Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck's Commentary - Reaction to Tuesday's elections + Failure for Trump in Iran

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Chuck's Commentary - Reaction to Tuesday's elections + Failure for Trump in Iran · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. Hello, They're happy Wednesday, and
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  Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast. We've got
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  Speaker 1: a pretty busy episode here, got an interesting interview. Look,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: we're having a big debate about the politics of patriotism
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: with the pull with the President deciding to turn the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of July and the two hundred and fiftieth birthday into
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: something that is fused with his own personal brand and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: personal celebrity, it is only adding to the politics of patriotism.
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  Speaker 1: So I had an interesting conversation with the author Dominic
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: er Dezaan. He's got a book called to Love a Country,
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  Speaker 1: and it really is about sort of the history of
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  Speaker 1: patriotism in this country and what is the line between
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  Speaker 1: patriotism and nationalism, the role of American exceptionalism in this
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  Speaker 1: conversation about patriotism anyway, Look, this is a topic that
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  Speaker 1: I think there's going to be more discussion of the
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  Speaker 1: closer we get to July fourth, and the more President
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  Speaker 1: Trump decides to put his imprint in, to try to
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  Speaker 1: fuse his own brand with something that is supposed to
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  Speaker 1: belong to every American, regardless of political persuasion. So that's
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  Speaker 1: the conversation for today. But I'm I got a few
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  Speaker 1: topics I want to get to. We got the election
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  Speaker 1: results from last night, We got the latest on the
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  Speaker 1: Iran deal or what we don't know about the Iran deal.
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  Speaker 1: And then there's a story that is probably the single
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: most important story you haven't heard about this week. But
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  Speaker 1: it's quite frightening, it's quite important, and it's quite familiar.
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  Speaker 1: I also have a top five list this week. It
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: is the top five most underrated races out there, five
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  Speaker 1: races that are much more competitive than the coverage by
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  Speaker 1: the political media would let you would let on. And
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  Speaker 1: of course we will take some questions, but let me
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  Speaker 1: just start with last night and what happened. Let's look
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: at it big picture. In the battle for control of Congress,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: there was really only one race that mattered. It was
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the runoff for the Republican Senate nomination in Georgia. The
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  Speaker 1: question was who was going to get that nomination to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: face off against Democratic and comment Senator John Ossoff. If
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  Speaker 1: you're John Ossoff, I think and your choices were a
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  Speaker 1: sitting member of Congress and Mike Collins and an outsider
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  Speaker 1: former football coach and the son of a legendary Georgia
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  Speaker 1: football coach, Derek Dooley. You wanted to face the member
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  Speaker 1: of Congress. Right, what's the more unpopular institution, football or Congress? Right,
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  Speaker 1: It's a pretty easy call. Now, Donald Trump endorsed Mike Collins.
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  Speaker 1: He did not endorse Derek Dooley. And there's one good
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: reason why he didn't do it. He didn't endorse Derek Dooley,
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  Speaker 1: because Derek Dooley is Brian Kemp's candidate. This is who
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  Speaker 1: the governor recruited to run. And of course the President
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  Speaker 1: did when he did his endorsement for Mike Collins late
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  Speaker 1: last week, he made a point to note that Derek Dooley.
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  Speaker 1: One of the reasons he didn't want to support Derek
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  Speaker 1: Dooley is Derek Dooley correctly knew who won the twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty election. Is Joe Biden won the election. He does
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  Speaker 1: not believe in Donald Trump's manufactured fantasy land. And of
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  Speaker 1: course when you don't believe in his fantasies about the
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty election, you don't get his support. Well, look,
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  Speaker 1: the Trump endorsement has not been a guarantee this primary
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  Speaker 1: season of victory, but it was enough to get Mike Collins.
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  Speaker 1: Now we're going to get to something here, because Donald
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Trump did not go undefeated in Georgia. He actually went
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  Speaker 1: one and one, and that is bad news for him,
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  Speaker 1: but it's actually good news for the Republican Party. I'm
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  Speaker 1: going to get to that in a minute, but let
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  Speaker 1: me go to the Senate race. Look, the fact of
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  Speaker 1: the matter is, and I mentioned this before, in the
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  Speaker 1: Big seven states right the seventh battleground stage, of which
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  Speaker 1: Georgia is one of them. But if you look at Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia,
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  Speaker 1: North Carolina, when Donald Trump has the Donald Trump endorsed
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: candidates have fallen on their face. They are terrible general
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  Speaker 1: election candidates. They just don't succeed Herschel Walker and Georgia,
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  Speaker 1: Mark Robinson, Kerrie Lake in Arizona. We've seen it in
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  Speaker 1: that the Mastriano character in Pennsylvania. Before that you had
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: doctor Oz. So the Donald Trump endorsement in one of
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  Speaker 1: these battleground states is a net negative in a general election.
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  Speaker 1: Never mind that he's actually more unpopular now than he
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  Speaker 1: was before. His track record in these swing states was
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  Speaker 1: pretty bad in general elections when he had a better
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  Speaker 1: jobberpoople rating, but now his jobberpoovle rating is in the
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  Speaker 1: mid to high thirties. So I think if you're John
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  Speaker 1: Ossoff tonight or this morning, excuse me, on Wednesday morning,
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  Speaker 1: you would rather run against Congressman Mike Collins than coach
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  Speaker 1: Derek Dooley. So I think it's pretty clear and it's
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  Speaker 1: interesting national Republicans. I have a feeling that Mike Collins
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  Speaker 1: is going to be on his own if Osoff builds
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  Speaker 1: a lead of anywhere, signify when you look at the
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  Speaker 1: money suck that Ken pactice. Ken Paxton's campaign is going
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  Speaker 1: to be in Texas. You know, I don't think the
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  Speaker 1: party and they certainly have to throw everything they can
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  Speaker 1: to hold Ohio. They have to throw everything they hand
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  Speaker 1: to hold Texas. I think they are going to have
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  Speaker 1: an opportunity going offense in Michigan that leaves Georgia and
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  Speaker 1: North Carolina in precarious positions here. I think now the
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  Speaker 1: Republican Party has two week nominees, by the way, nominees
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  Speaker 1: that are their thanks to Donald Trump, and the association
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  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump has made these gentlemen weaker general election candidates.
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  Speaker 1: May have helped them in a primary. Michael Wattley didn't
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  Speaker 1: even have a primary. The field got cleared for him
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  Speaker 1: North Carolina or Mike Collins. So there's that. Now, let's
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  Speaker 1: talk about the governor's race, because here I think Republicans
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  Speaker 1: caught a break and Democrats are a little bit disappointed
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  Speaker 1: in the results. On Tuesday night, Rick Jackson, the outsider
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  Speaker 1: businessman who did not have Trump's endorsement, certainly spent money
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  Speaker 1: like he was Tom Stier. He's essentially the Tom Styer
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  Speaker 1: the Republican Party. This year. He did not spend as
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  Speaker 1: much money as Tom Sire did in California, but George
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  Speaker 1: is not as big as California per capita. He came
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  Speaker 1: awfully close to spending a similar amount of money in
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  Speaker 1: Georgia as Stier did in California. And Jackson beat the
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  Speaker 1: Trump endorsed sitting Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones. Now Burt Jones'
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  Speaker 1: total election denier. This is an again and go back
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  Speaker 1: to the point I was making about Mike Collins here.
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  Speaker 1: Probably in this political environment, in a battleground state, probably unelectable,
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  Speaker 1: and certainly Democrats were really feeling pretty good about their
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  Speaker 1: chances to win the Georgia gubernatorial seat if Burt Jones
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  Speaker 1: was the nominee. But he's not going to be the nominee.
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  Speaker 1: Rick Jackson's a different story. Keisha Lance Bottoms is a
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  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee. She was able to get that nomination without
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  Speaker 1: having to be forced into a runoff. And now so
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: look the best thing she's got going for her is
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  Speaker 1: John ossof he's going to have a bunch of extra money.
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  Speaker 1: So the combination of the ticket, I mean it, look,
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  Speaker 1: this is this is going to be a very close race.
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  Speaker 1: You know, ken Osoff. Can the National Environment pull Keisha
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  Speaker 1: Lan's bottoms over the finish line? I think that's the
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  Speaker 1: open question here. But if you're the Democrats, you're disappointed
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  Speaker 1: in this result from last night. Rick Jackson, he doesn't
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  Speaker 1: have to carry the baggage of Trump. Sure, certainly he's
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  Speaker 1: embraced saying that, you know, sort of finds ways to
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  Speaker 1: compare himself to Trump, you know, as an outsider, as
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  Speaker 1: a businessman. But he's it's been an I think he's
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  Speaker 1: run a very as smart of a campaign as you
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  Speaker 1: can when you have this cult of personality that hovers
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  Speaker 1: over the party. So I think this is it's funny
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  Speaker 1: the White House isn't happy because you know, he's always
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  Speaker 1: unhappy when he looks like a loser. But the Republican
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  Speaker 1: Party now has a better chance of holding the Georgia
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  Speaker 1: Governor's mansion Wednesday morning because of Rick Jackson than they
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  Speaker 1: would had Burt Jones been that nominee Alabama. One thing
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  Speaker 1: I was watching there is if Barrymore was going to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: find out that being a member of Congress in a
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  Speaker 1: runoff against an outsider populist on the right. Was that
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  Speaker 1: going to end as badly as it did for Randy
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  Speaker 1: Feincher in Iowa. It did not in Alabama. More with
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  Speaker 1: Trump's endorsement is there and he's going to be the
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  Speaker 1: next US senator, Democrats are not really putting up a
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  Speaker 1: big fight there. If they put up any fight in Alabama,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: it's going to be in that governor's race. And in fact,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I'll have more on that governor's race in that top
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  Speaker 1: five list I talked to you about and that I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: teased you about earlier this week. We're going to have
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: a runoff in Oklahoma. That's interesting in governor. But look,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: this is a one party state, so the primary is
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the general. So in that case, the runoff is in
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  Speaker 1: some ways now the general election there. And look, I
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: think the only other race of significance Tuesday night that
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: we do not have the result of is DC mayor.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Are they going to elect a socialist mayor or are
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: they going to elect somebody from the mainstream wing of
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the party. That's the question. This thing's going to rank
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: choice voting. We'll find out. What's interesting is by the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: last couple weeks of the campaign, both candidates for DC
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: mayor were being very sort of trying to show themselves
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: willing to be confrontational with the Trump administration if necessary,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: sort of trying to take a different tack that Mario
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Bowser had taken over the last certainly over the last
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: eighteen months since Donald Trump's returned to office here. So
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see if the DSA candidate wins,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: how the Trump administration responds, and how much they're going
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to be tempted to try to use this as an
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: exploitive way to try to paint the Democratic Party nationally.
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  Speaker 1: Is somehow a part of this. You know, it didn't
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: work with mam Donni. Republicans thought they could use Mamdanni
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: to at least cause problems for Mikey Cheryl in that
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  Speaker 1: New Jersey governor's race back in November twenty twenty five.
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  Speaker 1: It had zero impact. I don't think this stuff has
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: impact outside of the actual jurisdiction that the election is
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: in now, though, I want to pivot to what we
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: know and don't know about the arandeal. First of all,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it's interesting to watch the Trump administration scramble here and
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: essentially trying not to talk about the details of this
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: arandeal I guess we'll see it on Friday. You have
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: John Thune publicly asking for more details on this deal.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: You have the Iranians leaking what they say are the
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: details of this, which includes accessing a three hundred billion
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: dollar fund for reconstruction. It's it's interesting Vice President of Vance,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: who went on The View and some other places to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: try to spin and sell this deal seem to hint
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: wanted to make it clear, well that money isn't coming
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: directly from the United States, and it's like, it's obvious
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: what Trump is going to try to do, which is
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: he's laundering this the money that's being used to essentially
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: bribe the Iranians to open the strait before they do
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: anything about the nuclear discussion. Is money in some way
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: that we're opening up? Are we funneling it through the
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Gulf States? You know, money is fungible. So it's funny
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: because Donald Trump, mister palletts of cash attack line that
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: he used a lot against Barack Obama and the original
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Iran nuclear deal. He's so desperate to preserve that talking
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: point that they want to try to convince people that
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: all of this cash that the Iranians are getting it's
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: not directly coming from the United States. Instead, it's coming
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: because the United States completely miscalculated in this war. But
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: there's a few things that are notable to me about this.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: If the Iranians spin on what the deal looks like,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: what the memo of understanding looks like, we're flat out wrong.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: The Administration would be able to provide details to prove
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: that we're flat out wrong. They have not done that.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: It is clear that the administration was desperate to do
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: whatever it took to open the strait. The economic pain
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: that this was causing them, the political pain that this
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: was causing them, they were just this was a They
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: were just incredibly desperate to do whatever it took, and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: they seem to have handed the Iranians what is a
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: victory here. The Iranians are getting a lot of what
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: they're asking for here, probably more than they expected. And
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: it's simply because they control the strait of hormones and that,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you know that, ultimately is what makes this entire rn
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: escapade just a giant, colossal failure. And again I've said
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: this before, I respect the the There there's two sides
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of this art. There was this. There's the side of
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the argument that says you shouldn't have started the war
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: in the first place. And then there's the side of
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the argument that says, if you're gonna do this, you're
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: gonna you need to you need to go all in.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: You can't half ass it. Donald Trump doesn't know any
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: other thing other in life other than half assing everything.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: He always does everything half assed. Just ask look at
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the reflecting pool. Right, he thought a code of paint
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: was going to clean up the problem, you know, when
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: actually the algae issue is something more complicated, takes hard work. Actually,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: you know, these are things that Donald Trump knows nothing about. Right,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: he just wants to splash a code of paint. Hey
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: take a look at this, and in July fifth, he
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't care. In fact, watch what they do with this
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: reflecting reflecting pool. Not to divert too much here for Iran.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: All he cares about is a reflecting pool not have
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: algae in it between now and July fourth. Right, So
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: they're going to constantly probably overpay people, throw money at
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the problem, do whatever they can to constantly try to
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: skim the reflecting pool. And then in July fifth, he's
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: not going to give a shit anymore and he's just
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: going to walk away and again never actually having fixed
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: the problem. It's basically what the Trump presidency is going
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: to look like in hindsight. Boy, he did a lot
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: of stuff. He broke a lot of stuff. He didn't
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: do a lot of stuff, and half the stuff they did,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: we've got to start back over and do it again.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: It's probably going to be the lesson of that East
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: wing when we get closer to it. But going back
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to Iran, I do think there are there are hawks
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: inside the Trump coalition that are going to finally leave
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: him over this. They haven't left him yet, they're all
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting. I interviewed Mike Pence earlier this
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: week before and vie for is going to appear a
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: newsphere uh and my Newsfare show on Sunday, But we
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: released an early clip about the Iran portion of our conversation,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and the former Vice president in some ways was very
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: consistent in how whenever he's wanted to level criticism on
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and he's not the only person that does this.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You get it from those that like Lindsey Graham, right,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: those that are that know what he's doing here. You know,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: it's like ten x worse than anything they ever criticized
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Obama for. And they know what kind of hypocrites they
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: look like. But you know, Trump's that sensitive they can't
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: ever look like they're criticizing them. So what the former
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: vice president did with me, and what you see all
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: these Republicans do is they begin with this this bizarre praise, right,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: and the former vice president said, well, look, you know
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: this president had the guts to confront the Iranians in
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: ways that previous presidents had, So it's basic the choosing
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: to act. He was trying to praise and I'm like,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and but the plan was bad. The plan was a failure.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: And while he wouldn't accept the premise that it's a failure,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: yet he said, it doesn't look good. And then he
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: finally admits, I would he would not if he had
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: been president, or if he had still been vice president
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: advising President Trump. He would not have advocating advocated stopping
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the military campaign. And he thinks that the stopping of
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the military campaign essentially handed the Iranians leverage and they've
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: run with it. And here we are, what's going to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: be interesting is Israel's behavior between now and the next
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: sixty days. It's clear this deal is politically a disaster
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: for BB domestically, right, because here he has been dining
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: out on his relationship with Donald Trump, dining out in
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: his ability to get Donald Trump to essentially to do
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the bidding and to sort of that of Israel when
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: it comes to their foreign policy goals. That is no
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: longer the case, and BB now looks oddly weak, right.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: He's going to get attacked in this, you know, and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: he's going to be up for election this fall. He's
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: going to get attacked essentially won't be necessarily from his right,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: but it's going to be from hawks who say, hey,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: you you essentially threw yourself in with Donald Trump, and
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Israel is paying the price, right they they essentially outsourced
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: their military sovereignty to the United States. That's going to
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: be the criticism on Israel. And I know some of
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: you out there are very critical of Israel's foreign policy,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: but I'm just talking about the domestic politics here. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: trust me, if bib Netnaho is not the Prime minister
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: six months from now, that might be you know that
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: that is something that politically may benefit Democrats down the road,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: because I think the person that is the biggest polarizing
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: force on the issue of Israel in American politics, it's
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: not Donald Trump, it's actually bb and if Netanyahu is
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: not there, and this essentially, this deal that Trump cuts
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: with the Iranians essentially spells the end of Bibi's political career,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: which it may, it's this could be the beginning of
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that that's going to have an interesting unintended consequences on
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: some domestic debates inside the Democratic Party regarding Israel. And
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: if that is, if that is less front and center
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of an issue, that might mean that Democrats won't be
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: as divided going into twenty eight as some people think
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: self included that they could be. But bottom line is,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting here about this and one last
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: point here in Iran is you know, the one thing
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: that the Obama administration would regularly do when Trump was
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: was attacking them, what the Clinton campaign would regularly do
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: when Trump was attacking them, would Democrats would do what
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: some of us in the media would do when Trump
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: was attacking us is not respond is not fill the void.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: And it turned out to be a mistake because Trump's
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: ability to sort of own the conversation to fill the vacuum,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: even with misinformation, made it that much harder down the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: road for the truth to ever surface back up. Well,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: what's funny is watching the Trump White House basically get
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: played the way they normally play others, and the Iranians
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: are playing them. And it certainly appears that the President
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: is so afraid of this fragile deal collapsing that he's
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: letting the Iranians essentially dominate this this current vacuum fill
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it in with what more and more folks are wondering, Boy,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: are the Iranians giving us more details than our own
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: government is giving us? And if those details are remotely true,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: on my word, it's going to make many conservatives long
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: for the original Iran deal that Barack Obama song. So look,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: as I said the other day about the only the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: only praise you can give Trump on this is that
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: at least he understood that he had to stop digging, right,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: he could have doubled down and tried to half ass
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: this war longer air strike his way out of it.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm one of those who thinks that if
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: he were serious about this, and he really wanted regime change, which,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of course now he says he's never talked about it,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: never wanted it, doesn't care about it. I know there
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: is nothing he says you can take at face value.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't know why I bother even reflecting what
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: he may say for one minute, because the mind's going
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: to change later. But given all the damage that has
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: already come here, Trump would have been better off doubling down,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: sending in ground troops and trying to actually do this
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the hard way. And there was the only way you
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: were going to pull this off, so that if you
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: were going to do this the hard way, there was
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: no easy way to do this. But Donald Trump doesn't
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: know any other way. The idea of doing of trying
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to do something that's hard, that's anathema to him. So
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I have a few more things I wanted to say
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: about sort of what Trump's been trying to do. Right,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: He's been trying to fuse America's birthday, his birthday. He's
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: been desperate to He's desperate to leave an imprint on
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the country in some form or another. Right he is. So,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: whether it's his own personal neediness, maybe it's his fear
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that history is going to treat him accurately, and he
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: knows if history treats him accurately, he won't just be
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: reflected in history. He might get erased from history. And
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: it's clearly a fear. And I think that fear has
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: driven him to desperately attach his name and reflected glory
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: on anything he can get his hands on. Right, if
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: he could have figured out a way to get somebody
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: to chisel his face on Mount Rushmore, he would have
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: done it. It's clear that that was too hard of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a task. So that's why he tried things like attaching
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: his name to the Kennedy And I do think symbolically
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the fact that his name has been physically taken off,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the fact that he lost this one, I do think
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: it's any acknowledgment. And I know we've said this before,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: and I hesitate even uttering the phrase I'm about to say,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: but I think this is symbolically the beginning of the
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: end of the Trump era and of Trump. First of all,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: if you watched him at all during the G seven,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: this is this is suddenly he's he looks as bad
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: as Biden did on any of those trips in twenty
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: four And we know, look at eighty years old. These
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: foreign trips take an enormous toll. Remember Biden was was
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: apparently barely coherent at that George Clooney fundraiser when he
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: did like a nine hour flight from Italy for a
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: similar meeting that Donald Trump's been at this week, and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Trump's been he just you know, you could look at
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: he stayed up half the night for is Chuck E.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Cheese's birthday party in the South Lawn with the UFC fight,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: he immediately cops on a plane and goes to the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: G seven. And he's eighty years old, right, these are
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: he does not have. You know, there's not many eighty
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: year olds out there that could handle a schedule like his,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: let alone somebody who was in such poor health, who
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: does no exercise, who does not eat well. Right, he
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: doesn't even make an attempt to try to make it
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit easier to try to live a healthy
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: life at eighty years old. But I do think that
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the image of that name being brought down and why look,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Trump knew it, right, this is why they put the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: fear of God and those poor gentlemen that they had
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: to go find like extra bed sheets to cover up
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the scaffolding while they pulled the name down, but I
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: do want you to sit with that image because I
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: think it's the most honest portrait we have of this
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: presidency right now. Not the controversies, not January six, not
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the tariffs, none of the stuff that we spend so
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: much time arguing about. It's the scaffolding, right, It's a
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: good symbol. Because here's the thing about Donald Trump that
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think we say enough. He chases a monument
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: to himself without ever building the thing that a monument
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: is actually supposed to commemorate. Right, let me just look
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: at his entire career. His lasting marks aren't constructions outside
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: of Trump Tower. His lasting marks, politically are demolitions. And
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that's the whole problem when you are so desperate to
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: see your name in marble because you don't see buildings
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: named after a wrecking ball. Let's think about the names
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that actually end up on things from American history. Roosevelt
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: social Security still cutting checks ninety years later, Eisenhower, the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Interstate Highway System, NATA, Lyndon Johnson for all of his
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: wreckage at the war, the Civil Rights Act, medicare. These
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: men have their names on buildings and bills and airports,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: because they actually built something that outlived them, and a
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: grateful country, sometimes decades later, decided to carve their name
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: in stone. The commemoration came at the end. It was
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: granted by other people. Eisenhower didn't force his own name
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: on the interstate highway system. Right, that's the difference. Now,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: a fair critic might stop me and say, hey, come on,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Trump has some durable accomplishments that may deserve commemoration at
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: some point, three Supreme Court justices, a whole new branch
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of the military space force, and those things are true,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and those things will outlast them. But look closer at
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: both of those so called accomplishments. The three Supreme Court seats, Well,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: that's just an actuary old draw right, like he just
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: happened to preside when they became open. A death, a retirement,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: another death, plus Mitch McConnell's procedural hardball right hand, those
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: same three vacancies and that same Senate to any Republican president,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and you get probably the same three justices off the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: same Federalist Society list. Right. There is nothing in those
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: picks that is distinctly Trump. Where you said, boy, without Trump,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't have them. It's, frankly, the most generic thing
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: a president can do. A point a spring Court justice.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: And then there's Space Force. It's one thing he's actually
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: credited with building in his first term. But here's the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: part that never gets told about that the idea didn't
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: come from Trump. It came out of Congress, and it
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: was bipartisan. It was a Republican and a Democrat on
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the Armed Services Committee that was pushing something called the
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Space Corps back in twenty seventeen. And Trump's own administration
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: actually fought the idea. At first, his own Defense secretary
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: wrote a rare letter opposing the idea. His own White
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: House called it premature, put it on the list of
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: they didn't want. They said that they leave it out
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of the Defense bill. Well in twenty seventeen, Donald Trump
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: lost that fight. Then a year later, you know, frankly,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: this is not the dumbest idea, it's good politics. He
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: decided to turn around adopt the idea he had opposed,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and changed exactly one thing about it, the name space Corps.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Turned it to Space Force. The Senate backed his name.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: The House called the identical thing a space Corps. So
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the one institution he supposedly built. His contribution was simply
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the branding. It's kind of on brand for him, right.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: He put his label on a blueprint somebody else drew
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and his own Pentagon had tried to kill, which, when
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you think about it, is the Kennedy Center move, just
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: earlier and legal because that time he got Congress to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: ratify the name. But if you want to understand the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: real cost of all this, the cost of wanting the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: prestige without doing the actual work, look at North Korea.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Because I did. Look, I wanted to tackle this issue
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: of him desperately to the to like create a monument
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: to himself. Has he done anything that's even worthy? You know,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and you consider and say, okay, there's a few things.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: That's why Space Force. Sure any president would have done it.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: In fact, he tried to stop it. The Supreme Court
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Justices again actuary tables. There was one unique thing he did,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and that was try to change how we dealt with
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: North Korea. So he did the thing no living president
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: would do. He walked across that line. He shook Kim
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Jong UN's hand, he got the photographs, he got the summit,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: he got the historic first, and then he skipped the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: part that actually mattered, you know, the hard work, the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: years of grinding, unglamorous shared credit diplomacy that might have
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: produced a real constraint on that regime. But all he
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: wanted was the picture, not the agreement. So here's the scoreboard. Today,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, North Korea is not less dangerous,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: it is more dangerous. Pyongyang is racing its nuclear program forward,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: firing more missiles in a month than it has in years.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It's being bankrolled by Russia cash, defense technology, a security
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: guarantee in exchange for troops and artillery shells for Russia's
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: war with Ukraine. The sanctions regime that used to give
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: us leverage Russia veto did there is nothing we can
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: offer Kim Jong un now that Moscow isn't offering more
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: of The handshake didn't freeze the problem. It blessed it,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: and then it got worse. And that's what impatience spies you.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: The flashy first and a problem harder than the one
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: you found. Frankly, the same thing that's happened with Iran now.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: But you want the thesis in one image, not a
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: metaphor an actual building, Well, then you get to look
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: at the east wing of the White House. He told
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: us the ball He told us the ballroom wasn't going
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: to touch the east wing, wasn't going to interfere with
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the existing structure. That was last July. By October the
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: wrecking crews were there, and within weeks the entire east wing,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: a wing that had stood since nineteen oh two that
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: held the First Lady's offices, was gone, leveled, hauled off
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: in dumpsters. And the ballroom he tore it down for
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: the four hundred million dollar ballroom. Well, a federal judge
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: is now frozen because they started swinging the wrecking ball
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: before anybody signed off on the building. So sit with
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the picture. The demolition is finished, the construction is not.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: There is a hole on the east side of the
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: White House where something stood for one and nearly one
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five years, and the monument that was
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: supposed to replace it exists only in a rendering that
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: he likes to wave around on Air Force one, that
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: is Trump in one giant pile of rubble. He got
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: the tearing down done. He's good at tearing things down.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: The building is now going to be somebody else's problem,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: or it judge's or twenty twenty nines. So put it together.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Durable accomplishments are slow, and they're kind of born. The
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: credit gets shared, the payoff is delayed, and the monument,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: if it does come, comes at the end and somebody
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: else decides to build that monument for you. Donald Trump
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: wants the reward up front, so he seizes the name
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: before he's done the work. He declares the first, before
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: he secured the deal. He brands the building before he
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: has ever even built it, and sometimes he never builds
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: it at all. He just knocks down the thing that
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: was already standing. So two pictures this spring that I
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: do think spell the end. We know the Trump ra
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: is coming to an end. Maybe a bumpy landing, and
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: maybe I have terrible end, maybe a crash landing, but
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: it is coming to an end. And those two pictures,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the scaffolding at the Kennedy Center to pull his name
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: off a building that he didn't build. At the White House,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: you've got scaffolding going up over the wreckage of the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: one building he did tear down, same instinct, same season,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: same man. He will be remembered, I have no doubt
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: about that. And he may be the most consequential president
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: we've had since FDR. But consequential and commemorated are not
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: the same thing. One you earn by what you teared out,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the other you earned by what you leave standing. And
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: we are running low on things this president has left standing.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: He can't even get woke algae out of the reflecting pool. Sorry,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I can't help myself. I find the woke ideology woke
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: algae kind of dad pun too good to pass out.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: He can't even get that done right. You don't name
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: buildings after the wrecking ball, and make no mistake, that
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: is what this presidency is going to be known for,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: a wrecking ball. And by the way, the estimate for
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the East Wing is now up to six hundred million,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: and it's likely that taxpayers are going to have to
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: pick up the tab to rebuild whatever is left of
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: this rubble once once we find out what's legal and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: what's proper. Before I get to my conversation about the
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: politics of patriotism, I wanted to tell you about a
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: story that I think it's the single most important story
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: that has not gotten enough attention to the United States
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: this weekend. It weirdly is understandable why it hasn't. We
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: have some other stuff going on, but trust me, it's
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: an incredibly important story. In fact, if you glance at
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the headlines this week internationally, you might have caught a
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: brief mention of a court case in London. A twenty
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: two year old builder named Roman was convicted of setting
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: fire to properties linked to British Prime Minister Keres Starmer. Yes,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Kure Starmer's still the Prime Minister, he hasn't been thrown
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: out office yet. But this person tried to set fire
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: to a hall where the Prime Minister's family was sleeping.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: On the surface, it looked like a terrifying, localized lone
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: wolf attack. But a massive joint investigation by the Financial
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Times and Panorama, which is the BBC's flagship investigative program,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: their version of sixty minutes, has just pulled back the
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: curtain on what is actually the most important story you
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: missed this week. Because Roman wasn't acting alone. He was
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: a weaponized proxy, and he was and the puppet master
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: pulling the strings the Russian state. Now, let's be entirely
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: square about what the Russians were trying to achieve here.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: This wasn't just some random act of state sponsored arson
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: going after the Prime Minister. The explicit strategic objective of
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: the Kremlin was to make the British public believe that
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: their Prime Minister was being physically hunted and attacked by angry,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: radicalized Muslims. And to pull this off, here's how the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: operation worked. A single three year old Russian name, Evgeny Lukshan,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: operating within elite Kremlin diplomatic circles, ran a dual sided
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: psychological trap over telegram. On one side, all of this
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: is in this BBC report, with the Financial Times. On
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: one side. He manufactured a fake online group called the
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Takbir Foundation, pretending to be an extremist Islamic cell calling
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: for jihad in England. He paid local actors to paint
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: religious graffiti on public buildings to intentionally terrify the British
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: public and stoke anti Islamic fury. Then Lukshan switched accounts
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and launched direct Action UK. This was a fake far
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: right group. This group posted videos branding the Prime Minister
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: a trader and offered cryptocurrency bounties for attacks. They used
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: an ordinary online jobs board to trap a young Ukrainian
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: builder who I'd just told you about, escalating him from
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: minor vandalism to setting fire to a residential building, and
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: again the goal was total societal polarization in the UK.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Paint the target on the Prime Minister, blame the country's
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Muslim population, and watch British society tear itself apart from
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the inside out. Now I know what you're thinking. I've
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: seen this story before, Avnai. Yes you have. If this
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: sounds shockingly sophisticated, it actually shouldn't. We need to remind
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: ourselves that this operation is almost identical to what the
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Special Council Robert Muller successfully uncovered and documented it in
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen Russia Investigation. People often
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: forget that the Muller report exposed a Russian Internet research
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: agency playbook that did this exact same thing to the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: American electorate in twenty sixteen. Russian operatives didn't just postpartisan memes.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: They built large fake Facebook groups representing opposite sides of
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: America's deepest fractures. They created a fake page called United
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Muslims of America to harvest hundreds of thousands of followers
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: while simultaneously running fake white nationalists and anti immigration groups.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Mueller documented cases where Russian handlers thousands of miles away
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: literally paid real unsuspecting Americans to stage opposing protests on
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: the exact same street corners in Texas and Florida, intentionally
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: weaponizing citizens against one another. The London Arson plot is
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: simply the twenty sixteen Muller blueprint, updated with cryptocurrency and
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: escalated to physical terrorism. Now this story is really important.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Look how just look closely at how this story went public.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Tracing ENCRYPTID telegram metadapa directly to the son of a
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: senior Russian diplomat photograph standing behind Russia's deputy foreign minister.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: That requires incredibly high grade operational data. All right, I
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: know a lot of great investigative journalists. None of them
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: are going to have the resources to do this. And
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: while Scotland Yard formerly maintains a cautious public stance, this
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: kind of deep forensic dump across major press outlets carries
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: all the hallmarks of an intentional move by British intelligence
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: to bypass standard diplomatic channels and force a warning into
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: the open. Frankly good for British intel if they did
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: do this. This needs to be out there. People need
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: to know what the Russians are doing. Yes, we can
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: self polarize as human beings, but the Russians are doing
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: it intentionally all over the West. By the way, here's
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: what's a little struggling this week. G seven leaders are
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: gathered at the moment, and we have heard absolute silence
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: from Washington and other Western capitals over the literal targeting
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: of an Allies prime minister. Now, part of that is
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: driven by the sheer political chaos in London right now,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: following disastrous local election results, Starmer's leadership is on life support.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Some domestic critics have viewed this year's Arson story through
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: a deeply cynical lens as a political shield to paint
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Starmer as a national security victim and to try to
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: quiet the political dogs at home right, But focusing strictly
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: on the domestic political theater here completely misses the point.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: The real reason for the silence. The West has taken
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: its eye off the Russian ball. Russia successfully confused the
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: American public over the last few years into thinking this
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: threat went away, but the Kremlin never stopped. And to
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: understand just how deep this confusion goes, you only have
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: to look at Washington. Just a few days ago, in
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: her final weeks, the Director of National Intel Diligence, Tulsa Gabbert,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: because she's still director until the end of the month,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: issued a sweeping declassification drop claiming to blow the lid
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: off a global network of over one hundred US funded
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: bio labs in Ukraine. Now, connecting all of these dots
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: requires analytical caution. What Gabbert declassified as a matter of
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: public record, so she didn't declassify a thing. The decades
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: old US Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which openly funds overseas
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: labs to secure old Soviet pathogens and to monitor disease.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: The Soviets were doing all sorts of a bioweapons crap
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: that we were trying to stop for and have it spread.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: It is also considered a public health initiative. But what
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Telsea Gabbert did for her friends over in Russia by
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: repackaging these standard facilities as secretive, dangerous biolabs with minimal oversight,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Gabbert effectively laundered a notorious Russian talking point pumped out
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: by Moscow since twenty twenty two into official US intelligence disclosure.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Do you know that Robert F. Kennedy Junior sort of
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: praised this disclosure, claiming she broke some new ground. So
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: did Roger Stone. If you needed a parade of suspects
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: of who's potentially on a Russian payroll, I think their
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: self identifying for what it's worth. But the point is
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: this is where the physical sabotage in London meets the
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: psychological sabotage here in Washington. Russia doesn't need to win
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: conventional wars to paralyze the West. By deploying this low
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: cost proxy to set a fire in London, they trigger
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: inner internal political cynicism by planning a narrative virus years
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: ago about biolabs. They watch as a high ranking US
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: official eventually nurture it into mainstream reality to think that
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the head of one of our major intelligence agencies is
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: spreading Russian propaganda and there has been barely a peep
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: about this. I mean, somebody is doing backflips in Moscow
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: right now. But the reason I wanted to make sure
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: you didn't lose the story because themo hasn't changed since
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen in Ukraine, twenty sixteen in America, or today
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: in the Ukraine. Russia is really good at locating our
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: fractures injecting this poison and then stepping back and allowing
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: our own political system and our own media echo chambers
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: to finish the job for him. It's twenty twenty six.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: They started doing this to us in twenty fifteen, and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: we've had a president for eight of those years who
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: not only wants to do six of those years, not
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: only wants to do nothing about it, but is convinced
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: half the country that all of this has been a hoax.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: That's cure Starmer's family, who could have get lit on fire,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: whether this stuff's a hoax. All right, with that, let's
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: sneak at a break and then we're gonna have our
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: tough conversation about the politics of patriotism. The biggest stage
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: in world soccer is here, and every goal changes everything.
• 46:23
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• 46:26
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• 46:44
  Speaker 1: So what does that mean if you're like me and
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: you're just coming to soccer because we're in the middle
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: of this big event, and yeah, you're gonna jump on
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: a bandwagon, And yeah, I'm jumping on the obvious bandwagon.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It's Team USA for me, and I enjoyed what four
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: to one. Look, some of us snarky sports fans you
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: would sometimes like to complain, oh, there's not enough scoring
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: in soccer. Well man, the first half of that match
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: against Paraguay, there's a lot of scoring. Three that counted,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: one that didn't. And look, I'm gonna be honest, it's
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: they're raising the bar, they're raising expectations for me. So
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Australia beat Turkey two to nothing, US beat Paraguay four
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: to one. Now Australia and the US meet this Friday,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: and there's Look, there's only one way I'm going to bet.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: It's going to be on you, on Team USA. And
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: the best part, by the way of the US planet Australia,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: is that, you know, for all of US casual bandwagon
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: fans who get mocked by our serious football friends for
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: calling it soccer, well, guess what, so does Australia, So
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: we can actually America is actually playing a team that
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: also caused soccer. So this might be the only actual
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: soccer match on both sides of the pitch. I'm learning
• 48:13
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• 48:17
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• 49:17
  Speaker 1: my top five list this week is brought to you
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: by fan Duels. So my top five list this week
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: is pretty simple. They're what I'm calling the five most
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: underrated races so far in twenty six And how am
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: I classifying underrated underrated to me is these are races
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: that are as competitive as Texas Senate, as competitive maybe
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: as Ohio Senate, Texas Senate, Main Senate, Iowa governor, but
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: are not getting the attention that they deserve. They're sort
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: of getting second tier attention. And just because they're getting
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: second tier attention doesn't mean they're not super super competitive.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: For the purposes of this exercise, of these five races,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: three are Republican health seats that Democrats are hoping to flip,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: and two are Democratic health seats that Republicans are hoping
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to flip. So look, my number five most underrated race
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: that I'm putting on here is Minnesota Senate. This is
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: a race where you have, I think you're going to
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: have a progressive versus sort of center left primary that's
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: taking place right now between Angie Craig and Peggy Peggy Flanagain.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Peggy Flanagan has the support the progressives, Angie Craig has
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: the support of sort of the establishment wing of the party.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: It is I think a year ago more people would
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: have favored Craig. I think Flanagan has. There was some
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: concern by some Democrats that Flannagan, being the sitting LG,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: was going to have problems separating herself from Tim Wallas,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: whose governorship has become a bit more unpopular since he
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: was Kamala Harris's running mate. But that's not turned out
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: to be the case. Flan again has had a very
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: strongly uh She seems to have benefited more from the
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: ice protests than Angie Craigs. I think she is seen
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: as a more genuine fighter on that issue and that's
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: helped her a lot. But the reason I think if
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Flannagan wins this Rice now, look, I think this is
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: gonna be a good Democratic year, and in a good
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Democratic year, I cannot imagine the scenario where a Republican
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: can win in Minnesota. But I do think that Michelle Tafoya,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the former ESPN broadcasters, the presumed Republican nominee for Senate
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: there is going to be a stronger candidate than folks realize.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: She is not. She's it's interesting she is. Certainly she's
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: not been afraid to talk about being a conservative, but
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: she has been careful not to overly attach herself to Trump.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: She seems so aware of the states she's running in,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: and I get the sense that she knows she might
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: get two bites at the apple here. Right, Amy Klobashar
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: gets elected governor, there's going to be another special election
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: to replace. If Amy Klobashar indeed wins the governorship there,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: which I think is highly likely, there'll be a special
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: election of replacers. So if Michelle Tafoya doesn't win the
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: senatece eat in twenty six, she may it a second chance,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: and that extra name recognition could actually make her quite
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: formidable then. But look, Minnesota has been a state that's
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: been teetering on the battleground right. We've had you know,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: we've a lot of times the blue leaning media will
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: tell you, hey, is Texas going to turn blue? The
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: red leaning media to be spending more time in Minnesota
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: because Minnesota, of all the blue states that have a
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: chance at moving the other direction, it probably I mean,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: just you know, Minnesota is surrounded by red states and
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: swing states. They don't touch many other blue states. So
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: the likelihood that Minnesota shifts more to the right than
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: over the next few years, I think is highly likely.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: So that's number five on my list. Number four on
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: my list is the other Republican race that I have here,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: and you know, look, it's going to be a Democratic gear,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: which is why the two Republican races are five and
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: four and not highering the list. But it's Oregon governor.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Oregon is one of it's not is one of the
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: longest streaks Democrats have of holding a governor's mansion of
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: any of the fifty states. And yet over the last
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: few cycles, Oregon governors, whether they've been sitting incumbents or
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: term limited incumbents who were carrying a lot of baggage,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: have really pushed the envelope here and given Republicans opportunities
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: here before, and they've come up just short. Chris Dudley,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the former Portland trail Blazer, came within a few thousand
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: votes of winning the governorship about a decade or so ago. Well,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: this time we have a bit of a rematch, and
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: boy rematches and governor's races, especially if the governor is
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: more unpopular than when she took over, can Can can
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: become quite problematic. Tina Kotech, she won a tough, essentially
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: semi three way race back in twenty twenty two. She's
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: going to face Christine Drazen, who is going to be
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the Republican nominee, but this time, you know, instead of
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Kotech was not the sitting incumbent before, so she didn't
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: have to own sort of the negative views and feelings
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: that many voters had about how the governance of Portland
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: or in the protests and the governance of the state itself.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Now four years later, Kotech has to own those things.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: And there's been every cycle, it does seem as if
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: there's been just more and more suburban erosion from the
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Democratic total. Now again, I think in this political environment,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: it's going to be very difficult for Republican to pull
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: an upset in the blue state. But all the ingredients
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: are in Oregon. And if you pull an upset in
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: a in a in an environment where the winds are
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: blown against you, Nationally, it's more likely to happen in
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: a governor's race, which can sometimes create their own weather, right.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: A governor's race is sometimes not a part of the
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: national conversation. So it's certainly I think it's I think
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: it's a I'm just saying it's a it's a close
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: race that's being slept on. Number three on my list,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Salabama governor. I've talked about this before. I think tom
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: this rematch of Tommy Tupperville and Doug Jones, the Tupperville
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: residency issues are not small. I think that's one of
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: those things that will bother voters, even those that that
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: maybe think they'll never vote for a Democrat. Doug Jones
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: being the last Democrat to win statewide, granted it was
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: against Roy Moore, certainly I think has the temperament to
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: win over sort of conservative independence. The question is can
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: he do it just with a surge and African American
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: turnout plus winning independence and hope that MAGA stays home.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: I think that's the recipe. All three of those things
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: have to happen. Here's the thing. It may be a
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: long shot, but it's not an impossible shot. And I
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: think it's a race. People are sleeping on number two
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: for some of the similar reasons, which is a fired
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: up African American voter base. Is why I put Mississippi
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: Senate in a in a higher tier than others do.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I think Misssippi Senate is totally being slept on. I
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: think Democrats, I think the likelihood they have an African
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: American nominee here, I think the likelihood that you're gonna
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: have a lot of upset African Americans about what's happened
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: with the voting rights back. I think this puts his
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: name Scott Collum is the is the potential. Is the
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee. There Sidney Hyde Smith, the Republican incumbent. She didn't.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: She won by single digits the first time when she
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: ran against Mike Recipe, and the political environment was slightly
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: better for Republicans than it is now. So again, it's
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: just one. Do I think Democrats are going to ever
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: be favored in this race? No, I think this one's
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: gonna be a heck of a lot closer than that.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: And then, to me, the number one most overlooked race
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: that is super competitive and is as competitive and as
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: close as any in the country Ohio Governor. And I
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: think the reason it's going to stay competitive, and the
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: reason it's going to stay a one or two point
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: race is because the Republican nominee, Vivik Ramaswami, is pretty
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: closely tied to Trump, pretty closely tied to what is
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: becoming increasingly unpopular, that whole doge business. He's got his
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: own issues trying to shut down half the state universities
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: with a proposal that is going over like a lead balloon.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: And the Democratic candidate Amy Acton has just been is
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: she is just it is a class tortoise hair. And
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: in fact, I think Ramaswami acting is of all the
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: races out there, the closest to being the tortoise and
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: hair metaphor. Where she's the tortoise, he's the hair. He
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: leaped out in front, he grabbed the Trump endorsement, grabbed
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the Wines endorsement, cleared the field, looked like he was
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: just going to be able to run away with the race.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: And Amy act then just grind it away, grind it away.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: And this thing has been a one point race for
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: three months and I don't think it's going to change
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: now in November, and in fact, come October November, I
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: think it's going to be one of the ten races
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: that even the national media acknowledges is one to watch.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: So we're there, there's my top five lists for the week,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: and now let's do some questions. All right, let's do
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: a little last chuck. First question here comes from Brian Dean.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: He goes Hey, long time listener from the Pacific Northwest. Hey,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: I hope you love that I did some moregon GUV
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: for you in the top five lists this week. Bye,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: by the way, he goes, really you're inside, thank you.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: It seems like Trump maybe looking for an off ramp
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: on a run, But does does that effectively make him
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: the primary negotiator in shaping how this plays out? Do
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: you think that dynamic is a run leverage in this situation?
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Bres Brian the yeah, Yes, it's clear Iran has leverage.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: By the way, there's one other thing. I'm glad the
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: first question was on Iran because I left out one
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: other important little nugget from my Iran report earlier in
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: this podcast episode, and that is the fact that it's
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: JD Vance that has to sell this deal, and that
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: there I think I tweeted this a couple of days ago,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: that we have put I have put out an APB
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: for the Secretary of State. If somebody can tell me
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: where Marco Rubio is on this deal, I'd love to know.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: He is the living embodiment of the Homer Simpson meme
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: that backs into the bushes. It's as if he wants
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with this. If you're going to defend appeasement.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Then let JD jd Vance be the guy that defends appeasement.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: But yes, look Trump, Trump is the one that wants
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: to deal in the worst way. The Iranians are not stupid.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: They see that he wants to deal in the worst way.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: And you know what's going to happen this memo of understanding,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: because guess what Donald Trump will not do between now November.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: He's not going to relaunch airstrikes. This thing has been
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: a financial disaster for the global economy. We are lucky
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: this hasn't triggered a recession, and if this kept going,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: it could have triggered a recession. He does not want
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: to mess with that. And so you think the Iranians
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: are just going to somehow not use that leverage to
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: their advantage. I mean, they basically already app the fact
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: that they've already gotten sanctions promise of sanctions relief immediately
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: tapping into an investment fund that I guess is on
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: paper being funded by the Gulf States. But we know
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: this has sort of passed through money, right, Yeah, I
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: mean the art of the deal. I thought he put
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: this in his book, but never look like you want
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: the deal worse than the person you're negotiating with. I
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: assume that would have been advice he would have given
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: in his book. Then again, we know he didn't actually
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: write the book, and I think all of us are.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: They're certainly a part of me that's wondered if he's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: ever actually read the book. Next question comes from Brenton Phoenix,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: and he says, hey, Chuck, I'm here to defend the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen playoff. Okay, at the FCS level, it works well.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Conference champs get in, plus at large teams and there's
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: far less controversy. Could a similar model at the FBS
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: level help address concerns about inequity, especially beyond the SEC
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: in a Big Ten. Look, if all I want is
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: there to be a I don't want a committee to
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: decide anything when it comes to the college football playoff.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: It should be all done on the field by record, right,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: just like it works in the NFL playoffs. You know,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: it isn't a committee that decides Oh, you know, seventh seed. Man,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: I know the tiebreaker went to the Jacksonville Jaguars, but
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: man point, nobody wants to watch them on TV. You know,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Dallas didn't make the playoffs, but they're only a game behind,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: and you know their body of work, Yeah, it's a
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: much better body of work they played, they played a
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: tougher schedule. Let's give let's put them in as the
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: seven as a seventh seed. How ridiculous would that be
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: if the NFL did it that way, or if Baseball
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: decided you know, boy that you know, let's say show Atona,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: show a Otani got hurt for the next four months
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: and the Dodgers record was, you know, collapsed. Then he
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: comes back in the last week and Major League Baseball decides,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: you know, the Dodgers don't have a record to qualify
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: for the playoffs, but we know with a healthy show Aotani,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: they're one of the best teams who We're just going
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: to go ahead and put them in the playoffs ahead
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: of the Washington Nationals, who have a better record. Again,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: it's insanity. So the point is, if you want to
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: sell me a twenty fourteen playoff, then you better you know,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: I want to know that you can earn the slot.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: I don't want some knucklehead ad making this decision, or
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: some executive at ESPN making this decision, or some executive
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: at Fox Sports making this decision, Right, I take Paul
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Finbaum making the decision before I take some of those
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: clowns making those decisions. By the way, So look, all
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: I ask is I look, take your point. In the FCS.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: I believe it's earned on the field. All I ask is,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: no committees. Just use a committee for seating. That's it.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Do not use the committee to decide who gets into
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: the playoffs. Make sure it's a meritocracy, make sure it's
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: by record, and make sure there isn't some sort of
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: extra advantage. Well nine and three in the SEC is
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: better than nine and three. No, it's we have no
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: idea because of the randomization of who you might play
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: in a given year in the in the eighteen team
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: league or twenty team deep league of the Big ten.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: So that's I still think twenty fourteen. My issue with
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen playoff is that I do think that finally
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: does real damage to the regular season the last two
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: or three games of the year. If you start out
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: nine and zero, right, you've you know, ten and one,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: and you're playing your take Georgia Georgia Tech. What is
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: the incentive for that rivalry game which is always slated
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: for the end of the last game of the season,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: after the SEC, after the SEC schedule ends, after the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: a SEC schedule ends. Is there gonna be any incentive
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: for that game to matter? If you go to this
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen playoff like that and then you have this
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: one sidedness that matters, That's what I worry about. I mean,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: college football might have what other sports as a more
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: meaningful regular season than college football. It's one of its
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: best attributes. Why would you want to lose that? Nathan
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: and Rockville rights, Hey, let's choose are I know where
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: you're coming from. Friend mentioned we might be in a
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: post scandal world, but I'm not sure that's true. Who
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: ultimately decides what counts as a scandal, voters, media, or
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: whether it actually changes behavior like votes are approval, and
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: our standards just more fragmented now rather than gone entirely.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: I'll hang up and listen. Nathan and Rockville, Well, it's
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: an interesting question, right, I had have I can't wait
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: for you to hear. But I posed a question to
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: the former Vice president Mike Pence about character and said,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: you know, isn't the most principled position when it comes
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: to character in politics as being a person who both
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: opposes pack an oppos's grand Platner. I can't wait for
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: you to hear his answer. I'm not going to give
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: it away yet, but most of you won't be surprised
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: at what at what you hear. So it's not that scandal.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: We're in a post scandal world, is I think it's
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: the second part of your question that you've hit the nail,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: and it's that we're very fragmented, so nothing, nothing breaks through, right.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think everybody paid attention to the UFC fight
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: and is outraged, as some of the UFC stuff might
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: have been to many people. I think there was a
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: lot of people that said, you know what, that's ridiculous,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: I'm tuning out, and didn't even pay attention at all,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: and so that that you know, that guy who talked
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: about his Lord and Savior and then attacked Michelle Obama.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: By the way, there is nothing if you're a if
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: you're a real Christian evangelist, you should be offended by
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: these knuckleheads who praise Jesus Christ one in literally one
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: sentence and then think that that's some sort of get
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: out of jail free card to act like a complete
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: and utter a hole. Everywhere else in life. Just because
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: you utter your beliefs doesn't mean you're a person of
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: high character. You could be a really low character individual
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: and still utter a belief in your faith. And if
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: you think that hides who you are, it's put it
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: this way. I really hope most people don't buy that
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: BS when they see when they see these folks do it.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: But the point is is that I don't know, I
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: think we're so fragmented. Is that I don't think that
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: moment broke through. I think it broke through to those
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: paying attention, But to those that wanted to tune that out,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: they could easily tune that out. And so it's sort
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: of like and then there's sort of we're numb to Trump.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if we're in post scandal or
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: if we're just we're just sort of we're just we're
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: just sort of living in this Trump kryptonite shield right
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: from scandal. And then once Trump goes away, scandal comes back.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: And it's not like scandal went away. Look at my business.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of famous people in my business who
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: couldn't you know, scandal got them. Right. Whether you want
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: to talk uh Matt Lower, you want to talk Harvey Weinstein,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: you want to talk Charlie Rose, you want to talk
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Mark Halprin, right, all of these people you know, scandal
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: got got them right. And so I don't want to
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: say that it's it's that we're in a post scandal world.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: But I do think Trump clouds things. But I think
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: your fragmentation point, I think some of this stuff doesn't
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: fully penetrate. Last question, and I'm gonna save I got
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: a bunch more here. We're gonna save him. I'm gonna
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: do a little extra mailbag on Thursday for you, I promise.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Last question. If trumps settlement with the Irs stems from
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: the leak of his tax information, does that imply the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: amounts reported in those returns were accurate or those separate
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: issues entirely? How should people think about the distinction between
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: the legality of the leak and the accuracy of the
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: underlying tax filings? Donald Allen Deerfield Beach ps can the
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: White House higher Bagdad Bob to deliver updates on they
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: ran war. I think they have. I think his name
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: might be Stephen Chung. I think he's playing the role
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: of Bagdad Bob for some of this stuff. But your
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: important point Yes, the information is accurate, which is why
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: he sued. Right if the information wasn't accurate, he never
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: would have sued. So that is why he sued. That
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: is why he got angry because the information was accurate. Look,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: the bigger issue here, though, is this crazy deal to
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: essentially give him blanket immunity from being a tax chief
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: for the lat for his entire life up until the
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: tax year twenty twenty five, apparently everything through twenty twenty five.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: That's what part of this deal is. So even though
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: Todd blanche has said that there will be no weaponization
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: fund that will sort of dole out money to January
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: sixth rioters and things like that, the deal, that the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: whole deal hasn't been expunged yet. Republican senators had a
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: chance to do it, and the Yolo Caucus choked and
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: they decided not to kill the deal. But right now,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's gonna get blanket immunity for all for anything
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: he is, you know, for whatever, either intentional in intentional
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: mistakes on his tax returns or unintentional mistakes on his
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: tax returns. He has still got this blanket immunity according
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: to the Steel and that that is something that I
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: think is just politically has the chance to to be
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: weaponized in campaign ads quite successful in you know, the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: I R. S is one of those places. And this
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: is one of those things where you know, look, there's
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: some things that people think, well, Donald Trump's a wealthy guy.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: He gets away with certain things, and hey, he can
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: get away with those things. But people do get offended
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: when they can't get away with the same thing you
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: got away with. And that's where, you know, it's almost
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: like it's a form of jealousy that they'd like to
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: get away with it and they can't, so they're going
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: to say, hey, screw you man. So you know, I
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: don't think this is going you know this, this is
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: this fund and being able to essentially get off get
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: a get out of jail free card for for tax evasion.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: If that's indeed what he might have might have done,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's one of those outrages
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: that that that's gonna set. Hey before we go, kudos
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: to the Soresby family for getting just getting everybody out
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: of this mess. And I say kudos to that because
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: apparently Brendan Sorosby's family, this is the quarterback who was
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: was going to go to transfer to Texas Tech. Has
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: been credibly accused of gambling on his own team when
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: he was at Indiana, and in fact, he doesn't deny
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: that he did it. He essentially was filing, you know, it,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: was claiming that hey, he's he's he's sick, he's got
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: a gambling addiction, and this shouldn't be used against him
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: to to die in his right to play football. This
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: was becoming an untenable situation, and he was being put
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: in a position where, you know, one bad throw in
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: his first game and just the mental impact on him
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: could be great. And apparently his own parents were calling
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: up the school questioning that over the last twenty four
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: to forty eight hours. And then when it was clear
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: that the Big twelve was going to aggressively pursue, you know,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: pursue an appeal to basically have the legal right to
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: sanction Texas Tech for for doing this, seemed to frankly
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: convince the Soursbee family to pull the plug on this
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and do the right thing, and we'll see where he
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: lands in the NFL supplemental Draft. But boy, I, to
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: this day, I have no idea why the Texas Tech
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: community thought this was a hill to die on, whether
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: the athletic department, Cody Campbell. I mean, I have to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: say that, I'm like, I love everything Cody Campbell's been
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: doing to put pressure on the other conferences, put pressure
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: on Congress. I think he's one hundred percent right when
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: it comes to how the media deals are done. But
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: he threw his away. I think I think he overdid
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: it here on this one, and I think he went
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: over his skis and Texas Tech's got a black eye
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: because of it in reputation handling, and it was this
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: is the the very definition of unforced air. But this
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: is one of those that you just sort of relieved.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: I mean when I saw the news that Soresby was
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: just going to turn pro sort like, all right, maybe
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: he can get a fresh start. Everything can get a
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: fresh start, and we can. And because this was this
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: was an ugly terrible turn that was taking place as
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: an almost and on the lead that stories of all
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: right with that, Uh, I'm gonna put a pin in
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: this episode. I'll see him point five mm hmmmmmmm h
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: m hm