Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Major Shake Ups That Affect The 2026 Midterms + Top 5 Things You Won’t Believe Were LEGAL In Politics

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Chuck’s Commentary - Major Shake Ups That Affect The 2026 Midterms + Top 5 Things You Won’t Believe Were LEGAL In Politics · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: Happy Wednesday, Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I've got a bit I don't want to call it popari,
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  Speaker 1: but in my focus before we get to my interview,
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  Speaker 1: day is going to be very campaigny, if you will,
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  Speaker 1: some interesting developments on the campaign trail for twenty twenty
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  Speaker 1: six plus. I want to sort of do a quick
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: little side by side comparison to what the Republicans are
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: doing with the so called Save Act, their election reform
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: proposal and compare it to the failed Democratic version of this.
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  Speaker 1: It was known as HR one back during the Biden era,
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  Speaker 1: and of course it passed the House but didn't make
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  Speaker 1: it out of the Senate. We're going to see a
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  Speaker 1: similar situation. This bill is going to fail, and I'll explain.
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  Speaker 1: But what you have as two parties are who both
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  Speaker 1: created bills that were designed to fail, not designed to pass,
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  Speaker 1: and I want to talk about.
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  Speaker 2: That also this episode.
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  Speaker 1: I have a fantastic top five list, or maybe a
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: depressing top five list, depending on your point of view,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: but it's a fun one, I think.
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  Speaker 2: Actually i'll tell.
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  Speaker 1: You so in case you really are so excited you
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  Speaker 1: want to quickly jump to it, which.
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  Speaker 2: Is the top five.
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  Speaker 1: Laws that used to be that you won't believe used
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  Speaker 1: to be legal when it came to politics, and then
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  Speaker 1: a top five list of things that we ought to
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  Speaker 1: make that fifty years from now someone's going to say,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I can't believe you guys, let this that this was
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: as legal as long as it was.
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  Speaker 2: So we'll get to that.
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  Speaker 1: Do a few questions, but bottom line are pretty robust episodes.
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  Speaker 1: Let me start with sort of the state of politics
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, because We've had a lot of movement.
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  Speaker 1: Probably the most significant disaster has been averted for the Republicans.
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  Speaker 1: And what do I mean? Susan Collins finally announced that
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: she is definitely going to run for reelection. Had there
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  Speaker 1: had been certainly she had done, she had taken a
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: while to confirm that she was running for reelection. There
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  Speaker 1: was starting to become some growing concern in some Republicans
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  Speaker 1: circles that the the the entire national electoral atmosphere was
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  Speaker 1: getting to her. That look, did she want to run
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  Speaker 1: in what is the most uphill race she's ever had
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  Speaker 1: to run? Right, She's never been simultaneously unpopular with Republicans
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and unpopular with Democrats. She certainly has has made some
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: conservatives angry in the days, but it's usually come the
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  Speaker 1: loss of that vote has come with the gain of
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  Speaker 1: votes of center or even center left voters in the
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  Speaker 1: state of Maine. But since her Cavanaugh, since since her
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  Speaker 1: Cavanaugh support and a few other things, she is in
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  Speaker 1: some ways, you know, used to be Lisa Murkowski in
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  Speaker 1: Susan Collins, it was almost they were interchangeable. They're not
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: so interchangeable anymore. I think Lisa Murkowski really is more
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  Speaker 1: of a political independent than a partisan. I think she
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  Speaker 1: almost says it herself. She coxes with Republicans because that's
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  Speaker 1: where she's caucused. You know, one of the more intriguing
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  Speaker 1: potential post election storylines I think of twenty twenty six
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: is if Democrats net three seats and it's a fifty
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  Speaker 1: to fifty Senate with Jadvan's breaking the tie. I promise you,
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  Speaker 1: before that Senate is sworn in, Chuck Schumer and other
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Democrats are going to be all over Lisa Murkowski to
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  Speaker 1: see if they can get her to switch parties. So,
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  Speaker 1: you know, there's always been a small part of me
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  Speaker 1: that thinks that Democrats actually have to need three Senate seats,
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  Speaker 1: get to fifty to fifty, then at that point they
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  Speaker 1: might be able to convince Lisa Murkowski to hand power
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  Speaker 1: over to the Democrats.
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  Speaker 2: Will that happen? Unlikely? Is that more probable possible than
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  Speaker 2: people realize? Yes, it is.
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  Speaker 1: She herself has opened that door, Lisa Murkowski, that is so.
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  Speaker 1: The point is with Susan Collins. Look, what's interesting about
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  Speaker 1: the Susan Collins development is the fact that Donald Trump
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  Speaker 1: will simultaneously complain about Susan Collins when she votes against
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  Speaker 1: him on certain things, but does not get so angry
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  Speaker 1: that he searches for a challenger.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: He found a primary challenger to Murkowski, right, and that's
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  Speaker 1: when she ended up running and winning as a write in.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, there was tea party movement. They've tried
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  Speaker 1: to get rid of Makowski and they have failed. He
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  Speaker 1: has never done that with Susan Collins. It's almost as
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  Speaker 1: if even though there's sort of a mini Trump in
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  Speaker 1: that state in Paula Page, the former governor who's running
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  Speaker 1: for the what is now an open main second congressional
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  Speaker 1: district with Jared Golden not seeking reelection, and yet that
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  Speaker 1: is never that it is. It's fascinating that Republicans in
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  Speaker 1: the Senate on the campaign side of things, Tim Scott
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  Speaker 1: John Thune in particular, have been able to get him
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  Speaker 1: to be pragmatic about Susan Collins. But really, nowhere else
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  Speaker 1: does he get this pragmatic.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: He has not been this pragmatic in Louisiana, He's not
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  Speaker 1: been this pragmatic in Texas, but he's willing to be
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  Speaker 1: this pragmatic. Wasn't willing to be this pragmatic in North Carolina,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: but he was willing to be this pragmatic in May,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps they realized she is the only candidate that can
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  Speaker 1: remotely have a chance at winning. I'm pretty pessimistic about
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  Speaker 1: her chances because she is entering this campaign with sort
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  Speaker 1: of the she's acquiring the same problem that Mitch McConnell
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  Speaker 1: and Chuck Schumer are both experiencing in poll numbers to
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  Speaker 1: this day, and that is the base of her own
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: party is not happy with her, and the base of
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the other party is very angry with her. Right, Mitch
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: McConnell's numbers are extraordinarily low, or were extraordinarily low, because
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  Speaker 1: he simultaneously had the entire Democratic Party hating him and
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the Trump wing of the Republican Party not liking him,
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  Speaker 1: so it made his negatives look even more. Chuck Schumer
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  Speaker 1: is starting to experience that, where the base of the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party is no fan of Chuck Schumer these days,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and they are more likely to rate him negatively than positively,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: And of course the entire Republican Party is pretty anti Schumer,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: so it in some ways makes his numbers look worse.
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  Speaker 1: And that's the situation that I wonder while she's I
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  Speaker 1: don't think Susan Collins has got the super negatives on
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  Speaker 1: the right, she does so on the left. And this
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  Speaker 1: is the first time where I don't think she starts
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  Speaker 1: you know, she starts easily with the lowest personal favorable
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  Speaker 1: rating that she's ever had in trying to seek reelection.
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  Speaker 1: So I think this is an uphill battle for her.
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  Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is, had she not
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  Speaker 1: sought reelection, the seat's done.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: If anything, it just becomes a you know, it's the
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  Speaker 1: big primary fight between Graham Platner and Janet Mills. Now
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  Speaker 1: that's not the case, and it makes you know, this
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  Speaker 1: is probably a good day for Janet Mills. If there
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  Speaker 1: is a if there's a growing belief that that Grand
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  Speaker 1: Platner's mouth has gotten him in too much trouble and
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  Speaker 1: it provides too much baggage, and that it's the wrong.
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  Speaker 2: The wrong.
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  Speaker 1: Profile to be running against Collins, you know that there
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  Speaker 1: will be the conventional wisdom crowd will gravitate more to Mills.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sort of torn on this, right, I think
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  Speaker 1: there is an out I think we're in an outsider
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  Speaker 1: insider phase, and if you're the outsider, you're in a
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  Speaker 1: better position than if you're the insider, right, And in
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  Speaker 1: some ways Grant Platner could run the campaign he runs
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  Speaker 1: against Mills. It's the same campaign he runs against Collins.
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  Speaker 1: And my guess is that's the campaign he tries to do.
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  Speaker 1: As a primary voter. Mills has a tougher job. She's
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  Speaker 1: got to both defend a little bit of her own
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  Speaker 1: incumbency and then at the same time, you know, does
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  Speaker 1: she is it just purely a character campaign against Platner,
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  Speaker 1: which doesn't always work in competitive prime, So it's it's complicated.
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  Speaker 1: I think it certainly will help her financially, help her organizationally,
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  Speaker 1: that's Janet Mills. But if you're Platner, you do get
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: to put the campaign together. That was sort of where
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: it's very much emblematic of what Trump did in sixteen, right.
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  Speaker 1: He ran against both the Bushes and the Clintons all
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: at the same time, so it gave him a little
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  Speaker 1: extra appeal from that sort of outsider. And you know,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I always think about the main independent as sort of
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the In my head, I always think of the Petrick
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: farm guy, that the cranky and this is I'm going
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: to date myself, but some of you will remember the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: sad campaign of the cranky old man who used to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: sell Petrick Farm cookies. That's you know that you know,
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  Speaker 1: kind of a crank and I always think of the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: New England crank a little bit, and it's, you know,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that's the that's the main swing voter. There's a little
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: crankiness to him. And I do think Platner and Collins
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  Speaker 1: both know how to appeal to that cranky, cranky person.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: But I do think that that's so it's it's, you know,
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  Speaker 1: is this is this a left right election or is
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: this an inside outside election right? And I think if
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: it's the inside outside thing is what I think is
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: is Platner's is Platiner's strength there, But either way it
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the fact is, you know, Republicans are breathing a huge
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: sigh of relief, especially given in a week where the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: developments in Texas are just terrible for them. Right, You've
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: got Ken Paxton getting the endorsement of the Turning Point organization,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: just giving him his first sort of first sort of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: official endorsement from more of the Trump wing of the party.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Trump hasn't weighed in yet, but it is it is,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I I am I am surprised Turning Point
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: wants to associate themselves with Ken Paxton and his questionable
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: character not just personal morals, professional ethics like that. I I,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I thought they might stay out considering how
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: competitive this primary is in but that maybe just driven
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: by a rank and file, could be driven by donors.
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  Speaker 2: But either way, it's a big.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Get for Paxxton because it kind of like he hasn't
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: gotten many endorsements. He seems to me like an illegitimate
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: candidate for office, given that he was impeached although he
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: never was not convicted, but the stuff around him is
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: really some ugly stuff. So I am mildly surprised that
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: they went with him, though I know that as far
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: as the type of the way he wants to pursue
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: conservative a little bit of that pugilistic, aggressive nature of
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: politics is something I think that appeals to Turning Point,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the Turning Point crowd a little bit. But I thought
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: maybe they wouldn't want to be associated with what is
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Paxton's really questionable morals and ethics on that one.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: But look, that's either way.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Republicans do have a mess on their hands in Texas,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: and the only thing that they've got going from in
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Texas is that the Democrats have a bit of a mess,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and the last thing they need is a racially divisive
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: primary on that side, and it's tall Rico's trying to
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: calm the waters. There after he was quoted as insulting
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Colin already a former Senate candidate who's now running for
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: a congressional seat. And look already I think there was
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: some hope pre slight from tallar Rico that already would
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: have supported tol Rico. I think ideologically he fit there.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: But now he's a Jasmine Crockett supporter, so you do
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: have that mess there. The other interesting development over the
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: week is Alexander Vindman, the retirement retired Army lieutenant colonel,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: kicked off his Florida Senate bid. He's, of course, he
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: was the whistleblower that helped launch the first impeachment on
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Trump when it came to the quid pro quote that
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Trump was demanding from Zelensk during twenty eighteen twenty nineteen.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: You know, we'll see I don't think of Vinman as
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: a Floridian, but you know that is not We've had Floridians,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: you know, are Floridians are used to people sort of
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: parachuting into campaigns that you didn't know they were Florida natives.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I didn't know Rick Scott was a
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Floridian or I didn't know, you know.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: So it is not unusual for that. And there's.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: There can be a penalty in a primary maybe if
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: it's a local race, but there's less of a penalty
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: for sort of becoming a new Floridian on the state
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: wide race. It's same in Arizona, Nevada. It's like the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: states where there are a lot of people who aren't
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: native who move, who choose to move there. You know, politically,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that's a problem if you're a newcomer in a Michigan
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: or even in a South Carolina or a Mississippi or
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: an Arkansas. It is not a penalty if you're a
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Floridian in Arizona. And I mean, look at Arizona senators,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: most of them.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: John McCain you know, was hit with being a carpetbagger
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: when he first ran, and he said, you're right. The
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: place I've had residents the longest was in the Hanoi Hilton.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: So you know, it sort of blew up in their
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: face when they hit. Then Mark Kelly was able to Dodge.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: You know that he was a newcomer as well. It's
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: sort of an accept you know, it's accepted there because
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of residents in those states that choose
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: to move there. But Vinman can raise some money nationally,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: and he might be able to raise a ton of money.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And I you know, I think this is one of
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: those on the on the watch list because you do
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: have an appointed senator situation there in Ashley Moody, and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that's you know, she's just not as well known yet.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: So let's see if Vinman can raise money closer to
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: how val Demmings did against Marco Ruby. And now, look,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: demy'sn't do well against Rubio at the ballot box, but
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: financially she raised quite a bit of money. Whether Vinmin
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: can do that is he sort of is it too
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: old of an impeachment for people to care in the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: blue donor world.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: We'll see.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: But that's a that's an intriguing potential development, and it's
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: sort of like I said, you sort of keep an
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: eye on it. You check in, you see if it
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: if it has much. Look, Vinmin is the profile of
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: the type of Democrat that can win in light red states.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I think the fair question is is Florida's still a
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: light red state. I think it still is, but we're
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: going to we'll find out this cycle how light red
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I expect Republicans to win most of those state wide offices,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: but is it with fifty two fifty three or is
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: it with fifty seven to fifty eight?
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Right? And that tells you light red dark red? Right?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: In a national environment like this, that's going to have
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the win that the Democrats back. You know, it's if
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: if democrat. If Democrats can't hold Republicans to the low
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: fifties in an environment like this in Florida, then maybe
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: it will be time to write the state off for
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: state wide elections. So he is a good profile of
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: a candidate that you'ld be looking for on that fund.
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  Speaker 1: percent off. And then one other development that sort of
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  Speaker 1: builds on what I said on Monday and I turned
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  Speaker 1: it into my Substack newsletter lead on Tuesday is the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: fact that the House. I think the House has slipped
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: away from the Republicans. I think the question now isn't
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: whether Democrats get control of the House. The question is
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: whether it's by a big margin or a small margin.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And when you just look, it's just more the data
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: is screaming it.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: We've hit fifty one open seats, right, thirty of them
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: or Republican open seats. Twenty of them are Democratic open seats.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: But the fact that we've crossed fifty this is only
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a third time ever we've had this many retirements, and
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the other two times saw massive turnover and massive gains
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: for the out party, if you will, including a flip
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: in eighteen for the Democrats and a near and then
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: essentially what happened in ninety two when you had sixty
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: five open seats, and I'm going to get to that
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit later in this broadcast, that it's still
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: led to huge churn, which of course gave Republicans the
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: momentum to end up picking flipping the House for the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: first time in forty odd years come nineteen ninety four.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So and when you look there, I've put some great
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: charts in the substact you used to take a look
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: at it of just everything is pointing towards a Democratic flip.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: The only thing preventing this at this point is something
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: changes the entire political environment right a massive And you know,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: when you look at the two exceptions of when the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: party in the White House in the last sort of
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: fifty years that the party in the White House actually
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: did well in a midterm, you had two outside events
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: that totally scrambled the sort of the normal pattern of
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: American politics. Ninety eight and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, an
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: impeachment attempt, which Boomer hanged on Republicans and ended up
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: helping Democrats. And then twenty oh two, the first election
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: that we held post nine to eleven, which where George W.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Bush was still sitting over sixty percent. Essentially, both Bill
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Clinton and George W. Bush in those two midterms had
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: approval ratings in the sixties. So then you have to
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: ask yourself, what would it take for Donald Trump's approval rating?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Forget the sixties, what would it take for him to
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: get to fifty or fifty one? Well, the only thing
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: you can think of is some sort of crisis where
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: there's a rally around the flag effect, and he certainly
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: makes it a little bit harder I think, for independence
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to rally around him, But it would have to be
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: something outside an extraordinary event. The point is all the
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: data here is showing. The only thing we don't know
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: is it a small Democratic majority is.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Are going to be a big one.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: And what's interesting there is Democrats are starting to feel cocky.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: The d tripleC just on Tuesday morning added five new
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: seats to their target list, and they were all seats
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: that Trump won by double digits. In these new seats
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: that they added, including Ryan Zinkey's seat in Montana, which
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I think is an interesting one, a more rural, the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: old Tim Wall's seat that went Republican in Minnesota's first district,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the open Charleston seat, the Nancy May seat in South Carolina,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: one which was held by a Democrat a couple of
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: times this century Joe Cunningham, a retired member of Congress there,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: but it actually had been redistricted and made a bit
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: more Republican. So the fact that they think they can
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: get that on the ballot and then they throw a
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Virginia seat in there, which of course Virginia is all
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: getting scrambled, is the Democrats are redrawing a map that's
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: going to make it very beneficial to them.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: But the point is is that.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: When you look at this political environment we've seen the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: special elections, I do think any district that Donald Trump
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: carried with fifty nine percent or less is theoretically in
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: play as long as his approval ratings are sitting at
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: forty four and below. And that's the situation we're staring at,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: which is why you see Democrats doing that. I think
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the thing to watch for on the Republican side is
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: when do they get to when do they get to
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the point that Democrats got to in twenty twenty two,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: There was a point where Democrats knew they were going
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: to lose the House.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: So then it became.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: A mitigation, Right, you were just mitigating your losses. And
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: they started messing around on Republican primaries and they got
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: some really bad nomine helped get some really bad Republican
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: nominees into general elections, which allowed them to win in
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: some places that they probably wouldn't have won had literally
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: there just been a generic Republican on the ticket. I
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: think you're going to see because the only thing standing
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in the way of Democrats having a big night versus
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: a small knight is if they have flawed nominees, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: if they somehow the nominees are so flawed that Republicans
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: can make those flaws part of the general election conversation. Right,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the more this is a referendum on Trump, and the
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: more generic the messaging is on a national front, advantage Democrats.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: If Republicans can somehow and it may only be a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: race by race situation, but you want to put yourself
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and what Democrats did in twenty two by mitigating, by
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: getting involved in Republican primaries, they were able to limit
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: their losses and make both twenty four and twenty six
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: biable campaigns to try to win control of Congress. That's
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the situation Republicans find they they can't afford to let
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: this slip away. They can't afford Democrats picking up twenty
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: five to forty seats, right, because that gives them padding
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: going into twenty eight and it probably cements a House
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: majority at least for two cycles. I know we've been
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: very tumultuous over the last over the century. In fact,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: if the House changes hands again, this will be the
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: fifth time the House has changed hands this century. The
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: House only changed hands twice in fifty in the last
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: fifty years of the twentieth century, so we are definitely
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: living in more tumultuous times. Finally, I want to close
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: a little bit on the absurdity. It's sort of and
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I'm going to come at this from my crankiness about
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: about politics and about congressional politics, which is, you know,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: do you are you trying to pass a bill or
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: are you trying to raise money? And when the Democrats
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: had there, and what I want to do is I
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: want to do a little comparison here. Right, the Republicans
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: are trying to shove through this SAVE Act. It's called
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, and it's been boiled
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: down to just this is about voter ID. It's not
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: about voter I D if this were simply about voter ID,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: like should you have to show voter ID at the
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: polls to get your ballot? Which I do in the
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: state of Virginia. Quite a few states already mandate this.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Let's say you said that at the pedigram and it
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: was just a standalone bill, not you have to produce
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: a certificate. I'm just saying, just produce your you know,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: a passport or driver's license or you know ID before
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you get your ballot. You get bipartisan support for that.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: But that is not what this bill does. This bill
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: wants to complicate the ability to even register to vote. Right, Look,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: it's difficult to go get a driver's license and you've
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: got to prove you've got to bring a birth certificate.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I remember that's the last I think the last time
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: you bring a birth certificate, driver's license, and potentially to
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: get a passport. We've never had it be used to
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: try to get a voter registration card and so that that's,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: you know, among the things it's trying to do. And
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the thing is is that both parties took their voter bills, right,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: The Democrats essentially wanted to what they really wanted to
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: do with their first HR one, Right, what was the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: thing that had the most support, But what had most
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: support is to create a minimum amount of windows for
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: early voting in all fifty states.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: You're not mandating that it has to be this way
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: in all but a minimum like fifteen days. That you
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: got to provide a fifteen days of early voting windows.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: But then how you go about doing it is up
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: to you. Do you want to do it in person,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: you want to do it, whatever it is. But they
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: threw in this other stuff, right, Democrats wanted to do
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: public funding of elections, which was not very popular. They
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: wanted to throw in other things like that. And that's
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the thing. Both parties are using these election bills to
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: put other stuff in there. They're not interested in actually
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: passing and actually passing it. Instead, there's all these poison pills.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I think the if Democrats had simply pursued and this
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: is where get this is where can't we have some
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: pragmatism in any of our politics, in any of our
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: election rules. If you gave a bill that did the following, Okay,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: you had to show voter ID to go to the polls,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and then you did what democrats want, which is every
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: voter in every state would have the right to vote
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: by mail for any reason, no excuse absentee voting, and
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: fifteen days of early voting. You do that, and maybe
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: you agree that, Hey, and you've got to get your
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: battle in by election day. There's no there's no fudging
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: that right. You got to put that you'd vote I
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: D there is. You know, in the old days of
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: give each side gets something that they care about, but
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: that that isn't what anybody's interested in. Nobody seems to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: be that interested in actually passing any of these reforms.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And the only way you're going to get reforms like
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: this is if you do one at a time and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: you start from the middle out, and you know, and
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: you start from sort of common sense pragmatism. People want
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: convenience voting. We're very busy. They want that, and they do, Hey,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: we show our ID almost everywhere else. They don't think
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: that that's an extra burden. But again, right, this is
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: not about showing your birth certificate, and that is so
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the point is is that there's a there's a path
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: here to pass sort of pragmatic, reasonable reforms that both
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: create more conveniences to voting. And I know some philosophically
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: think other you shouldn't make voting convenient, right, but hey,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: you know, we live in a very, very large and
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: diverse country. And I promise you if you put it,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: if you made everybody vote on the same day, it
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: would take even longer for election days to finish, it
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: would take even longer to count our votes, and there
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: would be a lot more distrust to it. So there
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: is a path to do some common sense reforms. If
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Republicans really cared about voter ID the most, as much
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: they say it, they do it as a standalone vote.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: And if Democrats cared enough just simply about allowing for
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: more access to voting so that there's more opportunity for
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: vote by mail and more opportunity for early voting, they'd
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: have made it stand alone. But they didn't make it.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Neither side made it stand alone. The poison pills that
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: were involved in either the Save Act or the HR
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: one were features, not bucks. And yes, you can jam
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: it through in the House because the House is always
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: the most partisan side for either party, and it is
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the Senate where you have a harder time doing this.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: But if you did this piecemeal, you'd have a better
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: idea and you you might have a stronger leg to
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: stand on when you accuse the other side of not
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: being interested in these issues. This episode of the Chuck
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  Speaker 1: to my top five list. And it's inspired by you know,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: So when I was going through all of my research
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: on how often, you know, the largest retirement classes we've
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: had in midterm elections, and I was reminded that as
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: large the fact that we'd crossed fifty retirements and it
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: was only the third time we'd ever done it. The
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: two times in midterms right twenty eighteen we had fifty five.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: We're at fifty one encounting now for twenty twenty six.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: But the high watermark was nineteen ninety two. That was
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: a presidential year, and it was sixty five. And if
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: you recall I said, you know, there were sort of
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: three things that were driving so many retirements that cycle. One,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it was a redistricting year, and it was no ordinary
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: redistricting year. It was the first cycle where the Justice
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Department prioritized majority minority reapportionment. So in the South they
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: guaranteed a lot more African American representation and in the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Southwest Latino representation, and the Justice Department was approving or
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: disapproving these maps based on that. Well, that really shook
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: up it. It shook up a lot of different maps,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: drove a lot of retirements. The second thing that drove
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: a bunch of incumbents into retirement was scandal, and that
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: there was a couple of unique They were basically members
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: of Congress were able to write checks without having to
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: prove they had the cash to do it, like this
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: special House bank and members were bouncing checks where some
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: guys bounced over seven hundred checks and it was just crazy.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: There was also a House post Office scandal where people
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: were getting free postage members of Congress free postage and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: then somehow like parlaying it into cash elsewhere. It's what
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: was the downfall of one Dan Rostenkowski, the one time
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: powerful chairman the Ways and Means Committee, an old Chicago Democrat.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: But there was a third reason that drove a bunch
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: of incumbents into retirement, and that was nineteen ninety two
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: was going to be the last year a sitting member
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: of Congress, House or Senate could retire and take whatever
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: leftover camp campaign money they had and convert it to
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: personal finances. They could just take whatever whatever campaign money
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: was left and it was theirs. They didn't have to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: give it back to donors. They didn't have to, you know,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: give it to the party, give it to a pack,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: or open up their own pack and create a political committee.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: They could simply just convert it to their and so
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: quite a few members had. You know, at the time,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: having a million dollars in your account was a huge
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: deal back then, thought hey, I got this brand new
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: retirement account, you know, in addition to their congressional pension.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: I remember South Florida lost three I think long time
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: or at least two long time members of Congress, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I can't out but wonder how much that contributed to it.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Bill Layman and Dante Facel or two of the guys
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: that took off in ninety two. Claude Pepper kept going
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: me he could have probably walked away with money, but
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: he was actually he had already passed away, I admit
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: claud Pepper by ninety My bad on that. Claude Pepper
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: was eight. He passed away in eighty nine. But you
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: had I think two other members who chose not to
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: seek reelection in one of the perks of that. So
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it made me think, you know what would be good
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: a top five list of you won't believe this used
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: to be legal in American politics, And it's just a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: good reminder that reform is always reactive in American politics.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: We don't outlaw abuses in advance, We don't think about
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: what could be abused. We wait for the abuse to happen,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: then we pass a law regulation to try to prevent
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: it in the future. So with that in mind, there's
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: my top five list of things that were once completely legal,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: followed by a second list that may someday make future
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Americans say, wait, they allowed that. So top five things
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that used to be legal but no longer are top.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Top five Top It'll shock you that this was so.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Number five.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Corporations could give directly to candidates. This was legal until
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: nineteen o seven and the passage of the then the
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Tilman Act. But back then there were no packs. Corporations
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: didn't need packs or shell entities to get money to candidates.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: They simply wrote checks directly from corporate treasuries to candidates.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: In fact, Mark Hannah, who was sort of the political
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: guru of Bill McWilliam McKinley in the turn of the century.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: In the eighteen ninety six and nineteen hundred elections, Mark
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Hannah while running the McKinley campaigns, he didn't ask corporations
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: for donations. He assigned them quotas railroads, banks, manufacturers. They
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: were told what they owed based on what he's thought
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: was the stake in prosperity. Hey, this is you have
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: to give this much money to our campaign. And then
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: it sort of blew up when Standard Oil it was
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: at the time it was exposed that they secretly funded
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt's nineteen oh four campaign, and when that came out,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Teddy was so embarrassed, not because it was illegal, but
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: because it looked bad that he actually got behind the
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: reform that became the Tilman Act that did this. Now,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: of course we have dark money, You've got people that
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: can make their donations anonymous, and there's certainly plenty of
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: shell companies now that can be used in shell five
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: oh one, s threes and fours and stuff like that.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: But believe it or not, back in the day, it
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: was not just legal. You had campaigns that essentially invoiced
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: that's what Mark Hannah Diddy invoiced railroad companies and oil
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: companies for those eighteen ninety six and nineteen hundred campaigns.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Number four on the list, party machines openly bought votes.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: This was legal for much of the nineteenth century. Vote
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: buying wasn't hidden. It was simply transactional. So you'd have
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: tammany hall operatives. They would just be handing out cash,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: call turkeys, whiskey right outside of polling places. This was
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: in New York City. Ballots back then were public, so
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: party bosses could actually know how someone voted, and if
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: you took the money and voted the wrong way, you
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: didn't get paid the next time. So basically that's how
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: we ended up with a secret ballot. And it's a reminder,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: secret ballots they don't make politics moral, It just makes
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: it made the corruption unenforceable on that front. The number three,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: you won't believe this was legal. Federal jobs being used
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: as campaign currency. This was legal until eighteen eighty three,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: so before we had Civil service reform, and frankly it's
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: something that Donald Trump's trying to undo today, but federal
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: employment up until eighteen eighty three was basically a spoils system.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Presidents would fire entire post office staffs after election, and
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the postal service back then was seen as part of
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: the political arm of presidents and political parties. That frankly,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: that was all the way through until Leftdr FDR's, you know,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: chief political strategist was the postmaster General. That wasn't an
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: accident because post offices were all over the country. They
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: were essentially little organizing hubs at least that's how they
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: saw them until they finally sort of separated out and
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: took the politics out of the postal service. But before
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three, you'd see just entire post offices would
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: just we would turn over if the political party of
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: the president changed and they were all replaced with loyalists.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Federal employees would actually be subjected to political assessments, something
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's trying to do right now with civil servants,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: right and they would be men. Tory kickbacks were expected,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: and if you didn't pay, you lost your job. And
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: it took the assassination of James Garfield for a former
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: party boss or party operative in Chester Arthur to see
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: the light, and he helped as president, lead to this
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: civil service reform that's actually served the country quite well
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: until Doge and until what Trump's trying to do now,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: where they're trying to repoliticize the federal government. I promise
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: you know, the corruption of the nineteenth century, which was
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: huge in government, would come right back if we got
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: rid of these civil service reforms. Number two on that
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: list is candidates could accept unlimited, anonymous cash. This was
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: legal until essentially Watergate, so before we ever had any
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: modern campaign finance, so there was no disclosure requirements and
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: no limits, so wealthy donors literally could.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Give bags of cash.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: To presidential campaigns with no public reporting. Campaign he literally
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: kept cash safes okay, envelopes stuffed with money, moved through
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: hotel rooms, private offices, and voters. None of us had
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: any right to know who was funding the campaigns or
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: asking for their vote. Essentially, democracy functioned as a blind trust,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: and that blind trust failed miserably. It took Watergate and
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Nixon for it to happen, But look, it was bags
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: of cash. Nobody knows how much money John Kennedy's dad spent.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: We still don't know how much he spent. We have
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: no idea how many people, how much money was spent
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: on behalf of Eisenhower, how much money FDR spent on
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: his own campaigns, all of those things. At least now
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: we have the laws to do that. And then, of
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: course number one, I can't believe it was legal, is
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: what I was telling you about, that retiring members of
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Congress could simply pocket their leftover campaign money for decades.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: When members retired, they just all campaign contributions were seen
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: as personal property. Retirement lawmakers retirement simply converted the campaign
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: accounts into personal income or retirement money. There was no
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: requirement to donate it, refunded, or justify it. And there's
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: no doubt in ninety two, which is why we had
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: the record breaking amount of retirements still the record because
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: that was the last time they could take their leftover
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: campaign balances and do that. So which leads me into
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: essentially a second top five list, And this is my
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: top five list of things that are legal today that
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: perhaps a future version of me, you know, the aid
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: version of me, fifty years from now, we'll do this
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: top five list of believe it or not, this stuff
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: was legal. And frankly, if some of this becomes illegal
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: sooner rather than later, we may have Donald Trump to
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: think so top five things that are still legal that
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I think are not going to age.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Number five members are Congress trading stocks. Right, We've been
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: seeing this back and forth about the stock trading ban.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: The amount of insider info average member of Congress can
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: get and can make decisions. We saw this during the pandemic.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: They get some COVID briefings and all of a sudden
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: you had members of Congress shorting some places, buying other places.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: You know, members of Congress because they you know, will
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: sometimes get access to funded but it's all parts of
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the federal government. People in the Defense Department, government contractors.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: So this is clearly a potential loophole. And I don't
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: see you know, I know that the argument says, well,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: and the problem is right, Congress is sitting there going
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: why do we have to play by one set of
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: rules while Donald Trump's going to play by no rules?
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: And I and how you apply this across government I
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: think is quite difficult. Ultimately, we probably need a constitutional
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: menut when it comes to and probably just saying that,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: you know, when you're in an office of public trust,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: federal office, you know you can't you know, you you
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: know you got to put an blind trust. You got
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: to do maybe monthly reports. You know, I'm not saying
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: people are still going to find ways. Perhaps you know,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: a crook's going to crook. But if you create more
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: friction in that process, create more accountability windows in that process,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: you're at least going to minimize and at that point,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: you know, perhaps shame and sunshine will will remind voters.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: But the fact that voted right now, and especially you know,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: you could have said forty years ago there weren't that
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: many people trading in the stock market.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: That's not the case anymore.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: And it does feel, you know, it's look, we already
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: know there are plenty of members of Congress who suddenly
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: end up purchasing land that they get to decide what
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: becomes an exit on a federal interstate, and then suddenly
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: that land is worth more money. That stuff's been happening
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: a long time. That's a little bit harder to to police,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: you know, stock trading is a little simple to do.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: And it seems like I do think this is going
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: to get some momentum, especially as there are more and more.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: This feels like it's one of those that the left
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: and the right are gonna that's one of those that
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: you're going to see a convergence on that one. Number
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: four Leadership packs right now, leadership packs are essentially little
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: lifestyle slush funds for members of Congress. Leadership packs they
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: can pay for luxury travel, high end restaurants, expensive hotels,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: you can create a family payroll, and it all can
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: be labeled as political activity. You know, hey, I've got to,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: you know, go do this fundraiser in Puerto Rico. I'll
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: have my leadership pack pay for this nice resort and
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: we'll have some great dinners. And it basically became the loophole.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Since you couldn't use tearing your campaign account into personal funds,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: these leadership packs became sort of the loophole for that.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: They're ripe for abuse.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: It's pretty clear that there needs to be more accountability
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: to them, not less lobbyists bundling the fact that a
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: single lobbyist right now can gather twenty or thirty maxed
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: out checks from clients and then deliver them in one
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: fell swoop, signaling influence within that industry right without breaking
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: contribution limits. So a pack can help get you a
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: million dollars in contributions, even if it's twenty five hundred
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: dollars at a time and creating the fact that that
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: is And again, I think bundling is hard to police.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you I have an easy
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: way to come up with a regulation that could minimumze
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: that could do this, but just I think a lot
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: of this stuff could probably be solved with obsessive transparency
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: at least where people you force sort of the Nascar effect,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: You force people to have to show what they're doing,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: who's giving, and how much they're giving at any one time.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: This is one that flies under the radar that sitting
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: members of Congress can negotiate private sector jobs while still
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: voting on legislation that might have an impact on their
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: future private sector employment. So, for instance, and we've seen
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: this right, we saw Mark Green who was a member
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: of Congress and Tennessee. He seemed to be doing to
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: negotiating figuring out his private sector future. He ends up
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: eventually resigning, but he was clearly in the middle of
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: doing it, then got exposed that he was doing it,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and then finally decided to quit quickly. The fact that
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: it's legal to negotiate future jobs with industries that are
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: affected by legislation they're currently voting on right now. They've
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: put in a cooling off period, but it only starts
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: after you leave office.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: There probably ought to be just a you know, I don't.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: It's it's sort of like you get expelled, you lose
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: your pension, like you know, some penalty if you get
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: caught negotiating for a job while you're a sitting member
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: of Congress and voting on that industry, right that you've
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: got to have some sort of disclosure I'm doing this.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe you don't have to make a public but maybe
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: to the House Ethics Office or something. Because most of
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: the time the conflict that you know right now, it's
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: the cooling. We've worried about former lawmakers going right into lobbying,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: and there's cooling off periods for that, but it's the
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: negotiating why you're voting where you have where it becomes
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: potentially corruptible. And of course, the number one thing that
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: is legal in this country that frankly is a mistake
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: that from the creation of this great Republic, and that
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: is the presidential pardon power. The fact that presidents can
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: pardon political allies, donors, family members, potential witnesses, even preemptively
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: with no transparency, no review, no limits. You know, I
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: think it's out I think it was outrageous that Joe
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Biden issued those those sort of pardons before anything was happening.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: And it's even more outrageous that every week Donald Trump
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: seems to essentially sell pardons and give pardons out to
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: people who are either political allies or financial benefactors. But
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: it is clearly a huge gap in our system. It's
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: going to take a constitutional amendment to get rid of
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: the presidential pardon now. You know, I think that there's
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: a way to reform it. You create a pardon board.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe it you know, there's two members of Congression leadership
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: to Supreme Court justice, maybe the two most senior Supreme
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Court justices, plus maybe the attorney general, president and vice president.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Something like that.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: You can create a pardon board where you still have
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: some but it's got to go through a vetting process
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: and some sort of process there. It is because right
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: now I think we've seen it's the greatest loophole that
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: sits in the Constitution for a president to abuse, and
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: we probably have a president right now that is abusing
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: the pardon power at a rate that no other president
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: has even come close to it. So there you go,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: my top five lists of things you wouldn't believe used
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: to be legal, and my top five list of things
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: I can't believe are still legal.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Right, little ass, Chuck? Ask Chuck.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: First question comes from Nick Denver, Colorado. Hey, Chuck, thanks
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: for the great content. What happened with the Supreme Court
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Tariff's case? It seemed like ruling was coming weeks ago,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: but now there's silence. Are they delaying it to make
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: the policy harder to reverse and easier for Trump to
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: get what he wants? Also, is Trump unique in being
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: an unpopular populist? It is sort of a you know,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: if you're You're put it this way, if you're an
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: unpopular populist, then you're no longer a populist, right because
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: in theory, a populist is supposed to always be the
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: ultimate finger in the wind politician. So yes, I think
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: he is a unicorn. I think what it's a reminder
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: of that populism isn't really an ideology or an agenda.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: And I think, frankly, we're I think it's a lazy
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: descriptive word. I've used it way too often, you know,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: when I hear the word populism. I can just tell
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: you as as I now I can tell you as
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: a Jewish American, I duck and I assume. Well, then
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: what comes next is the anti semitism, and as a
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: matter if it comes from left or the right. But
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: what this this really is is nationalism, right, It's economic nationalism,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: it's cultural nationalism. And that's what Trump is. He's a
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: nationalist and that's not popular. And ultimately, you know, right,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: we I there are specific ideas that get attributed to
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: nationalists that are popular, but the idea of.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: Being a nationalist is not popular.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: And I think more and more people the reason he's unpopular, Nick,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: is that I don't think he's viewed as a populist.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: I think he's viewed more as an America first or nationalist.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: He's done a good job branding himself that way, and
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's just the popular position to be.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: You know, yes, we're sort of we Americans are kind
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: of a tad more isolationist than Europeans. But emphasis on
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: the word tad on that one. All right, back to
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: your first question, Yeah, well, I mean this is the
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: you know, the lack of transparency of the Supreme Court
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: decision making process is one of those you know, only
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: only the Vatican is more opaque than the Supreme Court.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: The longer this goes, the harder it is to turn.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I can tell you that, you know, it's clear that
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Trump already has a plan to re implement the tariffs
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: in another way and essentially create another lawsuits. So I
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: do think this is going to Let's say the ruling
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: comes out against them, then it becomes whack a mole.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I think the question is why is it taking so long?
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Could it be that there are going to be multiple opinions?
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Could it be that Roberts is looking for that Roberts
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: is looking for this goldilocks, you know, an opinion that
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: only applies to this specific case.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: It seemed pretty open and shut to a lot of
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: legal analysts and a lot of economic TERRORFF experts. But
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: the longer it takes, it's fair. I mean, my guess
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: is more people want to write opinions. That's usually what
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: explains delays is that you'll have you know, are we
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: going to have multiple cents? Are we going to have
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: multiple concurrences? That would be my guess is what's taking
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: so long? But I do think the White House has
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: spent time they've got in this case, they're obsessed with
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: keeping this tariff regime implemented in some form or another
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: because the President likes the unilateral control it gives him
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: in negotiating with countries individually. They're going to find other
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: ways to challenge this. But you're right, it's been weird
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: to wait this long. Next question comes from Larry Kay.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: He goes, not a question, but did you notice I
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: live in Overland Park, Kansas, and noticed that Congresswoman Charis
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Davis recently toured areas well outside our district, which don
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: Dodge City, Colby, which suggests she may be eyeing a
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: run for Roger Marshall Senate.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: See.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Trump's effort to redistrict her out of the House may
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: have pushed her in that direction, especially as Marshall's more
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: extreme pro magastances are alienating some voters in eastern Kansas.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: With Kansas history of electing trailblazing senators, it's an intriguing possibility.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: Larry, I am.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: I think Cherise Davis is an interesting politician. She's not
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: easy to categorize.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: I have.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: I think she is one of the better. You know
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: a phrase I like to use political athlete, and I
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: think she's a really good political athlete. And you know,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: if there was ever a political environment for Democrats to
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: get to to take a shot at winning a Senate
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: seat in Kansas. By the way, they won a Senate
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: seat in Kansas since the early nineteen thirties. Okay, I
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: think it's thirty six. It was the last time a
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Democrat won a Senate a US Senate seat in Kansas.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: And Marshall has been more more, a little more trumpy
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: than I think the state of Kansas is, right, you know,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: he certainly it's interesting. I would not be as bullish
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: on David's chances if it was if she were challenging
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Jerry Moran. But Marshall has been a little more out
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: there on the conservative limb, which find in a primary
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: in Kansas these days. Like you know, I think Kansas
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: is light red and not dark red, and in a
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: political cycle like this one where it looks like the
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: wind is blowing in the direction of the Democrats, I think.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: She's I can tell you this.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: I know Chuck Schumer and others in the Senate are
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: working hard to recruit her. So we'll say filing deadline
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: hasn't passed. Next question comes from Mark h Alan, Texas. Hey, Chuck,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: go Pats. Sorry you probably sent the question before the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: Sorry about that for you, he goes.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: I rarely post political opinions, but after seeing how quickly
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the victims in the Minnesota I shooting were demonized, they
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: spoke out and was immediately labeled as Satanists with TDS
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: and a trader. The extreme content I was tagged in
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: afterward really highlights on tacks that can polarize the echo
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: chambers have become. How can we heal as a country
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: with this kind of division? Look, I think this is
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: where you know, what's what's what's frustrating is that I
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: do think the algorithms and the tech companies have created
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: an incentive structures too to paint a picture of division.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: You know, I constantly believe real America is less divided
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: than online America. Increasingly, I think we're all worried that
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: online America is invading real America rather than real America
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: bleeding into online America where we tone things down. But
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: this is where the tech companies have a responsibility. Why
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: are you being you know, why why are why are
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: you getting why are you seeing all this extreme content, right,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: the tech companies want to make sure you see it,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: because what do they want you to do? Make you angrier,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: make you respond more, make you post more, make you
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: sit on there more, create more engagement. All they care
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: about is the engagement. Whether the engagement excites crazies or
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: excites normies, it doesn't matter as long as it creates engagement.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: And I think you know, I hate I'm sorry this
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: happened to you, Mark, but in some ways more Americans
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: need to experience how much these algorithms.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: That's what I keep trying to tell people.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: We're not as divided as cable TV and and and
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: these social media sites make it seem.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: It really is sort of these these warped incentive structures
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: for the information ecosystem that makes it seem like it's
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: it's this crazy, because obviously we're not this crazy. You
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: just look at the polling. Right, Essentially, most people are
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle, and they don't like how divided
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: we are. They don't like this divisiveness. All right, next question,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make this the last question for the day,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: but I promise I know we've got a lot in here,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure the weekend mail
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: bag is a little longer for you since this, you know,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours. This is just for the you know,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: the quick turn around show. So this question comes from
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: also comes from Overland Park, Kansas. Man two Overland Park,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Kansas questions in the same episode.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Hey Chuck.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: With so much chaos from this administration, it's hard to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: distinguish what matters most short term versus long term. I
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: wonder if a visual tool like a graph plotting events
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: by their short and long term INCAC could help news
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: organizations and the public better prioritize what deserves attention. For example,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Trump's self dealing might rank high short term but low
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: long term, while the decline of US alliances would score
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: high on both axes. I love podcasts. Appreciate how you
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: think through the issues. Helps me develop my own perspective.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: That's all I'm trying to do. I am not trying
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: to tell you what your position should be. I'm trying
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: to give you as much context as I can possibly
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: give you so that you can make your own decision.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Then you add go big Red because you're a Husker fan.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: Football is better when Nebraska football is good in help healthy.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: I am not yet a rule truther, but I'm I'm
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: more I'm still I'm still a believer in rule, but
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling this has got to be the year.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: Twenty six has got to be the year where you
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: guys see eight or nine wins and and what is it?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: You can't keep losing these these one score games. Anyway,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Sorry to rubsult in that room, Dave, that's an interesting.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Idea you have there, you know.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: I one of the things I've tried to do is
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: at least focus on what Trump does unless somebody says right.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: And I've and you've seen me.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: You know, every once in a while, Ale weigh in
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: on something he says because I think it is, you know,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: unnecessarily divisive or puts us in a tough spot. But
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: I kind of think that's the real problem with the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: with the sort of the legacy media, because they're still
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: desperate for traffic, desperate for attention.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: So what do you do? The stuff he says is.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: Very dramatic, and it really like you won't believe what
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Trump said next. Yeah, you know, okay, Trump says crazy
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: shit all the time. You know, it's when he does stuff,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: you know, and I kind of think the priority has
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: to be on what he's doing, what he's done, not
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: what he says he might do. I'm not saying you
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: shouldn't ignore what he says he might do, but I
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: kind of think that that's where it sort of learn
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: to properly react, not overreact or underreact. And so my
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: whole dividing line is what does he do versus what
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: he says? And then when he does stuff based on
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: what he has said, And I think you've got to
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: point that out too. But that's you know, that's the
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: difficulty in both covering Donald Trump. It's the difficulty in
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: either being a supporter of Trump, covering Trump, or opposing Trump.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: He's all over the map. You know, ask ask a
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Republican who's trying to defend Trump, and and so, you know,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: help me, help you, right. One doesn't always know where
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: he's going to come down on certain issues. So he
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: has made it very difficult to be a supporter at times.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: He's made it very difficult to just cover him as
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: an observer, and he's made it very difficult to be
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: in opposition to him at times because of the erratic
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: and chaotic nature so ultimately I'm focusing. I try to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: focus more on what he's doing and less on what
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: he's saying. Not ignoring it, but just trying to de
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: emphasize it. All Right, I'm going to shut things down
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: for all of twenty four hours. I will be coming
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: to you actually from from Cambridge for the next episode,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: or at least for pieces of the next episode. I
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: will have a longer mail bag and i'll explain what
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: I'm doing there. I'll give you a little deep brief
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: of a talk and a conversation that I'll be having
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: with folks at the Kennedy School, and with that, I'll
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: see you in twenty four hours.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks for checking in.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: M