Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Voters Don’t Like Democrats… But They Want To Fire The Republicans + Pete Hegseth Needs To Be Impeached

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - Voters Don’t Like Democrats… But They Want To Fire The Republicans + Pete Hegseth Needs To Be Impeached · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
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  Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
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  Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
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  Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
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  Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
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  Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
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  Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Hello there and
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Monday episode of the Chuck Todd cast.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It's our October. We are now in the first full
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: week of October and it is our first real stress
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: test to see. How is the fall campaign going so
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: far for Republicans? How's their financial advantage holding up? Let's
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: just say we've got some results from some key polls
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  Speaker 1: that tell us the money bomb may have fizzled out.
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  Speaker 1: We will get to that quite a bit in this podcast.
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  Speaker 1: And then I want to talk about a few other
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: things happening in our federal government, including this fight between
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Tom Cotton. Because I think it's emblematic
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  Speaker 1: of the larger problem Donald Trump has with his own
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  Speaker 1: party and his own base and the problem he has
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of Republicans really not wanting to show up for him anymore.
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  Speaker 1: And I think the whole daylight savings and the whole
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: dispute over Tom Cotton is a reminder. Donald Trump gets
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  Speaker 1: mad when people won't do his bidding. And what he
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  Speaker 1: doesn't fully appreciate is a lot of folks thought they
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: elected him to do their bidding. And Tom Cotton, congratulations.
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  Speaker 1: You now know what it feels like to be a
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: rural farmer. You know what it feels like to be
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: in the ag sector, to see Donald Trump remodeling the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: American economy, not caring the damage that it does to
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: his voters in Kansas or Iowa and all these places,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: not caring about the damage the Iran war does to
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  Speaker 1: our ag sector, not caring about the damage the tariffs
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: do to small businesses. These are all people that voted
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  Speaker 1: for him. That's the irony to all this. And the
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  Speaker 1: anger and doxing of Tom Cotton is just, to me,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: an incredible example of the self-centered nature of Donald Trump's presidency,
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  Speaker 1: his leadership, and the fact that he just does not
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  Speaker 1: care about the future of the Republican Party. And he
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  Speaker 1: really doesn't care about his own constituents. Arkansas might be
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  Speaker 1: one of the four most Trumpy states in the country.
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  Speaker 1: Tom Cotton simply wants to represent the best interest of
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  Speaker 1: his state. And daylight savings, the entire daylight issue really
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  Speaker 1: screws them. And there's quite a few places in this country,
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  Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't care. So it may be a small
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: thing over daylight savings, but it's emblematic of the larger
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: problem that I think is happening here. So we're going
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: to get into that. We're going to, like I said,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: kind of I've spent the weekend going through all those polls. No,
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  Speaker 1: I didn't make it down to Clemson. I wish I had,
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  Speaker 1: I had, uh, I had a trip to Kansas city.
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  Speaker 1: I was telling you about incredible. If you check out
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  Speaker 1: my Instagram, you'll see, I shared a few things that
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I learned, um, from, uh, the Negro league museum that
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I just, uh, I can't wait to go back there.
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  Speaker 1: There's just more to take in. Um, and I spent
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  Speaker 1: way too much money, uh, in the museum shop. Um, but, uh,
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  Speaker 1: Just just good stuff there. Fascinating time in Kansas City, Kansas.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't there for long, but you can
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: get a sense. This is that area of of Kansas
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: is is Hamilton country. And you could feel it there.
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  Speaker 1: The irony is that these are suburban voters. These are
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  Speaker 1: purple voters. These are I was, you know, to give
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: you a sense. And it was a fairly the area
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  Speaker 1: I was staying is fairly wealthy. Apparently, I wasn't very
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: far from where Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift live. So
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  Speaker 1: it tells you, I think, the income level of the
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  Speaker 1: area that I was visiting in Kansas City. But let's
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  Speaker 1: just say after the visit and then seeing the time,
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  Speaker 1: seeing a poll that, oh, huh, the experience matches what
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  Speaker 1: the data is showing there. But I got back in
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  Speaker 1: while I got back technically in time to make it
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  Speaker 1: to that Clemson game. I don't know if I was
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  Speaker 1: going to be able to pull it off. I think
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I give Miami a B +. On that game, I'll
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  Speaker 1: have more to say. At the end, there was a,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it was methodical. It was a conference road
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: game at night where there was no doubt the other
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  Speaker 1: team was fired up to try to prove a point,
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  Speaker 1: to try to prove they belong. But I do think
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  Speaker 1: the game really exposed the atrophy of the Clemson football
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  Speaker 1: program under Dabo these last five years. Because that was a,
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  Speaker 1: it reminded me of a Miami-Clemson game from 2017. where
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: look we miami thought they were back and clemson just
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  Speaker 1: physically beat us up and uh what was interesting is
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  Speaker 1: i felt like the roles were reversed where we just
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  Speaker 1: beat them up they weren't physically prepared for that level
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  Speaker 1: of football and there was a time clemson set the
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  Speaker 1: standard for that level of football particularly on the defensive
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  Speaker 1: line um Dabo's just fallen behind. It's pretty clear he's
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  Speaker 1: not built for this era anymore. And the problem with
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: this is just like in politics, you're going to hear
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  Speaker 1: me say this phrase, good gets better, bad gets worse.
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  Speaker 1: And I think his philosophy is just making Clemson football worse.
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  Speaker 1: I get it. People are always resistant to change. People
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  Speaker 1: in this media business, much of my conversation in Kansas
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  Speaker 1: City was about, do you lament the loss of things
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  Speaker 1: in the past or do you move forward And build
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  Speaker 1: and try to come up with a solution in the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: world that you live in, not the world that you
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: wish existed. And as you know, that's what this podcast
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: is all about, right? Politics for the rest of us
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and it's reality-based. How do we figure out how to
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  Speaker 1: make this work? Not what's the ideal solution that will
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: never actually pass muster. So there you go. Even I'll
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  Speaker 1: even take my college football rants and tie them back
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  Speaker 1: into the both the problems of this country and how
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the solutions are actually quite similar. All right. So let
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: me kick things off here. We're basically a month out
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  Speaker 1: from the midterm elections. And I've told you before that
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  Speaker 1: when it comes to state polling, there are a handful
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: of pollsters where when they release something, I stop what
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  Speaker 1: I'm doing. And I spend a lot of time with
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  Speaker 1: the crosstabs. And I spend a lot of time in
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  Speaker 1: those polls. New York Times-Siena, AARP and its bipartisan polling team,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and Fox News and its bipartisan polling team. Those are
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the three entities regularly doing state polls, high quality surveys
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  Speaker 1: that are worth your time and worth my time. Anything
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  Speaker 1: else is not worth your time going to the crosstabs.
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  Speaker 1: But those three, I don't just look at the horse race.
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  Speaker 1: I want to get in inside the crosstabs. I want
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to know what's happening by age, by party, by ideology,
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  Speaker 1: what voters are thinking about the economy, what they think
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  Speaker 1: about individual races, because I trust these pollsters' methodology. I trust,
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  Speaker 1: so I will spend time under the hood. And look,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: you're going to see, you see every second of every day,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: you see now a lot of other polls between, and
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: we're going to see a ton of them between now
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  Speaker 1: and election day. And there's some, there are ones that
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: are total garbage and you should throw out. Insider Advantage,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: they were caught. doing something wrong about 10 years ago.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I don't trust anything out of there. I
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: think they're herders. They always have a poll that seems
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: to match the average. It's just garbage. I don't buy it.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: And like I said, there'd been evidence in the past
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: they were manufacturing numbers. Maybe it's a new situation. I
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: don't know. I'm just saying this to get myself legally
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: off the hook, but I can tell you, I don't
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: trust them. And I don't think you should either. And,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you know, panel surveys are panel surveys. I think they're
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: B minus C plus type of, you know, directionally, they
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  Speaker 1: can tell you some things, but I wouldn't spend a
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: lot of time on the crosstabs. And I don't want
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: to say they're all bad polls, right? But I know
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that what I just outlined are very costly. And I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: can tell you the polls, again, if a poll is
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  Speaker 1: cheap to conduct, the results are worth how much you
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: paid for it. And look, it's also why I'm not
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: so enamored with polling averages as some of my friends
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: in this business are. I understand what they're trying to do,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: smooth out the noise, combine a bunch of data, hopefully
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: get closer to the truth. But Look, anybody that's known
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: me a long time knows I think there's a huge
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: flaw in treating every additional poll as if it's necessarily
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: additional information. Sometimes you're averaging a really good poll with
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a really mediocre poll. And sometimes you're averaging a really
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: good poll with a really shitty poll. And you're going
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to make everything taste like shit. And somehow we're supposed
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to believe that the resulting number is more informative because
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you increase the sample size. Sorry. Look. If I've got
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: five really good surveys telling me something, I'd rather spend
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: my time figuring out what those five surveys are telling
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: me than throw another 15 shitty polls or mediocre polls
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: into a blender and pretend I've created something with greater precision.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I think these folks, they make you feel good, but
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: they're misleading you. But hey, you spend your money how
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: you want to spend your money. All right, many ran over.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I bring all this up because this weekend we got
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: exactly the kind of polling dump that I do like
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time with. New York Times
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: and Siena went into Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, and Texas.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: We got an AARP poll for Breezeo and Ward, Impact Research,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: DNR firms. They were in Maine. Remember what I told
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: you two weeks ago? Republicans had finally started their money bomb.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: They had dropped their financial, they had taken advantage of
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: their financial advantage, right? They had been getting swamped on
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: TV in some of these races, particularly Texas. So the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: cavalry was a rivalry. Republican outside groups finally putting in
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  Speaker 1: real money in these contests. And I said, let's watch
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the first week of October. We should see if these
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: ad campaigns are working, it should see some movement. Well,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I thought by then we'd ought to have enough information
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: to see whether all this money could change the trajectory
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of any of these races. Well, it's first week of
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: October and we have our final verdict. Our first verdict,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: not the final verdict. Our first verdict. Not well at all.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: In fact, if anything, we're seeing one of those phenomena
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: where you look for as an election gets closer, good
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: is getting better and bad is getting worse. And right
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: now the bad is Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean Democrats are gonna win every one of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: these races. These are polls, they're not results. They're all
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: inside the margin of error, although one is flirting outside
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the margin of error in the advantage of the Democrats.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And obviously, turnout's gonna matter. The makeup of the turnout
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: is gonna matter enormously. In fact, I think turnout may
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: be the biggest unanswered question buried in all of these numbers.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And I know that's an easy thing to lean on.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: It's all about turnout, right? But it's more than that.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: It's a specific turnout of specific age groups. But still,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: look at where we are. These aren't polls of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: or Arizona. We're not in battleground states, right? We're talking Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and Texas. These are all Trump states. all Republican states,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: all won by Donald Trump. And where they were both
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a governor's race and a Senate race, we got results
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: from Time Sienna, for instance. So let me give you
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a quick rundown. Alaska, Mary Patello ahead by seven points.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Times had her hitting 50% in Iowa. Ashley Hinson, the Republican,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: ahead by insignificant margin here, one point over Josh Sturek, 48-47.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Kansas was dead even, Marshall, 45. Adam Hamilton, 45. Ohio,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Sherrod Brown at 49. John Husted at 46. Tallarico was
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: over 50 in this poll. 51. Paxton's 45. You throw
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: in the governor's races. In Iowa, they had Rob Sand
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: with a double-digit lead, 52-41. Ohio, Amy Acton ahead of Ramaswamy, 49-45.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And in Texas, Gina Hinojosa ahead of Abbott, 49-46. Kansas
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: was the one exception among those where the Republican, Ty Masterson,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: was a head of Holsher, Sidney Holsher, 49-44. Kansas, we
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: have literally gone eight years one way, eight years the
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: other way. They're pretty windshield wipery on this, and we're
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: just wrapping up eight years of a Democratic governorship there. Again,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: let's not turn polling leads into the actual results, but
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: these are not states that Republicans thought were going to be,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: all were going to be this close and this competitive
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: less than a month before Election Day. And I do
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: think when you take a look at this, Charlie Cook's
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: distinction of instead of calling this the making of a
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: major blue wave, that instead this really is a red
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: undertow election. And it's because when you look inside the numbers,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you see voters are not embracing the Democrats. Voters are
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: firing Republicans. This is a repudiation of Donald Trump and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: his leadership and a repudiation of his economic policies, pure
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: and simple, if these polls are end up looking like
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the election results a month from now. These states are
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: not blue states all of a sudden, right? The Democratic
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Party itself isn't very popular in these five states. So
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you really are seeing an undertow of dissatisfaction beneath years
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: of Republican control in some of these states. Who else
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: are you gonna blame, right? But here's a, if you're
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: looking for another tea leaf to read about how real
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Kansas is and why Democrats probably have a much better
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: shot at winning that seat than Iowa, in my opinion.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Of the five states that the Time-Santa poll surveyed, there
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: is only one where voters think their state itself is
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: headed in the right direction. And it was the only
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: state of the five that had a Democratic governor, Kansas.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: How about that? Coincidence? Maybe. But if you're trying to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: understand how we got to the point where we're talking
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: about a tied Senate race in Kansas, I'd circle that
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: little data point, right? The fact is, state voters are
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: satisfied with their Democratic leadership in the governor's mansion, the
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: general direction of the state, Republican legislature, Democratic governor, unhappy
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: about the national economy. The point is, is the fact
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: that they have elected Democratic governors and have had Democratic governors,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: 16 the last 24 years, makes the idea of voting
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: for a Democrat for the Senate less odd, less, oh
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: my God, we haven't done this in a generation. Anyway,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: that's an important tea leaf there. Now let's get underneath
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: these polls. and understand the source of the dissatisfaction. And
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: guess what? It's pretty obvious. It's the economy, affordability. It's
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the lived experience in these states of this Trump economy.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Trump is underwater on the economy in all five states.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: His approval on cost of living is below 35% in
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: all five. On gas prices, he's below 28% in all five.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: On tariffs, he's below 40% in all five states. On
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the Iran war, he's below 37% in all five states.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: This looks like a, these all look like battleground states, right?
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: These all look like, frankly, lean blue states when you
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: look at it through the prism of Trump's popularity or
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: unpopularity on a slew of significant issues. And in every
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: one of these states, a plurality, so not quite a majority,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: but a plurality say that Trump's policies have hurt their
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: state more than they've helped their state. This isn't some
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: abstract ideological argument either, right? Your gas bill isn't ideological.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Neither is your grocery bill, right? None of it is.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: And one generational number really jumped out at me in
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: these polls. Millennials of all the different age groups, Gen Z, millennials,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Gen X, boomer. Millennials are the most dissatisfied with everything.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: They have the biggest right track, wrong track deficit of
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: any generation in these polls. And when you think about it,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: it makes a ton of sense in the world. They're
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: on the front lines of this more so than any
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: of the other three generations. Yes, Gen Z is looking
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: for work. Millennials are having to survive in this in
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: this uneven economy, an unfair economy, right? Gen X and boomers,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: if you have a little bit of retirement savings or
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you have a lot of better retirement savings, Trump economies,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: not great, but you've had the funds to withstand it.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: You've been able to get some of the upside, not
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of it, but you've gotten some of the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: upside that Trump's been personally benefiting from, right? But the millennials, boy,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: they are smack in the middle of the most expensive
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: period of their adult life, right? You're trying to buy
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a house or you just bought one at a lousy
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: interest rate You're having kids. You're paying for child care.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: You're buying groceries for four instead of one. You're paying insurance.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: You're trying to save money. You're thinking about, I know
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you look at, you don't have any of this accumulated
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: wealth that somebody in their late 50s, 60s or 70s
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: may have. So when affordability gets worse, this is the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: generation that's getting squeezed in every direction. So it is
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: not a shock to me that this is the most
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: unhappy age group. This episode of the Chuck Todd cast
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: is brought to you by Kalshi. It's an exchange. where
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: you can trade on what you actually think is going
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: to happen. Sports, politics, culture, whatever's on your mind. For example,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: one market, of course, that I'm monitoring very closely is
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the U.S. Senate and control of the U.S. Senate. As
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: recently as September 10th, Republicans were favored to retain control 52%, right,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: to buy a share of Republicans' retained control is going
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: to cost you 52 cents. It would have only cost
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: you 48 cents to buy essentially a share of the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: prediction that Democrats would win control. But boy, have things
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: changed in two weeks, right? Democrats are now favored, according
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: to the markets, the market to buy Democratic control is
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: up to 62 cents. The market for Republican control is
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: 38 cents. So it's the Democrats... High watermark so far
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: of the cycle. And so far, the number is growing
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: by the day. And so you know what that means?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: If you're confident, you think this number is only going
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: to grow, then you better hurry up and get in
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: now if you believe the Democrats are going to do this.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And if you look at this and go, hey, I
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: think the Republicans are going to retain. And in fact,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: whether they retain or not, I think we're going to
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: see some polls. There'll be the natural tightening of October.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I better get in on this, get a piece of
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: this Republican number before it goes back up. And, you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: either way. you can make a couple of bucks. So
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: it's fascinating. And depending on how you view the next
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: three weeks are going to go, not necessarily election day,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: but the narrative of the next three weeks may impact
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: which side of that equation you want to purchase. So
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: here's what you need to know about CalSheet. You're going
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: up against other traders directly. There's no house setting the odds,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: just people putting their own opinions and predictions on the line.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So if you trade $ 25 and you use the code ChuckTodd,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: They'll throw in another $ 25 instantly. As always, please remember
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: to trade responsibly. Now, Gen Z is a different story.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: And Gen Z presents Democrats with both their biggest opportunity
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: and their biggest problem. Democrats' largest age advantage on the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: generic Senate ballot in these five states is with Gen Z,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: voters under 30. And guess which generation is least certain
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: it's going to actually vote? Voters under 30. So if
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you want to see the problem in another high quality poll,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: you go to the state of Maine. This is the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: divide here on age is really stark. And that new
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: AARP poll, right, conducted by the firms that are the
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: pollsters for the last two presidents, Trump and Biden. This
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: poll has Troy Jackson at 50, Susan Collins at 47.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: It's basically right inside the poll's margin of error. But
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: forget the top line for a moment. Among voters 50
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and older, Collins leads 53-44. And among voters under 50,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Troy Jackson leads by 25 points. So, and then when
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: you look at motivation to vote, 87% of voters 50
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: plus say they're extremely motivated to vote in Maine. And
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: under 50, it's 73%. But under 35, that number drops
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: below 70%. And that's the basic tension in this election
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and really the difference between a good night for Democrats
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: and a tsunami and a massive red undertow. The younger
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: this electorate gets, the better these surveys look for Democrats
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: across the board. And the younger this electorate gets, the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: less certain those voters are to actually show up, right?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So that's why all of the effort by Democrats now
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: in this last month is gonna have to be about
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: figuring out how to talk to voters under 30 and
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: figuring out that they have a voting plan. That is
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: going to be the focus. I think millennials are gonna
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: show up, right? I think certainly voters over 50 are
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: showing up. That's the uncertainty. It's going to be Gen
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Z that is going to be the difference between, right?
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: If you want to see a blue tsunami, then you
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: need a motive. You need to see college campuses on fire.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: You need voters under 30 showing up everywhere. But right now,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: it's that uncertainty of their interest in this election that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: is giving Republicans any potential shot at mitigating what could
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: be a disastrous night for the party. Now, there's another
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: thing in these Times-Santa polls that Democrats ought to pay
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: attention to because the Democratic Party is not popular in
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: any of these states. In fact, when they ask the
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: question about which party do you identify with, this is
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: before pushing people who call themselves independents, which side do
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: you lean? Just straight up party identification. Just 14% of
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Alaska voters voluntarily would call themselves Democrats. One, four, 14.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't say 40, 14. It's 27% in Iowa, 26%
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: in Kansas, 30% in Ohio, 30% in Texas. Not in
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a single state do more voters identify as Democrat more
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: so than either Republican or Independent. They are second or
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: third in all of these states. Now, here's what's interesting.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Across these five states, this is where candidates matter. Because
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: across these five states, 52% say the Democratic Party is
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: too far to the left. majority believe the Democratic Party
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: is too liberal. But only 35% say the Democratic Senate
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: candidate in their state is too far to the left
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: or too liberal. Gap's really important here. In all of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: these cases, they're trying to run as candidates that fit
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: their state, right? We've seen it. Adam Hamilton has essentially
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: said he is not there to put Trump on trial, right?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: You've seen in the governor's race, Gina Enos in Texas,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: use a January 6th rally goer as an endorser to
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: focus on education. And she has said she's not going
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: to relitigate some of the culture wars that have taken place.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: She's essentially, in other words, not going to be Wendy Davis.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: And if you know, you know. So it tells you
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: in all five of these states, they're not buying what
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is selling, but they like these particular
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: candidates because these candidates are trying not to be cookie cutter,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: national liberal, left-wing Democrats, right? It's why, and it's this
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: phenomenon is why Mary Patello can be sitting at 50%
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: in a state where only 14% of the electorate calls
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: itself democratic. And it's why these campaigns don't look like
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: cookie cutter national campaigns, you know? So, It's a reminder,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: if you're going to win in Alaska or Iowa or
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Kansas or Texas as a Democrat, you have to persuade
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people who have absolutely no interest
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: in calling themselves Democrats. Right. And, you know, just to
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: dig into Alaska a little bit. So Patello leads Dan Sullivan,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the incumbent Republican, 50-43. But if you ask the same
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: electorate in Alaska, which party would you prefer to control
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the Senate? Republicans lead 49-45. Now, if that means if
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: you're Sullivan, you probably got to make the, hey, Republicans,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: you know, don't you want a Republican Senate argument? OK,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: we'll see how well that goes over. But there are
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: voters in Alaska essentially saying I prefer Republican Senate. I'm
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: just not voting for this Republican senator. Boy, talk about
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: real damage Trump has done to the Democrat, to the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Republican Party brand, particularly in these states. And it's a
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: reminder that candidate quality matters, character matters. And that brings
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: me to Texas. James Tallarico has a 23-point advantage over
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Ken Paxton on character. 23 points. That's why he's winning, folks.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: So what are Republicans doing to try to close that gap? Well,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: if you watch college football this weekend, you probably saw
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: this ad somewhere. It showed up in the Texas Tech
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: game that I happened to be watching. It showed up
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: in the SMU game, which I always watch in this household.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Angela Paxton is appearing in ads, essentially saying, vote for
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the Republican ticket. She never says her soon-to-be ex-husband's name,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: but she says, support the team. Don't let Democrats take control. Now,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I get why they're trying to make this argument. I'm
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: guessing this worked in a focus group of perhaps Trump
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Republican women, Republican women who voted Trump in 2024, who
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: don't like Paxton and I'm sure they play this Angela
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Paxton ad and it said, oh, OK, you know, if
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I heard her make that case, I'd be more open
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: to voting for the quote unquote Republican ticket. Right. And
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: we get it. They're trying to move the decision away
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: from Ken Paxton, the individual who clearly is kind of a.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Just a dirtbag, right, to use the words of Republican
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Senator Eric Schmidt. And they just want voters thinking about
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: partisan control. But I think it tells you something about
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the problem Republicans have right now. The argument increasingly isn't,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: here's why this person is going to make your life better.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: She's not making that argument. It's whatever reservations you have
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: about this person, you can't let the other team win.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: But they don't really have a reason why. It's just
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: some sort of, you know, I think it's a Rorschach test.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: They're hoping... You're just reminded. Remember all the reasons why
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: you've never voted Democratic in a long time or you
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: stopped voting Democratic or you never did. Right. But in
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: an election that appears to be driven by the lived
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: experience of this unfair economy, I'm not sure a tribal
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: argument answers the question voters are actually asking, which is
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: pretty simple. When does my life get easier? I think
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: this is a tone deaf ad campaign. And I mean, look,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: we already know the Republican Party doesn't care about character. Right.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is it is this is the party
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: of bad character. Right. I mean, to do all this
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that they're trying to do for Ken Paxton on behalf
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, two of the lowest. character individuals I've
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: ever seen try to succeed in elective office. And it's
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: not like their peers haven't tried to do right. Both
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: men have been impeached. Both men have had members of
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: their own party think they're unfit for office. And yet
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: here we are. And now they're trying to make a
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: national argument. Hey, ignore, you know, we're the party of
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: moral values, but ignore the moral values of the candidates
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: we're asking you to vote for. This is the rot
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: that's taken place inside the Republican Party. And this is
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: why so many true conservatives have left the party. Because
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: it's a full on rot. This is indefensible stuff. It's
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: just totally indefensible, you know. And you may not like
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the ideas some on the left, maybe they may concoct
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: once they get power. But I know the conservatives that
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: are disgusted by this Trump era would believe they can
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: win these arguments on the merits with people that have
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: some character, which is why they left their party. And
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: then there's Ohio. This one's almost too perfect. Sherrod Brown
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: has an 11-point advantage over John Huston. And this is
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the one state where data centers is probably the most
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: compelling issue, right? And Brown's winning by 11 points on
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: this issue. Who's going to handle this issue better? Houston,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of course, has spent a good portion of this campaign
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: trying to deal with this vulnerability on data centers and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: electricity prices. But then what does Donald Trump do? He
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: goes to Ohio this weekend to, in theory, help John Houston.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: And what does Donald Trump do? He defends data centers.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: He's been making money on data centers. He's making money
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: on this huge AI expansion. Just remember why Donald Trump
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: is so for this. Some of it's legacy play, but
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: more of it is he's made money. And that's really
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: always just Trump is a simple person to understand. He
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: wants glory and he wants cash. I don't know if
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: it's always in that order or not. But here he
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: is defending data centers and it's his pitch was essentially,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: there's too much money involved. We need them. Otherwise, they're
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: going to China. Okay. Now, maybe Trump believes that. Whatever.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: But politically, it gets to the question I've been asking
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: myself as I went through all these polls this weekend.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Is Donald Trump listening to the voters at all? Does
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: he understand why his party is in the position that
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it's in? Because every time somebody gives him evidence that
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: voters are unhappy, his response seems to explain why the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: evidence is wrong. The worst instinct. The economy? No, it's
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: doing great. Aren't you paying attention? Haven't you seen how
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: much money Donald Trump's made? The polls? They're fake. It's
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: all fake. The news, data centers, you don't understand how
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: much money there is. The jobs numbers aren't good. And
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: what is Kevin Hassett to Kevin Hassett? Right. The president's
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: chief economist, you know, God bless him. He goes out
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: after the jobs report comes out on Friday and he
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: goes out on Fox with the typical sort of literally
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: he's like Baghdad Bob of economists these days. And he's like, hey,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: these job numbers aren't good. And Kevin Hassett, well, one
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: reason unemployment ticked up is people see this incredible labor
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: market and they're rushing back into it. No, sure they are, Kevin.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: That's what they're seeing. Jeez. Gas prices are killing people? No,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: wait until the Iran deal. The Iran war itself? Trump
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: tells Time it actually could help Republicans. Sure it will, Donnie.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: And then there's the line in Texas that I think
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: sums up the whole problem. We're doing great, but I
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: can't get the word out. You know, when Trump tries
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: to play the Dale Carnegie cards, right? You always have
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: to pretend you're optimistic, always pretend everything's great. Always the salesman, right?
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: The used condo salesman, which is really what he is
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: at best, right? The bad casino operator. Oh, keep playing.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Everything's going to go great. Everything's going to work out.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And then he thinks, oh, people just don't understand this economy. Oh,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: they understand. The word's out. They just think this economy
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: sucks and they think your leadership sucks. Now, There is
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: somebody in the White House that seems to realize the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: country has an affordability problem because they are trying things like,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: let's send checks. Here's 90 bucks to 20 million seniors
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: to help with Medicare. It's not a bad idea if
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: you're looking to try to make the group that's most
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: likely to show up are voters over 65. So I
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: guess they're the, at least you're not throwing money away,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I guess. But I'm not sure $ 90 is going to
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: make them feel great about this economy since cost of
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: living basically eats that up and then some. But they're trying, right?
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: They've got $ 90 to 20 million seniors, $ 500 for Obamacare
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: rebates for other people, maybe a future dividend for people
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: that live near data centers. And of course, there's that
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: promised $ 5, 000 Trump dividend if Republicans keep the House and
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: the Senate. I mean, you know, Trump's just trying to
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: throw something, right? Throw spaghetti at the wall here. At
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: some point, the political response to the affordability crisis sounds
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: more like, can we just mail everybody something before election day?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: If we send everybody a check with my name on it,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: that seems to be Trump's answer to everything. But there's
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: a deeper problem. And it gets back to something I
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: talked about last week on the podcast, what I call
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: the Trump anxiety tax. It's the cumulative cost of living
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: in a country where you're never quite sure whether today's
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: rules are going to be tomorrow's rules. Because Trump is
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: always rocking the boat, even when it's smooth. And this weekend,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: we got perhaps another ridiculous example of Trump's narcissism, daylight
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: saving time. Donald Trump wants permanent daylight saving time. Well,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Arkansas Senator, Republican Tom Cotton, does it. And that's the dispute.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: And Tom Cotton has been the person who has objected
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to unanimous consent in the Senate to a bill to
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: make daylight saving time permanent that the House has passed.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: And Tom Cotton's argument is one actually I've made on
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: this podcast a long time ago. We've tried permanent daylight
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: saving time before. People hated the dark winter mornings and
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: parents in Arkansas don't want their kids waiting for school
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: buses in darkness. Now, agree with them or disagree with them, whatever.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: But it's a completely normal policy disagreement where Tom Cotton
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: is trying to represent the interests of his state. And
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is trying to just obsess over something he's
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: decided matters. But what's Trump's response to Cotton's objection? He publishes,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: he doxes Tom Cotton, gives everybody Tom Cotton's cell phone
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: number and told the people of Arkansas to call him
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: over Trump's demand for permanent daylight saving time. And look,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: as I said at the top of this podcast, I
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: think this story is much more revealing than it looks.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Trump needs Tom Cotton's voters next month. He needs Republicans
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: in Arkansas to show up. He needs Cotton supporting his agenda.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: And yet the moment Cotton says, Mr. President, I disagree
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: with you on this one because I think it's bad
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: for the people I represent, you know, the people who
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: put him in office. Trump's instinct isn't persuasion. It's punishment.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: And it's like he's punishing all of Arkansas over it.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: That's the anxiety tax. Tariffs on med and your business,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: that's the price of my trade policy that I think
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: will work. And it may take 40 years to do it.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: A data center changes your community and puts more pressure
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: on electricity prices. Hey, there's too much money to be
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: made for me and my buddies. So tough shit. The
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Iran war drives up gasoline prices higher. It'll be worth
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: it when Trump gets the deal he really wants. And
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: if you're a parent in Arkansas who doesn't want your
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: eight-year-old waiting for a school bus in the dark, well,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: apparently that comes second to whatever the hell the president
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: wants because he wants to get an extra nine holes
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: in the winter. That's a political problem for somebody who
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: isn't actually on the ballot anymore. And that's the thing.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Democrats don't need every disaffected Trump voter to become a Democrat.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: That's not how midterms work. Some can simply become exhausted
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Trump voters who say, screw that guy. I'm done helping
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: him because he doesn't help me anymore. They voted for
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: him because they wanted the border fix or lower prices
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: or conservative judges or lower taxes, or maybe they hated Biden.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Pick your reason. A vote for Donald Trump wasn't necessarily
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: a signed contract agreeing to every subsequent thing Donald Trump
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: might decide to do. But Trump has always had trouble
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: making that distinction. You're expected to be there for him.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: He doesn't expect to be there for you. And that's
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: what We're learning about this midterm election. The Cotton episode
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: is a pretty good reminder that when your interests and
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: his collide, you shouldn't necessarily assume he's going to care
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: about what you care about. And when Trump isn't physically
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: on the ballot, that matters because he keeps telling Republican voters,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: pretend I'm on the ballot. Okay, do that. Will somebody
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: who came out specifically for Trump Pretend Ken Paxton is
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump? Will they pretend John Husted is Donald Trump?
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: By the way, this didn't work in 24. He was
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: actually on the ballot and Democrats swept the battleground Senate
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: races other than Pennsylvania. It didn't work. Hey, this episode
• 39:27
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• 40:55
  Speaker 1: rating was as of August of 2026. There's another question
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: underneath all of this that bothers me even more because
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: elections come and go, presidents come and go. Political parties
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: win and lose, but certain institutions are supposed to survive them,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: regardless of which party controls the White House. And I'm
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: increasingly concerned about what is happening in three of these
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: institutions that Donald Trump is trying to screw up. The FBI,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the Justice Department, and the Pentagon. My friends at The
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Atlantic published an extraordinary story this weekend about Kash Patel
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and the FBI. And forget the weird gold-plated jet ski
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: response for a second. It's a colorful anecdote, but it's
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: not the important part of this story, though. It's the hook, right?
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: The important allegation is that enormous FBI resources are being
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: devoted to trying to find evidence for Donald Trump's continued
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: obsession with the 2020 election. The Atlantic interviewed more than
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: 40 current and former administration officials, FBI employees, congressional staffers,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and others, and reports that Patel has repeatedly pushed officials
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to revisit election investigations. including telling people to look again
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: when investigations haven't produced the evidence that the White House
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: is looking for. I mean, I guess we should be
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: happy they're not manufacturing the evidence. The FBI disputes the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: characterization of its work and says election security is appropriately
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: one of its highest national security priorities. Well, good. I'm
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: glad they say it out loud. But the reporting raises
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: a pretty fundamental question. Is evidence driving an investigation or
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: is a desired conclusion driving the search for evidence? We
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: saw what happens, right? When a U.S. Senator steps in
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: his own Schmidt because he's got the confirmation bias virus.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: And then there's one detail you can't, I can't get
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: out of my head. Andrew Bailey, one of the FBI's
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: deputy directors left this past week. And according to the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Atlantic sources, Bailey sometimes raised the most basic objection when
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: questionable actions were discussed. Hey, the law doesn't allow that.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Bailey denies that characterization. Okay. But the larger question remains,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: who is left in the room to tell Kash Patel no?
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Because apparently Andrew Bailey was. Because another Republican operative gave
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: The Atlantic perhaps the most revealing description of Patel's relationship
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: with Trump. Patel is the guy who doesn't say no.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what you don't want to hear about
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: an FBI director. The FBI director is supposed to be
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: willing to tell a president no. The attorney general is
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: supposed to be willing to tell a president no. The
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Justice Department isn't the president's private law firm, even though
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: he put his personal lawyer in charge of it. And
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: that brings me to Mr. Blanche and the Justice Department.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: The most disturbing allegation in the Atlantic story may be
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the line attributed to to a DOJ official about the
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: justice manual itself and the rules designed, among other things,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: to keep law enforcement from manipulating elections. The official says
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: they were effectively told those rules no longer mattered. Now,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: DOJ emphatically denies that was ever department guidance. OK, I
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: hope that denial is correct. But if agents and prosecutors
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: are seeking legal advice about what they may be asked
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: to do around an election, you know you already have
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: a problem. Now, I think it's too late. I don't
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: think there is enough actual apparatus and enough logistics movements
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: for FBI to damage these midterms the way some folks
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: fear that they could. But one can see how the
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: FBI could try to create dummy investigations to create the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: illusion that there's something wrong. But still, even if nobody
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: ultimately crosses the line, the people inside the Justice Department,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the FBI apparently aren't certain where the line is anymore.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Because Todd Blanch and Kash Patel do not give a
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: shit about the rule of law. They only care about
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: their standing with Donald Trump. That's institutional damage all by itself.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: These agencies only work if people inside them believe that
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: evidence comes first, the law comes second, and the political
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: desires of the president don't get a vote. And they
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: certainly don't work if the assignment is the president believes
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: something happened, go now go find the evidence to prove
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: the president right. That's ass backwards, folks. And it gets
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: to the thing, the Atlantic story, that is also very troublesome.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Nobody is in the room to say no. Nobody. Not
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: who can tell Donald Trump what he wants to hear.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: There are plenty of those people. But the minute somebody
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: tells him no, these people end up quitting. That's what
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Joe DiGenova did, right? To me, that's why the description
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: of Kash Patel is the guy who never says no.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: It's so damning. Isn't it embarrassing? Who wants to be
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: known as a lackey for anybody? I mean, literally, he's
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: just a bootlicker. He's just a Trump bootlicker. History is
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: always going to know. Kash Patel is always going to
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: be known as Trump's bootlicker. How embarrassing. Who the hell
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: grew up, wanted to grow up to be that? Have
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: you no shame, Mr. Patel? Are you just glad somebody,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: he takes you seriously when nobody else thought you were
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: worth a shit to put in charge of anything? Unbelievable.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: And frankly, the same ought to be true of an
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: attorney general. That ought to be true of a secretary
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: of defense. There are certain jobs in government where part
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: of serving the president is occasionally telling the president something
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: he doesn't want to hear. So we'll end with Pete Hegseth.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: He gave what he described as a state of the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: force address this week. It got plenty of attention for
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: all of his typical juvenile. I mean, this dude is
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: arrested development, just like the president, right? No wonder the
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: two get along. He basically didn't socially mature after the
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: age of 13, right? He literally, you know, the whole
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: no radicals. How about no dummies? Because apparently a dummy
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: is allowed to be in charge of the Pentagon. So sophomoric, again,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: arrested development. So far beneath the culture of the military,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: let alone beneath an office of a cabinet secretary. But look,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: that's not the part of the speech that disturbed me
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: the most, believe it or not. What bothered me more
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: was his continued attempt to turn the Pentagon, an institution
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: that has worked very hard, not always successfully, to remain
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: outside partisan politics. And he's trying to turn the military
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: into some ideological project. I'm old enough to remember when
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: the right thought the Democrats were doing ideological projects on
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: social policy in the military. Well, this guy's doing it
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: right now. He announced an office of religious affairs inside
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Service
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: members have religious liberty rights. They should have access to chaplains.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Christians should be able to practice their faith. So should Jews.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: So should Muslims and atheists. And others shouldn't be pushed
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: into picking a faith. Okay? Everything is protected by the
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: United States Constitution. That's why we call it religious liberty.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: But listen to how Hankseth talks about his own office
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: and about this new office he created. It will report
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: directly to him. I mean, he's got his own weird
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: sect of Christianity that he follows. And look, I shouldn't
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: have used weird. We're in America. Go ahead. But it's
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: not a mainstream version of Christianity that he follows. Now
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: he says this office is going to have real teeth.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: He talks about putting on the full armor of God.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Oh no, sir. Oh no. You don't use language like
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: that in the United States of America. He says, while
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: the military fights physical wars, the real battle is spiritual.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Who's spiritual battle? Who's God? We live under the constitution, buddy,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: nothing else. No other text guides the laws of this country.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: We don't have a Christian military. We don't have a
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Jewish military. There's no Islamic military. It's the American military.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: And the common oath is not religious. There's only one text.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: It's the constitution. I'm not trying to be anti-religious. The
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: constitution itself makes this clear. But it's precisely what allows
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: somebody of deep faith to serve next to somebody of
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a completely different faith who serves next to somebody who
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't believe there is a God. It's the whole American experiment.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: I guess Pete Hegseth was absent the day they taught
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: the Constitution in school. So when the Secretary of Defense
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: starts describing the mission in the United States military in
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: explicitly spiritual terms, we ought to pay attention and we
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: ought to be a little bit freaked out. That's what
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: theocracies do. That's what dictatorships do. It's not what the
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: American are supposed to do. Hanks said something else in
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: the speech. He claimed that roughly 95% of the force
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: recognizes an almighty God. All right. So even if that
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: is true, so what? First Amendment doesn't become optional at 95%.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: We don't vote on what rights get. protected and what
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: rights don't. Well, sometimes we do, but we codify it
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: in the law. The rights of the 5% aren't subject
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: to a vote though by that 95%. We chose not
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: to live in a country that did that. That's the
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: whole point of the American experiment. So Hegseth and Patel
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: begin to look like part of the same story to me.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: They both are running institutions whose credibility depends on professional
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: independence And both have spent an enormous amount of energy
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: attacking the very culture of independence inside those institutions. At
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: the FBI, the question raised by the Atlantic's reporting is
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: whether investigators are being pushed to keep looking until they
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: find and answer the president once. At the Pentagon, Hegseth
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: has spent nearly two years telling us which generals he
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: thinks are ideological, which officers don't belong, and which parts
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: of military culture need to be purged. And now, what
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: sort of religious and cultural values ought to define the force?
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: The man deserves to be impeached. He does not uphold
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: American values at all. Just keep that in mind. This
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: is very un-American. There are things that he brought up
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: in his State of the Force speech that somebody wrote
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: for him, probably Bridge Colby, that actually deserve some attention.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: The military needs to be more aggressively focused on preparing
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: for autonomous warfare. Drones have transformed the battlefield. This Pentagon
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: is wholly unprepared for modern warfare. And we have pissed
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: away 25 years of Pentagon budgets because of the military
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: industrial complex. No doubt in my mind on that. So
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: there are some things here that do deserve some reform
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and attention. But it's not the military culture. It's actually
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: the defense contractor culture. So we should prepare for some
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: of that future, though I'm not sure Elon Musk and
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Newt Gingrich are the best people to put in charge
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: of this. I'm not sure if you're trying to figure
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: out warfare in 2040. Somebody says, hey, has anybody checked
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: with Newt Gingrich to see what he thinks? Anyway, modernizing
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the military is one thing. Politicizing the military is something
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: else entirely. And that's the common thread here. The FBI,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Justice Department, Pentagon, these were not supposed to be the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: president's institutions. They're not Donald Trump's institutions, but he's trying
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: to do this. And it's damaged everything. It's going to
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: damage us for a long time. This is going to
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: take decades to fix. What you can't do is replace
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: institutional trust on an inauguration day, right? You might be
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: able to replace these people, but it's done real damage.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: You're not going to be able to issue an executive
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: order saying, okay, everybody trust the FBI again, trust DOJ,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: trust the Pentagon. I wish it worked that way. It doesn't.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: And once one administration establishes that these institutions are simply
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: another instrument of presidential power, You know what the temptation
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: is going to be for the next administration? Well, they
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: did it. And that's how damage becomes permanent. I hope
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: there is a Congress that has read the Constitution and
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: starts to put checks back into executive authority. I'm a
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: little skeptical because Democratic Congresses haven't done it in the
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: past and Republican Congresses haven't done it in the past.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure either major party is capable of this.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: But it brings me back to where we started today.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: These polls are telling us something. Voters are very unhappy
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: with this economy. They're unhappy with the cost of living.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: They're unhappy with all of this. They're unhappy with the
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Iran war. And in these five states that we looked at,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: one of the five people who voted for Donald Trump
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: in 2024 now disapproves of the job he's doing. One
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: out of five of Trump voters disapprove of the job
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: he's doing. That's how a good Democratic night becomes a
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: massive Democratic night. especially because Trump is not listening to
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: the people. Instead, his response are, well, the polls are wrong.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: The economy's great. The war is going to be great.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Don't worry. Data centers are good for you, no matter
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: how much you don't like them. And if Tom Cotton
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: won't give him what he wants in daylight savings time,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: we'll give out Tom Cotton's cell phone number so you
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: can harass him. And it's all part of Trump's same instinct.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: There's always another disruption, a fight, a person who has
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: to bend to him. And it gets back to this
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Trump anxiety test. You never quite know if the rules
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: today are going to be the rules tomorrow. You never
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: quite know if the policy today is going to be
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the policy tomorrow. And apparently, you never quite know if
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: being one of Donald Trump's most loyal supporters today means
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: you're going to be targeted by him tomorrow because you
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: disagree with him about daylight saving time. Remember, Tom Cotton's
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: argument is about Arkansas. He says, I represent Arkansas. And
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump says, I don't care. It's a small story
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: in some ways, but to me, it's emblematic about just
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: how out of touch Donald Trump is at this moment.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: He is in total denial about what's going on and
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: he thinks he can happy talk and use it. And
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: he's really just, if you look at it, it's something I've,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: the point I've made before is And it happens to
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: many a politician, right? Whatever worked the first time, that's
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: what they always want to try again, no matter how. Remember,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: he doxed Lindsey Graham, and it made Lindsey Graham bend
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: the knee for the rest of his life. So he thought,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: I'll dox Tom Cotton. It'll make him bend his knee,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: and this will all happen, and his own people will
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: turn on him, just the way Lindsey's voters turned on him,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and so he capitulated. The problem this time, Trump's voters
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: are disillusioned with Donald Trump right now. They don't have
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: time to be disillusioned about Tom Cotton. And I think
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's going to learn that lesson on November 3rd.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: All right, let's go to the time machine. And today
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: I want to start with what I think is one
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: of the biggest weaknesses of the modern Supreme Court. We
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: have a diversity problem on the court. And I'm talking...
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: about a different kind of diversity than the one we
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: usually talk about. I'm talking about the diversity of experience.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: We have nine justices with extraordinary legal resumes, but not
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: one of them has ever held elective office. Not one
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: has ever had to ask voters for their support, run
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: a campaign, serve in a legislature, or govern a state.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a huge problem. Somehow, In my lifetime,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: both parties have gotten to the point where actually practicing
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: democracy has become a liability if you want to sit
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court or on the federal bench in general.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: If you've run for office, well, you've had to take positions.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: You've cast votes. You've made some compromises. You've probably said
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: something at some point that will make a confirmation hearing
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: a tad uncomfortable. So instead, we keep looking in the
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: same places and producing versions of the same resume regardless
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: of ideology. Elite law school, check. Clerkships, check. Executive branch experience, check.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Federal appellate court, then Supreme Court. And somehow this is
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: supposed to make the court less political? Maybe. Makes it
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: very ideological though. But guess what, folks? The Supreme Court
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: is political. Of course it is. It's one of the
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: three branches of our political system. Politics is not good
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: or bad. It's people and how they practice. Do you
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: practice bad politics or good politics? But politics itself is
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: like a technology. It's neither good or bad. It depends
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: on the user of it. A president chooses its members
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: when we talk about the Supreme Court. Senators decide whether
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: they get there. And then these nine people make decisions
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: about what presidents can do and Congress can do and
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: what states can do and sometimes what voters themselves are
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: allowed to do. can't take politics out of any of that.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: The question is whether the court exercises that power fairly,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: whether it stays grounded in the Constitution, and whether it
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: understands the country, its decisions are governing and impacting, and
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: whether it has enough legitimacy that people will accept those
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: decisions even when they hate them. But what's funny here
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: is there was a time when we actually thought having
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: political experience might help somebody be a better member of
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. Chief justices had been governors and senators
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: and members of Congress. One of them had been a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: president in the United States. The last elected politician to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: lead the Supreme Court left more than a half a
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: century ago. His name is Earl Warren. And whether you
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: admire the Warren Court or despise it, nobody can accuse
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Earl Warren of failing to lead it. So that's where
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: we go to this time machine. October 5th, 1953, it's
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the day Earl Warren took the oath to become Chief
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Justice of the United States. And he gets there because
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: one of those accidents of history that ends up changing
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: the country. Dwight Eisenhower had been president for less than
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: eight months when Chief Justice Fred Vinson suddenly died of
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: a heart attack at the age of 63. The timing
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: is extraordinary because sitting before the Supreme Court at that
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: moment is Brown versus Board of Education. The court has
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: already heard arguments challenging racial segregation in public schools. The
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: justices are divided over what to do. And they've ordered
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the case argued again. And then Benson dies. Eisenhower needs
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: a new chief justice. And he chooses a politician. Earl
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: Warren's the governor of California. Now, Warren and Eisenhower have
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: some history. Warren had spent 14 years as a district
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: attorney in Alameda County, then became California attorney general, then governor.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: And he was one of the most successful politicians in America.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: He won three terms as governor in 1946 under California's
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: rather bizarre cross-filing system. He actually won the Republican, Democratic,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: and Progressive nominations. Thomas Dewey put him on the Republican
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: presidential ticket as his running mate in 1948. And in 1952,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Warren himself was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: which put him directly in the path of Dwight Eisenhower.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: In fact, there's a whole political story from the 1952
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: convention that matters here. Warren controlled California's very large delegation,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: and California became important in Eisenhower's convention fight against Robert
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Taft over disputed delegates and the so-called Fair Play Amendment.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Warren's delegation helped Eisenhower. And by most accounts, Warren came
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: away believing Eisenhower had promised him the first available Supreme
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Court vacancy. Quid pro quo. Initially, the expectation apparently was
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: that Warren might become solicitor general and wait for an
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: open seat. Well, then Fred Vinson dies. Now the vacant
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: seat isn't simply an associate justice seat. It's the chief justice. Now,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: there was some argument inside Eisenhower's circle about whether the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: promise to Warren really extended that far. Warren thought it did.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: And Warren held Eisenhower to it. Now, there's also another
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: character floating around this story. And he'll come to matter later.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: It's Richard Nixon. Warren and Nixon were both California Republicans,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: but they were hardly friends. And this won't surprise you.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Warren believed Nixon had worked against him inside the California
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: delegation in 52. I'm sure Nixon did. Remember that because
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to come back to Nixon. On October 5th,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Eisenhower gives Warren. a recess appointment, and Warren takes the
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: oath as chief justice. And three days later, Eisenhower writes
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: in his diary about the kind of people he wants
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court. He thinks legal ability matters, obviously,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: but Ike also talks about wanting someone with a national
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: reputation for integrity and statesmanship. Now, statesmanship, keep that word
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: in mind, because Eisenhower was about to get plenty of
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: it from Earl Warren, perhaps more than he bargained for.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: The first enormous issue sitting on Warren's desk was Brown.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: So for nearly 60 years, Plessy versus Ferguson and separate
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: but equal had provided the constitutional framework for segregation. Thurgood
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: Marshall and the NAACP had spent years methodically attacking that
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: doctrine through the courts. And by the time Brown arrives
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: at the Supreme Court, segregated education is a huge target.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: The court Warren inherits isn't unified. And this is where
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: I think Warren's political background mattered here. He doesn't simply
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: sit down and figure out whether he has five votes.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: He understands that if the Supreme Court is about to
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: tell a large part of the United States that the
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: racial structure of its public school system is unconstitutional, five
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: to four is going to land very differently than nine
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: to zero. So Warren works his colleagues. He talks to
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: them individually. He gives them time. He searches for language
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: everybody can live with. Stanley Reed of Kentucky is the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: last real holdout. Justice Robert Jackson has suffered a heart
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: attack and is in the hospital as the decision approaches.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Jackson is so determined that the court appear united that
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: he leaves the hospital to be there when Brown is announced.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Warren wants all nine men sitting there and he gets
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: all nine votes. On May 17th, 1954, Warren begins reading
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: the opinion. And here's a detail that mattered here a lot.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: The word unanimously is never actually in the written opinion
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: at that point. Warren adds it when he reads the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: decision from the bench. We conclude unanimously. He wants everybody
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: in the courtroom and everybody who is going to hear
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: about the decision afterward to know immediately, nine to nothing, unanimously.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: It's a politician's instinct. Warren understands that the constitutional ruling matters,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: but he also understands that how the ruling is going
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: to be heard. There was going to be a massive
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: resistance to Brown no matter what was ruled, but there
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to be a dissenting Supreme Court justice whom
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: segregationists could point to and say, see, even if the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: court itself thinks this is constitutionally questionable. Five votes could
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: decide Brown. Warren understood the value of getting all nine. Now,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: unanimity did come at a cost. The court settled the
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: constitutional question in Brown. in 1954, but delayed deciding exactly
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: how desegregation would be implemented. A year later, in what
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: was deemed Brown II, the court ordered desegregation to proceed
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: with what became the famous phrase, all deliberate speed. And
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: all deliberate speed turned out to contain a lot more
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: deliberate than speed. Southern governments used the ambiguity to stall
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: desegregation for years. So the Warren instinct for consensus wasn't cost-free,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: but I think that's part of what makes this story
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: rather useful than simply heroic. Political leadership always involves trade-offs.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Warren wanted an institution united behind the constitutional principle. The
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: compromise came over implementation. By the way, that always is
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: the case. We can agree on a principle. How we
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: implement it is always where it gets messy and complicated.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: History is entitled to ask whether that compromise gave segregationists
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: too much room to exist and resist. Maybe. So Warren
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: isn't infallible, but it is important for our own history
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: now that we know this was unanimous. We know that
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Warren had his own failings, though, from his own career.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: As California Attorney General during World War II, Warren strongly
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: supported the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. He
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: said he later deeply regretted it. So electoral experience doesn't
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: magically produce wisdom. Earl Warren's proof of that. But it
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: does give somebody experience exercising government power over actual people,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: living with the consequences and living in the real world.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Then there's Eisenhower, because one of the enduring stories about
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Warren is that Ike eventually came to regret appointing him.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: You've probably heard a quote attributed to Eisenhower that appointing
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Warren was, quote, the biggest damn fool mistake he ever made.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: It's a very Ike quote, isn't it? We don't actually
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: have reliable evidence that he ever actually said it for
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: what it's worth, but we'll put that aside. We do
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: know that Eisenhower became unhappy with the direction of Warren's court.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: And Brown itself had made Ike uncomfortable. Warren later recalled
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: a White House dinner before the decision at which Eisenhower
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: took him aside and talked about the white Southerners opposing integration.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: According to Warren's own account, Eisenhower told him, these are
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: not bad people. All they are concerned about is to
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: see their sweet little girls are not required to sit
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: in school alongside some big, overgrown Negroes. Pretty big stain
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: on the Eisenhower legacy, isn't it? Now, that's Warren's recollection,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: written years later, and he and Eisenhower... had plenty of
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: reasons to view one another differently by then. So it
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: should be treated as Warren's account, not a transcript for
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: what it's worth. But there's no question Eisenhower worried about
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: the reaction in the South and preferred a gradual approach
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: to desegregation. At the same time, I don't think it's
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: accurate to simply say Eisenhower wanted Plessy preserved. And when
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: the constitutional confrontation finally becomes unavoidable at Little Rock Central
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: High School in 1957, and Arkansas Governor Orval Fabus defies
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: federal authority, Eisenhower sends in the 101st Airborne to enforce desegregation.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: So the interesting question isn't whether Eisenhower accidentally appointed some
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: secret liberal. He did not. He appointed a Republican politician
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: he knew quite well, one he owed a favor to.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: What Eisenhower discovered was what happens when a politician you
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: think you know suddenly no longer has to answer to you,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: to his party or to the donors or to voters.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Warren had lifetime tenure. Ike said he wanted a statesman. Well,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: he got an independent statesman. And Brown was hardly the
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: end of it, right? Over the next 15 years, the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Warren court reshaped enormous areas of American constitutional law and
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: really enhanced our rights, the right to counsel in Gideon,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: One person, one vote in Reynolds. Privacy in Griswold. Miranda rights.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: The end of state bans on interracial marriage and loving.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: And Earl Warren became the face of all of it,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: which also made him the face of everything his opponents
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: thought was wrong with the Supreme Court. That's when those
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: famous billboards started appearing along America's interstate highway system. Impeach
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Earl Warren. The John Birch Society embraced the campaign. Brown
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: is part of that anger, but so are school prayer,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: criminal defendant rights, reapportionment, and the broader relief and the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: broader belief that unelected judges are imposing social change in
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: our country. And this is where Warren's leadership and his
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: concern about the legitimacy of Brown makes a lot more sense,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't it? He knew backlash would come. And it came.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: The difference between then and now wasn't the existence of
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: the political anger or the conspiracy theories. Robert Welch, the
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: founder of the John Birch Society, eventually suggested that Eisenhower
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: himself was part of the communist conspiracy. The difference, of course,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: back then was how those ideas moved. When we only
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: had three television networks that the government decided who could
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: get on the air, dominant newspapers, powerful editors acting as
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: gatekeepers for the national conversation, even William F. Buckley. And
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: other conservative leaders tried to push the Birch Society outside
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: the mainstream conservative movement. Now, the Birch Society still organized
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: and raised money and influenced Republican politics, but it didn't
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: have the algorithm that the far right has today. Those
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: impeachable Warren billboards were almost the social media of their time.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: The grievance was there. Now, today's information environment simply gives
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: grievance a much faster distribution system. And Warren himself eventually
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: makes one last enormously political decision about the court. In
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: June of 68, with Richard Nixon running for president and
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: Warren still carrying plenty of resentment toward his old California
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: political rival, Warren gives Lyndon Johnson his retirement letter. Warren
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: wants a Democratic president to choose his successor. So much
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: for pretending Supreme Court succession was ever completely removed from politics, right?
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: LBJ decides to elevate Associate Justice Abe Fortas to Chief Justice. Well,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: the Senate plays politics right back. Republicans and Southern Democrats
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: organize against Fortas. Fortas withdraws. Warren stays on the court.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Nixon wins the election. And in 1969, Richard Nixon gets
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: to replace Earl Warren after all. He chooses Warren Burger. Now,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: that episode matters for another reason. The Fortas fight was
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: the first successful filibuster of a Supreme Court nomination. So
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: if you're looking for the roots of our modern confirmation wars,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: some people like to say Bork, it might be Abe Fortas.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: But notice what happened. Warren tried to time his retirement politically.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Johnson tried to install a preferred successor. Senators used their
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: power to stop him. An election intervened and Nixon got
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: the seat. So my point is, this is not politics
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: corrupting some pristine apolitical Supreme Court. That's the political system
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: the Constitution created, folks. which is why I think our
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: obsession with pretending the court can exist outside of politics
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: gets us into huge trouble. Presidents certainly learned from Warren
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: that justices can surprise them. Republican presidents accumulated quite a
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: list of appointees who eventually disappointed important parts of their
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: far-right coalition. Right? William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter. And over time, the conservatives
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: Legal movement became much more sophisticated about preventing independent conservative
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: thinkers from being appointed. So they wanted to find younger
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: nominees who hadn't really lived real life, study a paper trail,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: vet the judicial philosophy, put people on appellate courts and
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: watch them basically make them audition. And now Democrats are
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: doing versions of the same thing. And you understand the instinct. Justices,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: they're the real legacy of presidents. But boy, have we
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: over learned this lesson, because one of the things that
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: makes a nominee less predictable is actually having participated in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: our electoral process. Our politics are messy. I want somebody
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: with that experience in the court. If you've had to
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: cast votes and make compromises, yeah, it's a record and yeah,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: it's baggage. But it means you understand how the American
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: system works and the American political system and the American
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: legal system are very intertwined. And we've gradually screened out
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: the kind of experience that used to be considered perfectly
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: normal for the Supreme Court. Fred Vinson, the Supreme Court
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: justice that Warren replaced, he'd repeatedly been elected to Congress.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: Charles Evan Hughes had been governor of New York and
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: a Republican presidential nominee. William Howard Taft had been president.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: Sam and Chase had been senator and governor. Then we
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: got Warren Burger, William Rehnquist, and John Roberts, three straight
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: chief justices who'd never held elective office. Roberts is somewhat
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: politically sophisticated. He spent years operating at high levels of
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: Washington before he became a judge. And he often demonstrates
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: some political savvy, much more so than either Berger or Rehnquist,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: for sure. But there's a difference between understanding how Washington
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: politics works and then understanding how the small, the democratic
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: politics of the entire country works. Roberts has never asked
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: anybody to vote for him. He's never had to build
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: a public constituency or manage a legislature. And he's never
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: had to make a decision knowing that the people impacted
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: can turn around and fire him in the next election.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: And I think that matters. The modern court understands its power.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: What it sometimes seems to struggle with is explaining that
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: power to the country and maintaining confidence in that institution
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: while exercising it. To me, that's a leadership challenge, not
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: a legal one. Warren spent years learning the kind of
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: leadership before he ever actually had to put on a robe.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: And it made him, I think, better able to navigate
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: that period. And America's better off for it. By the way,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: here's another little statistic that tells you something about just
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: how political Supreme Court succession really is. You know, the
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: last Democratic president to successfully install a chief justice, Harry Truman.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: It was Fred Vinson in 1946. 80 years ago. And
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: as we just went through, the one time since then
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: that a Democratic president had a shot at the center seat,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: it was blocked by technically a Democratic Senate, but it
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: was ideologically controlled by the right. Every chief justice since Vinson, Warren, Berger, Rehnquist,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: and Roberts has been appointed by a Republican president. Politics
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: is And sometimes I think the court gets itself into
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: trouble when it tries too hard to disguise political judgments
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: as something more clinical. Roe v. Wade is a great example.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: Whatever you think of the underlying constitutional right recognized in Roe,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: the court didn't simply identify a right. It constructed a
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: regulatory framework involving trimesters, viability, and different stages at which
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: states could regulate. That's an awfully specific structure to derive
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: from a constitution that doesn't mention trimesters. The court was
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: trying to settle a profound moral and political argument through
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: something that almost looked technocratic. It didn't remove the politics,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: and Dobbs hasn't removed it either. So I'm not interested
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: in the fantasy of an apolitical Supreme Court. I want
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: a court whose decisions are grounded in the Constitution, whose
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: process is fair, whose members understand the country those decisions govern,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: and whose leadership understands the legitimacy it has to maintain.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: And that's why I think the absence of electoral experience
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: in today's court is a genuine diversity problem. Sandra Day
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: O'Connor served in the Arizona legislature and became majority leader.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: She later ran for and won election as a state judge.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Since O'Connor, we haven't had another justice with comparable experience
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: of actually asking voters for their support. Plenty of judges
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: have been around electoral politics. Roberts advised the Bush legal
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: team back during the 2000 Florida recount, Brett Kavanaugh, so
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: did Amy Coney Barrett. So they know something about election fights.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: They just have never run in one. Not one current
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: justice has ever had to put his or her name
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: on a ballot and ask voters to say yes. Well,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: I haven't checked their student government track records. Maybe if
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: you told me that one of them had run for
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: student council president, that probably wouldn't be surprising. But I'm
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: not saying we should, I also don't want to put
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: nine governors on the Supreme Court either. That defeats the
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: point of diversity. Nor does electoral experience guarantee wisdom, right?
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: Nor Warren's record as California Attorney General and the internment
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: of Japanese Americans demonstrates that. But nine people without meaningful
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: experience of running for office isn't diversity either. It's professional monoculture.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: And both parties have created it. And it only adds
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: to the overtime why there's less legitimacy to the Supreme Court.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: And Earl Warren is an example of what happens when
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: you have a pretty sophisticated politician understanding the times that
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: we live in, understanding the difficulty something will be on
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: the ground politically, and what you have to do to
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: make sure a ruling sticks. I do hope, I do
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: hope that a future president, we've had a few, think
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: about the electoral experience. I do hope we rectify this
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: diversity gap in the Supreme Court sooner rather than later.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: There's your time machine. All right, let's do a few
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: Ask Chucks. We're going to start with Dalton Provo, BYU country.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: He says, I have to thank you for finally getting
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: me into sports, particularly college sports. And now I'm following
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: BYU football and basketball right as they're starting to get good.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: Hopefully that ages well. Yeah, BYU survived. But I still
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: can't get into baseball. It feels like a sport and
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: more like it feels less like a sport and more
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: like athletes hanging out. For a few hours, what am
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: I missing? And can you help me see the light? Look,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: I guess I would say is go to a few
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: baseball games and watch it played more often. Look, I
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: know it's slow. I get it, right? And basketball and
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: football move, right? There feels like there's movement, although you
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: could argue football... right? There's like, what is it? There's
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: only 11 actual total minutes of action, right? Compared to
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: like two and a half hours of standing around or
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. It feels that way. It's not quite that,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: but if you really add up actual play time, right?
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: When they're actively going, right? The average, I think, play
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: is maybe eight seconds, eight to nine seconds total, you know?
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: And you figure there's, you know, 80 to 100 plays
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: in a game, something like that. Anyway, um, you know, I, I,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: I enjoy it. I think it's the, I will say this.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: I think baseball makes for better movies. Baseball makes for
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: better drama. There's, there's a, it's both a team sport
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: and an individual sport in many ways, right? It's just
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: batter versus pitcher, but you can't do it alone if
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: you don't have a, so I don't know. That's the
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: draw it is for me. I mean, I just like the,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: There's strategy to it. Look, baseball, you can be 5'6,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: like Jose Altuve, and be a Hall of Famer, or
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: you can be the size of Aaron Judge at 6'7.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: You can't really say that about football or basketball. So
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: I think that's the other appeal to baseball that I
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: think is underrated, which is anybody, if you've got a
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: really good eye-hand coordination, you can play the game, right?
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: It takes that, but you can play the game. And
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: there's a science to hitting. Yes, you need some strength,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: but a small guy who understands his body's physics can
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: produce power just like a big guy can produce power.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: So I think the greatest appeal of baseball is the
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: fact that anybody of any size can play. And And
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: we've seen it. And we see it in today's game.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite baseball cards is this baseball card
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: that Topps put out in 2018. And it's a picture
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: of Aaron Judge standing on second base and Jose Altuve
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: standing right next to him. 6'7 and 5'7. I mean,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: they're literally a foot difference, I think. In fact, Altuve
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: may be smaller than 5'7, right? There's a foot of difference.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: I believe they went one, two in the MVP voting
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: that year or the year before or the year after,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: something like that. And of course, I think Yankees fans
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: to this day think, well, Tuve cheated to get that MVP.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: But the point is, is that that picture itself shows you,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: you can be any size of any, you know, you
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: just need, the one thing you really need is incredible eyesight.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: And outside of that, It truly is a game for
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: anybody of any size. So how's that for a case?
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: I hope that helped, though. And good, tough win down
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: in TCU in the rain. You know, you guys are
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: doing it again in BYU football. It ain't pretty. It
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: ain't dominant. It's just winning. And I don't know. I
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: don't know if I'm betting against you guys this year.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: I'm very curious to see, though, how this Notre Dame
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: game goes. Perhaps the biggest game of the season, even
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: though It's actually more of a must win for Notre
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: Dame than it is for BYU because you guys have
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: a path to the playoff where that game is meaningless
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: because it's not a conference game. But it certainly is
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: a huge game for the perception of the Big 12.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: That's for sure. And I know Provo, no easy place
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: to play, to come visit. One of my defining memories
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: of the 1990 season was opening, playing the opening game
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: in Provo and losing. All right. Douglas, PG County, Maryland writes, Hey,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: I'm listening to your answer about any given Sunday being
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: an underrated football movie. And I have to admit that
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: movie led to my high school gay awakening insert bashful
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: face here. Anyway, I'd love to hear your favorite political impressions.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: One of my favorites from nineties SNL was Will Ferrell's
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: attorney general, Janet Reno. What political comedic impressions still make
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: your list? Thank you very much for all that you do.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Douglas PG County. So, um, Dan Aykroyd's Bob Dole. There's
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: a great, it's a 19, the 88, they mocked an
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: 88 presidential debate. And there's, Aykroyd, just Bob Dole, he
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: like looks at the guy playing Pat Robertson, who I
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: think it was Al Franken who would do Pat Robertson.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: You cure my left arm and I'll vote for you
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: or something like that. It was just, you know, I'll
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: take a pencil and shove it in your eye. So
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I liked, Aykroyd's Dole was a good one. Of course,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: Dana Carvey. You know, the Dana Carvey Bush, and in fact,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: the Dana Carvey, everybody's brokaw is not brokaw. Tonight on
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: the NBC Nightly News, we're going to go to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: None of us are doing Tom. We're all doing Dana Carvey.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: And by the way, everybody that works at NBC does
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: a brokaw. Some people are better than others. I'm not
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: going to judge. My old friend David Gregory has a
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: great one. Ryan Williams is pretty good. I think mine's okay.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: I think mine's closer, is better. Some of my colleagues
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: think they have a good Brokaw impersonation. They don't, but
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: that's all right. But none of us are doing Brokaw.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: We're doing Dana Carvey doing Brokaw because he did the famous,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: Gerald Ford was mauled by a bear tonight. One of
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: those great SNL skits. You know, there's a lot of
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Will Ferrells. You talk about that one. His W was
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: fun and Bush handled it really well. I mean, I
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: could just think, I like ordering chimichangas. I think I
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: keep hearing Will Ferrell say chimichangas. That's one that sticks
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: into my head. I have to say, how about Kate
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: McKinnon's Rudy Giuliani? I think that's a pretty good one. Um,
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: but those were good. Um, and you know, I, I just,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: I miss Phil Hartman. God, do I miss Phil Hartman?
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: His Bill Clinton, his, well, he had both Phil Hartman
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: did one and, uh, Daryl Hammond. They both were good
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Clintons and they both had unique takes on Clintons. I
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: love Phil Hartman. And look, it was not going to
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: sit here and say that the, uh, Daryl Hammond one
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't good too, but. Because Daryl Hammond, he did the
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: lip biting better than Phil Hartman did. But both were
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: good ones. Those Clinton impersonations were really good. Yeah, I
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: think those were pretty good. There's a ton. There's a
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: great Will Ferrell where he plays a candidate whose genitals
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: got burned up in a fire. And it was his
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: way of saying, I can't. It was during the heat
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: of the Monica Lewinsky or it was, it was maybe,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: it was maybe even after, it could have been later
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: than that. It could have been in response to the
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: John Edwards scandal where Will Ferrell plays this fictional candidate
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: for Senate. And I, you know, I'll never cheat on
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: my wife. My generals were burned in a fire or
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: something like that. And it just was one of those,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: the punchline just kept coming. And it was like, it
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: didn't make you laugh at first. And then like, like
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: the 17th time, my general, you know, sort of, I'm
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: Joe Schmegi and I approve this message because my genitals
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: were burned in a fire, somehow became funnier and funnier
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: as the gag went on, which is sometimes the best
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: versions of SNL. So those were top of my head
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: with a little bit of a quick change there. All right,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: Don Z, Florida's ninth district chimes in and he writes, hey,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: love all your work, even from the pre-MTP days. As
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: our resident Florida expert, what do you make of Carnegie
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Mellon University's expansion into Miami and how could it affect
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: a state higher education system that's already seen its share
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: of turmoil? Full disclosure, I'm a CMU alum in music,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: which might surprise you. Thanks especially for your election night
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: coverage with Chrysalis and DDHQ. Keep it going. Hey, we
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: have an election night extravaganza that we'll be announcing formally
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: pretty soon, but we're really excited about it. Opportunities both
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: in person and a 12-hour live stream at a minimum.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: So we are looking forward to that. Again, I don't
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: view it that way. The Carnegie Mellon investment down in Miami,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: Ken Griffin was a big part of that. To me,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: it feels like just brands that are expanding. I believe
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: Vanderbilt has, you know, when I'm in the Palm Beach airport,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: there's a Vanderbilt business school annex down there. But to me,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: it's like the Cleveland Clinic with its Florida outposts, right?
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: Cleveland Clinic still headquartered in Ohio, but it has Florida outposts.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: I think Mayo Clinic has some Florida outposts. Look, I
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: actually think the next 50 years, not to, you know,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: I have a theory, you know, anybody that's worked with
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: me will tell you, oh, Chuck has a theory of everything.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: There's some truthiness to that. It's like I can always
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: manufacture a theory about something. But I do have a
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: theory about where higher ed is going. I think you're
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: going to see some brands. I think when you get,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: I think as universities consolidate and you're going to have, right?
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: The reason to acquire a smaller university and maybe to
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: put your brand on a, you know, to go down
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: is the land that a universe, you know, let's say
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: a small college is struggling with because we have the
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: demographic cliff. That's a lot of valuable land. It may
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: be that the land has to stay for educational purposes.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: So You know, could I picture Stanford deciding to buy
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: up small colleges around the country and turn them into
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: Stanford outposts? Could I picture Harvard doing this? Could I
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: picture the University of Michigan? Could I picture the University
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: of Texas? It might be harder for a state school
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: to do it, but I could see more private schools
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: like Carnegie Mellon thinking about creating annexes in different locations,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: especially now when there's a huge fight, right? There's a
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: dwindling number of younger people available for admission. So the
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: competition is, is only gonna increase on this. The branding
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: competition is gonna increase on this. And Carnegie Mellon being
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: more of an engineering, STEM focused, I think they saw
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: maybe a potential opportunity down in Florida. So I suspect
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: you're gonna see, I assume you'll see some of these
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: Northern universities, particularly private universities who are having problems attracting
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: students to their physical campus, go to where people wanna live.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's in Florida, maybe it's in Texas, maybe it's
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: in Arizona, but I suspect this will be a growing trend.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: I don't think it harms the state systems per se,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: but maybe I'm being a little naive to that. By
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: the way, I just had my friend, Paul Glaster, who's
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: the editor of the Washington Monthly, they're out with their
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: new college ratings and they do it a lot differently
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: than US News. They actually care about return on investment, right?
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: Be on the lookout for that interview. It's coming soon.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: And we talk a little bit about the future of
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: universities there. Grisha, let's see here. Jason Allen, Grisha, Costa
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: Rica writes, Jason, you're originally from Houston, but currently living
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: in Costa Rica as a former professional opera singer who
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: worked in the U.S. and Germany. including as an apprentice
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: at San Francisco Opera. I wanted to thank you for
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: your interview about Marian Anderson and for understanding not only
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: how difficult the profession is, but that she didn't necessarily
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: want to be a trailblazer. She just wanted to do
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: the job, which was hard enough on its own. I
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: usually tune in for politics, but hearing you bring your
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: own musical background into that conversation finally made me write
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: in for the first time. Much appreciated, Jason L. I'm
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: really glad to hear that. Look, that's It's kind of
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: my theory of the case of this podcast that ultimately,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: and it's the advice I've gotten from others who've been
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: successful in this space, is don't be afraid to share
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: your own interests. And in fact, lean into it a
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: little bit. If you're not interested and you do a segment,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: it's going to come through. And if you are interested
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: and you do a segment, it's going to come through.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: And I know I'm with the majority of people who
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: are more interested in learning anything if the person telling
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: me about it comes across as interested in said thing.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: So glad you enjoyed it. And when the midterm season
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: dies down a little bit post-November, I will widen the
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: aperture once again. And who knows, maybe even test out
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: my embouchure. All right, last question before I get into
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: my college football rants of the weekend. Ah, it's the
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: official mayor. Our mayor is here from Harvey Cedars, New Jersey.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: Mayor Imperiali, and he writes, instead of a Democratic congressional
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: candidate simply telling voters they're against Trump, the war or tariffs,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: why not run on something more local and tangible? I
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: promise to have the best constituent service of any member
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: of Congress. He or she takes Trump's calls. I'll take yours.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: I won my own race on one promise. Call me
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: anytime for anything. So could a renewed focus on constituent
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: service actually be a persuasive message for congressional candidates? Thanks, John. Well,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: I definitely buy that it really works in mayor's races.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: I remember we had a mayor in DC who did
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: that at the time, went door to door, gave everybody's
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: cell number, gave everybody's email, uh, and it worked. Now
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: he was, he was almost too focused on the personal
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: constituent service and he wasn't as good about reigning in
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: the council and all of that. Um, but he, but it,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: it really helped them win. Adrian Fenty was that mayor, uh,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: on that front. Um, I read recently about John Ossoff's
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: random phone calls to constituents in Georgia and how that
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: he's very, he just, he's been doing it his whole
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: six years and the dividends are starting to pay. I
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: think if the way you described it could be very
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: helpful politically. You know, hey, here's my number. Just, you know,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: because here's the thing. I think particularly younger voters have
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: an expectation of getting access to, you know, the idea
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: that somebody's inaccessible is not true for voters under 40.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: They expect accessibility. They expect access, right? We live, they
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: were raised in a social media climate, which means the
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: barriers to entry on everything are lower. So therefore the
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: barrier to connection with Congress should be right there. They
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: there is an even though they don't quite say there
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: isn't the older you are. We don't we somehow accepted
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: the gatekeepers. Right. We were raised with gatekeepers. So we
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: accept the premise of gatekeepers. Younger folks don't. So I
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: think you're on to something. I definitely look, you're not
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: in some ways with mayors. It's it's part of the job.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: It should be part of the job. that you're always available,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: you're accessible, et cetera. You know, I think in some ways, Mamdani, well,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he handed out his cell phone
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: to every single person, right? There's this, frankly, Donald Trump's
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: ability to take over the Republican Party in some ways
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: was due to the accessibility of Trump himself, at least
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: to donors and activists and things like that. He made
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: himself quite accessible, more so than most Republican politicians had
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: in the past. You know, you can get a cell phone,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: you can get them. You know, it's a reminder, not
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: everything Trump does is something that should be ignored, right?
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: Some of his tactics, maybe he's using the tactics for bad.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean they're bad tactics, if that makes sense. But,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: you know, this is his instinct. You know, he'll cut
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: out a middleman. He'll, you know, just come directly to me.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: I think that the politicians with this instinct usually are
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: better politicians. And I can't wait to see you run statewide, Mr. Mayor.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: And who knows, this may become the podcast party before
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: it's all said and done. But I would say this
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: on Congress. I think the constituent access, I think it
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: would be met with skepticism at first. That's why this
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: John Ossoff just phone calls where he doesn't advertise that
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: he did it. He'd been doing it for the last
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: six years. And then suddenly they've done it enough where
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: there was some traction. That's interesting to me. And I
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: know that if I were holding... office. I'd try to
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: do the same thing. That seems to be a better
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: way to try to figure out what's really on people's minds.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: Don't put them in a teletown hall where they're in
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: front of all their friends and neighbors. Call them up
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: individually where they feel like they can talk to you one-on-one. Look,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: as a political reporter, I learned more talking to voters one-on-one,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: even though you can't say it's a statistically sound sample,
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: but I understand the nuance better of the support or
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: opposition to candidate X or candidate Y. The one-on-one conversations
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: work for reporters, one-on-one conversations work for canvassers, and yes,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: one-on-one conversations are usually more helpful to elected officials. All right.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: And now my quick take on college football. So who
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: had the best game, right? Each week I want to
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: usually go through who had the best win, right? And
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: usually that win is a road win as far as
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: I'm concerned, right? Beating, winning on the road in a
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: conference is hard. I don't care if, you know, the
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: only reason and only SEC obsessors think only the SEC
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: is a tough conference. Every conference road game is hard,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: whether you're in the new Pac-10, 12, whatever they call it,
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: the old Big 10, the ACC, the SEC, the Big 12.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: Winning on the road is hard in college. College crowds
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: are crazy. They're fun and they're everywhere just because ESPN
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: only covers one conference and only thinks one conference matters.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: That's why Wake Forest should have been ranked two weeks
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: ago and wasn't. Now they'll finally be ranked, but they're
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: a better, but they're, you know, They're quickly as good
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: as anybody in the middle class of the SEC as well. Again,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: the SEC just has better atmospheres, better stadiums or bigger stadiums.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: So that's sort of rant number one. I think this–
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: I guess people can say, well, Missouri deserved to be ranked. Well,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: until Missouri wins a road game, right? I think the
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: inability to win conference road games should be held against
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: any team for what it's worth, right? We know Penn State.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: Chump change. Now, Northwestern, let's see what they can do
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: on the road, right? They got to go win one
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: on the road. Pitt's win. I'm very costly. That was
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: a big deal on the road. What a game, man,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: that Pitt-Virginia Tech game. It was just a ton of,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you throw in the, it was a good
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: night there and you throw in that Northwestern-Penn State game.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: It was a half-decent Friday night. But very quickly on Miami's, look,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: it was Death Valley at night. We were set up
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: for a tough game. I feel like Miami and Notre
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: Dame are just stalking each other. We almost had the
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: identical game. Both had to go to a state with
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: Carolina in it. One was north, one was south. Both
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: were on the road. Notre Dame had the easier time slot, right?
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: A noon game on the road is a little bit
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: easier than a night game on the road. But they
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: had the tougher weather. They didn't cover. Miami did. Miami
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: beat a team that beat the team that Notre Dame–
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: Seem to have trouble getting around, but I will... I'm
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: giving Notre Dame credit for that win. It's a good win.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: Because both Belichick and Dabo cared a lot about those
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: respective games and had game plans to try to do
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: the best that they could. But my big observation, as
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: I told you at the top, is Miami did to
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: Clemson what Clemson did to Miami a few years ago
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: for me. When I thought Miami was on its way back,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: playing Clemson was a reality check. And you realize, boy,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: we have a talent gap. Well, that was... very apparent
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: last night. There just was a physicality and italic in it,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: which then, if you're a Clemson partisan, the question is,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: what do you do? How much time do you give
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Dabo to adapt? Can he adapt to this new system?
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: Not everybody can adapt to this new system of media.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I have fully adapted. I'd like
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: to think I'm more adaptive than most in this space,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: but I'm doing my best to adapt. Some people have
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: adapted well. Mario Cristobal, I think, is adapting. There's no doubt.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: Kirby Smart is adapting. I'm trying to think of coaches
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: that were successful on both ends of this new college
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: football experience. Dabble hasn't figured it out yet. And the
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: question is, how much time if you're Clemson do you
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: give them? Or do you make a wholesale change? Because
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: this last night, the Saturday night, I gave away, I'm
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: taping here on Sunday. The Saturday night, loss for Clemson
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: was four years in the making. It was four years
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: of Miami building itself up, but four years of Clemson
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: atrophying and not having success, whether it's not doing the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: portal soon enough, whatever it is, the physical talent gap
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: was quite striking. And I just, I just have this
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: memory of when Clemson did the reverse to Miami. So
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: it was a bit of a I think if I'm
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: a Clemson person, that's a huge wake-up call. By the way,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: Ohio State, I think it's an impressive win, right? All
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: of the big teams had to play tough games on
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: the road. Ohio State had to go to Iowa City,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: never easy. Notre Dame had to go to Chapel Hill
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: in a game that Belichick was going to care a
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: lot about in bad weather. Miami had to go to
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: Death Valley. Alabama had to go to Stark Vegas. The
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: question is, did Mississippi State get exposed? Certainly, we know
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: they don't have much of a defense. But look, the
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: big game is next week on Alabama's front, right? It's Georgia-Alabama.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: On one hand, the game is meaningless, right? But essentially,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: they're playing for the bye. It's probably one way to
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: look at, you know, who will get a bye? Who
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: will be in the first four and who won't, right?
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: Who's going to have to host a game at home
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: in December? And who's going to get a bye going
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: right to the bowls? That pretty much feels this. As
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: for Florida-Missouri... You know, Missouri does this. This, to me,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: is more of a Missouri issue than a Florida. Florida
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: has won a game on the road, that Auburn victory.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: But they got rolled. And in some ways, you kind
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: of expected it. But the defense is still a question mark.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: And Florida might not be a playoff team because of that.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: Just like Miami. Miami defensively wasn't ready to be a
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: playoff team in the Cam Ward year. You know, we
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: were 10-2, but we didn't make it. And you know what?
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: We didn't have the defense to succeed. I think that's
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: the case with Florida. That's for Missouri. Can you win
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: a game on the road in conference? I mean, Missouri
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: probably is the most Jekyll and Hyde team in the SEC.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: They regularly pull these upsets or near upsets off at home,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: and they regularly fall flat on their face on the road.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: So it's something. Two most entertaining games, Syracuse-UConn, Kentucky-South Carolina. Um,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: I just love a good game. Thankfully, I didn't have
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: any money on either one of them. I most impressive
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: win might be wake forest. You know, we know Stanford,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: you know, was maybe the time zone thing was really
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: that bad, but you know, I think the, I think
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: if I'm Florida state and I'm like thinking about a new, um,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: my next coach, I think Dickard over in, in, uh, uh, uh, is, uh, is,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: is going to be somebody I'd put on that list.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: By the way, speaking of Florida state, I thought the
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: UVA coach might be somebody worth it. That guy's terrible
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: clock management. I watched it. That's first half clock management
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: was so bad to me. He's unhirable, unhirable. If you
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: want to compete for national titles, he may be really
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: good at recruiting, maybe really good at coaching players. Boy,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: did he have a terrible, I mean, it was, it
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: was pop Warner ask. It was such bad decision-making and
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: clock management. Um, I mean, I literally eliminated that guy
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: from top-end consideration. To me, it was that bad of
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: a performance. But overall, I said I wanted Miami to
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: put a pasting on Clemson. I think we proved a point. I,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: you know, the running game got, it was exactly, it
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: was a very Mario Cristobal game. Running game wasn't that
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: good at the beginning, but we wore the other team down.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: And by the end, we were popping five and six
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: yard runs and essentially putting the game out of reach.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: This is probably the game that cost Tony the Heisman trophy.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: He was always going to be a longer shot at
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: the Heisman this year than he will be. He might
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: be one of the front runners next year, but I
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: feel like Jeremiah Smith, that this thing is his to lose.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: And once again, when they needed scores, he was there
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: for Ohio State. He was the key guy. The good
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: news about Miami's offense is that we showed that, go ahead,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: double up, Tony. We've got plenty of other people that
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: can make big plays. So that was a game that
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: said to me that Miami's every week is getting a
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: little bit better. Every week is preparing for the grind
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: that is the college football playoff. And that's something we
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: all have to keep in mind. I am not. I
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: think solid wins are solid wins. You only need to
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: blow a team out if you're worried you're going to
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: get left out. But if you're winning, just keep winning.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: Because undefeated teams or one-loss teams from powerful conferences, they're
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: not getting left out of the playoff. And instead, you
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: should be preparing for the playoff. And in that sense,
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: how is that? Miami's got a much-needed bye. The injuries
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: are piling up. So I am happy about the bye week.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: Then we had Florida State and I got to give
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: Mike Norvell credit. That team has not quit on him.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: One iota. That should mean something to my friends in
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: the administration at Florida State. All right. I'll shut up.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: I will see you in 24 hours for Super Tuesday.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: And with that, thanks for liking. Thanks for subscribing. Please
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: tell a friend or two. We'd love to have them
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: as part of the podcast community. See you then.