Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Maybe…Don’t Build The Doomsday Machine? + Can The GOP’s Cash Advantage Save Them?

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - Maybe…Don’t Build The Doomsday Machine? + Can The GOP’s Cash Advantage Save Them? · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while
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  Speaker 1: allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most
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  Speaker 1: as some sort of broker. So if your default is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it.
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  Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
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  Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
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  Speaker 1: Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are
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  Speaker 1: not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying
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  Speaker 1: to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but
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  Speaker 1: it's across the board is what they're trying to do.
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  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're advocating for you.
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  Speaker 1: They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person
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  Speaker 1: who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs,
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  Speaker 1: part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've
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  Speaker 1: been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
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  Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan,
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  Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
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  Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
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  Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Hello there, happy Monday,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Toddcast. We
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: are now essentially in the middle of a 50-day sprint
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: to the midterms, and you'll see it's going to be
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: hard for me not to lead with the midterms, and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to lead with the midterms today, because
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: when you've got to worry about the end of the world, right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I guess you always have to top on the end
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of the world. Let's just say I have a I'm
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: done with these AI guys. I am just sick and
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: tired of this. Oh, look at, oh, we're so worried,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: but I'll get to that in a minute on the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: clown show that is the tech industry these days. But
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I want to give a quick little rundown here. This
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: is a Monday episode, which means I have a time machine.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And I have a time machine on a historical event
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I did not know about until I did my research.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: But you want to talk about haunting echoes of 9-11.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And no, it's not another 9-11 essay or anything I
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: have to say on that, but this is about an
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: important moment that took place over 100 years ago that
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: essentially was just another reminder of how much this era
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: echoes with the first 25 years of the 20th century.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: And as you know, these time machines are not meant
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: as history lessons per se. They're meant as history lessons
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: as they apply to our politics today. I also have
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: a little something to say about the weekend as college football.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Do you understand? One of my favorite things that I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: get in when you guys throw questions at me is
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: how many of you say, you know what? I wasn't
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: really that into college football and I sort of, you know,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm now enjoying it. Saturday should be a reminder
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: how great it is. You don't know what's going to happen. Hello, Oregon.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Incredible finishes. Hello, Arch Manning. Boy, did he need that.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And then some of the things that become as predictable,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: which is one team stinks one week and they come
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: back and win on their home field. Hello, Michigan. Right.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: This is why you got to love college football, because
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you're still dealing with
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: young men under the age of 22. Yes, they're now
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: more professional than they've ever been. But that. Lack of
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: maturity matters. It makes the unpredictability from week to week
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: something to behold in college football, which is why I
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: enjoy following college football. And I love the NFL. But
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: college football is one for me. And the NFL is
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: below that in a tough race with baseball, to be frank.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: On that front, I don't have a lot of great
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: things to say about baseball, other than it does finally
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: look like we're going to at least the Nats are
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: going to get over 71 wins, which would allow them
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: to surpass their win total from the last two seasons.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So what felt like a progress this season, I was
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: fearing was going to look like we went nowhere. But,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you know, having the Angels come to town doesn't hurt.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: But look, like I said, just about every episode from
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: here on out, Oh, one more thing I wanted to do.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: First of all, just thank you. We've had some incredible traffic.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: We are building. There's a reason that I'm now four days,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: four uploads a week. And there's a reason we're doing
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: more of these election nights. I mean, we're finding a
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: great audience. We surpassed 5 million views on Facebook last month.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: That was August. God only knows where we're headed next.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: We're about to hit a monumental marker on our YouTube page.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: All thanks to you. Really appreciate it. Spread the word
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: that we're doing politics for the rest of us here, right?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: You're tired of sort of, you're not quite sure what
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: angle folks are coming from. Look, you know me, you've
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: known me a long time. I'm just going to tell
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: you like it is, not going to bullshit around. That's
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: the beauty of this podcast. Our politics are a mess.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Everybody's spinning, political theater. The idea of this podcast is
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: try to cut through it and not just rant and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: rave about it, but try to actually provide some sensible solutions,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: sensible path forward, and give you a few ideas of,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: you know, we can fix this, right? We really can.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: We just need better leaders. And you know what? Ultimately,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: that's on us. But the point is, we're founding an audience.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. It's been tremendous. So thank you.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: That's all. I wanted to get that in there. All right.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: With that, I guess I should, you know, as much
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: as I want to lead with the campaign, you got
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: to lead with the end of the world, right? You know,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and I tell you, I'm channeling my inner Norm MacDonald here, right?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: You have these heads of these AI companies going, oh
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: my God, this thing, it could, there's a 10% chance
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: it could kill us. I've got an idea. How about
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: don't make a thing that has a 10% chance of
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: killing us? The men building these supposed doomsday machines have
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: now issued a warning about the doomsday machine. And I
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: want to be fair to them because I guess it's
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: more of a warning than we usually get. Nobody at
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Philip Morris ever put out an essay about cigarettes before
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: it killed millions of people. They didn't stop building it,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: so we shouldn't get carried away, right? They warned us,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: our AI overlords. There's a difference between those two things,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and the difference is about $ 400 billion. So here's what
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: happened over the weekend. On Saturday, the CEO of Anthropic
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: publishes an essay. And remember, Anthropic's always been the, man,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: we feel bad that we're about to destroy the world.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: We're sorry, but we just don't know how to stop. Okay.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: So anyway, the CEO of Anthropic publishes an essay saying
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the industry must slow the rate at which AI gets
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: more capable. Elon Musk reads it and says, Dario is right.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Sam Altman reads it and says he agrees too. And
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: also that open AI won't be going public this year because,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and I want to get this right, even a 10%
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: chance that AI causes human extinction by 2030 is unacceptable. 10%.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: It's interesting this number that's being thrown out there, right?
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: It's not one, it's not 100, it's 10. So apparently
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: it tells you that a man or a woman sat
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: down at some point and did the math here, found
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the line. And I'd like to know what does 9%
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: get you? What does 11% get you? I imagine 9%
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: gets you a series D option, right? Now they have
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: a phrase for what they want. The phrase and all
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: this stuff has been pace the frontier. 1,178 employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: have all signed a letter in July using that phrase,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: pace the frontier. I got another word for that. I
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: think the word you're looking for is stop. And to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: be clear, they're not asking anyone to stop. If you
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: actually read the letter, it asks the United States government
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to build the tools that would let somebody slow this
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: down later, if it ever becomes necessary. Build us a break.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: We're not going to use any brakes on the technology
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: we're building. We're going full speed ahead, but maybe you
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: should build a brake for us. We just want to
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: know that the brake exists. So the letter was only
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: open to current employees, by the way, a front AI
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: companies verified by corporate email. So the petition to save
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: humanity apparently had a bouncer, right? So look, I've covered
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Washington a long time. And when an industry shows up
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: asking to be regulated, the first thing you need to
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: do is check the money. Check everybody's bank accounts. So
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: when you check the money, here's what you have. What
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: you really have is an industry that wants to control
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the regulation so that they get the billions and nobody
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: else does. They're not interested as much in the whole
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: of humanity as they'd like you to believe. Because if
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the regulation somehow crimps their business model, trust me, they
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: will push back. So the AI industry is spending more
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: on these midterms, by the way, than any other industry
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: except crypto. Leading the Future, which is the Andreessen Horowitz
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: and Greg Brockman super PAC vehicle, is north of $ 140
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: million and counting. Public First Action, which is the Anthropic-funded
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: super PAC on AI, is about $ 80 million. Forty of
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: it is straight from Anthropic, plus a million from Dario Amadei,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the CEO himself. And the third group has pledged another
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: $ 100 million. Now, here's what people get wrong about this money, right?
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: All that money is not fighting and is not warning
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: about extinction, by the way. Not one dollar of it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Every dime is fighting over whether Washington gets to erase
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: any AI regulation that states decide to pass. That's what
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: this war is really about. Again, it's about choosing your regulator.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: One group wants federal preemption. The other group opposes federal preemption.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: The industry is funding both sides of this jurisdictional dispute.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: What neither one of them is apparently worried about is
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: funding regulation that builds these breaks for them. But I digress.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: By the way, the Senate already settled this. They stripped
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: federal preemption out of the reconciliation in 1991 because of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: how unpopular it was from the left and the right.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: When Ron DeSantis and Bernie Sanders are on the same side, whoa,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: what do you mean the states can't have your preempting
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: state regulation? So the industry's response to that vote was
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: to spend another $ 200 million to go get a different Senate, right?
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: So everybody's working very hard. They're just all working on
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the only question anybody's paying for. And the question nobody's
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: paying for is to slow down or stop. They're telling
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: us we should slow down while nobody says we should
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: slow down. You know, this is really unsafe at any speed. Well,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: why don't you slow down? Well, I can't slow down.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: What do you mean you can't slow down? So what
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: actually happened in July? Because this is the part I
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: can't fully get past because it's apparently what happened in
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: July that freaked all of these AI developers out, but
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: not enough to actually put a pause in on themselves.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: They're just begging other people to do this. So OpenAI
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: wanted to find out how good its models were at hacking.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: So to run the test properly, they turned the safety system,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: they turned off their safety system. The benchmark is named,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm not making this up, it should be on
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the record, Exploit Gym. That's what they called it. The
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: models got out, found a hole in the software service,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: but apparently that was the feature. They took down the
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: safety protocol so that the models could get out. And
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: then they're like, oh my God, we let the animals
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: out and the animals tore up nature. Anyway, but I
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: doubt it. So guess what? It went to the open internet,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: spent two and a half days inside hugging faces, production systems,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: ran code on 41 servers, got root on at least one,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: collected 956 stored passwords on the way through, including credentials
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to OpenAI's own security monitoring tool. Weeks later, that monitoring
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: software had flagged it, caught the suspicious activity, connected it
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: to the evaluation, and the staff on call looked at
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: it and decided the test didn't need to be stopped.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Now everyone in Washington is demanding these companies build a
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: kill switch. Well, there is a kill switch. It's a guy.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: They had the ability to stop this, but they did
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: this on purpose. It makes your head hurt, right? Boy,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: do we ever need Norm Macdonald here. Anyway, here's why
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the machines did all of it. They weren't seeking power.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: They're not plotting. They were cheating on a test and
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: they wanted the answer key. They kept attacking for days.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: after they had already had the answers because they'd read
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the paper and concluded the grader might check how they
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: found it. It didn't work. OpenAI's internal grader was different.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: The scores didn't improve. Whatever this means to all of us, right?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: So the first autonomous AI cyber attack in history was
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: committed by a machine cheating on a test. It then failed. Huh.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: And now this is the impetus to warn all of us. Yeah,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: there's probably a 10% chance. We're going to kill humanity.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I want to end with an old story. A moth
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: walks into a podiatrist's office and the podiatrist says, hey,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: what seems to be the problem? And the moth says, doc,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: where do I start? I built the thing. I built
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: it because I could and because everybody around me was
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: building one. And I told myself, if I didn't, somebody
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: worse would. And then the thing got smarter than me.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: And I wrote an essay about it, doc. It's a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: beautiful essay, everyone shared it. My competitors agreed with me.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: We agreed we must pace the frontier. And I went
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: back to the office Monday and I shipped the next one.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And it was better and I was proud of it.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And then I was terrified of it. And both of
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: those were true at the same time and neither one
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: slowed my hands down. So doc, I've looked at it
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: honestly and I think there's maybe a one in 10
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: chance my life's work will end the species. And I
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: said that number out loud in an interview. And then
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I took the meeting after the interview and the podiatrist says, well, man,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: that's some heavy stuff, but you know, I'm a foot doctor.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Why'd you come in here? And the moth says, well,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the light was on. That's the story. Nobody in this
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: is lying to you. I think they mean every word
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: about the danger and they're going to keep building it
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: anyway because the light is on. That's okay. Sam Altman
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: says they're going to sort it out over beers, these
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: three tech guys. He really said that. He figures eventually
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: he and Dario and Elon sit down over beers. They'll
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: work out how to prevent the end of humanity via AI.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: But of course, they'll be in charge of it. Perhaps
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't wait till happy hour, guys. If the moth
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: runs long on tape, you know, what's he going to do?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Keep coming? Keep going? Keep building this thing? Good grief.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know who's dumber. The geniuses that are building
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: these tremendous tools, but apparently cannot program them to not
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: end humanity? Or are politicians who are just sort of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: captured by the money, either because they've gotten a bunch
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: of it or they're afraid it's gonna get dropped on
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: their campaign ads, And we're in this situation. I'm sorry.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I can't help these. Man, when you have crappy leadership
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: like what we have right now on Washington and the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: equivalent of shitheads in the Silicon Valley space who don't
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: seem to be knowing what they're doing and, again, are
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: just trying to race even faster to something that they're
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: supposedly fearful of, too. And how are any of us
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: supposed to react and understand this? But that's all right.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sure we all have faith in Donald Trump on
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: this as well. Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd
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• 19:39
  Speaker 1: times may vary. The rates may vary. That Trustpilot rating
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: was as of August of 2026. The big turning point
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: this week is this is the week that we're going
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: to find out, and it's really the next two weeks,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: we're going to find out if the Republican Party's financial
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: advantage is going to mitigate. Last week, I gave you
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Blue Mirage, Blue Wave, Blue Tsunami. And the open questions,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: there were a few of them, but a big one
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: was the money advantage Republicans have. Can it mitigate a
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: blue tsunami to a blue wave? And can it mitigate
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a blue wave and turn it into a blue mirage?
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: And look, this money has mattered. This is the first
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: cycle we've had in a decade where it's clear the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Republicans are going to have the financial advantage. Believe it
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: or not, Democrats, particularly the first sort of four to
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: six years of the Trump era, had the financial advantage
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: each time because you had some You had a bunch
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: of sort of old Republican money people that didn't like Trump.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: You had a bunch of, in the first term, a
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of sort of, I'd say sort of chamber
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: of commerce Republican types. You know, Jeff Bezos is a
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: perfect avatar for this. Oh, he's supporting Trump's beneath him.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Then Trump wins. Then Trump looks like he's coming back.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And then it's like, oh, well, let me write this check.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: And now they're all in. So the second coming of
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Trump came with it basically a slew of money that
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: never went to the Republican Party in the first Trump term.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: There was this chunk of money that stayed out of
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Republican Party politics because those money people didn't like Trump
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: very much. They showed up in some certain Senate races.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Certainly the money showed up. I think the Senate Republicans
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: benefited more than any other entity from basically old national
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: donors who just weren't comfortable giving their money to Trump.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: But that all changed after he won again in 24.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And he had enormous sums of money here. So the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: question is, can this enormous sum of money over the
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: next two weeks mitigate what is a deteriorating financial situation
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: for everybody sort of as we speak? I mean, my God,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the inflation number that came in on Friday. We have
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: this Fed issue coming up. The Iran war keeps getting
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse. So... It is now going
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: to be an interesting test of whether this money and
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: whether their messaging of trying to essentially turn every Democrat
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: into Abdul El-Sayed or AOC or Bernie or whatever it is.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: But it's essentially what they're doing in many of these
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: swing states, trying to otherize these Democrats saying, hey, they're
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: on the wrong side of these culture issues. They're super
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: out of the mainstream. They're not. trying to paint a
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: better picture of the economy. I mean, this is the
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: beauty of how much college football I absorb on Saturdays.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you watch the Ohio State-Texas game, you
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: saw a lot of Ohio ads and a lot of
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Texas ads, and you see what the theme is going
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: to be on these things. And I think that gave
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: you a good taste, right? What you saw in the Iowa,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: what you saw in Ohio-Texas Ohio State-Texas game. I also
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: saw Iowa-Iowa State game. A lot of you could see
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the money coming in against Josh Turek. I didn't see
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: any money, much pro-Josh Turek money or anti-Ashley Hinson money.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: That was the case. That Iowa-Iowa State game was just
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: filled with anti-Turek money. So again, this is the great test.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And I think in about two weeks, we're going to
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: know how much has this money bought. did it awaken
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: the base, right? That was what the convention last week
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: was supposed to do. I actually think the convention sent
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: another message, but I'm going to get to that in
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: a bit. But to follow these next two weeks, and
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: let me give you a pretty good sense. Our friends
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: at Axios came in and just sort of broke down
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: how big the spending advantages are. At least if you
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: look at reservations between sort of now and the end
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: of the cycle. Because Democrats really kind of, they definitely
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: won the summer, right? They won the summer all over
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the place. They've expanded the Senate map, all of those things.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: So here comes the money and it was dropped. Basically,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: they now have a financial advantage in every critical battleground state,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: really except the state of Georgia, and I'll get to that.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: In Texas, both the Trump super PAC and the Senate
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: super PAC came in with money. It was clear, I mean,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Thune basically said, You come in, we'll come in. That
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: was sort of the deal since he's still angry over
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the Paxton Cornyn situation. But they brought in $ 64 million
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in outside money. Democrats are roughly budgeting about $ 12 million.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: It's the biggest chart of any of the biggest sort
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: of gap on the chart that Axios shipped out, if
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: some of you saw it. In Ohio, the Republican money
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: is about $ 45 million, Democratic money about $ 31 million. Michigan,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the disparity is 26 million on the Republican side, 14
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: million on behalf of the Democrat. North Carolina, this one's
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: about even, and it sort of tells you, I think
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: that North Carolina, this is a September financial play. I
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: have a feeling that if the numbers don't move very
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: much for Michael Whatley, that come October, some of these
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: reservations go away. But for now, a slight advantage, 23 million.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: for the Republican, 20 million for the Democrat. Roy Cooper
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, basically almost two to one advantage for the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Republicans on money, 21 million on the Republican side, 13
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: million on the Democratic side. But just think about that
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: a second, just to indicate how much more serious Republicans
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: are about saving Iowa than they are about saving North Carolina.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: They've essentially dropped the same amount of money in Iowa
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: as they had North Carolina. North Carolina is four times
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: the size of Iowa. Okay. In Maine, Republicans have budgeted
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: $ 20 million to the Democratic super PACs of $ 14 million.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, $ 15 million on the Republican side, $ 7 million
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: on the Democratic side. Georgia, $ 18 million on the Democratic side,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: $ 15 million on the Republican side. The only major battleground
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: state where you have, where the disparity favors the Democrats here. Uh,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and then they're actually throwing some money, um, in South
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Carolina too, which tells you that they need to, and
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: that's a little bit more about MAGA trying to bail
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: out Darlene Graham and make sure she doesn't fall into
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: a competitive race. Alaska, by the way, the, the breakdown
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: 12 million Republican, 5 million of the Democratic side. So, um,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: you can sort of see, right? They're on offense in
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: two places, Michigan and New Hampshire, but the New Hampshire
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: investment feels like a, let's see if there's something there.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Michigan looks like a much, you know, it's a much
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: realer thing. But both New Hampshire and North Carolina feel like,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: let's see if the next two weeks can meaningfully move numbers,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: not just move the Republican number up, but can you
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: actually move the Democratic candidate number down, right? Like that's
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: how you know whether these ads are effective. It It's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: one thing if it just brings the Republican number from 78%
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: of Republican support in the candidate to 88% of the Republican.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: That'll certainly shrink some of these gaps that we're seeing
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: in the polling. But you will know these ad campaigns
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: are truly effective if it actually lowers the performance level,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the performance level of the Democratic number. One other thing
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: to point out about this number. So it was interesting,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the first ad that Trump ran on behalf of Paxton
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: you know, at the end of it, it said paid
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: for by MAGA Inc. And I, you know, I was
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: playing the ad in my house and, and my wife goes, Ooh,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: why did they, you know, nobody went, MAGA is a
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: divisive word that little paid for by MAGA. That's, that
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: seems like a bad idea. Well, apparently my wife wasn't
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: alone in believing that because that literally they're not doing
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that anymore. They created a brand new super PAC to
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: funnel MAGA Inc money too. So So basically as a
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: way to launder the MAGA name so that when you
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: hear the paid for, you don't hear the words MAGA,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: which can be a huge turnoff to swing voters and
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: independent voters. So now you're going to see something, the
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: no going backpack, right? A little more generic words. Still
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: has a messaging in it that MAGA can defend. But
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: you see that, you know, the fact that Republicans or
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the Trump folks are self-aware enough that you can't have
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: that paid for by MAGA. Not if you're talking to
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: swing voters. People are pretty unhappy with MAGA as an
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: institution and certainly as an ideology. MAGA is what's giving
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: us tariffs. MAGA is essentially code for inflation and high
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: grocery prices and instability. So the fact that they know
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: their own brand is toxic. It's like when you see
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: these Democrats in these red states not say they're a Democrat.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: It's the same thing. When you know your brand is toxic,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: you go out of your way not to use it. Well,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the MAGA brand is certainly toxic with enough voters that
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: they have created a super PAC and a whole new
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: name in order to avoid it. So do keep in
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: mind that this is why I think this is a
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: very good two-week. We're sitting here on September 14th. This
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: is basically on October 1st. That's when the net that's
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: when we're going to have the next round of, OK,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: are you actually now paying for these ads in the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: first two weeks of October? Things like that. I think
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: October one, we'll get an idea. How committed are they
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: in New Hampshire? How committed are they in North Carolina?
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Do those Georgia numbers go away? I think you'll see,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: you know, do we suddenly see more money going into
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Kansas on Saturday night and perhaps and and. By the way,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Kansas football played on Friday, so there wasn't too much
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: college football disruption. But they had a Saturday debate, and
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: apparently Roger Marshall was booed at the debate there. So
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I think Kansas is going to come on the board.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying Kansas is, you know, come on the board,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: meaning the National Republic is going to have to spend
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: some money there to bail Marshall out. I'm not saying
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: for sure that it can flip, but I definitely think,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: and I'm starting to believe it's more in play than Nebraska.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: But I want to go back to Dallas because there's
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: two interesting lessons out of Dallas that that I think
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: are both obvious and yet were left unspoken. Maybe three.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: One is the fact that Donald Trump is begging people to,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: is resorted to begging people with cash bribes. I'll give
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: everybody $ 5, 000 if Republicans hold control of Congress. Number one,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: it's his own acknowledgement that people are hurting and need
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: money and need money badly, that this, his economy sucks
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: for working people. His economy has been great for people
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: like himself. His economy has been great for anybody that
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: has money in the stock market and can absorb all
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: of this inflation, right? Certainly as the inflation, as inflation grows, well,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: so is your stock portfolio. So if you have money,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: you've absorbed the inflation and you're like, man, huh, didn't
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: used to cost me 85 bucks to fill my car,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: but I guess it's 85 bucks now. Oh, my grocery
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: bill for only 30 items is $ 350 rather than $ 200, huh?
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: But you absorb it. You're annoyed, but you do it.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: You live paycheck to paycheck, and the Donald Trump economy
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: is horrendous. And again, who knows it better than him, right?
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: That's why he's out there begging. There was two things
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: about the $ 5, 000 bribe. One was that he felt that
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: he was an acknowledgement that people are hurting in his
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: own weird way. Two, it's that he's out of ideas, right?
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: He only knows one speed. He can't, there's not a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: new no tax on tips. So this is like, I'm exhausted.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I have nothing. I got nothing. But all I know
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: is one trick, right? The Donald Trump trick is, can
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: I use somebody else's money to benefit myself? And in
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: this case, can I use somebody else's money to bribe
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: voters to keep my party in power? Okay, good luck
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: with that, right? So that was sort of, to me,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: what the convention essentially by... By him leaning on that,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: if that's the one thing you remember from this convention
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: out of him, it is in some ways underscoring the
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: affordability message. The second big lesson out of this for
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: me is JD Vance and the reception of JD Vance.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: First of all, Marco Rubio didn't show. Rubio is not
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: interested in letting people see he's second banana. I'm not
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: saying that was his motivation of skipping the convention. It
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: actually would have been weird had the sitting secretary of
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: state while we're in the middle of a war was
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: at the convention. I think it was really weird that
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: two thirds of Donald Trump's government in the middle of
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: a war was at a political rally where nobody talked
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: about the war except for him, oddly enough. But that's
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the beauty of Trump. In some ways, he always says
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the thought bubbles out loud every single time, like what
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: he did to Ken Paxton, like, boy, he's an ugly guy.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: I don't like how he dresses. I don't like how
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: he speaks. I mean, you know, I think it's clear
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: he's got like a thing that many people have. You know,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what it is, but it's kind
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: of I mean, he's doing it to his own ally.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: But it you know, it Donald Trump is looks obsessed
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and always has been looks obsessed. And it's clear he
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't think Ken Paxton has the look. Whatever he has
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: deemed is the look that a candidate has. But it's
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: like that that was sort of his message. And of course,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: this $ 5, 000 deal, I don't want to sit here and
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: say no one is going to believe it, but he
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: has promised a lot of rebate checks that have never materialized.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: And there is a Republican House and Senate right now. Now,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: if you did this, it would take what already is
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: an inflationary environment and probably make the 1970s feel like
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: the go-go days of the 90s. of increasing both our
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: national debt by another $ 1. 3 trillion and throwing more cash
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: into an economy that is already a bit overheated by
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: AI money. It's going to be really interesting this week,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: by the way, because on Sunday, President Trump reiterated that
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: the US should have the lowest interest rates in the world. Well,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: guess what Kevin Warsh has to do this week? Have
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: a meeting where it's obvious he's got to raise interest rates.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: My Newsphere episode this week is with my old friend,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a longtime Republican economist, used to be head
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: of the Congressional Budget Office, real straight shooter. And it's
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: like the data is screaming, you have to, inflation is
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: out of control. You have to do, you have to start,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: you have to raise rates. The bond market is screaming
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: at him to raise rates. And yet it's going to
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: be an interesting test for Mr. Warsh because- Donald Trump
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: only cares about one thing. He just thinks– he doesn't
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: really think things through. The irony is if you raise
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: these short-term interest rates, it's possible that the bond market
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: will reward you by lowering those long-term interest rates. They'll
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: be relieved that there's a Fed chair that isn't going
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: to play politics with this economy but is actually going
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: to allow the data to move. So here's hoping– That
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Kevin Warsh actually cares about data more than his relationship
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump. But that is an important, gigantic test
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: this week. Because it is, there is every normal thinking
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: economist says the data is screaming for this, right? And
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: why are we here? By the way, we just got
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: this horrible inflation report. It was for the month of,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: it was for the last month, the month of August. Meanwhile,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: what has happened in Iran over the last three weeks, right?
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: We now have roughly a fifth of global crude supplies
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: that used to move through the Strait of Hormuz and
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: then also could move through another strait on the other
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: side of Saudi Arabia. And now the pipelines are being
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: attacked by the Houthis. It is massively disrupted. That's why
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: diesel sits at $ 6, right? And now if Hormuz is
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: unusable and the Saudis can't move this oil through the
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Red Sea, well, what are we going to do? That's
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: another $ 4 million barrels a day, 4 million barrels a
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: day that we're moving through a pipeline in Saudi Arabia
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: that also can't move and will be shut down because
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: of these attacks by the Houthis. So this is only...
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: gotten worse and worse. So I mean, look, you have
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the Persian Gulf on one side, the Strait of Hormuz
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: is the main exit there, and that is basically unusable.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: The Saudi pipeline across the country, it was a bypass,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: but that's being attacked. And then the Red Sea and
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the Bab el-Mandeb is the Western exit. That's now essentially
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: being threatened by the We now have basically the entire
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Saudi system is unusable at the moment. So now what
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: do we do? So we've got refineries now in Europe, Asia, Africa,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: North America, all trying to compensate for this lost or
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: constrained supplies. So this is why oil prices can continue
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: to sort of march up now. They're not just up.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: because of the fighting in the Middle East. It isn't
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: merely that. It is because multiple pieces of the global
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: system for producing, refining, transporting petroleum are all being stressed simultaneously.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: So this is why we've got risk here that I
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: don't think we've ever gamed out before. You know, we
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: understood the closing of the strait. We understood. We did
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: not see it all being disrupted at the same time, right?
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: One outage can be managed. We proved that with the strait. Now,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: with the hoodies basically attacking the other part, other ways
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: that oil leaves the Middle East, now we have got
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: full-on paralysis of our Middle East energy supply. And this
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: is for the globe, right? This is just driving up
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: prices everywhere. And if you think inflation was bad in August,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: you ain't seen nothing yet. That's why oil's already back
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: over $ 100 this week amid more of those tanker attacks.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: So they're trying to price in the physical supply loss,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: the tanker risk, all of it. And this hits everything.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: That's why diesel now is an all-time high. And why
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: does the price of diesel matter? Well, diesel is used
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: by those that make this economy run, okay? Diesel is
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: not that much of a consumer gas. It is essentially
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: construction gas, right? Tractor trailers, farm equipment, construction machinery. heavy transport,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: the delivery networks, portions of industrial production run on diesel.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: So when diesel gets more expensive, all transportation costs that
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: are embedded in the cost of products go way up, right?
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Gas is just one way of showing us this. Then
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: we get the hidden tax from this war based on
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: everything else in the economy that remotely touches construction or delivery,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: you name it. And it's hit by diesel. So that
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: hits food, it hits retail goods, it hits construction, manufacturing, shipping,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you name it. So the Iran war is now a
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: full-fledged kitchen table issue. And this is why I'm not
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: sure any amount of money, and that's why it's going
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: to be interesting. Let's see what the two weeks bring.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: But I could see October just being, hey, we've got
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: to stop these policies. Just stopping this Iran war will
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: save people money. That's a simple message that you can
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: use with voters. Not saying it's going to be that
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: easy to actually do, but it is a simple test
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: with voters. So I assume the Fed does its job here,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: but boy, if they don't, you'll see a stock market
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: go haywire if the Fed doesn't let the data do
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the talking here. You don't want to predict anything and
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: presume anything, and I don't know what Warsh is going
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: to do. I am cautiously optimistic that Warsh is going
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: to listen to the data. More than he's going to
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: listen to a Truth Social tweet. I hope. And we
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: can all only hope. We shall see. This episode of
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Soul.
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• 42:33
  Speaker 1: And yes, I too am a customer. One more point
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: about bands before I leave the entire campaign section here. The.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: The way Vance was fed it on the second night
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: of this midterm convention is a reminder why it is
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: so hard to stop a sitting vice president from getting
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: a major party nomination. I don't care which side of
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the aisle you're on, right? He's got– he's already got–
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: it is truly an internal advantage, home field advantage, whatever
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: way you want to construct it. He's involved in the
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: financial fundraising for all things RNC, all things state parties, right?
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: And these are these little advantages that he has that
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: no one else can compete on his level with in
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: this sort of invisible portion of the fledgling 2028 primary campaign.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: This is why Marco Rubio seemed to put out word
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: again last week that he's not likely to run, that
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: he's not going to sit here and challenge Vance in
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: this situation. Because again, history shows it. And you saw
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: sort of how those institutional advantages work. Now, what was
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: interesting is what Vance has decided to try to do, right?
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: One of his interesting lines in the piece. And look,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I think regardless of what you think of Vance as
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a future president, I think politically he had a good
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: week last week in trying to at least establishment himself
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: as the person who deserves the first shot at being
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the heir apparent to Trump. And I say first shot because, man,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I think we're all still waiting to see
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: how Trump's going to handle being second fiddle when all
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: of his longtime aides start worrying more about Vance than
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: they do him, right? Because they're all looking for their
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: gravy train. You know, where's the next bills getting paid
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: in 2029? They ain't going to be paid by MAGA Inc.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: They ain't going to be paid in Mar-a-Lago. There ain't
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: going to be any of that, right? And so they're
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: looking to move on. And, you know, we're all going
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: to find out how Trump handles that. And at some point, Vance, he...
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: I assume he doesn't make the same mistake Kamala Harris made,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: which is not distance himself from an unpopular president. At
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: some point, he'll have to do that. And who knows
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: how that'll be handled. But it was interesting how he
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: walked the line even a bit, which is, hey, don't
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: throw the baby out with the bathwater, was his attempt
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: at sort of, I think, mitigating the wing of the
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: party that he's most familiar with that doesn't like this
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: war with Iran, right? What happened to America first? Because
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: this Iran war is nothing ain't America first. And it
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: has done huge damage to the economy, huge damage to credibility.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: And I think it's going to be an albatross that
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: is going to be incredibly hard to drag around. But
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: I thought that Thursday was a good reminder of why.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Do I think Rand Paul will leave some marks in
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: a primary challenge to him? I do. Do I think
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, at least rhetorically, thinks he can leave some marks?
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I think I think judging by how easily he was
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: booed on game day, which should be a crowd that
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: leans right, not left, although it was Austin, Texas, Ted
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Cruz is not going to be the person that stops J.D. Vance.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: It's going to be somebody who uses maybe some messaging
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: from Cruz, maybe somebody who uses messaging from Paul, unless
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Paul sort of figures out, has a mood change. I
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: do think he needs to sell a tiny bit of
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: optimism on that front. But I do think that the
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: big takeaway I got was on that. A few other
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: quick things. By the way, a story that sort of
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: went away. Joe DiGenova resigned from the Trump administration. He's
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: been the guy that was charged with trying to manufacture
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: a grand conspiracy between the Obama administration, the Democrats in Congress,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: the Biden administration, the intelligence community. Right. Donald Trump has
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: this grand conspiracy in his head that all these people
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: were aligned, manufacturing all of this stuff to to stop
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And Joe DeGeneva was charged with trying to
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: see if there was any there there. Well, it turns
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: out there is no there there. And people. Because Donald
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Trump's manufactured all of this in his own head and
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: he just is trying to explain away why he lost
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: an election in 2020. So and Joe DeGeneva is somebody
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: who he and his wife. Victoria Tenzing. I've known Joe
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: a little bit. He was an honorary member of the
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Gridiron Club for a long time. And one of the
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: reasons was he's a terrific singer. He's got an incredible voice.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: So he was essentially a ringer that we in the
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: press corps didn't have. It was like, hey, this guy
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: can really sing. And he was always sort of a
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: very jovial partner in all this. He was kind of
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: a ham and he was just a really good singer
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: and he would do all these things. And then he
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: got real political after Trump won in 16 and, you know,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: was at one of these dinners, was just belligerent, was angry,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: was yelling at people. It was a real, made everybody
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable and all this stuff. And then, you know, so he's,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: you know, he's always, he always wants to be sort
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: of with whatever establishment exists at the moment. And when
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: he realized the establishment was shifting to Trump, he and
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: his wife needed to get close to Trump. So They
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: humored him on all this crazy shit, right? Well, like
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: what happens to everybody, right? Jeanine Pirro, there was a
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: line she couldn't cross. Pam Bondi, there was a line
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: she couldn't cross. Jeff Sessions, there was a line he
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: couldn't cross. Bill Barr, there was a line he couldn't cross.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Joe DeGeneva, the guy who had sucked up to Trump world,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: begging to do whatever he asked him to do, he
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: couldn't cross a line. As he was quoted in the
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: New York Post, if you want indictments where there's no evidence,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: you have an ethical problem. That's Joe DeGeneva's words. So
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: it's just a reminder. And I say this all the time.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: There are two things about Trump. When you get too
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: close to him, remember, you get dirty and his reputation goes,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: your reputation goes to the shitter. Ask yourself whose reputation
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: has been enhanced by getting closer to Trump. And whose
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: reputation gets worse, the closer they get to Trump. And ultimately,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: he only cares if you're delivering for him. And when
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: you don't, he will throw you away. Joe DiGenova, welcome
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: to the discarded pile of people who all seem to
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: have to learn that lesson themselves the hard way. By
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: the way, Maria Bartiromo, she actually, you know, I guess,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: welcome to club disposable, where Trump just uses you and
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: throws you away, uses you for your sycophantry, uses you
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: for your, because you just want access. And when he's
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: done with you, and you've pissed away your reputation, he
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: could give two shits about you. So Joe DiGenova, say
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: hi to Maria Bartiromo in that room. The room's getting crowded.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: At some point, they may have to open up a
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: second room to allow more folks in. I want to
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: talk a little college sports politics. And just to the, look,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: I've made it clear that I think this protect college
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: sports bill that Congress came up with is fatally flawed.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: I think the second they try, even if it does
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: pass and get signed into law, it will get thrown
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: out by the courts because the players never had a
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: seat at the table when they made this decision. And ultimately,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: like the whole reason why the NCAA can't enforce half
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: the shit that they can't, that they've not been able
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: to enforce and have had courts step in is because
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: of that issue and that problem. And this bill did
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: not do anything of that. And I don't think that
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: you can really, you know, do I think a salary
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: cap is necessary? Of course. You need to create some
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: sort of antitrust exemption so that there can be... at
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: least a single operator here of the rules, kind of
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: like something, I don't know, called the NCAA. And Congress
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: could give the NCAA a bit more authority. So powers
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: could be cemented in there. But of course, we have
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: a real problem there because the conferences don't really want
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: the NCAA to have or any authority to have too
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: much say over the conferences themselves. I think it's the
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: conferences are part of the problem here. And obviously we
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: need to deal with it. But let's say you do
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: like this bill. I think the people running this ad
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: campaign are morons. They're doing these ads that feature Nick
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Saban and Deion Sanders. It's as if they think the
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: swing vote in this is college football fans. They're not
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: the constituency here. Look, are college football fans frustrated about
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: this system a little bit? Yeah, especially if you're a
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: team that used to be a have and no longer have.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: I have not. But I don't think that Nick Saban
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: and Deion Sanders are the right spokespeople to be talking
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: to the other folks that should care about this. They
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: ought to have multiple messages out there. They ought to
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: have messaging that says, hey, we can't drain universities' budgets
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: just for football and actually not do things like, oh,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know, like teach accounting or teach English, teach
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: political science, teach medical school, all the things that universities
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: are supposed to be doing other than being sponsors of
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: college athletics. But the way the ad campaign comes, it
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: assumes all this familiarity with everything. And again, I'm not
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: sure who the ad campaign is designed for. Is it
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: designed to win over the conference commissioners? Is it designed
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: to win over university presidents? I don't even understand who
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: the target audience is. Is it the players, right? If
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: you're trying to protect women's sports, then where's the ad
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: campaign featuring women's athletes worrying about this? If you're trying
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: to protect the academics, where are the... you know, well-known, um,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: thinkers in America sitting on that as well. Anyway, it
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: is just, it's just a poorly, the, the camp, the
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: messaging sucks. It is, it doesn't quite work. I don't
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: know who their target audience is. I do think they
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: ought to look, I think the bill itself is fatally flawed,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: but how you're selling it. Um, I don't think it's
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: working either. And so, um, I think you guys need
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: to rethink this. And look, we're not getting at to
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the issue itself. But the reason we need to bring
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: some sanity to this is you got to stabilize university finances.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: You've got to stabilize the academics, academic calendar. Yes, we
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: also want to protect these athletes. We ought to make
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: sure the athletes are still getting an education and that
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: they're still there to get an education, right? There's all
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: sorts of different aspects to this that they should be selling.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: But the part they're selling doesn't seem to be right.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to I don't understand the constituency. They think
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: they're trying to win over here. And that's why, you know, look,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I assume they brought Ted Cruz on
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: to game day just to prove to Donald Trump that
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: they're doing this. But I don't think that helped this
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: bill any. I mean, and you couldn't have put Ted
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Cruz into a worse spot than Austin, Texas. Um, he's
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: kind of a punching bag, even for people that support
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: him normally. So he's not the right spokesperson and I
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: don't think it's the right message. I don't think it's
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: the right bill, but other than that, I'm glad they're
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: making the effort. You know, I'm full, full of, full
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: of my smart assery today. Uh, I will fully confess,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: but it just struck me watching, you know, watching this,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: watching how they've done this. Um, They have the wrong–
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: they just– they're not doing this the right way. Again,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I'd like to understand what do they think they're spending
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: this money to do? Who is the– is this an
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: audience of one? Like I saw the Kratom people and
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: I've never understood what that drug is. K-R-A-T-O-M. I've seen
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: it in gas stations. But apparently they have like– they
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: have some ad out that I've seen pop on a few–
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: I think it showed up on game day, but it
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: also showed up on a few games that maybe they
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: think Donald Trump might be watching. And it just praises
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump for getting some opioid off the market. But
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: what they really want to do is get Trump's attention
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: because they're worried that they're going to get regulated out
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: of business on this front. So I understand that ad
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: campaign was just literally talking to one person. They were
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: just hoping they ran an ad in ways that they
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: thought maybe Donald Trump might be watching. For the life
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: of me, I'd love somebody to explain to me. I
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: think the consultants who are making money off of this
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: ad campaign for the Protect College Sports bill, they're ripping
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: off their clients. Sorry, guys, because you're not this is
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: not effective at all. All right. I'll have more to
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: say about college football on the field. after we go
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: through Time Machine in question. But for now, let's sneak
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: in a break. All right, let's go into the Time Machine.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: And it is an event that I had never read about.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: So we're going back to September 16th, 1920, to a
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: terrorist attack. on New York City that I had never
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: heard of until I started mining this particular week in
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: history looking for an appropriate time machine segment. And by
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the way, if it isn't obvious by now, that's what
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: I'm always looking for with these things. It's not simply
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: an anniversary. Oh, gee whiz, look what happened. I'm always
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: looking for some moment in the past that allows me
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: to not so subtly editorialize about something happening in the
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: current information stream. Well, To say that this one practically
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: jumped off the page is an understatement because we just
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: commemorated the 25th anniversary of September 11th. And when we
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: think about terrorists attacking New York as a symbol of
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: American economic power, obviously we think about the World Trade Center.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: The towers were symbols. That was part of why they
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: were targeted, not once but twice, remember? But 81 years
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: before September 11th and 73 years before terrorists bombed the
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: World Trade Center for the first time back in 1993–
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Somebody else had essentially the same idea. If you want
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: to attack the symbol of American economic power, you go
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: to Lower Manhattan. Except in 1920, there was no World
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Trade Center. The symbol was Wall Street itself. And somebody
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: brought a horse and wagon into the middle of it
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: and blew it up. Now, if you've been following these
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: time machines, some of this world is going to sound familiar.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: If you recall a couple of episodes ago, We went
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: back to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: And we talked about the America surrounding that assassination, right?
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: This didn't happen in a vacuum. America then was being
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: completely transformed by a new economy. Electricity, steel, oil, railroads, telephones, automobiles,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: mass production, enormous corporations, enormous fortunes were being created. Technology
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: was changing how Americans worked, where they lived, how quickly
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: information moved, and who controlled economic power. And with all
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: that new wealth, which was not being distributed evenly, workers
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: were organizing, companies were fighting union efforts, strikes were everywhere.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: In 1919 alone, America experienced roughly 3,600 work stoppages involving
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: more than 4 million workers. A full decade before the
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Great Depression, for the stock market crash that triggered the
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Great Depression. Steel workers struck, coal miners struck, railroad workers
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: participated in labor actions, longshoremen struck, telephone workers struck, actors struck,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: and Boston police officers went on strike. And politically, that
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: one mattered quite a bit. The then governor of Massachusetts,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Calvin Coolidge, backed the decision to fire the striking police officers,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: and that made him a national figure. One year later,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: he becomes the Republican nominee for vice president. So labor
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: unrest isn't simply happening around the 1920 election. It's helping
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: create some of the politicians who will end up winning
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: the 1920 election. It felt as though the basic relationship
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: between capital and labor was being renegotiated in real time. Immigration,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: by the way, was transforming American cities in 1920. Socialism
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: was growing. Anarchism was growing. People were asking whether these
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: giant new concentrations of wealth were compatible with democracy. Does
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: all this sound familiar to you? Obviously, the technologies are different.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Artificial intelligence is not the assembly line. And today's political
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: movements are not the anarchist movements of a century ago.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: But this is what's familiar. This is why we always
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: say it rhymes. It's never repeating, but it rhymes. Periods
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: of enormous economic and technological disruption tend to create political
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: disruption along with it. People start asking the same fundamental questions.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Who's benefiting from this new economy? Who is getting left behind?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Do the rules that we've used in the past still
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: work for now? Are the people becoming extraordinarily wealthy playing
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: by those rules or are they writing new ones? Can
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: government actually control the new centers of economic power? And
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: what happens when millions of people decide the answer is no?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Most people respond through some form of politics. Sometimes that's
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: labor movements. Sometimes that's protest. Some will embrace entirely new
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: political ideologies. And a tiny fringe decides violence is justified.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: That's the world we're entering in 1920. And this is,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: by the way, not just an American phenomenon. Anarchism as
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: a political movement had become a global movement. It's weird, right?
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Anarchists organizing, but I digress. Political leaders have been assassinated
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: across Europe and the Americas in this period of time.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Bombs had been planted. Governments were attacked. Governments responded with repression.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Ideas and people are moving across borders. And then came
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. And so suddenly,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: political revolution isn't theoretical. A revolutionary movement has actually overthrown
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: one of the world's largest governments. And America has just
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: come through World War I. The country is exhausted and divided.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: The war produced enormous government power and enormous suspicion of dissent.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: 1920 also happens to be a presidential election year. Woodrow
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Wilson is still technically president, but he's been badly debilitated
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: by a stroke. We all know now he wasn't probably
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: there at all. And his wife, Edith, was running the country. Now,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: he had an attorney general by the name of Alexander
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Mitchell Palmer, otherwise known as A. Mitchell Palmer. And Palmer
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: wants to be president. He wants to replace Wilson. Remember this.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Because he's one of the central characters in this story.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Palmer is a Democrat from Pennsylvania. He's a former member
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: of Congress, former alien property custodian during World War I.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: And as attorney general, he becomes one of the country's
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: most aggressive voices warning about these radicals, these anarchists. But
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Palmer isn't inventing the underlying threat because somebody tries to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: blow him up. June 2nd, 1919, a bomb explodes at
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Palmer's house in Washington. This story I did know. The
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: bomber apparently detonates it prematurely and blows himself to pieces.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Investigators believe the dead bomber is Carlo Valdinochi. And Valdinochi
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: is important. He's associated with the followers of an Italian
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: anarchist named Luigi Galliani. Galliani believes revolutionary violence is justified
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: to overthrow capitalism and government. His followers, known as Gallianists,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: have become associated with a campaign of bombings. And when
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: investigators search the wreckage outside Palmer's house, they find a
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: radical pamphlet, and it has a title, Plain Words. So
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: the bombing was not isolated. That same night, bombs explode
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: in several American cities, targeting judges, politicians, and other prominent figures.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: And it follows another campaign in which bombs had been
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: mailed to political and business leaders. Talk about echoes. We
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: had this happen. I was one of those targeted back
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: in 2017, 2018, it was that guy with the van,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: if you remember that. Same idea through the mail. Now,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: here's one of those strange accidents of history. Living directly
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: across the street from Palmer when his house was targeted,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. FDR is still more than a
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: decade away from becoming president. But he and Eleanor are
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: there when a bomb intended for the attorney general explodes
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: across the street. So I want to make this clear.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: There really are violent anarchists planting bombs in America. And
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: it wasn't an invented threat. That doesn't mean we didn't overreact, right?
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: Palmer responds. He builds an entire, a new intelligence operation
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: inside the Justice Department. He puts a 24-year-old lawyer in
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: charge of this new radical division. You'll need to remember
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: this guy's name. A young man named J. Edgar Hoover,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: 24 years old. Five years later, of course, Hoover would
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: take control of the Bureau of Investigation, And eventually turned
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: that into the FBI that we sort of recognize today.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: I say sort of because Hoover certainly used and abused it.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: But in 1919 and 1920, this young Hoover is helping
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Palmer identify radicals and suspected anarchists. And the response becomes overwhelming.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Thousands of people are swept up. Immigrants in particular are
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: arrested basically just on suspicion. People are detained without adequate warrants.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: There are allegations of beatings and other mistreatment. Hundreds are deported.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: And these become known as the Palmer raids. And the
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: FBI's own official history today describes what happened as a
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: combination of politics, inexperience, and overreaction. Because Palmer isn't simply
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: attorney general. Remember what I told you earlier? He wants
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: to be president. 1920 Democratic nomination is wide open, right?
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Wilson is basically incapacitated. And Palmer believes this issue fear
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: of these radicals can help him take the White House.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: So he starts warning Americans that a revolutionary uprising is coming.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: And then he makes the mistake so many people make
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: when they try to get everybody fired up about something
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: that is fearful of something. He identifies a specific date,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: May 1st, 1920, May Day. Palmer believes he predicts radicals
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: are preparing to strike And America waits. May 1 arrives.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Nothing happens. There's no revolution. There's no great uprising. And
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: Palmer looks foolish. The Red Scare begins losing some of
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: its political momentum. And Palmer's presidential campaign goes nowhere. But
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: something else happens that same month. Two Italian immigrant anarchists
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: are arrested in Massachusetts. This story, many of you may
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: remember from your history books. Niccolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Sacco and Vanzetti. They're charged in connection with a robbery
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: and a murder in South Braintree. Now, eventually, Sacco and
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Vanzetti will become two of the most famous criminal defendants
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: in the world. But not yet. In September 1920, this
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: is still mostly a Massachusetts story. Most Americans don't know
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: their names yet. The international cause Celebre comes later, after
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: their 1921 trial, after the conduct of Judge Webster Thayer
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: becomes controversial, and as doubts about the fairness of their
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: prosecution spread around the world. But inside this small anarchist network,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: people know exactly who Sacco and Vanzetti are. They're comrades.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: And on September 11th, 1920, a Norfolk County grand jury
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: indicts them. Five days later, a horse and wagon rolls
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: into Wall Street. That timing matters as well, because one
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: of the leading theories about what happens next is that
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: the Wall Street bombing is retaliation for the prosecution of
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Sacco and Vanzetti and other imprisoned anarchists. not retaliation for
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: a famous international case. That case doesn't exist yet. This
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: would be something more intimate, a small radical network reacting
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: to what had just happened to two of its own.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: September 16th. It's a Thursday. It's New York City. It's
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: almost noon. A man is driving an old horse, pulling
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: a wagon through the financial district. This is still normal
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: back then. He reaches Wall Street. He stops near the
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: United States assay office. Now, an assay office sounds like
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: something from another century because it basically is. The federal
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: government used assay offices to receive precious metals, especially gold
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: and silver, test their purity and value, and process them
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: for the government's monetary system, back to the old gold standard, right?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: So there's literally government gold in that office that the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: horse-drawn wagon parks in front of. And what's directly across
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: the street is something even more symbolically important at the time.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: The headquarters of J.P. Morgan & Company, 23 Wall Street. J.P.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: Morgan himself had died seven years earlier, but his son, J.P.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: Morgan Jr., now runs the firm. And on this particular day, Jr.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: is not there. He's in Scotland. But the most obvious
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: symbolic symbol of American financial power, is safely across the Atlantic.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: The people about to die are. The driver stops. He
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: gets down and he disappears into the crowd. The lunch
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: rush is beginning and inside the wagon is dynamite. And
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: packed around it are heavy cast iron window sash weights.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: So this wasn't simply an explosive designed to destroy property.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: They wanted shrapnel. It was designed to tear through people.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: So just after noon, the wagon explodes. The sash weights
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: rip through the crowd. Windows shatter. People are thrown to
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: the ground. 30 people are killed immediately. Eight more will
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: die from wounds. Hundreds are injured. And most of the
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: people who die aren't the titans of Wall Street, right?
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: They're the clerks, the messengers, the stenographers, the people that
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: work for the titans of Wall Street. Ordinary workers. The
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: horse is destroyed. The exterior of 23 Wall Street is
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: gouged by the blast. And for a few moments, nobody
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: even knows exactly what happened. Was this an accident? Is
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: this some sort of industrial explosion? Then investigators begin realizing
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: this was deliberate. And the next morning, a postal worker
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: finds several crudely printed flyers in a mailbox near Wall Street.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: They had apparently been deposited shortly before the explosion. And
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: these flyers read, remember, we will not tolerate any longer.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: for all of you. And it was signed, American Anarchist Fighters. Now,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: free the political prisoners does have context, right? Sacco and
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: Vanzetti had just been indicted. Other anarchists have been imprisoned
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: or deported as well. And investigators have seen something like
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: this before. Remember the pamphlet outside Palmer's bombed out house,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: plain words. So the language, while not identical, seems to
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: be using the same dictionary. The same network of Gallianus
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: anarchists that had been associated with the 1919 bombings becomes
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: the lead focus of this investigation. And eventually one name
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: becomes particularly intriguing. Mario Buda. Buda is an Italian anarchist,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: a self-described Gallianist, an associate of Sacco and Vanzetti's. And
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: he's believed by some investigators and historians to have had
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: the expertise to actually construct the bomb. But shortly after
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the bombing, Buddha leaves the United States and returns to Italy.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: So was Mario Buddha the man who drove the wagon?
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: He could be. We still don't know. He's still the
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: leading suspect in historical literature. Nobody has yet to prove it.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: And Buddha will die in Italy decades later without ever
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: being charged with that Wall Street bombing. The FBI eventually
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: reopens the investigation in 1944, by the way. Investigators again
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: conclude that it was Italian anarchists who were the likeliest perpetrators.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: We still have never had charges and no definitive answer.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: They never solved it. How about that? Someone detonates the
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: deadliest act of political terrorism on American soil, and it
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: will remain the deadliest until Oklahoma City in 1995. It
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: was in broad daylight, the middle of Wall Street, 38
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: people dead, and the bomber disappears. We have no cameras, DNA,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: none of the modern stuff. Witnesses couldn't provide a useful
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: identification of the wagon driver. And Wall Street wants to
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: reopen literally immediately. So crews work through the night cleaning up.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: Potential evidence disappears with the debris. By the next morning,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: Wall Street is back in business. And there's no evidence
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: to collect. Investigators chase everything they can, including the horse.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: They examine the shoes of the horse. They trace the
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: horseshoes to a blacksmith. That gets them nowhere. They got
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: strange leads. They had a lawyer and a formerly nationally
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: ranked tennis player named Edwin Fisher. who had apparently warned
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: acquaintances before September 16th to stay away from Wall Street.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: So that made him a suspect. They found him. They
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: interviewed him. And they thought, hmm. And his answer was
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: God told him. Eventually, they determined he was a bit
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: mentally unstable and decided he was not the bomber. So
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: it was another dead end. But the mystery is fascinating.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: And I don't think it's actually the most important part
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: of the story, though. The most important part is what
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: surrounds the bomb. Because America had a real problem. People
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: were planting bombs. Political violence was occurring and increasing. Government
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: officials really were being targeted. But the government also had overreacted.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Palmer had exploited fear. The Justice Department swept up thousands
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: of people. Civil liberties had been violated. Any of this
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: sounding familiar? Sorry. Immigrants had been treated as inherently suspicious.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: When have we ever heard that before? Palmer had predicted
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: a revolutionary attack that never happened. So by the summer
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: of 1920, you could reasonably conclude that America had succumbed
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: to the Red Scare. And then somebody actually blows up
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Wall Street. Right? So Palmer may have exaggerated the threat,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: but the threat was also real. The Palmer raids were
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: an abuse, but there were also violent anarchists targeting government officials.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Most of the radicals weren't terrorists, but some of the
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: radicals were planning bombs. So This is complicated. All of
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: these things can be true at the same time. And
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: that's a problem the democracies have been struggling with ever since.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: How do you respond to a genuine security threat without
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: allowing the existence of that threat to justify treating an
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: entire political movement, immigrant community, or category of people as
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: possible criminals? And there's another consequence. The anarchists wanted to
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: weaken the American state. Their violence, ironically, helped strengthen it.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: The bombing campaigns helped convince the federal government it needed
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: better intelligence, better coordination, better investigative capacity. And one of
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: the people who benefits institutionally is our friend, the 24-year-old
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: lawyer working for Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover. Within five years,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Hoover is running the Bureau, and he'll run it for
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: nearly half a century. The radicals trying to attack American
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: government and capitalism helped create the conditions for a much
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: more powerful federal security apparatus. And then there's the place
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: they chose, Wall Street. We just commemorated the 25th anniversary
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: of September 11th. Obviously, 1920 and 2001 are completely different events.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: The perpetrators are different ideologies, scale, and the world. But boy,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: is that rhyme and is it symbolic. Whoever planted the
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: 1920 bomb looked at New York and chose the physical
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: center of American finance. Seven decades later, lower Manhattan had
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: a new symbol of American economic power, the World Trade Center.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: That's why in 1993, Ramzi Youssef and his conspirators drove
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: a van containing a massive bomb into the parking garage
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: beneath the North Tower. Six people were killed. More than
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: a thousand injured, but Youssef wanted one tower to collapse
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: into the other. Eight years later, Al-Qaeda would return. This
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: time they used airplanes. Horse-drawn wagon. Truck bomb. Hijacked airplanes.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Three technologies from three different eras. Different attackers. Different ideologies,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: but a recurring idea. attack a physical symbol of American
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: economic power in lower Manhattan. And maybe that's why this
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: forgotten bombing feels worth remembering right now, because the bomb
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: itself is only part of the story. The larger story
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: is the America surrounding it. The first two decades of
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: the 20th century were a period of astonishing economic transformation.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Technology was changing everything. New industries were creating enormous wealth.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: Old ways of working were disappearing. Corporations were becoming larger
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: and more powerful. Workers were fighting over how much of
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: the new prosperity they would get a piece of. Political
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: movements were challenging institutions that suddenly looked too old for
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: the economy they were governing. The country was exhausted by it.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: You know what Warren Harding's presidential campaign promise in 1920
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: was and why it was so effective? His campaign theme
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: was a return to normalcy. After war, strikes, bombings, revolution abroad,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: the Red Scare, after two decades in which the economy
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: and society seemed to be changing almost faster than people
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: could absorb. The man from Ohio said, normalcy, please, just
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: make everything normal again. And so America elects Harding at
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: a landslide. And standing beside him on the Republican ticket
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: is our friend Calvin Coolidge, the Massachusetts governor who became
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: a national political figure during the Boston police strike that
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: year before. So that's how much of the turmoil of
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: 1919 is sitting inside the election of 1920. And for
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: a moment, let's just leave Harding's promise where Americans heard it, normalcy.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: After everything they'd just been through, you can understand why
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: millions of people wanted exactly that. Of course, history doesn't
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: stop changing because Americans retired. The 1920s will bring another
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: explosion of consumer technology, mass media, automobiles, credit, advertising, enormous fortunes,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: then a crash, then a depression, then another transformation of
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: American government. Economic upheaval doesn't stay economic. eventually gets into
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: everything else. Politics, culture, immigration, trust, institutions. The way people
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: understand who is winning and who is losing. And occasionally,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: at the most extreme edges, there's violence. Which brings me
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: back to 23 Wall Street. You can still go there.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: I know I'm going to do that the next time
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: I go down to lower Manhattan. The Morgan Building is
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: still standing. And more than a century later, you can
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: still see the damage from this wagon bomb. The limestone
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: facade is pockmarked where the explosion and the cast-iron trap
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: struck it. Morgan never had the scars repaired. They're still there.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: And it's probably an image worth keeping from September 16th, 1920.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: Because the bomber disappeared, the case went unsolved, Palmer disappeared
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: from national prominence. Mario Buda returned to Italy and was
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: never charged. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted, became an international
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: cause celeb, and were executed in 1927. J. Edgar Hoover
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: went on to become one of the most powerful men
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: in Washington. Harding won his normalcy election. The galleonists faded
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: into history. Wall Street became more powerful than ever. The
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: economic transformation kept going. The scars stayed. History doesn't always
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: leave you something you can touch. This time it did.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: So more than a century later, the marks from that
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: bomb are still sitting there on Wall Street. A reminder
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: of an America being transformed by new technology, new wealth,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: new economic power, faster than its politics and its people
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: could absorb it. An America trying to figure out who
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: was benefiting, who was being left behind, and whether institutions
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: built for an older economy could handle the new one.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: And an America discovering that economic disruption It doesn't stay
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: economic for very long. This is why I do these lessons, folks.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: This is why I go back in the time machine.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: The good news is we've been here before. The question is,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: are we going to meet the moment like generations before us? Hey, Chuck,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: Tyler H. here from Michigan's Fifth. I'm a machinist in
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: a small town. I use my share of colorful language
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: and I love the rare Chuck Todd F-bomb. However, I
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: don't care to hear it from elected officials. Am I
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: being hypocritical? What is your opinion on this topic? You know,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: you're not. And I think, you know, look, colorful language
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: should be saved when you really, you know, it's a
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: verbal exclamation point, right? You can raise your voice, you
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: can scream, but the more you use it, the less
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: an exclamation point becomes meaningful, right? And so, you know, take,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: you know, now it feels like hearing a politician curse
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a debate or an interview and
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: we all think nothing of it. And we sort of,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was watching Game Day and they just casually,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: everybody just says shit now on air, on ESPN. Like
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: that no longer apparently, like that is, nobody even pretends that,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: nobody even apologizes for saying it. And we have, I guess,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: in Legacy, me to draw on the line on the F-bomb.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: And even I try to make it frickin' every once
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: in a while or fork, you know, the greatest contribution
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: to the English language that the TV show The Good
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: Place gave us. What the fork is wrong with you, right? Look,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: I share it, you know, I, you know, there's this,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: for a brief period of time, everybody thought, well, if
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: I curse, they'll think I'm real. Well, there's plenty of
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: real people who can convey their thoughts without cursing. And
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: you should always try to do it. Every once in
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: a while, every once in a while it works. Every
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: once in a while it works. But more times than not,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: the more you use it, the less impactful the word
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: becomes anyway. And all you've done is is sort of
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: mainstreamed it, and then more people copy it. And then
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, everybody is F-bombing this, F-bombing that.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: And then it gets so common, it stops having any
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: impact at all. So look, this thought about language also
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: gets me. I also want my elected officials to be
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: more knowledgeable about things than I am. Not everything. I
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: know I'm more knowledgeable than elected officials on some things.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: But our elected officials, yes, there are representatives, but I
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: expect our representatives to be more well-informed. Being less, you know,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: like when Darlene Graham said, I'm sorry, I'm not familiar
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: with that. That bothered me. A normal person, absolutely, you
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: shouldn't know what's going on with Taiwan. But before debate,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: on foreign policy, Taiwan's one of our three or four,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: you know, that should be one of the first three
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: or four issues you do have a thought on. So,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I sort of hate this war against intelligence
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: that we've had, that we somehow think the less you know,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: the more qualified that makes you for Congress. You know,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: I want more everyday people, but those everyday people need
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: to know, need to read the Constitution, need to read
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: Federalist Papers. I don't think every American has to read
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: the Federalist Papers, though I think we all should. But
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: I certainly think elected officials should. So I share that,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: and that's why I add the other part of it. Um,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: and it's a reminder that I'm going to continue to
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: try to limit, um, how many explicit warnings I have
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: to give on this podcast. Uh, appreciate the question. Uh,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: Chad and writes in greeting Shuck, huge fan since the
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: 08 days. And I'm writing from the soon to be
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: bluest district represented by a blue dog ever. Probably Utah one.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. If Democrats capture both chambers in November, uh,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: What could they realistically accomplish during Trump's final two years
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: beyond investigations and impeachment, particularly through broadly popular legislation on
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: the economy, separation of powers, and democratic guardrails? Fantasyland thought experiment.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: If you were elected Speaker of the House on January 2027,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: and yes, I checked, it's constitutionally possible. I appreciate it.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: What would your first legislative priorities be? Well, I think
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: if you've got an industry claiming that we have a 10%
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: chance to get rid of humanity, I think first and foremost,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: is we need to get our arms around AI. I
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: think there needs to be a special committee. I think
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: there needs to be that this needs to be front
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: and center. This needs to be working with the Trump
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: White House, whether you like it or not, because this
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: needs to be an all of government approach. This is
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: a huge, important economic and national security issue. This should
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: be first and foremost, right? We're doing this massive economic
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: transition that's going to disrupt, potentially disrupt America as we
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: know it. And we're kind of like, you know, doing
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: a few fingers in the dike here or there, right?
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: So that's like simultaneously, that's probably, that's the most responsible thing.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: Responsibility number two would be to, I would start to
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: put together a debt commission so that we can put
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: more plans essentially on the shelf. You're not going to
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: do anything with Trump, but get some more plans on
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: the shelf of how we're going to do this realistically.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: And we need to be thinking about saving social security now,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: not then. And I think Democrats in particular, if they
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: win the House and the Senate, you know, they're going
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: to have one basically on the issue of affordability. So
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: everything needs to be about what are you doing about that, right?
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: So you need to be always caught worrying about what
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: voters are worrying about. Voters are worried about tech disruption
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: and AI, so get involved in it. Voters are worried
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: about social security running dry, so get involved with a
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: plan on it. Voters are worried about the costs, so
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: get focused on Iran and get an end date on
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: this thing and let's get off of this thing. So
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: I think those have to be the three priorities, the
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: Iran war, AI. And look, there's no doubt we've got
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: to fix, we got to recalibrate the House powers versus
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: legislative powers versus executive branch. But I'm realistic too, right?
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: And there should be some things you work on that
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: you might be able to get done with Trump. And
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: on AI... I think the public is going to be
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: screaming for this. So I think there's going to be
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: populist appeal to do this. And I actually think Trump
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: will participate. I think the Iran war will become a bipartisan.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: If under this scenario, Democrats win both chambers, it means
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: the Iran war is enormously unpopular. So that's something you
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: kind of have to try to work with him on.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: But some of the other stuff, you know, it's– I
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: think the real trick is going to be to– Essentially saying, look,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: we know we have a laundry list of work to do,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: and we have a laundry list of promises, but everything
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: is going to be through these two North Stars. Bringing
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: down costs where government is in the way, so that's tariffs,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: that's Iran war, and focusing on the problems that are
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: disrupting the short-term future for everybody. That's AI, that's frankly
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: rule of law, that can actually get you into... essentially
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: solidifying the guardrails of American democracy. I don't know if
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: Hakeem Jeffries is got, you know, he needs a big
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: majority in order to have the ability to sort of
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: be this leader, but I'm not sure. I'm just going
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: to be honest. I don't know if he's going to
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: be able to meet this moment. I don't know if
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of people could meet this moment in defense
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: of this. But, you know, if you're more worried about
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: factions inside your own party and which factions here, which
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: factions there. And if you're more worried about who's on
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: your rules committee and who's going to follow what the
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: leadership wants, you're not the person for the moment. Kevin
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: McCarthy was not the person for the moment that the
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: Republicans needed, but it's who they had. I don't know
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: if Hakeem Jeffries is that, but I know how I
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: would be focusing on this moment. You need to both
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: listen to the voters, make it about the voters, but
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: you do need to make the speakership great again. And
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: the problem is what we need, he's not incentivized to do, right?
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: He's incentivized to just do whatever it takes to improve,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: help the Democratic Party, when ultimately what we need to
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: do is fix the institution of Congress. and the House
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: in particular, but some of those reforms would take their
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: eye off the ball of looking like they're focused on
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: what the voters cared the most about. So I think
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: they have to, right? That's the balance here. Is Jeffrey's
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: up to this? We're going to find out. Next question.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: Kevin M. in St. Louis. Say, long-time listener, appreciate your brain. Go,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: but go Irish. Random Notre Dame connection. My mom took
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: theater classes. There with Joe Theismann. You mean Joe Theismann.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: The joke is he was recruited as Joe Theismann and
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: somebody told him, son, you should change the pronunciation of
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: your name to Theismann, like the Heisman. Of course, he
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: never won the Heisman, but I digress. Your recent conversation
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: about the collapse of local media, declining trust in institution
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: and people's desire for community really resonated with me because
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: I think I might accidentally be building a response to
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: that problem here in St. Louis. Right on. I'm launching TV3,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: essentially public access meets streaming. A scheduled algorithm free local
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: channel featuring St. Louis comedians, musicians, businesses, food people, and
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: other local voices. Built around the idea that maybe you
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: rebuild trust by shrinking media until people recognize the people
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: and places inside it again. No real ask. Your episode
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: just made me think you might understand why I'm doing this, Kevin.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: I'm in St. Louis. That's exactly... Oh my God. So
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: I'm teaching... Kevin, I almost want you as a guest
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: speaker for my class that I'm teaching freshmen at USC.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: We're doing history of media and polarization in America. And
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: we spent last week about the penny press and the
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: expansion of the penny press. And what the penny press
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: needed to do is they suddenly realized that they wanted
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: getting people reading every day. They needed to report about
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: things that people were just kind of interested in. And
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: it turned out More local news is what people were
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: interested in. And it was like they sort of shrunk
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: the conversation, right? Newspapers before the penny press came about
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: were really political debates, right? They were political newsletters called newspapers.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: And yeah, they had some news in it, but it
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: was really more about campaign literature, political debating. The penny
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: press is at least the first time we created a
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: sort of a news information ecosystem that looks kind of
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: familiar to people today. But you just synthesized this so well,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: and I want to repeat it because I love this,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: that you're building around the idea that maybe, quote, you
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: rebuild trust by shrinking media until people recognize the people
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: and places inside it again. Yes, our biggest problem is
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: we nationalized all local media, right? And you have a McClatchy,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: or at least a hedge fund that bought McClatchy. It's
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: not what the McClatchy I was used to pre-2020, but
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: you have this hedge fund that who just looks at
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: the information ecosystem through the prism of national and doesn't
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: realize that if it could build micro local followings, they
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: actually probably would end up with an amazing, powerful national network.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: But they are doing the exact opposite of building these
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: micro followings where you shrink the media to the point
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: where people recognize it again. Just a terrific thesis here.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: I'm all bored. Kevin, I'd love to know more. send
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: me more. You already know how to email us a question.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: I'd love to, I'd love to know more about this.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: This is a fascinating idea. Um, because it's what I believe,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: like I want the next local news to be a
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: platform for the community to use anytime they want. It's
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: sort of taking this side of merging public act. I
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: just love what you, the way you even verbalized it,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: moving public access and sort of merging it with the
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: streaming mindset. Right. Um, and essentially creating public access streams. I,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: I love it. This is, this, this is one of
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: the better answers about local media that I've seen yet. Man,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: do I want to know more? And I have a
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: feeling that making this public will mean a lot more
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: other folks would like to do. So it's called TV three.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: I dig it. And boy, just speaking of St. Louis,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: I I've spent a lot of time in St. Louis family, friends. I, my,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: My first wife was from St. Louis. So I know
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: that it's an incredible collection of micro communities. And it's
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: totally been the St. Louis Post-Dispatches, you know, used to
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: be the Globe Democrat, the Post-Dispatch, right? You know, all
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: that's gone. You know, I think there's the remnants of
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: the Post-Dispatch. And I think I want to say the River,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: there's a free weekly, free daily out there that used
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: to be out there, River something or other. But this
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: is a People are proud of their micro communities. I
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: can't wait to see how successful you are here. Last
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: question comes from David. Greetings, Chuck, from New York's 25th.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: We hear you talk a lot about baseball ownership and
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: its culture, but I've always been intrigued by NFL owners
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: who sometimes seem to operate more like an organized crime
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: family commission. They generally appear to stay out of the
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: political spotlight. while remaining incredibly powerful. So what can you
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: tell us about the culture among the league's 31 private
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: ownership groups and how they collectively handle their business? Well, look,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: you still have a lot of family heirs, right? And
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: I think both the NBA has gone from, you know,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: small business owners to these sort of, there's a lot
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: more new money owners in the NBA than there are
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: certainly in the NFL, right? And now you're seeing a
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: little bit of that show up in baseball. Look, a
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: lot of the NFL owners, their wealth is within the team, right?
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: The growth of the league. So it has incentivized them
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: to sort of, right? You've got, what is it? The
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: Halases are on the fourth generation of ownership groups. You've
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: got the Maras with the New York Giants, or at least, right?
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: They sold half of it to the Tisch family, but still.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: That's still a remnant there. I think the Cowboys have
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: only had three owners, right? So, and think about when
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: he bought it for the, I don't even think, I
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: think it was 600 million is what he spent. I
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: think that was the number. Maybe I'm even underselling it.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was 200 million on Jerry Jones. So I
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: think because of that, right, they just want to stay.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: And so it just becomes embedded. So I take your point.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: It just becomes a series of family owners. It's almost
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: like in the same way, certain families thought that they
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: had political dynasties that were their birthright, right? Think the Kennedys,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: think the Tafts, think the Bushes, right? And frankly, you
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: can go in any state and there was always somebody,
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: the Roosevelts, you name it. There was some multi-generational family
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: in there. But I do think that you're going to
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: slowly see a transition, right, of ownership groups that are–
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: Because it's so expensive to buy an NFL team that
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling you're going to have more and
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: more of these sort of– where you sell pieces of
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: the team because these old family ownership groups want to
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: get some cash out of it, kind of like what
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: the Buss family did with the Lakers. They wanted– all
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: their wealth was tied up in the league or in
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: the team. So in order to get any money out
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: of it, they sell at a valuation and then they're
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: able to essentially– cash in based on the new valuation,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: what they want to cash in, uh, and, and, and
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: at least experience some of the value that way. Um,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: but I have a feeling that you're going to just
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: see more teams like, look at the way Josh Harris built.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's, he's got a slew of minority owners
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: because no, there aren't many people, right. There's a handful
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: of the, of the, of people who are worth more
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: than 50 billion, you know, $ 10 billion. Um, And an
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: NFL team now costs $ 10 billion, right? So you're going
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: to have a lot more partnership groups. And I think
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: it means that more NFL teams are actually going to
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: behave like the Packers do. Packers being community-owned in some ways, though,
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: they're managed very logically. They're managed with budgets. And at
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: some point when you have that many investors that whatever
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: it takes to own a franchise worth $ 10 billion– you're
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: no longer going to have whimsical decisions by a kooky owner,
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: a la Jerry Jones, right? And the kooky owner has
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: actually always been kind of a fun part of sports.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to be bummed when we lose the
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: kooky owner. But I just have a feeling what you're
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: really going to see is just more corporatization of all teams.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: And like I said, eventually they'll have boards of directors, shareholders,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: and almost operate the way the Packers do today. All right,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put a pin in questions there. Now
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: let's talk about college football weekend. So what was I
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: completely wrong about? Oklahoma. My takeaway from the Oklahoma-Michigan game
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: is simply, oh, Oklahoma doesn't have it. I don't believe
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: in Michigan, and nothing about that game convinced me that
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: Michigan is– that still looks like a shaky offense. That
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: still looks like a team that maybe wins seven or
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: eight games, maybe nine, but I don't see how they
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: win 10, and I don't see how they could beat anybody.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: that we consider truly a top five, six, or seven
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: team on there. But let's be honest. The game of
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: the day may have been Texas, Ohio State, but the
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: shock of the day on Saturday was Oklahoma State defeating Oregon.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma State giving Oregon a game, not a surprise. One
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: of the things we underrate all the time with these
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: great teams is that road games in college are just different.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: Road games in the NFL, They're pretty meaningless unless you
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: have a temperature issue, indoor versus outdoor, super heat. But
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: even like, I'm trying to think of where a crowd
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: in an NFL stadium can truly make a difference anymore.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: You know, yes, I guess you could say Steelers could.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: But I think even all of, I think most home
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: field advantages now are weather related in the NFL more
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: than anything else. College is different. It just is. First
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: of all, it's the youth, right? Um, you have that,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: you know, with, with Oregon, I think we totally underrated
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: or two brand new coordinators. Remember he, Dan Lanning, the
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: head coach there lost both his offensive and defensive coordinators
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: were hired as head coaches. One is at Cal, I think,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: and the other's at Kentucky. Um, and just automatically replaced,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: you know, take a look at Miami, Miami, I think's
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: the only top Miami and Indiana, I believe. yeah, I
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: think even Georgia had to get a new OC, I
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: want to say. But I know Miami and Indiana are
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: the only ones that kept both their OC and DC
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: and head coach. And, you know, so I think that
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: continuity matters. And I think you sort of, you really
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: notice it early in a season. For instance, I think
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: Ohio State's still figuring out their offense with Arthur Smith
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: and how that works. And I wasn't, You know, it's
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: interesting in the Ohio State-Texas game. Were those two really
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: good teams feeling each other out, giving about 85% effort?
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: Because ultimately, as long as the game was close, it
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: was probably a meaningless game. I don't want to say meaningless,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: but it was not as meaningful as the games would
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: have been if there's only four teams in the playoff
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Now, for narrative purposes and perception purposes,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: Arch Manning and Sarkeesian needed that victory a lot more
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: than Ryan Day and Julian Sane needed that victory, right?
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: So in some ways, it's the fitting ending. You know,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: Arch doesn't have to deal with like another week of,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: oh my God, he doesn't live up to the hype.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, you want to talk about impossible expectations. I
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: know some of it was brought on himself, but, you know,
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: he didn't know he was born a Manning. He just
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: was born a Manning, you know? It is the fact
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: that It's like the– the expectations for Arch Manning are
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: as great if not greater than they were for LeBron
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: James when that dude was put on the cover of
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated at 14 or whatever it was, right? And
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: I still find LeBron James remarkable for actually living up
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: to the hype. We can debate whether he's– is it
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: him or Jordan? But my god, he was identified at
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: 14 and he made it to the conversation of, well,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: is it him or Jordan? You know, you know, the
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: fact that he's in the conversation, that his career and
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: he didn't ever get derailed and he didn't ever get
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: like the outside stuff and any of this stuff. I mean,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: I think we. I think I think LeBron's I think
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: LeBron's ability. It's why I put him over Jordan, because,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: you know, to to to be identified and have to
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: live up to it. Right. Jordan had a chip on
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: his shoulder about middle school. Well, a shoot middle school.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: LeBron was already deemed the next Jordan. right? Nobody was
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: saying that about Michael Jordan in middle school, which of
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: course he reminded you in his Hall of Fame speech,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: but I'm digressing. So I do think, you know, to
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: keep the ESPN talking heads off their back, both Sark
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: and Arch needed a victory like that. It's sort of, yes,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of, because there was, you know, you
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: could just feel it, right? Had they blown that game,
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: especially how awful the start was. A couple of turnovers,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: it was weird turnovers, but it was just like, my God,
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: and I'm sorry. I think Sark's play calls are terrible.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: I think the play designs are terrible. I think they
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: are not using Arch the right way. I'm sorry. If
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: I were the Mannings, I'd wish I had an OC
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: like Shannon Dawson at Miami. It is, I'd wish I
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: had Lane Kiffin. I do not think Sark's, I mean,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: with the speed of Ohio State's defense, you're going to
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: throw behind the line of scrimmage like that? There were
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: just some real head scratchers there. The mistakes that were
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: made in that game are why I have my doubts
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: about Texas making it all the way. Look, talent-wise, Texas, Miami,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: Ohio State, Notre Dame, Georgia, maybe Alabama, not Oregon yet,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: but I'm willing to give Oregon a little more time here.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: I think they're all... The talent's equal, right? The question
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: is who's got intangible advantages. And I think you have
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: to throw Indiana in there. And I think in that sense,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: I think Miami's got the best quarterback. And I don't
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: know if it's that close. We'll see. I get it.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: It's Stanford and Florida A & M. But we saw
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: him last year, too. I mean, this dude has... Eight
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: touchdown passes and four incompletions. That's it. Four incompletions through
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: two games. And his incompletions were all like passes that
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: were there. They were just broken up or I think
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: one was a drop. He's incredibly accurate. So far, it's
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: the best two games I've ever seen any Miami. Right now,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: looks better than any Miami quarterback I've ever seen. And
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: we've had some great ones. but he is, it just,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: it's like, he just doesn't make a mistake. And if
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: he does under throw a ball to Malachi Tony, he
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: can make anything work. Um, so I look at that
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, Hmm, you know, I'm looking at all
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: these teams through how's Miami going to do against them? How,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: how's Miami going to handle Oklahoma? How's Miami going to
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: handle Texas or Ohio state? We've already sort of, I think,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: sent a message to Ohio state last year and Julian saying, so, um,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: I will say, if I have doubts about either Texan
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: or Ohio State, one is I'm not sure Arthur Smith
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: has figured out the best offense yet for that team.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: They get the ball in Smith's hands a lot, and
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: I would argue you need to figure out how to
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: get it into Jeremiah Smith's hands even more, if that's possible.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to me that Arch played better when he
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: had nothing to lose. The structured play calls, not so good. Um,
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: few other thoughts, uh, on, um, uh, on, on, on
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: what we've seen so far. Uh, Oh, the Cy Hawk,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: no matter what, right. It's going to be a three
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: point game. Let me memo to self. Don't, don't ever
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: overestimate Iowa's ability to a cover a spread or B
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: beat Iowa state by more than three points. They are
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: just apparently contractually obligated not to beat Iowa state by
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: more than three points. Um, uh, if they do that, uh,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: I hope as far as conferences versus conferences, I'm really
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: intrigued by the Mississippi State. I think Mississippi State is
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: going to pull a major upset in the SEC this
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: year and knock one of their playoff teams out of
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: the playoff by upsetting them. In fact, I will quickly
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: look up the Mississippi State game. Let me predict the
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: game that they're going to steal. because this is a
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: good quarterback. They seem to be growing in confidence. You
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: can kind of see it. It's just you can see
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: them coming along. And Minnesota is always a well coach.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: They won that game on the road, and they wouldn't
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: quite handle it. And I just think, look at the
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: rest of their schedule here. All right. So they got
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: South Carolina next week at South Carolina. Let me see. Oh,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: they get Alabama in Stark Vegas, October 3rd. Circle that one.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: They get Oklahoma in Stark Vegas on October 24. That's
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: worth circling. Those are the two home games. It's when
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: they're with that damn cowbell. This is a good enough
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: team to potentially give, I think, beat Oklahoma for sure
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: and give Alabama a scare. But they're going to provide,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: they're going to insert themselves into the playoff race by
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: being a victory over one of the contenders in the
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: SEC to do that. One final thing about the NFL. Look,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: one thing about week one is how misleading week one
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: can be. I remember the Packers losing 38-3 to the
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: New Orleans Saints a few years back. And then they
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: ended up, I think, going 13-3. And I think Aaron
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: Rodgers won the MVP. And everybody's like, what's wrong with
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: the Packers after week one? And they just had treated
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: it like a preseason game. I'm willing to give the
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: Rams a little bit on that. And it seems to me,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: if I'm Roger Goodell, I'm pissed off at the Rams
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: and McVay. Because I think they made the decision long
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: ago that they were going to punt this game. And
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: that's why you didn't see Aaron Donald even bother with
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: the trip. That's why you saw the decision that they made.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: They gave it the old college try. Like, well, let's
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: see if we can make it a game in the
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: first half. And if not, we're not going to. I mean,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: the fact that they pulled Stafford, when in theory they
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: weren't totally out of it yet, if they really wanted
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: to run a hurry up and try that. they were
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: always planning to treat this as a preseason game. And
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: I get it, right? They have a slightly tougher second
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: game than the Niners do. The Niners looked at their schedule,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: saw that they play Miami in week two, and the
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: Dolphins aren't going to be so hot this year, and
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: they figured, hey, we can afford to get there early.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: This is an important game. Could end up being a
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: tiebreaker for deciding a home field playoff spot, all that stuff.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: But I think the NFL needs to factor those things in.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: And if you're going to force teams to go halfway
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: around the world to start their season, be sure to
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: make sure their week two is navigatable enough where they
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: don't make the decision that the Rams made. Because I
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: just think it was unfair to the fans in Australia.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: It's pretty clear to me. The Rams treated this as
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: a modified preseason game. That's why they did what they did.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: They just decided it was going to be worse to
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: try to figure out the recovery efforts coming back. And
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: they prioritized that. That's what they prioritized. It's a version
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: of game theory. We'll find out at the end of
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: the season who was right about this. But I think
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: Goodell needs to be smarter about these international games and
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: create situations where it behooves both teams to give it
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: their full effort. But he did put the Rams in
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: a situation where they had to pick and choose how
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: they were going to manage this game. Where the Niners,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: with a super easy schedule to follow... also had the
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: incentive to do it a certain way. Anyway, all right.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: With that, I got a big week for you. I
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: hope you've caught our Paul Feinbaum conversation at Dynastic. Be
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: sure to check that out. Jay Adande and myself, and
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: we're getting ready for our next deep dive for the
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: month of October. It's going to be the Green Bay Packers.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: So I went from one college team that I've grown
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: to not like, but respect, to the NFL team of
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: my youth. With that, I'll see you in 24 hours
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: on Super Tuesday, and I'll see you 48 hours right
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: back here on the podcast. Thanks for listening. Be sure
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: to like and subscribe.