Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #139: James Thurber / Political Polarization / Elite vs Americans / Understanding Lobbying / Gov’t

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#139: James Thurber / Political Polarization / Elite vs Americans / Understanding Lobbying / Gov’t · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together,
• 0:15
  Jim Thurber. Professor Jim, how are you?
• 0:18
  Good to good to be speaking with you today.
• 0:19
  Thank you for taking the time. Good to speak with you.
• 0:22
  Thank you for having me on your podcast.
• 0:24
  I'm really, I'm really excited to talk.
• 0:26
  As I mentioned, while we were talking on our phone call the
• 0:28
  other day, I, I came across your name and the references of some
• 0:32
  of the work that you've done in John Perkins book.
• 0:35
  And I reached out and, and then I did a little bit of homework
• 0:38
  about your career and the work that you do and the research
• 0:41
  that you do. And I, I knew that I, I knew
• 0:44
  that I wanted to hear and learn as much as I can from you in the
• 0:47
  time that you have. So I would love to dive into
• 0:50
  things. It's an honour to be invited.
• 0:52
  Thank you. Very much sure, sure.
• 0:53
  Of course. So, so we have a lot of
• 0:55
  different directions that we can go because you've had quite a
• 0:58
  career and there's, and there's quite a bit that I think that I
• 1:01
  want to educate the audience on as far as the way that the, our
• 1:05
  government works and, you know, practicality, reality, your
• 1:09
  experiences. And I know that one of the main
• 1:13
  things that you, that you work on is, is understanding the
• 1:16
  roots of political polarization and methods that are used to
• 1:19
  kind of keep us at one another's throats.
• 1:21
  And nothing feels quite as prevalent as, you know, it does
• 1:25
  today. Even though I feel like every, I
• 1:26
  feel like every time I read in, in the history book, they, they
• 1:29
  say that every time, you know, at the date of publishing too.
• 1:32
  So I'm not sure if that's something new or not.
• 1:36
  The polarization has been here since the founding.
• 1:39
  Obviously, we had a revolution. Yeah, I.
• 1:43
  Guess the king and we were highly polarized then and and
• 1:48
  sometimes we forget that we are polarized not only by the
• 1:53
  colonies, but between the colonies and England, United
• 2:00
  Kingdom, but also within the colonies.
• 2:03
  We were polarized because of the the stain of of slavery and the
• 2:10
  fact that African Americans did not have the vote, women did not
• 2:15
  have the vote. But also sometimes we forget
• 2:17
  about the polarization with the people who lived on the land
• 2:21
  when we came here, indigenous people in all of the colonies,
• 2:25
  especially east of the Appalachian Mountains.
• 2:29
  But let's bring it up to date. We had a highly polarized
• 2:37
  democracy when we had a serious disagreement between the South
• 2:42
  and the North over the question of slavery in an economic system
• 2:45
  based upon owning people who would work for you in the South.
• 2:50
  And that polarized period stays with us today.
• 2:56
  It broke out in war, hundreds of thousands of people died.
• 3:00
  But today we still have a form of polarization based upon
• 3:06
  geography, the based upon personal values, based upon the
• 3:13
  way our leaders lead in terms of sometimes pulling us apart
• 3:20
  rather than pulling us together. But let's go through a few of
• 3:22
  those things right now. One is there's very differences
• 3:25
  between great differences between the traditional South
• 3:30
  and the Rocky Mountains. They are basically red areas
• 3:36
  except for Colorado in New Mexico and the urban areas in
• 3:44
  rural areas, rural areas in America, 94% of them voted for
• 3:51
  for President Trump. And the, the polarization within
• 3:56
  the Republican Party is important to focus on also
• 3:59
  because there's MAGA people, but then there's conservative
• 4:02
  Republicans and they're very different.
• 4:05
  And many traditional Republicans feel a little alienated from
• 4:10
  what's going on with this president now, especially in
• 4:15
  terms of his actions with respect to Minneapolis, but
• 4:24
  also. Iran and Venezuela has been a
• 4:27
  been a point of conflict between the Republican Party for sure.
• 4:31
  Yeah, and the rural areas are very different in terms of their
• 4:37
  values. They're there for, they aren't
• 4:40
  for gun control. They they want responsible use
• 4:43
  of guns. They need guns in Montana and
• 4:45
  Wyoming elsewhere for a variety of reasons.
• 4:48
  That's one source of polarization.
• 4:51
  But also they have more traditional values when it comes
• 4:54
  to religion and and other values, the role of government.
• 5:01
  It's, it's OK to, to debate and go and have a strong opposition
• 5:08
  to the size of government and these and the amount of taxes we
• 5:12
  have. And no one likes taxes.
• 5:16
  But people in rural areas are struggling and they, they would
• 5:19
  like to have lower taxes. They'd also like to have good
• 5:22
  health care. And that's that's another
• 5:24
  problem. Can I ask, I'm sorry, do you
• 5:26
  think that it's an issue of paying taxes or feeling like the
• 5:29
  money that the taxes are going isn't being well enough spent?
• 5:32
  Well, there's always that. Better, no matter who you are,
• 5:35
  Democrat or Republican, you. Well, Sir.
• 5:38
  You worry about how the money. Is being spent whether it's.
• 5:41
  Being wasted, whether it's corrupt, whether you're spending
• 5:45
  too much on on national security and war and not enough on other
• 5:52
  things, or maybe that you feel it's not the role of government
• 5:55
  to be involved in in healthcare or retirement, etcetera.
• 6:00
  The the voters are are polarized and when voters are polarized
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  based upon some of these values that are mentioned, then leaders
• 6:08
  take advantage of that polarization frequently.
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  But it also is a structural phenomena in America where the
• 6:15
  real election for the House of Representatives, for example,
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  but also in many state legislatures is the primary
• 6:22
  election. Whoever gets, whoever wins in
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  the primary basically will win in the general election because
• 6:29
  there are very few competitive districts right now.
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  We're going into a midterm election this year in November
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  and it's estimated that there's probably only 30 seats in the
• 6:41
  House of Representatives that are competitive where you win by
• 6:44
  by less than 5%. That may go up.
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  It does in certain years when there's looks like there's going
• 6:53
  to be a huge turnover and when there's a lot of retirements.
• 6:56
  There are 41 retirements so far. So the point is that if you want
• 7:01
  to get elected, you appeal to the far right and far left,
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  depending on the nature of your district or some other issue
• 7:09
  that takes you away from the from the middle, from the norm.
• 7:14
  Sure. In America, so when you do that
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  and you have people elected, say to the House of Representatives,
• 7:20
  but also the Senate, you have people that are that in order to
• 7:25
  get elected, they're pretty far left or right.
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  And then when they come together, it's very hard to
• 7:30
  compromise. And our, our whole democratic
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  system is based upon compromise. Our foundation of our Republic
• 7:38
  is based upon compromise. Wasn't very nice about the way
• 7:43
  we treated African Americans and Native Americans, but that's,
• 7:48
  you know, that's the foundation. And we, we've evolved, we're
• 7:52
  better. But when you get elected in the
• 7:54
  far right, far left, it's very hard to come together and agree
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  on things like right now we may have another short term shutdown
• 8:04
  a government. And as you know, we had a very
• 8:07
  long term in the fall. And one of the reasons is that
• 8:11
  the that if you're a hardcore Democrat or Republican and
• 8:15
  you're elected by people on the far right or far left, it's very
• 8:17
  hard to come together and say, OK, we'll take care of your
• 8:21
  issues of pro-life right now, or we'll take care of try to
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  improve ICE and what they're doing.
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  But if you come from a district that disagrees with that and you
• 8:35
  want to get re elected, that's the big drive.
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  You're going to appeal to your base.
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  So polarize voters, create a situation where leaders make it
• 8:47
  makes it very hard for leaders to come together and compromise.
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  Now there are very few people in the middle.
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  There used to be Blue Dog Democrats, moderate Democrats in
• 8:57
  the middle. They're gone.
• 8:58
  Really. There used to be.
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  Would you call a gentleman like Ro Kahana one of those type of
• 9:05
  guys or the Thomas Massie's or the Paul's on the on the
• 9:08
  Republican side or you wouldn't even call them that?
• 9:10
  Yeah, they they're more in the middle.
• 9:12
  They are more in the middle. Yeah, there's some issues where
• 9:15
  they're not in the middle, but they're in the middle.
• 9:16
  They're willing to compromise it really to come together.
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  And that's a problem for our democracy.
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  It creates difficulties for the leadership to get people
• 9:26
  together to lead. So we have polarized voters,
• 9:29
  polarized members getting elected, and then we have
• 9:32
  polarized leaders because the leaders are the people that the
• 9:37
  caucus wants in the House and the Senate.
• 9:40
  They get the leadership that they want.
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  And if they don't, they're out like McCarthy or or others in
• 9:46
  the past, riot, etcetera. They fire them, they get rid of
• 9:49
  them because quote they were too moderate.
• 9:53
  Really. Yeah.
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  And so like Ryan, former speaker from Wisconsin, had 28 bills
• 10:01
  when he was speaker that where he needed Democratic votes.
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  He got roundly criticized and pushed out of office for being
• 10:09
  too moderate by his caucus. People saw that McCarthy had a
• 10:15
  similar situation, even though even though he criticized Trump,
• 10:20
  at the end, he flew down to Mar a Lago and said, you know, we're
• 10:23
  going to support you and everything because he was the
• 10:26
  elected person. Then he got pushed out.
• 10:29
  So you have these polarized leaders that come from districts
• 10:34
  that are safe. And we redistrict usually every
• 10:38
  10 years, but now we're having mid, mid densest drawing right
• 10:45
  now in Texas, California, maybe Virginia, maybe Illinois, maybe
• 10:51
  maybe Florida that put they draw lines around the source.
• 10:57
  Yeah. I redistricted the state of
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  Washington many years ago, in 1972.
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  I was a statistician then. I merged census data with
• 11:06
  election data and I wanted more competitive districts because
• 11:11
  there's empirical evidence that if you have more competition in
• 11:15
  the general election, you get more moderation by the people in
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  office. Makes sense?
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  We're going in the opposite direction.
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  Yeah. I became a reformer after that
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  because the people who hired me to redistrict where the state
• 11:28
  legislature run by Democrats and I said I kept pushing, no, we
• 11:34
  need more competitive districts. They wanted more.
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  They wanted more districts that were non competitive.
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  So I pushed in my career for for commissions to do redistricting
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  with the idea that most of those commissions, there are seven
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  true commissions now in the United States and a bunch of
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  others that say they're commissions, but they're highly
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  partisan. I pushed for them to draw the
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  lines. We'd have more competition and
• 12:02
  we have more competition in some states.
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  But now we have this mid census drawing in California to create
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  even more districts that are safe for the Democrats out there
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  and in Texas more for the Republicans.
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  So it's going in the opposite direction.
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  So the foundations of political polarization come from the
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  voters, the leaders, regional differences, urban, rural
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  differences that are very different.
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  And we have partisan sorting, meeting people sort and they
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  live in places where they agree with people.
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  And if they don't, they keep their mouth shut or they change.
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  If you're if, for example, if you're a union member, pro pro
• 12:47
  Democratic and you come out of Detroit, MI and you're a strong
• 12:52
  Democrat, you move to to the suburbs of Phoenix or some or
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  South Florida. You don't go around knocking on
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  doors, getting people to try to vote Democratic.
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  You, you shut up. You reduce cognitive dissonance
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  with your neighbors by not saying much except people who
• 13:11
  are real community organizers. They'll do it and they'll do it.
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  They keep doing it. But, but most people just want
• 13:17
  to have peace. And so they sort, they agree
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  with the people around them. In rural America, in urban
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  America, it's primarily Democratic.
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  And in the suburbs, that's where there's a lot of battle and, and
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  there are a lot of people who are becoming independents.
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  They're more independents in the United States now, if you ask in
• 13:37
  surveys than there are Democrats or Republicans.
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  Those people are not voting. They're young.
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  Maybe they'll change. I hope they change because the
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  way out of this is to vote and to vote people, and that you
• 13:51
  think will represent your interests.
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  We also added to it. I'm sorry, there's a lot.
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  No, I love this is this is wonderful.
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  This is wonderful. There's a lot in the foundation
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  of polarization. We also have a polarized media.
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  Yeah. Podcasts, social media,
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  Newspapers, radio programs, all kinds of things are highly
• 14:18
  polarized. And, and frequently these
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  sources of media media are, you know, on multiple levels.
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  There's different kinds of media, but, but many of them are
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  polarized and they, they're polarized to attract more
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  eyeballs if people are watching it or more ears if they're
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  listening to it. And they ream podcasts
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  sometimes, for example, you know about them.
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  I don't think this is one of those.
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  That's why I said yes to the podcast.
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  I try not to let it be. Yeah, I think it's more
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  objective than you looked at some of them.
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  You have people all over the map in terms of ideology and their
• 14:57
  values and their research. That's important.
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  That's not always the case. The polarized media reinforces
• 15:04
  the polarization of the of the people elected and the voters
• 15:08
  and it makes it more difficult. And then we have this phenomena
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  that's been going on for 30 to 40 years.
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  The missing moderates. There used to be many moderates.
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  I, as you know, I work in the US Senate for then Senator Hubert
• 15:25
  Humphrey from Minnesota and his, his best friend was Dirksen, a
• 15:30
  Republican who's the Republican leadership.
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  They used to get together, have a little Scotch, figure out what
• 15:36
  they agreed on, what they didn't agree, go to the floor and very
• 15:39
  respectfully debated an issue. Not attacking them, their
• 15:45
  family, but with respect to base, and they knew where the
• 15:50
  votes were. They'd have the vote and then
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  leave the floor with their arms around each other, chatting,
• 15:56
  going back for a little more Scotch.
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  That's beautiful, but when's the last time you saw people do
• 16:00
  that? Very rare.
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  There are some issues that are bipartisan, but very few.
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  There's some. It used to be that we had
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  bipartisanship when we left the United States and hit the water.
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  In other words, when there was a when there was a a threat to the
• 16:23
  United States, when there was a war and then Vietnam happened
• 16:29
  and Iraq and Afghanistan and they ever named wars in the
• 16:34
  Middle East and all those things ripped the parties apart.
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  And that you've seen that right now you'll see it in in the run
• 16:43
  up to the midterm elections and and in 2028 for the presidential
• 16:47
  election. Back to the point, moderates are
• 16:50
  not around anymore. People don't run and say I'm a
• 16:53
  moderate elect me now when when Obama ran, he said I want to
• 16:57
  change the way Washington works. He was referring to corruption,
• 17:02
  but also he wanted to change it by bringing people together.
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  And he had people together because he had a huge majority
• 17:12
  the first two years together in the Republic and the Democratic
• 17:15
  Party. But then he lost overwhelmingly
• 17:18
  the midterms, and he couldn't really bring people together.
• 17:22
  I think all modern presidents, from FDR to, to to Trump's first
• 17:30
  four years in office said those things.
• 17:33
  We want to bring Americans together.
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  We all believe in freedom. We all believe in in our
• 17:38
  democracy, in our in our capitalist system.
• 17:43
  But Trump did not have that message.
• 17:46
  He didn't say, I want to bring people together.
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  And he never has that message, which is a problem that is
• 17:53
  throwing gasoline on the embers of polarization.
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  And his base likes it about a third.
• 18:00
  And then others didn't like Biden that much or they didn't
• 18:04
  vote. And and he won overwhelmingly,
• 18:07
  OK, for the second time around, but he won with a highly
• 18:11
  populist and polarized message. Now he's governing on that also.
• 18:17
  And support for him keeps going down in the polls because
• 18:21
  Americans are, I think, getting tired of the chaos.
• 18:25
  Tired, tired of the polarized language.
• 18:29
  They care about cost of living, whether the kids can go to
• 18:35
  college or not, whether they whether the kids can have
• 18:38
  housing, whether they can have housing.
• 18:41
  They care about these bread and butter issues.
• 18:43
  And in the polarized world, polarized rhetoric, that is not
• 18:52
  always the case. And there's extreme statements
• 18:55
  on the left and on the right. And we have a president that has
• 18:59
  some pretty extreme, extreme statements.
• 19:02
  And that's very hard. He is not saying let's all pull
• 19:05
  together. Can I can I ask if you don't
• 19:08
  mind? I just have a couple of follow
• 19:09
  up questions because I think that I think a lot of what you
• 19:13
  said really clarifies a lot and explains a lot, especially as to
• 19:18
  why it feels like everywhere you look, people are just so extreme
• 19:23
  and obviously that's being fed to us.
• 19:26
  I, I think that I have so many the problem.
• 19:32
  I think that potentially, and I'm curious what your thoughts
• 19:36
  are on this as someone that I guess I just turned 30 and I
• 19:41
  think I mentioned to you that I mentioned that to you as well.
• 19:43
  And, and there are a lot of concerns or issues that Trump
• 19:48
  ran on that it felt like was unilaterally appreciated and
• 19:57
  cared about by everyone, right? For example, the Epstein, I
• 20:01
  think was a problem with that, that whole being swept under the
• 20:05
  rug and this whole operation just constantly being, you know,
• 20:09
  I, I mean, there's no solid story for anything.
• 20:11
  And everyone left and right wants to hear, and you hear
• 20:14
  situations where the House and Congress passed, sorry, the
• 20:18
  Congress and the Senate passed, you know, this remarkable vote
• 20:23
  where they want to allow everything out and.
• 20:26
  Everything becomes redacted. And I feel like anyone that had
• 20:30
  hoped that this was going to be the case is now disappointed.
• 20:33
  And the same thing applies, I feel perhaps to the to the
• 20:36
  economy, right? Trump and Biden both walked
• 20:39
  around saying the economy is great, the economy is great.
• 20:43
  The America everyday Americans, from my understanding, didn't
• 20:46
  feel that way. And then, and one thing that
• 20:49
  John Perkins pointed out in in his newest revision of
• 20:53
  Confessions of the Economic, Economic Hitman was that if
• 20:57
  there's three people with approximately half the wealth in
• 21:00
  America and they make 10% on their investments and everyone
• 21:03
  else loses 3% or stays at stays, you know, just about the same,
• 21:08
  then as a whole, the economy went up, you know, And so
• 21:11
  they're always, you know, there are always ways to, for, for
• 21:16
  leadership or politicians to be able to say that things are good
• 21:20
  and to able to try and convince the audience or convince their
• 21:23
  bases or convince anyone that things are the certain way.
• 21:26
  But I think that it's become so blatant recently that the
• 21:33
  conversation for a lot of people isn't a question as to whether
• 21:36
  or not politics are left and right.
• 21:38
  It feels more elite versus everyday people, you know?
• 21:43
  Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good,
• 21:46
  that's an accurate position. Let me reflect on some of the
• 21:49
  things that you said, Sir. Trump ran, ran on the economy.
• 21:54
  He ran against Biden being too old and not with it.
• 21:59
  He ran on immigration and many immigrants, recent immigrants
• 22:06
  agreed with him that there should be a a legal pathway to
• 22:11
  citizenship. That's changed a little bit in
• 22:14
  terms of his implement, serious implementation of it now.
• 22:19
  But he also ran on a strong defense, but not getting into
• 22:27
  wars around the world that were directly related to us.
• 22:30
  So this is a lot of popularity there.
• 22:33
  But he also said things about when it came to the economy, the
• 22:41
  division, the difference of wealth in the United States.
• 22:47
  But he didn't hit it real hard. And then he forgot about it once
• 22:50
  he got into office and brought in all kinds of CE OS.
• 22:54
  And. Basically, they gave him all
• 22:57
  kinds of contributions, not only Musk but others for his
• 23:01
  campaign, but also for for the ballroom, all kinds of ways to
• 23:05
  to be in a transactional situation.
• 23:09
  Politics is transactional, but not as blatant as his
• 23:13
  transactional things. Behind that is what I call the
• 23:18
  norm of reciprocity. Now, what's the largest, what's
• 23:22
  the most important norm in one's life?
• 23:24
  Love. OK, in my opinion, it's behind
• 23:27
  all kinds of religions, love and caring for each other.
• 23:31
  But behind that is reciprocity. I'll help you if you'll help me.
• 23:35
  You hurt me. I may not get mad, but I'll get
• 23:38
  even. He is very blatant about that.
• 23:42
  And that affects our relationships with the world,
• 23:45
  but also people's relationships when they see this in the United
• 23:51
  States. There's a lot of transactional
• 23:52
  things with respect to lobbying. There always has been, but this
• 23:56
  is much of it, in my opinion. I write about ethics and
• 24:00
  lobbying a lot A. Lot of it is, I hope after.
• 24:04
  It's it's it's ill. Many things are illegal in my
• 24:08
  opinion. If you look at the standard
• 24:11
  laws, which I know pretty well back to the point he ran on
• 24:14
  things that were popular. He but most importantly,
• 24:17
  remember there were 3rd of America are a lot or more felt
• 24:23
  left out. That's related to the division
• 24:25
  of wealth. They felt left out.
• 24:27
  They thought he would come in and help them.
• 24:30
  They felt that the elite in the media and he attacks the media,
• 24:36
  the elite in the media, the elite in in elite institutions
• 24:41
  of higher education. The elite in government were not
• 24:46
  to be trusted. And he went after them.
• 24:49
  Yeah, in a very populist way. And that was popular.
• 24:54
  Yeah. But that's related to your point
• 24:57
  of this distribution of wealth. It's getting worse and worth.
• 25:02
  Very few people are in the billionaire category and they
• 25:08
  owned, you know, half the wealth or more in the United States and
• 25:12
  others are struggling and some are not struggling that much,
• 25:17
  but they're, they see their kids struggling, they're adult
• 25:19
  children that people want to go to college, etcetera.
• 25:23
  So then when Biden, but also Trump says, well, geez, the
• 25:29
  stock market's doing really well.
• 25:31
  Look at the data on unemployment.
• 25:33
  It's well baloney. It's, it's what it costs to buy
• 25:39
  some eggs. It's what whether you can have
• 25:41
  healthcare, whether you're going to afford healthcare insurance,
• 25:45
  whether your kids are going to have a future and most of them
• 25:49
  are are saying, well, we're our future is not going to be as
• 25:52
  good as what you had. That's a very serious problem in
• 25:58
  our democracy. And I think the same language
• 26:02
  from Trump going further now about, oh, the economy is good,
• 26:06
  don't worry about it. It's similar to Biden's he but
• 26:11
  but the strategy of Trump is to flood the zones with zone with
• 26:14
  all kinds of issues every day. I don't know what they'll be
• 26:17
  today. And that controls what the media
• 26:23
  are doing to a great extent, you know, the general media.
• 26:26
  And that's a strategy. He's he's not stupid that way.
• 26:31
  But the question is where does this strategy lead us as a
• 26:35
  democracy? And I think it's leading us in a
• 26:38
  way that is not very democratic, it's not very equitable in.
• 26:44
  Terms of quite frankly. Pardon me.
• 26:46
  It's terrible, quite frankly. Yeah, it's terrible.
• 26:49
  I mean, I, it's, it's and, and I think, and I think something,
• 26:54
  I'm sorry to interrupt, but something as glaring as Epstein,
• 26:56
  which is an like an exact, exact example of literally the will of
• 27:01
  the people that are supposed to be keeping the executive branch
• 27:05
  in check. That is the checks and balances
• 27:07
  in checks and balances is that every single person except for
• 27:10
  literally one person in Congress and the, and the Senate voted
• 27:14
  for something and for the people not to have that and for 50 days
• 27:18
  or 45 days, whatever it's been to go by without any
• 27:20
  repercussions. And with the fact that Bill and
• 27:23
  Hillary and Hillary Clinton had just decided they got subpoenaed
• 27:26
  and just didn't show up shows that the institutions don't
• 27:29
  really have one tier of justice. And I think that it's so blatant
• 27:34
  now that it's, it's really, it's upsetting.
• 27:37
  But I think a lot of people just throw up their hands and say,
• 27:40
  yeah, you know what? It's not really democracy
• 27:41
  anyway. You call it whatever you want,
• 27:42
  but like, no one really feels like they're getting what they
• 27:45
  voted for at the end of the day a lot of times.
• 27:47
  Well, the Epstein situation is terrible.
• 27:54
  I mean, if you had a daughter that got caught up in this,
• 27:57
  you'd be furious. You'd, I'm curious, just
• 28:00
  thinking about what happened. And in your in your statement,
• 28:06
  you refer to the Congress article one of the Constitution
• 28:11
  creates a very strong Congress, but it has to act.
• 28:15
  It hasn't acted. And one of the reasons it hasn't
• 28:18
  acted very, very firmly is that we've got a president who's
• 28:22
  dominating it in terms of what he wants.
• 28:25
  Yeah. Now LBJ did that, Johnson did
• 28:28
  that. Lots of people do that.
• 28:30
  I've written a whole book on called Rivals book, our
• 28:33
  President of Congress and it it changes.
• 28:36
  But this is to the extreme in terms of really forcing the
• 28:42
  Republicans in the House and the Senate not to challenge him on a
• 28:47
  variety of things, even even on Epstein and what happened with
• 28:51
  Epstein and, and, and the papers there, he has said terrible
• 28:58
  things about it, like, oh, it's, it's an extraction.
• 29:00
  This is distraction. Pardon me.
• 29:04
  It, it, it doesn't, it, it doesn't help us address the real
• 29:09
  problems of immigration. The criminals that are
• 29:14
  immigrants, well, they're very few criminals that are
• 29:17
  immigrants. There are some, in my opinion.
• 29:20
  I mean, the data show that. So we have a democracy that's a
• 29:25
  pluralist democracy, meaning groups are very powerful.
• 29:28
  If they organize and push things, they have some impact,
• 29:34
  but our pluralist democracy sings with an upper class
• 29:38
  accent. Yeah.
• 29:42
  Pluralism sings with an upper class accent.
• 29:45
  It's and it has a patina of elitism and certainly Epstein is
• 29:51
  about that. It's about the elites.
• 29:53
  We have another world that can do anything they want.
• 29:55
  They can do disgusting things with with young women that are
• 30:00
  underage and get away with it. Black market deals between
• 30:05
  governments and, and I mean, I mean, you know, arms deals
• 30:09
  between governments. I mean, we know that Epstein was
• 30:11
  related to Iran Contra and we know that I mean, there was
• 30:13
  quite a bit that he was that he participated in as far as as far
• 30:17
  as Internet global politics, you know, and.
• 30:20
  Yeah, but it's not only Epstein. It's it's we have a history of
• 30:23
  that, Yeah. Certainly.
• 30:26
  Under Reagan, you know, under every president, yes.
• 30:31
  Therefore, there's distrust of the elite in Washington.
• 30:34
  By some, they're not, you know, a core of his supporter.
• 30:39
  Trump's supporters distrust Washington totally.
• 30:42
  He distrust professors like me. It's good, even though I come
• 30:47
  from a small rural community in Oregon, you know, they, they
• 30:53
  think I'm an elitist that went to one of the Ivy League
• 30:55
  schools. And by the way, many of the
• 30:58
  people in his cabinet went to Ivy League schools, as you know,
• 31:01
  and they don't talk about it. If there are elites, there are
• 31:05
  elites always in government because we have a meritocracy.
• 31:09
  If you do well in a particular area, you get selected.
• 31:13
  And that's still true. Yeah.
• 31:16
  Under. Under Trump, Although you have
• 31:18
  to he totally loyal to Trump, there's nobody really standing
• 31:22
  up to him. You saw it happen with Marjorie
• 31:24
  Taylor Green. The second she stood up to him,
• 31:26
  she was she was out. That was it.
• 31:27
  Yeah, but she may, she may not be out.
• 31:29
  The party is splitting a little bit.
• 31:31
  And she's America first type. And he's getting us involved in
• 31:35
  a variety of external things. Bombing.
• 31:39
  Yeah. Iran going into Venezuela.
• 31:43
  I'm not making a value judgment about those things.
• 31:45
  But he's, you know, he's, he's expanding.
• 31:48
  You believe that he should have had to go to Congress in order
• 31:51
  to do in order to do the Venezuela strike to kidnap
• 31:54
  Maduro? Do you think he needed
• 31:55
  Congress's approval? I think under the War Powers Act
• 31:59
  he should have gone to Congress more quickly.
• 32:04
  He should have had a, He should have met with the 8 leaders,
• 32:09
  House and the Senate in a top secret meeting to let them know
• 32:16
  what was happening. And then he, and then he should
• 32:19
  go forward with Congress to approve or not approve the
• 32:24
  continuation of the use of force against another nation.
• 32:29
  I, I think that we have a major drug problem in the United
• 32:33
  States. But those boats that he's
• 32:34
  bombing were not going, You know, they, they let me put that
• 32:39
  in perspective. My son has lived in Ecuador for
• 32:42
  30 years. OK.
• 32:43
  So he's seen what happened to Ecuador.
• 32:45
  He'd like to have a stronger force going after the six major
• 32:49
  gangs that really transformed that country into a very
• 32:52
  dangerous place on the especially Guayaquil and all the
• 32:56
  coast. And he's influenced me.
• 32:59
  I've been there many times. I can see what it's done.
• 33:02
  They shoot mayors, all kinds of things.
• 33:04
  There should be some action inter, you know, inter
• 33:11
  interjecting our force with the approval of Ecuador that Ecuador
• 33:15
  wants it to deal with that. But to but to go after these
• 33:19
  boats the way they are without due process, in my opinion,
• 33:25
  without the rule of law is not right.
• 33:30
  We had the Coast Guard stopping these boats for many years and
• 33:34
  submarines and and arresting people when they saw evidence
• 33:38
  and due process with those people.
• 33:40
  But but if you're going from Venezuela to Trinidad in a
• 33:46
  little fishing boat. With some trace amounts of
• 33:49
  marijuana and like, nothing to do with fentanyl or heroin or
• 33:51
  cocaine or anything like that. That's right.
• 33:54
  Used to be it was fentanyl, but it wasn't.
• 33:56
  None of it was fentanyl. Then it was cocaine.
• 33:59
  Oh no, it's not cocaine. It's something else.
• 34:01
  It's. It's just something's legal in
• 34:04
  half the states of the country and medicinally available and
• 34:06
  like that and like another 10 states.
• 34:08
  It's it's, it undermines trust in government, It undermines
• 34:14
  what's going on. Although there are a lot of
• 34:15
  people say, yeah, we got to go after drugs.
• 34:17
  This is going after drugs. It's symbolic more than real.
• 34:21
  Right back to the point. Yes.
• 34:23
  Where we were about what he ran on and what he's doing.
• 34:27
  I think that he most importantly, he didn't run on
• 34:31
  this. He's really wiped out Article
• 34:33
  one of the Constitution primarily on the on the power of
• 34:38
  the purse. And we still don't have a major
• 34:40
  case before the Supreme Court decided yet about whether it is
• 34:46
  OK for him to impound money unconstitutionally, in other
• 34:52
  words, not spend it. That's been authorized and
• 34:54
  appropriate. Congress needs to get together
• 34:57
  to push back on that. But the Republicans are not with
• 34:59
  the Democrats on that. So that's the problem.
• 35:02
  I helped draft part of the Budget Impoundment Control Act
• 35:05
  of 1973. Title 10 of that act is on
• 35:08
  impoundment. There's ways to impound money
• 35:10
  legally. Recisions and deferrals.
• 35:13
  Recisions rescinded completely. Deferrals defer for a year.
• 35:17
  He's only had one rescission message that went to the Hill.
• 35:21
  It barely passed by one vote the rest of the time.
• 35:25
  Vogt, who's head of the OMB, executive director of OMB and
• 35:29
  and editor and author of many chapters of the Heritage
• 35:34
  Foundation's 2025 plan, has done it unilaterally.
• 35:40
  He has cut off money for AID Luke unilaterally.
• 35:44
  You may disagree with the AID, but there's a way to change it.
• 35:48
  There's a way to change the law. They've shut down the Peace
• 35:52
  Institute created through a partnership by legislative
• 35:57
  action and private sector support and cut off money for it
• 36:03
  illegally under Article One of the Constitution.
• 36:07
  The power of the purse belongs with Congress.
• 36:09
  The Congress currently has had no oversight hearings on these
• 36:14
  things. They have no, they have no guts
• 36:17
  to stand up against him behind the scenes and I know this
• 36:21
  because I have over 200 former students working on the Hill.
• 36:25
  Wow. For years and four members of
• 36:28
  Congress behind the scenes, the Republicans poor mouth him all
• 36:32
  the time and they, you know, they say he's terrible, he's a
• 36:35
  dictator, he's fascist, He's not doing Republicans are saying
• 36:39
  this, but they're not willing to stand up against him because
• 36:43
  they're worried they'll get primary.
• 36:44
  They're worried that the base, which is far right in their
• 36:48
  case, will come out against them.
• 36:50
  Sure. Like with Congresswoman Green.
• 36:55
  And so they don't do anything about it.
• 36:57
  So I see cracks in that right now in terms of what he's doing
• 37:02
  and how he's behaving. I think most Americans you'll
• 37:06
  see did not want us to invade or buy Greenland.
• 37:11
  I mean, that's that's gone now. Maybe they don't want us to
• 37:17
  break up at 80 year successful coalition of western
• 37:24
  democracies. Under NATO.
• 37:26
  Under NATO. OK, OK.
• 37:29
  I could hear, I could hear arguments both way about that
• 37:31
  for sure. Sure, but but this, I'm saying
• 37:33
  this, polls show that most Americans want to continue.
• 37:36
  OK, cool. OK.
• 37:38
  And then also change it, you know, but not blow it apart.
• 37:41
  So we're sorry. So we end up with partners from
• 37:46
  China and Russia. Some people say, I don't think I
• 37:48
  think that's an extreme, although his position with Putin
• 37:52
  certainly is very different than previous presidents.
• 37:54
  Sure. But where am I going with this?
• 37:58
  Not only the Poor Powers Act is being ignored by the executive,
• 38:02
  the power of the purse is being ignored, and also the power of
• 38:06
  Congress over. Over.
• 38:08
  Trade policy over. Tariffs.
• 38:14
  Tariffs with our friends as well as with our enemies like China.
• 38:21
  They have the right, but they also have the responsibility to
• 38:25
  stand up and do something. They haven't.
• 38:27
  The Supreme Court's going to come up with a decision about
• 38:29
  that. It looks like from the
• 38:31
  questioning about the tariff issues and the role of Congress
• 38:36
  that they're leaning against this president's position,
• 38:38
  although they've been very timid about about challenging, right.
• 38:47
  But he didn't run on getting rid of article one of the
• 38:51
  Constitution. Although Congress is always a
• 38:53
  very unpopular institution generally except for their
• 38:57
  member, you know, if you come from a district.
• 39:00
  Oh yeah, we love our member, but Congress is the problem.
• 39:03
  Because how much blame corruption that people just see
• 39:05
  it? Yeah, and it's the corruption.
• 39:09
  You're not going to like this, but the corruption is not as
• 39:13
  deep and as extensive as it seems.
• 39:16
  Because the headlines When you see headlines about what ICE is
• 39:20
  doing or headlines about FEMA's mismanagement, that doesn't mean
• 39:27
  the whole thing is that way. Sure.
• 39:29
  So I know many, many members so who certainly never crossed the
• 39:35
  line in a shade of grey ethically or any other ways, but
• 39:39
  there are some, they're really pushing it.
• 39:41
  There's some people that it seems to be not the sharpest
• 39:45
  tool in the shed that you know, you know, that speak out.
• 39:50
  And those are the ones that speak out frequently.
• 39:51
  You don't know the the workhorses behind the scenes.
• 39:54
  So it's unpopular for me to do this, but I'm going to stand up
• 39:58
  for the institution. I love the institution, OK.
• 40:00
  We just need to have better ways of getting more moderate
• 40:04
  selected and better ways for them to get some guts and stand
• 40:09
  up. Yes.
• 40:10
  For the rights of the people through Congress, and they're
• 40:14
  not doing it right now. OK, wonderful.
• 40:16
  I think that's and I actually, I really do appreciate your
• 40:19
  optimism. And I like that because I've
• 40:22
  spoken to a couple of people, for example, after, you know,
• 40:26
  Trump had gotten shot at and after Charlie Kirk got
• 40:28
  assassinated. And I was asking, you know,
• 40:31
  everyone's making a big deal. What's Secret Service doing?
• 40:34
  And it's the failed year of security.
• 40:35
  And I said for every, every failure, think about how many
• 40:38
  hundreds of thousands of cases that they had prevented that you
• 40:40
  don't hear about, that you don't know anything about, you know,
• 40:43
  and the same thing goes with our institutions.
• 40:44
  Think about, you know, that, that the, the, and this also
• 40:47
  goes with polarization, I suppose that polarization is the
• 40:51
  stuff that grabs people's eyes. And so the people that are doing
• 40:53
  the good, quiet, healthy work aren't getting that same level
• 40:56
  of of speculation, I suppose. Yeah, they don't get the news.
• 41:01
  No, they. Don't get the headlines.
• 41:03
  And I'm glad you said that about the Secret Service.
• 41:05
  They they've had some problems. I used to be an outside speaker
• 41:11
  that came in to speak at the Secret Service Academy.
• 41:14
  I did that for 15 years. So I've met a lot of those
• 41:18
  people. I learned from them about what
• 41:20
  they're doing. You are absolutely right.
• 41:22
  There are 10s of thousands of threats every month just on
• 41:30
  presidents and former presidents.
• 41:32
  And now there are thousands of threats on members of Congress.
• 41:36
  They're overwhelmed. They're under budget.
• 41:40
  They have a, a new world of threats coming online that they
• 41:45
  have to deal with, a huge bureaucracy to deal with that.
• 41:48
  It's amazing that we haven't had other really tragic situations
• 41:52
  and we may have more. So I, you know, most of them are
• 41:57
  doing, doing a very good job, but sometimes one or two don't
• 42:03
  and then that becomes the headline.
• 42:05
  That's my point. Yeah, excellent.
• 42:08
  Can you actually explain for anyone that doesn't understand?
• 42:10
  You mentioned this a couple of times the midterms and how that
• 42:12
  works please? Sure, the midterms are elections
• 42:16
  between the elections of presidents.
• 42:19
  They come up every two years. Every member of the house is up
• 42:24
  for for re election and 1/3 of the Senate.
• 42:27
  There are 34 this time that are up for election, and this time
• 42:36
  we have a situation where the incoming party controlling the
• 42:42
  House and Senate and the presidency, unified party
• 42:44
  government is under threat of a huge turnover of of New
• 42:51
  Democrats. So on average from 1946 to
• 42:54
  present, the midterms have shown that in this situation, there's
• 43:00
  a turnover of 27 seats to the out to the out party 27.
• 43:06
  This time there'll there'll be a huge turnover unless things can
• 43:11
  happen. I mean, things can happen with
• 43:13
  this president every day. It may help him, it may not help
• 43:17
  him. And with respect to ICE and a
• 43:21
  variety of other things, right now he's his popularity is, is
• 43:25
  going down. He's very His popularity has
• 43:29
  gone down, as most presidents do the first term.
• 43:32
  They've just gone down. Yeah, Obama happened to Obama
• 43:35
  too. Yeah, that's right.
• 43:37
  And in the midterm, he lost over 50 seats, and so that's set a
• 43:45
  record. What?
• 43:46
  What causes that what causes something such dramatic turnover
• 43:49
  is that policy is that impressions is that, you know,
• 43:52
  running based on idea and not being able to quite didn't
• 43:56
  happen yet and so you lose people become disenchanted.
• 43:59
  What causes such a dramatic overturn?
• 44:01
  All of those things, Obama's case, it was a perceived
• 44:05
  overreach in terms of new policies that he was pushing
• 44:10
  through like the Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare.
• 44:16
  People didn't understand it and, and the opposition went against
• 44:20
  it in simple ways. They like certain things.
• 44:23
  But for example, right now, if you call, if people say do you
• 44:27
  like Obamacare, there's a huge percent say no, but it's the
• 44:32
  same thing as the Affordable Care Act.
• 44:34
  And they say, Oh, yeah, we're for the Affordable Care Act, you
• 44:37
  know? So that's right.
• 44:37
  We don't like surveillance, but we like the Patriot Act.
• 44:40
  Right, exactly. So you've got it.
• 44:42
  So it's policy, it's it's also style of leadership that maybe
• 44:51
  people don't like. It's Vince internationally, it's
• 44:55
  the economy stupid. If the economy doesn't don't go
• 44:59
  well, you're going to it's going to hurt you.
• 45:01
  There are a variety of reasons for for the in, in party in the
• 45:08
  White House losing seats in Congress.
• 45:12
  Now, right now, it's all of those things with respect to
• 45:15
  Trump. And I'm not going to predict
• 45:18
  what's going to happen, but all of the data show that it's that
• 45:22
  he's in he's in serious trouble and he's he's flooding the zones
• 45:26
  with all kinds of new ideas and things to get people to focus on
• 45:31
  that, not focus on Epstein, although he gave in on that, but
• 45:37
  now he doesn't. Oh, why are we still talking
• 45:40
  about that? Focusing on things like
• 45:42
  Greenland, which, you know, why don't we?
• 45:46
  Why don't we? You know, I go to Iceland often
• 45:47
  because I knew the ambassador, he invites me to give speeches.
• 45:50
  This thing, we gave up a base in Iceland and they protested us
• 45:56
  leaving. They wanted us to stay.
• 45:59
  And now I know from briefings that the Soviet, pardon me, the
• 46:03
  Russians are fishing in their in their fishing area.
• 46:09
  They have overflights. They have military ships that
• 46:12
  come within their boundaries, have all kinds of problems.
• 46:16
  But we're talking about Greenland.
• 46:18
  Why don't we talk about Iceland? You know, and that happened
• 46:21
  under a long time ago. It happened under George W Bush
• 46:25
  when we got rid of that base. But at Keflevic is the name of
• 46:29
  the base. So that doesn't come up in the
• 46:31
  press. At all, Not at all.
• 46:34
  And if you're if you're what's now known, like what's now, it's
• 46:38
  almost a derogatory term these days, but a neo con and you're
• 46:41
  making an argument for, hey, if America is not the Big Brother,
• 46:44
  then like you know, then there's a power vacuum.
• 46:46
  This would be a case in point for them, wouldn't it?
• 46:49
  Yeah, well, yeah, Neo Con made a lot of difference when we had
• 46:57
  the Soviet Union. Yes, a huge threat.
• 47:00
  Sure, now Russia is a threat. Certainly, I have 21 former
• 47:06
  students that are Ukrainians that are suffering in Ukraine
• 47:09
  right now. Some of them have been fighting
• 47:12
  since 2014. I get emails from them so I'm
• 47:15
  biased about Ukraine. OK.
• 47:17
  I, I want to, I think we should help them and NATO should help
• 47:21
  them stand up against, against a bully against, against Putin or
• 47:28
  he'll go after Lithuania. I've been to Lithuania also, and
• 47:32
  1/3 of their population is ethnic Russian.
• 47:34
  And he's going to say, oh, just like in your game, we're going
• 47:38
  to go for that. Back to the point, we can't be
• 47:42
  the cop everywhere in the world, but we can set up certain
• 47:48
  positions where we should, where we should stop aggression.
• 47:55
  And that's certainly happen happening in Ukraine.
• 47:58
  I I certainly hope that we have peace there because the people
• 48:01
  that I know have families, Yeah, they've been seriously hurt.
• 48:04
  Their property's been blown up. And of course, we don't hear
• 48:08
  about Ukraine anymore. No, it's that no white light.
• 48:12
  Anymore. The white light of of the media
• 48:17
  is was on Greenland. It's on, you know, it's on
• 48:22
  Minneapolis, it's on a variety of other things, but they're
• 48:25
  still fighting and suffering. Yeah, yeah, it's terrible.
• 48:28
  Where? Was I going with that?
• 48:29
  I'm sorry I slipped off. That's OK.
• 48:30
  We were talking about how the neocons would would the neocons?
• 48:34
  Yeah, as as Iceland as as a case in point for their philosophy.
• 48:39
  Yeah, Wait a minute, neocons. Yeah, it's it's an unpopular
• 48:45
  position. It is the.
• 48:46
  Position within the jail track part pre to a certain extent was
• 48:52
  the neo body was tough on communism and tough on on Cuba,
• 48:57
  tough on on Soviet Union. Now it's different.
• 49:03
  It's really people that say, OK, if you don't stand up now with
• 49:11
  bullies like this one circumstance in in Ukraine, then
• 49:18
  then he will then take over another country.
• 49:24
  Now sometimes that's right, sometimes it's wrong.
• 49:27
  In the the Domino's theory in in Vietnam was wrong.
• 49:32
  Yeah. And we lost a lot of American,
• 49:37
  Great American soldiers there for what?
• 49:39
  So they can sell Coca-Cola and build our Nike shoes?
• 49:43
  I mean help, I mean so. That's that's always the
• 49:49
  consequence post war. You know, throw a dart at a map
• 49:53
  and you can find out where we put, you know, we're even to 1
• 49:56
  where Nike and Coke and and Chevron have all filled in the,
• 50:00
  you know, the empty areas that got bombed out.
• 50:03
  And where? And then in Washington, DC area,
• 50:06
  we get all kinds of great restaurants, Vietnamese
• 50:10
  restaurants. Oh my goodness.
• 50:13
  Iranian restaurants. Can I ask?
• 50:17
  Afghan restaurants. I'm serious.
• 50:18
  You. Know.
• 50:18
  Yeah, Yeah. Can I ask your opinion?
• 50:22
  And this can be brief, but I just want to know your thoughts.
• 50:24
  I know that it's it's a famous story or relatively, I guess
• 50:28
  infamous, depending what perspective you're looking at it
• 50:30
  from, but that Putin actually asked to join NATO.
• 50:35
  He asked George Bush to I think junior to join NATO.
• 50:38
  And what do you think would have happened if he if that if that
• 50:41
  was accepted? I'm not capable of.
• 50:46
  That's not my area of expertise. I don't know what would have
• 50:48
  happened. OK, that's fine.
• 50:50
  Watching his behavior, he's broken all kinds of treaties and
• 50:56
  agreements, First taking, you know, 1/3 of Ukraine in 2014.
• 51:05
  There were agreements, you know, that he wouldn't do that.
• 51:08
  So I wouldn't trust him. OK, bottom line, I wouldn't
• 51:10
  trust him, but I don't, I don't know what would happen.
• 51:13
  I know that war is is absolutely terrible and you should try to
• 51:19
  avoid it. And I think that maybe Obama was
• 51:23
  trying to do that by not pushing back on Russia 2014 because
• 51:32
  absolutely that's that was their major naval base that that for
• 51:38
  Russia. And that would have maybe
• 51:43
  triggered a major war. And I think he was being very
• 51:46
  careful. But also, you got, you know,
• 51:49
  looks what look what happened. I mean, it continues and tragedy
• 51:53
  continues. Yeah, for Ukraine, but also for
• 51:56
  Russia and Russian troops. Yeah, certainly.
• 52:00
  But this is an area that I'm not an expert on.
• 52:02
  No problem. I was just curious.
• 52:05
  Yeah, sure. From the perspective of former
• 52:07
  students, I've been to Ukraine four times, OK?
• 52:10
  I'm very concerned about corruption in Ukraine and I have
• 52:14
  been involved in in with Ukrainians in trying to try to
• 52:21
  go after corruption. And now that the war has been
• 52:24
  going on, people haven't thought about it.
• 52:26
  But you know, it's it's still corrupt.
• 52:28
  Sure. Not everywhere, but it's pretty
• 52:31
  corrupt. And that issue will come back
• 52:34
  once the war is over with no matter what.
• 52:37
  Yeah, and we should not forget that.
• 52:42
  We need to clean up, no matter what kind of regime it is.
• 52:46
  We need to clean up corruption because then the people don't
• 52:50
  trust government and you know, you have huge problems, turmoil
• 52:53
  as you know. Yes, as I do.
• 52:55
  And that's where actually I want to lead into, if you don't mind.
• 52:58
  I think there's a perfect time to lead into lobbying and ethics
• 53:01
  because I think everyone hears the word lobbying, you know,
• 53:05
  lobbyists and lobbying in the news and people, I don't know
• 53:08
  people really how it works or what it means.
• 53:11
  Or, you know, and people hear about this evolving door that
• 53:15
  happens between all sorts of industries that an industry that
• 53:19
  has relation any kind of regulation and, and you'll see,
• 53:22
  you'll see a revolving door there.
• 53:24
  So can you maybe explain in a little bit of depth how lobbying
• 53:28
  and ethics works, especially, you know, within the political
• 53:31
  system? Yeah, a lot of people laugh when
• 53:33
  I say that I teach a workshop, a research workshop.
• 53:37
  I'm teaching now on ethics and lobbying and students are
• 53:41
  looking at ethical problems and what the law is and how to
• 53:45
  improve it. I've been doing this for 16
• 53:48
  years. I've had a grant to do this and
• 53:51
  even though I'm Meritus, which means I'm retired, I've the Dean
• 53:55
  said no one can teach this class.
• 53:57
  You have a grant. We're going to lose the grant
• 54:00
  unless you do it. So I'm doing it and I enjoy it.
• 54:02
  Great. Lobbying throughout the world is
• 54:06
  a dirty word. In France, it's a dirty word.
• 54:09
  In Italy it's a dirty word. It's not a nice word in the EU.
• 54:14
  And I've taught for 16 years on the European Public Affairs and
• 54:18
  Advocacy Institute, lobbying in in a workshop there for two
• 54:25
  weeks every year. So I got to know the problems of
• 54:32
  advocacy lobbying there. But you know, lobbying is a
• 54:37
  necessary function in democracy. It is protected under the 1st
• 54:44
  Amendment of our Constitution. We have freedom of speech,
• 54:47
  freedom of assembly freedom, freedom to petition government
• 54:50
  for grievances without being arrested and thrown in jail.
• 54:55
  That's under freedom of speech, all that.
• 54:57
  Freedom of speech, freedom of religion.
• 55:00
  It's it is there. It's it's protected.
• 55:05
  But when you look at the norm of reciprocity that I talked about
• 55:09
  before, scandal is often related to lobbying.
• 55:16
  The norm of reciprocity often drive scandal and then therefore
• 55:21
  reform. What is the norm of reciprocity?
• 55:23
  It's quid pro quo, a favor or advantage granted or expected in
• 55:29
  return for something, something for something.
• 55:32
  Now we have the perception that, oh, you give a lot of campaign
• 55:36
  contributions to somebody, they're going to do something
• 55:39
  for you. And it's blatant.
• 55:41
  Right now with the president, with many members of Congress,
• 55:49
  there are rules and regulations, but some of those rules and
• 55:53
  regulations are very, very vague.
• 55:57
  We have super PACs that are secret.
• 56:00
  You don't know who's giving money to them or how the money
• 56:02
  is spent until later. It's controlled.
• 56:05
  It's regulated under the IRS, not under the Federal Election
• 56:08
  Commission. And so we have the perception
• 56:14
  as, oh, all you have to do is bring in like Musk, bring in
• 56:17
  $250 million and you're going to buy an election.
• 56:20
  Well, even he even he failed in many cases where he was
• 56:24
  supporting people in primaries that that lost money is not
• 56:29
  always power. Political power in America is
• 56:34
  taking resources. It could be money, it could be
• 56:37
  mobilizing people, it could be knowledge, it could be a variety
• 56:43
  of things. And being able to transform
• 56:47
  those resources into an action that you want, minus a
• 56:53
  resistance. Frequently in a pluralist
• 56:55
  system, you have people on either side fighting each other
• 57:00
  with lots of money, and they're fighting each other to gridlock.
• 57:04
  Now we have gridlock, much of it is partisan gridlock between the
• 57:09
  two parties, but we have gridlock between, between
• 57:12
  hospitals and doctor associations and insurance
• 57:16
  companies. We have gridlock of the, the
• 57:19
  cane sugar growers in Florida and the beet sugar growers in
• 57:24
  Idaho. You know, it's, it's throughout
• 57:28
  our system. And when you throw in the
• 57:31
  question of reciprocity, well, we're going to give you a lot of
• 57:34
  money to run because you're doing the right thing for us
• 57:40
  legally. We're going to do this.
• 57:42
  Then the public begins to think, well, it's all about money.
• 57:46
  It's all about these guys. No, you can more money's wasted
• 57:50
  in Washington, DC of the of the $5 billion or more.
• 57:58
  It's no, wait a minute, it's 14 billion now in lobbying then is
• 58:03
  used appropriately. Money just flows in here, but
• 58:08
  it's on either side of the of the issue.
• 58:10
  And many times firms take it's, I think it's unethical.
• 58:15
  They take people on either side of an issue and they take the
• 58:18
  money. Now, there was a guy by the name
• 58:20
  of Jack Abramoff. Now, Jack Abramoff was a guy who
• 58:24
  did a whole bunch of illegal things and went to jail for for
• 58:28
  five years and 10 months, who triggered ethics and lobbying
• 58:34
  reform in 2006 and seven. I worked with then Senator Obama
• 58:38
  on the reforms, helped draft some of them and it stemmed from
• 58:42
  Abramoff, but lots of other people who were doing things
• 58:46
  that were illegal or in a shade of grey ethically.
• 58:51
  What would be the? Example One example is there are
• 58:55
  two Native American tribes in the South.
• 58:59
  One had a had a a license for a gambling Oregon, a gambling
• 59:06
  institution, which they had and it was doing very well.
• 59:09
  And then these are ways to make a lot of money for tribes and
• 59:12
  they use it in a variety of ways.
• 59:15
  Another one was geographically close to this tribe in Louisiana
• 59:22
  and it wanted a license. Jack Abramoff took both of those
• 59:27
  as clients. Unethical, he said.
• 59:31
  Well, there was a Chinese wall between the two.
• 59:36
  We didn't, you know, we had different people in the firm
• 59:40
  dealing with it. Well, baloney.
• 59:42
  They had a conflict of interest. I had, I taught for 40 years a a
• 59:49
  seminar called Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute.
• 59:55
  It was an institute about treating, teaching people how to
• 59:59
  do ethical lobbying and all the strategies and tactics of direct
• 1:00:03
  lobbying, grassroots social media, all kinds of elements in
• 1:00:09
  it. I had a student who told me at
• 1:00:11
  the end of this two week thing, he said.
• 1:00:14
  Professor Thurber, if I'd only known what lobbying really was,
• 1:00:17
  we would not have given Jack Abramoff $25 million to support
• 1:00:24
  our our cause. The one who wanted a.
• 1:00:29
  A license. Now this is interesting because
• 1:00:31
  Abramoff used that money not for them, but to illegally fly a
• 1:00:38
  delegation of people paid for by Abramoff to London and then to
• 1:00:43
  play golf in Scotland and back, paying for everything on the
• 1:00:48
  trip as long as well as other things not related to the
• 1:00:52
  lobbying for the Indian tribe, the Native American tribe.
• 1:00:58
  He that's what got him in trouble and got members of
• 1:01:00
  Congress in trouble. In fact, just one example, there
• 1:01:03
  was a conviction of Representative Bob nay Nye,
• 1:01:08
  pardon me, He was chairman of a committee.
• 1:01:11
  He went on this trip, everything was paid for.
• 1:01:14
  That's illegal. He and then the, the laws were
• 1:01:19
  changing even more, but he wasn't allowed to receive more
• 1:01:23
  than $50 a year from one source. And this was thousands.
• 1:01:27
  He went to jail, got convicted, went to jail.
• 1:01:30
  And it was related to Abramoff bribes also directly to him.
• 1:01:36
  So back to the point, the norm of reciprocity often drives
• 1:01:42
  reforms, OK? Abramoff would help members with
• 1:01:48
  campaigns, give them things, these trips and things, but they
• 1:01:52
  would give him information about what was going on on the
• 1:01:56
  committee. He would offer them jobs also
• 1:01:59
  before they left the Hill, which now is ill.
• 1:02:02
  You can't do it. You got it.
• 1:02:05
  The Ethics Committee is watching this theoretically, and there
• 1:02:09
  the reciprocity was. OK, Chief of staff of the
• 1:02:14
  Appropriations subcommittee, you can have a job with me.
• 1:02:17
  Just help me out a little bit on this.
• 1:02:19
  OK, So that triggered a lot of scandal.
• 1:02:25
  One more scandal and then I'll get back generally to ethics and
• 1:02:29
  lobbying. Another example was a was
• 1:02:32
  Representative Duke, his nickname Duke Cunningham.
• 1:02:36
  OK, Duke Cunningham came from San Diego.
• 1:02:39
  He was chairman of the defense subcommittee of Appropriations.
• 1:02:44
  They used to call it the candy store, meaning most of the
• 1:02:48
  earmarks setting aside money out of that committee for
• 1:02:53
  corporations, for example, within members districts came.
• 1:02:58
  Most of the earmarks came out of that subcommittee.
• 1:03:02
  He was chairman of that committee.
• 1:03:04
  He set aside a $250 million earmark for a corporation in San
• 1:03:13
  Diego to do what to digitized top secret material for the
• 1:03:22
  Army. I had students who were in that
• 1:03:25
  division in the Army. They didn't want it done.
• 1:03:29
  He asked that this corporation do it and they got a sole source
• 1:03:35
  contract for that. The corporation bought his house
• 1:03:40
  in San Diego for $750,000 over market.
• 1:03:46
  They also got him. They bought him a Rolls Royce
• 1:03:49
  used, but a Rolls Royce and a lot of antiques and things.
• 1:03:53
  Well eventually a local reporter from the San Diego Union saw the
• 1:04:00
  sale. This is weird.
• 1:04:02
  What's this corporation? Well the corporation got this
• 1:04:05
  sole source contract and therefore there was publicity
• 1:04:10
  about it. So therefore, the US District
• 1:04:13
  Attorney was forced to do something about it.
• 1:04:16
  They didn't want to do it, but they they indicted him.
• 1:04:19
  He was convicted. He went to jail.
• 1:04:20
  Good I. Don't even.
• 1:04:23
  Think that the digitizing necessarily a problem, you know,
• 1:04:25
  I mean I, I, I, I'm sure your your army contracts would
• 1:04:28
  probably know better than I do, but.
• 1:04:31
  Well, they didn't want it. They didn't want it done.
• 1:04:33
  It wasn't needed. It was marginal stuff to
• 1:04:36
  digitize a bunch of old army top secret stuff.
• 1:04:43
  They had other priorities. What it did is it took other
• 1:04:46
  priorities that were more important in their in their
• 1:04:49
  division away from them and they had to do this other thing thing
• 1:04:53
  with a sole with a sole source contract.
• 1:04:55
  No, yeah, that's. That's more of a problem.
• 1:04:57
  That's more of a problem to me. Serious problem.
• 1:04:59
  So anyway, there were lots of causes for reform, but much of
• 1:05:03
  it dealt with reciprocity and scandal.
• 1:05:07
  I won't go through all of them. The latest, I'll go through one
• 1:05:10
  more. Senator Menendez, New Jersey.
• 1:05:13
  Yes. Yeah.
• 1:05:15
  He broke rules of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
• 1:05:19
  He broke rules of not paying taxes.
• 1:05:22
  He had bars of gold hidden throughout his house.
• 1:05:27
  And he blamed his wife, you know, for it, for setting this
• 1:05:31
  up. The connection was with
• 1:05:33
  Egyptians who were. Who were importing beef?
• 1:05:39
  I won't go through all the details, but he.
• 1:05:42
  I remember this story. Yeah, he's convicted just
• 1:05:45
  recently, and his wife was convicted.
• 1:05:48
  He's asking for a pardon now from Trump, even though he was
• 1:05:53
  the Democrat. He was chair of the Foreign
• 1:05:55
  Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate.
• 1:05:56
  It was a big deal. Yeah.
• 1:05:59
  So it continues. It's not widespread in my
• 1:06:03
  opinion, from knowing the institution really well, but it
• 1:06:07
  continues and people never learn and they get they get corrupted
• 1:06:12
  because frequently an elected public official doesn't have a
• 1:06:15
  lot of money. You.
• 1:06:17
  Know and they're living on the margin and they have this
• 1:06:19
  opportunity to help somebody and that person will help them So
• 1:06:25
  one more. Yes.
• 1:06:29
  One more is that there were dozens of people that should
• 1:06:34
  have registered under the Foreign Nations Registration
• 1:06:37
  Act. There are two there are two laws
• 1:06:40
  that apply primary laws that apply to lobbying in the United
• 1:06:43
  States. One is the Lobby Disclosure Act
• 1:06:46
  as amended in 2007 and the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
• 1:06:50
  Manafort Paul Manafort was was chair of Trump's campaign
• 1:06:58
  committee. He was campaign director.
• 1:07:00
  He had clients in Ukraine but also several in Africa.
• 1:07:05
  He did not register on the foreign as Foreign Agents
• 1:07:09
  Registration Act. That is a felony.
• 1:07:11
  OK. He was convicted and convicted
• 1:07:17
  of a felony. Then Trump pardoned him
• 1:07:22
  afterwards. Manafort is still around and
• 1:07:24
  lobbying, but he was convicted of felony what's what's the
• 1:07:27
  Foreign Agents Registration Act. It started in 1938 because there
• 1:07:31
  were Nazis in the United States around lobbying to keep us out
• 1:07:34
  of World War 2. And they had rallies at Madison
• 1:07:41
  Square Garden, all kinds of things.
• 1:07:42
  We didn't know what was going on.
• 1:07:43
  So this requires them to show who they are, how much money
• 1:07:48
  they're spending on what. And that's what we have now.
• 1:07:51
  But now the president has said, Trump has said, well, we're not
• 1:07:55
  going to enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act except
• 1:07:59
  in cases of espionage, not in not in cases of of lobbying,
• 1:08:06
  only espionage. So now the Saudis have over 100
• 1:08:10
  firms in the United in Washington, DC that they've
• 1:08:13
  hired, including Ballard from from Florida, hired to represent
• 1:08:18
  them. And they're not registering
• 1:08:20
  under the Foreign Registration Act.
• 1:08:22
  So the the ethical issues and law illegal activities continue
• 1:08:30
  anyway. We still need it.
• 1:08:31
  We just need to enforce the law under the LDA and, and, and
• 1:08:36
  Farah and have more transparency about what's going on and clean
• 1:08:42
  things up because we need the expertise and information coming
• 1:08:47
  from lobbyists in the process of making decisions in a democracy.
• 1:08:53
  So a lot of people say no on that unless it's about their,
• 1:08:57
  their, their group like AARP. No, no, they aren't lobbyists.
• 1:09:01
  They're lobbyists. The Catholic Church is a
• 1:09:03
  lobbyist. Sure, sure.
• 1:09:05
  You know, we have 10s of thousands of lobbying
• 1:09:07
  organizations. We need them.
• 1:09:09
  We just need to enforce the law with respect to what they're
• 1:09:13
  doing. I'll probably talk too much
• 1:09:15
  about things that you don't want to hear.
• 1:09:17
  But no, not at all. Not at all.
• 1:09:18
  These are great. These are great case and points.
• 1:09:22
  But I would, I think it would be remiss to to point out that and
• 1:09:27
  perhaps we need some kind of like middle ground or solution,
• 1:09:30
  just like we don't live in a pure capitalist society, because
• 1:09:33
  that would be just a mess. We need to, yeah, there has to,
• 1:09:40
  yeah. Lobbying.
• 1:09:42
  Lobbying as it stands continues down that same issue that we
• 1:09:46
  discussed earlier with with the elite versus the regular folk,
• 1:09:49
  which is that if it's just going to be a matter of dollars and
• 1:09:52
  cents, then then you can just keep looking the other way as
• 1:09:56
  long as you know, as long as people are.
• 1:09:58
  Corporations and unions and individuals can give an
• 1:10:02
  unlimited amount of money to campaigns if the if, it's if,
• 1:10:10
  if, if it's regulated under the IRS.
• 1:10:14
  So what's happened is that that just opened the doors.
• 1:10:17
  It's like a Mississippian flood stage that people stopped giving
• 1:10:21
  regulated money they'd still given.
• 1:10:25
  There's limits on what an individual can give and limits
• 1:10:28
  what political action committee can give.
• 1:10:31
  And I won't go through all of those.
• 1:10:33
  And it was working pretty well until the Supreme Court said,
• 1:10:35
  wait a minute, corporations can can give them and unions and
• 1:10:41
  individuals can give an unlimited amount in a different
• 1:10:45
  regulatory process through the IRS, OK, through the Internal
• 1:10:50
  Revenue Service, that opened the gates to super PACs, huge PACs
• 1:10:56
  that had hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 1:10:59
  And you don't know where the money came from.
• 1:11:01
  It could come from Soros on the left or come from Musk now.
• 1:11:07
  Now they're openly saying how much they're giving, like Musk
• 1:11:11
  did it and he gets credit for it.
• 1:11:13
  With Trump, it's no longer a controversy.
• 1:11:16
  We're going in the opposite direction now.
• 1:11:18
  I feel that there should be limits on contributions, as we
• 1:11:22
  had for many years under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
• 1:11:27
  It was bipartisan, and that's what that's what got changed by
• 1:11:31
  the Supreme Court. I think that needs to be
• 1:11:33
  clarified. So with respect to money, it's
• 1:11:39
  not only money. We have shadow lobbyists there.
• 1:11:44
  There about 14,000 federal registered lobbyists.
• 1:11:48
  And by some estimates, the metropolitan area, Washington
• 1:11:52
  has as many as 80,000 people involved in advocacy because
• 1:11:57
  there are many things that are not regulated under the Lobby
• 1:12:02
  Disclosure Act. So the question is, what is a
• 1:12:05
  lobbyist? And it's it's defined clearly in
• 1:12:12
  the LDA. And there's lots of loopholes if
• 1:12:16
  you, if you are a strategic advisor, if you're a grassroots
• 1:12:20
  organizer, if you're a coalition builder and you need all those
• 1:12:23
  things to win, if you're a pollster, if you run an
• 1:12:28
  association here, if you are in a law firm and you're doing
• 1:12:33
  regulatory lobbying before, before an agency or you're a
• 1:12:37
  think tank in the think tank like Heritage Foundation or AAI
• 1:12:42
  or Brookings or others are advocating, you don't have to
• 1:12:45
  register under the law. So 14,000 registered lobbyists
• 1:12:50
  has been a level for many, many years, for 20 years, but we have
• 1:12:57
  huge amounts of lobbying going on.
• 1:13:00
  Yeah, far more than 14,000, yeah.
• 1:13:03
  Yeah. And so it's the tip of the
• 1:13:06
  iceberg and the money is the tip of the iceberg cause only those
• 1:13:09
  who register. So how much money that they're
• 1:13:11
  spending? It's a lot of money.
• 1:13:15
  So we need, I think, a little more regulation over who's
• 1:13:21
  lobbying, who isn't lobbying. Now the definition of a
• 1:13:24
  lobbyist. I'll go.
• 1:13:26
  You know, I go through it very quickly under the LDA.
• 1:13:28
  It's two contacts with members of Congress and staff, anybody
• 1:13:32
  on the Hill that's paid. It's two contacts with political
• 1:13:36
  appointees in the executive branch.
• 1:13:38
  It's about 8000 people and it's spending 20% of your time on
• 1:13:44
  lobbying in contacts and efforts to support those contacts
• 1:13:50
  quarterly. Well, so there's this phenomenon
• 1:13:53
  in Washington and it's called the 19% club.
• 1:13:56
  OK. If you meet these other criteria
• 1:13:59
  and then you only are spending 19% of your time, you don't have
• 1:14:04
  to register. So there's a whole lot of people
• 1:14:06
  not registering and they watch that very carefully because it's
• 1:14:09
  audited by the GAO and there's a limit 3500 income per lobbyist
• 1:14:18
  quarterly and 16,000 for an organization quarterly.
• 1:14:22
  Look at Ballard, it's a firm, you know, out of Florida,
• 1:14:29
  $16,000 quarterly is nothing. You know, there's billions
• 1:14:35
  flowing and including from Harvard.
• 1:14:37
  I had a call from people at Harvard saying students for the
• 1:14:41
  Harvard Crimson. They said, well, you know, why
• 1:14:45
  are they hiring Ballard? Because it's associated with
• 1:14:50
  with Susie Wiles and the chief of staff and the president.
• 1:14:55
  That seems crazy. And I said, well, half of
• 1:14:57
  lobbying is figuring out what's going on.
• 1:15:00
  Yeah, sounds like it. And that's they hire people,
• 1:15:04
  hire firms just to tell you what's going on.
• 1:15:06
  And then you can make a decision about what you're going to do.
• 1:15:10
  Most people think lobbying is you're going and out of the
• 1:15:13
  lobby. You go in and talk to a member
• 1:15:15
  and try to persuade them. Well, no, it's, it's figuring
• 1:15:19
  out what's going on. It's doing policy analysis, it's
• 1:15:23
  doing opposition research. It's grassroots, it's coalition
• 1:15:26
  building. It's using social media.
• 1:15:29
  You have to have all those things now.
• 1:15:31
  Probably what Harvard was doing is they just wanted to figure
• 1:15:34
  out what the hell was going to go go on in the department of of
• 1:15:38
  Education with respect to higher education.
• 1:15:40
  Boy, me on the mind. Yeah, right.
• 1:15:43
  Yeah. So I can go on and on.
• 1:15:47
  I just gave you half of a semester of a seminar.
• 1:15:51
  I love you. That's amazing.
• 1:15:54
  It's amazing. We're going to have to quit here
• 1:15:55
  in a second, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 1:15:59
  If I can ask for your last thoughts on positive steps or
• 1:16:04
  helpful steps that you think people can take to try and to
• 1:16:07
  try and have a positive influence or impact.
• 1:16:09
  Can I, can I, can I bother you to for your thoughts on that
• 1:16:12
  before you go? Well, first and foremost,
• 1:16:14
  everybody should get out and vote no matter what.
• 1:16:17
  Even though they think it's a fixed deal is not It isn't
• 1:16:20
  always a fixed outcome in the primary of the general election
• 1:16:24
  vote OK. And so people your age and and
• 1:16:28
  younger that are eligible vote they're voting at very low
• 1:16:31
  rates. They're they're alienated.
• 1:16:33
  My granddaughter, by the way, goes to school at Eckert College
• 1:16:37
  in Tampa and she is a political science major.
• 1:16:44
  She's going on to law school. I tried to talk her out of it,
• 1:16:46
  but she's law school always by beta capital all that.
• 1:16:51
  So anyway, she in the last election when Biden was running
• 1:16:56
  against Trump, she said I can't vote for those two old men.
• 1:16:59
  They don't represent what I want.
• 1:17:01
  So there's a whole lot of that. She eventually voted, I think,
• 1:17:06
  you know, but but there's there's an alien nation that's
• 1:17:11
  there breakthrough the alienation, have hope, have
• 1:17:15
  faith that it makes a difference.
• 1:17:17
  That's the that's the most important thing.
• 1:17:19
  I also think hope comes from there are guardrails in our
• 1:17:24
  democracy still, even though it seems like there isn't, even
• 1:17:27
  though a lot of people saying our democracy is failing,
• 1:17:30
  certainly it's challenged. Guardrails are the courts, the
• 1:17:34
  federal courts, but also the Supreme Court, but also the
• 1:17:37
  guardrails are to organize, organize, organize.
• 1:17:40
  Saul Alinsky of Organizer in Chicago in the 30s forties said
• 1:17:48
  organize, organize, organize, and he helped do community
• 1:17:53
  organizing to push back, to change things.
• 1:17:57
  Become involved. Don't become so alienated that
• 1:18:00
  you're not involved and you just say it doesn't make any
• 1:18:03
  difference. It's all bad to become
• 1:18:06
  organized. Also, make sure that you go and
• 1:18:12
  it sounds silly, but go to the town meetings.
• 1:18:15
  Stand up to people who are who are running that maybe you
• 1:18:19
  disagree with in a respectful way.
• 1:18:21
  Don't squirt things on them. You know, don't be violent, but
• 1:18:26
  stand up and in a respectful way and push back.
• 1:18:28
  That makes a difference. I hope so come.
• 1:18:30
  Back from those town meetings and say, well, wait a minute,
• 1:18:33
  there are a whole lot of people who had good questions.
• 1:18:35
  Humphrey used to get a lot of good ideas from going to town
• 1:18:39
  meetings in Minnesota but also around the United States.
• 1:18:42
  And Thurber, take care of that. That's a great idea.
• 1:18:46
  And so we go with an amendment or something.
• 1:18:48
  So get involved that way. Also there was the phrase all
• 1:18:56
  politics is local by Tip O'Neill, former speaker, speaker
• 1:19:00
  of the House from Massachusetts. Well, now all politics seems to
• 1:19:04
  be national. These national things overwhelm,
• 1:19:07
  but all politics, in the end, it's it's local.
• 1:19:11
  Yeah, there are these national issues.
• 1:19:13
  And so get involved locally with elected public office.
• 1:19:19
  That's where the hope comes from.
• 1:19:21
  Or people like you and people your age.
• 1:19:24
  It's time for you to take over from the old white men or now
• 1:19:29
  women in many cases, or African Americans that are in their 80s.
• 1:19:34
  It's time to push them out and and change things.
• 1:19:38
  I think our democracy is being challenged, especially article
• 1:19:45
  one of the Constitution. The Republicans have to stand up
• 1:19:49
  and and go forward with what they believe in.
• 1:19:52
  And they are now they're cracks with respect to the shootings in
• 1:19:59
  Minnesota. They are with a variety with
• 1:20:03
  respect to Greenland, a variety of other things, but they got to
• 1:20:06
  do with respect to the bombing of ships.
• 1:20:12
  Off of Venezuela, there are little things here and there,
• 1:20:16
  but behind the scenes, quietly, there are the workhorses that
• 1:20:19
  are coming together and working together.
• 1:20:22
  We have a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to train people on
• 1:20:26
  the Hill about how to how to come together when you disagree
• 1:20:32
  and go forward. It had a major impact on the
• 1:20:35
  infrastructure bill when Democrats and Republicans came
• 1:20:38
  together, quietly compromised and went ahead with a bill.
• 1:20:42
  Now, you may not like the bill, but it was an example of of some
• 1:20:46
  bipartisanship. There's some of that going on
• 1:20:48
  now with respect to China and a variety of other things.
• 1:20:51
  So, so reward people who are moderate and reward those who
• 1:20:59
  stand up for the institutions that are guardrails in our
• 1:21:03
  democracy, I think will overcome some of the things that have
• 1:21:08
  that are happening now. I think the midterm election is
• 1:21:12
  going to put a big check on some of those things.
• 1:21:15
  There'll be oversight hearings. Maybe they'll be too extreme,
• 1:21:18
  maybe they won't. But the next presidential
• 1:21:21
  election is going to be very important in terms of whether we
• 1:21:24
  get it, get candidates or say that, say, wait a minute, let's
• 1:21:28
  bring us together. Let's work together, Let's work
• 1:21:31
  in the middle to solve problems. That's what America wants.
• 1:21:34
  That's what Americans want. They don't want to be preached
• 1:21:37
  to like I'm doing right now, but they they want you to listen to
• 1:21:41
  them. And then they want you to come
• 1:21:42
  together and come together with solutions to serious problems.
• 1:21:46
  It almost feels like it that that this past, the reason why I
• 1:21:50
  was hopeful this past time was because I felt like people that
• 1:21:53
  were historically left like Tulsi and RFK and and even Elon,
• 1:21:57
  You know what historically I think voted more left than
• 1:22:00
  right, He. Was a Democrat, yeah.
• 1:22:02
  Yeah, you know, I think. And Trump was a Democrat.
• 1:22:05
  Too. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:22:06
  That's right. That's right.
• 1:22:06
  But but my point, but my point being that, you know, you have,
• 1:22:11
  you have a you have a you have, you have a, you have a guy
• 1:22:15
  running for president that seems like he is trying to unify the
• 1:22:18
  two sides. And you have people jumping from
• 1:22:20
  one side to the next to be part of this quote UN quote populist
• 1:22:22
  movement. It didn't happen.
• 1:22:24
  So, I mean, I hope it does in the future and I hope that we
• 1:22:26
  can keep on doing that. But I'm I I was that's really
• 1:22:30
  what's been the hardest about the part about all this for me
• 1:22:32
  was I was so hopeful and I was so excited.
• 1:22:34
  And then if and then, you know, like I heard it put very
• 1:22:37
  astutely. It's funny.
• 1:22:37
  It is. You would never have guessed the
• 1:22:39
  RFK is the least controversial member of Trump's cabinet at the
• 1:22:43
  moment. You know, and you're so you're
• 1:22:45
  right. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't
• 1:22:46
  never have thought that. But that, yeah, that's, that's
• 1:22:48
  what we are saying. Don't give up hope.
• 1:22:52
  OK, OK. Good for you to.
• 1:22:55
  Have hope and to continue to stay engaged like you are.
• 1:22:59
  That's very important to get information, different views out
• 1:23:03
  and get people to talk. And thank you very much.
• 1:23:06
  Professor J, Thank you. This is such a pleasure.
• 1:23:08
  Yeah. Good luck.
• 1:23:10
  I appreciate this. Take Care now.
• 1:23:11
  All the best, bye.