Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary- Trump’s War Will Hurt His Base The Most - Trump's Vile Celebration Of Robert Mueller’s Death

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Chuck’s Commentary- Trump’s War Will Hurt His Base The Most - Trump's Vile Celebration Of Robert Mueller’s Death · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: constantly working on this for years myself, and here's an
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Speaker 1: opportunity for you to take matters into your own hands
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Speaker 1: as well. Hello there, and welcome to the Monday episode
1:53
Speaker 1: of the Chuck Podcast. As you can see, I'm representing
1:56
Speaker 1: the Canes here because in my extended family, I've told
1:59
Speaker 1: you so, we've we've we basically we have Florida State,
2:02
Speaker 1: s m U Auburn, Arkansas. That that's sort of like
2:06
Speaker 1: the large group of schools in our extended family that
2:11
Speaker 1: we consistently rood for. Oh, miss, I got some ties
2:14
Speaker 1: to I'm not going to claim LSU. Sorry, Drew, on
2:19
Speaker 1: that one. That's that's a little hard for me. But
2:21
Speaker 1: you guys aren't in this NCAA tournament yet, and maybe
2:23
Speaker 1: I would if you were there. The bottom line is,
2:27
Speaker 1: there's only in my in my extended family chats where
2:31
Speaker 1: we care about college basketball. There are two teams left
2:35
Speaker 1: that I have some family invested in, or at least
2:39
Speaker 1: two teams that did that didn't lose in the first round.
2:42
Speaker 1: So I'm representing my Canes here with that. But hey,
2:48
Speaker 1: the tournament's kind of played out how we kind of
2:51
Speaker 1: all thought how that it was going to be top heavy,
2:55
Speaker 1: right two years in a row that the top four
2:58
Speaker 1: seeds all went undefeated in the first round. This is
3:01
Speaker 1: the conundrum of nil right. On one hand, some people
3:04
Speaker 1: say it's terrible, it's doing terrible things for college athletics.
3:07
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the good gets better in college basketball,
3:12
Speaker 1: and we have seen right the top twenty five programs.
3:17
Speaker 1: It's just a better it's better quality. College basketball feels
3:22
Speaker 1: like as close to the eighties in competitiveness, where you
3:26
Speaker 1: consistently had three and four year starters on teams. We
3:30
Speaker 1: have that this time. They just don't always stay with
3:32
Speaker 1: the same team for three or four years. But you
3:35
Speaker 1: have that that these veteran players are sticking. They're not
3:40
Speaker 1: testing to see if there's any money to be found
3:42
Speaker 1: in the NBA or go make money overseas. Instead they're
3:44
Speaker 1: staying in college basketball, and you're seeing what that does. Now,
3:48
Speaker 1: what's the part of the tournament? We all love the
3:50
Speaker 1: best ah those twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen seed upsets. So
3:55
Speaker 1: it was fun to watch Sienna give Duke a scare
3:57
Speaker 1: for everybody right to see that that's still ill possible.
4:00
Speaker 1: And there's certainly were some impressive you know, thirteen and
4:04
Speaker 1: fourteen seeds and how they played, but you could see
4:07
Speaker 1: that it was really because what's really been the big
4:11
Speaker 1: difference these days between sort of the power for conferences
4:14
Speaker 1: plus the Big East and everybody else is depth. That's
4:19
Speaker 1: where you see it. And even these these mid majors
4:22
Speaker 1: that have hung. You watched it with Saint Louis, with Michigan,
4:24
Speaker 1: they can hang until they can't and they just sort
4:28
Speaker 1: of run out of bodies. Frankly, it's something I'm concerned
4:30
Speaker 1: about about Miami. I feel pretty good about their ability
4:33
Speaker 1: to match up against anybody for a game, being able
4:36
Speaker 1: to get through a grueling tournament requires a little bit
4:39
Speaker 1: of depth. I think we're seeing that and that's probably
4:42
Speaker 1: going to be what's decisive and who wins this national title. Right,
4:45
Speaker 1: Is Douke going to be healthy enough by the end
4:47
Speaker 1: to pull this off? Is Iowa State going to be
4:50
Speaker 1: healthy enough to stay as competitive as they are? So
4:53
Speaker 1: I know we depth is going to be a big deal,
4:56
Speaker 1: But that's the big the big thing you do. There
4:59
Speaker 1: a few other things I want any alert you to tomorrow.
5:05
Speaker 1: As in Tuesday, I'm very excited. I'm going to be
5:09
Speaker 1: launching a new podcast show. I'm going to be co
5:15
Speaker 1: hosting it with somebody. I want to not get ahead
5:17
Speaker 1: of things here, I will just leave you this clue.
5:21
Speaker 1: It is in the sports history space. I'll be teaming
5:24
Speaker 1: up with a terrific journalist who happens to have a
5:28
Speaker 1: deep knowledge in the area of sports. But again, we
5:32
Speaker 1: will wait till I can't step on my own press
5:36
Speaker 1: release on things like that. But I'm very excited. Debuts Tuesday.
5:39
Speaker 1: Everything comes out Tuesday. You'll start to see opportunities to
5:45
Speaker 1: take a listen to the show in this feed and
5:47
Speaker 1: other feeds here because guess what, if I'm involved, I
5:49
Speaker 1: want you guys to know about it, just like when
5:51
Speaker 1: I'm involved with my other projects and including I have
5:54
Speaker 1: a fascinating interview this week on Newsphere. For those of
5:58
Speaker 1: you who subscribe, you may have already watched it. It
6:02
Speaker 1: is with Robert Albriton. He is one of the original
6:07
Speaker 1: founders of Politico. He is just recently decided to hire
6:11
Speaker 1: up some former Washington Post journalists, including perhaps their single
6:17
Speaker 1: best congressional reporter and analysts that they have there and
6:21
Speaker 1: Paul Kane, and he wants to try to fill the
6:24
Speaker 1: void that the Washington Post has chosen to leave here
6:26
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And it is if you are
6:30
Speaker 1: in the media business and you are curious what is
6:33
Speaker 1: happening in the DC market, what is Robert Albritton up to?
6:37
Speaker 1: And you should know a little bit about his family history.
6:39
Speaker 1: His father was the one time owner of the Washington Star,
6:44
Speaker 1: which was a serious competitor an afternoon paper here in Washington,
6:48
Speaker 1: but a serious competitor of the Post. There's some terrific
6:50
Speaker 1: journalists who who go back to the Washington Stars days,
6:55
Speaker 1: but in the sixties and seventies it was the other
6:57
Speaker 1: paper of Washington. His family also own one of the
7:00
Speaker 1: TV affiliates here and was in the TV affiliate ownership business. WJLA,
7:05
Speaker 1: the ABC affiliate in d C, was an All Britton station.
7:08
Speaker 1: The A and w j LA stands for Albritton, Joe L. Albrighton. Well,
7:12
Speaker 1: Robert is his son. Robert got in the media business himself,
7:17
Speaker 1: working with John Harrison Jim Vandeheide found Politico. After selling
7:22
Speaker 1: it successfully to Axel Springer, he started a journalism institute
7:26
Speaker 1: to try to help train young journalists. But I'll be
7:31
Speaker 1: honest to me, it looked like he was just waiting
7:33
Speaker 1: to see what he was going to do next. He
7:35
Speaker 1: had made a nice, tidy profit off of Politico, and
7:38
Speaker 1: he certainly had the ability to do something here and
7:42
Speaker 1: wants to, you know, now, get into the local space,
7:47
Speaker 1: be a I don't know if it's necessarily a competitor
7:50
Speaker 1: with the posts, quasi competitor with the post, but at
7:53
Speaker 1: the same time leaning in more on the on some
8:00
Speaker 1: of the local vacuums. That and what was interesting is
8:05
Speaker 1: look in our conversation, it's pretty clear things are a
8:08
Speaker 1: bit unformed. Still, let me just I hope you take
8:13
Speaker 1: a look at it. Yes, it's behind a paywall. I
8:14
Speaker 1: encourage you if you've not subscribed, take a trial take
8:18
Speaker 1: a look. There's some terrific independent journalists covering the war
8:21
Speaker 1: in Iran, in particular what's going on in Cuba. There
8:24
Speaker 1: is plenty to learn from Newsphere. It is a really
8:28
Speaker 1: sort of an elite, high quality news organization with some
8:32
Speaker 1: of the most intriguing journalists that are on the ground,
8:35
Speaker 1: experts in their space, yours truly. Obviously, I'm I'm an investor,
8:40
Speaker 1: I'm a participant. I'm a big fan of this. I
8:42
Speaker 1: think the technology is terrific as well. So let me
8:46
Speaker 1: just give you a few quotes that Robert gave me
8:49
Speaker 1: in the interview, and again I really encourage you. I'll
8:52
Speaker 1: have some clips on my Instagram feed. We'll have some clips.
8:55
Speaker 1: You'll be able to circulate some of them. But let
8:56
Speaker 1: me just give you a few quotes from here that
9:00
Speaker 1: just gives you a taste of the conversation that we had.
9:03
Speaker 1: But he really does give an idea that I think
9:06
Speaker 1: this is going. He wants to try to rethink what
9:08
Speaker 1: a local news organization could be. How do you engage
9:12
Speaker 1: the community in a way that maybe their participants not
9:17
Speaker 1: just consumers of the product. What do I mean by
9:19
Speaker 1: that well, think local sports, think sports coaches helping to
9:23
Speaker 1: make sure, maybe becoming a platform to showcase use sports
9:31
Speaker 1: streaming feeds so that parents can and grandparents and aunts
9:35
Speaker 1: and uncles can keep up with their sons, daughters, grandkids,
9:39
Speaker 1: nieces and nephews, etc. On that. So he is thinking
9:44
Speaker 1: about sort of all the sort of more modern ways.
9:47
Speaker 1: How do you we're a hyper local community. People care
9:51
Speaker 1: what's going on in Arlington, Virginia, but they may not
9:54
Speaker 1: care that much what's going on Montgomery County. But they
9:56
Speaker 1: also care about what's going on, but both of us
9:58
Speaker 1: may care about what's going on in Congress. So he
10:00
Speaker 1: wants to try to figure out how do you engage
10:02
Speaker 1: how do you be a hub for the micro local
10:06
Speaker 1: at the same time without it becoming too resource dependent
10:10
Speaker 1: where it becomes impossible to do that and be able
10:15
Speaker 1: to run an organization that doesn't lose money. So a
10:22
Speaker 1: few things, a few quotes from him. So I'm the mission,
10:26
Speaker 1: he says. So, I think what our mission here is
10:28
Speaker 1: to do is really cover what I call the village
10:31
Speaker 1: in Washington, which is it's not the entire area. I
10:34
Speaker 1: think we need to cover the various places where people
10:36
Speaker 1: live too. But I think a huge portion of what
10:39
Speaker 1: we're going and looking to do is acknowledge the fact
10:41
Speaker 1: that we're a factory town. Right, And he makes this
10:44
Speaker 1: point whether folks live in rest In or Hyattsville, which
10:47
Speaker 1: are local areas in Virginia and Maryland suburban areas. I
10:50
Speaker 1: want to admit it, everybody's indirectly here because some job
10:53
Speaker 1: has something to do with the fact that the public
10:55
Speaker 1: government's here, So we're all tied into it. That's our
10:58
Speaker 1: primary village. But then we go down to but it's
11:00
Speaker 1: not just covering Congress in the White House and agencies.
11:02
Speaker 1: It also goes to people who live here. They don't
11:04
Speaker 1: work one hundred percent of the time. What else is
11:07
Speaker 1: going on? Right? Kids in school, they want to make sure.
11:10
Speaker 1: They want to know what's going on with their neighbors.
11:12
Speaker 1: They want to know all these things. They're interested in sports,
11:15
Speaker 1: they're interested in weather, They're interested in all kinds of
11:17
Speaker 1: basic things that anybody in Des Moines or Tipeka or
11:19
Speaker 1: Houston would be interested in today. So I think there's
11:21
Speaker 1: a magic blend between two of those that works to
11:24
Speaker 1: make it. The hometown paper seems pretty simple enough. Again,
11:28
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to it. Trust me. I don't.
11:33
Speaker 1: I'm not shy about, you know, giving them my points
11:36
Speaker 1: of view and my ideas and we banter back and forth.
11:40
Speaker 1: If you care about the future of local media, if
11:42
Speaker 1: you care about the future of Washington media, if you
11:44
Speaker 1: care about the future of the information ecosystem, I think
11:46
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy this conversation. I'll tell you one thing about
11:52
Speaker 1: Robert Albert. He's kind of a happy warrior. He really
11:56
Speaker 1: I think he. I think, Look, you know, you never
12:01
Speaker 1: know for sure, but I really think he because he's
12:03
Speaker 1: grew up here, he lives here. I think that's a
12:07
Speaker 1: huge distinction with Jeff Bezos. I think he didn't by
12:10
Speaker 1: not ever living here, he didn't understand what the Washington
12:13
Speaker 1: Post meant to people personally. And I think that lack
12:17
Speaker 1: of knowledge of him not leaving living here, I think
12:21
Speaker 1: he might have cared. You know, he might have understood
12:23
Speaker 1: it more because he lived in northwest Seattle. He never
12:24
Speaker 1: lived here. And this is what happens. This is why
12:27
Speaker 1: you never want to sell see your sports teams bought
12:29
Speaker 1: up by outsiders. You never want to see your local
12:31
Speaker 1: institutions bought up by outsiders because they do not have
12:35
Speaker 1: the personal investment and that's ultimately what feels like the
12:40
Speaker 1: distinction here between all Burton and Bezos. One grew up here,
12:44
Speaker 1: seems to do at the end of the day, care about
12:48
Speaker 1: the community and maybe care what his friends and neighbors
12:50
Speaker 1: think of what he's doing as a steward in the community,
12:53
Speaker 1: versus the Jeff Bezos, who has no friends and neighbors.
12:55
Speaker 1: Here just a little thought there. But anyway, so I've
13:01
Speaker 1: got that, I've got the new podcast on sports history
13:04
Speaker 1: launching on Tuesday that I'm very excited about. But let's
13:10
Speaker 1: get to what's going on in the world of politics.
13:13
Speaker 1: And as you know, I've said it before and I
13:16
Speaker 1: will say it again, there is only one story at
13:21
Speaker 1: the moment. You know, Ultimately, the war in Iran is
13:26
Speaker 1: impacting everything. It's impacting the economy, it's impacting politics, It's
13:30
Speaker 1: impacting everything this point. So we're far enough into this
13:33
Speaker 1: war to say this as plainly as possible. Everything else
13:38
Speaker 1: is downstream of this, the economy, the election, energy prices,
13:41
Speaker 1: the broader media environment. And yet for all the coverage,
13:44
Speaker 1: one basic question remains unanswered on this war. What does
13:47
Speaker 1: the end of this look like? Because wars tend to end,
13:51
Speaker 1: one of two ways, total surrender or a viable exit
13:55
Speaker 1: ran Right now, it's hard to see either, and that's
13:58
Speaker 1: what makes this moment so dangerous. So let's start with
14:01
Speaker 1: something that might seem secondary of the ward its self,
14:03
Speaker 1: but politically it's not. Gas prices. The rising energy costs
14:08
Speaker 1: are not politically neutral, and this is a huge problem
14:11
Speaker 1: for the president. They hit different voters in different ways,
14:16
Speaker 1: and in this case, the voters who are going to
14:18
Speaker 1: feel this first, who are feeling it in the moment
14:20
Speaker 1: and they're getting the artists, are the voters that are
14:23
Speaker 1: most likely part of Donald Trump's coalition. In a city,
14:27
Speaker 1: a gas hike is an annoyance on an app in
14:30
Speaker 1: the excerbs and in rural America, a majority of whom
14:35
Speaker 1: are Trump supporters, and we're Trump voters. This is a
14:38
Speaker 1: tax on simply existing. You can't subway your way out
14:43
Speaker 1: of a commute in Pennsylvania, Ohio. You live it. And
14:47
Speaker 1: that's the shift here that matters the most. This isn't
14:50
Speaker 1: just an economic hit to all of us. It's to
14:53
Speaker 1: a specific group of voters. It's a breach of the
14:56
Speaker 1: populist contract that Trump agreed to with them, the promise
15:01
Speaker 1: that the system would work better for them. It's blowing
15:05
Speaker 1: up in their face, one expensive gas tank at a time.
15:13
Speaker 1: Your costs were supposed to go down, instead they're going up.
15:15
Speaker 1: Your life was supposed to get easier. Instead it's gotten
15:18
Speaker 1: more complicated. The cost of simply getting through the day
15:21
Speaker 1: is right, there is now a tax I'm just picking
15:23
Speaker 1: up your kids from school. There is a new Trump tax.
15:26
Speaker 1: I'm just going to the grocery store. There's a new
15:28
Speaker 1: Trump tax. I'm going from one job to another. And
15:34
Speaker 1: this war has no clear endpoint, which brings us to
15:39
Speaker 1: the core strategic issue. So we're trying to apply pressure
15:42
Speaker 1: right now, economic and military on a regime that may
15:45
Speaker 1: not respond to pressure the way small deed democracies do.
15:49
Speaker 1: We think in terms of incentives, costs go up, behavior changes,
15:56
Speaker 1: pain increases, pressure builds. I'll give you a simple answer.
15:59
Speaker 1: We shack up taxes on cigarettes. Just made them vice taxes.
16:03
Speaker 1: The point was to get people to make it so
16:05
Speaker 1: expensive that they would change their habit, and for the
16:07
Speaker 1: most part people have. It's pretty it's been a pretty
16:11
Speaker 1: effective way to to help cut back. That's just a
16:18
Speaker 1: small incentive, right, It's a behavioral incentive, But that logic
16:24
Speaker 1: doesn't cleanly apply in this war. At the moment, we're
16:26
Speaker 1: trying to play chess against a regime that is not
16:28
Speaker 1: operating on a conventional strategic board. You cannot bank on
16:33
Speaker 1: rational economic actors when the leadership views suffering as a
16:37
Speaker 1: tool of domestic control. Right, we sit here and think, hey,
16:42
Speaker 1: your people are going to suffer. This regime was willing
16:45
Speaker 1: to kill its own people that protested them. So the
16:49
Speaker 1: president threatening them with more suffering, it may not have
16:55
Speaker 1: the impact he thinks it's supposed to have. Sanctions are
16:58
Speaker 1: a scalpel the regime wheelds a sleigh chammer. This is
17:02
Speaker 1: a system that has repeatedly shown it is willing to
17:06
Speaker 1: absorb pain. Look at how long we've had sanctions on Iran.
17:10
Speaker 1: They not only absorb it, then they impose it and
17:13
Speaker 1: they punish their own people, all to maintain power. So normal,
17:19
Speaker 1: small the democratic incentives are not going to work with
17:22
Speaker 1: these folks. So the pressure then the question becomes what
17:26
Speaker 1: is the pressure point? What does force a change in behavior?
17:30
Speaker 1: I think we naively thought just eliminating the Ayatola was
17:35
Speaker 1: going to do it, and that there was going to
17:37
Speaker 1: somehow be all these people below who were not devoted
17:40
Speaker 1: to the regime. Oh, the Ietol is gone, Let's go
17:43
Speaker 1: cut a deal just like he got in Venezuela. And
17:48
Speaker 1: I am concerned. I'm going to repeat this. He is not.
17:52
Speaker 1: I think that only General Kine tried to be specific
17:58
Speaker 1: with him about the potential calamities that could come with this,
18:02
Speaker 1: the un you know, the the unintended consequence of starting
18:06
Speaker 1: this war. Why do I think General Kine was the
18:09
Speaker 1: only one, because he also then went to the Wall
18:10
Speaker 1: Street General, Washington Post, and New York Times and seemed
18:13
Speaker 1: to make sure his skepticism was his public and was
18:16
Speaker 1: in every place that the president could see it. But
18:19
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like anybody else told the president what
18:21
Speaker 1: he didn't want to hear. Everybody told him what he
18:23
Speaker 1: wanted to hear on this. And this is what happens.
18:26
Speaker 1: This is why a presidency built the way he built it,
18:30
Speaker 1: where loyalty is one hundred percent, and telling him news
18:33
Speaker 1: that he doesn't want to hear can get you fired.
18:35
Speaker 1: This is how you end up in a circumstance like this.
18:39
Speaker 1: So look, this is this is why sick of fans
18:44
Speaker 1: in an administration actually endanger your life and my life.
18:50
Speaker 1: These sick of fans. These spineless folks who just want
18:53
Speaker 1: to be close to power, who are willing to do
18:56
Speaker 1: whatever it takes to keep dear leader happy, arevoing you
19:00
Speaker 1: and I in danger, are rising the costs of our
19:03
Speaker 1: gas prices. That's spinelessness. Now maybe he does this anyway,
19:08
Speaker 1: but let's not pretend he was told all of the
19:11
Speaker 1: consequences in the detail that he needed to be told.
19:15
Speaker 1: That might have where other presidents did set themselves up
19:19
Speaker 1: to make sure they were getting feedback that wasn't sickophantish
19:25
Speaker 1: in nature. This president, he has designed an administration to
19:30
Speaker 1: be sickophantic. I mean, we've seen those cabinet meetings. They're embarrassing,
19:34
Speaker 1: they're hilarious, except that it impacts all of our lives.
19:40
Speaker 1: If we were observing another country, we would mock and
19:43
Speaker 1: just find it absolutely Like God, look at these nutjobs
19:48
Speaker 1: and what they do. We do laugh at North Korea
19:51
Speaker 1: when we see the North Korean anchors, We laugh at
19:54
Speaker 1: Bagdad Bob. Suddenly we have, you know, propaganda pede. It's
20:00
Speaker 1: really it again. But wasn't so dangerous It would be funny,
20:05
Speaker 1: but it's extraordinarily dangerous situation that being in again we're
20:10
Speaker 1: here in this where he's boxed himself in where I
20:14
Speaker 1: think we're going to end up escalating because we have
20:16
Speaker 1: no other choice, because perhaps even finding an exit ramp
20:20
Speaker 1: at this point would just essentially hand the region and
20:23
Speaker 1: hand global superpower to China. This episode of the Chuck
20:34
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22:24
Speaker 1: we are. There's no clear incentive for surrender. There's no
22:27
Speaker 1: clear off ran for the United States. There's every chance
22:33
Speaker 1: that we just are sort of you know, we basically
22:36
Speaker 1: the United States may have made the exact same miscalculation
22:39
Speaker 1: that Russian made with Ukraine. Now this will be easy,
22:41
Speaker 1: this will be quick. We'll overwhelm them for more than
22:46
Speaker 1: five years into that war in Ukraine. And then there's
22:50
Speaker 1: the coalition question. So over the last year, US foreign
22:53
Speaker 1: policy has been defined less by partnership and more by
22:58
Speaker 1: transaction and version, tariffs, public pressure, burden sharing demands, beating
23:09
Speaker 1: up these folks in public. Right, these things have consequences.
23:13
Speaker 1: So when you treat your foreign policy like a protection racket,
23:17
Speaker 1: your partners start acting like reluctant customers. They'll do what
23:20
Speaker 1: they have to, but they're not going to be there
23:22
Speaker 1: when you need them. They're not going to be looking
23:25
Speaker 1: for shared victories with you. They're going to basically be
23:27
Speaker 1: looking for exits. A coalition of the coerced is never
23:31
Speaker 1: a coalition of the willing. And right now that's the
23:35
Speaker 1: reality we're dealing with. He beats the crap out of
23:38
Speaker 1: our allies over the last year and a half. He
23:40
Speaker 1: pounds them with tariffs, he landbasts them from you know,
23:45
Speaker 1: every which way, and then when they don't show up
23:48
Speaker 1: when we really could use them at the moment, they're
23:53
Speaker 1: not there, and do you blame them? You know, think
23:57
Speaker 1: about any of your relationships in life. Right, somebody needs
24:00
Speaker 1: your help if they've been an asshole to you, how
24:05
Speaker 1: likely are you to pick up a hand to help.
24:08
Speaker 1: You may help because you think it helps the greater neighborhood,
24:12
Speaker 1: but you may be just as likely to say good luck. Right,
24:22
Speaker 1: that's a shame. I wish you all the best. And
24:28
Speaker 1: that's the situation that Donald Trump has put us in.
24:30
Speaker 1: We are isolated, we are alone, and we could use
24:36
Speaker 1: the help. Of course, if he had built you know, again,
24:41
Speaker 1: he did none of this spade work that you're supposed
24:43
Speaker 1: to do that you should have done before launching this excursion.
24:49
Speaker 1: Which come on, we all know this. It's an incursion
24:52
Speaker 1: that he's trying to say, but instead he keeps saying excursion.
24:56
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know, Donald Trump's very sort of
25:01
Speaker 1: narrow vocabulary at times can be amusing. You know. His
25:05
Speaker 1: obsession with the idea that somehow all of these immigrants
25:10
Speaker 1: that have come into this country are in are coming
25:14
Speaker 1: from insane asylums is because he conflates the word asylum.
25:20
Speaker 1: He hears asylum and he thinks a a institution that
25:25
Speaker 1: holds mentally deranged people or mentally unhealthy people, when it
25:31
Speaker 1: is obviously an entirely different definition when you're dealing with immigration.
25:35
Speaker 1: So it is amusing with his excursion. This is not
25:38
Speaker 1: an excursion. If you want to call it an incursion.
25:42
Speaker 1: You might call it an incursion, but it is amusing.
25:49
Speaker 1: But this goes back. We just we just sort of
25:52
Speaker 1: dismiss and I you know, oh, it's just Trump and Trump.
25:56
Speaker 1: You know Blue Tarski when the Germans bomb Borough Harbor,
26:00
Speaker 1: Germans excursion, incursion. You know, he's on a roll, right
26:05
Speaker 1: that that that's what we end up doing. But we're
26:13
Speaker 1: in a we're we're in it deep. We could use
26:15
Speaker 1: some help with the straight of horror moons and if
26:17
Speaker 1: he had put together a coalition and explained everything he
26:20
Speaker 1: was going to do. But now you understand why so
26:26
Speaker 1: many American presidents, Democrat and Republican have been very careful
26:30
Speaker 1: here on Iran. It's because they will fight back asymmetrically.
26:35
Speaker 1: This is this. I mean, look, this playbook, this, this
26:41
Speaker 1: asymmetrical playbook was written in Vietnam, was perfected in Afghanistan,
26:47
Speaker 1: and has essentially been used against great powers everywhere we've been.
26:54
Speaker 1: We've overcome it eventually in Iraq. We eventually would overcome it,
26:59
Speaker 1: but it got wrong way out right. What was initially
27:02
Speaker 1: an overwhelming victory, we were dealing with insurgent for years,
27:07
Speaker 1: and of course in Afghanistan we never really won, end
27:13
Speaker 1: up handing the country over to the group of people
27:16
Speaker 1: we were never intending to hand the country over to.
27:19
Speaker 1: The hope was to have a pluralistic society of some sort.
27:24
Speaker 1: That did not happen again, asymmetric warfare. So how's Ukraine survived?
27:31
Speaker 1: Asymmetric warfare? Here we are so at leads to something else,
27:36
Speaker 1: more intangible, but just as important leadership. Because presidents and
27:40
Speaker 1: moments like this typically do something very specific, specific they're
27:44
Speaker 1: supposed to project steadiness even when they don't feel it.
27:47
Speaker 1: And what's striking here it's not just the volatility. It's
27:49
Speaker 1: the absence of any effort to mask it. It's not
27:52
Speaker 1: simply a messaging issue. But he literally vacillates from day
27:55
Speaker 1: to day. We don't need you, We're desperate for how
28:00
Speaker 1: with our allies. You know, every day it's an unpredictably
28:03
Speaker 1: you have forty eight hours to open the straight of
28:05
Speaker 1: Horn moves oron, or we're going to blow up your
28:08
Speaker 1: largest energy structure. You know, what their largest energy structure
28:11
Speaker 1: is a nuclear reactor. We're going to bomb a nuclear
28:15
Speaker 1: reactor the United States. By the way, I have my
28:18
Speaker 1: time machine in this episode. Nuclear reactors are a theme
28:23
Speaker 1: to this week's time machine. But I so there's a
28:25
Speaker 1: fun little teas for you. There are we going to
28:29
Speaker 1: do this? We just lectured Israel to stop bombing certain
28:34
Speaker 1: energy infrastructure so that these countries can get rebuilt within
28:38
Speaker 1: a reasonable amount of time and have an economy and
28:40
Speaker 1: not just tank the entire global economy. And now we've
28:45
Speaker 1: got mister hothead on truth Social saying, you've got forty
28:48
Speaker 1: eight hours and we know what's going on here. He
28:50
Speaker 1: is panicking about gas prices. It all goes to back
28:53
Speaker 1: his voter. Right, you own an F one fifty, you
28:56
Speaker 1: own a specifically, if you own a Dodge Ram, which
28:59
Speaker 1: is probably the worst of the gas mileage, that is,
29:03
Speaker 1: you want to pick up truck in America, you're probably
29:06
Speaker 1: more likely to vote for Donald Trump. You're more likely
29:08
Speaker 1: to drive more miles than than than than most people.
29:14
Speaker 1: You probably live in in a larger geographic area that
29:18
Speaker 1: you conduct your day to day life rural and exurban America.
29:25
Speaker 1: His voters. He is punishing them financially right now, and
29:30
Speaker 1: it's not going to get over more could start stop tomorrow.
29:34
Speaker 1: We're still months before things get back to normal on
29:37
Speaker 1: the energy markets, therefore, months before you start to see
29:42
Speaker 1: relief in the prices. And again it's his voters that
29:48
Speaker 1: could hit first. So his his panic is politically explainable. Here,
29:57
Speaker 1: it's completely explainable. But this is what happens when you
30:03
Speaker 1: don't think things through before you make a decision like this,
30:07
Speaker 1: and you just continue to get told everything's going to
30:09
Speaker 1: be easy. You're told what you want to hear, so
30:12
Speaker 1: you get the sickophants that have put us in danger.
30:16
Speaker 1: Lack of planning has put us in danger. Alienating our
30:19
Speaker 1: allies has put us in danger. Other than that things
30:21
Speaker 1: are going swimmingly with this war, something else happened this
30:27
Speaker 1: weekend that's sort of exposed something that is not surprising
30:30
Speaker 1: about this president, but continues to it continues to depress me. Right.
30:38
Speaker 1: It's the death of Robert Muller, former FBI director, just
30:42
Speaker 1: basically a model public servant, served in Vietnam, served as
30:47
Speaker 1: SBI director during nine to eleven. I mean, really sort
30:51
Speaker 1: of brought the FBI out of out of you know,
30:56
Speaker 1: sort of helped rebuild its reputation in a positive direction.
31:01
Speaker 1: Just a fine you know, he's got a fine, long
31:03
Speaker 1: resume of public service, and by all accounts, this is
31:08
Speaker 1: an honorable individual. You may disagree with what he did
31:14
Speaker 1: or how he conducted himself during the Special Council Investigation
31:18
Speaker 1: of the twenty sixteen campaign, but I imagine most of
31:23
Speaker 1: you would have some respect for anybody that wore the
31:25
Speaker 1: uniform and served this country, anybody that helped rebuild this
31:32
Speaker 1: country and go find the bad guys after nine to eleven.
31:36
Speaker 1: These would be good things. And Donald Trump celebrates his
31:47
Speaker 1: death and you know, you know, it's easy. I was,
31:54
Speaker 1: it's easy to dunk on him in moments like this, right,
31:57
Speaker 1: and you know, and I know that you know, dunk
32:00
Speaker 1: on him, and hey, take a look at this video
32:02
Speaker 1: and look, Donald Trump's an asshole. See there's more proof
32:05
Speaker 1: of it, right, there's no doubt, Like I mean, it is.
32:10
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, I know, we're never it's never
32:14
Speaker 1: surprising anymore when he has no problem sort of just
32:21
Speaker 1: you know what to people who die, it's it's truly sad.
32:30
Speaker 1: I mean, it was sort of my old friend Britt
32:35
Speaker 1: Hume who's a political analyst for Fox. He said something
32:40
Speaker 1: very plainly on X that I'm going to repeat here
32:42
Speaker 1: because he's right, and I want to unpack it here
32:48
Speaker 1: for a minute. So you know Trump it was. He
32:52
Speaker 1: retweeted what Trump said about mull Arm. You know, he
32:54
Speaker 1: said he was basically good riddance. You know, he's glad
32:57
Speaker 1: to see you know that he can't hurt people anymore,
32:59
Speaker 1: or something like that. And it's britt human notes he goes,
33:02
Speaker 1: this is the kind of stuff Trump does that makes
33:05
Speaker 1: people not just oppose him but hate him. There's no
33:08
Speaker 1: need to say anything. Right. Meanwhile, you have like George W.
33:11
Speaker 1: Bush and Barack Obama talking about Robert Muller is one
33:13
Speaker 1: of the finest public servants this country's ever had. And
33:21
Speaker 1: that's the question that we all should be asking ourselves.
33:25
Speaker 1: All of us have people that we have a rational
33:27
Speaker 1: hate about. If you're a human being, you have somebody
33:31
Speaker 1: in your life somewhere, at some point that you're irrationally
33:35
Speaker 1: angry at. You know, you might even say I'd piss
33:39
Speaker 1: on their grave, right, you know, something like that. But
33:47
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess ninety nine percent of you would
33:53
Speaker 1: know when to shut up. We know when to use
33:58
Speaker 1: some grace. His inability to ever have grace at any
34:03
Speaker 1: moment in time is what happened to him in his
34:10
Speaker 1: life that he feels this way. Like I said, the
34:13
Speaker 1: easy way to sort of deal with this here is
34:16
Speaker 1: to say, you know, and you know all these things
34:20
Speaker 1: are true. Right. It undermines his credibility, It undermines his leaderships.
34:24
Speaker 1: Half the country doesn't feel like like like Britume said,
34:27
Speaker 1: it's not just worth opposing him. And so then when
34:31
Speaker 1: you hate somebody, you're never going to give him credit
34:33
Speaker 1: for anything because somebody with such terrible character like this.
34:42
Speaker 1: And this is why I am a huge I vote
34:44
Speaker 1: on character. I only vote on character because ultimately character
34:48
Speaker 1: counts more than a political position, because character matters, at
34:52
Speaker 1: the end of the day, more than anything else. If
34:55
Speaker 1: you have bad character, you're willing to change your position
34:58
Speaker 1: for unprincipled reasons. So give me character any day of
35:01
Speaker 1: the week over I'll take somebody who I disagree with
35:05
Speaker 1: with ninety nine percent of the time, who I know
35:08
Speaker 1: has higher character than the person I agree with, say
35:10
Speaker 1: sixty seventy percent of the time. A low character person
35:15
Speaker 1: will eventually tear you down with them and when you
35:20
Speaker 1: hand low character people your credibility, they will piss it away.
35:28
Speaker 1: So I do. I vote very much on character. And
35:34
Speaker 1: it's moments like this that are a reminder that character
35:37
Speaker 1: matters here when our president can't, ever, when this president
35:41
Speaker 1: can't ever rise above any sort of personal, partisan, personal grievance,
35:48
Speaker 1: you know, and it goes back to the investigation itself.
35:50
Speaker 1: You know, the great failure of the Mueller investigation is
35:55
Speaker 1: the fact that we did nothing about the crime that
35:59
Speaker 1: did happen. In plain site, the Russians interfered with our
36:03
Speaker 1: presidential election. The Russians attempted to influence our elections. A foreign, hostile,
36:10
Speaker 1: foreign actor did this. Those facts are not in dispute,
36:15
Speaker 1: right Well, the Mula report was about was whether the
36:18
Speaker 1: Trump campaign actively worked with the Russians to do this
36:22
Speaker 1: or simply was happy to be the beneficiary. I happened
36:28
Speaker 1: to think just simply being happy to being the beneficiary
36:30
Speaker 1: was a pretty unpatriotic thing to do, right I'm old
36:33
Speaker 1: enough to remember when a guy like Marco Rubio said, no, no, no,
36:37
Speaker 1: I'm not quoting WikiLeaks because I know that's a Russian
36:39
Speaker 1: intelligence operation. I'm old enough to remember when a John
36:43
Speaker 1: McCain and Barack Obama, who both had their campaigns hacked,
36:47
Speaker 1: went to the FBI before making a public and somehow
36:50
Speaker 1: trying to turn it into a partisan Whig issue. And
36:57
Speaker 1: I guess if we want to look back, but the
36:59
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is the Mueller Report absolutely
37:05
Speaker 1: confirmed the suspicions that at the highest levels of the
37:09
Speaker 1: Russian government they were trying to do everything it took
37:12
Speaker 1: to elect Donald Trump president. Whether that meant Donald Trump
37:16
Speaker 1: committed a crime or not, that evidence was harder to prove.
37:20
Speaker 1: There was a lot of circumstantial evidence and if being
37:25
Speaker 1: if benefiting from the hack was a crime, then they
37:29
Speaker 1: committed a lot of them. You know, I've always thought
37:32
Speaker 1: there is one one culprit we've never found in the
37:37
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen elections, and that is who curated the emails
37:44
Speaker 1: for Julian assanj and WikiLeaks because they were not released
37:48
Speaker 1: randomly like the Epstein files. And now we know the situation.
37:52
Speaker 1: If you recall, Wiki leaks was well collated, right, was
37:56
Speaker 1: well curated, It was very well timed. There was an
38:00
Speaker 1: American who did this. The Russians were not good at
38:04
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, over time, right, we ended
38:07
Speaker 1: up discovering that they weren't good with our language, and
38:09
Speaker 1: so some of the ads that they bought were easily
38:11
Speaker 1: seen as attempts to be it was outsiders attempting to influenced.
38:15
Speaker 1: But over time they learned to, you know, start to
38:19
Speaker 1: use third parties, and Julian Assange was a was an
38:23
Speaker 1: easy target, and so he was the third party. They
38:29
Speaker 1: stole all these emails from using a phishing scam on
38:34
Speaker 1: John Podesta, pretty simple one. But the emails were curated,
38:40
Speaker 1: and that's always, you know, and they were curated really smartly,
38:43
Speaker 1: like somebody that understood the Washington media ecosystem, not just
38:46
Speaker 1: the American political ecosystem. So this was definitely an American consultant,
38:52
Speaker 1: an American, a knowledgeable American political human being of some sort.
39:02
Speaker 1: Because if you they were always very well timed, very specific,
39:07
Speaker 1: you know, it was all about and they and it
39:09
Speaker 1: had a strategic you know, the the you know, it's
39:13
Speaker 1: not like they were just randomly released. You know, we
39:16
Speaker 1: got the Bernie the Bernie Hillary controversial emails right when
39:20
Speaker 1: the start of the DNC convention, right and you have
39:23
Speaker 1: these systemic ways of trying to cherry pick an email
39:29
Speaker 1: from a reporter to try to discredit a media outlet, right,
39:34
Speaker 1: it was, so the whole thing was very well orchestrated.
39:38
Speaker 1: And you know, I've always been a little bit surprised
39:42
Speaker 1: that very little law enforcement had been focused on that.
39:45
Speaker 1: And perhaps if Julian A. Sanja had ever talked, had
39:48
Speaker 1: ever been been in the US system, we might have
39:52
Speaker 1: learned more from him. But in some ways they were.
39:57
Speaker 1: The focus was so much on Trump and this is
39:59
Speaker 1: what Trump did. You know, Trump said, hey, look, no collusion,
40:02
Speaker 1: no collusion. Well, collusion to me was not the crime
40:04
Speaker 1: that was committed in twenty sixteen. The crime that was
40:06
Speaker 1: committed was our hostile foreign actor hacked our elections and
40:09
Speaker 1: had and successfully pulled it off. Okay, that's it. And
40:14
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump was just the first campaign that didn't
40:17
Speaker 1: put the country before himself, right, And so that's may
40:22
Speaker 1: not be illegal, but that's pretty unethical and arguably against
40:25
Speaker 1: the national interests in the United States. And what's really
40:28
Speaker 1: sad is what happened to one time, truly, you know
40:33
Speaker 1: what one time, you know, American patriots like Lindsey Graham
40:36
Speaker 1: and Marco Rubio who cared a lot about what the
40:38
Speaker 1: Russians were doing, and all of these hacks and knew
40:40
Speaker 1: full well what the Russians were up to. Now, there's
40:45
Speaker 1: no doubt there was zeal on the left, and I
40:47
Speaker 1: think that that, you know, Muller's reputation got harmed as
40:51
Speaker 1: much by the over promising of the left about what
40:55
Speaker 1: Muller was going to find as much as what Donald
40:57
Speaker 1: Trump's character assassination tweets to him as well. But the
41:05
Speaker 1: biggest failure of the Mueller investigation is the lack of
41:09
Speaker 1: follow up and the lack of essentially public conviction of
41:13
Speaker 1: the Russians for twenty sixteen. And you know, I get
41:18
Speaker 1: it right, Donald Trump didn't want his presidency delegitimized by
41:23
Speaker 1: admitting to that aspect of things. So there was an
41:27
Speaker 1: entire effort made that you cannot even even copping to
41:32
Speaker 1: the Russians hacked was a was going to delegitimize his presidency,
41:40
Speaker 1: and that was something that they wanted to fight very
41:44
Speaker 1: very hard, and over time, more Republicans put the party
41:48
Speaker 1: over the country as this thing dragged on. Look, I
41:55
Speaker 1: think I think the Mueller you know, I think, you know,
41:59
Speaker 1: like with everything, know, Muller tried to play by a
42:01
Speaker 1: set of rules that Donald Trump was never going to
42:03
Speaker 1: play by and he got played by him. They dragged
42:06
Speaker 1: it out, and the longer they dragged it out, the
42:09
Speaker 1: easier it was, and the more sort of tactical Muller was.
42:14
Speaker 1: I think again, the north star got lost, and that's
42:19
Speaker 1: ultimately what happened. The north star of this investigation got lost.
42:23
Speaker 1: What was not in dispute was what the Russians did.
42:26
Speaker 1: What was in dispute and was not in dispute is
42:29
Speaker 1: that there were Americans that helped. And perhaps, you know, look,
42:33
Speaker 1: in some ways, Trump's behavior ended up being a distraction,
42:37
Speaker 1: right the firing of Komi. He was Everything he did
42:41
Speaker 1: there he may have been doing simply because he wanted
42:43
Speaker 1: to clear the decks of the investigation. You know, if
42:49
Speaker 1: I'm I'm open to any angle being true, but you're
42:55
Speaker 1: gonna have to have evidence in the other angle on
42:57
Speaker 1: this one when it comes to, you know, Trump collusion.
43:01
Speaker 1: But the fact been there hasn't been strong enough evidence
43:04
Speaker 1: on that. What there is strong evidence on this. The
43:06
Speaker 1: Russians did this they were hoping Trump would benefit. There
43:10
Speaker 1: were people within Trump's orbit who knew what the Russians
43:14
Speaker 1: were up to and wanted to find ways to exploit
43:16
Speaker 1: it to their benefit. The question was whether any of
43:19
Speaker 1: that rose to criminal activity. But it was certainly on
43:22
Speaker 1: American and it was certainly against America's national interests. And
43:27
Speaker 1: that is where, in particular, in some ways, both parties
43:32
Speaker 1: let us down on this, right. The Democrats so obsessed
43:34
Speaker 1: with getting Trump that they took the eye off the
43:38
Speaker 1: larger picture here, the thing that everybody should have had
43:41
Speaker 1: seventy eighty percent sort of agreement on. And then of
43:44
Speaker 1: course the Republican Party not, you know, basically turning a
43:47
Speaker 1: blind eye to what the Russians did because fearing that
43:50
Speaker 1: if they didn't it was somehow going to help. So Look,
43:55
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is Bob Muller was a
43:58
Speaker 1: terrific FBI director, brought a lot of credibility to the FBI,
44:02
Speaker 1: lived a life of public service, served this country in uniform.
44:08
Speaker 1: Could have done better on the Mulor investigation, There's no
44:11
Speaker 1: doubt about it. But he did not deserve the disgusting,
44:16
Speaker 1: horrible treatment by our sitting in president of the United States.
44:20
Speaker 1: And I would just ask all of you to ask yourself,
44:21
Speaker 1: how did what is wrong with him? Right? Imagine not
44:29
Speaker 1: being able to show grace to somebody who dies after
44:32
Speaker 1: complications of Parkinson's, the lack of grace, his inability. This
44:39
Speaker 1: is not who we are, As John Jack Danforth said
44:44
Speaker 1: on my podcast, aren't we better than this hate? Fellow
44:50
Speaker 1: Republicans out there, are you comfortable with how he is
44:55
Speaker 1: just totally destroyed the image of the Republican Party. That
45:00
Speaker 1: people assume that this is now callous. You be callous,
45:04
Speaker 1: You root for the death of people you politically disagree with.
45:11
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember when folks on the right
45:13
Speaker 1: were angry, when folks on the left weren't properly mourning.
45:18
Speaker 1: Charlie kirk As, the First Lady of the United States,
45:24
Speaker 1: likes to say, mister President once should be better, but
45:29
Speaker 1: more importantly, maybe he's incapable of being better. But I'm
45:34
Speaker 1: old enough to remember when they were members of the
45:36
Speaker 1: Republican Party who knew how to be better. And I know, yeah,
45:41
Speaker 1: I'll just ignore. It's just trumpy and Trump. No, he's
45:46
Speaker 1: taking you down with him. This episode of the Chuck
45:52
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47:21
Speaker 1: And yes, I too, am a customer. Well, it is Monday,
47:30
Speaker 1: which means we're going to step into the time machine.
47:40
Speaker 1: And as I gave you in the hint in the monologue,
47:44
Speaker 1: nuclear energy was your clue. March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy
47:50
Speaker 1: nine is where we're going in the time machine. So
47:54
Speaker 1: if you drive about two hours west of Philadelphia, in
47:57
Speaker 1: about two and a half maybe three hours east of Pitts,
48:01
Speaker 1: you're going to come to the Susquehanna River just south
48:04
Speaker 1: of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's the state capitol, Harrisburg. And there's a
48:08
Speaker 1: small island there, three mile Island. That's where this story
48:12
Speaker 1: takes place. And if you were alive in nineteen seventy nine,
48:15
Speaker 1: you probably remember it the way I do. It was
48:18
Speaker 1: fragments a news bulletin the word radiation. You'd hear that sound,
48:23
Speaker 1: a sense that something serious was happening, but no one
48:26
Speaker 1: could quite explain what I was seven. I remember the
48:30
Speaker 1: anxiety more than the facts. Right, Three Mile Island ooh right,
48:34
Speaker 1: just say that three words, right, and it immediately triggers
48:37
Speaker 1: something in me. Yet you have to look up the details, right,
48:43
Speaker 1: And in a way that's the story. Though it's the fear,
48:46
Speaker 1: not the details, that makes this time machine an important
48:52
Speaker 1: lesson for us. So in March twenty eight, nineteen seventy nine,
48:55
Speaker 1: a nuclear reactor and three Mile Island partially melted down.
49:00
Speaker 1: There was no explosion, there were no mass casualties, but
49:04
Speaker 1: something else broke confidence. To understand the shock, you have
49:11
Speaker 1: to understand the expectations what we thought nuclear power was
49:14
Speaker 1: going to be in the sixties and seventies, right, you know,
49:17
Speaker 1: so we get the nuclear bomb and we use it,
49:21
Speaker 1: and we have you know, Oppenheimer, and we have all this,
49:23
Speaker 1: you know, we have all these handering about nuclear weapons.
49:26
Speaker 1: But there was excitement about nuclear energy, and in the
49:28
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, the United States was building nuclear power
49:31
Speaker 1: plants rapidly. By the late seventies, there were roughly one
49:34
Speaker 1: hundred reactors operating or under construction. Dozens more were in
49:41
Speaker 1: the planning stages. The promise was extraordinary, massive energy output,
49:47
Speaker 1: no air pollution, less dependence on fore and oil. Something
49:52
Speaker 1: going on in the Middle East at the moment. Sorry,
49:53
Speaker 1: but I digress. Nuclear power was supposed to be the future. Basically,
49:57
Speaker 1: the only thing we were debating is where to put
49:59
Speaker 1: the waste. But that early morning on March twenty eighth,
50:06
Speaker 1: a pump failed. Pressure rose a really valve opened to
50:11
Speaker 1: release it. That part worked, but then the valve got
50:15
Speaker 1: stuck open. And here's the critical failure. The control room
50:20
Speaker 1: indicator said the valve had closed, Well it hadn't closed.
50:25
Speaker 1: Cooling water was escaping, but the operators didn't know that
50:29
Speaker 1: at the moment. What the operator saw was falling pressure
50:33
Speaker 1: and assumed the system had too much water, so they
50:37
Speaker 1: reduced the cooling flow. So in reality, the reactor was
50:42
Speaker 1: losing cooling. They were acting logically based on the warning
50:47
Speaker 1: system they were staring at, but it was incorrect information.
50:51
Speaker 1: It wasn't a single failure, but it turned into a
50:54
Speaker 1: cascade yet a mechanical failure, misleading instrumentation and then of
50:59
Speaker 1: course incorrect human interpretation. So without cooling, without that cooling water,
51:07
Speaker 1: the core overheated. The fuel rods were damaged, a partial
51:12
Speaker 1: meltdown did occur, hydrogen gas formed inside the reactor vessel.
51:18
Speaker 1: In fact, a bubble of hydrogen built up, and for
51:21
Speaker 1: several days, experts feared that bubble of hydrogen could explode,
51:27
Speaker 1: and that was the fear that drove the national headlines.
51:30
Speaker 1: This became a feeding frenzy. Later scientists would determine that
51:35
Speaker 1: the bubble actually never could have ignited in that environment
51:38
Speaker 1: because there was never enough oxygen, but they didn't know
51:41
Speaker 1: that at the moment, and there was a lot of fear.
51:44
Speaker 1: And this is the key. We never figured out the
51:47
Speaker 1: facts of everything that was happening and understood the science
51:50
Speaker 1: even until after the fact, and most disconcerting in the moments,
51:56
Speaker 1: and this of course is why public confidence just on nuke's.
52:02
Speaker 1: The experts at the time weren't sure. So what the
52:06
Speaker 1: public saw was the following. Harrisburg was just a few
52:11
Speaker 1: miles away. That's a large city, state capitol Philadelphia one
52:14
Speaker 1: hundred miles east, Pittsburgh two hundred miles west. This wasn't
52:19
Speaker 1: going to have if this explosion wasn't going to happen
52:21
Speaker 1: in a remote area. This was happening near state capitol
52:24
Speaker 1: in a populated corridor in this country. So what people
52:28
Speaker 1: experienced was mass confusion. The plant operator, Metropolitan Medicine they
52:33
Speaker 1: would say one thing, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission they would
52:36
Speaker 1: say another. Information was changing hour to hour. Even the
52:42
Speaker 1: institutions responsible for explaining the situation weren't aligned. And then
52:48
Speaker 1: there was something else. Pop culture had kind of already
52:52
Speaker 1: primed the public for a catastrophe. Twelve days earlier, a
52:58
Speaker 1: movie called The China Syndrome had opened in theaters. That
53:03
Speaker 1: movie depicted a nuclear accident and then a cover up.
53:07
Speaker 1: So now suddenly people were watching the news and wondering
53:12
Speaker 1: if fiction had become reality. And remember movies in the
53:14
Speaker 1: late seventies, there were big events. Okay, millions, everybody was
53:22
Speaker 1: staying movies. We had no streaming, right, we just had
53:25
Speaker 1: our three channels. Maybe a handful of people had this
53:28
Speaker 1: weird thing called home box Office, with this little weird
53:30
Speaker 1: thing that they could access on weekends only. But the
53:35
Speaker 1: movies were a big deal. And I remember my parents
53:38
Speaker 1: saw that movie. Jane Fonda was in it. You're going
53:42
Speaker 1: to see those movies. President Jimmy Carter visited the site
53:46
Speaker 1: on April first, And remember he wasn't just a politician.
53:50
Speaker 1: He was a trained nuclear engineer under Admiral Recover. So
53:55
Speaker 1: in theory, we had the right president to deal with
53:57
Speaker 1: the situation like this is he understood the technology. But
54:03
Speaker 1: images of Carter walking through the plant in protective gear
54:07
Speaker 1: were broadcast nationwide. The American president wasn't safe in America.
54:13
Speaker 1: He actually was doing this to try to reassure the public,
54:16
Speaker 1: but the images did the exact opposite. Does it reinforced
54:21
Speaker 1: how serious the situation had become. And this is where
54:25
Speaker 1: the psychology shifted. Radiation is invisible. You can't see it,
54:30
Speaker 1: you can't smell it, and you can't feel it. The
54:32
Speaker 1: only way to detect it is with instruments Geiger counters
54:36
Speaker 1: clicking in the background. That creates distance. The public has
54:40
Speaker 1: to rely on experts to tell them whether they're safe.
54:42
Speaker 1: They don't get to tell themselves. That's an uncomfortable feeling, right.
54:45
Speaker 1: We would learn this during COVID. How much the public
54:48
Speaker 1: would push back on that feeling, and when those experts
54:51
Speaker 1: appear uncertain, that trust begins to erode again, something we
54:55
Speaker 1: all experienced during COVID. Right when the specifics of what
54:58
Speaker 1: the expert says that's and quite play out the way
55:01
Speaker 1: they say it does and ironically, and here's the single
55:06
Speaker 1: most important fact you should take away from this episode.
55:09
Speaker 1: There were no immediate deaths and no officially confirmed fatalities
55:12
Speaker 1: from this accident, but for the people living nearby, the
55:15
Speaker 1: uncertainty never did end. The question what if has never
55:18
Speaker 1: fully gone away. To this day. There are various entities
55:24
Speaker 1: still testing for radiation poisoning, seeing what's happened, things like that.
55:30
Speaker 1: And this is where this became a real break. It's
55:34
Speaker 1: not just is nuclear power safe if it becomes will
55:37
Speaker 1: we understand it when it fails? And more importantly, will
55:41
Speaker 1: we believe the explanation? Now, this ended up having a huge,
55:45
Speaker 1: huge consequences that we're still feeling today. We're at war
55:48
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, arguably because of Three Mile holeur
55:50
Speaker 1: Let me explain, before nineteen seventy nine, nuclear expansion was steady.
55:54
Speaker 1: After nineteen seventy nine, new plant orders stopped, projects were canceled,
55:59
Speaker 1: costs or regulations tightened. The United States didn't ban nuclear energy,
56:04
Speaker 1: but it stopped building towards a nuclear future. We basically,
56:10
Speaker 1: I mean, look at it now, we're just maintaining the
56:13
Speaker 1: power plants that are because I think we're afraid of
56:17
Speaker 1: shutting them down, and we need the power. But all
56:21
Speaker 1: of this had consequences. By stopping the nuclear clock, we
56:25
Speaker 1: didn't just stop building plants, We started building dependency. Every
56:28
Speaker 1: megawatt not generated by nuclear had to come from somewhere else.
56:32
Speaker 1: Usually that meant burning something coal, gas, or oil, and
56:36
Speaker 1: that continued reliance has tied the United States to the
56:38
Speaker 1: global energy markets, including the Middle East. Now Three Mile
56:47
Speaker 1: Island alone has not stopped us from having a nuclear ambition.
56:54
Speaker 1: But every time confidence is about to return into the
56:57
Speaker 1: nuclear energy space, something else happens. In the nineteen eighties,
57:02
Speaker 1: the industry tried to recover. Then came Chernobyl in nineteen
57:05
Speaker 1: eighty six. Reactor explodes, massive radiation release, global shock. Confidence
57:11
Speaker 1: collapses in nuclear energy again. And yes it was a
57:14
Speaker 1: different plant, it was bad Soviet maintenance. There's all sorts
57:19
Speaker 1: of explanations and rationales. This couldn't happen here, and this
57:22
Speaker 1: hasn't happened here, right, We haven't had radiation leaks. We didn't.
57:25
Speaker 1: We don't have a we don't have a no go
57:27
Speaker 1: zone anywhere, right like they do with Chernobyl. Decades later,
57:33
Speaker 1: climate concerns seemed to change the conversation. Nuclear energy was
57:37
Speaker 1: coming back because people saw nuclear as cleaner, more necessary.
57:42
Speaker 1: In twenty ten the Obama administration, so it was an
57:45
Speaker 1: important moment right Democrats was mostly the left that was
57:48
Speaker 1: pushing the anti new movement more so than the right,
57:51
Speaker 1: though nim not in my backyard was sort of prevalent
57:54
Speaker 1: left and right. But it was a big step because
57:57
Speaker 1: you know, the environmental community to this day has always
58:00
Speaker 1: and divided on nuclear energy about half or or four
58:04
Speaker 1: because it's the cleanest, cheapest energy that's realistic, and others
58:09
Speaker 1: fear that you know, have embedded in them the fear
58:13
Speaker 1: of what could go wrong. So in twenty ten, the
58:16
Speaker 1: Obama administration approved support for new nuclear plants, first ones
58:20
Speaker 1: we'd seen in decades. Momentum returned briefly because then came
58:26
Speaker 1: Fukushima in twenty eleven. Earthquake, tsunami, cooling failure, meltdowns again
58:30
Speaker 1: totally different cause right, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima
58:34
Speaker 1: all failed for different reasons. One was the weather event,
58:39
Speaker 1: one was probably bad maintenance and bad facility management, and
58:44
Speaker 1: one was a mechanical failure. But we had the same result.
58:51
Speaker 1: After Fukushima, fear returned and momentum stacked. So three Mile Island,
58:55
Speaker 1: Chernobyl Fukushima. Each time a complex system fails and explanation
58:59
Speaker 1: is differult the risk feels existential, public confidence collapses, and
59:04
Speaker 1: policy follows. And this is the moment to linger on
59:09
Speaker 1: because Three Mile Island didn't end nuclear power, but it
59:11
Speaker 1: changed the trajectory. If the US had continued building plants
59:15
Speaker 1: through the eighties and nineties, our energy system today might
59:18
Speaker 1: look very different. It's not a certainty, but it was
59:22
Speaker 1: a real fork on the road. And I'm serious. Would
59:26
Speaker 1: we be in the Middle East today? Where would we
59:30
Speaker 1: be in the climate conversation? Would our Earth cleaned up
59:33
Speaker 1: a lot sooner? Would the temperature of the planet not
59:37
Speaker 1: be as high as it is. This isn't just about trust,
59:44
Speaker 1: It's about understanding and so when people and this is
59:46
Speaker 1: a real lesson that we need to figure out how
59:49
Speaker 1: to do better. Our public policy leaders need to figure
59:52
Speaker 1: out how communicate better. Scientists need to figure out to
59:55
Speaker 1: speak American, not just technical English, textbook English. Because when
1:00:00
Speaker 1: people don't understand a risk, especially one that can kill
1:00:03
Speaker 1: you invisibly, they'll always choose caution, always, always, always, and
1:00:08
Speaker 1: that caution will get passed down to other generations. It's survival,
1:00:11
Speaker 1: its human nature, and that's what's happened here. We're multiple
1:00:16
Speaker 1: generations now where we have this reticence on nuclear energy,
1:00:21
Speaker 1: and we also have a new technology out there that
1:00:25
Speaker 1: has got a lot of skepticism about it, artificial intelligence,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: and it's very similar nuclear. Right, the experts can't quite
1:00:32
Speaker 1: explain how it works. Oh, it hallucinates, What the hell
1:00:35
Speaker 1: does that mean? Right, it's not great. I think one
1:00:40
Speaker 1: of the reasons AI has a negative right when the
1:00:42
Speaker 1: designers themselves struggle to explain the outcome. Right, So the
1:00:49
Speaker 1: question doesn't become is this safe? The question is if
1:00:52
Speaker 1: it fails, will we understand why it failed? And will
1:00:55
Speaker 1: we believe the explanation. So if you go back to
1:00:58
Speaker 1: three Mile Island today, it's quiet. Unit two never operated again.
1:01:01
Speaker 1: Unit one has continued for decades, but they shut it
1:01:04
Speaker 1: down in twenty nineteen. What was one supposed to represent
1:01:07
Speaker 1: the future of energy became something else, a symbol of doubt.
1:01:10
Speaker 1: March twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, a reactor partially melted,
1:01:14
Speaker 1: But what really changed was something harder to measure, confidence
1:01:17
Speaker 1: in nuclear energy, and once confidence in a system breaks
1:01:22
Speaker 1: or in an idea breaks, especially when people don't fully understand.
1:01:25
Speaker 1: The consequences don't last for years, they last for generations.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: And what are the unattended consequences? I mean, I you know,
1:01:38
Speaker 1: is it three more wars in the Middle East? Or
1:01:41
Speaker 1: if we go down, if we expand nuclear reactors at
1:01:44
Speaker 1: the same rate we were building them in the sixties
1:01:46
Speaker 1: and seventies, Are there no more wars in the Middle East?
1:01:51
Speaker 1: Or at least no more than involve the United States?
1:01:55
Speaker 1: As they used to say it my old employer, that
1:02:00
Speaker 1: might be one to grow on. Ask Chuck still a
1:02:12
Speaker 1: little last Chuck. This question comes from Chris Moorsville, North Carolina,
1:02:16
Speaker 1: and he writes Trump frequently uses phrases like radical left
1:02:19
Speaker 1: lunatics to describe Democrats, and his consistent vilification the opposition
1:02:23
Speaker 1: party feels more extreme than what I remember from past
1:02:25
Speaker 1: presidents or the same age. I'm curious about your perspective.
1:02:28
Speaker 1: Both parties have used unflattering language like liberal and conservative
1:02:32
Speaker 1: for years. By the way, isn't it weird that we've
1:02:35
Speaker 1: turned liberal and conservative into unflattering language. They're just simply
1:02:38
Speaker 1: descriptors that I think still we should not waste. But
1:02:43
Speaker 1: you are correct, we do weaponize those two words. But
1:02:46
Speaker 1: his rhetoric referring to Trump seems different in tone and intensity.
1:02:49
Speaker 1: Is his language actually more extreme historically? Or have other
1:02:52
Speaker 1: presidents used similarly harsh rhetoric to frame their political opponents?
1:02:55
Speaker 1: Love the podcast and really have enjoyed following your move
1:02:57
Speaker 1: into independent journalism. So you know, if I want to
1:03:04
Speaker 1: defend Trump's use of rhetoric, I can go back to
1:03:06
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century and find a lot of crappy stuff
1:03:09
Speaker 1: and a lot of nasty stuff. Right. I can go
1:03:13
Speaker 1: into the Nixon tapes. Right, you can hear some things
1:03:16
Speaker 1: you can't believe a president but uttered, but they were
1:03:18
Speaker 1: never meant to be uttered in public. Right. I think
1:03:23
Speaker 1: that where I would draw a line and where you're
1:03:26
Speaker 1: trying to go here. So look, there's no doubt our
1:03:28
Speaker 1: politics were really personal and sometimes not just you know,
1:03:34
Speaker 1: both rhetorically violent and sometimes physically violent in the nineteenth century,
1:03:39
Speaker 1: and considering that we thought an actual civil war? Is
1:03:43
Speaker 1: that really surprising considering that it did lead to a
1:03:45
Speaker 1: civil war. But I think by me going back to
1:03:50
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century to say, you know, do we have
1:03:52
Speaker 1: examples of harsh rhetoric like this. You have to go
1:03:55
Speaker 1: back to the nineteenth century. You know, that shouldn't make
1:03:59
Speaker 1: you feel better about this. In fact, it probably I
1:04:03
Speaker 1: may have may be making you feel even more concerned
1:04:06
Speaker 1: about this. Look, I do think you know, Trump's words matter.
1:04:08
Speaker 1: A president's words matter. They leave an impression. They can
1:04:13
Speaker 1: serve as a permission slip. Right. If the president of
1:04:16
Speaker 1: the United States thinks it's okay to be little somebody,
1:04:20
Speaker 1: then why isn't it okay to be little somebody? Right?
1:04:22
Speaker 1: If the president of the United States thinks it's okay
1:04:24
Speaker 1: to say this, then it must be okay to say this. Right.
1:04:30
Speaker 1: That's and it is different. And in the modern era
1:04:33
Speaker 1: it's been different. You know. Ever since when presidential words
1:04:36
Speaker 1: have been put on tape or have been heard or
1:04:41
Speaker 1: seen or heard rather than read, right, there were plenty
1:04:45
Speaker 1: of harsh I mean, that's the thing. All the nineteenth century.
1:04:47
Speaker 1: Harsh rhetoric is sort of quotes in print, right, you don't,
1:04:53
Speaker 1: but when you hear it, see it, it's you know,
1:04:56
Speaker 1: it's instantaneous, and it stems from a belief. You know.
1:05:05
Speaker 1: I've been through this with him. I've had these conversations
1:05:08
Speaker 1: with him about the use of his harsh rhetoric, and
1:05:10
Speaker 1: I said, you know, and he goes, oh, it's just
1:05:15
Speaker 1: he thinks it's just hyperbole, and that's how he defends it.
1:05:18
Speaker 1: I'm just you know, it's over the top. It's I
1:05:21
Speaker 1: think I've used this compared, you know. I think in
1:05:24
Speaker 1: his head he thinks it's no different than than the
1:05:28
Speaker 1: rhetoric professional wrestlers use at each other. You know, they
1:05:31
Speaker 1: don't really hate each other, but they use all this
1:05:33
Speaker 1: crazy rhetoric. It's it's a script It's a soap opera, right,
1:05:36
Speaker 1: which is what professional wrestling is scripted. And I think
1:05:40
Speaker 1: in Trump's head this is this is political rhetoric because
1:05:43
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how often. I mean, I had
1:05:46
Speaker 1: a direct confrontation with him in a room full with
1:05:49
Speaker 1: other media executives who just sat there silently in the
1:05:52
Speaker 1: fricking cowards. But this is before that. This is in
1:05:55
Speaker 1: the run up to the first term, where nobody else
1:05:59
Speaker 1: was gonna and I said, look, when you name drop,
1:06:02
Speaker 1: I just simply said, when you name drop, And it
1:06:04
Speaker 1: was one of our correspondents, And whenever he would utter
1:06:06
Speaker 1: her name, literally instantaneous hate and threats would come at
1:06:11
Speaker 1: her all over the place. And I said, you know, look,
1:06:19
Speaker 1: nobody's telling you you want to bash the press, bash
1:06:21
Speaker 1: the press, but do it generally. I said, when you
1:06:25
Speaker 1: name somebody individually, you think it's all in good fun
1:06:28
Speaker 1: because he has said, oh, that's good for your ratings.
1:06:30
Speaker 1: When he would, you know, he called me a son
1:06:32
Speaker 1: of a bitch. And what's always bothered me about that
1:06:35
Speaker 1: moment when he called me a son of a bitch
1:06:37
Speaker 1: at a rally. Was the first person to tell me
1:06:40
Speaker 1: about it was my then fifteen year old daughter who
1:06:44
Speaker 1: saw it on Instagram. So I've always you know, it
1:06:47
Speaker 1: was like, I'm fine, you know, I don't I don't
1:06:51
Speaker 1: you know, I it's funny. In my thirties and forties,
1:06:55
Speaker 1: I cared sort of in my late forties and fifties.
1:06:58
Speaker 1: I just, you know, I know it's meaningless rhetoric, but
1:07:04
Speaker 1: it is sad when you see people assume and what
1:07:07
Speaker 1: happens is they project all sorts of things on me, right,
1:07:10
Speaker 1: you know, they hear his rhetoric and then assume that, well,
1:07:14
Speaker 1: we must hate him if he's saying this about us,
1:07:17
Speaker 1: so we must be unfair to him, right, And that's
1:07:19
Speaker 1: really what this is designed to do. Right, It's just
1:07:21
Speaker 1: design to other eyes, anybody who's potentially a credible critic
1:07:27
Speaker 1: of his, and so he's trying to delegitimize and in
1:07:32
Speaker 1: some cases dehumanize. But there is a part of his
1:07:36
Speaker 1: brain that thinks it's just this is all part of
1:07:38
Speaker 1: a show, and he's got to play his part and
1:07:42
Speaker 1: he expects to get as good as he gives. Right,
1:07:45
Speaker 1: that's what he would say. Now, of course he doesn't
1:07:47
Speaker 1: handle it when he actually when people do fire back
1:07:49
Speaker 1: at him. But look, it's why I just, you know,
1:07:55
Speaker 1: I don't. It's easy to fire back on him. I'm
1:07:57
Speaker 1: a muller. It's easy to fire and this stuff, I
1:08:00
Speaker 1: do think it desensitizes people. I think it What it
1:08:04
Speaker 1: really does is that it for those that are for
1:08:10
Speaker 1: the meant, for the less stable partisan, it gives them
1:08:15
Speaker 1: a permission slip to to not treat somebody like a
1:08:20
Speaker 1: human fellow human being, but somebody below that meaning they're
1:08:23
Speaker 1: willing to commit violence, willing to do things. And so look,
1:08:26
Speaker 1: I think it's terrible. And you know, the first term
1:08:29
Speaker 1: there would be people that would denounce when he would
1:08:31
Speaker 1: do this stuff. The biggest difference between term one and
1:08:33
Speaker 1: term two is everybody just ignores it. And looks the
1:08:35
Speaker 1: other way. The question is, well, how is it conditioning
1:08:39
Speaker 1: this right, and how it means we're normalizing this and
1:08:43
Speaker 1: we should never normalize this right. And it is disconcerting
1:08:48
Speaker 1: to me that the Democrats that are doing that, are
1:08:50
Speaker 1: getting the most traction, are the ones that are willing
1:08:53
Speaker 1: to sort of engage in the same rhetoric. And I
1:08:55
Speaker 1: understand the emotional relief it may give you in a moment,
1:09:04
Speaker 1: that doesn't build a more perfect union. We know it
1:09:07
Speaker 1: does not. So look, I struggle with you know, It's
1:09:11
Speaker 1: like I could you could spend every hour of every
1:09:14
Speaker 1: day calling out his unethical, immoral, and unpresidential and unpatriotic behavior.
1:09:23
Speaker 1: There's a point where you come across as Charlie Brown's,
1:09:27
Speaker 1: as the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon wan wah
1:09:30
Speaker 1: wah wah wah wah, and then fewer and fewer people listen.
1:09:35
Speaker 1: But I do want to encourage people who I think,
1:09:37
Speaker 1: you know, don't have a lot of trust right now
1:09:39
Speaker 1: in either party, maybe did vote for Trump once or
1:09:43
Speaker 1: twice because they didn't like what the Democrats were offering,
1:09:46
Speaker 1: or they didn't you know, they thought, you know what,
1:09:47
Speaker 1: maybe yes, he's a bore, but his disruption hopefully will
1:09:51
Speaker 1: sober everybody up. Here's what I would tell you if
1:09:53
Speaker 1: your hope was it would sober everybody up. It didn't work.
1:09:57
Speaker 1: People want to get drunker on rhetoric now and people
1:09:59
Speaker 1: want to you know, seemed to is it is what
1:10:02
Speaker 1: we have done, right? What you hoped you were going
1:10:04
Speaker 1: to get out of him shaking up the system. What
1:10:07
Speaker 1: it has done is chase the good people away and
1:10:09
Speaker 1: has invited some real dirt bags to show up into
1:10:13
Speaker 1: the political space. And these people are going to be
1:10:17
Speaker 1: more grifty than ever, more exploitive of the system than ever,
1:10:22
Speaker 1: and they're going to be voted in when they win.
1:10:25
Speaker 1: They're going to believe they have a mandate essentially to
1:10:28
Speaker 1: do and behave this way because hey, he did it
1:10:31
Speaker 1: and they won by basically fighting fire with fire. So
1:10:37
Speaker 1: I think what the intent of what the disruption would
1:10:40
Speaker 1: do and what has actually happened. I understand the need
1:10:43
Speaker 1: for disruption. I think the better way to disrupt this
1:10:47
Speaker 1: system now is to go find an independent because I
1:10:50
Speaker 1: think both parties are afraid. Both parties want power more
1:10:56
Speaker 1: than they want the country to move on. That's my concern,
1:11:05
Speaker 1: all right, Next question, comes from Jim Wade. He says, Hey,
1:11:07
Speaker 1: I enjoy your podcast immensely. Thank you, and I have
1:11:09
Speaker 1: a brief question. I've heard you mentioned President Garfield several
1:11:12
Speaker 1: times in almost what might have been tone. You made
1:11:15
Speaker 1: me curious to learn more about the man and how
1:11:16
Speaker 1: things might have gone differently had he lived. Can you
1:11:18
Speaker 1: recommend some books I might read? Thanks in advance. Yes,
1:11:21
Speaker 1: Destiny of the Republic is the one that the Netflix
1:11:25
Speaker 1: series was based on. There's three that I'm going to recommend.
1:11:30
Speaker 1: Destiny of the Republic is the one I was just
1:11:32
Speaker 1: telling about. That's Candice Millards. That book was the basis
1:11:36
Speaker 1: death of Death by Lightning the Netflix series. There's another
1:11:41
Speaker 1: one called dark Horse that was written by an old
1:11:44
Speaker 1: Senate staffer. It is It's called The Surprise Election and
1:11:48
Speaker 1: Political Murder of President James A. Garfield by Kenneth Ackerman.
1:11:52
Speaker 1: He wrote that nearly twenty three years ago. It is fantastic,
1:11:55
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time in the convention. I love
1:11:57
Speaker 1: the political side of things. You could tell. It's very
1:11:59
Speaker 1: much written by a Washington insider and I say that
1:12:01
Speaker 1: with love. And then there's a newish book out by
1:12:05
Speaker 1: a historian named C. W. Goodyear that is more more
1:12:12
Speaker 1: about Garfield the person in general and his upbringing. Look,
1:12:18
Speaker 1: he is that every every sort of mythology about you know,
1:12:23
Speaker 1: anybody can become president, you know, and the nominating comment,
1:12:27
Speaker 1: all these things. Garfield is the origin story. So those
1:12:32
Speaker 1: three books, like I said, Goodyear, Garfield Expansively, Destiny of
1:12:37
Speaker 1: the Republic and Dark Horse are both about more about
1:12:41
Speaker 1: just the incidents themselves. And there's some tremendous books about
1:12:47
Speaker 1: the Gaetau trial itself that in alone, like the trial
1:12:50
Speaker 1: of Gatoau because he was alive. Garfield was still alive
1:12:53
Speaker 1: when the trial started. I mean, it's just so, but
1:12:56
Speaker 1: those are those would be the big three that I'd
1:12:58
Speaker 1: recommend there. Thanks Jim. Next question comes from mattin Connecticut,
1:13:03
Speaker 1: and he says, Hey, I enjoy the podcast and the
1:13:04
Speaker 1: way you present all sides of an issue. The lifelong
1:13:06
Speaker 1: Democrat have a question about something you discussed on a
1:13:08
Speaker 1: recent episode. You mentioned how many independents would like to
1:13:11
Speaker 1: see more moderate policies from Democratic leaders. I have a
1:13:13
Speaker 1: liberal leaning view of social issues, but a more moderate
1:13:16
Speaker 1: view of fiscal issues. So I'm curious do you think
1:13:17
Speaker 1: independence would like to see more Democrats moderate their views
1:13:20
Speaker 1: on social issues or fiscal issues, any specific examples. Thanks
1:13:24
Speaker 1: and go yukon basketball. What's fun about ukon basketball is
1:13:27
Speaker 1: you guys. You guys get two shots with both tournaments,
1:13:30
Speaker 1: right with the men and the women. One goes down,
1:13:33
Speaker 1: we got the other squad. You know, not all basketball
1:13:37
Speaker 1: programs have it as good as you talk, So kudos.
1:13:42
Speaker 1: So I want to go back to something I did
1:13:46
Speaker 1: a few months ago when I was talking about the
1:13:48
Speaker 1: old FDR coalition and right, the biggest critique of the
1:13:52
Speaker 1: FDR coalition comes from the left, and it comes from
1:13:55
Speaker 1: the social justice left because he would prioritize that can
1:14:00
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the economic populism over it. And
1:14:03
Speaker 1: in some ways, you know, if FDR is criticized on
1:14:06
Speaker 1: the left for anything, it's his lack of follow through
1:14:10
Speaker 1: on desegregation, it's his lack of follow through on certain
1:14:13
Speaker 1: social justice issues. And you know, yes, he appointed the
1:14:19
Speaker 1: first woman Cabinet secretary, so it's not like he didn't
1:14:22
Speaker 1: move the ball forward. But you know, you had a
1:14:27
Speaker 1: culturally diverse country, a religiously diverse country, and yet he
1:14:32
Speaker 1: got them all united behind behind his economic policies. So
1:14:39
Speaker 1: I would just say generally, economic security. And that's the
1:14:44
Speaker 1: phrase I would use here, Matt. Economic security is how
1:14:50
Speaker 1: you can win the broadest swap of independence. Doesn't mean
1:14:57
Speaker 1: you're moderate, right, I think it's more. You know, I
1:15:01
Speaker 1: think this is where we need better language. Right, there's liberal,
1:15:04
Speaker 1: it's really what are your focus? What's your focus? And
1:15:08
Speaker 1: the reason Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did so well
1:15:12
Speaker 1: with the middle is that that they were always leaning
1:15:14
Speaker 1: more into economic security. Right, whether it's healthcare, that's part
1:15:19
Speaker 1: of your economic security. And so I think you know
1:15:26
Speaker 1: you can you can get more devoted supporters. This is
1:15:29
Speaker 1: why primaries are usually more involved, more of the social issues,
1:15:36
Speaker 1: because your core rank and file voters are more and
1:15:39
Speaker 1: they've chosen a party based on those issues. They've not
1:15:42
Speaker 1: necessarily chosen a party based on economic issues. That's where
1:15:46
Speaker 1: we vacillate the most. So it's just in general, I
1:15:48
Speaker 1: just think it's it's it's I think you know what
1:15:51
Speaker 1: you just describe about your your cut between social and
1:15:55
Speaker 1: fiscal issue and economic issues. Pretty much everybody in the
1:15:58
Speaker 1: right would express it the same way. I'm pretty conservative
1:16:01
Speaker 1: on this, but you know, I ultimately you know, you'll
1:16:04
Speaker 1: take a and that's why with Bill Clinton, you know,
1:16:09
Speaker 1: he got the harshest political beat downs when he touched
1:16:13
Speaker 1: things like guns, right, but he got but he was
1:16:17
Speaker 1: able to sort of keep his coalition and if anything,
1:16:21
Speaker 1: expand when he was focused solely on the economy in
1:16:25
Speaker 1: some form or another. So I just think in general
1:16:28
Speaker 1: and look, and that I go back to something else
1:16:30
Speaker 1: I brought up recently. The base of the Democratic Party
1:16:35
Speaker 1: is smaller than the base of the Republican Party, which
1:16:37
Speaker 1: means Democrats have to win more of the sort of
1:16:41
Speaker 1: the less aligned voter, right, which means you're you're moderate,
1:16:44
Speaker 1: you know you're moderate, or your independent voter. And then
1:16:49
Speaker 1: the Republicans do right, they may may seventy percent of
1:16:53
Speaker 1: their voters are core voters, are base voters, and sixty
1:16:57
Speaker 1: percent of Democratic voters are base voters. Right, So to
1:16:59
Speaker 1: get to the fifty percent, Democrats need more of the
1:17:02
Speaker 1: so called middle than the Republicans do. And because of that,
1:17:06
Speaker 1: I think that's why they almost have to lean harder
1:17:09
Speaker 1: on the economic security issues. But that's the phrase I'd
1:17:12
Speaker 1: be using. It's economic security, right. The fear of AI
1:17:16
Speaker 1: is not what it's doing. It's fear of losing a
1:17:19
Speaker 1: secure economic future. Right. Economic security that is the phrase
1:17:24
Speaker 1: that pays in my opinion. Next question comes from Brad.
1:17:28
Speaker 1: Hey love the pods and the election night live streams.
1:17:30
Speaker 1: Feel like I learned something new every time? That is
1:17:32
Speaker 1: that is my chief goal, My goal when I listen
1:17:35
Speaker 1: to something, did I learn one thing right? And if
1:17:38
Speaker 1: I do, I go back and keep listening. So I
1:17:41
Speaker 1: appreciate you saying that, Brad. Question is why are Republicans
1:17:45
Speaker 1: so much better than Democrats at messaging? Is it simply
1:17:47
Speaker 1: because they have a news channel watched by millions that
1:17:49
Speaker 1: does their bidding. Thanks? Ps. Assuming you're doing a livestream
1:17:53
Speaker 1: for the midterms, is there a place I can send
1:17:54
Speaker 1: pizza's next to help you with the team get through
1:17:56
Speaker 1: the night? Oh, Brad, that's awesome. To my friends at
1:18:00
Speaker 1: the d d HQ boiler room. They have an expansive
1:18:04
Speaker 1: place at the on campus at Georgetown's Public Policy School,
1:18:09
Speaker 1: so I think I'll be directing all pizza. So enjoy,
1:18:16
Speaker 1: miss Kelley. If you've gone this long on the pod
1:18:18
Speaker 1: and you're hearing you now see that my my my
1:18:21
Speaker 1: viewers want to feed you and Scott and the boys anyway,
1:18:26
Speaker 1: So thank you for that, Brad. We will we will
1:18:28
Speaker 1: probably take you up on that. I think on messaging
1:18:35
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, I think each I you know,
1:18:39
Speaker 1: people on the right complain to me that the left's
1:18:41
Speaker 1: better at messaging. People on the left complain to me
1:18:43
Speaker 1: that the right's better at messaging. I think some of
1:18:46
Speaker 1: this is confirmation bias, right do I think? I think
1:18:55
Speaker 1: Democrats fear offending a certain There's always this extra fear
1:19:00
Speaker 1: of offending an interest group that waters down language, which
1:19:05
Speaker 1: is why they sometimes don't always speak American. I always say,
1:19:08
Speaker 1: don't speak English, speak American. I think the Republicans are
1:19:12
Speaker 1: better at talking to people that live between I five
1:19:18
Speaker 1: and nine ninety five than Democrats do. I think Democrats
1:19:22
Speaker 1: worry too much about talking to people east of I
1:19:26
Speaker 1: ninety five and west of I five. If you get
1:19:30
Speaker 1: where I'm going right ninety five, the East Coast interstate
1:19:35
Speaker 1: High five, the West coast interstate, I mean, and a
1:19:38
Speaker 1: lot of their voters live it live, you know, between
1:19:42
Speaker 1: the ocean and that and those two interstates, and I
1:19:47
Speaker 1: think Democrats don't want to offend voters in those areas.
1:19:50
Speaker 1: And I think Republicans do a better job of talking
1:19:52
Speaker 1: to everybody in between, and they don't have the same
1:19:56
Speaker 1: interest groups holding them accountable in language that the left does.
1:20:00
Speaker 1: The language police on the left is a much more aggressive,
1:20:08
Speaker 1: is much more aggressive at hitting their leaders on word
1:20:14
Speaker 1: choices than the right is. So I think when you
1:20:17
Speaker 1: factor all that in, I think it just it feels.
1:20:20
Speaker 1: I will tell you this. It always feels like both
1:20:24
Speaker 1: everybody focus groups, it feels, but it feels more noticeable
1:20:28
Speaker 1: with them with Democrats at times. But I will say this,
1:20:32
Speaker 1: I think some of this is the assumption that the
1:20:35
Speaker 1: other side is always better at it right, grass is
1:20:37
Speaker 1: always greener mindset mark for ann arbor rights. Hey, it
1:20:43
Speaker 1: seems the authorities that run airports would benefit from implementing
1:20:48
Speaker 1: programs that would provide payday loans to TSA agents based
1:20:50
Speaker 1: at their airports. Given the benefit, seems the credit risk
1:20:53
Speaker 1: would be acceptable. Participants could pledge their paycheck proceeds as security.
1:20:56
Speaker 1: The airlines may also be interested in participating. Are you
1:20:59
Speaker 1: aware of any organization considering such a program. By the way,
1:21:01
Speaker 1: I watched the film Perfect Neighbor you discussed on one
1:21:04
Speaker 1: of your recent podcasts. It was very well done and
1:21:06
Speaker 1: I was particularly impressed with how the police officers conducted themselves,
1:21:09
Speaker 1: very professional and competent in contrast with some of the
1:21:11
Speaker 1: ICE agents that have been showing on selected videos. Markro
1:21:14
Speaker 1: Man Arbor. Yeah, no, I'm by the way, I'm so
1:21:17
Speaker 1: glad you point that out in perfect neighbor. I think
1:21:20
Speaker 1: I think that to me, it is an endorsement of
1:21:22
Speaker 1: body cameras, right. I mean, if you can't tell me
1:21:26
Speaker 1: that doesn't change behavior or incentivize de escalation, I think
1:21:31
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear that it does. I mean that to me,
1:21:33
Speaker 1: and I know that wasn't that's not the intended message
1:21:36
Speaker 1: in that movie, but it's certainly one that I think
1:21:38
Speaker 1: for me, it just right, couldn't make the movie without
1:21:41
Speaker 1: the body camera footage, and body camera footage didn't embarrass
1:21:44
Speaker 1: the police officers, and in some cases it may have.
1:21:48
Speaker 1: It certainly was an MRI on some you know, sort
1:21:51
Speaker 1: of historical thing stereotypes, things like that, but it also
1:21:56
Speaker 1: served as a good reminder that it works. Right, you know,
1:22:02
Speaker 1: what you're presenting is interesting. Can I just go another place?
1:22:06
Speaker 1: We probably ought to privatize this, you know. Look, I
1:22:12
Speaker 1: think the fact that the government can just stop, we
1:22:17
Speaker 1: know they're going to pay this, and the fact that
1:22:19
Speaker 1: they just it just automatically stops, right, it is the
1:22:23
Speaker 1: system is you know, this is let me put it
1:22:29
Speaker 1: in another way. We wouldn't have these standoffs if the
1:22:33
Speaker 1: system said that the standoff could happen. Right in some ways,
1:22:38
Speaker 1: the fact that you can stop funds is the feature,
1:22:41
Speaker 1: not the bug, and it should be a bug. I
1:22:44
Speaker 1: go back to I don't understand how the shutdowns are legal,
1:22:48
Speaker 1: Like we just we're the United States government. The idea
1:22:50
Speaker 1: that we can just suddenly hold up spending money out
1:22:54
Speaker 1: of nowhere when we're you know, helping the entire global
1:22:57
Speaker 1: economy function, I mean, that just seems dangerous and sort
1:23:02
Speaker 1: of a terrible idea. But if if we're going to
1:23:04
Speaker 1: continue to sort of govern this way and allow this
1:23:07
Speaker 1: dysfunctional method to budgeting that Congress does, then with something
1:23:13
Speaker 1: as essential as our air travel, privatize tsa right, you know,
1:23:20
Speaker 1: government pays for it, but the funds, but basically they
1:23:24
Speaker 1: are to get reimbursed by the federal government. So that
1:23:27
Speaker 1: way then you would basically still have the same thing
1:23:30
Speaker 1: that you're describing. Right, the private entity continues to pay,
1:23:33
Speaker 1: they're not going to get reimbursed for a while, but
1:23:35
Speaker 1: they'd have a better They can withstand this better, and
1:23:38
Speaker 1: they certainly, you know, it would create it, so you
1:23:42
Speaker 1: would have functioning security agents getting paid without having for
1:23:48
Speaker 1: them to figure this out. Reliable security. You still have
1:23:53
Speaker 1: the same standards and everything, but if each you know,
1:23:56
Speaker 1: airport authority ought to run its own or privatize it
1:23:59
Speaker 1: in some way. Again, privatize it with the strict with
1:24:02
Speaker 1: the standards that we have. But there's no reason why
1:24:05
Speaker 1: you couldn't do that. If you wanted to make sure
1:24:06
Speaker 1: that they had to be labor union jobs, you can
1:24:10
Speaker 1: privatize and and make sure and mandate, you know, opportunity
1:24:14
Speaker 1: for labor unions or something like. So I think there,
1:24:17
Speaker 1: I know the political debate that would take place to
1:24:20
Speaker 1: do this and all this, I think you can accommodate
1:24:22
Speaker 1: that and not disrupt the public intentionally the way lawmakers
1:24:26
Speaker 1: are disrupting the public intentionally here. So we shall see.
1:24:33
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this an episode. I'm going
1:24:38
Speaker 1: to hold myself back from lamenting, you know, because it's
1:24:46
Speaker 1: it's baseball time, right, We've got baseball season, that's what's coming.
1:24:51
Speaker 1: First of all, I've got two fantasy drafts that I
1:24:53
Speaker 1: couldn't be less I couldn't be less prepared for, and
1:24:58
Speaker 1: the Nats just sent down the and Cruise to triple A.
1:25:02
Speaker 1: Dylan Cruz, I hope will become more famous then right
1:25:07
Speaker 1: now for what he's famous for. What he's famous for us.
1:25:10
Speaker 1: He's the next guy picked after Paul Skins. Right the
1:25:13
Speaker 1: LSU tim meets went one two, and there was supposedly
1:25:18
Speaker 1: the pirates were debating between Cruise and Schemes. That's had
1:25:22
Speaker 1: the second pick. What if we could have had Schemes
1:25:28
Speaker 1: and not pitched him for two years the way we
1:25:30
Speaker 1: did with Strausburg. No, but I digress. But I'm a
1:25:33
Speaker 1: little bummed out of that. But come on, Dylan, use
1:25:37
Speaker 1: this as motivation. I hope this is a temporary deal.
1:25:40
Speaker 1: But man, this never ending rebuild. This is going to
1:25:46
Speaker 1: be a rough year, and it's already feeling rougher thanks
1:25:52
Speaker 1: to the Dylan Cruiz news. But I said, I'm not
1:25:53
Speaker 1: going to go down that rabbit hole for now. He
1:25:55
Speaker 1: will be going down some baseball rabbit holes for you
1:25:58
Speaker 1: very very soon. But with that, we'll call it an
1:26:00
Speaker 1: episode and I'll see in forty eight hours and do
1:26:03
Speaker 1: in twenty four hours. Be on the lookout for a
1:26:06
Speaker 1: brand new podcast series that I'm going to be a
1:26:10
Speaker 1: part of with one of one of the great sports
1:26:13
Speaker 1: journalists out there. I look forward to sharing it all
1:26:17
Speaker 1: with you Tuesday and then Wednesday, right here on this podcast.