Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - Trump’s Treasonous Capitulation To Putin + Cat 1 Blue Wave Or Cat 5 Blue Tsunami?

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Chuck’s Commentary - Trump’s Treasonous Capitulation To Putin + Cat 1 Blue Wave Or Cat 5 Blue Tsunami? · The Chuck ToddCast

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
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Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
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2:18
Speaker 1: Hello there. I'm Chuck Todd. Welcome to another edition of
2:20
Speaker 1: the Chuck Todd cast. I'm coming to you from Coral Gables, Florida.
2:25
Speaker 1: And I am specifically saying Coral Gables because my beloved
2:29
Speaker 1: university of Miami hurricanes, let's just say they survived on Saturday.
2:34
Speaker 1: And given what happened in college football, uh, On October 17th,
2:39
Speaker 1: like a day that will live in this season's infamy.
2:43
Speaker 1: Five of the top seven teams losing. The ranks of
2:47
Speaker 1: the undefeated shrinking quite a bit. So I think as
2:52
Speaker 1: far as Miami's concerned, facing a rivalry game. Yes, I
2:57
Speaker 1: know Florida State's not the Florida State of old. They
3:00
Speaker 1: still have the athletes. We know this. When Florida State's good,
3:03
Speaker 1: Miami wasn't. They'd still give Florida State games. That just
3:05
Speaker 1: is what it is. I'm just relieved. That's for sure.
3:11
Speaker 1: Just relieved. I'll have a lot more to say on this,
3:13
Speaker 1: a lot more to say on the 2014 playoff, but
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Speaker 1: I do want to leave you with this. Saturday was
3:19
Speaker 1: an amazing day in college football. And yet, because of
3:24
Speaker 1: the 12-team playoff, forget the 2014 playoff, because of the
3:27
Speaker 1: 12-team playoff, will any of these games matter that much?
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Speaker 1: And then when we have the 2014 playoff, Will this
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Speaker 1: just be a, you know, come across as one of
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Speaker 1: those weird Sundays that we've seen in the NFL where,
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Speaker 1: oh my God, every one lost, every one lost team
3:50
Speaker 1: lost and every one win team won, right? Type of mindset.
3:54
Speaker 1: Because we know the difference between one and 32 in
3:57
Speaker 1: the NFL is like this. And I think now in
4:00
Speaker 1: college football, especially when it comes to depth, where even
4:05
Speaker 1: the best team's depth gets tested and you're like, oof,
4:08
Speaker 1: especially when you're, you know, nobody has a quality backup
4:11
Speaker 1: quarterback that they feel really good about because if they did,
4:15
Speaker 1: that person would be starting for another program. Have we now,
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Speaker 1: are we now going to go to a situation in
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Speaker 1: college football where we can have an entertaining day like this,
4:25
Speaker 1: but it doesn't have the impact that we used to
4:30
Speaker 1: think these things had the impact. And is that, we're
4:34
Speaker 1: going to lose that. Look, I think there are things
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Speaker 1: that we gained in the 2014 playoff, sort of, I'm
4:40
Speaker 1: comparing it to Churchill's description of democracy. This is the
4:43
Speaker 1: worst of all forms of college football, of deciding who
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Speaker 1: the college football national champion is, except for all the
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Speaker 1: other ideas that have been put out there. So I
4:52
Speaker 1: think that's why we're here. But anyway, I'm gonna have
4:55
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about this because at the
4:56
Speaker 1: end of the day, we know that is not why
4:59
Speaker 1: you tune in to the Chuck Toddcast. We are now
5:02
Speaker 1: a little bit more than two weeks from election day.
5:05
Speaker 1: So what I really want to start with is actually
5:08
Speaker 1: with the fact that nothing really has changed. And that
5:12
Speaker 1: in itself is a major development. A lot's happened. There's
5:16
Speaker 1: a lot of motion, but there's really not a lot
5:20
Speaker 1: of new movement. And in fact, if anything, everything is
5:23
Speaker 1: still moving in the same direction. There's very little evidence
5:27
Speaker 1: that the trajectory of this midterm has shifted. If anything,
5:30
Speaker 1: the evidence actually continues to pile up that it is
5:33
Speaker 1: moving in the same direction. The debate at this point
5:36
Speaker 1: isn't whether there's a Democratic wave coming. It's now how big.
5:40
Speaker 1: Is this a category one? Is this something that resembles
5:43
Speaker 1: 2018 or 2006, where Democrats have a good night? They
5:47
Speaker 1: win the House. They maybe, like 06, pick up Senate seats.
5:51
Speaker 1: Maybe they win, narrowly win control of the Senate. But
5:55
Speaker 1: they might run into a wall in some of the
5:57
Speaker 1: tougher places, just like in 06. They couldn't quite, the
6:01
Speaker 1: wave couldn't quite reach Arizona. The wave couldn't quite reach Tennessee.
6:05
Speaker 1: at that time. And what I'm describing here, this would
6:08
Speaker 1: be the wave not quite maybe reaching Iowa. Maybe Susan
6:12
Speaker 1: Collins survives. Now, is this a category three, right? A
6:17
Speaker 1: broader election where the national environment overwhelms some very good
6:20
Speaker 1: Republican campaigns and Democrats start winning races. They had no
6:23
Speaker 1: business winning six months ago. So this is winning Iowa,
6:27
Speaker 1: winning a Kansas, and then watching Republicans who have run
6:32
Speaker 1: pretty good campaigns this election cycle, Joe Lombardo in Nevada,
6:36
Speaker 1: Susan Collins in Maine, Rick Jackson, the Republican nominee for
6:39
Speaker 1: governor in Georgia, despite running good campaigns, they lose anyway.
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Speaker 1: That's what a wave of a sort of what I'm
6:47
Speaker 1: calling a category three, that's what that would mean. And
6:50
Speaker 1: then of course, there's the disaster scenario for the Republicans,
6:54
Speaker 1: a cat five type of blue wave, something that looks
6:57
Speaker 1: more like 1994. that benefited the Republicans, where it was
7:02
Speaker 1: just a massive surge, massive realignment, sort of a, you know,
7:09
Speaker 1: you know, that one was partially, you know, finishing up
7:12
Speaker 1: a realignment that we were watching take place in the
7:14
Speaker 1: South over a 10 year period anyway, coupled with all sorts.
7:17
Speaker 1: So it is, you know, this is, I'm going to
7:19
Speaker 1: be honest. I think this scenario is very unlikely, but
7:23
Speaker 1: this one would include, you know, people like Mike rounds
7:26
Speaker 1: losing in South Dakota, uh, Pete Ricketts losing in Nebraska
7:30
Speaker 1: and things like that. Um, But then there's another possibility
7:35
Speaker 1: that I do keep trying to introduce. I call it,
7:38
Speaker 1: you know, this is what Charlie Cook referred to as
7:40
Speaker 1: the red undertow. But I have a different definition of it.
7:43
Speaker 1: And I think I'm refining this definition as I sort
7:48
Speaker 1: of process more data that's coming in. So it ends
7:52
Speaker 1: up not being a traditional wave, sort of one party
7:55
Speaker 1: wave at all, blue wave at all. Maybe voters are
7:58
Speaker 1: so unhappy with Republicans that they'll consider Democrats in some
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Speaker 1: of the reddest places in America. like what we're watching
8:04
Speaker 1: in Texas and Kansas and in Iowa and in Ohio,
8:10
Speaker 1: even as some Republican incumbents in, say, purple states or
8:14
Speaker 1: even blue states managed to survive. So those are different
8:19
Speaker 1: kinds of elections, and I'm going to walk through the
8:20
Speaker 1: evidence on each of them. But I will say this.
8:23
Speaker 1: There is something I've noticed in the last 72 hours
8:25
Speaker 1: that I do think deserves some focus. Donald Trump has
8:30
Speaker 1: already decided he's going to have a bad night. Why
8:33
Speaker 1: do we know this? Because he's got a head start
8:35
Speaker 1: on the blame game. We haven't even had the election.
8:37
Speaker 1: Voters haven't rendered their verdict yet. We've seen a lot
8:40
Speaker 1: in the polls indicating where they're leaning. But the president
8:43
Speaker 1: is already building or manufacturing an explanation for why things
8:47
Speaker 1: might go badly and why, if they do, it will,
8:50
Speaker 1: of course, be somebody else's fault, not his, right? No
8:54
Speaker 1: way it could be his fault, right? And what it
8:57
Speaker 1: does tell us though is how he sees the election
9:00
Speaker 1: that's coming. He knows what's coming and he's just looking
9:05
Speaker 1: to prepare what a narcissist has to do, right? Sort
9:10
Speaker 1: of manufacture in their own head so they don't feel
9:13
Speaker 1: any pain or shame or whatever it is that he's
9:15
Speaker 1: trying to mask. But first let's talk about some evidence.
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Speaker 1: Third quarter fundraising reports were extraordinary. Those have come out
9:20
Speaker 1: since the last time we talked. If all you knew
9:23
Speaker 1: about this election was what the candidates have raised over
9:27
Speaker 1: the last three months, and you were using that to
9:29
Speaker 1: denote momentum, which is something used to be the thing
9:32
Speaker 1: we would denote the most, right? It used to matter
9:35
Speaker 1: the most before the age of super PACs, before the
9:38
Speaker 1: age where the major parties couldn't do fundraising on their own.
9:42
Speaker 1: You would conclude this environment is extremely favorable to the Democrats,
9:45
Speaker 1: because it's not just one state. It's not just one
9:48
Speaker 1: charismatic candidate who's captured the imagination of small donors. This
9:52
Speaker 1: is across the board. Texas, Tallarico raises more than $ 60 million.
9:56
Speaker 1: In the third quarter, it's almost more than nearly double all-time.
10:00
Speaker 1: record of a one quarter of fundraising for a Democrat.
10:03
Speaker 1: What did Paxton raise in that same quarter? $ 10 million.
10:06
Speaker 1: So six to one advantage in the state of Texas
10:09
Speaker 1: for Tallarico. Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed reported more than $ 30 million. Rogers,
10:13
Speaker 1: less than $ 10 million. Ohio, Sherrod Brown raised $ 23 million.
10:16
Speaker 1: John Huston, about $ 5 million. In Maine, Troy Jackson reported
10:20
Speaker 1: more than $ 20 million raised. Susan Collins, roughly $ 5 million.
10:24
Speaker 1: And then North Carolina, Roy Cooper, $ 20 million. Michael Watley,
10:27
Speaker 1: $ 2 million. All right. And we've seen it. It happened
10:31
Speaker 1: in South Carolina. It happened in Kansas. Now, some of it,
10:37
Speaker 1: Republicans had banked some early money. Roger Marshall banked money early.
10:40
Speaker 1: Ashley Hinson banked money early. but you saw it in Florida.
10:45
Speaker 1: Angie Nixon, massively outraged. Ashley Moody. So this is happening,
10:50
Speaker 1: whether it's in the reddest of red states, the bluest
10:52
Speaker 1: of blue states, or anywhere in between. Pattern, unmistakable. Democrats
10:58
Speaker 1: are raising extraordinary sums, and they're doing it in places
11:01
Speaker 1: where they don't normally have this kind of financial lens.
11:04
Speaker 1: And this does matter, right? And the type of TV
11:08
Speaker 1: advertising you could spend, candidates get lower rates, super PACs don't.
11:12
Speaker 1: So But there's something else. It's not just the actual
11:16
Speaker 1: financial help that the fundraising gives you tactically. There is
11:22
Speaker 1: something else this is measuring. This measures enthusiasm. This measures engagement.
11:27
Speaker 1: And again, when we've only had one or two, when
11:30
Speaker 1: you've had what we saw with Mitch McConnell's Amy McGrath,
11:34
Speaker 1: and I think it was in 2018, and you had
11:37
Speaker 1: Jamie Harrison in 2020 are these sort of singular where
11:41
Speaker 1: the national donors all piled into one race. This is
11:47
Speaker 1: just spreading out all over. And I think it tells
11:50
Speaker 1: you that's why this feels a bit different and it
11:53
Speaker 1: feels a bit more significant than when we've seen these
11:56
Speaker 1: fundraising advantages in just a handful of places of just where, say,
12:01
Speaker 1: The base of the Democratic Party just gets so angry,
12:04
Speaker 1: you know, can't stand Mitch McConnell going to just, you know,
12:06
Speaker 1: vent my frustration that way. That's not the type of
12:09
Speaker 1: doesn't appear that this is the type of fundraising that
12:13
Speaker 1: we're seeing. And so when you see it, this spread out,
12:15
Speaker 1: you realize people are generally reaching into their pockets for candidates.
12:18
Speaker 1: They think they can't win. Right. So it is you
12:23
Speaker 1: have to ask, you know, just just, you know, is
12:27
Speaker 1: this I don't think it's a last. And the fact
12:29
Speaker 1: that it's not being matched on the right. That tells
12:31
Speaker 1: you something about the lack of enthusiasm, probably from, you know,
12:36
Speaker 1: especially from corners of the Republican Party that do have money,
12:40
Speaker 1: who I think are not as MAGA as parts of
12:43
Speaker 1: the Republican coalition that have money. They're not as MAGA.
12:46
Speaker 1: So the fact that that part of the party is
12:49
Speaker 1: the least enthusiastic, that should be a very worrying sign
12:53
Speaker 1: for Team GOP. But of course, there's a huge caveat
12:56
Speaker 1: on the supposed financial advantage that Democrats have candidate to candidate.
13:01
Speaker 1: The Republican Party does have something this cycle that the
13:03
Speaker 1: Democrats don't have anywhere near to the same degree. Elon Musk.
13:09
Speaker 1: And it's not just Elon Musk. It's Elon Musk and
13:11
Speaker 1: a handful of other extraordinarily wealthy donors who've decided to
13:14
Speaker 1: pour millions of dollars into Republican outside groups simply because
13:18
Speaker 1: they're trying to get something out of Donald Trump. It's
13:20
Speaker 1: a quid pro quo. Trump has made it very clear.
13:23
Speaker 1: All of this is a quid pro quo. They're all
13:25
Speaker 1: trying to do this. And so the price of getting
13:27
Speaker 1: favorable treatment from Trump means writing these big checks to
13:30
Speaker 1: these various groups. And it has a huge, it can matter.
13:36
Speaker 1: Take Texas, so Tallarico, right? Six to one fundraising advantage
13:39
Speaker 1: over Paxton, candidate to candidate, right? Massive. Paxton's not close
13:45
Speaker 1: to matching them, but Musk just gave $ 158 million to
13:48
Speaker 1: the Senate Leadership Fund in September. That money was then
13:50
Speaker 1: moved in matching installments to a Texas-based super PAC. It's extraordinary,
13:57
Speaker 1: and there's so much to dig into here, but one
13:59
Speaker 1: donor has supplied enough money, one donor, to fundamentally change
14:03
Speaker 1: the advertising environment in one of the largest states in America.
14:07
Speaker 1: Is this a system we want, folks? This is not
14:12
Speaker 1: what was imagined as free speech in Citizens United. There's
14:19
Speaker 1: no way this is what was imagined. So we do
14:22
Speaker 1: have two very different political economies operating in this election.
14:26
Speaker 1: On the Democratic side, candidates are raising enormous sums from
14:29
Speaker 1: a fairly broad donor network. On the Republican side, extraordinarily
14:33
Speaker 1: financial backstop from a very small number of very wealthy people.
14:39
Speaker 1: And the distinction, as I said, matters because of how
14:42
Speaker 1: far those dollars go in actual campaign spending. The candidate,
14:48
Speaker 1: you know, this is sort of There's a money ball
14:50
Speaker 1: approach to this. The democratic way of raising money gives
14:53
Speaker 1: them some tactical advantages, allows them essentially to let their
14:57
Speaker 1: dollar go farther in ad rates versus what the super
15:00
Speaker 1: PACs do. But when you have that amount of money,
15:04
Speaker 1: you could sort of overcome that wasted aspect there. And
15:10
Speaker 1: that's why it's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to
15:13
Speaker 1: declare what category of storm we're looking at yet. You know,
15:16
Speaker 1: it could be this wealthy money is sort of almost
15:21
Speaker 1: like you're building a barrier, right? A flood wall. As
15:25
Speaker 1: this storm approaches on the coast, do you have a
15:27
Speaker 1: high enough wall to protect you from the storm surge,
15:31
Speaker 1: if you will? And that's, you know, to keep beating
15:34
Speaker 1: up my weather metaphor over and over again. Hey, I'm
15:36
Speaker 1: in South Florida. What would you expect me to do, right?
15:41
Speaker 1: That's the question here. And it's one of the reasons
15:43
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how we know it's all moving
15:46
Speaker 1: in one direction. The trajectory of this election is going
15:49
Speaker 1: in one direction, but we don't know how effective this
15:52
Speaker 1: Republican backstop of huge big donor money is going to be.
15:56
Speaker 1: So another set of numbers I'm watching very carefully, thanks
16:00
Speaker 1: to one of the, Michael McDonald, who's one of the
16:03
Speaker 1: University of Florida professor. Yes, all roads lead back to
16:06
Speaker 1: the state of Florida with me, you know that. Anyway,
16:09
Speaker 1: Michael McDonald, one of the best academics and researchers when
16:12
Speaker 1: it comes to understanding the early vote and where it's going. Anyway,
16:16
Speaker 1: his sub stack is must read every single day, does
16:20
Speaker 1: updates as he gets the data in. It is worth
16:23
Speaker 1: the time. It is worth your money if you really
16:25
Speaker 1: want to get granular and get sort of a look
16:28
Speaker 1: at some of the raw data that he's looking at,
16:31
Speaker 1: some of his analysis. It's outstanding. But this stuff matters.
16:35
Speaker 1: But some of the comparisons that he's been doing. So
16:38
Speaker 1: he took a look at North Carolina after the first
16:39
Speaker 1: few days of the early vote. And of course, North
16:43
Speaker 1: Carolina is useful here and he's trying to use it.
16:46
Speaker 1: It's possible you can extrapolate some of this out, at
16:49
Speaker 1: least as trend spotting, but you got to be careful.
16:52
Speaker 1: But what makes North Carolina useful in his exercise is
16:55
Speaker 1: that North Carolina has party registration, has a relatively stable
16:59
Speaker 1: early voting voter setup from one midterm to the next.
17:03
Speaker 1: So the comparisons are worth looking at. And through the
17:07
Speaker 1: first day of early in-person voting, counting mail ballots already received,
17:12
Speaker 1: you have a quarter million people have already cast ballots, right? Well,
17:15
Speaker 1: at the same point in 22, it was under 200,000
17:17
Speaker 1: and in 2018, it was about 150,000. So we're seeing
17:21
Speaker 1: a substantial increase in the number of people voting early
17:24
Speaker 1: and so that's one level of enthusiasm. Yes, it's usually
17:28
Speaker 1: people that vote early are the people that are probably
17:31
Speaker 1: the most sure of which way they're gonna vote. They're
17:33
Speaker 1: not swing voters, right? They're excited, they wanna make sure
17:36
Speaker 1: their vote counts and they wanna get it to the
17:38
Speaker 1: bank quickly, if you will, right? So the more people
17:42
Speaker 1: that wanna get it to the bank quickly, and the
17:43
Speaker 1: more it seems to favor one side over the other,
17:46
Speaker 1: that tells you something about who's willing to crawl on
17:48
Speaker 1: broken glass to vote and who may not be. The
17:53
Speaker 1: partisan makeup, registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters are up compared
17:58
Speaker 1: with previous cycles, registered Republicans are down compared with 2022.
18:03
Speaker 1: Black voter participation in North Carolina is also significant. Now,
18:07
Speaker 1: does this mean that for sure, that you can extrapolate
18:11
Speaker 1: what's happening in North Carolina, apply it to South Carolina,
18:13
Speaker 1: apply it to Georgia, not fully, right? We don't know,
18:17
Speaker 1: for instance, even in North Carolina, how the unaffiliated voters
18:19
Speaker 1: are voting. But this trend is somewhat unmistakable and looking
18:23
Speaker 1: at this over a decade now where we've had early vote,
18:26
Speaker 1: where you've done analysis like this, Michael McDonald's been doing
18:28
Speaker 1: this for a long time, you know that this stuff,
18:32
Speaker 1: it's unlikely to be an outlier for North Carolina alone.
18:36
Speaker 1: And so, You know, we call it reading tea leaves
18:38
Speaker 1: for a reason, but this is a tea leaf worth
18:42
Speaker 1: reading in this front. Georgia, another one is showing increased
18:45
Speaker 1: early vote activity, higher engagement among Hispanic voters. And this is,
18:50
Speaker 1: we're seeing some evidence of just a bigger turnout among Latinos.
18:55
Speaker 1: It's still a little bit noisy in the early numbers.
18:58
Speaker 1: This is something as the week progresses, we'll get more
19:00
Speaker 1: data and we'll have a better sense, but... I think
19:08
Speaker 1: this increase in Latino vote participation has the feel of
19:15
Speaker 1: what a lot of people anecdotally have been saying that, hey,
19:19
Speaker 1: you know, the aggressive immigration strategy, the ICE campaigns have
19:22
Speaker 1: really had a impact on Latino voters and their swing voters.
19:27
Speaker 1: And they're also pocketbook sensitive. And essentially, Donald Trump has
19:30
Speaker 1: hit him twice, right? He essentially put a target on
19:34
Speaker 1: the back of anybody who looks Latino with enforcement issues.
19:40
Speaker 1: And then, oh, by the way, this economy stinks, particularly
19:44
Speaker 1: for those that live, you know, smack dab in the
19:50
Speaker 1: middle class. Quite a few Latino voters live smack dab
19:53
Speaker 1: in the middle class. This episode of the Chuck Todd
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Speaker 1: let them know it was the Chuck Todd cast. It's
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Speaker 1: the best way to support the show and the best
22:25
Speaker 1: way to make sure you're getting every discount. So, look,
22:31
Speaker 1: we're accumulating, you know, we know this. So far, this
22:35
Speaker 1: is not a low turnout midterm. Now, that's something else
22:38
Speaker 1: you have to realize, right? There's sort of there's degrees
22:42
Speaker 1: of turnout. Midterm electorates in general these days favor the
22:46
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, favor the party that has more voters with
22:51
Speaker 1: higher levels of education attainment. That said, the higher turnout goes,
22:58
Speaker 1: there's a point where it stops benefiting Team Blue and
23:01
Speaker 1: actually starts benefiting Team Red. We know presidential level turnout
23:05
Speaker 1: absolutely now favors Republicans. So that's sort of this border.
23:09
Speaker 1: It's sort of like Democrats want a really high turnout.
23:13
Speaker 1: But if it starts to approach presidential levels, that's where
23:16
Speaker 1: things get really noisy. And it might not be signaling
23:21
Speaker 1: that this is all one. Right. It could signal that
23:23
Speaker 1: you've got a very close and competitive electorate. So we're
23:27
Speaker 1: approaching a higher turnout than 18. And 18 was one
23:30
Speaker 1: of the highest midterm turnouts we ever had. And that
23:32
Speaker 1: was mostly a repudiation of Trump. Another increase in that,
23:40
Speaker 1: and that's where you start to ask yourself, hey, is
23:42
Speaker 1: this something that's going to be semi-partial realignment, et cetera?
23:47
Speaker 1: But if it gets really high, that's when you have
23:52
Speaker 1: to ask yourself, oh, maybe Trump's strategy is starting to
23:54
Speaker 1: have an impact. So all of that matters. These are
24:00
Speaker 1: tea leaves I'm continuing to read with 15 days to go.
24:03
Speaker 1: So now I want to ask and answer the following question.
24:08
Speaker 1: What does a big Democratic majority look like? What are
24:11
Speaker 1: the raw numbers? And there's another way I've been thinking
24:14
Speaker 1: about this, thanks to my friend Kurt Beto at the
24:16
Speaker 1: hotline who tweeted this over the weekend. And he said,
24:18
Speaker 1: you know, be careful here. A 20-seat pickup this cycle
24:23
Speaker 1: is the equivalent of a 40-seat pickup in 2018, simply
24:27
Speaker 1: because Democrats are starting with a higher floor in this
24:30
Speaker 1: midterm in 2026 with already having 215 House seats versus
24:34
Speaker 1: the floor they had going into 2018, where they were
24:38
Speaker 1: at a number that was substantially lower. So I do
24:42
Speaker 1: think rather than talking about raw pickups, can the Democrats
24:46
Speaker 1: pick up 20, 25, 30, 40 House seats, right? We're
24:51
Speaker 1: doing in there. The question is, are they gonna have
24:54
Speaker 1: more than 235 total House seats in the House, 240, right?
24:57
Speaker 1: So let me give you a little run. After 2006,
24:59
Speaker 1: Democrats had 233 total house seats. After 2008, their number
25:09
Speaker 1: grew to 257 house seats. That back-to-back Democratic wave, small
25:15
Speaker 1: wave in 06, bigger Obama-driven wave in 08, semi-realignment as well, 257.
25:20
Speaker 1: After the 2018 election, they had 235, right? So you
25:25
Speaker 1: see the difference there between, right, 235. After 2020, where
25:30
Speaker 1: they did lose some seats, they were sitting at 222.
25:34
Speaker 1: that majority, right? Barely over the Mendoza line there. And
25:37
Speaker 1: after 2024, they had a pretty high floor to be
25:41
Speaker 1: in the minority, 215 House seats. So if you start
25:43
Speaker 1: from 215 and Democrats gain 20 seats, they're at 235,
25:48
Speaker 1: basically right where they were after the 2018 wave. See,
25:50
Speaker 1: that's how, how does 20 equal 40? That's how 20 equals,
25:54
Speaker 1: a 20 House seat pickup in 2026 equals the 40
25:57
Speaker 1: House seat pickup in 2018. Now, if they gain 25,
26:00
Speaker 1: they're sitting at 240. Second best number that they've had
26:06
Speaker 1: in 30 years. If they gain 30, they're sitting at 245, right?
26:11
Speaker 1: These are important distinctions and why I think the raw
26:14
Speaker 1: number on the House here is what you should be
26:16
Speaker 1: focused on, right? A 20-seat pickup, someone's gonna say, oh,
26:21
Speaker 1: that just fits the pattern. But if Democrats end up
26:24
Speaker 1: with 245 House seats and it's a 36 pickup, you'll say, oh,
26:27
Speaker 1: only 30 seats, that's no 1994. Yeah, but 245? That's
26:32
Speaker 1: a governing majority that only one other time did they
26:35
Speaker 1: have a majority higher than that this century. And that
26:40
Speaker 1: was after the 2008 election. So, and obviously there's a
26:47
Speaker 1: huge difference between having a majority and having a governing majority.
26:52
Speaker 1: You sit in the 220 to 225 total House seat range.
26:55
Speaker 1: Handful of members can hold the entire caucus hostage, right?
26:59
Speaker 1: Republicans have been living that. And Akeem Jeffries and the
27:02
Speaker 1: socialist wing of his party, if he only has between
27:05
Speaker 1: 220 and 225 seats, that's going to be a living nightmare.
27:08
Speaker 1: Akeem Jeffries is going to become Kevin McCarthy. He's going
27:12
Speaker 1: to understand and have empathy for the world Kevin McCarthy
27:15
Speaker 1: entered after 2022. At 235 house seats, well, then leadership
27:25
Speaker 1: has a little room to maneuver. At 240, 245? Well,
27:28
Speaker 1: you can absorb all sorts of defections. You can truly
27:31
Speaker 1: have a Big Ten majority without making every tough vote
27:37
Speaker 1: a crisis, if you will, a political crisis. And again,
27:41
Speaker 1: Democrats haven't held 240 House seats in an election since 2008.
27:46
Speaker 1: And in order to get 240, you're looking at a
27:49
Speaker 1: pickup of 35 seats, right? So I do think when
27:53
Speaker 1: you hear those ranges, we really ought to change how
27:56
Speaker 1: we talk about this, which is, which is the target
27:59
Speaker 1: actual seats they'll have, right? And if they're, you know,
28:04
Speaker 1: a 20 seat pickup puts them at 235, which has
28:06
Speaker 1: basically been where they were in 06 and where they
28:10
Speaker 1: were in 18. You know, it's essentially where they were
28:13
Speaker 1: after those two midterms. So when we debate category one,
28:19
Speaker 1: category three, category five, part of what we're really debating
28:21
Speaker 1: is whether Democrats merely take the House or come out
28:24
Speaker 1: of this with a majority that can actually govern. And
28:26
Speaker 1: that's before we even get to the Senate. Look, to me,
28:30
Speaker 1: it's the Senate map that tests these wave scenarios. I've
28:34
Speaker 1: spent much of this cycle talking about the unusual geography
28:37
Speaker 1: of this election. This is very much a campaign being
28:41
Speaker 1: fought in red America, right? And this is why it
28:44
Speaker 1: is mostly, why it's both a, you know, let me
28:48
Speaker 1: give you a little hint about election night. It's very
28:50
Speaker 1: possible between the hours of 8 p.m. Eastern and 11 p.m. Eastern,
28:54
Speaker 1: we don't call a consequential race. That doesn't mean the
28:57
Speaker 1: Democratic wave isn't happening. It actually could mean this Democratic
29:01
Speaker 1: wave could be gigantic. But if it's gigantic, they're going
29:04
Speaker 1: to win a whole lot of races in red states
29:07
Speaker 1: by nose hairs. And I promise you, all of us
29:11
Speaker 1: in the election projection business are going to be super
29:14
Speaker 1: careful and make sure we know our number, all of
29:16
Speaker 1: those things. This happened in 2018, where Democrats won 40
29:20
Speaker 1: House seats. A lot of them are fairly close. Some
29:22
Speaker 1: of them couldn't be called until you had a lot
29:24
Speaker 1: of the vote in. And then all of a sudden,
29:27
Speaker 1: you know, there wasn't a lot between, say, 7 p.m.
29:29
Speaker 1: Eastern and 930 p.m. Eastern. And then all of a
29:32
Speaker 1: sudden everything came in and all those close races went
29:35
Speaker 1: in one direction. So I'll have more to say on
29:39
Speaker 1: how to watch. election night, but that's something, trust me,
29:42
Speaker 1: as we plan our live election night, I've got a
29:44
Speaker 1: lot more announcement on that, but this is going to be,
29:46
Speaker 1: I've got a big election night extravaganza promise for you.
29:50
Speaker 1: My partners at DDHQ, Chris Eliza, we're at We we've
29:54
Speaker 1: got both live and virtual stuff that's in the offing.
29:58
Speaker 1: That's going to be amazing. It's going to be fantastic.
30:02
Speaker 1: And it's it's going to be everything you've you've come
30:05
Speaker 1: to expect in our primary night live streams on steroids
30:09
Speaker 1: that I promise you. But the point is, it's I've
30:12
Speaker 1: discussed this issue that, hey, if, you know, let's paint
30:17
Speaker 1: the scenario that Democrats are going to somehow win Texas,
30:20
Speaker 1: Kansas and Iowa. We call on those races to pull close.
30:22
Speaker 1: Of course not. Those are races you're not calling until
30:25
Speaker 1: you have 90% of the vote in, 95% of the
30:28
Speaker 1: vote in. Point is, we could be hours where we're
30:32
Speaker 1: sitting there going, huh, when are we, are they ever
30:34
Speaker 1: going to call Texas? What are we waiting for? Are
30:36
Speaker 1: they ever going to, you know, and that's what we're
30:37
Speaker 1: going to be there for, right? We're going to be
30:39
Speaker 1: there to explain what we're looking for, what's missing, what's not,
30:43
Speaker 1: all those things. So the point is, is that especially
30:48
Speaker 1: with the Senate races, right? These states are considerably more
30:52
Speaker 1: Republican than traditional battlegrounds. But there does seem to be
30:56
Speaker 1: something happening in all of these places. The question, is
30:59
Speaker 1: it enough? Right. Is it enough to get Democrats pass
31:02
Speaker 1: a healthy 46, 47 percent to something that's actually a victory?
31:07
Speaker 1: Forty nine, 50, 51. So, look, we know they're pulling
31:13
Speaker 1: money out of North Carolina to try to save Roger
31:15
Speaker 1: Marshall in Kansas. They're seeing the same poll numbers the
31:18
Speaker 1: rest of us are seeing. That said. What's interesting for Democrats,
31:24
Speaker 1: and this gets it to a complication of how you
31:26
Speaker 1: judge this wave, is some of the toughest races for
31:28
Speaker 1: Democrats right now are not in the red states. They're
31:31
Speaker 1: in states that are less Republican. Take Maine. I've said
31:36
Speaker 1: for a while that Susan Collins, she's one of the
31:38
Speaker 1: most important tests of this election, right? Is there a
31:42
Speaker 1: point where you're just sort of exhausted from the Republican
31:45
Speaker 1: majority and you're just going to punish Republicans, period? Now,
31:49
Speaker 1: so far, I think when you look at her campaign
31:51
Speaker 1: compared to Troy Jackson's campaign, she's running the better campaign.
31:58
Speaker 1: Other than the true Jackson partisan here, I think she's
32:00
Speaker 1: running a better race than Jackson is. But you can
32:03
Speaker 1: win a campaign and still lose an election. It's clear.
32:07
Speaker 1: She knows her state. She's been good at it. She's
32:11
Speaker 1: had to separate herself from the image of the National
32:14
Speaker 1: Party most of her career, so she's comfortable doing it. Now,
32:19
Speaker 1: Troy Jackson has a different challenge, right? He's trying to
32:21
Speaker 1: build a coalition that includes a lot of people who
32:23
Speaker 1: are deeply unhappy with Trump, but also aren't necessarily sold
32:27
Speaker 1: on Troy Jackson. And he's got to win over people
32:29
Speaker 1: that have been voting for Collins for a long time.
32:32
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest with you, I think these debates
32:35
Speaker 1: haven't been, I don't know how impactful debates are anymore.
32:40
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this, I don't think Troy
32:41
Speaker 1: Jackson's debate performances have helped him. Maybe they don't matter.
32:45
Speaker 1: Maybe the environment overwhelms everything. But and it's possible. And
32:52
Speaker 1: that to me that you want a real test of
32:54
Speaker 1: this wave. It's not whether Democrats can carry Kansas. It's
32:58
Speaker 1: whether they can have they can overwhelm and win in
33:01
Speaker 1: places and say knock off the incumbent Republican governor of Nevada,
33:06
Speaker 1: whether they can win Georgia governor, whether they can win
33:09
Speaker 1: main Senate. So then you have Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed is
33:15
Speaker 1: running a very different Democratic campaign than Haley Stevens would
33:18
Speaker 1: have run, the person he knocked off in the Democratic primary.
33:22
Speaker 1: And he's betting that his progressive coalition, coupled with dissatisfaction
33:26
Speaker 1: over Trump and sort of skepticism of Mike Rogers being
33:29
Speaker 1: independent of Trump, will allow for a statewide win. Very
33:35
Speaker 1: notable to me, AOC. She's put her money where her
33:38
Speaker 1: mouth is. She put a million dollars. She transferred a
33:40
Speaker 1: million dollars from her campaign to him. She clearly sees
33:44
Speaker 1: him As a, as a, as, and it's interesting, you know, I,
33:49
Speaker 1: I had to go off on a little bit of
33:50
Speaker 1: an aside here on AOC. Let's assume her decision is
33:53
Speaker 1: to run for the Senate in 2028, but she is
33:57
Speaker 1: trying essentially to accept the premise that she's the leader
34:01
Speaker 1: of the movement, right? She's the heir apparent to Bernie Sanders.
34:06
Speaker 1: She's going to be doing town hall with Troy Jackson,
34:07
Speaker 1: by the way, in Maine later this week, she transferred
34:11
Speaker 1: this million dollars. she is certainly making a play as
34:14
Speaker 1: sort of being the leader of the movement, even if
34:17
Speaker 1: perhaps she's not the actual presidential candidate. And I think
34:22
Speaker 1: she thinks Abdul El-Sayed is the potential face of this movement.
34:27
Speaker 1: And she believes, and she said it before, if you
34:28
Speaker 1: can win in Michigan, then that means you can win
34:30
Speaker 1: perhaps anywhere. Something to keep in mind there. Remarkable amount
34:36
Speaker 1: of money for AOC to put into one campaign. Still,
34:41
Speaker 1: He's struggling with his coalition. Haley Stevens herself raised some
34:44
Speaker 1: concerns about how aggressively Republicans and Mike Rogers are competing
34:48
Speaker 1: for the black vote in Michigan. And while she's endorsed Al-Sayed,
34:52
Speaker 1: she hasn't been a fixture alongside him on the trail.
34:56
Speaker 1: How much does he want? There are days that I
34:59
Speaker 1: watch Abdul Al-Sayed and I wonder, is he making enough
35:04
Speaker 1: effort to assuage the skeptical Democrats enough? Should he be?
35:08
Speaker 1: And I know he's walking a line here. He wants
35:10
Speaker 1: to broaden his coalition, perhaps make folks that are uncomfortable
35:16
Speaker 1: with him a bit more comfortable without undermining the enthusiasm
35:22
Speaker 1: of the folks that have been with him through thick
35:23
Speaker 1: and thin. It requires a lot of political skill to
35:30
Speaker 1: pull that off. I think in the last, I'm not
35:34
Speaker 1: sure he's, he may win anyway. I when when you
35:40
Speaker 1: start to hear these things about what's happening with the
35:43
Speaker 1: black vote and look, that's Obama's coming in. We'll see
35:45
Speaker 1: how effective that is for Abdul El-Sayed. But I am
35:52
Speaker 1: guessing there are some Democrats at the DSCC that wished
35:57
Speaker 1: he would. It could make a few more efforts, a
36:02
Speaker 1: few more gestures to the skeptical side of the Democratic
36:05
Speaker 1: Party and reach out to the coalition. Two other races
36:09
Speaker 1: that I vaguely mentioned before, but I want to come
36:12
Speaker 1: back to that sort of get at this, we could
36:14
Speaker 1: have a strange sort of wave in the red states,
36:17
Speaker 1: but surprisingly not hitting the blue and purple states, right?
36:22
Speaker 1: And two other races I come back to that would
36:24
Speaker 1: help me clarify that are both governor's races. One is Nevada,
36:27
Speaker 1: one is Georgia. Lombardo has a huge financial advantage over
36:31
Speaker 1: the Democratic nominee, the sitting attorney general, Aaron Ford. Rick
36:34
Speaker 1: Jackson is Has his own financial advantages. He sort of
36:37
Speaker 1: bought his way into that Republican nomination, kind of has
36:41
Speaker 1: both clean hands from Trump a little bit. And as
36:44
Speaker 1: he is, boy, was, you know, he went to the Trump.
36:48
Speaker 1: He showed up at the rally that Trump had in Georgia.
36:50
Speaker 1: But boy, was he careful of the words that he said.
36:52
Speaker 1: I think he's been as effective doing that as you could.
36:56
Speaker 1: He defeated a Trump candidate in the primary, which I
36:58
Speaker 1: think gave him some level of credibility with some Trump
37:02
Speaker 1: skeptic voters. But he's just an enormous amount of his
37:08
Speaker 1: own money that he's poured into this race. Keisha Lance Bottoms,
37:10
Speaker 1: a Democratic nominee. She's run a good campaign, but financially
37:14
Speaker 1: keeping up. And there's a question. Can an Atlanta Democrat,
37:18
Speaker 1: African-American Democrat, win a governor's race statewide? They've come close,
37:25
Speaker 1: but they haven't. And boy, this environment with Jackson's money
37:29
Speaker 1: is big. That's why the question is, it's, you know,
37:33
Speaker 1: so let's say Democrats win the Senate, win the House,
37:38
Speaker 1: pull off some upsets in Kansas, Texas, Iowa, and Ohio
37:41
Speaker 1: and Alaska. But Joe Lombardo survives. Susan Collins survives. Rick
37:47
Speaker 1: Jackson wins the Georgia governor seat. What do we call that?
37:52
Speaker 1: I think then that's when you're going to start asking
37:54
Speaker 1: about the red undertow or blue wave in the red states, right?
37:58
Speaker 1: A repudiation of the National Republican Party that doesn't translate
38:01
Speaker 1: into uniform gains in bluer states. Now, if Democrats start
38:06
Speaker 1: winning those races too, Nevada governor, Georgia governor, Maine Senate, right?
38:11
Speaker 1: If the national environment overwhelms Republicans who have otherwise run
38:15
Speaker 1: good campaigns in this environment, then we're talking something about
38:19
Speaker 1: a wave that is closer to a category three or five.
38:24
Speaker 1: And we have to have those conversations. And of course
38:27
Speaker 1: then one more set of candidates that I wanna discuss
38:29
Speaker 1: here before I move on to another topic I wanna
38:32
Speaker 1: get to. Our independent candidates that are sort of in
38:36
Speaker 1: some ways they're quasi sort of defacto Democratic challengers or
38:40
Speaker 1: out party challengers. Dan Osborne in Nebraska showed in 2024,
38:44
Speaker 1: he could attract voters who've never support an actual Democrat.
38:48
Speaker 1: He's got some new problems. but I wonder if his
38:52
Speaker 1: new problems also get at to the strength he has
38:55
Speaker 1: with just two weeks to go. So, boy, the oppo
38:58
Speaker 1: is being dropped on him. There was an audio recording
39:02
Speaker 1: of him using a pretty vulgar insult about Senator Deb Fischer,
39:07
Speaker 1: the senator he lost to last election, and it wasn't
39:09
Speaker 1: very helpful. Now, to his credit, he apologized, didn't try
39:13
Speaker 1: to deny it, just said he talks like a sailor sometimes.
39:16
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it changes the race, but
39:18
Speaker 1: there's clearly an attempt by the Ricketts campaign to paint
39:22
Speaker 1: Osborne as, look, he may be saying what you think,
39:24
Speaker 1: but do you really want him representing Nebraska in the Senate? Now,
39:28
Speaker 1: it's ironic that they're trying to hit Osborne for vulgarity
39:32
Speaker 1: and these sorts of issues. The party of Donald Trump's
39:36
Speaker 1: doing this, right? And I think that that's where you're
39:40
Speaker 1: not quite sure it hits the way it hits. So
39:44
Speaker 1: I look at this and there's a part of me
39:47
Speaker 1: that thinks Osborne's about to hit the same Same brick
39:50
Speaker 1: wall he hit against Fisher. Close, but he can't really
39:53
Speaker 1: break through. Or they're throwing more negatives at him this
39:59
Speaker 1: time because they're very nervous that he is going to
40:01
Speaker 1: break through. One other note. Montana. Seth Bodnar's campaign released
40:15
Speaker 1: a poll showing himself narrowly ahead in an actual three-way race.
40:19
Speaker 1: I'm cautious about this because this is the only survey,
40:22
Speaker 1: and it happens to be a campaign-sponsored survey, that has
40:24
Speaker 1: shown Bodnar in the lead. Bodnar has been down anywhere
40:27
Speaker 1: from high single digits to low double digits this entire
40:30
Speaker 1: campaign in polling from a variety of sources. Kurt Almey,
40:35
Speaker 1: the Republican nominee, has polled anywhere from the low 40s
40:40
Speaker 1: to the mid 40s. Now, in theory, the Democratic nominee,
40:45
Speaker 1: who did not take a knee like the Democratic nominee
40:47
Speaker 1: did in Nebraska, Um, she's getting anywhere from 15 to 20%
40:53
Speaker 1: of the vote. Um, if the number goes down to
40:57
Speaker 1: 10 or even below 10, maybe there's a path to
41:00
Speaker 1: victory for Bodnar here, but it is, um, it does
41:05
Speaker 1: his path to victory. I think it is less about
41:07
Speaker 1: the democratic candidate and more about whether jet having nominees
41:12
Speaker 1: from both parties get some soft, um, right-leaning, uh, folks
41:21
Speaker 1: into the Bodnar camp. I think he released this poll
41:24
Speaker 1: to try to convince people that this race isn't over yet.
41:29
Speaker 1: We'll see. We shall see. Bottom line. Fundraising has been extraordinary.
41:36
Speaker 1: Early vote is worth watching. Senate map continues to broaden.
41:40
Speaker 1: It's not shrinking. And it's only shrinking in where Republicans
41:43
Speaker 1: are trying to target. It is broadening where Democrats are
41:46
Speaker 1: trying to play. Ditto in the House field. but we
41:49
Speaker 1: still don't know the size and shape of this wave.
41:53
Speaker 1: But there is no dispute about the direction of this.
41:56
Speaker 1: So with that backdrop, let's talk about the president. Let's
42:00
Speaker 1: start with Ken Paxton. Trump's already blaming John Cornyn and
42:04
Speaker 1: Karl Rove for the possibility that Paxton loses Texas. Think
42:08
Speaker 1: about that. Cornyn was the incumbent. He was the candidate.
42:10
Speaker 1: A lot of Republicans believe was better positioned to hold
42:12
Speaker 1: the seat. Paxton beat him in the primary because of
42:16
Speaker 1: Trump deciding to give Paxton, his support. And now if
42:19
Speaker 1: Paxton loses, it's John Cornyn's fault or Karl Rove's fault,
42:25
Speaker 1: who these days spends more time just being a commentator,
42:28
Speaker 1: a columnist. At some point, doesn't the candidate bear some responsibility?
42:34
Speaker 1: Doesn't the president who helped elevate that candidate bear responsibility?
42:39
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to me to watch Trump grasp for
42:43
Speaker 1: other people to blame, right? Because it's very revealing. Trump's
42:46
Speaker 1: always wanted credit for Republican victories, and he's been the
42:49
Speaker 1: dominant figure in his party for more than a decade.
42:53
Speaker 1: He's had enormous say over who gets nominated, what the
42:56
Speaker 1: party stands for, which politicians get rewarded, and which candidates
42:59
Speaker 1: get punished. And yet, heading into an election that could
43:02
Speaker 1: be a significant repudiation of his presidency and leadership, he's
43:07
Speaker 1: starting to sound like somebody who's just along for the ride.
43:10
Speaker 1: And it's not just in Texas. There are reports Trump's
43:13
Speaker 1: been asking allies about Susie Wiles and potential replacements for
43:17
Speaker 1: her as chief of staff. At the same time, he's
43:20
Speaker 1: angry at political advisors who've been doing lucrative consulting work overseas,
43:26
Speaker 1: including people close to Susie Wiles. Now, is he angry
43:29
Speaker 1: that people are making money off of him, or is
43:31
Speaker 1: he angry that he found that it went public that
43:33
Speaker 1: people are making money off of him? Those are two
43:35
Speaker 1: different things. Now, This is the caveat. This is the
43:40
Speaker 1: point I'm supposed to say. President's changing chief of staff
43:43
Speaker 1: after a midterm. That's hardly unusual. It's actually kind of normal.
43:46
Speaker 1: Sometimes you do need a new team, a new strategy,
43:49
Speaker 1: new voice in the room. Somebody might have a better
43:50
Speaker 1: relationship with the new majority from the other party. Trump's
43:55
Speaker 1: no conventional president. And Susie Wiles hasn't been a conventional
43:57
Speaker 1: chief of staff. Now, she's one of the few people
44:01
Speaker 1: who has shown some ability to keep Trump focused and
44:04
Speaker 1: disciplined for an extended period of time. In fact, it's interesting.
44:08
Speaker 1: I've long thought there are two people in Trump's orbit
44:09
Speaker 1: that deserve particular credit for keeping Trump on track during
44:14
Speaker 1: the last like 90 days of his two winning presidential campaigns.
44:18
Speaker 1: Kellyanne Conway in the closing weeks of 2016, that campaign
44:21
Speaker 1: was a mess. She took over and she, you know,
44:24
Speaker 1: especially October, starting on October 8th, 2016, the day after
44:28
Speaker 1: the Access Hollywood tape, she somehow reined him in, kept
44:33
Speaker 1: him somewhat boring at the end and it paid off.
44:37
Speaker 1: Susie Wiles in 2024. Now, the two of them had
44:40
Speaker 1: different styles and different relationships with Trump, but both found
44:44
Speaker 1: ways to keep on what mattered politically. But of course,
44:48
Speaker 1: as we know, eventually Trump tires of being managed, or
44:53
Speaker 1: more importantly, he doesn't like it when he finds out
44:56
Speaker 1: he's being managed. If he thinks he's not being managed,
44:59
Speaker 1: but he's being managed, he loves it. Loves Kellyanne, loves
45:02
Speaker 1: a Susie Wiles. When it becomes apparent and other people
45:06
Speaker 1: note how well managed she is, then he gets upset, right?
45:08
Speaker 1: Then he gets, then of course, especially if it's a woman, right?
45:11
Speaker 1: On one hand, it seems like only women effectively manage him.
45:15
Speaker 1: And yet when the chips are down, it's only women
45:18
Speaker 1: he seems to fire, right? Bondi, Guilfoyle, Noam. Now he's
45:24
Speaker 1: looking to scapegoat Wiles. You see where I'm going here.
45:28
Speaker 1: Which brings me to Katie Zachariah. Look, I think we
45:33
Speaker 1: know there is a new measurement of unit in American politics, right?
45:36
Speaker 1: We had the Scaramucci for years. That meant 11 days
45:39
Speaker 1: of public service. Did you, have you been in government
45:42
Speaker 1: for a Scaramucci? Well, I've been in government for three Scaramucci's. Oh, wow.
45:46
Speaker 1: A whole month, right? Now, Anthony Scaramucci's legendary tenure as
45:50
Speaker 1: White House communications director in Trump's first term was 11 days.
45:53
Speaker 1: So now we have a Zachariah and I've decided you
45:55
Speaker 1: can't just use five days. I've decided the unit of
45:58
Speaker 1: measurement has to be five and a half days. I
45:59
Speaker 1: want some symmetry here, right? I want to be able
46:01
Speaker 1: to say two Zacharias equals one Scaramucci. Or I was
46:04
Speaker 1: here for a Scaramucci plus a Zachariah, which would tell
46:07
Speaker 1: people you were there for 16 and a half days.
46:10
Speaker 1: So I do. We need to formally establish. And I
46:13
Speaker 1: think we'll have a debate in the measurements committee when
46:17
Speaker 1: we have this debate here. Two Zacharias, I think, should
46:20
Speaker 1: equal one Scaramucci. So we have to unequivocally accept the
46:24
Speaker 1: premise that she served for five and a half days,
46:26
Speaker 1: not just five days. All right. Because, hey, we don't
46:28
Speaker 1: want to deal with fractions that often, do we? And
46:32
Speaker 1: you start trying to figure out how five I saw
46:33
Speaker 1: somebody say it's a point four or five of a Scaramucci. No, no, no, no, no, no.
46:38
Speaker 1: Let's not do that. Let's make this a little simpler.
46:42
Speaker 1: But still joking aside here, how she left is more
46:46
Speaker 1: reveal revealing, though, than how long she lasted. Right. She
46:49
Speaker 1: was named press secretary despite questions about all of her qualifications.
46:52
Speaker 1: And despite reports, she was. didn't, had not really been
46:57
Speaker 1: vetted by Susie Wiles. Trump just sort of did this
47:00
Speaker 1: on his own. The first briefing went badly. Then she
47:03
Speaker 1: went on Sean Hannity's show. And normally Fox is where
47:06
Speaker 1: you play cleanup, right? But Hannity, out of nowhere, asked
47:11
Speaker 1: some surprisingly tough questions, right? And Sean, I've known you
47:15
Speaker 1: a long time. We know you're capable of asking tough questions,
47:18
Speaker 1: but you seem to believe you have to be on
47:20
Speaker 1: message for other people rather than play the role of journalists.
47:23
Speaker 1: I appreciate you do it every once in a while.
47:25
Speaker 1: Proves you can. You can be quite effective when you
47:27
Speaker 1: choose to do it. Anyway, but he hit her with
47:33
Speaker 1: legal credentials about why she'd identified herself as an attorney
47:37
Speaker 1: when she hadn't passed the bar, about why her first
47:39
Speaker 1: briefing lasted 14 minutes and took only three questions. And
47:43
Speaker 1: she struggled. Now, here's where it gets fascinating. According to Politico,
47:46
Speaker 1: Susie Wiles helped arrange the interview. And there are people
47:50
Speaker 1: inside the White House who believe Wiles essentially set her
47:53
Speaker 1: up to fail. In fact, one person told Politico it
47:56
Speaker 1: was a, quote, sanctioned hit. Everybody loves their mafia metaphors
48:00
Speaker 1: in Washington, D.C. Now, the White House denies it. Fox
48:03
Speaker 1: says Hannity decides his own questions. And there's a perfectly
48:08
Speaker 1: plausible alternative. Wiles was simply giving Zachariah a chance to
48:11
Speaker 1: clean up her own mess. I guess I could plausibly
48:15
Speaker 1: see it both ways. Maybe Wiles figured you want to
48:17
Speaker 1: be the public face of this administration, then you ought
48:19
Speaker 1: to be able to handle Sean Hannity, right? The spokesperson
48:24
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump ought to be able to handle a
48:25
Speaker 1: Sean Hannity interview. If you can't handle Sean Hannity as
48:28
Speaker 1: a Donald Trump spokesperson, then good luck handling any other
48:31
Speaker 1: interview you have, right? Welcome to the NFL. Or maybe
48:35
Speaker 1: Wiles knew exactly what was going to happen. Either way,
48:39
Speaker 1: Zachariah was gone within hours. And what it suggests is
48:42
Speaker 1: that the president and his chief of staff are not
48:44
Speaker 1: working from the same playbook anymore. Trump is now off
48:47
Speaker 1: on his own. This is why we're seeing, this is
48:50
Speaker 1: the worst parts of Trump 1.0 have shown up now
48:53
Speaker 1: in how he's managing. The one thing that hadn't happened
48:56
Speaker 1: was chaotic management. Well, the chaotic management is back, which
49:00
Speaker 1: means he knows he was being controlled and he doesn't
49:03
Speaker 1: like it anymore. So Trump made a personnel call, Wallace
49:08
Speaker 1: was left to manage the fallout, and now the White
49:11
Speaker 1: House is consumed by a drama that never should have
49:14
Speaker 1: been a national story. Now, Trump himself says, Susan Wall's
49:17
Speaker 1: not going anywhere, right? That's like the owner that says,
49:21
Speaker 1: the manager's not going anywhere. No, I vote, you know,
49:24
Speaker 1: anytime the president gives you a vote of confidence, you
49:27
Speaker 1: probably ought to get your resume put together. But the fact,
49:32
Speaker 1: because the fact is we know, because everybody who talks
49:35
Speaker 1: to Trump likes to tell people they talk to Trump, um,
49:41
Speaker 1: He's doing his thing when he's nearing the end of
49:44
Speaker 1: time with somebody. He's asking about, well, who else do
49:47
Speaker 1: you think I should put in? And let me just say,
49:50
Speaker 1: if it's Jay Clayton at DNI, we probably should breathe
49:52
Speaker 1: a sigh of relief. If it's Bill Pulte, the sort
49:55
Speaker 1: of the goon that has been used to weaponize government
49:58
Speaker 1: against various people like Lisa Cook at Fed, and I
50:00
Speaker 1: think he's a part of this Elon Omar business, that
50:04
Speaker 1: should scare a lot of people. Pulte is, and none
50:06
Speaker 1: of this is, he can name who he wants. If
50:08
Speaker 1: Bill Pulte replaces Susie Wiles, This could turn into a
50:14
Speaker 1: full-on rogue administration. So here's hoping it's a Jay Clayton
50:19
Speaker 1: or even a Kevin McCarthy on that one, just simply
50:22
Speaker 1: to make sure we don't. It's one thing that we
50:24
Speaker 1: crash the car. It's another thing if we go off
50:26
Speaker 1: a cliff. And Bill Pulte is the type of guy
50:29
Speaker 1: who might take the country totally off a cliff. I mean,
50:32
Speaker 1: he and Trump together, that is Thelma and Louise all
50:35
Speaker 1: the wrong way around it. All right. I want to
50:38
Speaker 1: transition a little bit to the campaign trial. Republican candidates
50:41
Speaker 1: around the country are trying to figure out how much
50:43
Speaker 1: distance they can put between themselves and the president without
50:46
Speaker 1: alienating his voters. And as usual, Trump's making this incredibly
50:50
Speaker 1: difficult for these Republicans. Politico had an interesting fundraising number
50:54
Speaker 1: over the weekend. Democrats have spent one hundred and forty
50:56
Speaker 1: five million dollars in general election ads that mentioned Donald Trump.
51:00
Speaker 1: Republicans have spent eight million dollars on ads that mentioned
51:03
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Eighteen to one. Hey, who wants to pretend
51:07
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's on the ballot? The Democrats or the Republicans?
51:10
Speaker 1: What does Donald Trump keep telling Republicans? Pretend he's on
51:13
Speaker 1: the ballot. What do Democrats say? Yes, please. Right. Now,
51:18
Speaker 1: I think it tells you we know what Republican campaigns
51:21
Speaker 1: don't want. Donald Trump on the trail and Donald Trump
51:23
Speaker 1: helping them out at this moment. This is a man
51:25
Speaker 1: whose endorsement had been a valuable commodity in Republican primaries
51:29
Speaker 1: and probably still is. But in a general election. He's
51:33
Speaker 1: not helpful most times and certainly not helpful in a
51:35
Speaker 1: cycle like this. In Ohio, John Huston has appeared with Trump,
51:40
Speaker 1: but the Republican Senate ads do not feature him. In Nebraska,
51:43
Speaker 1: Ricketts isn't exactly making the Trump endorsement the centerpiece of
51:47
Speaker 1: his campaign. In Michigan, Republican candidates were reportedly nervous about
51:53
Speaker 1: even showing up at a Trump rally, given the tariffs,
51:55
Speaker 1: the Canada trade war, and the Iran war. Look, they
52:00
Speaker 1: don't fully distance themselves from Trump because they want his voters,
52:03
Speaker 1: they want his turnout operation, and they want him exciting
52:06
Speaker 1: people who still love him. They just don't necessarily want
52:10
Speaker 1: to be standing next to him. The problem is Trump
52:12
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to deliver a message that helps these candidates.
52:16
Speaker 1: The New York Times today devoted an entire story to
52:19
Speaker 1: Trump's to what I pointed out a few days ago,
52:22
Speaker 1: Trump's fascination with the physical appearance of the men he's
52:25
Speaker 1: been campaigning for or against. He likes to talk about
52:27
Speaker 1: their shoulders, their jawlines, their physiques, even their asses. It's
52:33
Speaker 1: been really strange. If he said these things about a woman,
52:35
Speaker 1: you'd say, why is he objectifying this woman? He literally
52:37
Speaker 1: objectified John Husted's body. And shouldn't people be offended by it?
52:46
Speaker 1: He's offered assessments of the relative attractiveness of John Ossoff
52:50
Speaker 1: and Mike Collins. He's even talked about what parts of
52:53
Speaker 1: his makeup he likes to mess with and stuff. He's
52:56
Speaker 1: criticized Ken Paxton's looks while trying to get Texans to
52:59
Speaker 1: vote for him. Look, I certainly have plenty of theories
53:03
Speaker 1: that I've hinted at here. I think the older you get,
53:06
Speaker 1: the more your filters disappear and maybe the real you
53:11
Speaker 1: comes out. Mr. President, love is love. You be you,
53:16
Speaker 1: my friend. But the fact is, in all seriousness, he's
53:22
Speaker 1: a different public performer right now than he was 10
53:24
Speaker 1: years ago or even four years ago. These appearances keep
53:27
Speaker 1: generating headlines that have nothing to do with the candidates
53:30
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be helping. Republicans need him talking about
53:33
Speaker 1: the economy, the cost of living, how he's about to
53:36
Speaker 1: end the war in Iran. And instead, he wants to
53:39
Speaker 1: talk about what he thinks of John Husted's backside. By
53:43
Speaker 1: the way, Maureen Dowd had a had a One of
53:46
Speaker 1: her classics over the weekend of a column, and she
53:50
Speaker 1: captured the moment, I think, pretty well using a photograph.
53:53
Speaker 1: She has a particular talent for writing about Trump's id,
53:58
Speaker 1: his need for attention, his fixation on loyalty and adulation.
54:02
Speaker 1: And she has her own long relationship with him over
54:05
Speaker 1: the years. He loves her. He hates her. He loves her.
54:08
Speaker 1: He hates her. Everything he has said about Maggie Haberman,
54:12
Speaker 1: before there was Maggie Haberman, there was Maureen Dow. And
54:15
Speaker 1: she built this column around my friend Doug Mills' photograph.
54:19
Speaker 1: Doug Mills is the New York Times chief photographer, probably
54:23
Speaker 1: our best living political campaign government photographer there is, news
54:26
Speaker 1: photographer there is here domestically. You know, he just is
54:31
Speaker 1: so good at capturing literally the pictures that are a
54:34
Speaker 1: thousand words. This is what he does. And he has
54:38
Speaker 1: this photograph that Maureen Dowd uses to write her old
54:41
Speaker 1: column about. Trump is aboard Marine One. This is a
54:44
Speaker 1: photograph from last week. leaning towards Katie Zachariah, you know,
54:48
Speaker 1: sometime in her five and a half day tenure, and
54:51
Speaker 1: Natalie Hart, the two aides who look absolutely delighted to
54:56
Speaker 1: be in his presence. Big smiles is in the photos, right?
55:00
Speaker 1: Susie Wiles is there too, but she's mostly outside the frame.
55:03
Speaker 1: You do see her legs and her bag. And Dowd
55:06
Speaker 1: sort of portrays, she reads it as a portrait of
55:09
Speaker 1: an increasingly insular world for Donald Trump, surrounded by people
55:13
Speaker 1: who tell him exactly what he wants to hear, Natalie Harp,
55:15
Speaker 1: Katie Zachariah, right? Who both have striking resemblance to his daughter. Well,
55:22
Speaker 1: the political environment outside that bubble gets more hostile. I
55:26
Speaker 1: think she's onto something because you look at what's happening
55:28
Speaker 1: outside the helicopter. Candidates are keeping their distance. His advisors
55:32
Speaker 1: are fighting amongst themselves. The public is increasingly skeptical of
55:34
Speaker 1: his motives, right? There's another new poll showing another new
55:38
Speaker 1: all-time low in his job rating. And then in this
55:42
Speaker 1: most recent, this Washington Post ABC poll, The one big
55:46
Speaker 1: new piece of information that I thought was interesting was
55:48
Speaker 1: nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Trump is using the presidency
55:51
Speaker 1: now to enrich himself. A year ago, it was 22%
55:55
Speaker 1: of Republicans and Republican-leading independents believed this. Now, 34% of
56:00
Speaker 1: Republicans and Republican-leading independents, a third of Republicans, essentially a
56:05
Speaker 1: third of Trump's voters themselves, think he's just enriching himself.
56:09
Speaker 1: It's a big jump, 12-point jump among people already disposed
56:13
Speaker 1: to support him. And this goes back to something I've
56:17
Speaker 1: been thinking about, about the size of this wave. Corruption
56:20
Speaker 1: is sort of the, and I've said this before, right?
56:23
Speaker 1: If corruption starts to make its way into the end
56:27
Speaker 1: part of the cycle, that's usually the last necessary ingredient
56:32
Speaker 1: for a successful political wave in your favor. And the
56:36
Speaker 1: corruption issue is percolating, right? It seems to be outside
56:43
Speaker 1: of just the cable news chambers or even the echo
56:45
Speaker 1: chamber of DC. And when corruption, it's not replacing concerns
56:52
Speaker 1: about cost of living. It gets connected to the issue
56:56
Speaker 1: of cost of living. You don't care about what's happening
56:58
Speaker 1: to us. You only care about enriching yourself, right? So
57:01
Speaker 1: if they're already frustrated about what they pay for gas, groceries,
57:03
Speaker 1: and electricity, they're wondering, huh, you're making a whole bunch
57:07
Speaker 1: of money. You're cashing in. What about me? So then
57:11
Speaker 1: it becomes more than economic frustration. It becomes a question
57:14
Speaker 1: of trust. So the fact that this concern is popping up,
57:20
Speaker 1: there's more headlines to prove it, right? Kimberly Guilfoyle, right?
57:24
Speaker 1: Just another, and it's funny about her, Guilfoyle, right? Who
57:27
Speaker 1: was once engaged to Donald Trump Jr. Got pushed out
57:31
Speaker 1: as ambassador of Greece, basically because she got caught being
57:35
Speaker 1: a grifter. Not because she's a grifter, right? If he
57:37
Speaker 1: fired everybody who got caught being a, but it was
57:40
Speaker 1: sort of in his own way. It was sort of,
57:42
Speaker 1: I guess maybe she didn't give him a piece. I mean,
57:44
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but this to me,
57:49
Speaker 1: the way he handled Guilfoyle tells me he really has
57:52
Speaker 1: lost a step here because now we're getting stories about
57:54
Speaker 1: a supposed burn book, collection of Trump family secrets. She
57:57
Speaker 1: might be ready to reveal. Now, when I first read it,
58:00
Speaker 1: my thought was somebody shopping a book deal. She wants
58:03
Speaker 1: to let publishers know she might have material and she
58:06
Speaker 1: needs money. So she's going to be looking for a
58:08
Speaker 1: big advance. So let's see if she actually has what
58:11
Speaker 1: she has. But, you know, that felt like the, hey,
58:14
Speaker 1: book publishers, give me a call. I've got something. I know,
58:18
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, could you help me pay
58:20
Speaker 1: my Amex bill? Oh, no. Did I say it that way?
58:22
Speaker 1: Did I connect those dots that directly? No. Look, we
58:24
Speaker 1: don't know. But and maybe it's leverage. Who knows? But
58:29
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that Trump Papa Trump here didn't find her
58:33
Speaker 1: a softer landing, a better face-saving explanation, quiet exit, because
58:38
Speaker 1: she's now somebody, you never know what she might say.
58:40
Speaker 1: You never know what she might do. And now it's
58:43
Speaker 1: a more public spectacle involving people already profiting off of
58:47
Speaker 1: their proximity to him. And I think that's another political
58:50
Speaker 1: danger for Republicans, right? You put all this together, and again,
58:55
Speaker 1: you're not doing enough to prevent Trump from doing this,
58:57
Speaker 1: so maybe you're part of the problem too. All of
59:00
Speaker 1: this wages one other question that I like to remind
59:03
Speaker 1: folks of. How much does Donald Trump actually care about
59:06
Speaker 1: the long term future of the Republican Party? And I
59:08
Speaker 1: ask this question because I actually one of the reasons
59:11
Speaker 1: why I'm not concerned about him truly messing with the
59:15
Speaker 1: midterms or questioning the results, because I don't think this
59:18
Speaker 1: isn't about himself. This were about him in his own head,
59:23
Speaker 1: then maybe he would do use his executive power. And
59:27
Speaker 1: I think that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant about
59:30
Speaker 1: this and really concerned about his behavior going into 28.
59:34
Speaker 1: But for a weird reason, I think he doesn't care
59:37
Speaker 1: about the Republicans and would be fine if it's just him. Like,
59:43
Speaker 1: I don't think if he were the lone member of
59:46
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, but we're still in office, I don't
59:48
Speaker 1: think that would bother him one bit. So, look, would
59:53
Speaker 1: he prefer a Republican Congress over a Democratic one? Of
59:56
Speaker 1: course he would. Republican Congress protects him from investigations, lets
1:00:00
Speaker 1: him govern basically without any restraints. I mean, even when
1:00:03
Speaker 1: they vote for a Russian sanctions bill, he just signs
1:00:05
Speaker 1: an executive order and they just shrug their shoulders. But
1:00:10
Speaker 1: I don't think he cares whether the Republican Party is
1:00:12
Speaker 1: still a viable governing party after he leaves the stage.
1:00:14
Speaker 1: If anything, I think he'd love for it to disappear
1:00:16
Speaker 1: and say, I was the only one that kept it afloat. Again,
1:00:20
Speaker 1: if he cared about the future of the Republican Party,
1:00:22
Speaker 1: why would he have elevated Ken Paxton? If he cared
1:00:25
Speaker 1: about the future of the Republican Party, why would he
1:00:27
Speaker 1: have alienated Tom Tillis? Why would he spend so much
1:00:30
Speaker 1: energy settling scores inside the party with people who actually
1:00:34
Speaker 1: might have helped him keep power? And would he be
1:00:39
Speaker 1: making foreign policy decisions he's making right now? Decisions that
1:00:42
Speaker 1: force Republican candidates to answer questions they'd rather not be
1:00:45
Speaker 1: answering two weeks before an election. Like, why is the
1:00:48
Speaker 1: president favoring Putin, a war criminal, over Zelensky in New York?
1:01:03
Speaker 1: This brings me to the most consequential story of the week.
1:01:09
Speaker 1: Once again, Donald Trump has made a decision that benefits
1:01:11
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin at the expense of Ukraine. And this time
1:01:15
Speaker 1: it's about more than just rhetoric or his relationship with
1:01:18
Speaker 1: the Russian leader. It's the decision to let Russian diesel
1:01:21
Speaker 1: back into global markets. It's the reported throttling of the
1:01:25
Speaker 1: satellite system Ukraine relies on to defend itself. and the
1:01:28
Speaker 1: extraordinary influence of our big donor that we talked about
1:01:32
Speaker 1: at the start of this podcast, Mr. Elon Musk. Look,
1:01:38
Speaker 1: I am asked, these are questions, all right? This is
1:01:43
Speaker 1: Claire Danes putting index cards on a bulletin board and
1:01:49
Speaker 1: putting some yarn that might connect the pushpins. But I
1:01:53
Speaker 1: think we need to see what the picture looks like.
1:01:58
Speaker 1: There are things we know, and there are things that
1:02:01
Speaker 1: have been reported but are disputed. And there's some very
1:02:04
Speaker 1: serious questions that nobody's adequately answered. So how we got
1:02:08
Speaker 1: this diesel deal? Let's remember how we got here. The
1:02:10
Speaker 1: United States has been at war with Iran for nearly
1:02:13
Speaker 1: eight months. Whatever you think of the decision to go in,
1:02:17
Speaker 1: there's a growing body of evidence that the consequences have
1:02:20
Speaker 1: been a lot more complicated than this administration expected. Michael Froman,
1:02:25
Speaker 1: the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, had
1:02:27
Speaker 1: a fascinating assessment of the war over the weekend. Because
1:02:32
Speaker 1: he noted that by the administration's own military objectives, the
1:02:35
Speaker 1: United States has actually accomplished quite a bit in Iran.
1:02:38
Speaker 1: Iran's conventional military has been significantly degraded. Its navy has
1:02:41
Speaker 1: taken enormous losses. Its ability to launch missiles and drones
1:02:44
Speaker 1: has been diminished. Real achievements. But Iran has been much
1:02:49
Speaker 1: better at the asymmetrical part of the war game, if
1:02:51
Speaker 1: you will. You don't need to be the world's best
1:02:55
Speaker 1: Navy when you can threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
1:02:58
Speaker 1: You don't need to win an air war when cheap
1:02:59
Speaker 1: drones and missiles force everybody else to spend fortunes defending themselves.
1:03:04
Speaker 1: And you don't need to wreck the American economy. You
1:03:06
Speaker 1: just need to rattle global energy markets enough that an
1:03:10
Speaker 1: American president starts looking for almost any way to bring
1:03:12
Speaker 1: prices down. And apparently that's how we ended up with
1:03:15
Speaker 1: Donald Trump cutting a diesel deal with Vladimir Putin. So
1:03:19
Speaker 1: let's follow this chain. The U.S. goes to war with
1:03:20
Speaker 1: Iran in part to reduce the threat Iran poses to
1:03:23
Speaker 1: the region and American interest. Iran responds by exploiting its
1:03:25
Speaker 1: ability to disrupt energy supplies. Prices rise. Americans feel it.
1:03:30
Speaker 1: Political cost becomes obvious as the midterms approach. The president
1:03:33
Speaker 1: turns to Putin. He lets millions of barrels of Russian
1:03:38
Speaker 1: diesel back into the market, handing Russia another revenue stream
1:03:42
Speaker 1: while it's still raging a war in Ukraine. By the way,
1:03:45
Speaker 1: did I note that Russia is an ally of Iran? Oh, right,
1:03:48
Speaker 1: I left that out, didn't I? Anyway, the administration can
1:03:51
Speaker 1: say it's trying to relieve pressure on energy prices. It's
1:03:53
Speaker 1: a legitimate goal. Americans are paying more for fuel and
1:03:57
Speaker 1: it's been rippling through the whole economy. The question is
1:04:01
Speaker 1: whether this remedy makes any strategic sense because you're trying
1:04:05
Speaker 1: to solve one foreign policy problem by making another one worse.
1:04:09
Speaker 1: And there's no guarantee that the actual volume of Russian
1:04:12
Speaker 1: diesel involved even offsets what's happening in the Persian Gulf.
1:04:16
Speaker 1: Zelensky himself made that point, which is why he's skeptical
1:04:20
Speaker 1: that this was the motivation, right? The diesel deal will
1:04:23
Speaker 1: never make up for what isn't coming out of the Strait,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: Zelensky argued, but it will put more money in Putin's
1:04:30
Speaker 1: pocket so he can continue to conduct this war with Ukraine.
1:04:34
Speaker 1: And that's this fundamental contradiction. The United States has spent
1:04:36
Speaker 1: years trying to make Russia pay an economic price for
1:04:40
Speaker 1: invading a sovereign democracy. I say the United States has,
1:04:43
Speaker 1: because Congress has backed these sanctions. Republicans and Democrats voted
1:04:47
Speaker 1: to punish Moscow. Our European allies made painful economic choices
1:04:51
Speaker 1: to wean themselves off Russian energy at our behest, mind you.
1:04:56
Speaker 1: Everybody is aligned on this except for one person. The
1:05:01
Speaker 1: president himself decides that easing pressure on Russia is an
1:05:04
Speaker 1: acceptable way to deal with the consequences of his own
1:05:07
Speaker 1: war of choice with Iran. What message does this send?
1:05:15
Speaker 1: Putin is delighted. What does it tell Ukraine, European allies,
1:05:19
Speaker 1: every other country we've ever asked to trust an American commitment?
1:05:22
Speaker 1: And none of this is happening in a vacuum. And
1:05:24
Speaker 1: then there's this bizarre, I mean, look, I understand why
1:05:27
Speaker 1: people are going to their conspiratorial mindset on this one. Shoot,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: Trump himself almost introduced the conspiracy. He was sitting down
1:05:35
Speaker 1: with Rob Fenerty at Newsmax. And he, again, Trump sounded
1:05:40
Speaker 1: more frustrated with Zelensky than the president. the man behind
1:05:45
Speaker 1: all of the atrocity, Vladimir Putin. He criticized Ukraine strikes
1:05:49
Speaker 1: on Russian energy infrastructure. He did not criticize Russia's strikes
1:05:52
Speaker 1: on civilian populations in Ukraine or on their energy infrastructure.
1:05:57
Speaker 1: He suggested that Zelensky doesn't really want to settle. No,
1:06:00
Speaker 1: he's not settling anything. He's not handing land back to
1:06:03
Speaker 1: the Russians. You're right. And of course, Putin wants to
1:06:07
Speaker 1: settle anything that gives him more, not less. And then
1:06:10
Speaker 1: he repeated his claim that the Ukrainian president It's harder
1:06:13
Speaker 1: to deal with than the Russian one. Is that just
1:06:16
Speaker 1: for you, buddy? Why is Putin so easy to deal
1:06:19
Speaker 1: with for you? Remember the circumstances. Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia
1:06:26
Speaker 1: keeps hitting Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Ukraine is trying to
1:06:29
Speaker 1: defend its territory and impose costs on the country that
1:06:31
Speaker 1: invaded it. And our American president aims so much of
1:06:35
Speaker 1: his frustration at the leader of the country that was invaded.
1:06:38
Speaker 1: He's blaming the victim. It's deeply troubling. And then he
1:06:44
Speaker 1: offered a peculiar in that interview explanation for why Russia
1:06:46
Speaker 1: didn't take Ukraine quickly. He claimed that Russian generals took
1:06:50
Speaker 1: a wrong turn and otherwise the war might have been
1:06:52
Speaker 1: over in a day or two. And I'll tell you
1:06:55
Speaker 1: what made me scratch my head on that one. Where
1:06:59
Speaker 1: did he get that information? Who gave him that talking point?
1:07:02
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't invent talking points. People plant shit in his head.
1:07:06
Speaker 1: Is it something Putin told him? Did he actually pick
1:07:08
Speaker 1: this up elsewhere? It's an account, though, that blames Russia's
1:07:12
Speaker 1: failure on bad execution rather than on the resistance of
1:07:16
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian people or that maybe doing it was wrong
1:07:19
Speaker 1: in the first place. Right. Trump just says, ah, Russia
1:07:24
Speaker 1: blew it. You know, it's like, yeah, you turned the
1:07:26
Speaker 1: ball over in the first quarter. How about it was
1:07:31
Speaker 1: wrong for them to ever do it, period. And it
1:07:36
Speaker 1: really raises a bigger question of how Trump understands this war.
1:07:38
Speaker 1: Does he see Ukraine as a sovereign country? defending itself
1:07:41
Speaker 1: against aggression? Or did he simply see Ukraine as an
1:07:45
Speaker 1: obstacle to a deal he wants to have himself with Putin?
1:07:51
Speaker 1: And then we get to Elon Musk, and the story
1:07:54
Speaker 1: somehow gets more disturbing. According to the Telegraph, the London Telegraph,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: Musk approached Trump with a proposal to slow down the
1:08:01
Speaker 1: satellite communications being used by Ukrainian forces. More precisely, it's
1:08:04
Speaker 1: called Starshield, the military-grade version of Starlink that SpaceX built. Now,
1:08:10
Speaker 1: the Telegraph reported that Trump agreed, clearing the way for
1:08:12
Speaker 1: the Pentagon to impose restrictions that affected Ukraine's drone defenses.
1:08:15
Speaker 1: By the way, this is where I'd like to know,
1:08:18
Speaker 1: at what point in this conversation did the Ken Paxton
1:08:21
Speaker 1: $ 158 million donation come to? But anyway, but I digress. Now,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: Reuters reported that the order to slow down Starlink or
1:08:36
Speaker 1: Starshield actually originating inside the White House. Now, the White
1:08:39
Speaker 1: House disputes that account. Musk says Starshield is controlled by
1:08:43
Speaker 1: the U.S. government and that decisions about speed and usage
1:08:46
Speaker 1: ultimately rest with the military and the president. Musk not
1:08:50
Speaker 1: denying this happened, by the way, just trying to say,
1:08:53
Speaker 1: wasn't my decision. Well, he can't order it. He can
1:09:01
Speaker 1: influence it. He can write a check to Ken Paxton
1:09:03
Speaker 1: for $ 158 million, and maybe that opens the eyes of
1:09:06
Speaker 1: Trump to do something Musk would like him to do. Now,
1:09:11
Speaker 1: here's what we know. We know this happened. We just
1:09:13
Speaker 1: don't know who ordered the code red here, if you will.
1:09:20
Speaker 1: Zelensky says the system wasn't shut off, but its speed
1:09:23
Speaker 1: was cut and it interfered with Ukraine's ability to intercept
1:09:26
Speaker 1: certain Russian drops. It's not a minor technical inconvenience, mind you.
1:09:30
Speaker 1: We're talking about a communication system being used to protect
1:09:33
Speaker 1: civilians from Russian attacks, technology that can be the difference
1:09:35
Speaker 1: between intercepting an incoming weapon and letting it reach its target.
1:09:41
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is, according to reporting, the restrictions came
1:09:44
Speaker 1: during a stretch of really intense Russian strikes. Coordination, folks.
1:09:52
Speaker 1: Nine United States senators, Republicans and Democrats have asked the
1:09:55
Speaker 1: Pentagon inspector general to investigate this incident. The concern goes
1:09:59
Speaker 1: beyond Ukraine. They say American diplomatic and security personnel were
1:10:02
Speaker 1: also put at risk. We have Americans on the ground
1:10:04
Speaker 1: helping Ukrainians. And this president of the United States has
1:10:07
Speaker 1: allowed Putin unfettered access like this? Whatever the explanation, we're
1:10:12
Speaker 1: talking about a reported disruption that may have endangered Americans
1:10:15
Speaker 1: as well as Ukrainians. Now, You may wonder, where's the
1:10:20
Speaker 1: Secretary of State been? I wonder this all the time
1:10:22
Speaker 1: whenever there's crazy Trump stuff. Well, he's back. He showed
1:10:25
Speaker 1: back up Sunday night. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was
1:10:27
Speaker 1: asked about it, and his answer was remarkable. He said
1:10:29
Speaker 1: he wasn't sure Zelensky knew what he was talking about.
1:10:32
Speaker 1: And then he insisted nobody deliberately ordered a slowdown. Didn't
1:10:36
Speaker 1: deny there was a slowdown. He suggested the problem just
1:10:39
Speaker 1: sort of happened. And as far as he understood, service
1:10:42
Speaker 1: has been restored. It sort of happened. That's essentially the explanation, right?
1:10:48
Speaker 1: This is Rubio This is Homer Simpson. This is Marco Simpson, Rubio, right?
1:10:51
Speaker 1: He sort of does, you know, when things go really
1:10:54
Speaker 1: nut job with Trump, he does the Homer Simpson into
1:10:56
Speaker 1: the Bushes. And then when allies and Republican senators start
1:11:01
Speaker 1: getting cranky about something and they know the only person
1:11:04
Speaker 1: in that administration that remotely has credibility with them is
1:11:06
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio, he suddenly reappears from the Bushes, comes up
1:11:09
Speaker 1: with a convoluted explanation and doesn't denounce Trump at all, doesn't,
1:11:14
Speaker 1: and just tries to say, nothing to see here. Can't
1:11:17
Speaker 1: we move on? but none of this is beginning to
1:11:21
Speaker 1: answer the question. What happened? Who authorized it? Who gave
1:11:24
Speaker 1: the instructions to the Pentagon? What was SpaceX's role? What
1:11:27
Speaker 1: did the White House know and when did they know it?
1:11:29
Speaker 1: And why was the system Ukrainian forces depend on suddenly
1:11:32
Speaker 1: running at reduced capacity right in the middle of a
1:11:34
Speaker 1: bunch of Russian attacks? None of these are unreasonable questions.
1:11:39
Speaker 1: They're the most basic questions Congress should ask whenever a
1:11:44
Speaker 1: government decision may have endangered American lives and an ally's civilians. So,
1:11:50
Speaker 1: which gets us to the larger issue. How much influence
1:11:52
Speaker 1: does Elon Musk actually have over the foreign policy of
1:11:54
Speaker 1: the United States? Musk isn't a businessman with a government contract.
1:11:59
Speaker 1: He's become one of the most important financial figures in
1:12:01
Speaker 1: Republican politics. Remember the $ 158 million to the Senate Leadership
1:12:06
Speaker 1: Fund that was transferred in whole to a super PAC
1:12:10
Speaker 1: in Texas, right? It's clear, Jonathan, none of other Republican
1:12:15
Speaker 1: donors want to help Paxton. So somehow Trump By the way,
1:12:18
Speaker 1: in the same week, he complained about Cornyn and Rove
1:12:21
Speaker 1: and about Paxton. He's complaining about this. Paxton doesn't have
1:12:24
Speaker 1: any money. All of this happens in a compressed timetable.
1:12:29
Speaker 1: The massive Musk contribution shows up. Slowing down of Starlink happens.
1:12:34
Speaker 1: Helps out Putin. This diesel deal. What's going on? Look,
1:12:40
Speaker 1: I don't have evidence establishing anything beyond. Again, I go
1:12:43
Speaker 1: back to my Claire Daines wall here from Homeland. A
1:12:47
Speaker 1: lot of cards on the, I think you're like, really?
1:12:51
Speaker 1: All of these things are, what's weirder? If they're connected
1:12:54
Speaker 1: or if they're unconnected? It'd be stranger if they're unconnected
1:12:57
Speaker 1: at this point, right? But like I said, the sequence
1:13:03
Speaker 1: of events raises questions that deserve answers. Musk makes an
1:13:08
Speaker 1: extraordinarily large political contribution. Republicans are increasingly dependent on his money,
1:13:13
Speaker 1: particularly in Texas. Musk reportedly approaches the president about restricting
1:13:17
Speaker 1: a system in Ukraine he's using. The system is subsequently restricted.
1:13:23
Speaker 1: Serious consequences for Ukrainians defenses. We need the chronology of this.
1:13:30
Speaker 1: When exactly did Musk talk to Trump about Star Shield?
1:13:33
Speaker 1: When did the Pentagon get its instructions and from whom?
1:13:37
Speaker 1: What conversations took place between SpaceX and the administration? What else?
1:13:41
Speaker 1: were Musk and the White House talking about during that period.
1:13:44
Speaker 1: And just for shits and giggles, I'd like to understand why,
1:13:50
Speaker 1: at a period of time, Donald Trump unilaterally waived the
1:13:55
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham Russian sanctions bill, an executive order that essentially
1:14:00
Speaker 1: kept Russia out of it. You wanna really put on
1:14:03
Speaker 1: a tinfoil hat? If you really believe all the conspiracies
1:14:08
Speaker 1: with Trump and Putin, You would have a Putin looking
1:14:13
Speaker 1: at this political situation in America and realizing Trump's effectiveness
1:14:18
Speaker 1: as an asset is going to get curtailed big time
1:14:21
Speaker 1: in about three weeks. So you need everything you can
1:14:24
Speaker 1: get out of Trump in the next few weeks before
1:14:29
Speaker 1: the gig is up. Again, a lot of coincidences here.
1:14:32
Speaker 1: I think we need some answers. And this is what
1:14:34
Speaker 1: actual congressional oversight would look like. This is about whether
1:14:40
Speaker 1: or not Americans are being put in danger by Elon Musk,
1:14:44
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump. We don't know the motivations, but this
1:14:47
Speaker 1: is a lot of smoke, a ton of smoke. And again,
1:14:53
Speaker 1: I think at this point, it's weirder if all of
1:14:57
Speaker 1: this is simply a coincidence. What's more likely, that this
1:15:00
Speaker 1: stuff's not connected or that a lot more of it
1:15:04
Speaker 1: is connected than we realize? Now let's get back to politics.
1:15:07
Speaker 1: Two weeks out. Republican candidates are wrestling with the Iran war.
1:15:11
Speaker 1: Energy prices, voters are furious about affordability. And now the
1:15:14
Speaker 1: president has made a decision that helps Russia economically while
1:15:17
Speaker 1: his administration faces questions about whether deliberately degraded technology Ukraine
1:15:23
Speaker 1: uses to defend itself. The timing of this is also strange.
1:15:29
Speaker 1: How does any of this help a Republican running for
1:15:32
Speaker 1: Senate in Alaska, in Ohio, Maine, South Carolina? How does
1:15:36
Speaker 1: it help Republicans who've spent years arguing that America has
1:15:39
Speaker 1: to stand up to Putin? It's one of the few
1:15:41
Speaker 1: things many of the Republicans on the ballot this cycle
1:15:43
Speaker 1: have actually never agreed with Trump on. And, you know,
1:15:49
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz was campaigning with Dan Sullivan and they were
1:15:52
Speaker 1: put in the position of having to say they don't
1:15:53
Speaker 1: support what the president is doing, but they weren't comfortable
1:15:55
Speaker 1: doing that in their Fox interview over the weekend. And
1:15:58
Speaker 1: I understand they're buying, right? Sullivan needs Trump's voters. They
1:16:02
Speaker 1: don't want to alienate the people who are still intensely
1:16:05
Speaker 1: loyal to him. But they know that some of these
1:16:07
Speaker 1: decisions are terrible for America, terrible for Ukrainians. And bordering
1:16:12
Speaker 1: on treasonous. They won't say treason. I did. Trump never
1:16:17
Speaker 1: makes it easy to disagree with him. Sometimes he tolerates
1:16:20
Speaker 1: a little independence. Other times, the moment he sees somebody
1:16:22
Speaker 1: trying to walk that line, he makes an example of them.
1:16:26
Speaker 1: And that's the problem with a party organized so completely
1:16:29
Speaker 1: around one person. Very little room for independent judgment when
1:16:33
Speaker 1: the president decides disagreement is disloyalty. But here's what really
1:16:37
Speaker 1: troubles me about this episode. It's not that Trump is
1:16:39
Speaker 1: making decisions that are politically inconvenient for Republicans. It's that
1:16:43
Speaker 1: the decisions themselves appear to undermine longstanding American interests. And
1:16:48
Speaker 1: how about the interest in small d democracy? And that's
1:16:51
Speaker 1: all I'm asking. Why does Trump so consistently look for
1:16:54
Speaker 1: ways to accommodate Putin? Why does his anger go to
1:16:56
Speaker 1: Zelensky rather than the man who invaded Ukraine? Why does
1:16:59
Speaker 1: he seem more interested in relieving economic pressure on Russia
1:17:02
Speaker 1: than keeping the pressure that might get Putin to end
1:17:04
Speaker 1: the war? There have been all sorts of theories about
1:17:07
Speaker 1: Trump and Putin. And I'm not going to pretend I
1:17:10
Speaker 1: have all the answers, but man, I'm sorry. The smoke
1:17:14
Speaker 1: is really hard to see through at this point. And look,
1:17:19
Speaker 1: just judge the policy. The policy is insane. Does it
1:17:22
Speaker 1: serve American interests? Does this policy strengthen our allies or
1:17:27
Speaker 1: weaken them? Does this reward aggression or discourage it? Does
1:17:31
Speaker 1: it make the world safer or more dangerous? I don't
1:17:34
Speaker 1: care if it's about a PP tape or something else.
1:17:37
Speaker 1: Does his actions put us in harm's way? Asking those
1:17:43
Speaker 1: questions and getting those answers, they don't require a conspiracy theory.
1:17:48
Speaker 1: They just simply require an honest assessment of what this
1:17:50
Speaker 1: administration is doing. Maybe we'll never get the motive of why,
1:17:54
Speaker 1: but the what is bad enough. Because if the United
1:17:57
Speaker 1: States is prepared to ease economic pressure on Russia while
1:18:00
Speaker 1: restricting technology that helps Ukraine defend itself. It's a profound
1:18:04
Speaker 1: shift in American policy. And it certainly deserves more than
1:18:08
Speaker 1: a shrug from the Secretary of State, more than a
1:18:11
Speaker 1: vague denial from the White House, and certainly more than
1:18:14
Speaker 1: just uncomfortable silence from members of Congress who do no better.
1:18:19
Speaker 1: So let's end where I began. Two weeks out, evidence
1:18:21
Speaker 1: keeps pointing to a difficult election for Republicans. Is it
1:18:24
Speaker 1: a cat one, cat three, or cat five? I've given
1:18:27
Speaker 1: you my scenarios. We don't know if it's a traditional
1:18:29
Speaker 1: blue wave or something closer to a red undertow. But
1:18:32
Speaker 1: we do know the president's looking for people to blame.
1:18:36
Speaker 1: And he doesn't have a mirror, apparently, because he wants
1:18:39
Speaker 1: to blame his chief of staff, his advisors, John Cornyn,
1:18:42
Speaker 1: Karl Rove, Volodymyr Zelensky. And yet, when you look at
1:18:46
Speaker 1: the decisions that created so many of the problems Republicans
1:18:49
Speaker 1: are facing, at the moment, there's only one person he
1:18:52
Speaker 1: needs to name, Donald John Trump. He made the decision
1:18:56
Speaker 1: on the Iran war. He made the decision about which
1:18:59
Speaker 1: Republicans are back. He made the decision to ease pressure
1:19:01
Speaker 1: on Russia. Whenever investigation ultimately establishes about Starshield, he's the president.
1:19:06
Speaker 1: It's his foreign policy. He wants all this power. The
1:19:12
Speaker 1: idea he gets to blame someone else for his misuse
1:19:15
Speaker 1: of it. Sorry. All right, we're going to jump into
1:19:28
Speaker 1: the time machine. Try to get in and out about
1:19:32
Speaker 1: 10 or 12 minutes. So stick with me here. And
1:19:35
Speaker 1: this week, we're going back 39 years. Monday, October 19th, 1987.
1:19:40
Speaker 1: It's a day that Wall Street still refers to as
1:19:43
Speaker 1: Black Monday. And before you decide whether this is going
1:19:47
Speaker 1: to be 20 minutes about the stock market, let me
1:19:50
Speaker 1: assure you, this is not about the stock market. This
1:19:52
Speaker 1: is a story about technology, about our confidence in technology,
1:19:56
Speaker 1: and about what happens when we build systems that are
1:19:58
Speaker 1: supposed to protect us, only to discover that those very
1:20:02
Speaker 1: systems can make a bad situation much worse. And it's
1:20:06
Speaker 1: particularly relevant right now as we're trying to figure out
1:20:08
Speaker 1: how much authority we're prepared to hand over to artificial intelligence.
1:20:11
Speaker 1: We're already hearing about AI models behaving in ways their
1:20:14
Speaker 1: creators never anticipated. We're debating whether those systems need kill switches,
1:20:19
Speaker 1: how much independent oversight is necessary, and whether governments are
1:20:22
Speaker 1: moving fast enough to understand the technology they're supposedly going
1:20:28
Speaker 1: to regulate. Well, nearly 40 years ago, Wall Street had
1:20:31
Speaker 1: an experience that ought to sound familiar. It discovered that
1:20:33
Speaker 1: when you automate decision-making, You can create consequences nobody intended,
1:20:38
Speaker 1: even when the technology is doing precisely what it was
1:20:41
Speaker 1: designed to do. And then the government had to figure
1:20:44
Speaker 1: out how to protect the financial system from said technology
1:20:47
Speaker 1: that was supposed to make the system more efficient. But
1:20:50
Speaker 1: the government's response raised a different kind of question, and
1:20:53
Speaker 1: I want to spend some time on that as well.
1:20:54
Speaker 1: If you promise to protect a system from catastrophic failure,
1:20:58
Speaker 1: do the people operating that system become more willing to
1:21:01
Speaker 1: take risks? Economists have been arguing about that since Black Monday.
1:21:06
Speaker 1: And it's one we ought to be asking about AI
1:21:09
Speaker 1: before we get too far down the road. But let's
1:21:12
Speaker 1: go back to that day in October. It's 1987. Ronald
1:21:16
Speaker 1: Reagan is president. It's not a great autumn for him.
1:21:19
Speaker 1: Iran-Contra is still hanging over the White House. The Senate
1:21:22
Speaker 1: is days away from rejecting Robert Bork for the Supreme Court.
1:21:25
Speaker 1: The economy, though, has been expanding for nearly five years.
1:21:28
Speaker 1: Inflation has come way down from the terrible levels of
1:21:31
Speaker 1: the late 70s and early 80s. Wall Street is in
1:21:33
Speaker 1: the middle of an extraordinary bull market. By late August,
1:21:37
Speaker 1: the Dow had been up roughly 44% for the year. Now,
1:21:42
Speaker 1: for those who don't follow the markets, the Dow simply
1:21:44
Speaker 1: tracks the stock prices, 30 major American companies. It's always
1:21:48
Speaker 1: been one of the ways we measure whether investors believe
1:21:50
Speaker 1: in American businesses and are they getting more valuable or
1:21:54
Speaker 1: less valuable. And yes, the composition of the 30 biggest
1:21:58
Speaker 1: American companies changes quite a bit. But they're the 30
1:22:02
Speaker 1: biggest at the time, 30 most important. So by the
1:22:04
Speaker 1: summer of 87, investors have gotten used to watching it
1:22:06
Speaker 1: just go up, up, up, and up. There's enormous confidence
1:22:09
Speaker 1: in the American economy at this point in time, growing
1:22:11
Speaker 1: confidence in something else, too, computers. Wall Street is becoming
1:22:16
Speaker 1: increasingly computerized at this point in time. Trading is getting faster.
1:22:19
Speaker 1: Financial institutions are building more sophisticated mathematical models. A growing
1:22:24
Speaker 1: number of investors believe technology can help them manage risk
1:22:29
Speaker 1: that previous generations simply had to live with. One of
1:22:32
Speaker 1: the most popular innovations at that time is something called
1:22:35
Speaker 1: portfolio insurance. It was developed by two Berkeley finance professors,
1:22:39
Speaker 1: Hayne Leland and Mark Rubenstein, who went into business selling
1:22:42
Speaker 1: it to some of the biggest pension funds in the country. Now,
1:22:46
Speaker 1: don't let the phrase scare you off because the basic
1:22:48
Speaker 1: idea is actually pretty simple. Imagine somebody tells you they've
1:22:51
Speaker 1: developed an automatic braking system for your investments. What do
1:22:55
Speaker 1: I mean? If the markets start falling, the system automatically
1:22:59
Speaker 1: reduces your exposure before the losses become catastrophic. Well, that
1:23:03
Speaker 1: sounds pretty good. Some people might call that a hedge fund,
1:23:07
Speaker 1: but I digress. But there's an important difference between this
1:23:10
Speaker 1: and the brakes on your car. When you hit the brakes,
1:23:13
Speaker 1: you're slowing down your own vehicle. In the stock market,
1:23:17
Speaker 1: reducing your exposure means selling something, and somebody else has
1:23:21
Speaker 1: to be willing to buy it. Well, portfolio insurance wasn't
1:23:24
Speaker 1: insurance in the traditional sense, where you pay a premium
1:23:27
Speaker 1: to an insurance company that has agreed to cover your loss.
1:23:31
Speaker 1: This was a trading strategy. As the market fell, the
1:23:34
Speaker 1: strategy called for selling stock index futures contracts or otherwise
1:23:38
Speaker 1: reducing stock exposure. Well, the more the market fell, the
1:23:43
Speaker 1: more it called for selling. In theory, you're protecting yourself
1:23:46
Speaker 1: from catastrophic decline. But by October of 87, somewhere between
1:23:51
Speaker 1: $ 60 and $ 90 billion in stock was being managed with
1:23:56
Speaker 1: this way of so-called portfolio insurance. And so these strategies
1:24:00
Speaker 1: looked pretty similar. So think about what happens when everybody
1:24:04
Speaker 1: tries to protect themselves at the same time using the
1:24:07
Speaker 1: same strategy. The market starts falling. And the strategies call
1:24:11
Speaker 1: for selling. That selling puts additional pressure on prices, which
1:24:15
Speaker 1: does what? Triggers more selling. And pretty soon, the very
1:24:19
Speaker 1: mechanism that was supposed to protect investors is contributing to
1:24:22
Speaker 1: the thing investors are trying to protect themselves against. Now,
1:24:28
Speaker 1: portfolio insurance wasn't the only reason Black Monday happened. Economists
1:24:30
Speaker 1: have spent nearly 40 years arguing about the causes. And
1:24:33
Speaker 1: there were plenty of other problems building in the market.
1:24:35
Speaker 1: Interest rates were rising. Long-term treasury yields inclined towards 10%.
1:24:39
Speaker 1: There were worries about the federal budget deficit then, which
1:24:42
Speaker 1: they dealt with in the 1990 budget deal and again
1:24:46
Speaker 1: in the 1993 budget deal. Boy, the good old days
1:24:48
Speaker 1: of when Congress gave a shit about that, right? But
1:24:53
Speaker 1: stock prices had run up so far that some investors
1:24:55
Speaker 1: were starting to wonder whether the market had gotten ahead
1:24:57
Speaker 1: of itself. So there was fears of bubble too, right? Well,
1:25:00
Speaker 1: then came the week before. On Wednesday, October 14th, the
1:25:03
Speaker 1: government reports a trade deficit that was much worse than expected.
1:25:06
Speaker 1: That same week, the House Ways and Means Committee moves
1:25:08
Speaker 1: a tax proposal that would make it harder to finance
1:25:11
Speaker 1: corporate takeovers, and takeover speculation had been one of the
1:25:13
Speaker 1: things that was pushing up stock prices. The Dow fell
1:25:17
Speaker 1: 95 points on Wednesday, another 58 on Thursday, and on Friday,
1:25:21
Speaker 1: October 16th, it dropped about 100 points, or nearly 5%,
1:25:25
Speaker 1: on what was then record volume. Now, here's a detail
1:25:30
Speaker 1: I find remarkable. The portfolio insurers had been selling all week,
1:25:35
Speaker 1: but by the math in their own model, some were
1:25:36
Speaker 1: still billions of dollars behind on what they were supposed
1:25:39
Speaker 1: to have sold. So on Friday afternoon, there's additional selling
1:25:43
Speaker 1: pressure potentially waiting for Monday. Then comes the weekend. Treasury
1:25:48
Speaker 1: Secretary Jim Baker publicly signals that the US may allow
1:25:52
Speaker 1: the dollar to fall further in its dispute with West
1:25:55
Speaker 1: Germany over interest rates. Investors are already worried about the dollar,
1:25:59
Speaker 1: And now the treasury secretary appears willing to let it weaken.
1:26:03
Speaker 1: It only adds another layer of uncertainty to a market
1:26:05
Speaker 1: that had already been falling for three days. Monday arrives,
1:26:08
Speaker 1: overseas markets are under pressure. Hong Kong falls sharply. And
1:26:12
Speaker 1: eventually they have to close their exchange for the rest
1:26:15
Speaker 1: of the week. It's so bad. That same day, the U.S.
1:26:18
Speaker 1: Navy is shelling Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf.
1:26:21
Speaker 1: Retaliation for a missile strike on an American flag tanker.
1:26:24
Speaker 1: Trading opens in New York. Things start falling apart. Sell orders,
1:26:28
Speaker 1: overwhelm buy orders. Some of the biggest stocks in America
1:26:31
Speaker 1: can't even open for the first hour because the specialists
1:26:34
Speaker 1: on the floor can't find enough buyers to establish a price.
1:26:37
Speaker 1: It is literally out of the movie trading places where
1:26:39
Speaker 1: you see these guys, oh, sell, oh, buy. You know,
1:26:42
Speaker 1: it's like you're watching it. You know, you're watching it
1:26:45
Speaker 1: was the Dukes, Don Amici, all those guys, the guys
1:26:48
Speaker 1: that were working for Don Amici, right? It is literally
1:26:50
Speaker 1: this picture. And this is 1987. We don't have the
1:26:54
Speaker 1: full electronic trading system we have today. So we still
1:26:57
Speaker 1: had physical people on the exchange floor. The volume is
1:27:00
Speaker 1: unlike anything the system had ever seen. 600 million shares
1:27:04
Speaker 1: traded on the New York Stock Exchange that day was
1:27:06
Speaker 1: nearly double the all-time previous record. Ticker tape falls more
1:27:10
Speaker 1: than an hour behind. Different markets are showing different prices.
1:27:14
Speaker 1: Investors are trying to figure out what the hell was happening.
1:27:16
Speaker 1: There was no instant communication. It was near instant, but
1:27:20
Speaker 1: not instant. And that's a big distinction. All the while,
1:27:23
Speaker 1: these portfolio insurance strategies are contributing to additional selling pressure.
1:27:29
Speaker 1: So according to the federal investigation afterwards, just three major
1:27:32
Speaker 1: portfolio insurers sold nearly $ 2 billion of stocks that day,
1:27:36
Speaker 1: plus the equivalent of another $ 2. 8 billion in futures. Portfolio
1:27:42
Speaker 1: insurance accounted for more than 40% of the trading in
1:27:46
Speaker 1: the main stock index futures market, not counting the floor traders'
1:27:49
Speaker 1: own trading. The computers weren't necessarily broken, by the way.
1:27:52
Speaker 1: They weren't infected with some virus or making calculations. They
1:27:58
Speaker 1: were doing exactly what they were programmed to do. But
1:28:01
Speaker 1: the people who designed and used these strategies hadn't adequately
1:28:05
Speaker 1: accounted for what would happen when so many investors tried
1:28:08
Speaker 1: to follow the same instructions under extreme conditions. By the
1:28:13
Speaker 1: closing bell, the Dow fell about 500 points. Now, these days,
1:28:16
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like a lot, but back then, That
1:28:19
Speaker 1: was a 23% point drop in one day. Roughly half
1:28:24
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars in the stock market value wiped out.
1:28:28
Speaker 1: So imagine waking up today, tomorrow, and discovering that the
1:28:34
Speaker 1: stock market had fallen by nearly a quarter before you
1:28:37
Speaker 1: went to bed. It's still rampant. remains one of the
1:28:40
Speaker 1: largest one-day percentage declines in the Dow's modern history. It's
1:28:44
Speaker 1: nearly twice the worst single-day percentage loss during the 1929 crash. Today,
1:28:50
Speaker 1: Reagan tells reporters he's puzzled because the economic indicators he's
1:28:54
Speaker 1: looking at don't suggest anything like this kind of collapse.
1:28:57
Speaker 1: And that's an important distinction. The underlying American economy at
1:29:00
Speaker 1: the time hadn't suddenly lost a quarter of productive capacity.
1:29:04
Speaker 1: It was the financial machinery was behaving as though something
1:29:06
Speaker 1: catastrophic did happen. And it creates a very different problem
1:29:10
Speaker 1: for government because a stock market crash doesn't necessarily stay
1:29:13
Speaker 1: in the stock market. If the financial system starts seizing up, well,
1:29:17
Speaker 1: banks become reluctant to lend, businesses that need credit to operate, i.e.
1:29:22
Speaker 1: to make payroll, they can't borrow. And then you know
1:29:24
Speaker 1: what happens. Employees start being laid off, yada, yada, yada.
1:29:27
Speaker 1: And that actually brings me to Alan Greenspan. Greenspan has
1:29:30
Speaker 1: been chair of the Federal Reserve for about 10 weeks
1:29:32
Speaker 1: when this happens. He had succeeded Paul Volcker. On Black Monday,
1:29:36
Speaker 1: he's actually on his way to Dallas for a banker's
1:29:38
Speaker 1: convention when the financial system he's just inherited starts coming apart.
1:29:43
Speaker 1: And suddenly this brand new Fed chair is facing a
1:29:45
Speaker 1: crisis that looks very different from the financial panics the
1:29:47
Speaker 1: institution was originally created to handle. Remember, it was established
1:29:53
Speaker 1: in 1913. in part because the country kept experiencing financial panics,
1:29:58
Speaker 1: including one in 1907. So Greenspan wasn't inventing the idea
1:30:02
Speaker 1: of government stepping into a financial crisis, but 1987 isn't
1:30:06
Speaker 1: a traditional banking panic. This isn't people lining up outside
1:30:11
Speaker 1: of banks just trying to get their money. This was
1:30:13
Speaker 1: in the markets itself, amplified by technology, and then by
1:30:17
Speaker 1: growing connections among financial institutions around the world, right? This
1:30:20
Speaker 1: is what happens when you have this global market. And
1:30:24
Speaker 1: there was concern whether this could spread to the rest
1:30:26
Speaker 1: of the economy. Overnight, there's serious discussions about whether the
1:30:30
Speaker 1: exchanges would even open on Tuesday. They would. And before
1:30:33
Speaker 1: trading begins on Tuesday morning, the Fed issues a statement
1:30:36
Speaker 1: that is exactly one sentence long. The Federal Reserve, it says,
1:30:40
Speaker 1: stands ready to serve as a source of liquidity to
1:30:43
Speaker 1: support the economic and financial system. Let me translate that
1:30:47
Speaker 1: out of Greenspan speech. The Fed is telling the financial
1:30:50
Speaker 1: system that it will make sure enough money and credit
1:30:52
Speaker 1: remain available to keep things functioning. It's not promising to
1:30:56
Speaker 1: reimburse investors for their losses, and it's not promising that
1:30:58
Speaker 1: stock prices will go back up. It's simply saying that
1:31:01
Speaker 1: government isn't going to stand by while a financial panic
1:31:04
Speaker 1: causes the machinery of the American economy to stop working.
1:31:08
Speaker 1: And the Fed backs that up. It supplies reserves to
1:31:10
Speaker 1: the banking system. It encourages major banks to keep lending
1:31:13
Speaker 1: to brokerage firms. And that matters because those firms face
1:31:17
Speaker 1: enormous demands for cash on an individual day. Banks were
1:31:20
Speaker 1: nervous about lending to anybody connected to the stock market
1:31:24
Speaker 1: at that point. But if the banks stopped all lending,
1:31:27
Speaker 1: the crisis would get worse. So the Fed was trying
1:31:29
Speaker 1: to prevent a financial version of the same problem we
1:31:32
Speaker 1: saw with portfolio insurance. Everybody trying to protect themselves individually
1:31:36
Speaker 1: ends up making the entire system more dangerous. Now, there
1:31:43
Speaker 1: was one more problem. Stocks, futures and options are increasingly connected,
1:31:45
Speaker 1: but the markets have different systems for settling trades and
1:31:48
Speaker 1: moving money. So a firm might be waiting to receive
1:31:52
Speaker 1: money from one transaction while already being required to pay
1:31:55
Speaker 1: money on another. Normal circumstances, that's manageable. But in a
1:32:00
Speaker 1: panic where everybody suddenly needs cash at the same time,
1:32:03
Speaker 1: it can bring the system to a standstill. And so Tuesday,
1:32:07
Speaker 1: Black Tuesday after Black Monday was even more frightening inside
1:32:10
Speaker 1: the system. Around midday, parts of the markets are barely functioning.
1:32:15
Speaker 1: Then finally, things begin to turn. The Dow closes up
1:32:17
Speaker 1: on Tuesday and it closes up again on Wednesday. Market
1:32:21
Speaker 1: remains volatile, but it doesn't regain its August peak until
1:32:23
Speaker 1: the summer of 89. Took two years. But the broader
1:32:26
Speaker 1: financial collapse doesn't happen. And that's a good thing, right?
1:32:30
Speaker 1: There's no banking panic like the 1930s. Now, we can't
1:32:33
Speaker 1: prove the Fed's intervention alone prevented all that. Economists still
1:32:37
Speaker 1: debate the causes of the crash and the recovery. But
1:32:40
Speaker 1: the Fed's willingness to is widely regarded as an important
1:32:44
Speaker 1: part of why the crisis didn't get worse. That's one
1:32:48
Speaker 1: lesson Washington took from 1987, but it wasn't the only one.
1:32:51
Speaker 1: Because once the immediate panic subsided, the government started asking
1:32:55
Speaker 1: how a financial system that was supposed to be getting
1:32:57
Speaker 1: more sophisticated had managed to behave so chaotically. So Reagan
1:33:01
Speaker 1: established a task force headed by a Wall Street banker
1:33:05
Speaker 1: named Nicholas Brady, who would later become Treasury Secretary. And
1:33:08
Speaker 1: they reached a conclusion that I think deserves more attention.
1:33:11
Speaker 1: They said stocks, stocks futures, and stock options had effectively
1:33:14
Speaker 1: become one interconnected market. The computers and the traders had
1:33:17
Speaker 1: tied them together, but they were still regulated by separate
1:33:21
Speaker 1: markets and by separate agencies, stocks by the SEC, futures
1:33:25
Speaker 1: by the Commodity Futures and Trade Commission. Each agency was
1:33:28
Speaker 1: watching its own piece while the risks were increasingly developing
1:33:32
Speaker 1: across the entire system. The technology connected the markets. The
1:33:35
Speaker 1: government was still overseeing them separately. So Brady recommended that
1:33:39
Speaker 1: one agency, most likely the Fed, coordinate oversight across all
1:33:43
Speaker 1: of them. That part never happened. We never did it.
1:33:46
Speaker 1: Congress never did consolidate. And to this day, this distinction
1:33:50
Speaker 1: between the SEC and the Commodities and Futures Trade Commission
1:33:54
Speaker 1: is a huge problem. We have two different regulators. We
1:33:57
Speaker 1: have people gaining which regulator they want to deal with.
1:34:00
Speaker 1: See the crypto folks. And it's very destructive. Washington identified
1:34:05
Speaker 1: a structural flaw, agreed it was a flaw. And then
1:34:09
Speaker 1: they didn't fix it. They just built a work rule.
1:34:12
Speaker 1: Not good. Not good at all. Still, in 1988, the
1:34:17
Speaker 1: exchanges introduced what became known as circuit breakers. Well, you
1:34:21
Speaker 1: can think about what a circuit breaker is in your house.
1:34:23
Speaker 1: If there's an electrical overload, the breaker trips and interrupts
1:34:26
Speaker 1: the flow of electricity before something worse happens. That was
1:34:30
Speaker 1: the idea behind this. If prices fall too far, too fast,
1:34:33
Speaker 1: they just halt trading. We've seen it a few times.
1:34:36
Speaker 1: Market Ride, Circuit Breakers, first tripped in October of 1997.
1:34:39
Speaker 1: It was almost exactly 10 years after Black Monday. Happened
1:34:43
Speaker 1: again in March of 2020 as the COVID pandemic happened.
1:34:46
Speaker 1: But they don't prevent markets from falling. They aren't supposed to.
1:34:49
Speaker 1: There are legitimate arguments about whether trading halts can actually
1:34:53
Speaker 1: sometimes create more problems of their own. But the idea
1:34:57
Speaker 1: is that there ought to be a way to slow
1:34:59
Speaker 1: things down when a system starts behaving in a way
1:35:01
Speaker 1: that threatens its ability to function. And think about how
1:35:05
Speaker 1: interesting that is. The financial industry has spent years developing
1:35:08
Speaker 1: technology to make trading faster. One of the main reforms
1:35:12
Speaker 1: after the crash was a mechanism designed to make trading stop,
1:35:16
Speaker 1: to restore order. The government didn't ban computerized trading. It
1:35:20
Speaker 1: didn't decide financial innovation had gone too far. Instead, regulators
1:35:24
Speaker 1: and exchanges began adapting the rules to the technology. But
1:35:28
Speaker 1: there's another part of this response that deserves some attention.
1:35:32
Speaker 1: Remember that phrase we started with, portfolio insurance? Wall Street
1:35:35
Speaker 1: had built a strategy that was supposed to protect investors
1:35:38
Speaker 1: against large losses. When the market really collapsed, the strategy
1:35:42
Speaker 1: itself contributed to the chaos and more losses. The ultimate
1:35:46
Speaker 1: insurance policy for the functioning of the financial system turned
1:35:49
Speaker 1: out to be the Federal Reserve. The same industry that
1:35:52
Speaker 1: celebrates free markets, competition, and the discipline of risk increasingly
1:35:57
Speaker 1: came to operate with the expectation that if the entire
1:36:00
Speaker 1: system got into enough trouble, the central bank would step in.
1:36:05
Speaker 1: And there's plenty of good reasons for that. But there's
1:36:08
Speaker 1: also a legitimate question about what that expectation does to behavior,
1:36:12
Speaker 1: the unintended consequence. Does it make financial institutions more willing
1:36:15
Speaker 1: to take risks? Eh, the government will bail us out.
1:36:18
Speaker 1: Does it encourage the belief that profits belong to investors
1:36:21
Speaker 1: while the worst consequences of failure become somebody else's problem?
1:36:26
Speaker 1: Economists have a phrase for that. It's called moral hazard.
1:36:29
Speaker 1: It's what happens when somebody becomes more willing to take
1:36:31
Speaker 1: a risk because they believe somebody else will absorb some
1:36:34
Speaker 1: of the consequences that things go badly. And after 1987,
1:36:41
Speaker 1: investors increasingly came to talk about something called the Greenspan Put.
1:36:45
Speaker 1: In plain English, if markets get into serious trouble, Greenspan
1:36:49
Speaker 1: and the Fed would step in. It became prominent in 1988.
1:36:53
Speaker 1: Then during the financial crisis in 2008, the Fed would
1:36:56
Speaker 1: go much further under Ben Bernanke using emergency lending programs,
1:36:59
Speaker 1: massive purchases of financial assets, became known as quantitative easing.
1:37:04
Speaker 1: Those weren't tools Greenspan used in 87. And I don't
1:37:07
Speaker 1: know if you draw a straight line to it, but
1:37:09
Speaker 1: you certainly can trace the evolution of an expectation that
1:37:12
Speaker 1: the Fed will always save us from our own stupidity.
1:37:18
Speaker 1: The line is blurry, which raises one more question about
1:37:22
Speaker 1: how we regulate a free market. How much freedom do
1:37:24
Speaker 1: we give private companies to take risks when the consequences
1:37:27
Speaker 1: to those risks can become a public responsibility? Talked about
1:37:30
Speaker 1: this in the whole Mark Walters, using life insurance as
1:37:33
Speaker 1: a way to purchase sports teams and gaming regulatory markets.
1:37:42
Speaker 1: And that brings me to artificial intelligence. Obviously, AI is
1:37:45
Speaker 1: not portfolio insurance, and we shouldn't assume that the same
1:37:47
Speaker 1: safeguards will work. But we're looking for circuit breakers, aren't we?
1:37:51
Speaker 1: We're worried about something that would amplify a systemic risk.
1:37:55
Speaker 1: So we're building AI systems capable of much more complicated tasks,
1:37:58
Speaker 1: increasingly able to act autonomously and operate in environments where
1:38:02
Speaker 1: their developers can't predict every possible behavior. But those systems
1:38:07
Speaker 1: aren't going to operate in isolation. They're going to interact
1:38:09
Speaker 1: with other AI systems. They're going to make decisions that
1:38:11
Speaker 1: impact businesses. The danger isn't necessarily that one AI model
1:38:15
Speaker 1: suddenly decides to do something malicious. What if it's something
1:38:18
Speaker 1: much more mundane and everybody's operating rationally and logically and
1:38:22
Speaker 1: the AI systems are actually acting the way they're supposed
1:38:26
Speaker 1: to be programmed? Wall Street didn't simply need better computers
1:38:33
Speaker 1: in 1987. It needed better rules for a world in
1:38:36
Speaker 1: which computers have become central to how the financial system operated.
1:38:42
Speaker 1: So if you look at how we're approaching AI right
1:38:43
Speaker 1: now with different agencies, different states, different countries, each trying
1:38:46
Speaker 1: to oversee their own piece of the technology, Boy, there's
1:38:49
Speaker 1: something awfully familiar about this. Because if 1987 is any guide,
1:38:53
Speaker 1: recognizing the problem isn't the same as fixing it. We
1:38:55
Speaker 1: saw the problem. We just never fixed it. We're already
1:38:58
Speaker 1: debating whether powerful AI models need a kill switch. Well,
1:39:01
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Who decides when we need to
1:39:04
Speaker 1: use the kill switch? Is it the company that built it?
1:39:06
Speaker 1: Is it the government? Is it some independent body? What
1:39:09
Speaker 1: happens if the system has already become essentially institutions that
1:39:11
Speaker 1: depend on it? If you shut down an AI model,
1:39:15
Speaker 1: that's one thing. Keeping a hospital, a power grid, or
1:39:18
Speaker 1: a communications network operating, if that model has become part
1:39:21
Speaker 1: of how those systems function, that's a whole other issue. Right?
1:39:27
Speaker 1: The circuit breaker with stocks is designed to interrupt dangerous behavior.
1:39:30
Speaker 1: The Federal Reserve backstop is designed to keep the larger
1:39:33
Speaker 1: system functioning when a crisis threatens to spread. Those are
1:39:36
Speaker 1: different responsibilities. What are the equivalents for artificial intelligence? Who's
1:39:41
Speaker 1: responsible for building them? We can't assume the companies developing
1:39:45
Speaker 1: these systems can anticipate every problem themselves. They have their
1:39:49
Speaker 1: own incentives. They have competitive pressures. They have limited knowledge
1:39:54
Speaker 1: of how their technology will behave once it becomes widely used.
1:39:57
Speaker 1: We don't know yet. We all thought social media would
1:40:01
Speaker 1: be a net positive. It's turned out to be a
1:40:02
Speaker 1: net negative. But the problem is, what scares me is
1:40:10
Speaker 1: that if we If we behave the way we behaved
1:40:13
Speaker 1: with stocks, first came the crisis, then the investigation, then
1:40:16
Speaker 1: the safeguards. Do we want to repeat that sequence with AI?
1:40:22
Speaker 1: If AI companies believe the government will, and then here's this,
1:40:25
Speaker 1: what if AI companies ultimately believe the government's going to
1:40:29
Speaker 1: bail them out if things go really catastrophically wrong? Does
1:40:34
Speaker 1: that change how they risk manage? I don't know the answer,
1:40:39
Speaker 1: but the experience of Wall Street gives us a reason
1:40:40
Speaker 1: to ask. Because there's a difference between protecting the public
1:40:43
Speaker 1: from technological failure and protecting the company responsible for that
1:40:47
Speaker 1: failure from the consequences of its own decisions. That's something
1:40:52
Speaker 1: we ought to think about. Nearly 40 years ago, the
1:40:54
Speaker 1: government confronted a financial system whose technology had evolved faster
1:40:58
Speaker 1: than the institutions responsible for overseeing it. We didn't ban
1:41:02
Speaker 1: computerized trading. We developed new safeguards and used the Federal
1:41:05
Speaker 1: Reserve's existing authority to be the ultimate backstop. It didn't
1:41:11
Speaker 1: eliminate financial crises, and it certainly didn't settle the argument
1:41:14
Speaker 1: over how much government intervention belongs in a free market.
1:41:19
Speaker 1: But it did force us to think differently about the
1:41:23
Speaker 1: relationship between private risk and public responsibility. And now we're
1:41:27
Speaker 1: facing another technological transformation. The lesson of black money isn't
1:41:33
Speaker 1: that technology is dangerous. It's that making decisions faster doesn't
1:41:37
Speaker 1: necessarily make the system making those decisions any wiser. And
1:41:42
Speaker 1: if we're going to give increasingly powerful machines more authority
1:41:46
Speaker 1: over our lives, we'd better figure out who has the
1:41:50
Speaker 1: responsibility and the ability to intervene when something goes wrong.
1:41:55
Speaker 1: And hopefully we can do it before there's a crisis.
1:41:58
Speaker 1: That's unlikely. Let's just hope the crisis doesn't kill a
1:42:02
Speaker 1: whole bunch of us. On that upbeat note, there's your
1:42:05
Speaker 1: time machine. Ask Chuck. First question comes from Graham from
1:42:18
Speaker 1: New Orleans. Hey, Chuck, big fan of the podcast. Always
1:42:20
Speaker 1: appreciated your political insight. Several years ago, I used to
1:42:22
Speaker 1: be more partisan, but listening to your podcast has really
1:42:24
Speaker 1: encouraged me to think more independently. Anyway, I know from
1:42:27
Speaker 1: listening that you're a big fan of alternative history, so
1:42:29
Speaker 1: I have one for you. I just finished watching An
1:42:32
Speaker 1: insane day of college football. I was rooting for your
1:42:33
Speaker 1: Hurricanes and was glad to see them pull it out.
1:42:36
Speaker 1: My alternative history question is, what if Miami had joined
1:42:38
Speaker 1: the SEC? Love to hear your analysis of how that
1:42:41
Speaker 1: might have changed the trajectory of Miami football, the SEC,
1:42:43
Speaker 1: and college football as a whole. Keep up the great work.
1:42:45
Speaker 1: Miami's never been invited to the SEC. There's never remotely
1:42:50
Speaker 1: been any interest from the SEC. Florida State had some
1:42:52
Speaker 1: opportunities to be in the SEC. No, the University of
1:42:55
Speaker 1: Florida has always stood in the way of any hopes
1:42:58
Speaker 1: of Miami joining that conference. It's too bad. I think
1:43:03
Speaker 1: at some point the SEC probably wishes it had Miami
1:43:07
Speaker 1: in there a little bit. But it was, you know,
1:43:12
Speaker 1: I can't really tell you it was all that close.
1:43:15
Speaker 1: I'll be doing a deeper dive on Miami football with
1:43:17
Speaker 1: Dynastic pretty soon. We're going to be doing that. But,
1:43:20
Speaker 1: you know, I certainly, you know, Miami's advantage has always
1:43:27
Speaker 1: been location, location, location. Right. And as High school football
1:43:33
Speaker 1: became better and better in Florida. The opportunity for, you know,
1:43:39
Speaker 1: two things helped Miami football that were going to happen
1:43:43
Speaker 1: regardless of whether they were members of the SEC, the ACC,
1:43:46
Speaker 1: the Big Ten or whatever. And it was all their
1:43:48
Speaker 1: geographic location and the integration in the college football of
1:43:54
Speaker 1: of more and more African Americans. And I think Miami
1:43:57
Speaker 1: was on the forefront, particularly in urban America, of bringing
1:44:00
Speaker 1: more urban African American kids into college football than what
1:44:05
Speaker 1: happened before. It was sort of step two of integration
1:44:08
Speaker 1: of college football, right? If step one was the 60s
1:44:10
Speaker 1: and 70s, step two was the 80s and 90s. And
1:44:13
Speaker 1: it was that second integration of urban African Americans into
1:44:17
Speaker 1: college football that really fueled the rise of both Miami
1:44:20
Speaker 1: and Florida State, arguably. But You know, I think, I'm
1:44:28
Speaker 1: pretty cocky. I think if Miami joins the SEC, it's
1:44:30
Speaker 1: a power in the SEC. Now, some would argue, hey,
1:44:34
Speaker 1: Miami joined the ACC and look what happened there. I
1:44:37
Speaker 1: don't think it had to do with being in a conference.
1:44:38
Speaker 1: It had to do with, you know, its moment in time.
1:44:41
Speaker 1: You know, if Miami had always been a member of
1:44:44
Speaker 1: the SEC, probably its rise would be similar to what
1:44:48
Speaker 1: happened with Florida. Florida has never been a very effective SEC.
1:44:52
Speaker 1: They don't have a great record in the SEC, but
1:44:56
Speaker 1: as the urbanization of college football grew, even Florida was
1:45:01
Speaker 1: able to have success come the late 80s, early 90s,
1:45:04
Speaker 1: and then more so in the mid 90s and stuff.
1:45:06
Speaker 1: So I could argue that what you saw in the
1:45:10
Speaker 1: increasing success and prominence of Florida football in the SEC
1:45:14
Speaker 1: probably Miami would have mirrored that. And if anything, Miami
1:45:18
Speaker 1: probably would have suppressed the ability of Florida to be
1:45:20
Speaker 1: as successful in the SEC because then Miami would have
1:45:23
Speaker 1: probably had that first. But, you know, I don't know.
1:45:27
Speaker 1: There's another argument to be made that what helped Miami
1:45:30
Speaker 1: was its independence. It allowed it to be a national program.
1:45:33
Speaker 1: The SEC forces you to be a regional program. Miami's
1:45:36
Speaker 1: always had more of a national brand. So I think
1:45:38
Speaker 1: that matters as well. Hey, Nick from Michigan's 2nd Congressional
1:45:44
Speaker 1: District writes, hey, let's fast forward a decade to 2036.
1:45:46
Speaker 1: What will have happened to anti-Trump Republicans like Adam Kinzinger
1:45:50
Speaker 1: and Liz Cheney? Are they seen as redeemed? Do they
1:45:53
Speaker 1: return to politics either as Republicans or as leaders of
1:45:56
Speaker 1: a new conservative movement or will they have started to
1:45:57
Speaker 1: fade into history? You know, it's interesting. I suspect that
1:46:01
Speaker 1: those that are most prominent in the anti-Trump world will
1:46:04
Speaker 1: end up in the first center-right presidency that is anti-Trump.
1:46:10
Speaker 1: They'll be hugely prominent members. Maybe they'll be cabinet secretaries.
1:46:13
Speaker 1: Maybe they'll be ambassadors. Maybe they'll simply be endorsers. Maybe
1:46:16
Speaker 1: they go come back and run for office. I'm not
1:46:18
Speaker 1: fully convinced of that. I think everybody has their moment.
1:46:22
Speaker 1: But I think generally, if you're wondering, some of the
1:46:25
Speaker 1: more prominent ones I could see being symbols, Liz Cheney
1:46:29
Speaker 1: would be a symbol. Liz Cheney getting on board the
1:46:32
Speaker 1: first center-right candidate that could win. You know, and she
1:46:37
Speaker 1: becomes ambassador to Japan or ambassador, you know, one of
1:46:39
Speaker 1: the really key strategic ambassadorships or something like that. But
1:46:43
Speaker 1: that would be my guess is that in, you know,
1:46:45
Speaker 1: in about 10 years that that would be the virtue
1:46:47
Speaker 1: signal on that front. You know, I think they're in exile.
1:46:53
Speaker 1: I don't think they are extinct for what it's worth.
1:46:58
Speaker 1: All right. Last question. And then I want to jump
1:47:00
Speaker 1: quickly to college football. And then I got to let
1:47:04
Speaker 1: you have the rest of your Monday back. Greetings from
1:47:07
Speaker 1: Colorado's first district in Denver, longtime listener since the MTP
1:47:11
Speaker 1: days and a progressive-leaning Democrat who, after Trump's 2024 victory,
1:47:14
Speaker 1: looked to the midterms as an opportunity to push back
1:47:16
Speaker 1: against this administration. While I've grown cautiously optimistic about Democrats' chances,
1:47:21
Speaker 1: my anxiety is shifting from whether they'll win to whether
1:47:23
Speaker 1: even a massive blue wave will be enough to constrain
1:47:25
Speaker 1: this administration. If Democrats win 240-plus House seats and gain
1:47:29
Speaker 1: six to seven Senate seats. How do you think Congress
1:47:31
Speaker 1: will govern? How will Trump respond? And what might the
1:47:33
Speaker 1: next two years look like heading into 28, assuming we
1:47:35
Speaker 1: have an election? I know you don't have a crystal ball,
1:47:38
Speaker 1: but a little insight might help me survive the next
1:47:40
Speaker 1: few years. Thanks, Steve W. You're asking the hardest question
1:47:43
Speaker 1: I have to answer. I talk about this all the time.
1:47:44
Speaker 1: I have an easier chance. I have a better idea
1:47:47
Speaker 1: of what's going to happen in November than I do
1:47:49
Speaker 1: of what happens after. I, you know... there's so many
1:47:53
Speaker 1: contradictions that may happen even in a big blue wave, right?
1:47:57
Speaker 1: You're going to have a slew of Democratic senators. Let's
1:48:00
Speaker 1: assume there's a big wave. Then you'll have a slew
1:48:02
Speaker 1: of Democratic senators that were elected as, quote, different types
1:48:05
Speaker 1: of Democrats, that were promising not to, you know, sort
1:48:08
Speaker 1: of turn the page on the polarization, that we're going
1:48:10
Speaker 1: to be different. They're going to reach out, right? You're
1:48:12
Speaker 1: going to have others that, one, primarily, two, hold Trump
1:48:15
Speaker 1: more accountable. So you're going to have this half that
1:48:19
Speaker 1: are going to be pushing on a and half they're
1:48:21
Speaker 1: going to be pushing to try to, hey, govern more.
1:48:23
Speaker 1: All right. And then let's take the governing side of things.
1:48:26
Speaker 1: Do you try to pass bills that Trump will sign
1:48:30
Speaker 1: or do you try to pass bills that he'll veto
1:48:32
Speaker 1: so that you can make 2028, you could start to
1:48:35
Speaker 1: set a potential and showcase an agenda that a Democratic
1:48:40
Speaker 1: president might be able to support in 2028. How broad
1:48:46
Speaker 1: is the win, right? And I think that that's, and
1:48:49
Speaker 1: where does the center of the party gravitate? Does the
1:48:54
Speaker 1: center gravitate more to the progressive left? Does the center
1:48:58
Speaker 1: gravitate more to the center left? You know, is is
1:49:03
Speaker 1: an Adam Hamilton seen as, you know, you can't pass
1:49:08
Speaker 1: legislation until you have an Adam Hamilton that feels comfortable
1:49:11
Speaker 1: in a Kansas doing this, versus is the center of gravity, say,
1:49:16
Speaker 1: a Troy Jackson or an Abdul El-Sayed, right? Like, so
1:49:19
Speaker 1: I think that this is, I say this is the hardest,
1:49:21
Speaker 1: because I don't know, you know, what is going to be,
1:49:24
Speaker 1: you also then have the presidential primary campaigns, which will
1:49:27
Speaker 1: have an impact, like some Democrats who may wanna do
1:49:30
Speaker 1: some compromising, presidential primary candidates might be mocking those who
1:49:35
Speaker 1: choose to compromise and who choose to enable, right? So
1:49:40
Speaker 1: I don't mean to, you know, I think that it
1:49:43
Speaker 1: will still restrain this administration somewhat. But here's another one.
1:49:51
Speaker 1: Who are the Republicans that are left? Do the Democratic
1:49:54
Speaker 1: victories wipe out the rest of the normal Republicans? And
1:49:59
Speaker 1: suddenly those that are left are more radicals? and the
1:50:02
Speaker 1: heart of the Republican minority is more MAGA than ever?
1:50:07
Speaker 1: Or do those Republicans who survive realize that Trump and
1:50:12
Speaker 1: MAGA put them here and they start to moderate and
1:50:15
Speaker 1: they start to find, and then suddenly there's a different
1:50:18
Speaker 1: center of gravity. I know I'm just introducing more questions
1:50:21
Speaker 1: to your question to me, but this is why I
1:50:25
Speaker 1: have found this question to be the most difficult I
1:50:27
Speaker 1: have to answer is that I can, All I can
1:50:31
Speaker 1: do is I can see a scenario where it's all
1:50:34
Speaker 1: accountability all the time. Start impeaching these guys. Start doing
1:50:37
Speaker 1: these investigations. I could see a scenario where it's, let's
1:50:42
Speaker 1: pass some pieces of legislation. If he signs it, great.
1:50:44
Speaker 1: If he vetoes it, even better. I could see a
1:50:47
Speaker 1: scenario where Trump, the guy who loves hanging out with Mamdani, says, hey,
1:50:52
Speaker 1: I hated the Republican Party too. That's why I ran
1:50:55
Speaker 1: for president. Let's do some deals. and I can see
1:51:00
Speaker 1: the Republican Party either going full on MAGA, because that's
1:51:03
Speaker 1: all that's left, or those that are left want to
1:51:09
Speaker 1: retake their party back from Trump. I don't think any
1:51:13
Speaker 1: of those are 1% chances. I think those are sort of,
1:51:17
Speaker 1: and I think this is the uncertainty. I think there is,
1:51:21
Speaker 1: no matter what, there is a lot of uncertainty going
1:51:24
Speaker 1: into the next two years, nevermind the impact of the
1:51:26
Speaker 1: presidential campaign. All right, with that, let me do a
1:51:33
Speaker 1: few quick thoughts on college football. First, quickly, Miami surviving. Look,
1:51:38
Speaker 1: they should have lost the game. Florida State got inside
1:51:43
Speaker 1: the 10 twice and got no points in the first half.
1:51:46
Speaker 1: They lost the game in the first half. They didn't
1:51:47
Speaker 1: lose the game on whether or not there was a
1:51:50
Speaker 1: holding call in the second overtime. They did not lose
1:51:54
Speaker 1: this game in the second half. They did not lose
1:51:55
Speaker 1: this game in the first overtime or the second overtime.
1:51:57
Speaker 1: Florida State lost this game. The... Glasses have full sight
1:52:02
Speaker 1: of me as a Canes diehard is this. Anytime Miami's
1:52:07
Speaker 1: won a national title, the five that they've won, there's
1:52:11
Speaker 1: always been a game like this that they've won. A
1:52:13
Speaker 1: game they shouldn't have won, that they somehow won. That
1:52:16
Speaker 1: they somehow literally snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
1:52:22
Speaker 1: And that's what championship teams do. So it's one way
1:52:27
Speaker 1: I can reassure myself. Darian Mensah threw his first interception.
1:52:34
Speaker 1: Two things make me nervous going forward about how you
1:52:39
Speaker 1: can shake Miami up. Number one, obviously, if you can
1:52:42
Speaker 1: pressure Mensah, you might pressure him into some mistakes. He
1:52:45
Speaker 1: still makes a lot of great throws. He made a
1:52:47
Speaker 1: couple of spectacular plays while scrambling. At the same time,
1:52:50
Speaker 1: he hasn't had to scramble a lot. He got a
1:52:54
Speaker 1: little indecisive. Should he run? Should he pass? Should he slide?
1:52:56
Speaker 1: Should he not? So there was a little bit of that.
1:52:59
Speaker 1: He could get rattled. Second, Our secondary, you can throw
1:53:02
Speaker 1: on us, especially if you're a running quarterback. I don't
1:53:06
Speaker 1: think there are enough running quarterbacks that Miami faces going
1:53:10
Speaker 1: forward that can stop them this year. But if they
1:53:14
Speaker 1: do in the playoff, that becomes a huge situation. I
1:53:19
Speaker 1: do think I saw certainly what Miami needs to improve on.
1:53:22
Speaker 1: But again, surviving matters here. It's a rivalry game. um
1:53:26
Speaker 1: to say i was tense by the way the most
1:53:28
Speaker 1: uh fun little interaction i had was with uncle luke
1:53:31
Speaker 1: luther campbell was sitting right in front of me uh
1:53:34
Speaker 1: those of you if you know you know um you
1:53:37
Speaker 1: know at first he turned around he goes i think
1:53:38
Speaker 1: i know you and i was like you look familiar
1:53:39
Speaker 1: but i wasn't sure and you know and then all
1:53:42
Speaker 1: of a sudden at the end of the game he
1:53:43
Speaker 1: goes you know we follow each other on twitter i
1:53:44
Speaker 1: went uncle luke and anyway we had a fun little
1:53:49
Speaker 1: moment he was there with his son i was obviously
1:53:50
Speaker 1: there with my daughter uh and and uh and my
1:53:53
Speaker 1: wife and so it was a Needless to say, he
1:53:56
Speaker 1: was happy. If you really want to see where I
1:53:59
Speaker 1: was sitting, if you go to his videos, he did
1:54:01
Speaker 1: a few videos. I noticed I'm in the background and
1:54:05
Speaker 1: my wife wearing her Florida State gear also in the background, too.
1:54:09
Speaker 1: As for the rest of the day, look, I'm prepared.
1:54:14
Speaker 1: I know this. When there are upsets and close calls
1:54:20
Speaker 1: in the ACC and the Big 12, it's proof that
1:54:22
Speaker 1: those conferences are weak. When there are close calls or
1:54:25
Speaker 1: upsets in the SEC, it's proof that it's a gauntlet. Look,
1:54:28
Speaker 1: I know what the SEC partisans are going to say.
1:54:30
Speaker 1: And you know what the rest of us are going
1:54:32
Speaker 1: to say about the bottom line is, guess what? Conference
1:54:35
Speaker 1: football games are hard, whether they're in, you know, yes.
1:54:39
Speaker 1: Is the SEC hard? Yes. Are other conferences hard? Yes.
1:54:43
Speaker 1: Are winning on the road hard wherever you are? Yes.
1:54:46
Speaker 1: Do the SEC have nice stadiums? Yes. Okay. So. Yes,
1:54:52
Speaker 1: you guys are a more competitive conference. It doesn't necessarily
1:54:55
Speaker 1: make you a better conference. And last time I checked,
1:54:57
Speaker 1: I don't think Miami's lost to an SEC team in
1:54:59
Speaker 1: about three years. I look forward to playing some more
1:55:02
Speaker 1: SEC teams. We're happy to become members of the SEC.
1:55:08
Speaker 1: But which of the games that matter and which didn't,
1:55:11
Speaker 1: I think Georgia doesn't really matter. That's one of the
1:55:13
Speaker 1: oldest rivalries in the South. I warned you. If you
1:55:16
Speaker 1: guys listen to the podcast on Thursday, I warned you
1:55:18
Speaker 1: about that Auburn game. It just had the feel, right,
1:55:20
Speaker 1: both But Alabama's in trouble, doesn't, you know, and Texas
1:55:24
Speaker 1: is in trouble. Can nine and three Alabama and Texas
1:55:27
Speaker 1: teams make it? I mean, Texas has a resume that
1:55:30
Speaker 1: Ohio State win is going to age well, although the
1:55:34
Speaker 1: Texas loss doesn't. I'll say it's lucky they beat Indiana
1:55:37
Speaker 1: by that. Boy, how about that? By a little. So
1:55:40
Speaker 1: many games decided by a couple inches here and a
1:55:42
Speaker 1: couple inches there, right? The foot on the line there.
1:55:45
Speaker 1: But let's say Indiana wins that game. The Texas loss
1:55:49
Speaker 1: is not aging very well for Ohio State, right? No way.
1:55:51
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure a nine and three
1:55:53
Speaker 1: big 10 team gets in the playoffs. We do know
1:55:55
Speaker 1: the nine and three, right? The ESPN, it's still the
1:55:59
Speaker 1: ESPN invitational, right? They're going to be in charge of
1:56:01
Speaker 1: the 2014 playoff. And by the way, my thoughts on
1:56:04
Speaker 1: that is simply, I'm glad there's no automatic births for
1:56:07
Speaker 1: by conference. Like that was creating an unfair situation. This
1:56:11
Speaker 1: is sort of the best of all the bad ideas.
1:56:15
Speaker 1: It does open up access. And at the end of
1:56:17
Speaker 1: the day, I'd like to widen the access that college
1:56:20
Speaker 1: football programs have to success than to narrow the access.
1:56:25
Speaker 1: I think there are better ways to do a 2014 playoff.
1:56:28
Speaker 1: I'd still keep a 16 national playoff. I'd love to
1:56:30
Speaker 1: see sort of the other eight teams decided by individual
1:56:34
Speaker 1: conference playoffs, individual, maybe in the group of six, some
1:56:37
Speaker 1: sort of like sub play. You know, you could do this.
1:56:40
Speaker 1: in more interesting ways that also would generate more revenue
1:56:43
Speaker 1: for everybody involved. This just sort of feels haphazard and
1:56:48
Speaker 1: lazy the way they did it. But again, I go
1:56:51
Speaker 1: back to what I tweeted. I kind of looked at
1:56:55
Speaker 1: this version of the 2014 playoff as I look at democracy.
1:56:58
Speaker 1: It's the worst of all forms of government. It's the
1:57:01
Speaker 1: worst form of government except for all the others. This
1:57:04
Speaker 1: was about as bad of an idea as you can
1:57:06
Speaker 1: have except for all the other ideas that were floating
1:57:08
Speaker 1: out there. And so at the end of the day,
1:57:10
Speaker 1: this preserves access. And you know what this does do?
1:57:13
Speaker 1: The biggest thing it does? It probably means that the
1:57:17
Speaker 1: ACC and the Big 12 don't get poached one more time.
1:57:21
Speaker 1: Because now there's really no need to. Access to this.
1:57:24
Speaker 1: You win nine games in one of the Power Four
1:57:28
Speaker 1: conferences you're going to get in. You win eight games
1:57:31
Speaker 1: in one of the Power Four conferences and you have
1:57:32
Speaker 1: a chance. My only request after this is, please, we
1:57:37
Speaker 1: need some more more matchups, no more matchups against FCS
1:57:42
Speaker 1: teams at all. And more matchups, you know, I'd like
1:57:46
Speaker 1: to see a annual, you know, every, you know, it's
1:57:49
Speaker 1: basically a rotation just in the same way as you
1:57:51
Speaker 1: rotate divisions. So this, you know, we're going to have
1:57:54
Speaker 1: a SEC versus ACC where, you know, everybody plays at
1:57:58
Speaker 1: least one from that conference that season. Then do it
1:58:00
Speaker 1: again with the Big 10 and the Big 12. Then
1:58:02
Speaker 1: it's the Big 12 and the ACC. And then it's
1:58:04
Speaker 1: the SEC and the Big 10. You just go around
1:58:07
Speaker 1: where every year, every season, there's a rotation that way.
1:58:12
Speaker 1: So that we're constantly having matchups in between teams from
1:58:16
Speaker 1: different conferences. And I think it would give us a
1:58:19
Speaker 1: better way to assess just how tough these conferences are
1:58:22
Speaker 1: compared to next to each other. One quick thought on baseball. Dodgers.
1:58:29
Speaker 1: Old and slow always loses to young and fast. The
1:58:32
Speaker 1: Brewers were young and fast. The Dodgers were old and slow.
1:58:35
Speaker 1: The biggest, more immediate issue is, does this screw up
1:58:40
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball's attempt to get a salary cap? Because
1:58:43
Speaker 1: you're now going to have two Moneyball teams fighting for
1:58:45
Speaker 1: the World Series. Brewers versus either the Guardians or the Rays. Both,
1:58:49
Speaker 1: all three of those franchises Moneyball themselves. The Dodgers are
1:58:57
Speaker 1: a different story. Um, I'm not sure how the owners
1:59:02
Speaker 1: are going to be able to make the effective argument
1:59:06
Speaker 1: that they could have made had the Dodgers three-peated and
1:59:10
Speaker 1: sort of rolled over everybody. But they didn't. And one
1:59:15
Speaker 1: of the interesting things is if you stay young and
1:59:18
Speaker 1: you're smart about how you build your team, you end
1:59:21
Speaker 1: up outmaneuvering the big, well-funded, and sometimes semi-bloated franchises. which
1:59:30
Speaker 1: does feel like what the brewers did there. All right.
1:59:34
Speaker 1: With that, I'm going to put a pin in it.
1:59:36
Speaker 1: I will see you in 24 hours on Super Tuesday
1:59:38
Speaker 1: with Chris Silliza. And do check out my interview on
1:59:42
Speaker 1: Newsphere with Jeff Flake, former Republican senator from Arizona. Spend
1:59:46
Speaker 1: a little bit of time. We talk about the future
1:59:49
Speaker 1: of the conservative movement and of the Republican Party post-Trump.
1:59:53
Speaker 1: I'll see you then until we upload it.