't you know. I've
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: had trepidation a couple of times. I mean, I did
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: write a book a few years ago called a Black Widow,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: and I actually ended up putting a forward to it
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: because it was it was an attack in Paris, and
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: it was so similar to the attack in Paris that
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: the big one that happened that I literally thought, gosh,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: I can't, I can't, I can't write this book any longer,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: and that's why I explained to readers what happened, and
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: I and I finished the book as planned. But it
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: was exactly exactly the way it turned out to be.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: You were right, you would sort of you would, you
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: would drafted and all of a sudden that happens while
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: you're in the middle of that.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: Yes, and right down to the fact that there was
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: there were connections between the Paris cell and uh and
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: and a part of Brussels called Mullenbeck where there were
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: a number of of isis radical space.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: It happens from time to time.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: But I mean, look, look, I'm not making anything up
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: here that when there was a major drone incident in
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: the Copenhagen as what all we all recall, there was
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: an emergency summit meeting that was held in Copenhagen a
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: few days later, And is that right in the author's
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: note the Europeans had to bring in massive arrays of
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: of of anti drone kit and other personnel because they
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: were worried that there was going to be a drone
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: attack on the heads of state administer sitting around that table.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: I'm not breaking any new ground here. The Europeans are
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: already very very nervous about a boy drones and the
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: and the impact that they can have on their economy
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: and their and their political leaders.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: M You know, I was thinking about this when I
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: saw you writing about drones, and I was thinking about, frankly,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: all the different sophisticated ways that moving currency has changed
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: just in your twenty six years of this, right like you,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: you do a great job of keeping your books modern,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: Right like you, you in and so and so much
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: has changed. And we think, you know, take the issue
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: of there's cameras everywhere. So on one hand, I think
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: it's harder than ever to get away with certain crimes.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: I've had this theory that the real reason for this
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: sort of larger trend line that essentially crime has been
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: going down.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: All Right, we have these ups and downs.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: But when you compare to say, the life you and
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: I lived in the seventies and eighties compared to you
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: are today always and I think the biggest difference is
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: cameras are everywhere, right, that there are just people don't
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: want to get caught, right, And that's going to It's
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: not going to eliminate all criminals, but it's going to
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: eliminate probably a third of them have them. You know,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: what is it that that fear of getting caught does, right,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: putting that barrier, And yet we have cameras anywhere. And
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: then yet with drones and with crypto, it's never been
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: more easier to be anonymous or to be further away.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: So here you thought you eliminated the ability for people
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: to disappear in plain side, and yet that isn't the
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: case because you can now mask your identity so easily
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: in so many different places.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: No, and yes, certain aspects of crime are down, and yes,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: there are cameras everywhere, but you can go to plenty
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: of places here in the United States and out in
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: the sticks and smaller communities, and there's plenty of plenty
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: of places with their cameras. But look, I think that
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: the just the general overall level of criminality and corruption
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: in the world right now is staggering. And I've talked
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: about that this this very issue with with friends that
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: the FBI.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: The old FBI staggering. Is it just.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: It's a money log of money, luxury of drugs, of
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: drugs of all kinds of art and crime as well
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: and fraud.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: These criminal syndicates are their own international Yeah, right.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: As I put as I pointed out, and in one
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: of the books recently, and I think it was the
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: last book that that the Italian organized crime earns more
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: than Deutsche Bank and McDonald's combined each year. That's how
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: big these groups are. And that's just one. You know,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: a set of criminals syndicates there, there are, they are
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: spread throughout the world, and there is a lot of
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: primate war, perfect perfect for a character like Gabriel Law.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: So when you talk and I and I appreciate you
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: saying the old FBI, we know that there's a current there,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: but that's the same place that there aren't actual left.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, you hear about this. I mean, look, I've
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: got sources in both military intelligence, civilian intelligence, and in
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: domestic it's just all the different things we're not looking
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: at right now because of the of.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: This, because they're they're turmoil. Yeah, I don't know why.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, I have to say, you know, President Silva,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: President Todd, I don't I don't think that you would
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: be you know, jettisoning your allies in Europe and and
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: and and creating chaos and been. You're a challenging services
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: if if you didn't want something bad to happen to
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: your country.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: I don't understand the rationale why we.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Or the only one rationale Like you start to think
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: of it, none of it makes sense unless the unless,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: the main unless the unless. I mean, that's the thing.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 5: The only thing that explains it is that you're like,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 5: why would you write why would you rip up the
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 5: American intelligence community?
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: Why would you rip up the FI? I don't know.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: Why would you would you destroy NATA?
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Let me let me flip it on you. You write
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: about the g r U, so I know you've studied
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: them very carefully.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: If you were the g r U. Okay, where would
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: you want an asset to be in the US government?
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: I assumed that they would love. The best asset for
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: the g r U would be somebody that sees all
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: the intelligence. Oh sure, So to me it would be
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: d n I and so I remember it. Just look
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: and that was my conver Not sure.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure that would be a gr U asset
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: or an SVR asset, But.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: I certainly love the idea of oh, the person in
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: charge of seeing everything it all comes through one entity.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: What a great person, What a great place to have
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: an asset and that person not chosen for that job.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, of all things, it was one of those things.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: And I know we're like, we're pretending, we're like, it
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: does not speak this, and yet time and again you
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: can't help but go back.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: Look there.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: And yet anything to keep in mind is that there
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: are all kinds of different assets.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, there are.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: You don't have to be MFI to be an asset,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: you know, you know someone who has recruited in his
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: youth and brought up to be an agent of penetration.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: There are different levels of assets.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: And Escabriel Lines pointed out a few years ago that
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: some of the best assets don't even realize that their assets.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: And and and they've been they have been.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: So how do they be income assets?
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: They're either they either come to the table as an
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: asset or they get compromised, compromised and you just tell
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: them but that your compromise this is this, and then
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: they just start sort of running themselves to try to
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: bless you, to stay in your good graces. There's that,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: there's that kind of person. But but some of these
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: people are just it's a good old phrase, it's been
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 3: used over and over, but just useful idiots.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: Just useful idiots.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: And and for some reason we got one into the
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: position of d n.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: Of the Guru. You can't even make I wouldn't. I
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: wouldn't put it in the novel. I would not put
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: the Guru in a.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: Right because it doesn't feel like a right. Look, I mean, please,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: the fourth of July was a caricature of the caricature.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you do.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: Did you happen to did you happen to read the
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I did you happen to read the big
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 3: piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: crisis meeting that took place.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: At the headquarters and.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 3: No no about about Trump jettisoning the European allies, that
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: they had this big meeting at at NATO headquarters that
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: are in this the fishbowl or whatever they call that room,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: and they're just throwing up their hands. They don't they
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 3: don't know what to do. And I try to capture
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: a little of that. I mean, you had to deploy
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: troops to Greenland to defend Greenland against a potential attack
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 3: from a fellow NATO member.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: It's just madness.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: What So, there's a part of me that thinks, in
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: ten years, NATO Europe will be stronger and that will
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: be a young thing, but the period between now and
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: ten years from now is going to be shaky.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, although I have to say that that I think
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: that if the if the wars were to stay conventional,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: that's a big if, you know. I think that the
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: combined natal forces could take the Russians right now.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: That's my opinion.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: I agree with that. I have to tell you my
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: my uh friend Ian Bremer, who runs your yes.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: Yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, fan is Yeah.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: He is growing increasingly concerned that they're that the the
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: leader of Russia is becoming more erratic and more clearly
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: and there's he does not get factual information in it's
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: head anymore. And that is a very scary proposition.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: One thing I was going to say to my actually
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: my last point was that the frontline country do not
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: mess with the Poles.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: By the way, they are.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: Heavily armed, they're trained, they're ready, and the Baltics have
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: have you know, they're small and they don't have the
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: man power.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: Do you want to face a Lithuanian boxer.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: No, they these guys are these guys are are are
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 3: ready to go.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: Finland is ready to go.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: And so he's not with you. It's important you said
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: the words conventional, which is why I brought up the
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: erratic behavior of Putin. That's the big fear right now
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: is that he's not a state. You know, there's always
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: been this debate how rational of an actor is he
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: and he's you know, Putin has always thought to have
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: been a rational actor. But right now there's not a
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: lot of people that say that he.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, he clearly thought obviously that it was going
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: to be a two or three day warn this was
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: going to be it was going to gobble up this
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 3: this country.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: This is your fourth part of the Ukraine, Bhore.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: By the way, Yeah, my friends in the in the
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: in the in the in the business, and you know
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: they call them the Yukis, by the way, that's what
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: we call them inside the community. The Yuki's may knew
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 3: they were ready, they're ready, and that they were it
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: was not going to be a cakewalk for them. And
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: and he just got himself into a into a pickle.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: By the way, if I if as I right at
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: the end of the book, we ought to and someone
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 3: someone forgive you. I can't remember the piece that was
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: written day or two ago. We ought to be putting
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: the screws to Vladimir Putin right now. We should not
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 3: be trying.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: To trump a huge opportunity, the opportunity.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: He's going to go to NATO and try to strike
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: the deal. Hell no, now, there's no.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: You don't have to do a deal. He wants the
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: deal badly. I mean, you know, well, no, you're not
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: going to get it on his terms.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: The irony now is that is that I don't think
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: to lose Crimea well. And the irony was Ukraine might
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: have been willing to sort of not let Crimea go
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: but not fight it if that were part of the negotiations,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: like they were willing to sort of accept that kind
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: of outcome. They're not. Now they got victory inside.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 3: They too, And we got people in Moscow like going
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 3: to be like hurrying from place to place here pretty
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: soon because because they can't stop these these attacks they're
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 3: incapable of.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: And I'm a little I think about the warnings Biden made,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: don't strike inside of Russia, and I remember just feeling
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: imagine being told you're being beaten up. Look, you can
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: only fight back below the ways. You can't hit in
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: the face and You're just like, well.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: That was with our weapons.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: I get that.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he didn't want us to use He didn't
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 3: want them to use our weapons to do that. And
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 3: they've developed their own capability and it's very effective. Obviously
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: very effective.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: It is. So how do you tackle Israel's reputation right
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: now around the world with.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 3: Gabriel's I have moved him out five books ago. He's
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 3: like many other people like him. He you know, had
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 3: the ability to to leave the country. I mean, Gabriel
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 3: is an old social democrat, Ashkenazi, secular Jewish person as
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: if you call them in Israel these days, endangered species.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: He's hard to be a majority of the Israeli. You know,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: the Israel I visited was I was shocked at how
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: secular it was. The first time I went there, I
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: had no idea.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: Now it's not, it's much more religious. It's the.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: This Rahi population air Borne chooses Saphardic, choose, as we
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 3: call him, this way up the extremest wing. His radical
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: settlers are. I mean, we have radical settlers running important
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 3: ministries in in Bekavere and Smotri. It's not it's not
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 3: Gabriel's Israel. He people have asked me, well, I don't
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: why isn't he involved in this? He would he wouldn't
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 3: be in the same room with those guys, let alone
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: serving a cabinet with them, and in fact that they
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: wouldn't warnt him.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: You know these are not it's not he'd have been purged.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: He wouldn't have survived.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: He would have been he would have been purged.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 3: He would have been And look the people like Gabriel,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 3: many of them have been the most outspoken in terms
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 3: of the way that war has been waged. And I'm
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: talking sorry to old line security professionals.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: That I have people tired a retired major team and
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: spoken my congregation a few months ago. I know exactly
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: the type of person you're talking about.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so you know who he is. He looks
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: like highly sounds how he thinks.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 3: And they've been the most critical, and they've used words
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: like war crimes and crimes against humanity. And a few
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 3: weeks ago that had of the former head of the
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 3: massade went out of a tour of the West Bank
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: and said, see what was going on out there in
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: terms of the settler violence against the air population, said
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 3: he was the same to be Jewish he didn't say
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 3: he was ashamed to be Israeli. He said he was
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 3: ashamed to be Jewish. So so the country. I mean,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 3: I knew I could see this change coming from a
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 3: long way off and prepared for it.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: But you know, it's just it's the other.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 3: But the other thing is that that you know, why people,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 3: why haven't you written? But you want me to write
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 3: about a war where more than one hundred thousand people
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 3: have been killed and in Kaza and Lebanon and Iran
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: and uh, you know, many twenty thousand children at least
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 3: in cause this is not something I want to write about,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 3: and I don't think it's anything that people want to
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 3: read about, to be honest with you. No, someone's going
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 3: to write a really good novel about it someday.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: And it's it's it's not going to be it's not
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: going to be good reading.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: For instant reminder that radicalism usually creates more radicalism. And
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: just we're watching it in our own country, right, We're
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: watching the two bases of the two political parties, right,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: I realize each other I was doing this.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: That's it's such a good point. That's such a good point.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's what happened. Look, I'm not gonna what
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: Hamas did only radicalize the far right of Israel. I mean,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: it's like we consider and say who started it, It
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I haven't heard in Israel,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: Israeli government official talk about the two state solution in
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: a decade.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: We are already at to facto one state solution.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: And the two state with what they've done with these settlers.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: I know it would be impossible to.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: It sort of have to be a virtual two states,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 3: you know, a state two state of mind.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: Here's a country out there that has like non contiguous
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not quite ind it's sort of like exactly,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: it's like an island nation without water, right.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 3: Right, and so, but the communities are like this that
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: they can't you can't disentangle them. Facts on the ground
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 3: is the term that you used a term of art
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: in the in the Middle East in the conflict. And
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: the facts of the ground that now are that there's
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 3: just it's inseparable. It's there's a there's a straight line
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: the highway from from Jerusalem to the Jordanian border that
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: that's solid. Israel they controlled now, so they have two
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 3: little patchworks of of of of Palestinian areas that it's
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: not doable.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: Now, I'll just be honest with you, Daniel, we Israel
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: could use a prime minister like Gabriel Alon.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: It's the only job left for him.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's only job left for him.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: I mean the ironing is that it's they need a
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: they need a they need a Ben Garian moment, they
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: need a George Washington moment again because this guy. I mean,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: the most remarkable thing about BB is how every single
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: American president that I've covered professionally their hands. Yes, at
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: one point they're like, let they're out. They that's it,
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: like that guy. And they even like they use an
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: F bomb, which they normally wouldn't. Right, like every one
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: of them, which would like whatever you think of our
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: American President's okay, from H. W. Bush through Trump, right,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt. And yet the one thing all of
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: them have in common, they get in a room, and
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: the one person they be and moan about the most
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: would be BB.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: I love the transcript of the of the phone call
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: that's in Maggie and John's book, Jonathan's book, You're just
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: throwing every day everyone hates you. You're It was that's
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: one thing that that that Donald Trump has in common
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: with Brockenbam.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: I guess it's the one thing where they actually like, yeah,
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: you know this is something. You know, that guy's a
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: real pain in me, you know what. Yes he is,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: and he causes me all sorts of political problems.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: Yes he does.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: But there's it.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 3: There's it, I don't. I mean, there's this fortress Israel
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 3: mindset that has sprung up. They think they can do
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: it alone. Net who's given speeches about it. Yeah, so
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 3: when you have so when when you get to South
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 3: African level of disinvestment and trade embargoes and things like that,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 3: things could get really ugly pretty quickly.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: M I'm gonna make this. You think Gabriel still a zionis.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 3: This Gabriel believe that that there should be a Jewish
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: homeland for absolutely. I'm still design see that once upon
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 3: a time one could be a liberal and design at
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: the same time.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: The fact that change that isn't the case. And the
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: irony is that the domestic policy in Israel still quite
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: liberal on the grand.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: Inspectorm some some, I mean they went from a social
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 3: democratic you know, centrally managed I mean these I mean,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 3: this wasn't it wasn't a Marxist state when it came
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 3: into being.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: It's a socialist because it.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: Was more like a socialist European country, right, you're sort
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: of extream. Socialist European is probably the way.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 3: And so the economy has much more wide open than
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 3: it was, and so there have been changes to the
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 3: fabric of the country like that. But look, people, you know,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 3: we have we talked about self segregation here, okay, and
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 3: there's really they're there are just different enclaves of communities
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 3: and they have you know, liberal Ashka Nazis have their
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 3: little areas down on the coast. And I have friends
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 3: who said, I don't even go up there to referring
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 3: to Jerusalem.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: I don't even go up there. Those people are crazy.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: I stay down here, my little place.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 3: So there's still just like in the ancient times when
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 3: you had you know, Hellenized liberal twos along the coast
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 3: and you had the crazy something and so the country
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 3: is very very antsonized right now, siloed. That's it's dangerous.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: No, it's that. Look, I I'm I read this column.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you read Nick Leeman's column in
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: The New York Times today.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: I was just pretty I was just I did. But
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: he I think he he talked about that his in
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: his youth, how that man you could be, you could
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: be a Zionist, and you know, zion.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: Not all liberals first were Zionists. There was not all
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: like there was a you know, the reform. I didn't
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: fully appreciate that reform. Judaism was not always a uh
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: was not always universally Zionist.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: I mean you could go back to Firstal's time.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 3: Okay, So the very idea and so assimilated European Jews
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 3: were saying, come on, you know, don't do this.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: We know this is everything's okay.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: It wasn't okay if you're if you're you know, living
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 3: in the pale of settlement and and got you got
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 3: well grams every night, and so it was.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 4: It was.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: It was never universally accepted by the by the diaspora
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 3: that we should there should be a Jewish date. Never never,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 3: And I think, I think which.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: I've never understood, because every I mean, you know, the
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: thing about is there a European country that didn't try
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: to kick Jews out or segregate them in some way?
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: I mean it's almost every single European country has some
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: history of this.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 3: But there was, as I said, there's a there were
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 3: assimilated Jews in Europe who were opposed to the Zionist project.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, I think, I yes, I'm not an
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 3: expert on hersal, but you know he's a journalist. He
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 3: covered the Dreyfus affair and he saw that Drive is
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 3: being cashiered and that's the moment he became an es
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 3: men why.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: He became a Zionist like this is, this is not
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: going to end well, and he's.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: Right now, it is. It is. It's interesting I and
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: I've said this before. I you know, up until about
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: ten years ago, I would have told you, man, anti Semitism,
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: that was my parents, that was my mom's problem. You know,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I haven't had to deal with this and
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: and it you know, I can tell you that at forty,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: at forty years old, I didn't feel like I had
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: to deal with it. By forty five, I did. And
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: it's been ten years, you know, and it's been and
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: it is there's no doubt and you sit here and
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: you're like I was raised to be to hide in
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: plane side I was from a mixed religious family, so
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: I could my last name hides me in plain sight,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: and I feel like, boy, I guess I'm lucky. I
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: can hide in plainside again, although it's harder to hide
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: these days, because like it's funny how important it is
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: for other people to denote what faith I am. Interesting,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: Oh you're Jewish?
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: I think helps a couple of assumptions that go with it.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: And you're like careful making assumptions.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: That's all.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 3: It is the longest hatred, Chuck. It is never ending.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 3: It as bottomless. I've tried to address the roots of
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 3: it and by fiction, and.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: But it just takes it just it just takes the
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: right set of circumstances to reignite the virus, you see.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, something like a nine to eleven,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 3: you know, a tear in the fabric of history, something
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 3: like the Great Recession and the financial crisis, something like
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 3: these incredibly fast changes that are overtaking our society right now.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 3: You know, the rise of the incredible wealth among among
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 3: a few people.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: These things.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: Helped disturb the pots and that's what we're And then
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 3: and then, of course this war has been has had
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 3: a huge impact on a Semitism around the world.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: Gig dantic, just gigantic. We're headed to You know, at
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: the last G seven meeting you had the Loose and
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: the AI guys all sort of as peers. Yeah, and
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: it felt like, oh my god, we're gonna move. This
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: is going to turn into a bond villain movement, Like
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: we're going to have a corporation be more powerful than
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: it than some of the most powerful nations on Earth.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: I assume you, as a novelist, you're thinking about this
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: quite a bit.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 3: I am. I think about it all the time, not
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 3: just as a novelist, but as a as a citizen,
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 3: citizen of the world. That we've just been this incredible
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 3: concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 3: people is staggering that. I mean, the comparisons to the
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 3: guilded age are not really accurate because the golf is
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 3: much wider now than it was even then. And it's
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 3: it's you can't have this level of disparity without political disruption.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, there's something that is going to come.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 3: You can't have so much wealth concentrated in the hands
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 3: of so few, and and and then but at the
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 3: same time, they're they're not willing to pay any taxes
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 3: and contribute in any way to society the ways with
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 3: which you know.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: You hold wealth.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: And remember the billionaire pledge.
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: The billionaire pledge, how quaint?
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: All right? And yeah, Warn Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Steve all
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: those sort of I guess you could call them the
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: first the sort of the first, you know, that first
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: round of twenty first century billionaires. There was this sense of, well,
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: I should do this, even if I secretly don't want
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: to do it right. They also, I think some of
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: them have rescentved it, have like literally taken the pledge back.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 3: But any anyone who's involved in philanscope people will tell
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 3: you that the new generation of really wealthy they have
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 3: no interest in it. In fact, they're kind of opposed
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 3: to it. They think they approach it sort of this
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 3: Machiavelli and Darwinian way about, you know, survival of the
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 3: fittest and how things of us.
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: And I guess these guys are going to be excited
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: to create their feudal their feudal become feudal lords and
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: have people just as.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 3: Well wait wait until they're wait until their product is unleashed.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: And it wipes out the entire.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 3: Knowledge economy, and it tears through the financial industry. You
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 3: don't need all these analysts and all these guys when
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 3: when they get these AI things up and running.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: And I think that that I just don't know if
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: the why colug workers know how a pitchfork works. I
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: think they're going to be looking for it, but they're like,
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: which way do I use it?
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: You know, it's going to be very very disruptive.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 3: They broke catastrophic climate change into the mix and things
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 3: things can get.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing. It's the wild card, Like there's
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: this god. You know, my daughter just got a degree
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: in marine science oography, so she's so where does she study?
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: Where'd she study in Miami? She agree from there. So
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: it's we're very proud and it is it is both
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: important work and when the government cuts all these jobs,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: really hard to find work in this field currently at
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: the moment. But she's But the point is is that
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: I over index reading about climate stuff now and all
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: that just to keep up obviously with your kids, right,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure you do this thing.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: You do similar things with.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: Yours and the Pacific Ocean, there was this great story
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: in the in the post that had a terrific headline,
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: the sea Way, and they're like, good for the headline writers,
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: which is the Pacific Ocean has a fever. This is
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: a sever yeah, and they use the words fever. And
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: I just thought it was what a great way to
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: just look, it's a it's hot, and we wanted to
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: give you another you know, this is sick. And I
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: just thought it was a terrific headline. And you read
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: it and you realize the next great political crisis may
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: the trigger may absolutely be a natural disaster gone wrong. Right,
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: we can look, we're we're living this in real time
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: in Venezuela. At the moment, we're going to we're not
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: sure if this puppet stay that we've manufactured here can
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: hang on when there's real you know, and and who's
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: to do. You know, I'm waiting for the population to
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: turn on us, because they're going to think, well, you're
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: in charge of this country at the moment, you know,
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: you fix our stuff. But the point is is that
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: a natural disaster triggering our next political crisis seems as
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: about as likely as anything out there these days.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 3: Well, as a fellow climate alarmist, you know, that about
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 3: the Great al Nino. I'm going to get the years
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 3: wrong that that took place, oh gosh, in the late
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 3: nineteenth century. I believe it hadn't read had the impact
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 3: of creating famine all across Asia, and millions and billions
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 3: and millions of people died as a result of warming
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 3: water in the Pacific. There is a strong case to
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 3: be made that that the uprising in Syria was a
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 3: result of climate change and lack of rainfall and.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: All these migrants failure, right, the migration patterns we're seeing
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: as almost all being you can absolutely in Central America
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: there's just less work for sure, right with what's happening,
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: and so people are moving north. And you know, I've
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: always said the Mediterranean Sea is the southern border of Europe, right,
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 3: And so it's going to get get worse before it
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 3: gets better, and so we need some enlightened political leadership
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 3: to try to deal with it. We shouldn't, you know,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 3: turn our back on Africa the aid cuts that I mean,
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 3: people are dying directly as a result of our not
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 3: being there with the same Let's go for a day
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 3: level of aid, and we need to stay engaged in
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 3: the world we can't turn it back on it.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: And this is the part where this is where you're like,
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why you can't convince Donald Trump to
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: do this for transactional reasons. Don't do this because it's
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: the right thing to do, hester president. Do it because
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: you need you need people to owe you something. You're
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: you know, right, like, you know, I don't get why
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: he doesn't see it through that.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 3: I always I always thought he should do it for
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 3: the right readings. It's one of the things that I
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 3: found interesting about Donald Worst. You know, you know the
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 3: movie Dave Right, the classic movie Day, the guy finds
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 3: himself to be president. His first impulse is to try
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 3: to help people. Okay, I gotten into this job accidentally,
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 3: but I'm going to do some good. That's the thing
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 3: I don't understand about the man. You know, why the
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 3: constant division and why not actually try to do something
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 3: decent for a change.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try to help your life. I think
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: about the America two fifteen and how none of the
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: living presidents were involved. He didn't take a you know,
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: I mean man as president. I'd have been excited to
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: like take new tours of the day of the archives
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: to see all the original documents, and I would have
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: brought the country along with me to do something like that.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: I would have the American presidents that are living, you know,
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: we'd all we'd all sort of oversee this, and you
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: might have a reading of the of the Declaration of
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: Independence that they You know, it could have been an
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: incredible unifying event. But the man doesn't care. I've always said,
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: I believe presidents are all in charge of writing a
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: chapter of the story of America. Well, this guy doesn't
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: believe he's a chapter and he doesn't believe in the
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: story of America. So then what do you do. It's
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: first time we've ever had a president like that.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: Were you in Washington for the fireworks?
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: I was not. I was not happen to be here
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: right now, but I was in. We have a place
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: in northwest Florida, in Pennsacola. We were there and we
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: had a great By the way we do, it's our
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: Here's the other thing about the Fourth of July that
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: I think the President didn't fully appreciate is the Fourth
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: of July is like Thanksgiving and Christmas in Hankah. In
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: this respect, you usually do the same thing, right, You
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: gather with the same same group. I did the same
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: thing about eight years in a row. An old friend
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: of mine but before he died, had an apartment that
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: overlooked the Yewjima.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: So guess what I did.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, where we were every fourth of July for about
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: ten years. Right, it is sure it is apartment, you know,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: And I do the same family gathering. People elect their traditions,
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: so be careful upending them, you know. And he tried
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: to up end him here in Washington, but I didn't
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: want to, I'll be honest. I had enough for the
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: traffic attack. I feel like I feel like he declared
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: war on Northern Virginia commuters.
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: Over it was.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 3: We went to Florida also, where it was I think
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 3: twelve degrees or thirteen degrees cooler that it wasn't.
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: About that, I know, we were bracket. Yeah, it's cooler
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: here in Florida to DC.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we came back last night.
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 3: Anyway, The mall is it's I don't know if you've
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 3: been down there, it's just such a mess.
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: I know, it's just a mess.
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 3: Defences and the construction sites and the gear and the
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 3: the whole place is a mess. The White House grounds
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 3: are really sad. I mean, let's see the If.
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: You love me he did to Atlantic City, you're gonna
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: love what Washington. I mean, if only we had some
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: sort of example, what happens when you put Donald Trump
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: essentially in charge of a city. What what could go wrong?
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 6: You?
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: Atlantic City?
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 3: I put my hand in the reflecting pool the day
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 3: before that poor guy was arrested.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: Well you are now you just less after. As soon
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: as this gets posted, man, you're in trouble.
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't remove any of the blue coating.
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to see if it was actually green.
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 3: It was Kermit green. It was Kermit green.
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: You know the fact that I don't know if you've
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: seen pictures of the guy who got the no bid contract,
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: but you're like, it's again. If you had created the character,
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: you'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: not real. This doesn't happen.
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: How could that possibly go wrong? I'm going to turn
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: a reflecting pool into it into a swimming.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: Pool, don't don't I mean talk about somebody not understanding
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: why there is a reflecting pool, what it's supposed to reflect?
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: Whose reflection sits there? Brother? Aren't she was supposed to
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: understand this and what let's anyway, we're spirally we are
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to Gabriel. Let's go back too, which
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: is uh, it sounds like you already got is is
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: Gabriel the next uh? The next book? Or are you
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: gonna it?
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 4: Is it is?
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 3: I don't talk about books that aren't written, but I
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 3: will say that it is a game, Gabriel. Yes, and
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm at a hinge point in my contracts. And
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 3: and then you can make some decisions about.
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: You could if you could write your next book about
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: anything you wanted. And I assume at this stage in
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: your career, honestly, and if you want to do you
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: have a nonfiction book in you that you have been
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: wanting to do, that you like to do. Is there
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: something you've contemplated? Because I think you do a great
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: job of putting essentially putting your reporting into the fiction,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: which is which is why I think.
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 3: You know, I write little pieces of nonfiction within the novels,
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 3: you know, sometimes I sort of go on high and
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 3: explain an issue in the art books. I love writing
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 3: biographies of painters and artists, these little MINDI by my vermire,
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 3: biography is pretty good. If you don't know anything about Premiere,
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 3: you could read my Vermire biography in the Collector and
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 3: you say you understand them. The little biography that I
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 3: wrote an auto for the Inside Job is it was
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 3: was pretty good. I don't think I would go into nonfiction.
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 3: I have too many novels I need to write in
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 3: too little time.
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: But I do need to write.
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: How many do you got it?
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 3: Man, I have the illness, chuck, I do. I just
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 3: cannot not write. And I always say to people who
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 3: want to write, I cannot.
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: The beauty of you is, would you don't just write?
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: You literally hand write your novels. You handwrite your hand draft.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 7: If I if I were to slide out like I
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 7: lie on the floor right over there, I don't know
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 7: if you can see the shot some my stereo over there,
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 7: and keep a pillow over there, and I.
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: Just lay right there and on my stomach and right.
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: And and.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: Eventually I'll move from there over to here and and
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: take what I've written longhand and type that in.
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 3: But I just like I like to get the distractions
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 3: away and keep my phone in another room and writing.
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: To keep an eye out of your life. Then to
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: handwrite stuff.
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 2: How how there are already people, there are already people
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: using it.
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: How have you incorporated it? I mean, you know the
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: problem with avoiding A is that search is so bad
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: you're you almost have no choice but to use the
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: large language models as a search engine.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 3: I have not.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 2: I've not gone there yet, and I will tell you that.
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 3: You know, there are a couple of writers who have
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 3: acknowledged that they've used AI to write their books.
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: I imagine they aren't imagine doing that.
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: I just don't get that.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: It's not writing. I don't know, find it, find another
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 2: line of work.
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: But well, my worry about that is is is. And
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've read these studies that already
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: show that even even though literally they're getting people to
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: write back in blue books again in college, you're reading
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: so that the sameness of writing when you're read searching.
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: Now that there is that it, that is, it's going
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: to be it's going to be hard for it not
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: to become white noise, which I am very inserting.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: Well, my son is in law school, and.
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 3: A very top notch law school, and they are training
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 3: them already to incorporate AI into their their legal writing
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 3: and their legal research.
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 2: Knowing that they will be doing it get their law firms.
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 3: It's going to revolutionize the legal industry, the amount of
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 3: work that can be done by AI.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: I assume that we will no longer have a job
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: called paralegals.
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 2: Uh maybe not, maybe not. That you might need fewer associates,
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: for example.
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: A lot of you on that. I mean, as I've
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: gone into business for myself over the last two years,
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: I've I've had AI review a contract, you know, so
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: that I didn't spend the money. I mean, I don't
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: write when you're when you're working for yourself, you know,
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: you know, you're like at least to help you with
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: which questions to ask? I need a first pass at this,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: and I don't interest and so it is you Look,
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: there are ways that it can help you, you know.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: I think for small business, for entrepreneurs, it's potentially it's
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: like giving somebody who can't see eyeglasses.
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 2: You know, Can I ask you which which which tools
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 2: you're using? Claude.
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: I use all three because I don't trust one, so
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: I do try to if I use it for research,
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: go back and forth. But Claude's the one. You know.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: It's funny, how right A narrative develops. It feels like
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: the claw the Anthropic guys there are slightly more ethical
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: than the other two. So you find yourself And I
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: think it's confirmation by it. I think it does much better.
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not going
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: to tell you I'm smart enough to know that that's
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: for sure, but there is. It is true. It's reassuring
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: to me that the guys who run Anthropics seem to
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: at least care, at least pay more lip service to
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: what's being built than say, the gentleman that runs Open Ay, right,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: or did you happening with Grock and mister Mosque.
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 3: Did you see Shane Harris's viral video when he asked
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 3: the answerpic and how it felt about being used in
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 3: military applications?
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: Did you ever see that?
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 4: And it gave the most thoughtful, reasoned, scarily reasoned, deep
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 4: answer to how it felt.
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if you've been reading some of this,
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 3: this new notions that that AI is actually has a conscience, yeah, yeah,
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 3: that is sensitive, yes yeah, and that that that's actually
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 3: the goal of it. You pretty soon you'll be able
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 3: to yourself, you know, you'll have a heart AI you're
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 3: gonna have an.
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 2: AI version of yourself that will live forever.
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: I guess I don't know if I I don't know
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: if the world wants that or or I didn't want that,
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. Well, Daniel, you were my grandmother's favorite novelist.
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: And I had to say were because we lost her
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: this year. She made it to ninety nine years old,
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: which means she read twenty five.
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: Of your Gabriel Lan books.
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: Actually if she listened to the last three, because she
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: hasn't been able to see you for for for some time,
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: but there was. She was always very excited, so and
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: you guys were always so good to her. Jamie was
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: always so good to her. So I just just publicly
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: thank you for for for for keeping my grandmother company
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: for five years. Mister a Lot, I have your stuff
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: like that all the time, but I do I am
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: tired of it either.
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 2: I'm very sorry for your loss.
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: You know, it's fantastic. You can't, you can't. She lived
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: an amazing life, so it was a celebration, you know,
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: of a great life. Yeah. So okay, well, mister Silva,
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: another one, and do you take a rest at all
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: because you're already writing. But your rest is podcast your
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: resting time.
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my rest, I get.
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 3: Chew over the world and and and and solve all
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 3: the ills of the world and one hour together. My
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 3: wife and son of conspired to take me out a
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 3: little European job after we got off book tour.
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: Uh, but I will. I will take my book with
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: me and.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 3: Try to write in the morning, because I just I
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 3: am so unsettled when I'm not working.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: I look, it's so true.
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 2: You see the same thing, right.
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: I have the thing I always and in fact, I
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: do what you just described. If I do something first
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: thing in the morning, before buddy wakes up, then I
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: can relax the rest of the day with them because
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like, well, I didn't waste it.
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 3: That's right, And thank God that we are so crazy
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 3: about what we do that that that's the impulse.
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 2: I was just you know that.
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 3: So I'm a non sleeper. I don't know about you,
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 3: but so I'm always up very very early. I can
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 3: even just go hide someplace, write a couple hundred words,
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 3: and I'll feel better.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: There is that's the reporter in you. I think you
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: know when you're a reporter, right, you always feel like
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: I got to hurry up and no stuff beforebody else.
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 2: So I've always been an early rider for this. I
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 2: think the same.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 3: It's I would say that that being a reporter. I
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 3: started wire service, okay, like the old writing writing.
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: Over the barrowing of reporting. Man, like you're just mainlining information.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: Writing over the phone with a notebook in your hand.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 3: You know, could dictate and write very fast, and and
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 3: and I was at UPI you know, no punctuation. They
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 3: really didn't wanted to punctuate our sentences with anything other
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 3: than a period. And that's why with my training ground
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 3: and I had really good editors and good and good
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 3: uh partners and teachers and colleagues, and I learned a
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 3: lot and it's been a big influence on me, just
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 3: just like everyway started as a newspaper writer. It was
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 3: I was drawn to writers who started their career that way,
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 3: and I had.
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: The same I find it's funny I don't look for
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: them when I look for new but it inevitably the
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: writers I like best all started as daily news reporters.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: And that tells you something, which it means they write
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: in the rhythm that I think too. So I think
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: you're right about that. Congrats as always, give me my best.
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 2: this is.
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 6: Ben, It's all right, it is time machine.
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: Let's go back on our time machine.
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: And where are we going.
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: Well, we're going to go back to this week in
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine. We're going to the summer of fifty nine.
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: And it's one of the most famous moments of the
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: Cold War. It was dubbed the Kitchen Debate. If you've
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: ever seen the photograph, you know it immediately. Richard Nixon,
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: then the vice president, standing in a model American kitchen
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: in Moscow, pointing his finger at the Soviet premiere Nikita
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: Khrush and Kruse Jeff pointing back. Two world leaders smiling,
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: interrupting one another, arguing as if they were neighbors leaning
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: over a backyard fence instead of leaders of rival superpowers
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire planet.
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: History remembers the Kitchen Debate, but here's the part almost
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: almost nobody remembers. It didn't really begin in Moscow. It
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: began in New York City. Because the Kitchen Debate wasn't
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: simply an argument between Nixon and Khrush Chef. It was
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: the culmination of one of the more fascinating diplomatic experiments
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: of the Cold War. In the middle of this arms
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: race in the fifties, the United States at that time,
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: of course, led by President Dwight Eisenhower, and the Soviet
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: Union agreed to compete somewhere entirely different. They would compete
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: by showing off their countries, not their armies or missiles,
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 1: but their way of life. An actual debate communism versus capitalism.
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: It sounds almost quaint today right. The Eyesenhower administration and
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: Chris Chess's government negotiated what became known as the Cultural
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: Exchange Agreement. Each country would host a massive exhibition for
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: the other. The theory was remarkably optimistic. Perhaps ordinary Americans
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: and ordinary Soviets could better understand one another if they
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: could actually see how the other society lived. Soviet Union
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: came first in the summer of fifty nine. It was
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: in June of that year the Soviet Exhibition opened at
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Today,
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: almost nobody remembers that that happened. Hundreds of thousands of
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: Americans walk through display celebrating Soviet science Soviet engineering, industrial machinery, education, culture, housing,
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: and of course Sputneck. That was the big draw for
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: the Soviets. Right, That message that they were trying to
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: send to Americans was unmistakable. Judge us by what our
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: society can accomplish together. Look at what planning can produce,
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: Look at the speed with which a determined society can industrialize.
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: That's why we beat you space. That was the point
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: of Spotman. Look at our scientists, look at our engineers.
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: And again, you have to remember where the Cold War stood.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty nine, spot niked shocked the world. Less
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: than two years earlier. Many Americans generally feared the Soviets
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: were actually pulling ahead in this arms race. Khrushchef wasn't
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: acting like the leader of a failed system. To the opposite.
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: He believed, truly that history belonged to the Communists. He
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: regularly predicted the Soviet Union would eventually surpass the United
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: States economically. Right, He wasn't just talking about war machinery.
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: He really thought that their system would defeat capitalism. He
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't reluctantly participating in this cultural exchange. He welcomed the competition,
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: and then a month later, America answered the answer to
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: the Soviet exhibition at Columbus Circle wasn't another rocket. We
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: didn't send a bomber, not a missile.
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 2: We sent a kitchen.
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: Well, actually, it was an entire suburban branch house, the
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: perfectly ordinary one story American home, or at least it
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: appeared ordinary. Reporters quickly nicknamed it Splitnick because the builders
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: had literally sliced the house down the middle, creating a
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: corridor so thousands of Soviet visitors could walk straight through it.
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: You could see both sides of it. It was like dissected.
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: The most famous house of the Cold War was famous
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: because it had been cut in half. And what did
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: they find inside? Modern appliances, comfortable furniture, a television, fully
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: equipped kitchen, and what did the house costs in nineteen
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: fifty nine dollars? Fourteen thousand dollars? And Nixon's argument to
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: Krushchev wasn't that every American lived in the exact same home.
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: It was actually more politically effective than that. He argued
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: that an American steel worker could afford one of these homes.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: That was the entire American case for capitalism condensed into
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: a single sentence. Not that everyone was rich, and not
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: that everyone was equal, but that ordinary working people could
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: aspire to a better life. Equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: America had completely changed the terms of the competition. The
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: Soviet Exhibition had asked Americans to admire what the state
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: could build. America simply asked a different question, what could
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: an ordinary family own. Nixon traveled to Moscow to dedicate
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: the exhibition. Khrush Chef personally gave him a tour. Neither
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: man had prepared for an actual debate. There was no moderator,
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: there was no podium, There were no opening statements. These
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: were just two extraordinarily confident leaders walking through the exhibits
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: with reporters, photographers, and television cameras trying to keep up.
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: And the argument actually began. Early in the tour. Nixon
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: and Khrushchef entered another American exhibit. It was an RCA
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: color television studio. Think about that for a moment. One
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: of America's exhibits wasn't simply television programming. It was the
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: television itself, because inside the studio was one of the
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: newest Ampex color videotape systems of the world. The two
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: men began arguing about communism, capitalism, freedom of prosperity. Khrushchef
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: immediately understood the significance of the moment. He insisted his
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: remarks be shown in the United States without editing or
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: selective translation. Both men knew the real audience wasn't in Moscow.
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: It was millions of people who would eventually see their debate.
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: And then something interesting happened. The argument didn't end when
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: they left the TV studio. It followed them throughout the exhibition,
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: and it reignited in front of that model house, in
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: that kitchen. Two world leaders who would begun debating inside
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: a television exhibit produced one of the most enduring images
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: of the Cold War.
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 8: In a kitchen.
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: Krushcheff looked around the model homed and scoffed. He didn't
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: believe Americans really lived this way. This wasn't this simply propaganda?
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: Why are we obsessing over dishwashers and refrigerators? Civilians, he argued,
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: should be judged by larger accomplishments, security, science, industrial achievement, equality,
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 1: And then Nixon answered with something much simpler. Freedom meant choice,
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: competition meant innovation, and intervention eventually raised the standard of
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: living for ordinary people. Now, looking back, it's tempting to laugh. Right,
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: we know how the story ends. The Soviet Union collapsed,
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall fell, Market capitalism proved itself to be
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 1: the more dynamic economic system. But in the summer of
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: fifty nine, none of that was obvious. Khrush Jeff wasn't bluffing.
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: He genuinely believed that communism was going to win the argument,
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: and that socialism would win the argument. Now there's another
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: reason this moment matter. Richard Nixon pretty much resuscitated. History
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: usually remembers Nixon backwards. Watergate overshadows almost everything, but in
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: fifty nine, Nixon was one of America's most experienced Cold warriors.
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 1: By that he had spent years traveling abroad, he had
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: debated Soviet officials before, and by the time of that
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: Moscow moment, he looked comfortable, confident, prepared, never lost his temper,
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: never appeared intimidated, And millions of Americans watched the vice
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: president who wasn't well. It wasn't unlike, but wasn't super like. Right,
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: Ike was sort of a larger than life figure saved
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 1: the world. But here was the Vice President Andy toe
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: to toe with America's greatest adversary, and he held his
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: own and it really helped them going into the sixty campaign. Look,
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: he's gribing giv me the nominee either way, but he
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: became a strong nominee not a week one. Of course, ironically,
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: over a year later, while television, and this has always
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: been the incredible like ironies with all things Nixon right,
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: television created Nixon the checker. Speech right reinforced Nixon's image positively,
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: and then television took him down right. The debate would
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: become one of Nixon's greatest political liabilities against John Kennedy,
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: and of course televised Watergate hearings. You know, we could
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: go on, but in Moscow in fifty nine, television elevated Nixon.
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: In America, television elevated Kennedy. There's your sense of irony.
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: But here's why I want to revisit the story, because
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: guess what, the Kitchen debate hasn't really ended now. The
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: Cold War did, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Planning lost
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: market capitalism proved to be the more dynamic economic system
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: history answered that question, but it did leave behind a
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: harder one. Go back and listen to our politics Today
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 1: we argue about housing, affordability, childcare, healthcare, manufacturing supply chaine,
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, energy production, economic mobility, and increasingly something that
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: some on the left are pushing as the abundance agenda.
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: Strip away the modern language and you'll hear echoes of
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: that summer afternoon in Moscow. How should we judge an
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: economic system by GDP, by the stock market, by national output,
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 1: or by whether ordinary families believe they can build better
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 1: lives than the the generation before them. Here's what's fascinating.
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: Khrushchef believed history would judge societies by what they could
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: accomplish collectively. Nixon believe history would judge societies by what
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: ordinary citizens could accomplish individually. Those are still two profoundly
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: different ways of measuring success. The Cold War proved one
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: system was more innovative. It proved one system generated greater prosperity.
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: But then prosperity creates its own set of expectations. Once
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: people believe that every generation should have a better life
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: than the one before it, maintaining that promise becomes part
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: of the legitimacy of the system itself. And that's why
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: the Kitchen debate actually feels so modern to me, and
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: why I chose this moment in history to highlight for
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: this segment today, history remembers it as an argument over
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: washing machines and refrigerators. What it really was was an
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: argument over what success looks like. The Cold War settled
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: which economic system was more dynamic, but it never settled
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: what the winning system owes the people living in it.
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 1: And that's why we're still talking about abundance. That's why
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: we're still arguing about opportunity. The Soviet Union disappeared, that
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: the kitchen debate continued as Chuck, all right, let's do
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: a little last check, all right. Next first question for
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: today comes from Jake from California District one forty. Are
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: you giving me a full state? You give me a
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: state Assembly district? Jake, I'd love to hear back from
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: you on that one. I goes as always, I love
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: the show. Your independent perspective is refreshing and much needed.
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: I have two fun non political questions. One, do you
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: think an MLB lockout after the season is avoidable? And
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: as a fellow sports card enthusiast or your word, the
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: hobby is heading toward another junk wax era or has
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: the industry learned from its mistakes. Thanks again for all
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: you do. Cheers, Jake. Let's talk about the MLB. Look,
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: it does feel unavoidable because the owners want to do this.
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: The baseball owners are jealous of how high the franchise
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 1: values of the NBA and the NFL have gotten. But
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: it's really the NBA that gets under the skin of
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: baseball owner. It's not the NFL, right, because the NBA
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: and MLB have the same arguably same sized fan base,
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 1: essentially same sort of like everything is kind of the same,
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 1: very long regular seasons. It's the regular season where owners
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: make their money. You get where I'm coming here now. Obviously, right,
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: the NBA, if you throw in the G League, you know,
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: each franchise might be responsible for thirty to forty players.
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: Major League Baseball, each franchise is responsible for, you know,
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 1: maybe two hundred and fifty players. We go through the
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: all minor league system, right, so they're a little bit bigger.
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: But what does the NBA have The baseball doesn't a
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: salary cap. Now it looks like the NBA salary cap
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: is a total mess, and it's actually gotten too rigid
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 1: and they're going to actually have to loosen it up
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: if they want fans to care about their teams again, right,
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 1: you're going to have more teams do what the Celtics did,
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: which is decided they can only afford to pay one
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: superstar superstar money and they'll get trade the other. So
• 2:28:59
  Speaker 1: I'll just tell you, you know, I first cut my
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: teeth covering sports business. I helped found those Sports Business Daily,
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: which is now the Sports Business Journal in nineteen ninety four,
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: which was, of course the year of the most famous
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: baseball strike lockout, however you want to describe it, that
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: one I believe was technically a lockout, not a strike.
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: I think it to start a lockout became a struck. Anyway,
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into Once we didn't have
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: baseball and I can't. And then of course the owners
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: got rid of the World Series, and I just look
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: back at that. You lost a World Series and you
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: still couldn't get the salary cap, and now you're going
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: to come back and try to get the salary cap
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 1: again twenty six You know what is it now? Thirty
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: four years thirty four years later.
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 3: And yet.
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: That's the question I have, which is how badly do
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: they want the salary cap are do they want it
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: bad enough that they will set the first cap at
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: a level that only the Dodgers will reach in the
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: next five years. Dodgers and Mets and maybe Yankees. You
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: saw private equities coming into the Yankees soon, which means
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: they're going to start spending money again. Now that that young,
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: you know that the next generation to Steinbrenners, who have
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: been much more physically savvy, if you will, to the
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 1: chagrin of some of their fans who missed George's overspending,
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: although arguably the Yankees never really got great until he
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: was technically not allowed to get involved in the management
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: of the team back in ninety and they you know,
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: he doesn't trade away their farm system for the first time,
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: and lo and behold, they're able to put together something.
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: But the point is how badly they want it. I
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: think you if you want this salary cap, you've got
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: to accept one that is so large and have a
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: you know, real floor that this general that essentially no
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: player over the age of twenty seven is going to
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: be impacted, right if you're trying to do the long
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: term health right and we've all seen this, right these
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: you know, the valuations of contracts and all this stuff
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: grows much faster than it's ever anticipated, and the amount
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: of money that gets brought in is and you know
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: there's going to be some limits, but you know baseball
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: has to it'll figure out its metea ites. So I
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: am I am cautiously optimistic that they're going to not
• 2:31:25
  Speaker 1: miss games. It's just too you can't afford to get
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: rid of revenue. And baseball has been on a on a.
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 2: On a net positive run.
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: Right. It's playoffs are terrific. Local, the local revenue is
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 1: really good. Local TV rights are going, Local TV ratings
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: have been going up, not down. You know it is.
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: Baseball is pretty healthy. They just don't have They just
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: don't have as equitable of a system. The only thing
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: that equalizes baseball is its playoff format. Right. The fact
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: is even the Dodgers can who's a five game series?
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: Very are to beat the Dodgers in a seven game,
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: but you can beat them in a five game And
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: as long as that five game exists, or even that,
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: why you know, it allows for you know, a bit
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: of a Cinderella run, right, That is that is the
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: upside of the right. Basketball doesn't allow for a hot
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: team to like because of their best of seven formats, right,
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: I kind of wish basketball would go back to at
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: least the best of five for the first round.
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 2: Let's do some randomizing a little bit.
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, seven guarantees, it's only the best of the best
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: make it through. But that why are you holding sporting
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: events for the predictable or for people to be entertained
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: on the unpredictable. I always try to go back to
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: that when you're trying to decide your playoff formats. Are
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: you trying to entertain and have people enjoy and then
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: and have multiple paths to a championship or do you
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 1: only want to reward one way of winning a championship?
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 2: Anyway?
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: So I'm I'm very curious, and I also think you're
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: going to have a fight. If the players are smart,
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: they should be able to divide the because the only
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 1: way this works is if the owners agree to pool
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: off their revenue. Well, the problem with that is the Yankees,
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: the Dodgers, the Cubs get massive individual revenue. Are they
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 1: really willing to share it completely with the Twins?
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 2: The Royals?
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: They've you know, over time, they've contributed a bit more
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: into the larger pool, but not not to the degree
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 1: that happens in the NBA or the NFL, And that
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: has to change. And I don't know if this owners
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 1: if they I don't know if Manfred has the owners
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: that are smart enough to see more than two years
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: down the road, and whether the owners see valuations as
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: being more important than how much cash you can generate
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: on an annual basis. So that's I think the Dodgers
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: have savvy owners. Private equity will probably make the Yankees
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 1: a little savvier. Maybe the Cubs think this way. We
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: had Todd rickettson I asked.
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 2: Him this question.
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 1: He seemed to be he said, he said all the
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: right things that Manford would want to hear. Yes, the
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: Cubs will put it all in there and we'll pull
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: revenue sharing. Okay, but that's a question I have. I'm
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: not as convinced that they'll all be they'll all agree
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: to that. You know, that's been the biggest difference between football,
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: basketball and baseball Baseball's owners have you know, it came
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of them still came up through where much
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: of their revenue was self generated. The the the NFL
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: and the NBA have thrived due to their collectivism the
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: reason baseball franchises haven't done that is because they don't
• 2:34:36
  Speaker 1: have this unified system, and individual owners may be reluctant
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: to give that up. We'll see, but I think the
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: only way to sell the salary cap is to just
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: just set it super high so that it doesn't get
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: hit by today's players, and then by establishing the structure,
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: then within a decade it becomes something that that might
• 2:34:57
  Speaker 1: make a lot more sense, a lot more sense there.
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: As for the sports card era, I'm a little nervous
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: about the quote unquote junk slab era. I will tell
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: you this, I'm sticking to one. I don't I am.
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous about it. I think it is interesting.
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: What we're seeing is there's a real not everybody's values
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: are going up, which I think shows you that there's
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: more of a sophistication this time than there was to
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: the junk wax era. The junk wax era, in some
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: ways was sort of supercharged by Michael Jordan I think
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: at the time, and Ken Griffy, and then it quickly
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 1: and then you know you had and you threw an
• 2:35:40
  Speaker 1: upper deck and it was sort of a too many
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: people had licenses and so you just had overprinting of
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: everything and they were all, you know, there's there's a
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: little more structure around it. So I don't think we're
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: gonna go to the full junk wax era. And in
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: some ways, again these are just for those of you
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: deep deep cuts. Is the fact that PSA has stopped,
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: has sort of suspended their cheaper service for grading is
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: actually good for the market, right. It's sort of as
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: it almost you know, if they just kept churning it
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: out and sped up the process, then we might have
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: had a junk slab era. It makes me confident we won't.
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: And by the way it's made now, I do think this.
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: I do think because I mean talk about a dramatic
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: shift in car and the card market. Grating was as
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: much a pain in the ass as anything else back
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties and early odds. Now it
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: feels like if you don't have your card greater, then
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: there must be something wrong with it, right, So I
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 1: do think, and frankly that also is another way of
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: making I think it means that at least there's a
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: higher bottom this time, when there'll be inevitable ups and downs,
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: just like any market but I do think this bot.
• 2:36:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think the bottom is going to fall out
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: the way the junk wax era essentially had the bottom.
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: Next question comes from Bills. He is one of the
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 1: I think officers of the five Timers Club. Here. Hey,
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: I recently realized one of your episodes is about the
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: perfect length for a half marathon.
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 2: Thanks for helping me keep pace.
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm trying to think the half marathon writes
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: twelve miles. If you're averaging what I probably whatever, it's
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: somewhere closer to fifteen miles an hour. I will be honest,
• 2:37:26
  Speaker 1: I could probably did half marathon if I kept it
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: in the fifteenth minute range. But I'm a mid fifties
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: kind of guy. So okay, I see where you're going there. Yeah,
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 1: if you listen to it, soup the nuts. So anyway,
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: glad to help out, he goes, Hey, You've often described
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: yourself as an incrementalist. But if Trump was reshaped politics
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: through the gradual erosion of norms and rules, changes in
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 1: that a form of incrementalism too?
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 2: Or is there an important distinction of missing? Thanks Bill, ast.
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: Member of the long time What I mean by incrementalism? Look,
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: you're right he is. His is erosion. It's almost like
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: erosion by incrementalism, and he is sort of eroding norm
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: So there's no doubt. I guess where I make my
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: incrementalism distinctive is I'm incremental when you want to start
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 1: policy right and incrementalism right. If you want same sex marriage,
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 1: it took civil units. If you want a full fledged
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: disability program for America, you had to start with Social
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: Security as a widow's you know, is just to make
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: sure we dealt with widows. So you know, I would
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: say two of the most successful achievements in the United States,
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 1: in different ways, has made over the last in my lifetime, right,
• 2:38:36
  Speaker 1: the legalization of same sex marriage and the cultural acceptance
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 1: of it, the speed with which it was accepted, and
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: the growth and popularity of Social Security. Yes, we're concerned
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: about continuing. Nobody's arguing we should get rid of Social
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: Security other than real fringies, right. Everybody's trying to figure
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: out how to make it functional and keep it working.
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: Nobody's arguing. But the point is, these are two important
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 1: things that have taken place in our democracy that are
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: huge radical ideas. When you if you propose the finished
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 1: product at the start, but incrementalism allowed them to become
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: rooted into our system. Right, if you want policy to
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 1: grow roots in our democracy, you have to do it
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: one step at a time. So incrementalism does not mean
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: you somehow don't push for innovation, you don't push for
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 1: big ideas. It's about you pursue big ideas one step
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: at a time. You don't try to force everybody to
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 1: do everything all at once. So that would be my
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 1: deb you know, it is really about execution, you know,
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 1: where yes, we need to get to a system where
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: healthcare is a right not a privilege. Our country and
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 1: our politics are complicated. Or do you want to accomplish
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: the goal or do you want to stand on s
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: our money? And if you want accomplish the goal, then
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: you come at it in five or six different ways.
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: It isn't the most efficient. You know, authoritarianism takes hold
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: because its biggest upside is the efficiency. But as we
• 2:40:13
  Speaker 1: all know, if you want efficiency, you have to sacrifice
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: individual freedom. And I think what we've discovered is that
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 1: most human beings are umbiling to do that. So that's
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: that's how I would sort of describe my version of
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: incrementalism and defend, appreciate the question, and I've got another
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 1: half marathon for you today. So this is a good
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 1: episode for and if you're hearing at this point right,
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 1: you're at the bury in So come on, Bill, keep
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: it up, keep up the pace. You can do it,
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: you can finish it up. Just prepare for like some quick,
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 1: quick British open commentary. Now I'm having kidding because I
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 1: don't want to put you asleep. Next question comes from
• 2:40:55
  Speaker 1: Kevin Spokane, Washington, the fifth Congressional District. Thanks for answering
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: my question on d C statehood and for the and
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 1: for the history lesson. It really helped put the issue
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 1: in context. My follow up is beyond congressional representation, what
• 2:41:08
  Speaker 1: rights or powers are DC and Puerto Rico residents still missing?
• 2:41:11
  Speaker 1: And is there any realistic path forward, whether through Congress
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 1: or the courts? Also, are there any lessons from Harriet
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: meyers failed Supreme Court nomination that applied to Todd Blanch's nomination,
• 2:41:19
  Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to conflicts of interest mische hade MTP.
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: But I'm glad to hear your perspective on your own platform.
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 1: Kevin and Spokane, Well, that's obviously the biggest issue is
• 2:41:31
  Speaker 1: just simply representation, right, like laws get passed without any
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 1: say so, right federal these federal like DC and Puerto
• 2:41:39
  Speaker 1: Rico have no say DC has a small amount of
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 1: saying committee at times, but they can't even you know,
• 2:41:46
  Speaker 1: DC can't even have its own city budget without approval
• 2:41:49
  Speaker 1: of Congress. And there's a lot of things Puerto Rico
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 1: can't do without the approval of Congress. So it really
• 2:41:55
  Speaker 1: is they don't you know, Puerto Ricans and DC residents
• 2:41:59
  Speaker 1: don't have the rights of every other American citizen in
• 2:42:01
  Speaker 1: the other in the fifty states right there are whether
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: it's representation in Congress, they're getting. Essentially the government is
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 1: behaving to Puerto Ricans and DC the way the British
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: government behaved to the colonists back in the seventeen sixties
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 1: and seventies. They're passing laws and decrees without any input
• 2:42:24
  Speaker 1: from the citizenry itself and they have no say in
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 1: it whatsoever. They do have access to courts, so that
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 1: is equal access, but it's the self governance is the
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: biggest part of this, and just the lack of representation,
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: right that's the biggest part of this. So they have
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: no say so on that, but no, they still have
• 2:42:47
  Speaker 1: a And it's interesting on the courts. I wonder if
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 1: the courts could be used to essentially say that this
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: American citizens in d C and Puerto Rico. Here's the
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: lawsuit that I would try to concoct, because the outcome
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 1: you would want is for the court to conclude that
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: basically these structures are Maybe the structures aren't unconstitutional, but
• 2:43:22
  Speaker 1: the structures have treated its citizens. The citizens within those
• 2:43:28
  Speaker 1: structures or territories are are don't have their full constitutional rights.
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: And if the courts came back and said, hey, essentially
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 1: these these territories are governing in an unconstitutional way, then
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: it throws it back at Congress to have to make
• 2:43:47
  Speaker 1: it constitutional. And there are different ways they could do that.
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 1: You know, do you give full statehood or do you
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: give just more representation in the US Congress. You know,
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: there's are there some measures right with d C. One
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 1: of the half measures was allowing there at large member
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 1: of Congress to at least serve on committees, which there
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: was a time they weren't even allowed to be in
• 2:44:07
  Speaker 1: a committee. So I think that's the best way to
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 1: try to get the courts to essentially agree that the
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 1: citizens in DC and Puerto Rico don't have constitutional rights,
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 1: and that that in itself is it is a violation,
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: you know, and that they have to you know, they
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 1: need to, they need to have access to full constitutional rights. Now,
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: maybe that simply means they move and get and the
• 2:44:35
  Speaker 1: governments to pay for their move to provide to move
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 1: into a state with constitutional rights. I don't have a
• 2:44:40
  Speaker 1: good you know, I'm I'm spitballing here on this one,
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 1: but I would want the courts to rule the you know,
• 2:44:46
  Speaker 1: I think the best path of the best way to
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 1: use the courts is to come up with an argument
• 2:44:51
  Speaker 1: where the courts have no choice but to say, hey,
• 2:44:54
  Speaker 1: these structures aren't constitutional because the people within the system
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: don't have full constitutional rights. Your Harriet Myers question, that,
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 1: to me, is the best argument against Todd Blinch right.
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: If you thought the fear of Harriet Myers was too
• 2:45:11
  Speaker 1: close to the President Bush was among the reasons. Now,
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: it was the right that took her down because they
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: feared she wasn't a real conservative, and that's why there
• 2:45:18
  Speaker 1: was this left right partnership into into tanking her nomination.
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: Of course, careful what you wish for you end up
• 2:45:24
  Speaker 1: with Samuel Alito. Right, talk about talk about a fork
• 2:45:30
  Speaker 1: in the road moment, right had had had had Bush
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 1: just pursued, you know, somebody in between Harriet Myers and
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: Samuel Alito, we might have a we might have a
• 2:45:42
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court that was a little still it's a conservative
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 1: court and it so far hasn't been turned into a
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 1: trumpet court. And the irony is that Alito is the
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 1: most trumpy of them all, and he was not appointed
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 1: by Alito.
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 2: But we digress.
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 1: I you know, I still I cannot fathom Blanche getting confirmed.
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: And again I take if you take Corny at his word,
• 2:46:11
  Speaker 1: he ain't getting confirmed tillis the Epstein thing was.
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 2: A weird he'll to die on?
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 1: Is he really? Now?
• 2:46:19
  Speaker 2: All's good? Right?
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: Blanche does one perfunctory meeting with Epstein survivors, doesn't really
• 2:46:24
  Speaker 1: promise anything, doesn't really do much, and that's good enough.
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 1: You know. Look, the fact that he was the personal
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: lawyer means he's unqualified. But he was unqualified the first
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: time and he got confirmed. But I think he's a
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: political liability for Republicans in general. And that's the I
• 2:46:39
  Speaker 1: don't know if we're there yet, right, We haven't seen
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: it pop and polling. But I if I were on
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 1: the ballot in twenty twenty six, I don't know if
• 2:46:46
  Speaker 1: I would want my name on his confirmation because nothing
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: good has come out of this Justice Department, whether you're
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: a left, right or center.
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 8: Let's see here, let's try to sneak in two more questions.
• 2:47:06
  Speaker 8: Next one is Michael New York's seventh district. He said
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 8: he's moving to New Jersey's seven pretty soon. And he said, hey,
• 2:47:12
  Speaker 8: I was curious what goes into persuading someone to run
• 2:47:14
  Speaker 8: for office? And on the flip side, kind of pressure
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 8: is applied to convinced candidates to drop out of a race.
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 8: Can you take us behind the scenes and how someone
• 2:47:19
  Speaker 8: like Schumer might recruit candidates such as Janet Mills and
• 2:47:22
  Speaker 8: Maine or Shared Brown in Ohio. So number one, it's
• 2:47:25
  Speaker 8: promises of resources. Number two is we're going to do
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 8: everything we can to clear primary field.
• 2:47:29
  Speaker 1: Right. Normally, candidates who are on the fence about running
• 2:47:32
  Speaker 1: don't want to have to go through a primary, right.
• 2:47:34
  Speaker 1: That's the ugliness of this social media stuff is so ugly.
• 2:47:38
  Speaker 1: Now primaries get so personal. So the number one thing
• 2:47:42
  Speaker 1: is that, and the number two thing is raising money. Right,
• 2:47:45
  Speaker 1: So that's what these guys left or right. You know,
• 2:47:48
  Speaker 1: they're promising clear primary fields, key endorsements, and key access
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 1: to donors. Right, that's the biggest you know. And then
• 2:47:56
  Speaker 1: if you're recruiting somebody that used to be a senator
• 2:47:58
  Speaker 1: like Sheard Brown, you might say, hey, uh, I'm gonna
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make sure you're seniority from the past
• 2:48:03
  Speaker 1: counts and you'll automatically be if we win the Senate,
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 1: you're going to be a committee chair. Automatically you get
• 2:48:08
  Speaker 1: all your all your seniority. And you might even promise
• 2:48:12
  Speaker 1: that to a Janet Mills who would come in with
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 1: some seniority just simply as a statewide elected official. There's
• 2:48:17
  Speaker 1: a whole math. By the way, if you really want
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 1: to dork out one day, I'll go through the friend
• 2:48:21
  Speaker 1: of mine. Quinn McCord, a former colleague of Mind, does
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 1: terrific research on his own these days when on a
• 2:48:29
  Speaker 1: variety of things in the world of politics.
• 2:48:32
  Speaker 2: He might know.
• 2:48:33
  Speaker 1: He might understand that how the seniority said, how seniority
• 2:48:37
  Speaker 1: is is awarded to incoming Senate winners better than any
• 2:48:42
  Speaker 1: other individual person. What what counts in your seniority score?
• 2:48:46
  Speaker 1: There's a whole thing on it. And again, maybe I'll
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 1: dork out on it one day because it's it is.
• 2:48:52
  Speaker 1: It is sort of convoluted, but a little dorky, but
• 2:48:56
  Speaker 1: it will. You would, you would promise, you know, certain
• 2:48:58
  Speaker 1: things like that. And then when you're trying to convince
• 2:49:00
  Speaker 1: somebody to get out, boy, you know, you don't understand
• 2:49:04
  Speaker 1: the negative ads that are coming. You don't want to
• 2:49:06
  Speaker 1: humiliate yourself.
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 2: This is going to be ugly.
• 2:49:09
  Speaker 1: You don't want I'll end up endorsing your opponent, right
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 1: you you sort of paint a picture. Sometimes you convince
• 2:49:16
  Speaker 1: somebody to drop out by saying, look, and I'm like,
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know that this happened in Iowa, but this
• 2:49:23
  Speaker 1: is this situation that I think happened in Iowa. So
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 1: in Iowa you had a pretty crowdit primary for a
• 2:49:27
  Speaker 1: small period of time. You had Zach Walls, you had
• 2:49:31
  Speaker 1: Josh Turik. You also had another guy, JD. Schultz, And
• 2:49:34
  Speaker 1: if you remember him, he's the guy that almost beats
• 2:49:36
  Speaker 1: Steve King in that fourth district. He's been he's run,
• 2:49:39
  Speaker 1: he's run for office before. He's the former minor league
• 2:49:42
  Speaker 1: baseball player. He ends up dropping out, you know, in
• 2:49:46
  Speaker 1: favor of Turk. And if you told me that. One
• 2:49:50
  Speaker 1: of the ways that Schumer could and National Democrats convince
• 2:49:53
  Speaker 1: him to drop out by saying, hey, when the grassy
• 2:49:55
  Speaker 1: seat comes open, you're our guy, and so we will
• 2:49:59
  Speaker 1: you know you, you know, look, this is not the
• 2:50:02
  Speaker 1: seat for you. We think this guy is that you
• 2:50:05
  Speaker 1: are better in this, you know, we think that that
• 2:50:07
  Speaker 1: would be the better We think Turk is the better
• 2:50:09
  Speaker 1: candidate under this scenario, and we'll be full fledged behind
• 2:50:13
  Speaker 1: you the next time. Now, if you're a candidate, don't
• 2:50:16
  Speaker 1: ever believe a national party when they tell you that,
• 2:50:18
  Speaker 1: because number one, they can't guarantee anything. Number two, politics changes,
• 2:50:22
  Speaker 1: everything changes, right, all sorts of things. So I would
• 2:50:25
  Speaker 1: take them at their word, But you're asking me. These
• 2:50:27
  Speaker 1: are some of the persuasive ways that they try to to,
• 2:50:31
  Speaker 1: you know. So, and sometimes it's using third party groups
• 2:50:34
  Speaker 1: to endorse other candidates to just sort of make it
• 2:50:38
  Speaker 1: look like it's really difficult for you to win, right,
• 2:50:40
  Speaker 1: And that is one way. It's what we learned about
• 2:50:44
  Speaker 1: the brewer in Maine who was in and then drops out.
• 2:50:48
  Speaker 1: Dan Kleebeck, I think it's his name, and he's probably
• 2:50:50
  Speaker 1: not gonna be the nominee. It looks like Troy Jackson's
• 2:50:52
  Speaker 1: going to be. I think that's that's what it is,
• 2:50:55
  Speaker 1: all right. Last question for the for the Monday episode,
• 2:50:58
  Speaker 1: have got another question for you, as anyone else, This
• 2:51:00
  Speaker 1: one comes from Phil W Rogers City, Michigan, Go Blue,
• 2:51:04
  Speaker 1: I've got another question for you, as anyone else, pointed
• 2:51:06
  Speaker 1: out that Donald Trump's make America great against slogan is
• 2:51:08
  Speaker 1: essentially reworking of Ronald Reagan solon Let's make America great again?
• 2:51:11
  Speaker 1: And why doesn't that come up more often? Also, as
• 2:51:13
  Speaker 1: a fun follow up, how could you make a list
• 2:51:15
  Speaker 1: of greatest political movie presidents without including rufus T Firefly
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 1: from Duck Soup. Thanks for interesting podcasts, Phil W. I
• 2:51:23
  Speaker 1: gotta familiarize myself more with rufus T Firefly from Duck
• 2:51:26
  Speaker 1: Soup and I'll see where that goes. Right when he
• 2:51:31
  Speaker 1: did it, and for the first going back to Trump
• 2:51:34
  Speaker 1: a million, we all pointed out that this was not
• 2:51:37
  Speaker 1: like typical Donald Trump. He doesn't ever come up with
• 2:51:41
  Speaker 1: anything on his own. This was something Roger Stone whispered
• 2:51:44
  Speaker 1: in his ear, reminded him Reagan did it and Donald
• 2:51:46
  Speaker 1: Trump just conveniently forgets that Reagan did it right, and
• 2:51:51
  Speaker 1: you're right, it is stopped being you know, because in
• 2:51:53
  Speaker 1: some ways Trump's made it more his than it ever
• 2:51:58
  Speaker 1: was Reagan's. It was a slogan, Reagan you, but Trump's
• 2:52:02
  Speaker 1: turned it into a political movement, right, and suddenly make
• 2:52:06
  Speaker 1: America Great Again became an acronym to describe the far
• 2:52:11
  Speaker 1: right fringe of the Republican Party apparatus. Right. So it's
• 2:52:19
  Speaker 1: funny you get at something that I often worry about
• 2:52:22
  Speaker 1: this on this podcast, which is, well, I've reported on this,
• 2:52:25
  Speaker 1: like you know, missus Todd will say you should discuss this,
• 2:52:28
  Speaker 1: and I like some idea, and I'll be like, well,
• 2:52:30
  Speaker 1: I did, I did this six months ago. She goes,
• 2:52:32
  Speaker 1: that was six months ago. You got to say it again.
• 2:52:35
  Speaker 1: And I think this is one of those stories where
• 2:52:37
  Speaker 1: we all think we've reported this so often. People must
• 2:52:40
  Speaker 1: know this, and if you if you go and do
• 2:52:41
  Speaker 1: any AI in large Language model or any search right,
• 2:52:44
  Speaker 1: it immediately comes up. It's easily fact checkable. But it's
• 2:52:51
  Speaker 1: no longer in it. I don't defense will sound like
• 2:52:55
  Speaker 1: a strong word. It doesn't feel like a borrowed slogan anymore. Right,
• 2:52:58
  Speaker 1: it feels like it's actually it's it's like this phrase
• 2:53:02
  Speaker 1: groundhog day, it's been completely redefined into something totally different.
• 2:53:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was this.
• 2:53:07
  Speaker 1: It was a logo that Reagan came up with, and
• 2:53:10
  Speaker 1: and Reagan was trying to write Carter, you know, and
• 2:53:14
  Speaker 1: and it made sense when you're challenging a sitting president
• 2:53:17
  Speaker 1: to do something, you know, to make that case. He
• 2:53:20
  Speaker 1: was trying to he basically say, hey, this was a blip.
• 2:53:24
  Speaker 2: Let's go back. And you didn't like this, let's go
• 2:53:26
  Speaker 2: let's go back.
• 2:53:26
  Speaker 1: To what you liked. And so I guess that that's
• 2:53:34
  Speaker 1: you know it, it's I guess that's why it's not
• 2:53:38
  Speaker 1: been noted as often anymore, because in some ways he
• 2:53:41
  Speaker 1: really had. It has become its own thing, and it.
• 2:53:44
  Speaker 2: Isn't doesn't it.
• 2:53:46
  Speaker 1: It's a borrowed phrase, but it's meaning now versus what
• 2:53:49
  Speaker 1: it's meaning then. Was Actually are pretty different.
• 2:53:54
  Speaker 2: On that score.
• 2:53:56
  Speaker 1: They're pretty they're they're they're pretty different. All right, that's
• 2:54:02
  Speaker 1: quite a bit of time I've spent with you. As
• 2:54:07
  Speaker 1: my friend Bills says, perfect for a half marathon. So
• 2:54:11
  Speaker 1: there's your half marathon for today. Don't have a ton
• 2:54:17
  Speaker 1: on on what we've seen. What we've seen here, but
• 2:54:20
  Speaker 1: let me just complain about one thing. Minor league baseball
• 2:54:24
  Speaker 1: parks shouldn't be used unless you have an emergency, and
• 2:54:30
  Speaker 1: it is ridiculous the Nats are playing in this ridiculous
• 2:54:33
  Speaker 1: Sacramento baseball park. I love it for people in Sacramento
• 2:54:37
  Speaker 1: that they get a couple of years of major League
• 2:54:39
  Speaker 1: Baseball players visiting, but make no mistake, the game that's
• 2:54:43
  Speaker 1: played in that park is not major League baseball. When
• 2:54:46
  Speaker 1: you have the games that we've had, right, it's just
• 2:54:49
  Speaker 1: it's nuts what we do and that that that's been done.
• 2:54:53
  Speaker 1: It was one thing in Tampa because you actually had
• 2:54:55
  Speaker 1: to stadium and get harmed. This is a choice, and
• 2:55:00
  Speaker 1: this is where the commissioner should have just told the
• 2:55:02
  Speaker 1: Athletics are no, you're finding a major league part to
• 2:55:07
  Speaker 1: play in now, whatever it takes. But they didn't, and
• 2:55:11
  Speaker 1: so here we are with that. I will, of course
• 2:55:15
  Speaker 1: my schedule this week. By the way, check out newsphere.
• 2:55:18
  Speaker 1: Interviewed Byron Donalds. Who's gonna Who's a front runner to
• 2:55:20
  Speaker 1: be the next governor Florida. I think you got to
• 2:55:22
  Speaker 1: keep track. If he's the next governor of Florida means
• 2:55:24
  Speaker 1: he's the next front runner for president. In twenty thirty
• 2:55:26
  Speaker 1: two or twenty thirty six. And if you're wondering about Donalds,
• 2:55:32
  Speaker 1: is he a true believer or a politician in the
• 2:55:34
  Speaker 1: MAGA movement, check out the interview. Strikes me he's a
• 2:55:40
  Speaker 1: politician more than a true believer of the Mega movement,
• 2:55:45
  Speaker 1: maybe more Brian Kemp in him, I don't know, but
• 2:55:49
  Speaker 1: a little less sort of doctrinaire I think than Ronde Santis.
• 2:55:54
  Speaker 1: But again, I'll let you decide on that, and we
• 2:55:57
  Speaker 1: won't know for sure until Trump's not in the picture anymore.
• 2:56:00
  Speaker 1: And that's gonna be fascinating to watch politicians who have
• 2:56:04
  Speaker 1: benefited from Trump, and Donald certainly has what they become
• 2:56:08
  Speaker 1: after Trump is no longer essentially a threat in their.
• 2:56:11
  Speaker 2: Lives, if that makes sense anyway.
• 2:56:14
  Speaker 1: We got the live stream Tuesday night, arizon A Primary
• 2:56:17
  Speaker 1: Night Super Tuesday with Chrystaliza
• 2:56:20
  Speaker 2: And of course I will see you Thursday and with
• 2:56:22
  Speaker 2: that until we upload the gift