Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - We Gave Up Freedoms After 9/11… It’s Time To Get Them Back + The Blueprint For How To Steal An Election

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Full Episode - We Gave Up Freedoms After 9/11… It’s Time To Get Them Back + The Blueprint For How To Steal An Election · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: dot com slash chuck. Hello there, and welcome to the
2:06
Speaker 1: Thursday episode of the Chuck Toddcast. I'll just be honest,
2:10
Speaker 1: I feel overloaded with information, overloaded with a few things
2:17
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. 25th anniversary of 9-11 is
2:21
Speaker 1: this weekend. I have a few things to say about that,
2:25
Speaker 1: and a few ways that I think we need to
2:26
Speaker 1: be thinking about a few things there. We got this
2:29
Speaker 1: midterm convention. that I know some of you are looking
2:32
Speaker 1: forward to dunk on, but I kind of want to
2:34
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of humility there and explain
2:38
Speaker 1: how it could be incredibly effective for Trump. It is
2:44
Speaker 1: still likely to backfire, but at least explaining the rationale
2:47
Speaker 1: a little bit more behind it there. And then a
2:52
Speaker 1: disconcerting set of poll numbers out that actually dovetails well
2:57
Speaker 1: with my guest's For this episode, my guest is Molly Roberts.
3:01
Speaker 1: She writes for a terrific publication called Lawfare. Essentially, that
3:05
Speaker 1: intersection between politics and the rule of law. And it's
3:09
Speaker 1: a terrific organization. You may know Ben Wittes, who's been
3:12
Speaker 1: a guest on this podcast multiple times. Well, Molly wrote
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Speaker 1: a piece essentially that attempts to answer a question many
3:18
Speaker 1: of you have asked me. How confident are you that
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Speaker 1: the midterms are going to be fair? How confident are you? Well,
3:24
Speaker 1: guess what? It turns out most of America is not confident.
3:27
Speaker 1: It's about the only thing we agree on. And that's
3:31
Speaker 1: a very disturbing trend that we're in. But I hope
3:36
Speaker 1: the conversation with Molly at least explains where our vulnerabilities
3:40
Speaker 1: do exist and why I continue to call myself vigilant,
3:45
Speaker 1: but not an alarmist. But speaking of alarmism, We have suddenly,
3:53
Speaker 1: you never know when you hit a break glass moment,
3:59
Speaker 1: a hockey stick moment, the aha, the light bulb goes off.
4:06
Speaker 1: But in the last 48 hours, it's as if a
4:11
Speaker 1: bunch of people have collectively suddenly heard the warnings that
4:18
Speaker 1: many people in Silicon Valley have been screaming for the
4:20
Speaker 1: rooftops for the last six months. We don't have enough
4:25
Speaker 1: guardrails around the development of AI. That's basically, and you've
4:29
Speaker 1: heard different versions of it. There's a 10% chance AI
4:32
Speaker 1: could destroy humanity. And you're like, huh, if there's a 10%
4:35
Speaker 1: chance of that, how come we're not more alarmed about this?
4:38
Speaker 1: Where are the leaders on this? And look, we haven't
4:44
Speaker 1: danced around this issue. You know, there's always been, I'll
4:47
Speaker 1: be honest, there's always been a part of me that
4:49
Speaker 1: has compartmentalized the doom and gloom of these AI companies, right? Well, we,
4:56
Speaker 1: you know, that they've come up with different rationales for
4:59
Speaker 1: why government needs to leave them alone or why they
5:03
Speaker 1: need to do regulation the way they want to do regulation.
5:05
Speaker 1: Because if we don't, China will beat us. But as
5:08
Speaker 1: the dark joke on the internet, So it's a race
5:12
Speaker 1: to see which country is gonna destroy humanity first on
5:17
Speaker 1: that front. But the viral tweet from the employee of
5:24
Speaker 1: Anthropic who said he resigned and essentially said, hey, all
5:29
Speaker 1: of this concern about the future of AI is shared
5:32
Speaker 1: by the entire ecosystem there. And this is what is
5:38
Speaker 1: a concern. And he shared this concern. And then all
5:43
Speaker 1: of a sudden you've got, you know, people that work
5:45
Speaker 1: at Anthropic going, yeah, he's right. You know, there is
5:48
Speaker 1: a concern here that as we develop AI, we're going
5:50
Speaker 1: to lose control of it. And, you know, for what
5:56
Speaker 1: it's worth, this isn't the first time we've heard this.
5:59
Speaker 1: And like I said, part of me thought it was
6:02
Speaker 1: a pretty dark and cynical way to market the to
6:08
Speaker 1: market the various chat models. Oh man, it is so powerful,
6:12
Speaker 1: we can't release it yet. It's almost like the Viagra warning,
6:18
Speaker 1: be careful of an erection that lasts more than four hours.
6:22
Speaker 1: That wasn't designed to dissuade you from getting Viagra, right?
6:26
Speaker 1: It was a side effect that clearly was an attempt
6:30
Speaker 1: to market the drug. And so there's been a part
6:33
Speaker 1: of me that has assumed that some of this fear of,
6:38
Speaker 1: we don't know, boy, we lost control of this model.
6:41
Speaker 1: It's so incredible at what it does that it had
6:45
Speaker 1: the whiff of marketing to it. And so, and that's
6:50
Speaker 1: part of the problem with the tech community. You don't
6:52
Speaker 1: know what to believe. You know, the credibility of the
6:55
Speaker 1: tech industry is about as, it's probably one step below
7:00
Speaker 1: the credibility of media these days. And of course you
7:04
Speaker 1: can thank the tech industry for the distrust in media.
7:07
Speaker 1: and Congress and politicians. But when we, you know, look,
7:12
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is this is an issue,
7:14
Speaker 1: the general issue of concern about tech, about AI, about
7:19
Speaker 1: social media, all of this has been coming from the public.
7:24
Speaker 1: None of this has been led by politicians. And none
7:28
Speaker 1: of our leaders in government have done anything remotely responsible
7:33
Speaker 1: when it comes to the country's concerns about what This
7:37
Speaker 1: massive transformation that is taking place in our economy, in
7:41
Speaker 1: the way we interact with each other, in the way
7:43
Speaker 1: we're going to consume information and the way we're going
7:46
Speaker 1: to learn information. And the public is begging, right? Why
7:52
Speaker 1: did this go viral? The public is begging for somebody
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Speaker 1: to rein in big tech. We already, you know, this
8:00
Speaker 1: anger at the data centers, this concern about what AI
8:03
Speaker 1: is gonna do with us. It's all because these tech
8:07
Speaker 1: guys screwed up all of our, a generation of us.
8:11
Speaker 1: with the social media disaster, right? Social media has been
8:15
Speaker 1: a terrible thing for society, hard stop. There are certainly
8:23
Speaker 1: examples of where social media has been a positive individually
8:26
Speaker 1: for people's lives. And there's certainly been attempts to connect.
8:30
Speaker 1: But the general impact on us has been more negative
8:34
Speaker 1: than positive, right? We trust each other less, not more,
8:39
Speaker 1: thanks to big tech. We have growing armies of people
8:44
Speaker 1: who are sort of finding each other to go after
8:49
Speaker 1: other parts of society, thanks to big tech. And so
8:55
Speaker 1: maybe that the fact that this went viral, that more
8:59
Speaker 1: politicians are gonna realize we need to get our arms
9:05
Speaker 1: around this ASAP and you need to show some leadership, right?
9:09
Speaker 1: You know, if we had real presidential leadership, and I
9:11
Speaker 1: know we don't, I mean, this is the problem, right?
9:14
Speaker 1: We have literally the worst president we could have at
9:19
Speaker 1: a moment when we need somebody who's got a little
9:22
Speaker 1: bit of empathy and a little bit of intelligence, right?
9:25
Speaker 1: We've got somebody with zero intelligence and zero empathy leading
9:29
Speaker 1: at a moment when the country is desperate for both, right?
9:33
Speaker 1: It is obvious we need a better president sort of
9:36
Speaker 1: coordinated game plan on how to develop AI, how to
9:40
Speaker 1: deal with guardrails, right? A functioning government would have essentially
9:46
Speaker 1: a president that could convene a bipartisan team of governors,
9:53
Speaker 1: public sector, private sector. We would come together and actually
9:58
Speaker 1: think about all of the of the various ways that
10:01
Speaker 1: we're concerned about. If we've got this 10% chance we
10:04
Speaker 1: could lose control of AI, well, let's do something about it.
10:10
Speaker 1: When we had this fear of nuclear weapons, we decided, well,
10:16
Speaker 1: we better build some sort of diplomatic connection with the
10:23
Speaker 1: other superpower who's got nuclear weapons, since we both now
10:26
Speaker 1: have enough to destroy the planet. Well, I guess that's
10:29
Speaker 1: what AI is becoming, that if you let it go
10:34
Speaker 1: on its own, it could be enough to essentially consume
10:37
Speaker 1: us or consume humanity in some sort. Some of this
10:40
Speaker 1: feels very science fiction-y, so it's hard to sort of
10:43
Speaker 1: wrap our arms around. And this is why we need.
10:47
Speaker 1: Some leadership that knows how to lead with both intelligence
10:50
Speaker 1: and empathy. And we don't have it. You know, there
10:52
Speaker 1: should be, there should be emergency hearings on Capitol Hill
10:55
Speaker 1: right at this moment. I want to see these people
10:59
Speaker 1: in front of Congress under oath on a live stream,
11:03
Speaker 1: whether it's regular television, you know, legacy television online, but
11:08
Speaker 1: we need to hear from these people individually, right? This
11:12
Speaker 1: is one of those where we need to convene the
11:14
Speaker 1: country and we need to all understand this. And nobody
11:19
Speaker 1: seems to want to meet this moment. And I think
11:20
Speaker 1: part of it, frankly, is that our elected officials have
11:23
Speaker 1: been bought off, right? And either they've been bought off
11:26
Speaker 1: or they fear the power of the money dropped on
11:30
Speaker 1: them if they at all show any hesitation. And yet,
11:36
Speaker 1: you know, this is what's so frustrating about these tech companies.
11:40
Speaker 1: On one hand, they're the ones who that are telling
11:43
Speaker 1: us we should be very nervous and very concerned. On
11:47
Speaker 1: the other hand, they do that with like their right brain.
11:50
Speaker 1: And with their left brain, they're writing these giant checks
11:54
Speaker 1: to various politicians and the Trump administration and other people
11:58
Speaker 1: trying to griff off of tech to basically get a
12:02
Speaker 1: promise that they can, I don't wanna say have no regulation,
12:07
Speaker 1: but they basically get to design the regulation themselves, right?
12:11
Speaker 1: They want to have regulatory capture is the phrase that's used.
12:16
Speaker 1: But we need, I mean, look, the fact is we
12:18
Speaker 1: may need these data centers. Well, if you have some
12:21
Speaker 1: presidential leadership, you bring everybody at the table and say, okay,
12:24
Speaker 1: we've got to find, here's the best ways we're going
12:27
Speaker 1: to deal with this. And just the way you would
12:29
Speaker 1: have military installations all around the country, well, everybody would
12:35
Speaker 1: share some form of this if indeed we decide as
12:38
Speaker 1: a society that And we decide as a government that
12:41
Speaker 1: we need these data centers and we're not going to
12:43
Speaker 1: concentrate it in one area. We're going to do it
12:45
Speaker 1: various ways, just like we did with military bases, right?
12:47
Speaker 1: Just like what we did when we designed the interstate
12:50
Speaker 1: highway system. And that's the kind of leadership that's missing.
12:55
Speaker 1: And that's just like, this is, you know, I'm calling
12:57
Speaker 1: for something that on one hand is incredibly logical and obvious.
13:01
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, with this administration and this president,
13:05
Speaker 1: it's impossible to do, right? He just does. I do
13:09
Speaker 1: think a President Vance actually would be able to, would
13:12
Speaker 1: actually have a, might behave a bit more normally here
13:17
Speaker 1: and might at least accept the premise that, hey, you're
13:20
Speaker 1: going to have to convene stakeholders from a variety of
13:24
Speaker 1: society in order to get us on the same page
13:27
Speaker 1: here on this front. Trump doesn't think that way. And
13:30
Speaker 1: he's surrounded by people who are allowing him to essentially
13:35
Speaker 1: go down this fantasy path that he goes down. But
13:40
Speaker 1: this is a moment, and I know individually, I talk
13:45
Speaker 1: to these elected officials individually, they know that the public
13:49
Speaker 1: is demanding something. None of them know exactly what to do. Look,
13:54
Speaker 1: step one is let's get these people in front of
13:58
Speaker 1: a fricking camera in public under oath for all of
14:02
Speaker 1: us to hear. Explain to me in American how the
14:06
Speaker 1: development of AI could destroy humanity. Tell us how it works, right?
14:12
Speaker 1: Explain it out. And we have this weird, it's like it's,
14:15
Speaker 1: and this is the part that I'm both nervous that
14:19
Speaker 1: maybe they're right. And I'm a part of me that
14:22
Speaker 1: feels as if that it's this black box right? Just
14:25
Speaker 1: trust us. It's bad. Okay. Why should I trust anything
14:29
Speaker 1: that comes out of this industry, right? This industry has
14:32
Speaker 1: had one mindset, increased shareholder value. That's it. That's the
14:40
Speaker 1: only mindset left in this community. I think that the
14:45
Speaker 1: original generation of tech entrepreneurs wanted to make money and
14:50
Speaker 1: improve society. Now it just feels like, whatever it takes
14:54
Speaker 1: to increase valuation, whatever it takes to hurry up and
14:57
Speaker 1: get their IPOs, right? This is what, on one hand,
15:00
Speaker 1: anthropic and open AI are very public about the dangers
15:04
Speaker 1: and the concerns they may have as we develop AI.
15:07
Speaker 1: And at the same time, what are they doing? They're
15:09
Speaker 1: prepping for one of the largest IPOs in history because
15:12
Speaker 1: all of them can't wait to get extraordinarily wealthy. Maybe
15:16
Speaker 1: we ought to put a pause on worrying about the
15:18
Speaker 1: IPO and let's, if this is truly If we're literally
15:25
Speaker 1: at the precipice where if we advance too much further,
15:29
Speaker 1: it's out of our control, then shouldn't we be pausing
15:34
Speaker 1: almost anything that we're working on right now and just
15:37
Speaker 1: focusing on this problem? Well, the answer is obvious. Do
15:42
Speaker 1: we have a politics that can deal with this? Do
15:45
Speaker 1: we have the leaders that know how to convene both
15:49
Speaker 1: intelligently and empathetically? And that's what's missing here. I think
15:56
Speaker 1: the reason why there's a little bit of extra panic
16:01
Speaker 1: here is because we're dealing with AI without a net, right?
16:08
Speaker 1: It used to be that government was a net. You
16:10
Speaker 1: may not have loved the decisions government would make, but
16:13
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you thought, well, they
16:15
Speaker 1: still have the resources to prevent the most catastrophic things.
16:20
Speaker 1: Or they still have the resources to rescue us from
16:22
Speaker 1: the most catastrophic events. But when you have a government
16:29
Speaker 1: that you can't rely on for anything, you can't trust
16:32
Speaker 1: any of the information that comes out of it, how
16:35
Speaker 1: do we hope that they can lead us into a
16:40
Speaker 1: place that would make us feel more comfortable and more
16:47
Speaker 1: reassured that as this technology advances, it isn't gonna destroy
16:54
Speaker 1: humanity as we go, right? Now, I don't know whether
16:58
Speaker 1: these folks are being super alarmist or they're onto something,
17:04
Speaker 1: but at some point, they've yelled the sky is falling
17:10
Speaker 1: a lot. The worst thing to do would be to
17:13
Speaker 1: ignore the warning, right? The infamous, I have a lot
17:17
Speaker 1: to say about the anniversary of 9-11, right? You know,
17:20
Speaker 1: the famous intelligence briefing, you know, bin Laden determined to,
17:23
Speaker 1: you know, to strike America on its soil, you know,
17:27
Speaker 1: a month before. And, you know, it is. So, you know,
17:32
Speaker 1: the mistake of 9-11 was failure of imagination. The mistake
17:38
Speaker 1: of all of us when it came to our politics
17:41
Speaker 1: and the entry of Donald Trump into mainstream politics was
17:45
Speaker 1: failure of imagination. Dealing with Donald Trump has been failure
17:49
Speaker 1: of imagination. Well, dealing with the tech community has been
17:52
Speaker 1: failure of imagination. So we need to take this threat
17:57
Speaker 1: seriously and the public's begging for it. The politicians have
18:00
Speaker 1: never been further behind on an issue like they are
18:03
Speaker 1: on tech, right? They think it's about data centers. It's
18:06
Speaker 1: not about data centers. It's about the fact that somehow
18:10
Speaker 1: tech has more control of our lives than we do.
18:13
Speaker 1: We don't feel like we have control of our own lives.
18:16
Speaker 1: It feels like Tech tells us what to read. Tech
18:18
Speaker 1: tells us, you know, what our worldview is, whether we
18:21
Speaker 1: ask for it or not, you know, and the whole
18:23
Speaker 1: algorithm business. And that's what this is. This is almost
18:27
Speaker 1: like a primal scream, the fact that this thing went viral.
18:31
Speaker 1: And so, look, right now, politicians are, because we're two
18:36
Speaker 1: months from an election, they see the polls, they see
18:38
Speaker 1: the Angar data center. So they're sort of responding reflexively
18:42
Speaker 1: like you would if you were checking your reflexes and
18:45
Speaker 1: they hit your knee and you just kick the doctor, right?
18:48
Speaker 1: You know, data center's bad. Okay, data center's bad. You know,
18:52
Speaker 1: I'm the governor of Texas. I'll now say data centers
18:54
Speaker 1: were bad. Never mind all the money I just raised
18:57
Speaker 1: from the tech community that gave him the green light
19:00
Speaker 1: to use this land. And maybe it will be a
19:03
Speaker 1: good thing in the long run, right? But he's running
19:06
Speaker 1: for cover because he read a poll. But the bigger
19:09
Speaker 1: issue is what the public's really screaming about is somehow
19:16
Speaker 1: a private industry has more influence over our lives, over how,
19:21
Speaker 1: and apparently over our future. And the government is a
19:24
Speaker 1: passive actor in all of this, right? At the end
19:28
Speaker 1: of the day, the whole point of government is to
19:31
Speaker 1: sort of be this collective that helps us do things
19:35
Speaker 1: we can't individually do. And if government doesn't work, Anarchy
19:44
Speaker 1: will ensue, It sounds a little bit extreme in putting
19:50
Speaker 1: it in those terms, but that's a huge test here.
19:57
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22:37
Speaker 1: isn't sure that it will be. Because that's where we are.
22:41
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's all– it's this– we're in an
22:45
Speaker 1: era of distrust and we're in a moment of distrust
22:48
Speaker 1: where it couldn't be the worst possible time to have this.
22:52
Speaker 1: So a new poll finds that only 45 percent of
22:55
Speaker 1: Americans believe the 2026 midterms are going to be conducted fairly,
23:00
Speaker 1: 45 percent. And this isn't simply one side preparing to
23:04
Speaker 1: scream fraud if it loses or whatever. This is not one-sided.
23:09
Speaker 1: Only 48% of Democrats say they think the election will
23:11
Speaker 1: be conducted fairly. And only 48% of Republicans say the
23:15
Speaker 1: same thing. Among independents, just 37%. So think about that.
23:21
Speaker 1: We have managed to achieve bipartisan consensus on something in
23:26
Speaker 1: American politics. Well, frankly, we're seeing the one place we
23:30
Speaker 1: have consensus is on the doomer part of our existence, right?
23:35
Speaker 1: We don't trust big tech with the development of AI
23:38
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons, but there's bipartisan consensus on that.
23:42
Speaker 1: And we don't trust either party to conduct free and
23:44
Speaker 1: fair elections anymore.
23:48
Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
23:50
Speaker 1: It's a republic if we could keep it, right? So
23:53
Speaker 1: here we are. I've been hoping we could get some
23:57
Speaker 1: bipartisan consensus on repairs that we need. I guess a
24:01
Speaker 1: good way to start is bipartisan consensus on what's wrong.
24:05
Speaker 1: But then again, should we be surprised that the public
24:07
Speaker 1: thinks this is going to be unfair, right? We're less
24:10
Speaker 1: than eight weeks from election day. and parts of the
24:14
Speaker 1: election itself are still being litigated, right? If you listen
24:19
Speaker 1: to Wednesday's podcast, you know all about the Missouri story.
24:23
Speaker 1: So we still have fights over congressional maps. Less than
24:25
Speaker 1: 60 days away, people in Missouri don't even know which
24:28
Speaker 1: congressional district they're gonna be voting in. We have fights
24:31
Speaker 1: over mail voting, right? The Trump administration is still hoping
24:35
Speaker 1: that somehow they can get your mailman to decide whether
24:38
Speaker 1: you get a ballot or not. Just an absurd premise
24:42
Speaker 1: on its face that we're involving the postal service, which
24:45
Speaker 1: by the way, at its founding, at its founding, right?
24:50
Speaker 1: We use the postal service as a way to distribute
24:54
Speaker 1: cheap newspapers, right? We were giving a discount to newspapers, right?
24:59
Speaker 1: We didn't create a political test for it. We basically
25:02
Speaker 1: just said, hey, you know, your newspaper, no matter your
25:06
Speaker 1: you know, we just wanted we wanted that. And now
25:10
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is so un-American, he wants to weaponize the
25:13
Speaker 1: Postal Service. The one thing that at its creation, we said, no, no, no, no,
25:16
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that. We're having fights over,
25:19
Speaker 1: you know, purging of voting records and things like this.
25:23
Speaker 1: And of course, we have a president who has spent
25:25
Speaker 1: the better part of six years convincing his supporters that
25:30
Speaker 1: every election he's lost was by definition suspicious. It actually
25:34
Speaker 1: began with the Iowa caucuses in 2016 that he still
25:37
Speaker 1: doesn't accept. And Ted Cruz, it's funny to him, funny
25:42
Speaker 1: to me to see Ted Cruz still be a surrogate
25:45
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump, all the different ways that Donald Trump
25:48
Speaker 1: character assassinated Ted Cruz. And it was like, thank you, sir.
25:51
Speaker 1: May I have another? But but I digress because it
25:53
Speaker 1: all goes back. I mean, you know, if anybody should
25:56
Speaker 1: understand that Donald Trump is a serial liar, it's the
25:59
Speaker 1: winner of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz. But I digress.
26:05
Speaker 1: So coming up later in this podcast, though, because of
26:08
Speaker 1: this concern, I'm talking with a reporter, Molly Roberts from Lawfare,
26:14
Speaker 1: who explored the question that sounds almost a bit provocative
26:16
Speaker 1: to ask, right, which is, can the midterms be rigged?
26:19
Speaker 1: Are they going to be free? What should we be
26:21
Speaker 1: concerned about? And, you know, how vulnerable is the system
26:26
Speaker 1: and where are the vulnerabilities? Right. And, you know, it's
26:31
Speaker 1: a it's a good conversation. It's a good exercise. I in,
26:36
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, we're we're the fact that we even
26:40
Speaker 1: have to have the conversation is disconcerting. But look, as
26:43
Speaker 1: this polling shows, half the country is concerned that this
26:47
Speaker 1: stuff's not going to be free. Right. I'm I'm I'm
26:50
Speaker 1: still pretty confident. It's very hard to rig our elections.
26:54
Speaker 1: You can rig a small portion of it. You can
26:57
Speaker 1: you can rig a congressional district in North Carolina's nine
26:59
Speaker 1: district and, you know, packet full of of fake absentee voters.
27:03
Speaker 1: But you're going to get caught doing it.
27:05
Speaker 2: Right.
27:05
Speaker 1: Like that's that to me is a reminder there. I
27:08
Speaker 1: still have that the the fact that our system isn't
27:11
Speaker 1: centralized actually creates the security that I think that some
27:15
Speaker 1: people fear. that lack of centralization that makes them think, oh,
27:19
Speaker 1: it can be rigged even more. But, you know, it is,
27:24
Speaker 1: I think it's a healthy conversation. I know many of
27:27
Speaker 1: you want to explore this and I think you'll enjoy
27:30
Speaker 1: that part of it. So don't miss that. But meanwhile,
27:36
Speaker 1: before we get to the interview with Molly, there's something
27:38
Speaker 1: else I want, a few other things I want to
27:40
Speaker 1: talk about. Because I told you, imagine holding a midterm
27:45
Speaker 1: that half the country doesn't believe is gonna be free
27:47
Speaker 1: and fair. Well, imagine trying to convince your own voters
27:49
Speaker 1: to come out for a midterm election while the price
27:51
Speaker 1: of oil is hitting record highs, which means the price
27:54
Speaker 1: of gasoline is only gonna go higher. And if you're
27:57
Speaker 1: trying to run a campaign around affordability, welcome to the
28:00
Speaker 1: Republican Party's problem and Donald Trump's problem, right? This has
28:03
Speaker 1: been a strange, there's been this strange vacillation inside Trump
28:06
Speaker 1: world over the economy, and you're seeing it play out
28:09
Speaker 1: at this midterm convention. First, remember he said, what affordability
28:13
Speaker 1: a problem? This is a made up word. Then, all right,
28:18
Speaker 1: there's an affordability problem, but it's temporary. It's this. Maybe
28:22
Speaker 1: there's an affordability problem, but it's all Joe Biden's fault, right?
28:26
Speaker 1: You're hearing different versions of this as we speak, right? Obviously,
28:31
Speaker 1: at some point, the voters are going to decide that
28:33
Speaker 1: you own the presidency. And I think we're well past
28:37
Speaker 1: the point where Donald Trump can plausibly argue that every
28:40
Speaker 1: bad economic development belongs to the guy who had the
28:43
Speaker 1: job before him.
28:44
Speaker 2: Right.
28:44
Speaker 1: The major price pressures that Americans are feeling right now
28:47
Speaker 1: are all directly connected to choices Donald Trump made. The
28:50
Speaker 1: tariffs being the most obvious, the immigration crackdown, which tightens
28:54
Speaker 1: the labor supply and raises labor costs. That's been something.
28:57
Speaker 1: And of course, his war of choice with Iran.
29:00
Speaker 2: Right.
29:01
Speaker 1: All of those were Trump specific policies. Hard stop. Somebody
29:04
Speaker 1: wants to show me a current Biden policy that is
29:08
Speaker 1: that is somehow in effect that is currently creating these
29:11
Speaker 1: price pressures. Show it to me. I'd like to see
29:12
Speaker 1: the evidence. You know, I know I know the one
29:16
Speaker 1: thing Trump likes to say as well, because of Biden,
29:20
Speaker 1: Russia invaded Ukraine and that had impacted our economy. OK,
29:24
Speaker 1: as if the biggest myth going is this idea that
29:28
Speaker 1: Putin wasn't going to invade. It somehow wouldn't have invaded
29:31
Speaker 1: Ukraine had Trump been president. Give me a frickin break.
29:35
Speaker 2: Right.
29:35
Speaker 1: This the idea that Donald Trump was going to stand
29:38
Speaker 1: in the way of this disaster. decades long obsession that
29:41
Speaker 1: Putin has had about restoring the Soviet, a form of
29:45
Speaker 1: the Soviet union is, is just, um, is, is myopic
29:50
Speaker 1: at best, but still, uh, I get, um, why Trump
29:56
Speaker 1: would like to sell the idea that he inherited some
29:59
Speaker 1: economic catastrophe and he's now heroically digging us out of it. Obviously,
30:04
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. He has literally taken a recovery
30:07
Speaker 1: and said, screw it, I'm going to make it harder.
30:10
Speaker 1: But I also understand why Trump's obsessed with trying to
30:12
Speaker 1: do it this way, because Barack Obama got away with it. Now,
30:15
Speaker 1: Barack Obama told a version of that story very successfully.
30:18
Speaker 2: Why?
30:19
Speaker 1: Because there was an economic crisis, right? For years, Obama
30:22
Speaker 1: could point backward to George W. Bush and say, I
30:24
Speaker 1: inherited a mess. And politically, it mostly worked. It's why
30:28
Speaker 1: he won reelection. But there's a reason it worked. It's
30:32
Speaker 1: called facts, right? There actually was a financial crash. The
30:36
Speaker 1: economy literally crashed. It was an emergency, literally 60 days.
30:41
Speaker 1: We delayed the start of a presidential debate between McCain
30:45
Speaker 1: and Obama so the two of them could meet with
30:48
Speaker 1: the president during this crisis. By the way, if AI
30:51
Speaker 1: is going to destroy humanity, how come we're not having
30:53
Speaker 1: a moment like that right now, right? We had a
30:56
Speaker 1: financial crisis that we thought was going to bring down
30:58
Speaker 1: the economy. And George W. Bush said, I better bring
31:02
Speaker 1: the two presidential nominees in here right now because this
31:05
Speaker 1: is a mess they have to deal with, right? It's
31:07
Speaker 1: called responsible leadership, of which we have none at the moment.
31:13
Speaker 1: But the point is, the public knew pretty clearly that
31:17
Speaker 1: the economy crashed before Obama took office, right? We all
31:20
Speaker 1: watched it happen. We all watched this stuff, the stock
31:24
Speaker 1: market clash. So the economy Obama inherited was objectively in crisis.
31:29
Speaker 1: So whatever you thought about Obama's remedies, you could not
31:32
Speaker 1: seriously argue that he had caused the financial crisis before
31:36
Speaker 1: he became president. It's a pretty important distinction because the
31:40
Speaker 1: economy Donald Trump inherited in 2025 was not an economy
31:44
Speaker 1: in free fall. Inflation had come substantially down from its peak.
31:49
Speaker 1: The country had largely worked its way through economic distortions
31:52
Speaker 1: created by COVID. The border was getting more secure because
31:57
Speaker 1: finally there was a chief of staff in the White
32:00
Speaker 1: House that let Ali Mayorkas do his job at DHS.
32:05
Speaker 1: And now Trump has implemented a series of policies that
32:08
Speaker 1: has put upward pressure on prices. Now, it doesn't mean
32:12
Speaker 1: every single price increase is Donald Trump's fault. You know,
32:16
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know this. Presidents don't have a
32:18
Speaker 1: little dial in the office that says eggs, gas over here,
32:21
Speaker 1: turn it up, turn it down. But the policy matters.
32:24
Speaker 1: And when you deliberately raise the price of imported goods
32:28
Speaker 1: through tariffs, restrict the supply of labor, and then get
32:32
Speaker 1: yourself involved in a war that disrupts energy markets, you
32:36
Speaker 1: don't get to act shocked when things cost more. Now,
32:41
Speaker 1: there is one area where Trump gets to claim the
32:43
Speaker 1: good news that began before he took office, and that's crime.
32:47
Speaker 1: Violent crime continues to fall. And I think we're now
32:50
Speaker 1: seeing that the COVID explanation for the spike in crime
32:56
Speaker 1: was the likely explanation for the spike in crime, right?
32:59
Speaker 1: We had this extraordinary social disruption. People were shut in,
33:02
Speaker 1: schools closed, communities disrupted, crime spiked, society reopened, life normalized,
33:07
Speaker 1: violent crime started falling again. Not in one city. not
33:11
Speaker 1: because one mayor suddenly discovered the secret formula. It's remarkably widespread,
33:17
Speaker 1: which is only more proof that this was all connected
33:19
Speaker 1: to COVID, right? And that's okay. Trump gets to preside
33:24
Speaker 1: over that decline, right? That has happened. Many a president
33:28
Speaker 1: has gotten credit for policy that was implemented from the
33:31
Speaker 1: previous president that suddenly started to work. So presidents get
33:35
Speaker 1: credit for things they didn't entirely cause all the time.
33:38
Speaker 1: And they also get blamed for things they didn't entirely cause.
33:42
Speaker 1: Welcome to politics. But here's where I think the midterm
33:44
Speaker 1: campaign is getting interesting. While there is a temptation among
33:47
Speaker 1: Trump opponents to look at the economy, look at the
33:50
Speaker 1: price of gas, look at the tariffs, look at the
33:51
Speaker 1: war and say, well, this thing is over. I'll say,
33:54
Speaker 1: I do want to say, let's be careful out there.
33:57
Speaker 1: We live in an extraordinarily fragmented information environment. There are
34:02
Speaker 1: probably people listening to this podcast who barely know there
34:06
Speaker 1: is a Republican political convention happening right now. because your
34:11
Speaker 1: information ecosystem may simply not feed it to you. Because
34:14
Speaker 1: maybe you're just like, I don't want anything Trump. I
34:16
Speaker 1: don't want anything MAGA, right? But if your algorithm is
34:19
Speaker 1: filled with Trump content, MAGA influencers, meme coins, owning the libs,
34:24
Speaker 1: all the rest of it, you know exactly what's happening.
34:28
Speaker 1: And you're getting a very different presentation of the state
34:30
Speaker 1: of the country. And that does matter. Because whatever else
34:34
Speaker 1: you think about Donald Trump's political operation, they do know
34:37
Speaker 1: how to communicate to their own voters. They're not persuasive
34:41
Speaker 1: at all. You know, that they're no good at. Both
34:46
Speaker 1: parties are really good at repelling independence to the other party.
34:52
Speaker 1: Meaning once, you know, independents are the ones that are
34:55
Speaker 1: sort of swinging this thing back and forth. And it's
34:58
Speaker 1: more out of disgust. Right. And they sort of go
35:01
Speaker 1: back and forth. But the one thing about this Trump
35:05
Speaker 1: operation is they know where their voters are. They know
35:09
Speaker 1: which media those voters consume. They know what makes those
35:12
Speaker 1: voters angry. And they also know what makes them laugh.
35:16
Speaker 1: And they've been better at this than their opponents. Right.
35:18
Speaker 1: So if somebody else had figured out how to communicate
35:20
Speaker 1: with these voters more effectively, perhaps Donald Trump wouldn't have
35:23
Speaker 1: the political movement he has. So I would do think
35:27
Speaker 1: everybody that folks on the left need to show a
35:29
Speaker 1: little humility before declaring that this midterm convention is a
35:33
Speaker 1: total disaster. And it's I look. I'm 75% with it.
35:38
Speaker 1: I think it's a mistake. I think nationalizing this election
35:42
Speaker 1: only makes it harder for Republicans that win over independent voters.
35:48
Speaker 1: All that's true. But if this is only about one thing,
35:52
Speaker 1: turning out the MAGA base, this is where I think
35:55
Speaker 1: people ought to just not assume this doesn't work. It
35:58
Speaker 1: may not work, but we'll see. Because this convention is
36:02
Speaker 1: not intended for swing voters. This is all about motivation.
36:06
Speaker 1: This is all about trying to get the people inside
36:09
Speaker 1: the tribe to care enough about this election to show
36:13
Speaker 1: up and vote. And it really does. One of the
36:17
Speaker 1: things that I'm reminded of by seeing in some ways,
36:23
Speaker 1: this midterm is still competitive. And if this were truly,
36:27
Speaker 1: if all voters truly voted via pocketbook, nothing would seem
36:32
Speaker 1: competitive at the moment, right? This would be a rout, right? Now,
36:36
Speaker 1: there are some people that vote pocketbook. I think there's
36:39
Speaker 1: enough that they help swing elections. But huge numbers of
36:43
Speaker 1: Americans don't vote their pocketbook. Politics is more identity than
36:47
Speaker 1: ever before. It's culture and community. It's entertainment. It's resentment.
36:51
Speaker 1: It's victimhood. It's belonging. And if you're a strong partisan
36:56
Speaker 1: and you're unhappy with your party, you don't necessarily vote
36:58
Speaker 1: for the other party. Sometimes you simply don't vote. And
37:02
Speaker 1: that's what MAGA and the Republicans are nervous about. And
37:07
Speaker 1: that's why you're seeing Republicans who you think, what the
37:10
Speaker 1: hell are you doing staying with MAGA? Standing with MAGA
37:13
Speaker 1: at this moment, Mike Rogers, or at this moment, John Husted. Well,
37:17
Speaker 1: it's because they can't win without the base. All right.
37:21
Speaker 1: And the question isn't necessarily whether a MAGA voter paying
37:24
Speaker 1: more for gasoline suddenly becomes a Democrat. That ain't going
37:26
Speaker 1: to happen. The question is whether that voter decides the
37:29
Speaker 1: whole thing isn't worth showing up for. That they had
37:31
Speaker 1: a little bit of faith. Maybe this guy, Trump guy
37:33
Speaker 1: is different. Maybe he can manage the economy. And they're like, oh,
37:36
Speaker 1: this guy's an idiot. I'm out of politics. Because remember,
37:39
Speaker 1: a big chunk of Trump's mega supporters were people that
37:42
Speaker 1: had kind of given up on politics and then saw
37:45
Speaker 1: him as sort of, all right, let me try this
37:47
Speaker 1: crazy outsider. So when they realize what a total and
37:52
Speaker 1: complete failure this guy has been, you know, I fear
37:56
Speaker 1: these voters are just going to be out, right? They're
37:59
Speaker 1: just going to check out again and not get involved.
38:01
Speaker 1: That's not healthy, by the way.
38:03
Speaker 2: Right.
38:04
Speaker 1: Just because, you know, if you may be thinking, well,
38:06
Speaker 1: that'll that'll benefit my guys or that'll be my team.
38:09
Speaker 1: It's bad. It's unhealthy if a chunk of voters are
38:12
Speaker 1: totally going to give up on the system. And that's
38:17
Speaker 1: obviously the whole point of this convention. And Trump has
38:20
Speaker 1: another instinct whenever he gets into political trouble as well. Right.
38:23
Speaker 1: Which is to throw money at a problem. And it's
38:26
Speaker 1: always somebody else's money. It's obviously never his. We've seen
38:29
Speaker 1: this repeatedly.
38:30
Speaker 2: Right.
38:30
Speaker 1: He's always in this way. This is why real conservatives
38:35
Speaker 1: get so frustrated. They're like Donald Trump is no conservative
38:37
Speaker 1: and he's never been a conservative. He's just a big government. Populist.
38:43
Speaker 2: Right.
38:43
Speaker 1: Who has hijacked the Republican Party and convinced a lot
38:47
Speaker 1: of a lot of people that somehow this is a
38:50
Speaker 1: that winning because he won, it makes him conservative.
38:53
Speaker 2: Right.
38:56
Speaker 1: But. One thing Trump is pretty good at as a
38:59
Speaker 1: populist is realizing he needs a gimmick. No tax on
39:03
Speaker 1: tips was a good example, right? Trump was desperate for
39:06
Speaker 1: a new economic idea. He didn't really have one for
39:08
Speaker 1: his 24 campaign. And he just sort of stumbled upon it.
39:12
Speaker 1: Who knows if somebody whispered into his ear that he
39:14
Speaker 1: tells a story that it was a server that said
39:17
Speaker 1: this to him. Maybe it's you can't. Can you believe anything? Remember,
39:21
Speaker 1: according to Donald Trump, he was pulling people out of
39:23
Speaker 1: the 9-11 rubble or people were pulling him out of
39:25
Speaker 1: the rubble. I could tell you what's true. He wasn't
39:29
Speaker 1: anywhere near. that part of Manhattan when it happened. And
39:34
Speaker 1: in fact, there's plenty of videotape and evidence to prove that.
39:37
Speaker 1: But the point is, is this no tax on tips, right? Whatever,
39:42
Speaker 1: however you stumbled upon it, it caught fire. In fact, remember,
39:46
Speaker 1: Democrats didn't quite know what to do with it. And eventually,
39:49
Speaker 1: many of them essentially embraced the concept. Now, I can
39:53
Speaker 1: be the sourpuss here and say I'd prefer a tax
39:59
Speaker 1: code that treated income more consistently, whether it comes from wages, tips,
40:03
Speaker 1: capital gains, dividends, interest, whatever else. But I'll save that
40:08
Speaker 1: for another rant. I mean, another podcast. What interests me
40:11
Speaker 1: is the newest idea being floated in Trump world. paying
40:15
Speaker 1: mothers to stay home and have children. Welfare for stay-at-home moms.
40:22
Speaker 1: The leader of the Republican Party is advocating for welfare. Just,
40:28
Speaker 1: you know, imagine going back in time and telling Newt
40:34
Speaker 1: Gingrich in 1996 that his North Star, the leader of
40:39
Speaker 1: his party, will eventually be advocating for more welfare. I
40:46
Speaker 1: think Newt would say, you better stop smoking whatever you're smoking.
40:51
Speaker 1: But that's what's happening. Obviously, those on the right that
40:58
Speaker 1: are advocating for this are desperate. Don't call it welfare.
41:01
Speaker 1: It's not welfare. No, it's a family benefit. It's natalist incentive,
41:07
Speaker 1: whatever the hell you want to call it. The government
41:08
Speaker 1: is paying you to engage in a particular lifestyle because
41:11
Speaker 1: the government wants more people to choose that lifestyle. What
41:16
Speaker 1: I find fascinating about this idea is what it tells
41:19
Speaker 1: you about what has happened to what is left of
41:21
Speaker 1: the conservative movement. Donald Trump has essentially eviscerated the limited
41:27
Speaker 1: government wing of the conservative movement. They exist, but they
41:31
Speaker 1: can't be part of the Republican coalition anymore. And those
41:34
Speaker 1: that claim they still are, are lying to themselves because
41:37
Speaker 1: they apparently just, you know, either that caught up in
41:41
Speaker 1: their own cult or just refuse to see reality. Right.
41:46
Speaker 1: I mean, if you genuinely believe that government should be smaller,
41:50
Speaker 1: less intrusive, less interested in engineering how citizens live their lives,
41:56
Speaker 1: there is not much about the modern Republican Party that
41:59
Speaker 1: Donald Trump leads that reflects that philosophy. God bless George Will.
42:04
Speaker 1: He saw it a lot sooner than most people, which
42:06
Speaker 1: is why he left the party completely and is registered
42:10
Speaker 1: as an independent. Because he this is not. a party
42:15
Speaker 1: that cares about limited government anymore. In many ways, it's
42:19
Speaker 1: the exact opposite. This is a big government Republican party.
42:25
Speaker 1: It is increasingly comfortable wanting to use the power of
42:29
Speaker 1: government to encourage and sometimes coerce a particular social behavior.
42:36
Speaker 1: And that's what makes this proposal, I mean, in some ways,
42:40
Speaker 1: so whiplashy to me. This episode of the Chuck Todd
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44:24
Speaker 1: Now I look at it this way. What problem, you know,
44:26
Speaker 1: this is, this is sometimes, you know, what problem are
44:29
Speaker 1: you trying to solve, right? If the problem is the
44:31
Speaker 1: birth rate, okay, that is a real issue. If the
44:36
Speaker 1: problem is an aging population, okay, that's a real issue.
44:39
Speaker 1: If the problem is the long-term solvency of programs like
44:42
Speaker 1: social security and then yes, demographics matter enormously if you
44:46
Speaker 1: wanna continue to have this flywheel work, if you will, okay?
44:53
Speaker 1: But if you need more young people and more workers,
44:55
Speaker 1: why would your solution simultaneously be to cut immigration and
45:00
Speaker 1: pay existing workers to leave the workforce? Those things are
45:04
Speaker 1: working against each other. If America needs more Americans, there
45:09
Speaker 1: are multiple ways to get there. Immigration is one, and
45:12
Speaker 1: it's one that is powered this country to have the
45:16
Speaker 1: greatest economy it has had for as long as it's had.
45:20
Speaker 1: We're an economic superpower because of our immigration policies. I
45:27
Speaker 1: know people don't like it, and I know we're a
45:28
Speaker 1: nation of immigrants. I say this these days, we're a
45:32
Speaker 1: nation of immigrants reluctantly, right? We've never wanted immigrants. And
45:38
Speaker 1: yet we've constantly benefited from immigrants, right? It's this weird,
45:43
Speaker 1: we say, once we've been here a generation or two,
45:47
Speaker 1: we're proud to be here. And when we don't want
45:48
Speaker 1: anybody else to be here, right? Like it's this weird
45:51
Speaker 1: cycle we get into a little bit. So, like I said,
45:57
Speaker 1: if we need more Americans, immigration is one. Making it
45:59
Speaker 1: easier for people who want children to afford children is another.
46:04
Speaker 1: Keeping people who want to work attached to the workforce
46:08
Speaker 1: is yet another. We should probably be doing some version
46:11
Speaker 1: of all of the above. Instead, we keep turning family
46:14
Speaker 1: policy into a culture war argument. And this is where
46:17
Speaker 1: I think Democrats made one of their biggest strategic mistakes
46:21
Speaker 1: of the last several years. When the expanded, temporary expanded
46:26
Speaker 1: child care tax credit, you know, expired, they made a
46:30
Speaker 1: little bit of hay out of it, but then they
46:32
Speaker 1: sort of just let it go. This should have been
46:35
Speaker 1: the defining fight of the party. And that's it. They
46:40
Speaker 1: should have fought for this like they fought for Obamacare.
46:44
Speaker 1: They should have fought for this like FDR fought for
46:47
Speaker 1: Social Security. If you genuinely want to encourage people to
46:53
Speaker 1: have families, help them with the cost of having a family.
46:58
Speaker 1: Child care is expensive. Housing is expensive. Health care is expensive.
47:03
Speaker 1: Everything associated with raising a healthy child is expensive. Meet
47:10
Speaker 1: people where they are. Don't try to construct some fantasy
47:14
Speaker 1: about returning America to a world where everybody lives in
47:18
Speaker 1: some multi-generational household. Grandma is upstairs, the oldest kids watch
47:23
Speaker 1: the youngest kid. One parent is always home. We don't
47:27
Speaker 1: live in an agrarian economy anymore. This isn't how most
47:31
Speaker 1: Americans live. Good policy in this country starts where you actually,
47:38
Speaker 1: where you help the country that exists, not the country
47:43
Speaker 1: you wish existed. And when government starts designing policy to
47:47
Speaker 1: change the way people live, rather than helping people live
47:51
Speaker 1: the lives they choose, guess what? People tend to resent it,
47:57
Speaker 1: which is why this is, there's such extraordinary irony here. Right.
48:01
Speaker 1: For the last decade, the populist right has accused liberals
48:06
Speaker 1: of trying to reengineer American society. And now here they
48:11
Speaker 1: are proposing to use your tax dollars and my tax
48:15
Speaker 1: dollars to reengineer American society. Maybe a different cultural destination.
48:22
Speaker 1: But it's it's the same impulse they are accusing the
48:26
Speaker 1: left of. And this is actually a useful bridge to
48:32
Speaker 1: something much larger that has been on my mind this week.
48:36
Speaker 1: Friday marks the 25th anniversary since the September 11 attacks.
48:42
Speaker 1: I'm 54 years old, so you can do the math, right?
48:45
Speaker 1: This was a very searing experience for me. I was
48:49
Speaker 1: running a newsroom. I was running the hotline. It is,
48:54
Speaker 1: you know, to this day, it was my first year
48:56
Speaker 1: as editor-in-chief. And You know, our offices were across the
49:02
Speaker 1: street from the Saudi embassy. I will always, and I
49:06
Speaker 1: think I've shared it before, I will always, I have
49:09
Speaker 1: this vision. I don't know if my friend is still
49:12
Speaker 1: listening these days anymore, but my old colleague, Court Ruddy,
49:16
Speaker 1: I'll never forget watching him staring at the window, looking
49:19
Speaker 1: for the smoke at the front. Pentagon, right? And look,
49:22
Speaker 1: I thought the best thing for everybody to do was
49:24
Speaker 1: two things. Call your loved ones to let them know
49:27
Speaker 1: you're okay. And let's continue to produce a product because
49:30
Speaker 1: what else are we going to do? And let's help
49:32
Speaker 1: people with all the information we were gathering about everything
49:37
Speaker 1: we had heard and try to put it all in
49:39
Speaker 1: one place. So it is, I say this because I
49:46
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, going through it as an adult,
49:51
Speaker 1: I think allows for the perspective I'm about to share.
49:56
Speaker 1: And before I get to the larger argument I want
49:58
Speaker 1: to make about 9-11, I want to talk about one
50:00
Speaker 1: other thing that has really bothered me as we've gotten
50:03
Speaker 1: to the anticipation of some of the ceremonies on 9-11 itself,
50:07
Speaker 1: both in New York and in Washington. this blatant Islamophobia
50:12
Speaker 1: surrounding the mayor of New York City, Zohan Mamdani. Look,
50:16
Speaker 1: I've criticized Mamdani. I think when he did his address
50:19
Speaker 1: to the city and Bibi Netanyahu, it was a little
50:21
Speaker 1: bit too much theater and a little bit like, oh,
50:24
Speaker 1: what are you up to there, right? Did you run
50:27
Speaker 1: to make a better city or did you run looking
50:29
Speaker 1: for a platform? But the point is, you don't have
50:32
Speaker 1: to agree with Mamdani. You don't have to like his politics.
50:35
Speaker 1: And you don't have to pretend some of the things
50:37
Speaker 1: he says aren't provocative. And you can challenge him and
50:40
Speaker 1: criticize him because we live in a free country, folks.
50:44
Speaker 1: And you can try to form organizations and run against him.
50:48
Speaker 1: You can try to defeat everything he wants to do.
50:50
Speaker 1: It's called democracy. But the voters of New York City
50:53
Speaker 1: elected him mayor. And he represents the voters of New
50:56
Speaker 1: York City. And when elected officials go out of their
50:59
Speaker 1: way to snub him because of who he is or
51:04
Speaker 1: imply that there is something inherently suspect about a Muslim
51:08
Speaker 1: American participating in a 9-11 commemoration, what exactly are we
51:13
Speaker 1: even doing here? You're not simply insulting Mamdani when you
51:18
Speaker 1: do this. You're insulting the voters who elected him. If
51:22
Speaker 1: you believe it was wrong, and I do, when Hillary
51:25
Speaker 1: Clinton dismissed Trump's supporters as a basket full of deplorables,
51:32
Speaker 1: then it is wrong to dismiss Mamdani and his supporters
51:35
Speaker 1: as somehow less American, simply because they chose to elect
51:41
Speaker 1: a Muslim mayor that you don't like. I find it
51:46
Speaker 1: outrageous that you have these clowns like Laura Loomer who
51:50
Speaker 1: are somehow warning J.D. Vance, you better not shake his hand.
51:55
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, any politician that snubs anybody
52:00
Speaker 1: like that, Look, I think if you don't agree with
52:02
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, but he's the elected president, sit down with
52:05
Speaker 1: him and work with him because the country asked you to,
52:08
Speaker 1: they voted for him. Respect the voter, fight the politician.
52:14
Speaker 1: It's called pluralism. And you know, I'm on my hobby
52:19
Speaker 1: horse on that. Pluralism doesn't mean I agree with you.
52:24
Speaker 1: It means I accept that you belong here too, even
52:27
Speaker 1: if I disagree with everything you believe vehemently. And if
52:31
Speaker 1: you want to win somebody over, open your hand. Don't
52:33
Speaker 1: close your fist. You know, one reason Mamdani has a 70%
52:38
Speaker 1: job approval rating and has been politically successful for the
52:42
Speaker 1: most part is that he actually understands this better than
52:44
Speaker 1: many of his opponents. He opens his hand. You may
52:48
Speaker 1: not agree with his rationale, but he opens his hand.
52:52
Speaker 1: And his opponents too often begin with the fist. And
52:55
Speaker 1: when they do that, they lose. And on this 25th
52:58
Speaker 1: anniversary of 9-11, I find myself on this issue of
53:01
Speaker 1: two minds. On one hand, I look at Muslim American
53:04
Speaker 1: participation in American life today compared with 2001. And it's
53:09
Speaker 1: actually a good story. Not a great story, but it's
53:12
Speaker 1: a good story. Meaning we do have more Muslim members
53:15
Speaker 1: of Congress. Voters are more open to that. Not everywhere,
53:19
Speaker 1: but in more places. There are Muslim mayors. There are
53:22
Speaker 1: Muslim Americans serving throughout government, business, medicine, law, academia, journalism,
53:27
Speaker 1: the military. It's everywhere. Muslim American life is actually far
53:31
Speaker 1: more integrated into the American mainstream than it was 25
53:35
Speaker 1: years ago. So that is real progress. And yet Islamophobia
53:40
Speaker 1: clearly is still here. By the way, as we know,
53:43
Speaker 1: as I know all too well, so is anti-Semitism. And
53:47
Speaker 1: as many of my friends of color know, so is racism.
53:51
Speaker 1: And that is the frustrating part about progress. We can
53:56
Speaker 1: take two steps forward and one step backward at the
53:59
Speaker 1: same time. And I'm sorry that some Americans apparently believe
54:04
Speaker 1: Islamophobia is somehow an expression of patriotism. And somehow on
54:09
Speaker 1: the anniversary of 9-11, being suspicious of Muslim Americans demonstrates
54:13
Speaker 1: that you remember the people who were killed. No, no, no.
54:18
Speaker 1: And if that really is your standard, then I assume
54:21
Speaker 1: you're equally outraged by the American government's and this president's
54:25
Speaker 1: relationship with Saudi Arabia. I assume you're equally outraged by
54:29
Speaker 1: the deal Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Remember, the
54:32
Speaker 1: Taliban is who protected Osama bin Laden. I assume you're
54:38
Speaker 1: equally outraged by the deal he cut handing Afghanistan back
54:42
Speaker 1: to the Taliban. Yes, Joe Biden executed the disastrous withdrawal.
54:46
Speaker 1: He owns the execution of the withdrawal. But never forget
54:51
Speaker 1: the bad deal Donald Trump negotiated that handed Afghanistan in
54:55
Speaker 1: its backwards direction. policies and all of the security advancements
54:59
Speaker 1: that we'd made there, back to the Taliban. The point is,
55:03
Speaker 1: you don't get to selectively decide which relationships offend your
55:06
Speaker 1: memory of September 11, based on the party identification of
55:10
Speaker 1: the person responsible. And all of this brings me to
55:13
Speaker 1: the bargain, to one other bargain about 9-11. Because I've
55:17
Speaker 1: been thinking about this bargain a lot, and it actually
55:19
Speaker 1: dovetails right back to the top with my opening rant
55:23
Speaker 1: about the development of AI. 25 years after 9-11, apparently
55:28
Speaker 1: we have finally figured out how to make an airport
55:31
Speaker 1: safe enough that you can go meet somebody at the
55:34
Speaker 1: gate again. Sort of. On the 25th anniversary, TSA has
55:41
Speaker 1: launched a program called Gateside by TSA PreCheck. So at
55:46
Speaker 1: a small number of airports, people who aren't flying can
55:49
Speaker 1: apply ahead of time for permission to go through security
55:52
Speaker 1: without a boarding pass. If you're old enough to remember
55:56
Speaker 1: flying before September 11th, and I am, this was once
56:00
Speaker 1: completely unremarkable, okay? You walk somebody to the plane, you
56:05
Speaker 1: met them at the gate. It was kind of a
56:08
Speaker 1: lot of fun. You hugged and embraced your loved ones,
56:10
Speaker 1: your mom, your dad, your kids, whatever. It was pretty cool.
56:15
Speaker 1: And by the way, you used to do it all
56:17
Speaker 1: without registering your identity with the federal government. But there
56:24
Speaker 1: is something wonderfully revealing about the way we're getting this
56:27
Speaker 1: particular freedom back. You have to already be inside the
56:31
Speaker 1: trusted traveler system. You have to enroll. You provide identifying information.
56:36
Speaker 1: You go through vetting. You pay for the privilege. So
56:39
Speaker 1: 25 years after September 11th, you can now finally, once again,
56:44
Speaker 1: walk to an airport gate without having being a ticketed passenger.
56:48
Speaker 1: But of course, you've had to register yourself with the
56:51
Speaker 1: security state. I guess that's progress, sort of. Look, it's
56:56
Speaker 1: a tiny thing, but it's a terrific metaphor. Because the
56:58
Speaker 1: more I think about this anniversary, the more I started
57:00
Speaker 1: to think about this specific issue, right? The airport gate.
57:04
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good metaphor for what happened to this
57:07
Speaker 1: country after September 11th. Because we decided to give up
57:10
Speaker 1: a lot. Some of it, we needed to give up.
57:14
Speaker 1: And it absolutely made us safer. Some changes were embarrassingly
57:17
Speaker 1: overdue in the intelligence community. And some things we did realize,
57:21
Speaker 1: that's too much, we should give some of it back.
57:24
Speaker 1: But there's always been this fundamental problem with government powers
57:27
Speaker 1: created during an emergency, right? I've always felt the creation
57:31
Speaker 1: of DHS was a gigantic mistake because it was created
57:34
Speaker 1: during an emergency. Because it is much easier to give
57:38
Speaker 1: government a new power than it is to convince government
57:41
Speaker 1: to give that power back after the emergency passes, right?
57:45
Speaker 1: It's taken us 25 years to just figure out how
57:47
Speaker 1: to go meet a loved one at the gate at
57:49
Speaker 1: the airport. Isn't that kind of absurd? Now, 25 years, though,
57:55
Speaker 1: also feels like a pretty reasonable time to ask what
57:58
Speaker 1: we still need and what we shouldn't be doing anymore. Now, look,
58:02
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say this casually. I remember how
58:05
Speaker 1: Washington felt after 9-11. I remember wondering whether Washington and
58:09
Speaker 1: New York were now going to become cities like Tel
58:12
Speaker 1: Aviv and Beirut, where you simply had to learn to
58:15
Speaker 1: live with your head on a swivel, where terrorism became
58:19
Speaker 1: part of everyday life. And look, I'll be honest, since then,
58:24
Speaker 1: I've had my own version of a go back. You know,
58:27
Speaker 1: I've always got a plan. If you live in Washington
58:30
Speaker 1: or New York and you live through 9-11, I know
58:33
Speaker 1: I'm not alone with like thinking about my exit strategy.
58:39
Speaker 1: And by the way, there's a very strong argument against
58:41
Speaker 1: everything I've been saying about us giving up too much.
58:46
Speaker 1: We haven't suffered another foreign terrorist attack on anything remotely
58:49
Speaker 1: approaching the scale of 9-11. And that does matter. So
58:52
Speaker 1: it means that many of the things we did worked, right?
58:55
Speaker 1: Hardening the cockpit doors, changing airport security, having our intelligence
59:00
Speaker 1: agencies get better at sharing information. Look, the counterintelligence that
59:05
Speaker 1: we do at the FBI now versus what was done
59:08
Speaker 1: pre-9-11 is like night and day. We've disrupted all sorts
59:11
Speaker 1: of plots, right? We've had thousands of people who have
59:15
Speaker 1: spent their entire working professional careers doing very invisible work
59:20
Speaker 1: of making sure that another 9-11 never happens. And so far,
59:25
Speaker 1: another 9-11 hasn't happened. And that matters. I don't think
59:30
Speaker 1: it's intellectually honest to look back at everything we did
59:32
Speaker 1: after September 11th and say it was unnecessary simply because
59:36
Speaker 1: the thing we feared most did not happen again. Maybe
59:40
Speaker 1: it didn't happen again in part because of what we did.
59:43
Speaker 1: That has to be part of the accounting. But here's
59:45
Speaker 1: the other part. 25 years is enough time to distinguish
59:49
Speaker 1: between an emergency measure and a permanent feature of American government.
59:54
Speaker 1: And I know we've not done enough of this. You know,
59:58
Speaker 1: one of the great lessons of September 11th was that
1:00:00
Speaker 1: our government had information and didn't know how to connect it. OK,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: so the 9-11 Commission came back again and again to
1:00:07
Speaker 1: this problem. Different agencies had different pieces of the plot.
1:00:10
Speaker 2: Right.
1:00:10
Speaker 1: But they couldn't. We didn't have a process that helped
1:00:13
Speaker 1: connect the dots. So we had misaligned incentives. The culture
1:00:19
Speaker 1: was need to know instead of need to share. So
1:00:22
Speaker 1: we responded by building an enormous information sharing architecture. Some
1:00:26
Speaker 1: of that was unquestionably necessary. But the commission itself, and
1:00:30
Speaker 1: this was what is important. I spent some time going
1:00:33
Speaker 1: back to the famous 9-11 commission to find out how
1:00:37
Speaker 1: many of their recommendations we really abided by. And the
1:00:41
Speaker 1: commission itself warned us about the other side of the
1:00:43
Speaker 1: equation of improving our security state. If you're going to
1:00:47
Speaker 1: give government substantially more power to collect information and share information,
1:00:52
Speaker 1: you also have to strengthen the mechanisms that protect privacy,
1:00:56
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Speaker 1: was as of August of 2026. This wasn't some ACLU
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Speaker 1: footnote to the 9-11 Commission report. This was part of
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Speaker 1: the Commission's recommendation. The part. our idiot lawmakers ignored. More
1:02:49
Speaker 1: government requires more oversight. Pretty sensible bargain. And this is
1:02:55
Speaker 1: where I think we have fallen massively short. The government's
1:02:58
Speaker 1: appetite for information expanded much faster than our appetite for
1:03:02
Speaker 1: overseeing what government does with that information. Think about the
1:03:07
Speaker 1: basic structural changes. We created the TSA within weeks of
1:03:11
Speaker 1: the attack. We created DHS, folding 22 agencies. We did
1:03:15
Speaker 1: that in like 18 months. We created a director of
1:03:19
Speaker 1: national intelligence, a national counterterrorism center. We did all sorts
1:03:23
Speaker 1: of things. We changed what the government can ask private
1:03:25
Speaker 1: companies to turn over. We gave more power to the
1:03:28
Speaker 1: government to get information about us from the private sector.
1:03:32
Speaker 1: We built an entirely new homeland security state. Some of
1:03:37
Speaker 1: it was necessary. But bureaucracies have a funny characteristic, right?
1:03:42
Speaker 1: They rarely volunteer to shrink. Government programs do not wake
1:03:46
Speaker 1: up one morning and say, you know what? Mission accomplished.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: Presidents sometimes do that. We probably don't need all of
1:03:52
Speaker 1: this anymore. Every government power acquires defenders. They get a
1:03:57
Speaker 1: constituency and they get a bunch of lobbyists. And the
1:04:00
Speaker 1: burden gradually shifts, right? Instead of government having to prove
1:04:03
Speaker 1: it still needs the power, citizens have to prove why
1:04:06
Speaker 1: government should give it back. Man, is that completely backwards.
1:04:11
Speaker 1: Everything should have an expiration date. All right. And it's
1:04:15
Speaker 1: not because every idea is bad or every emergency power
1:04:18
Speaker 1: is bad. Maybe they are justified. What's ironic here is
1:04:23
Speaker 1: that Congress actually understood that at least some of this,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: because they partially, when they wrote it, they did write
1:04:31
Speaker 1: some sunset provisions into some of the surveillance authorities adopted
1:04:35
Speaker 1: after 9-11. And it is because of that that we
1:04:38
Speaker 1: gave back some of those things. Thank goodness they put
1:04:41
Speaker 1: some sunset clauses in there. I kind of think everything
1:04:44
Speaker 1: Congress passes ought to have a sunset clause that is
1:04:50
Speaker 1: no lengthier than 25 years. Because the broader security architecture
1:04:56
Speaker 1: never did sunset. It became normalized. And I'm not sure
1:05:00
Speaker 1: most Americans realize how much of it that we've all
1:05:05
Speaker 1: absorbed as normal. Taking off your shoes at the airport
1:05:09
Speaker 1: became normal. Taking liquids out of a bag became normal.
1:05:13
Speaker 1: Showing ID everywhere, getting wanded all the time, having your
1:05:17
Speaker 1: face scanned. Government databases talking to one another became normal.
1:05:23
Speaker 1: Private companies handed enormous amounts of information to government. And
1:05:30
Speaker 1: there's a really disturbing asymmetry here. Every new technology makes
1:05:36
Speaker 1: surveillance cheaper. Every new database makes information easier to combine, right?
1:05:42
Speaker 1: Every new artificial intelligence tool makes it easier to search
1:05:45
Speaker 1: and analyze enormous amounts of data. So the power of
1:05:48
Speaker 1: the security state increases automatically with technology, even if Congress
1:05:52
Speaker 1: never passes another law. This is why oversight should become
1:05:58
Speaker 1: more important with time, not less. And yet, look, do
1:06:01
Speaker 1: you know that one of the recommendations of the 9-11
1:06:04
Speaker 1: Commission was to create a privacy and civil liberties oversight board? Okay,
1:06:08
Speaker 1: so Congress created it. Let me tell you about this institution.
1:06:14
Speaker 1: It was created because the 9-11 Commission worried about essentially
1:06:17
Speaker 1: government overreach here. And the whole point of the board
1:06:21
Speaker 1: was to ask whether the government's counterterrorism programs are striking
1:06:25
Speaker 1: the right balance between security and liberty. And guess what?
1:06:29
Speaker 1: This won't shock you. This board has repeatedly operated without
1:06:32
Speaker 1: enough members to even function, right? Just like our SEC,
1:06:35
Speaker 1: just like all the all these supposed independent agencies that
1:06:39
Speaker 1: Congress created because they're too fucking lazy to do the
1:06:42
Speaker 1: job themselves. But I digress. As of this year, this
1:06:47
Speaker 1: board has been operating below quorum. They have exactly one
1:06:53
Speaker 1: member of its five-person board. They put out a 2026
1:06:57
Speaker 1: report on one of the surveillance programs, and it had
1:07:00
Speaker 1: to be issued as a staff report because there wasn't
1:07:04
Speaker 1: a fully functioning board to approve it, right? So we
1:07:08
Speaker 1: built this enormous surveillance state after 9-11. We created a
1:07:13
Speaker 1: watchdog to oversee the capabilities. And 25 years later, the
1:07:17
Speaker 1: surveillance programs are still here and the watchdog board doesn't
1:07:22
Speaker 1: even have enough members of it to have a meeting,
1:07:25
Speaker 1: to have a formal meeting. Look, no, I'm not saying
1:07:30
Speaker 1: we got to dismantle all of these things. But my God, look,
1:07:35
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have needed a separate board to oversee this.
1:07:38
Speaker 1: The constitution wrote a provision in it to have an
1:07:44
Speaker 1: entity look out for our civil liberties. It was called Congress.
1:07:52
Speaker 1: They need to get better at this. Because if you
1:07:57
Speaker 1: want Americans to trust the government with extraordinary powers, You
1:08:02
Speaker 1: need extraordinary oversight of those powers. Otherwise, eventually people stop
1:08:07
Speaker 1: trusting the entire system. And maybe that's another lesson we
1:08:11
Speaker 1: can take away, sadly, from these 25 years. I've thought
1:08:14
Speaker 1: about this. One of the scary aspects now of when
1:08:18
Speaker 1: you look back 25 years and now forget the government
1:08:23
Speaker 1: surveillance state. We get nervous about government having too much information.
1:08:27
Speaker 1: How about Amazon? How about OpenAI? How about Google? We
1:08:33
Speaker 1: got so used to trading our privacy, trading away some
1:08:39
Speaker 1: of our privacy in exchange for security, that as the
1:08:43
Speaker 1: tech revolution was developing pretty much simultaneously, 9-11 commission report
1:08:49
Speaker 1: comes out in 04, Facebook is getting invented in a
1:08:52
Speaker 1: Harvard dorm room. We became so used to this of
1:08:58
Speaker 1: giving up our privacy and our data in exchange for
1:09:01
Speaker 1: security that we just gave up our privacy and data
1:09:04
Speaker 1: in exchange for apps. It's really screwed up, right? It's
1:09:13
Speaker 1: really screwed up. Now, look, maybe, you know, I get it.
1:09:19
Speaker 1: September 11th was an enormous shock to all of us
1:09:23
Speaker 1: because it was suddenly like, oh, we can be attacked here.
1:09:27
Speaker 1: But our response trained Americans to live in a permanent
1:09:30
Speaker 1: state of suspicion as well. And I think some of
1:09:33
Speaker 1: this Islamophobia is due to our constant concern about being suspicious, right?
1:09:41
Speaker 1: We're actually actively told to be suspicious at the airport,
1:09:44
Speaker 1: be suspicious on the subway. If you see something, say something.
1:09:48
Speaker 1: Watch the unintended bags. Watch the person that acts strangely.
1:09:51
Speaker 1: Watch your neighbor. Watch each other. Some of this awareness,
1:09:54
Speaker 1: of course, is reasonable. But you know what happens is
1:09:57
Speaker 1: you start to absorb this as a habit. That's what
1:09:59
Speaker 1: societies do. And suspicion became one of ours, right? And
1:10:05
Speaker 1: then after Iraq, the financial crisis, the rise of social media, COVID,
1:10:08
Speaker 1: January 6th, all this election denial, we've now reached a
1:10:11
Speaker 1: point where distrust itself might actually be the dominant fact
1:10:18
Speaker 1: of American political life, right? What is the one thing
1:10:21
Speaker 1: that connects to every single story I've talked about today?
1:10:26
Speaker 1: Our collective distrust of either a specific system, person, or technology, right?
1:10:34
Speaker 1: We don't trust the government to run our elections. We
1:10:36
Speaker 1: don't trust the corporations to build AI. We don't trust
1:10:39
Speaker 1: the media to tell us what's happening. We don't trust
1:10:42
Speaker 1: the universities to teach our kids now. And now we
1:10:44
Speaker 1: don't trust our elections. We barely trust each other. It's
1:10:48
Speaker 1: a pretty dangerous place for a pluralistic society to be in.
1:10:52
Speaker 1: A successful democracy requires trust in something larger than just
1:10:59
Speaker 1: supporting your own side. You don't have to trust the
1:11:02
Speaker 1: politician or the party, but you have to trust the
1:11:06
Speaker 1: process enough to accept that this person's going to get elected,
1:11:10
Speaker 1: whether his name is Mamdani or Trump. Because you trust
1:11:15
Speaker 1: that there'll be another election. You trust that the rules
1:11:18
Speaker 1: will apply when your team doesn't win. You have to
1:11:22
Speaker 1: trust that your opponent is an opponent and not an
1:11:24
Speaker 1: enemy who must be destroyed. And that takes us all
1:11:28
Speaker 1: the way back to the beginning here. 45% of Americans
1:11:31
Speaker 1: say they believe the upcoming midterm election will be conducted fairly.
1:11:35
Speaker 1: That number scares the hell out of me. Because I
1:11:38
Speaker 1: don't think this election is going to be unfair.
1:11:40
Speaker 2: I don't.
1:11:42
Speaker 1: There's going to be some anomalies and you're going to
1:11:43
Speaker 1: hear a conversation about where we would be vulnerable. OK,
1:11:48
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here. I'm not I'm not
1:11:49
Speaker 1: in full denial on this. There is real vulnerabilities. This
1:11:54
Speaker 1: tells us something perhaps more troubling. Majority of Americans are
1:11:57
Speaker 1: approaching an election without confidence in the process before the
1:12:01
Speaker 1: process has even happened. Are we going to is half
1:12:04
Speaker 1: the country going to accept the result of this election?
1:12:09
Speaker 1: It's an incredibly dangerous incentive for bad political actors. Because
1:12:13
Speaker 1: if your voters already believe the system is rigged, every
1:12:17
Speaker 1: attempt to change the rules can be sold as self-defense, right?
1:12:20
Speaker 1: We're not manipulating the map. There, they manipulated it first.
1:12:25
Speaker 1: We're not restricting voting. We're trying to protect election integrity.
1:12:30
Speaker 1: We're not tilting the playing field. We're trying to stop
1:12:32
Speaker 1: them from tilting the playing field. And that's the fear here.
1:12:37
Speaker 1: If both parties can justify every escalation by pointing to
1:12:40
Speaker 1: something the other side did first, there's no natural stopping point.
1:12:45
Speaker 1: That's how the democratic norms really erode, right? It's never
1:12:50
Speaker 1: all at once. It's one exception at a time, one emergency,
1:12:54
Speaker 1: one temporary measure. Then the extraordinary thing becomes precedent, like
1:12:59
Speaker 1: we happened with, you know, giving away all of our
1:13:02
Speaker 1: privacy in exchange for security. Then somebody else just simply
1:13:05
Speaker 1: inherits the precedent and they push it a little bit further.
1:13:09
Speaker 1: And pretty soon everybody has forgotten where the original line was.
1:13:12
Speaker 1: We've seen versions of this with executive power, right? The
1:13:14
Speaker 1: War Powers Act. We've seen it with redistricting. We've seen
1:13:18
Speaker 1: it with the courts. We've seen it with the filibuster.
1:13:22
Speaker 1: So look, this conversation about whether or not you have
1:13:29
Speaker 1: to be concerned about the fairness of this election is
1:13:33
Speaker 1: This is not about whether someone can walk into a
1:13:35
Speaker 1: county election office and start stuffing ballots into a box,
1:13:38
Speaker 1: all right? That is not how this works. The modern
1:13:41
Speaker 1: question is a bit more sophisticated. What happens if somebody
1:13:44
Speaker 1: uses legal authority aggressively, decides to certify an election before
1:13:48
Speaker 1: the ballots are all counted, or decides not to certify
1:13:51
Speaker 1: an election so that it isn't recognized or seated? These
1:13:55
Speaker 1: are the type of conversations and questions I'm getting into
1:13:59
Speaker 1: in here because that's the gray area. of all this.
1:14:05
Speaker 1: And that's the stuff that I think that, that I
1:14:08
Speaker 1: get it. Why, why we should be concerned. But look, I,
1:14:12
Speaker 1: I do want to see this 9-11 anniversary. I'm, I'm
1:14:18
Speaker 1: fearful of how comfortable too many people are with Islamophobia
1:14:24
Speaker 1: right now. You watch it play out through how people
1:14:29
Speaker 1: interact with the mayor of New York City. And, you know,
1:14:32
Speaker 1: we just, We don't know how to disagree with each
1:14:35
Speaker 1: other without demonizing each other. And, you know, you want
1:14:39
Speaker 1: to talk about losing 9-11, losing here, that's losing. The
1:14:45
Speaker 1: terrorists win if we fight each other, right? That was always,
1:14:49
Speaker 1: it was always like, you know, ultimately America's enemies have
1:14:54
Speaker 1: always known that the best way to weaken America is
1:14:58
Speaker 1: to turn us against ourselves, right? And that's what many
1:15:05
Speaker 1: of our enemies have been using social media to do.
1:15:09
Speaker 1: It's what Osama bin Laden thought he could pull off.
1:15:14
Speaker 1: On one hand, there are times where I think we
1:15:16
Speaker 1: proved him wrong. And then there are times that I
1:15:19
Speaker 1: fear that our enemies know us better than we know ourselves.
1:15:25
Speaker 1: So look, I look at this anniversary. I think it's time,
1:15:30
Speaker 1: you know, let's not weaponize criticism. I also think we
1:15:34
Speaker 1: need to not relitigate decisions that were made at the time.
1:15:39
Speaker 1: What we need to do is deal with the country
1:15:42
Speaker 1: we live in at the moment. If we've got an emergency,
1:15:46
Speaker 1: if people are worried about AI, let's hold these hearings.
1:15:48
Speaker 1: Let's do something about it. Let's actually be responsive to
1:15:52
Speaker 1: where the public is. Let's look at what we've done
1:15:57
Speaker 1: over the last 25 years. and decide what should we
1:16:02
Speaker 1: keep and what shouldn't we. Let's realize that what we
1:16:08
Speaker 1: did in the name of security ended up creating a
1:16:12
Speaker 1: more compliant society to hand over all of our identity
1:16:16
Speaker 1: and privacy to a private sector that is just weaponizing
1:16:20
Speaker 1: it to make money off of us. I hope we
1:16:26
Speaker 1: can have a group of elected officials that understand the
1:16:30
Speaker 1: damage that we've done here and actually stands up and
1:16:35
Speaker 1: tries to do something about it. And it can't be
1:16:39
Speaker 1: one party. It has to be people from a variety
1:16:43
Speaker 1: of factions. Because the one thing we should have in
1:16:46
Speaker 1: common is to want to have pluralism, to live in
1:16:50
Speaker 1: a country where we will disagree and we will never
1:16:54
Speaker 1: agree with each other, but we accept that there's a
1:16:57
Speaker 1: process by which we can all live and govern safely together.
1:17:03
Speaker 1: So with that, I'll sneak it a break. And when
1:17:06
Speaker 1: we come back, my conversation with Molly Roberts about what
1:17:11
Speaker 1: should concern you about the midterms and what shouldn't. And then,
1:17:17
Speaker 1: of course, I'll take some questions and give you the
1:17:19
Speaker 1: best college football preview you can find anywhere from a
1:17:23
Speaker 1: non-sports guy. Well, one of the questions I get a
1:17:35
Speaker 1: lot is from family, friends, concerned listeners. And it is.
1:17:44
Speaker 1: Can the midterms be fixed? Can they be rigged and fixed?
1:17:47
Speaker 1: Not like a corrected, fixed, like rigged. Can they be stolen?
1:17:53
Speaker 1: And as many of you know, I always, I call
1:17:55
Speaker 1: myself vigilant, but not an alarmist on these things. I
1:17:59
Speaker 1: think there's certain aspirational things that politicians say that can't
1:18:04
Speaker 1: be implemented. But then there is the, you know, there
1:18:07
Speaker 1: are mechanisms that I think when I say you gotta
1:18:10
Speaker 1: be vigilant is you gotta pay attention when you see
1:18:13
Speaker 1: people messing around with those mechanisms. Well, Molly Roberts, who's
1:18:17
Speaker 1: my guest today, is the senior editor at Lawfare. Those
1:18:22
Speaker 1: of you may be familiar with Lawfare and its founder,
1:18:25
Speaker 1: Ben Wittes. They do some terrific work doing what it
1:18:31
Speaker 1: just is sort of the politicizing of the rule of law.
1:18:35
Speaker 1: I mean, if there's a North Star, I think, and Molly,
1:18:38
Speaker 1: if you want to chime in here and correct me,
1:18:40
Speaker 1: there is a North Star to Lawfare's editorial focus. I
1:18:45
Speaker 1: think it is that where the rule of law and
1:18:48
Speaker 1: politics intersect. Is that the fairest way to describe Lawfare?
1:18:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, when Lawfare started,
1:18:55
Speaker 2: it was really national security focused.
1:18:58
Speaker 3: And you wouldn't have had someone like me writing.
1:19:00
Speaker 2: For it, probably, because I don't have a background in
1:19:03
Speaker 2: national security, anything. But how Lawfare has really changed in
1:19:08
Speaker 2: recent-ish years is that it's become clear that democracy and
1:19:12
Speaker 2: rule of law is a national security issue in a way.
1:19:15
Speaker 2: And so the stuff that I write about, which you know,
1:19:19
Speaker 2: recently has had to do with elections, but also has
1:19:22
Speaker 2: had to do with politicization of the Justice Department, is
1:19:24
Speaker 2: motivated by that idea that it's just as important to
1:19:28
Speaker 2: national security for the laws to actually mean something as
1:19:32
Speaker 2: it is for, you know, I don't know, us to
1:19:36
Speaker 2: have an AUMF when we're engaging in a foreign conflict.
1:19:40
Speaker 1: So let's talk about how you went about this. And I,
1:19:43
Speaker 1: you know, I felt I felt like you went about
1:19:46
Speaker 1: it the way I would, which is like, if someone
1:19:49
Speaker 1: were trying to do it, how would it be done?
1:19:52
Speaker 1: Is that fair to say? Is that the prism you used?
1:19:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I've been looking at what
1:19:58
Speaker 2: the administration is doing on elections across a variety of vectors.
1:20:04
Speaker 2: So everything from this executive order having to do with
1:20:09
Speaker 2: mail-in voting that's before the Supreme Court. Now the administration
1:20:12
Speaker 2: has just appealed a judge's injunction to the Supreme Court
1:20:16
Speaker 2: to the question of can you lawfully deploy troops or
1:20:20
Speaker 2: federal agents at polling places. But Recently, I started tracking
1:20:27
Speaker 2: this kind of more technical, more specific question of, regardless
1:20:32
Speaker 2: of what actually happens when votes are cast, is there
1:20:37
Speaker 2: something kind of, I don't know, sneaky might be the
1:20:39
Speaker 2: word that could happen in Congress that might remind you
1:20:43
Speaker 2: a little bit of President Trump saying, do the right thing, Mike.
1:20:45
Speaker 3: Pence, on January 6th?
1:20:47
Speaker 1: So this is, to me, the important, you know, and I've,
1:20:50
Speaker 1: like I said, at my little mini intro there when
1:20:53
Speaker 1: I brought you in, I'm not somebody that looks around
1:20:57
Speaker 1: every corner and thinks that there's another conspiracy to steal
1:21:00
Speaker 1: the election. But I do think the vulnerabilities in our
1:21:06
Speaker 1: system are always most exposed when the results aren't decisive, right?
1:21:11
Speaker 1: The 2000 election is a terrific example of this, right?
1:21:14
Speaker 1: We basically, you know, you got to a point where
1:21:19
Speaker 1: it wasn't gonna be decided by ballot boxes, it was
1:21:21
Speaker 1: gonna be decided in courtrooms. it is very possible that
1:21:27
Speaker 1: if we are looking at a House majority that is
1:21:30
Speaker 1: under five in either direction, but there is power that
1:21:35
Speaker 1: the House has up until January 2nd, 2027. January 3rd
1:21:41
Speaker 1: is the day that the new Congress is supposed to
1:21:43
Speaker 1: be sworn in. And that's the You know, that's our
1:21:48
Speaker 1: period of vulnerability. If you talk to experts about America,
1:21:51
Speaker 1: when we're the most vulnerable, we're the most vulnerable during
1:21:54
Speaker 1: a presidential transition, when there isn't clarity of who's in
1:21:59
Speaker 1: charge and things like that. Well, you could arguably say
1:22:03
Speaker 1: the same thing about the midterms, right? That our vulnerable
1:22:06
Speaker 1: period is in between election day and the swearing into
1:22:09
Speaker 1: the new Congress, right?
1:22:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
1:22:13
Speaker 2: I think that's true on two fronts. One of the
1:22:16
Speaker 2: fronts is certification, right? So after the election, the first
1:22:19
Speaker 2: you have the truly local officials going and they're canvassing
1:22:23
Speaker 2: and they're making sure there are no irregularities and they're
1:22:26
Speaker 2: resolving any apparent discrepancies. And then they're certifying the election.
1:22:29
Speaker 2: Then that goes to the states and then they do
1:22:31
Speaker 2: the same thing. And of course, what we saw in
1:22:34
Speaker 2: 2020 and we saw in 2024 was was some weirdnesses
1:22:39
Speaker 2: on the local level where local officials said they didn't
1:22:42
Speaker 2: want to certify the elections that often came from an
1:22:45
Speaker 2: election denialist kind of big lie.
1:22:47
Speaker 3: Sort of place.
1:22:48
Speaker 2: But it didn't work out in the end because for
1:22:52
Speaker 2: you to successfully as a local official not certify an
1:22:56
Speaker 2: election and for that to go all the way up
1:22:57
Speaker 2: to what credentials end up getting turned into Congress, you
1:23:00
Speaker 2: really need compliance up and down all of the food
1:23:04
Speaker 2: chain and from the courts.
1:23:06
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people that have got to participate
1:23:08
Speaker 1: in that conspiracy. It's not just one or two people. Right. Yeah, exactly.
1:23:12
Speaker 3: Exactly.
1:23:13
Speaker 2: And again, it's not just, you know, it's certainly not
1:23:16
Speaker 2: just the local officials. And then even when you get
1:23:18
Speaker 2: to the state level, you have to have, you know, the.
1:23:21
Speaker 2: fifth official who's in charge ultimately of the certification there,
1:23:24
Speaker 2: the governor, the secretary of state, some local board, you
1:23:27
Speaker 2: have to have them on board. Then you also have
1:23:30
Speaker 2: to have nobody who's willing to challenge it in court
1:23:32
Speaker 2: or a court that says, yeah, this is fine, go ahead.
1:23:35
Speaker 2: And legally, that's just not something courts, it seems, are
1:23:39
Speaker 2: going to stand for. There's a lot of A lot
1:23:42
Speaker 2: of doctrine, federal due process doctrine around the idea that
1:23:46
Speaker 2: if the state law says this is how the elections work,
1:23:50
Speaker 2: there's a duty to certify. You could put someone in
1:23:52
Speaker 2: place to certify if someone else refuses.
1:23:55
Speaker 3: But it's a vulnerable period. And that's why a lot
1:23:58
Speaker 3: of people who.
1:24:01
Speaker 2: do research on this, the Brennan Centers, particularly good resources
1:24:05
Speaker 2: on certification, but why they said after 2020, hey, states,
1:24:09
Speaker 2: you might really want to lock down this process. You
1:24:11
Speaker 2: might want to tighten up the timelines and you might
1:24:13
Speaker 2: want to make clear who has what duties and what
1:24:16
Speaker 2: happens if someone is trying not to comply with those duties.
1:24:18
Speaker 2: The good news is a lot of states have done that.
1:24:20
Speaker 2: So things are looking better on that score than they
1:24:23
Speaker 2: have in previous elections.
1:24:24
Speaker 3: But then the second front, Let's stay with the first front.
1:24:29
Speaker 1: Let's stay with the states because I have a couple
1:24:31
Speaker 1: of questions on specific states before we get to your
1:24:33
Speaker 1: second part. There's no doubt in the presidential battleground states
1:24:39
Speaker 1: that it feels as if those are hard to manipulate.
1:24:41
Speaker 1: There's been enough essentially purging of election deniers at the
1:24:47
Speaker 1: secretary of state level, things like that. But what about
1:24:50
Speaker 1: in these midterm states? Take the state of Texas. If
1:24:55
Speaker 1: we have a super close election, is the certification process
1:25:01
Speaker 1: in Texas bulletproof or not?
1:25:05
Speaker 2: You know, I don't want to tell you that anything
1:25:06
Speaker 2: is bulletproof. I don't want to be that person who
1:25:08
Speaker 2: said that something was bulletproof. And I don't know the
1:25:12
Speaker 2: exact process. weaknesses in every individual state. I think I
1:25:18
Speaker 2: would just emphasize the idea that you need everybody on board.
1:25:22
Speaker 2: In 2020, you saw, obviously, a Republican official, Brad Raffensperger,
1:25:27
Speaker 2: in Georgia, not be on board. So you need not
1:25:30
Speaker 2: only those people on board, but again, you need also
1:25:34
Speaker 2: the courts, and you need that to be the case
1:25:36
Speaker 2: as you escalate through the courts. To me, What I
1:25:40
Speaker 2: would worry about a lot more than a court ultimately
1:25:43
Speaker 2: allowing a wrongful certification to go through would be a
1:25:47
Speaker 2: certification delay. It would be the idea that if you
1:25:49
Speaker 2: have enough people on board, you can kind of push
1:25:51
Speaker 2: this litigation process on and on and on. And if
1:25:54
Speaker 2: you push it on past January 3rd, that's where you
1:25:57
Speaker 2: get to that second front I was mentioning.
1:25:59
Speaker 1: So, you know, that's interesting. You know, one of my
1:26:02
Speaker 1: what ifs about the 2000 election is over certification. And
1:26:06
Speaker 1: in this case, Florida certified before the count was done.
1:26:09
Speaker 1: If Florida, you know, it goes back to why I
1:26:12
Speaker 1: always said every election counts. Back then, Florida elected its
1:26:14
Speaker 1: secretary of state. Two years earlier, had there been a
1:26:17
Speaker 1: Democrat in that office, which actually due to a series
1:26:22
Speaker 1: of bizarre circumstances, there should have been. It's just, you know,
1:26:25
Speaker 1: sort of a happenstance of Republican primary politics back in
1:26:28
Speaker 1: the day. and it doesn't get certified, well, then the
1:26:32
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has no, there's nothing to send to the
1:26:35
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. And it stays a Florida issue. And if anything,
1:26:41
Speaker 1: you may not even have, to certify or not certify,
1:26:47
Speaker 1: depending on what you want from the courts, you want
1:26:50
Speaker 1: state courts involved or federal courts involved, that is also
1:26:53
Speaker 1: a strategy, correct?
1:26:54
Speaker 2: Correct.
1:26:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no.
1:26:56
Speaker 3: And that's that's definitely an interesting point.
1:26:58
Speaker 2: I mean, again, delay can be useful in some cases
1:27:02
Speaker 2: and in some cases delay would be mandated if you
1:27:05
Speaker 2: don't it depending on state law.
1:27:07
Speaker 1: Right. So certifying faster, maybe before provisional ballots get counted
1:27:11
Speaker 1: and things like that. Also, I mean, either way, certification
1:27:14
Speaker 1: is a. is a fulcrum. Yes.
1:27:16
Speaker 2: Right.
1:27:16
Speaker 3: Certification is a fulcrum a hundred percent.
1:27:18
Speaker 2: And kind of the key area of vulnerability that I've been.
1:27:21
Speaker 3: Looking at is this question of when the house is
1:27:24
Speaker 3: an organization, when.
1:27:25
Speaker 1: It doesn't exist.
1:27:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:27:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, okay.
1:27:28
Speaker 3: But you're right about certification being a fulcrum.
1:27:29
Speaker 2: And I do, I do want to say that sometimes
1:27:31
Speaker 2: state law, yeah, explicitly makes sure that someone isn't seated
1:27:35
Speaker 2: until certification has happened. And so like a good example
1:27:38
Speaker 2: of that would be the Al Franken race for a
1:27:41
Speaker 2: long time. Nobody was seated because no official certificate had
1:27:44
Speaker 2: been signed. And the law there said you can't sign
1:27:46
Speaker 2: the certificate while it's being litigated. So as long as
1:27:49
Speaker 2: you had litigation happening, you wouldn't get a certification. But
1:27:53
Speaker 2: you can make an argument for why you might want
1:27:55
Speaker 2: a certification while it's being litigated. And, you know, that
1:28:00
Speaker 2: I can get to that now. We can get to
1:28:01
Speaker 2: January 3rd and sort of what happens on that very
1:28:05
Speaker 2: strange day.
1:28:07
Speaker 1: Well, I want to go to that because there's different
1:28:09
Speaker 1: rules that govern house races than these other races. Because
1:28:13
Speaker 1: what people are always surprised to learn, if they don't
1:28:17
Speaker 1: know it already, is that the House of Representatives is
1:28:19
Speaker 1: the ultimate arbiter of House elections.
1:28:23
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
1:28:24
Speaker 1: And that's what makes a very narrow majority, I think, vulnerable,
1:28:31
Speaker 1: if it's a flip, to shenanigans.
1:28:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's this kind of strange situation in the
1:28:37
Speaker 2: House specifically. So a lot of people who are worried
1:28:41
Speaker 2: about a January 6th on January 3rd, which is the
1:28:45
Speaker 2: key date here.
1:28:46
Speaker 3: That's the date where the House and the Senate turn over.
1:28:48
Speaker 1: The Constitution. Yeah, by the way.
1:28:50
Speaker 3: Yes, the 20th Amendment.
1:28:51
Speaker 1: That is not something they can That they can't delay,
1:28:57
Speaker 1: I believe, right? January 3rd.
1:28:59
Speaker 3: 20th Amendment says January 3rd.
1:29:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
1:29:01
Speaker 3: January 3rd at noon. That is the key date and
1:29:04
Speaker 3: the key time.
1:29:05
Speaker 2: So a lot of people have said, I'm worried that
1:29:09
Speaker 2: if the Republicans lose the elections, Mike Johnson and the
1:29:12
Speaker 2: current Republican majority are going to refuse to seat the
1:29:15
Speaker 2: Democratic winners.
1:29:17
Speaker 3: And that's actually, as scary as it sounds.
1:29:20
Speaker 2: Sort of nonsense based on how the House works.
1:29:23
Speaker 3: Because at January 3rd, At noon.
1:29:28
Speaker 2: The old house dissolves. The house isn't a continuing body.
1:29:31
Speaker 2: And that might sound like something out of science fiction.
1:29:33
Speaker 2: It's actually a parliamentary practice thing, right? Its entire membership
1:29:36
Speaker 2: turns over from one election to the next, unlike the Senate.
1:29:40
Speaker 2: And so there's this strange liminal period of time during
1:29:43
Speaker 2: which functionally, formally, there is no house. Mike Johnson isn't
1:29:47
Speaker 2: the speaker. Hakeem Jeffries isn't the minority leader. There is
1:29:50
Speaker 2: no Republican majority, regardless of who won the most seats.
1:29:53
Speaker 1: A friend of mine who is an expert at this
1:29:54
Speaker 1: stuff says you start literally with a blank piece of paper.
1:29:58
Speaker 1: And the House can organize itself any way it wants
1:30:00
Speaker 1: to organize itself. Like it has this it's a uniquely
1:30:04
Speaker 1: it's a unique period where you can create different rules
1:30:08
Speaker 1: and how the House works and you could create different
1:30:10
Speaker 1: committees and conferences. In some ways, it's a blank canvas.
1:30:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all happening by custom.
1:30:17
Speaker 2: By custom, they're operating according to parliamentary procedure and according
1:30:20
Speaker 2: to the old rules package.
1:30:22
Speaker 3: But again, that is by custom. An election law.
1:30:26
Speaker 2: Lawyer I spoke to, Ned Foley at Ohio State University,
1:30:29
Speaker 2: called this period the barrier between law and non-law. And
1:30:33
Speaker 2: it is, and it's weird, and it's concerning, and it's
1:30:36
Speaker 2: particularly concerning because the You know, you might think now, oh,
1:30:41
Speaker 2: I'm reassured.
1:30:41
Speaker 3: There's no Speaker Mike Johnson. There's no current Republican majority.
1:30:45
Speaker 2: But there's no anything except there is this one individual,
1:30:50
Speaker 2: the clerk of the House, whose authority does carry over
1:30:54
Speaker 2: from one session to the next.
1:30:57
Speaker 3: He's not a member of Congress.
1:30:59
Speaker 1: Right.
1:31:00
Speaker 3: A lot of people have.
1:31:01
Speaker 2: Worried about this particular possibility of the quote unquote rogue
1:31:05
Speaker 2: clerk who during this key period of organization is responsible
1:31:10
Speaker 2: for making up the role of members who vote for speaker.
1:31:14
Speaker 3: Then once they voted for speaker, you have a speaker.
1:31:16
Speaker 3: The speaker starts swearing in the house. You have a house.
1:31:19
Speaker 2: But during this key period, it's the clerk who's sort
1:31:22
Speaker 2: of sitting there in the chair running things with a
1:31:26
Speaker 2: lot of authority for someone who's not even an elected official.
1:31:30
Speaker 1: So let me paint a scenario that is, I think,
1:31:33
Speaker 1: more viable now because of the court ruling. The state
1:31:37
Speaker 1: of Missouri has been told it cannot use these new
1:31:41
Speaker 1: congressional districts. Its state Supreme Court ruled last week. They
1:31:45
Speaker 1: held primaries based on the new congressional lines. And now
1:31:50
Speaker 1: they're told they have to hold the general election based
1:31:52
Speaker 1: on the old congressional lines. I think the likelihood that
1:31:56
Speaker 1: the entire election, the primary season gets thrown out. What
1:32:00
Speaker 1: they do here, I think they're still having to, I
1:32:02
Speaker 1: think voter disenfranchisement lawsuits are going to get filed as
1:32:05
Speaker 1: they should. This is wrong, right? Now, the state messed up,
1:32:12
Speaker 1: maybe purposely, right? They tried to jam the courts. No, no, no, no.
1:32:15
Speaker 1: We're going to hold the primaries even though we don't
1:32:17
Speaker 1: have the ruling for sure yet, but we're going to
1:32:19
Speaker 1: hold the primaries assuming we're going to get the ruling
1:32:21
Speaker 1: we want. Well, they didn't. So now we're in this
1:32:23
Speaker 1: weird situation. And I think the likelihood of a revote
1:32:28
Speaker 1: is high and it's possible the revote is in after November.
1:32:32
Speaker 1: Maybe it doesn't take place until January. Suddenly we have
1:32:37
Speaker 1: a scenario where there are, there's an entire state's delegation.
1:32:41
Speaker 1: I believe Missouri's at eight, if I'm not mistaken, I
1:32:44
Speaker 1: think it's eight congressional districts. Um, probably would be a
1:32:47
Speaker 1: seven one under the old map, uh, maybe a six two. And, um,
1:32:54
Speaker 1: If that is the difference between a party getting 218
1:32:57
Speaker 1: and not 218, then suddenly we're in a no man's
1:33:01
Speaker 1: land situation. So what could happen in December in the
1:33:07
Speaker 1: lame duck, right, that could possibly sort of change the numerator, frankly,
1:33:14
Speaker 1: in the House come January 3rd?
1:33:16
Speaker 3: What could happen in December?
1:33:18
Speaker 2: I mean, I think what you have to worry about
1:33:20
Speaker 2: with a situation like that is the question of what
1:33:23
Speaker 2: the clerk is obligated to do on January 3rd if
1:33:27
Speaker 2: you don't have a certified election in Missouri in any
1:33:31
Speaker 2: of these districts, right? So the clerk, there's a statute
1:33:35
Speaker 2: that governs what the clerk does. And the clerk has
1:33:38
Speaker 2: to put on the role, according to the statute, essentially
1:33:42
Speaker 2: the people who are certified voters in accordance with state law.
1:33:47
Speaker 2: But he's arguably, when you read the statute, obligated to
1:33:52
Speaker 2: leave vacant any seats where there is no certified winner.
1:33:57
Speaker 2: So if you get to the situation where you don't
1:33:59
Speaker 2: have the certified winners on January 3rd, then the clerk theoretically-
1:34:06
Speaker 2: shouldn't seat anyone.
1:34:07
Speaker 3: And then you get to weird math, right?
1:34:09
Speaker 2: Because you have to figure out who's voting for Speaker
1:34:11
Speaker 2: and who gets to win the vote for Speaker. And
1:34:13
Speaker 2: the way that it works is that you have to
1:34:17
Speaker 2: have a majority of the people voting, either yes or no.
1:34:21
Speaker 2: It's not that you have to have a majority of
1:34:23
Speaker 2: the 335 people who should be voting. Sorry, 435 people
1:34:27
Speaker 2: who should be voting if you actually had everybody certified
1:34:31
Speaker 2: and nothing in dispute.
1:34:33
Speaker 1: So.
1:34:34
Speaker 2: Vacancy to make it essentially so that for the chamber
1:34:39
Speaker 2: to flip, you'd have to like 2X the number of,
1:34:45
Speaker 2: say you're a road clerk, right? So say you're a
1:34:47
Speaker 2: road clerk and an election yields a, 220-215 split in
1:34:51
Speaker 2: favor of the Democrats. If you're just replacing the Democrats
1:34:54
Speaker 2: on the roll with Republicans for the purposes of the
1:34:56
Speaker 2: speaker vote, you get 218-217.
1:34:59
Speaker 3: The Republicans are in the majority. They can elect their speaker.
1:35:02
Speaker 3: But if you just remove those three Democrats, you leave three.
1:35:05
Speaker 2: Seats vacant and you have a 217-215 split and the
1:35:09
Speaker 2: Democrats are still in the majority of that split.
1:35:11
Speaker 3: So you haven't accomplished anything. You'd need to leave six
1:35:14
Speaker 3: seats vacant to be able to change the balance.
1:35:17
Speaker 2: So- What you're saying about Missouri, I mean, it totally
1:35:20
Speaker 2: depends on the numbers, but it could theoretically flip the control.
1:35:24
Speaker 1: Right, we don't know, right.
1:35:26
Speaker 3: Right, right, we just don't know. And so I.
1:35:30
Speaker 2: Think that there is a good argument that as a
1:35:32
Speaker 2: matter of positive law, the clerk would be obligated to
1:35:35
Speaker 2: leave those seats that you're describing vacant, but that's kind
1:35:39
Speaker 2: of a disaster, right?
1:35:41
Speaker 3: Because what if it does flip it?
1:35:42
Speaker 2: And then they elect a speaker.
1:35:46
Speaker 3: And so what should that speaker do?
1:35:49
Speaker 1: Do.
1:35:50
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the speaker probably should not seat anyone.
1:36:02
Speaker 1: I mean, we sort of had a test run of
1:36:03
Speaker 1: this in Pennsylvania, I want to say, the last couple
1:36:06
Speaker 1: of cycles. Their state house assembly, I forget what they
1:36:09
Speaker 1: call it there in their commonwealth, was really close. I
1:36:13
Speaker 1: think somebody I want to say that somebody died after
1:36:17
Speaker 1: election before swearing in, and it literally changed the number.
1:36:22
Speaker 1: But as soon as the special election was going to
1:36:23
Speaker 1: get held, it was going to change it back. So
1:36:25
Speaker 1: then it was sort of like, who was going to
1:36:27
Speaker 1: be in the majority for a brief period of time
1:36:29
Speaker 1: was one party, then the other. And I can't remember
1:36:32
Speaker 1: what they ended up doing. I mean, I think they
1:36:34
Speaker 1: just held multiple leadership elections in a couple of cases.
1:36:38
Speaker 1: So we've seen this in state legislatures, and they essentially have...
1:36:43
Speaker 1: functioned OK. Right. There hasn't been a an attempt to
1:36:48
Speaker 1: sort of. Outright theft, I don't think.
1:36:51
Speaker 2: Right.
1:36:52
Speaker 1: Right.
1:36:52
Speaker 3: I mean, like what you should do is you should
1:36:54
Speaker 3: leave those seats vacant.
1:36:56
Speaker 2: The strangeness would be if you leave them vacant and
1:37:00
Speaker 2: then ultimately the election happens, the certifications come in and
1:37:05
Speaker 2: the certifications show that.
1:37:08
Speaker 3: The actual winners flip the control of the chamber.
1:37:12
Speaker 2: And then you have the question of, OK, so at
1:37:15
Speaker 2: that point, is the House obligated to seat those people
1:37:18
Speaker 2: if they properly left them vacant? A speaker could seat
1:37:21
Speaker 2: the wrong people and it's possible that wouldn't intervene.
1:37:24
Speaker 1: No, I mean, and there's a there's precedent for that.
1:37:27
Speaker 1: There's a famous. infamous dispute called the Bloody Eights, Indiana's
1:37:32
Speaker 1: eighth congressional district. This is a dispute, I think it
1:37:34
Speaker 1: was the 86 midterms, maybe it was 84. And it
1:37:39
Speaker 1: took two years to litigate. I can't remember, 84, 86.
1:37:41
Speaker 1: But essentially, the recount showed the Republican winning and the
1:37:47
Speaker 1: Democratic majority sat the Democrat anyway. And everybody's like, well,
1:37:51
Speaker 1: how can that be? The House is the ultimate certifier
1:37:54
Speaker 1: of elections, correct? Correct.
1:37:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly what happened on the bloody eighth.
1:38:00
Speaker 2: The Frank McCloskey, the incumbent Democrat, was challenged by Rick McIntyre, Republican.
1:38:06
Speaker 2: And initially, so McIntyre was certified by the secretary of state.
1:38:12
Speaker 2: And then McCluskey wanted to block McIntyre from assuming office.
1:38:15
Speaker 2: The House decided, OK, we're going to keep the seat
1:38:17
Speaker 2: vacant while the administration committee evaluates this election. But the
1:38:21
Speaker 2: House administration committee, because the Democrats were in the majority,
1:38:26
Speaker 2: had a Democratic majority.
1:38:27
Speaker 3: It was 2-1. And they decided.
1:38:30
Speaker 2: Basically, the Republicans said, the recount that you guys are
1:38:33
Speaker 2: doing isn't in conformity with Indiana law.
1:38:36
Speaker 3: And you're counting nonconforming absentee ballots.
1:38:39
Speaker 2: And it didn't matter. The majority of the task force
1:38:41
Speaker 2: prevailed over the minority. And the Democrat, who wasn't the
1:38:44
Speaker 2: one who was certified, was seated. And I mean, I
1:38:48
Speaker 2: think that really what that shows.
1:38:51
Speaker 1: That incident is so important because I could argue it
1:38:54
Speaker 1: created Newt Gingrich, that Newt Gingrich's political power came from
1:39:00
Speaker 1: that moment where he was trying to galvanize a Republican
1:39:05
Speaker 1: party that did not want to be a that kind
1:39:08
Speaker 1: of party. And he galvanized him to become that kind
1:39:10
Speaker 1: of party. Yeah.
1:39:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Republicans tried to get it overturned in federal
1:39:14
Speaker 2: court and the court. I think Scalia wrote the opinion
1:39:18
Speaker 2: on this. It was before he was on the on
1:39:20
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, but he wrote the opinion as a
1:39:22
Speaker 2: federal judge. And he said that the claims weren't justiciable
1:39:24
Speaker 2: because it was a political question. And so that's the
1:39:27
Speaker 2: issue you get into at the point where you have.
1:39:31
Speaker 3: A speaker and a majority.
1:39:32
Speaker 2: The courts are going to say this is, I mean,
1:39:35
Speaker 2: are almost certainly going to say this is a political question.
1:39:38
Speaker 3: The House is the judge of the returns of its
1:39:40
Speaker 3: own members. We're not going to do anything.
1:39:42
Speaker 2: The kind of tricky part and sort of an interesting
1:39:45
Speaker 2: argument in the rogue clerk theory area is if the
1:39:49
Speaker 2: clerk is, you know, doing something nefarious. Will the court
1:39:55
Speaker 2: still say it's a political question or because he's not
1:39:59
Speaker 2: a member of the house and because of that moment,
1:40:01
Speaker 2: the house doesn't exist.
1:40:02
Speaker 3: And because there's a statute, might they be.
1:40:04
Speaker 2: Willing to intervene to tell him that he has to
1:40:07
Speaker 2: comply with what's his ministerial duty to put the correct
1:40:11
Speaker 2: person on the role? I think that that's kind of
1:40:14
Speaker 2: a live argument. And I'm, I couldn't tell you, my
1:40:17
Speaker 2: guess is that It would depend on.
1:40:19
Speaker 3: The judge, right? Kind of what they wanted to do.
1:40:21
Speaker 2: But I think a judge could write a decent opinion
1:40:24
Speaker 2: in either direction on the question of what they have
1:40:27
Speaker 2: to do, depending on whether there's only one set of credentials,
1:40:31
Speaker 2: how clear state law is on what credentials are valid,
1:40:34
Speaker 2: whether there's a dueling set, whether there's a certification delay.
1:40:37
Speaker 2: I think courts possibly would intervene at that weird time
1:40:41
Speaker 2: during organization with regard to what the clerk did. But
1:40:45
Speaker 2: At the moment that you get the speaker, you get
1:40:47
Speaker 2: the majority, courts are almost certainly going to bow out.
1:40:51
Speaker 2: There's one possible caveat. There is a case, Powell versus McCormick,
1:40:56
Speaker 2: in which the Supreme Court ruled that the House did
1:41:02
Speaker 2: have to. So basically, it was a qualifications case. It
1:41:06
Speaker 2: wasn't a certification case. So it's a little different. But essentially,
1:41:11
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court ruled that the House couldn't exclude a
1:41:14
Speaker 2: properly credentialed member elect. So, you know, the understanding there
1:41:19
Speaker 2: would be.
1:41:19
Speaker 1: Was this the Grialva case where they kept they kept delaying?
1:41:25
Speaker 1: It was a special election. They kept delaying the swearing
1:41:29
Speaker 1: in of a member.
1:41:30
Speaker 2: This is this is the House voting not to seat
1:41:34
Speaker 2: a New York representative.
1:41:36
Speaker 3: Adam Clayton Powell was his name. This goes way back.
1:41:41
Speaker 2: He was accused of misappropriating federal funds so they didn't
1:41:43
Speaker 2: want to seat him. And what the court said was, well,
1:41:46
Speaker 2: you can expel him for his misconduct by a two
1:41:48
Speaker 2: thirds vote, but you can't just exclude him by a
1:41:51
Speaker 2: simple majority vote from membership in the first place if
1:41:54
Speaker 2: he's duly elected.
1:41:56
Speaker 3: And so I think some people would.
1:41:57
Speaker 2: Argue that if the House tried to exclude someone with
1:42:01
Speaker 2: the proper credentials and the qualifications, the certificate, then the
1:42:05
Speaker 2: courts would intervene. But I think you could also argue
1:42:08
Speaker 2: they wouldn't because there wasn't any dispute about who'd won
1:42:11
Speaker 2: the race. There was no one saying, oh, well, you know,
1:42:14
Speaker 2: Powell didn't win. Someone else won. It was The courts
1:42:18
Speaker 2: basically said, well, he has the constitutional qualifications. I think
1:42:21
Speaker 2: the moment that there is like a colorable claim that
1:42:24
Speaker 2: someone else has won sort of a live dispute about
1:42:27
Speaker 2: who won that different people in the House are on
1:42:29
Speaker 2: different sides of, that's likely the moment the courts bow out.
1:42:32
Speaker 3: They say that's a political question. They don't do anything.
1:42:36
Speaker 3: So that's part of why it's such an important issue.
1:42:40
Speaker 2: Period organization, that's the only moment at which it's really
1:42:43
Speaker 2: reasonable to imagine courts intervening at all. And so if
1:42:48
Speaker 2: a majority gets flipped by a rogue clerk or by
1:42:51
Speaker 2: a clerk who's complying with his duty to leave seats
1:42:55
Speaker 2: vacant in the event of a certification delay, then you've
1:42:58
Speaker 2: crossed this Rubicon where you might have a majority that's
1:43:01
Speaker 2: an improper majority. And you run into the question of,
1:43:04
Speaker 2: even if the certifications come in later, even if the
1:43:07
Speaker 2: result is different, Does the House, does the Speaker really
1:43:11
Speaker 2: have any obligation to seat the lawful winners? Or, you know,
1:43:14
Speaker 2: does it have any obligation that courts would ever enforce?
1:43:17
Speaker 2: And the answer is probably not.
1:43:18
Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about the clerk. How does, who
1:43:23
Speaker 1: decides who's the clerk of the House? Yeah.
1:43:27
Speaker 2: So the, I'll tell you who the current clerk is,
1:43:29
Speaker 2: which I think is helpful.
1:43:31
Speaker 3: His name is Kevin McCumber.
1:43:32
Speaker 2: He was appointed by Kevin McCarthy. But he served in
1:43:36
Speaker 2: the clerk's office under Nancy Pelosi, too. He's generally understood
1:43:40
Speaker 2: to be a serious person, has bipartisan bona fides. So
1:43:45
Speaker 2: you look at Kevin McCumber and you think maybe not
1:43:48
Speaker 2: that much to worry about.
1:43:50
Speaker 1: But.
1:43:51
Speaker 2: the Speaker of the House can fire the clerk unilaterally.
1:43:54
Speaker 2: So when people say, you know, oh, current Speaker Mike
1:43:56
Speaker 2: Johnson turning the election, this is where current Speaker Mike
1:44:00
Speaker 2: Johnson has power because he can fire the clerk unilaterally
1:44:04
Speaker 2: the moment that he sees that there's an issue and
1:44:06
Speaker 2: that it might be convenient to have a compliant clerk
1:44:09
Speaker 2: in place.
1:44:09
Speaker 3: He can do that in December.
1:44:11
Speaker 1: You can fire, but can you hire a clerk? No,
1:44:14
Speaker 1: you cannot.
1:44:15
Speaker 2: You need a majority to install a permanent replacement, but
1:44:18
Speaker 2: it's sort of cold comfort because the Speaker can also
1:44:21
Speaker 2: unilaterally appoint an acting clerk who temporarily is supposed to
1:44:25
Speaker 2: fulfill all the statutory duties of the clerk, including the
1:44:27
Speaker 2: making up of the role. And in fact, McCumber himself
1:44:30
Speaker 2: was an acting clerk for about a year and a
1:44:32
Speaker 2: half when he started his term. So I don't think
1:44:36
Speaker 2: that the majority to install a permanent replacement thing is
1:44:39
Speaker 2: as comforting as it seems. I think that, you know, sure,
1:44:44
Speaker 2: if you're arguing the clerk is in charge here, everybody
1:44:50
Speaker 2: should obey the clerk. You have more of a leg
1:44:52
Speaker 2: to stand on if the clerk is the properly installed clerk.
1:44:55
Speaker 2: But yeah, you need the majority to install him. Presumably,
1:44:58
Speaker 2: that is, I mean, I don't want to say presumably.
1:45:01
Speaker 1: So Johnson, Johnson can appoint an acting. Is there an
1:45:05
Speaker 1: expiration on the acting title before the before the whole
1:45:08
Speaker 1: House gets to vote on on whether this person should
1:45:11
Speaker 1: be the clerk?
1:45:12
Speaker 3: I don't think there's an expiration.
1:45:14
Speaker 2: I would want to go back and check it and
1:45:15
Speaker 2: I don't want to say something that I'm going to
1:45:16
Speaker 2: be wrong about.
1:45:17
Speaker 3: But McCumber was an acting clerk for a year and
1:45:19
Speaker 3: a half and that didn't expire.
1:45:21
Speaker 1: Boy, that is really problematic. That is a huge vulnerability.
1:45:26
Speaker 3: It seems like a vulnerability to me. Yes. I mean,
1:45:30
Speaker 3: I think, again, the.
1:45:31
Speaker 2: Issue is so I don't think it's that difficult to
1:45:34
Speaker 2: put the compliant clerk in place. What I think is
1:45:37
Speaker 2: difficult for. What I think is difficult is for the
1:45:41
Speaker 2: rogue clerk, even if the clerk goes rogue, to actually
1:45:45
Speaker 2: successfully pull off this sort of coup that people are describing.
1:45:49
Speaker 1: Why is that? So we've identified the vulnerability. Now you're
1:45:57
Speaker 1: giving a little bit of comfort that might not be
1:46:00
Speaker 1: as powerful.
1:46:00
Speaker 2: A little, a teeny tiny bit. So I think there
1:46:06
Speaker 2: are two axes on which to think about it. One
1:46:10
Speaker 2: of them is comfort. legal viability, and one of them
1:46:13
Speaker 2: is practical possibility. So we talked already a little bit
1:46:17
Speaker 2: about the legal question. And so that's where it seems
1:46:21
Speaker 2: like as a matter of positive law, the clerk has
1:46:25
Speaker 2: a duty, what's known as a ministerial duty. And that
1:46:28
Speaker 2: goes all the way back to Marbury versus Madison, by
1:46:30
Speaker 2: the way, most people remember that as the case that
1:46:32
Speaker 2: in trans judicial review, but to get there, what was
1:46:35
Speaker 2: important was that Madison, the secretary of state had a
1:46:38
Speaker 2: ministerial duty to deliver a Marbury who'd been appointed as
1:46:41
Speaker 2: a justice of the peace, his commission.
1:46:43
Speaker 3: And the court said, yeah, it's up to us then
1:46:45
Speaker 3: to hand down a writ of mandamus.
1:46:47
Speaker 2: So what courts do is they say, if is there
1:46:50
Speaker 2: a ministerial duty to we can enforce and to do
1:46:54
Speaker 2: that they ask whether there's any room for discretion in
1:46:58
Speaker 2: the statute and so in this case you look at
1:47:00
Speaker 2: the clerk's duty to make a role of the representatives
1:47:03
Speaker 2: elect and place there on the names of those persons
1:47:06
Speaker 2: and such persons only whose credentials show that they were
1:47:09
Speaker 2: elected in accordance with the law and you ask is
1:47:12
Speaker 2: there any discretion there and.
1:47:15
Speaker 3: You know the You tell me.
1:47:18
Speaker 2: I think you could argue that there's not, at least
1:47:21
Speaker 2: in the case where there is someone who comes in
1:47:25
Speaker 2: with a certificate, there's only one person who comes in
1:47:28
Speaker 2: with the certificate, and state law is clear on who
1:47:31
Speaker 2: the lawfully certified elected member is. And state law is
1:47:35
Speaker 2: clearer and clearer, as I mentioned earlier. So I think
1:47:38
Speaker 2: there's a good argument that the clerk does have a
1:47:41
Speaker 2: ministerial duty to put the certified winner on the roll
1:47:45
Speaker 2: if there's a certified winner.
1:47:46
Speaker 3: Right.
1:47:47
Speaker 2: And I think that there is a decent argument to
1:47:50
Speaker 2: make that at least some courts would be willing to
1:47:54
Speaker 2: enforce that ministerial duty with the writ of mandamus if
1:47:57
Speaker 2: the clerk refused to do it, install someone else to
1:47:59
Speaker 2: do it for him, which they can do, and say
1:48:02
Speaker 2: it's not a political question because of what I mentioned
1:48:04
Speaker 2: earlier about the fact that the House isn't in session
1:48:07
Speaker 2: and the clerk isn't a member of the House. I
1:48:08
Speaker 2: think it gets a little trickier where there are dueling
1:48:12
Speaker 2: sets of credentials. I think the fact that state law
1:48:14
Speaker 2: is better on that mitigates that issue. And I think
1:48:18
Speaker 2: the problem again is the delay certification where you could
1:48:21
Speaker 2: argue that the clerk, in fact, has a ministerial duty
1:48:23
Speaker 2: to leave the seat vacant.
1:48:25
Speaker 3: So that's the legal side of it.
1:48:28
Speaker 1: So it's interesting. It feels as if then that the clerk,
1:48:34
Speaker 1: that this isn't the vulnerability. The real vulnerability is certification itself.
1:48:40
Speaker 1: and not having certified elections, not having certified. And I'm
1:48:45
Speaker 1: like trying to, I'm going through, I think the biggest
1:48:47
Speaker 1: vulnerability is the state of Texas. And let me walk
1:48:50
Speaker 1: you through it. It's an all Republican controlled state at
1:48:53
Speaker 1: the moment. It's going to be, it looks like we're
1:48:56
Speaker 1: on a knife's edge. This looks like it's gonna be
1:48:58
Speaker 1: extraordinarily close elections. I could identify three to five seats
1:49:04
Speaker 1: in Texas alone that might, you could argue the Democrats
1:49:07
Speaker 1: win that if you took them away, it could put
1:49:10
Speaker 1: them below the majority, right? Like where suddenly they went from,
1:49:14
Speaker 1: I mean, in theory, I think what you're describing, if
1:49:18
Speaker 1: we're assuming that everybody's gonna behave as a partisan, then
1:49:24
Speaker 1: it is the states where the certification is being controlled
1:49:29
Speaker 1: by the Republicans, where Democrats could make gains. And that's
1:49:34
Speaker 1: why I look at the state of Texas and I
1:49:36
Speaker 1: guess to a lesser extent Ohio, though Mike DeWine just
1:49:39
Speaker 1: doesn't roll that way. So I'm not concerned about a
1:49:42
Speaker 1: Mike DeWine. Greg Abbott's on the ballot. Greg Abbott himself
1:49:46
Speaker 1: may be fighting certification, right? And you have an entire slate, right,
1:49:51
Speaker 1: where there's going to be pressure and motive and all
1:49:54
Speaker 1: sorts of things. So painting that picture, right, I already
1:49:58
Speaker 1: painted a Missouri picture for you that is a different
1:50:01
Speaker 1: scenario that is frankly legitimate for the clerk to say, hey,
1:50:04
Speaker 1: I can't seat these folks. There's real questions here. Texas
1:50:11
Speaker 1: seems to be, and I'm still not clear here, Molly,
1:50:15
Speaker 1: that just because the state certifies a House election that
1:50:18
Speaker 1: the House can't just sort of ignore that. I thought
1:50:22
Speaker 1: the House had that power.
1:50:24
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, OK, I guess two things. One, if you
1:50:28
Speaker 2: accept my argument that the clerk has a ministerial duty
1:50:33
Speaker 2: to put the lawfully certified person on the role, which
1:50:36
Speaker 2: and that that goes to your last question, you're saying
1:50:38
Speaker 2: that the House doesn't have to do it. The argument
1:50:40
Speaker 2: is that the clerk does have to do it. The
1:50:42
Speaker 2: clerk isn't a member of the House.
1:50:44
Speaker 3: The clerk doesn't.
1:50:45
Speaker 2: Doesn't have this sort of article one protection from any
1:50:47
Speaker 2: judicial interference but you're right that if you accept that
1:50:50
Speaker 2: which i think some people wouldn't accept i think it's
1:50:53
Speaker 2: it's possible that a clerk that a court wouldn't buy
1:50:55
Speaker 2: that right so i'm not going to tell you that
1:50:57
Speaker 2: a court necessarily will i'm more telling you that if
1:50:59
Speaker 2: a court wanted to not let this happen i think
1:51:02
Speaker 2: a court could that that would be a viable route
1:51:05
Speaker 2: to take and it's a solid legal argument but but
1:51:09
Speaker 2: So if you accept that argument, that some people might
1:51:12
Speaker 2: not accept, then you are 100% correct that it means
1:51:15
Speaker 2: that the role-making process is only robust, only as vulnerable
1:51:21
Speaker 2: to interference as the certification process is.
1:51:23
Speaker 3: You're totally right.
1:51:24
Speaker 2: It hinges on whether you can, first of all, certify
1:51:29
Speaker 2: someone who shouldn't be certified, which I think is quite difficult.
1:51:31
Speaker 2: And second of all, whether you can affect a delay
1:51:33
Speaker 2: that gets past that Jan 3rd period, which I think
1:51:36
Speaker 2: is easier to do. So that I think that is
1:51:38
Speaker 2: a totally accurate assessment of the logical implication of that argument.
1:51:44
Speaker 2: The argument might feel a little better, but it shouldn't
1:51:47
Speaker 2: necessarily resolve all your concerns about what can happen. But
1:51:50
Speaker 2: that gets you to the practical possibility point, I think.
1:51:53
Speaker 2: So if there's a certification delay.
1:51:56
Speaker 3: How likely is it that the House actually gets flipped.
1:52:01
Speaker 2: And I think that one point is this thing I
1:52:04
Speaker 2: was saying about the math and the two X-ing, right?
1:52:07
Speaker 2: You need a, you need a, A, you need a
1:52:10
Speaker 2: razor thin margin. Like to me, if it's an even split,
1:52:13
Speaker 2: all bets are off. Like, I'm not going to tell
1:52:15
Speaker 2: you to feel good about things if it's an even split.
1:52:17
Speaker 1: No, I mean, look, I think that's always the lesson
1:52:19
Speaker 1: of 2000. When an election's close enough, at this point,
1:52:22
Speaker 1: it's who's got better lawyers. I mean, that's what we
1:52:24
Speaker 1: learned in Minnesota Senate in 2008. It's what we learned
1:52:27
Speaker 1: in the presidency in 2000. Yeah.
1:52:30
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:52:30
Speaker 2: So, I mean, again, if it's that narrow, then you
1:52:34
Speaker 2: have a certification delay and I think you can run
1:52:37
Speaker 2: into real trouble. If it is a wider margin, then
1:52:41
Speaker 2: to have a certification delay flip control, you would need
1:52:47
Speaker 2: to have a.
1:52:49
Speaker 3: Lot of seats in and.
1:52:51
Speaker 1: The correct seats. A lot of people following this conspiracy,
1:52:54
Speaker 1: like a lot of people have to get together.
1:52:56
Speaker 2: Yes, so you would need a lot of people to
1:52:58
Speaker 2: get together to do this in all the right places.
1:53:01
Speaker 2: You would need a lot of people in the correct
1:53:04
Speaker 2: place or multiple correct places to make that actually yield
1:53:07
Speaker 2: the math that you wanted.
1:53:09
Speaker 3: So I think that it's quite difficult to do.
1:53:12
Speaker 2: And I think that when the margin is wider, then,
1:53:15
Speaker 2: I mean- I think that kind of no matter what,
1:53:21
Speaker 2: you do get.
1:53:22
Speaker 3: A situation of chaos.
1:53:24
Speaker 2: So let's say that the clerk says, all right, I'm
1:53:29
Speaker 2: going to leave these seats vacant. Well, we've seen that happen.
1:53:31
Speaker 2: We've seen a clerk leave seats vacant. So I'm taking
1:53:34
Speaker 2: you all the way back to... 1838, 1839, in what's
1:53:39
Speaker 2: known as the Broad Seal War, which is essentially a
1:53:41
Speaker 2: certification dispute.
1:53:42
Speaker 3: It's not a delay.
1:53:43
Speaker 2: It's a dispute where you have dueling certificates, but it
1:53:45
Speaker 2: teaches basically the same lesson. And there, New Jersey elected
1:53:51
Speaker 2: It had six federal representatives. Five of those seats were
1:53:53
Speaker 2: in dispute and partisan control of the chamber hinged on
1:53:57
Speaker 2: who the Whigs or the Democrats won those seats. So
1:54:00
Speaker 2: the governor, who was a Whig, certified the Whig winners
1:54:04
Speaker 2: and he gave them the official broad seal of the state.
1:54:07
Speaker 2: That's why it's called the Broad Seal War. So they
1:54:09
Speaker 2: came in with these fancy certificates with the broad seal
1:54:11
Speaker 2: on them. But a few towns returns had been left out.
1:54:15
Speaker 2: And if the returns had come in properly, they would
1:54:18
Speaker 2: have shown that the Democrats won all five of those seats.
1:54:21
Speaker 2: So the Secretary of State, who was a Democrat, certified,
1:54:25
Speaker 2: quote unquote, the Democrats. But he didn't have the broad seal.
1:54:28
Speaker 2: He had his kind of makeshift, dodgy-looking certificates.
1:54:33
Speaker 3: So everyone shows up to work at the U.S. Capitol.
1:54:36
Speaker 2: It wasn't January 3rd back then. It was sometime in December.
1:54:39
Speaker 2: But they all show up to work with their dueling certificates,
1:54:42
Speaker 2: some of which have the broad seal.
1:54:44
Speaker 3: And some of which don't. And so the clerk at
1:54:47
Speaker 3: the time, his name was Hugh Garland.
1:54:49
Speaker 2: He'd been appointed by the outgoing Democrats who knew the
1:54:52
Speaker 2: election would be tight.
1:54:53
Speaker 3: They hoped he'd be compliant.
1:54:55
Speaker 2: And what he ended up doing was he said, I'm
1:54:58
Speaker 2: just going to skip New Jersey. They would have wanted
1:55:00
Speaker 2: him to just put the Democrats on the roll. He
1:55:02
Speaker 2: actually didn't do that. He said, I'm going to skip
1:55:04
Speaker 2: New Jersey. And I'm going to leave those seats vacant.
1:55:07
Speaker 3: But he's part way through.
1:55:09
Speaker 1: Seems like a reasonable decision.
1:55:10
Speaker 3: That's what he said. That's the way to give no
1:55:12
Speaker 3: party advantage.
1:55:13
Speaker 2: He said, you know, of course, the Whigs said, well,
1:55:15
Speaker 2: the way to give no party advantage would be to
1:55:17
Speaker 2: properly install the Whigs who have this nice broad seal
1:55:19
Speaker 2: on their certificates. But he said that that was the
1:55:21
Speaker 2: thing to do, to leave the seats vacant. And there
1:55:24
Speaker 2: wasn't this statute at the time telling him to do that.
1:55:27
Speaker 2: But that would be, if the statute had been there,
1:55:30
Speaker 2: that would be what the statute requires. But he'd already
1:55:33
Speaker 2: started calling the roll when he did this. So it
1:55:35
Speaker 2: interrupted the calling of the roll. There wasn't a quorum yet.
1:55:38
Speaker 2: He said there can't be any business done until there's
1:55:40
Speaker 2: a quorum, but there can't be a quorum until I.
1:55:42
Speaker 3: Call the roll.
1:55:43
Speaker 2: But I won't call the roll until we've addressed all
1:55:46
Speaker 2: these objections or until all the objections are gone.
1:55:49
Speaker 3: So it was this impasse.
1:55:50
Speaker 2: And What happened in the end, actually, was that John
1:55:54
Speaker 2: Quincy Adams came to the rescue, took the chair. There
1:55:57
Speaker 2: wasn't really an official mechanism for this. But as we
1:56:00
Speaker 2: were talking about earlier, it's sort of all by custom.
1:56:02
Speaker 2: He just said, all right, clerk, move aside. I'm taking
1:56:05
Speaker 2: the chair. And everybody kind of wanted to avoid anarchy.
1:56:09
Speaker 3: So even the Democrats let this happen. John Quincy Adams
1:56:12
Speaker 3: was a Whig.
1:56:13
Speaker 2: And he put to a vote whether to seat the
1:56:16
Speaker 2: Whigs with the certificates or And again, even if he
1:56:19
Speaker 2: hadn't done this, the clerk could have said, and I
1:56:21
Speaker 2: think it's reasonable to imagine the clerk saying, let's vote
1:56:26
Speaker 2: on whether to.
1:56:26
Speaker 3: Seat the Whigs with certificates.
1:56:28
Speaker 2: Because if you have a situation where there are dueling
1:56:30
Speaker 2: certificates or there's a delay, you're almost certainly going to
1:56:33
Speaker 2: have an objection to whatever role the clerk makes up
1:56:35
Speaker 2: from the party that role disfavors. And so then there's
1:56:39
Speaker 2: the question of what should the clerk do? And they
1:56:41
Speaker 2: vote on that because they're operating according to parliamentary procedure.
1:56:44
Speaker 3: They can motion to make votes. They can vote.
1:56:45
Speaker 1: Right.
1:56:46
Speaker 3: But- Who gets to vote on whether to on whom
1:56:51
Speaker 3: to seat?
1:56:51
Speaker 2: Who gets to vote on whether to seat the Wigsworth certificates?
1:56:54
Speaker 3: Do the Wigsworth certificates get to vote on whether to
1:56:56
Speaker 3: seat themselves?
1:56:57
Speaker 2: Do the Democrats get to vote on whether to seat
1:56:59
Speaker 2: the people who have the Broad Seal certificates when they
1:57:02
Speaker 2: have their certificates? So there becomes this whole series of
1:57:05
Speaker 2: votes on who can vote. There's like this parliamentary vortex
1:57:08
Speaker 2: of voting on who can vote.
1:57:10
Speaker 3: And at one point, in fact- So meta. It is
1:57:14
Speaker 3: so meta. All the claimants at one point vote.
1:57:17
Speaker 2: The Whigs with the broad seal certificates, the Democrats with
1:57:20
Speaker 2: the made-up certificates, which is insane, right? Because no matter
1:57:24
Speaker 2: who won these disputes, some of them obviously are not
1:57:26
Speaker 2: entitled to vote here. And yet they all get to
1:57:28
Speaker 2: vote because that's just what happens at the time.
1:57:30
Speaker 3: In the chaos. Ultimately, the Whigs with the.
1:57:35
Speaker 2: Broad seal certificates do get seated, but then- Congress thinks
1:57:40
Speaker 2: it over, realizes, oh, you know what? It's actually true
1:57:44
Speaker 2: that these towns' returns were left out. Those returns would
1:57:46
Speaker 2: have let the Democrats win, and they seat the Democrats
1:57:49
Speaker 2: in the end. So the Whigs get put on the roll,
1:57:52
Speaker 2: they get seated, and ultimately they change the seating. And
1:57:55
Speaker 2: it's sort of interesting because I don't think you'd see
1:57:59
Speaker 2: that part of it happening now. It's like I said,
1:58:01
Speaker 2: I think at the point that you get to, I mean,
1:58:03
Speaker 2: it's like the bloody eighth, right? The bloody eighth is
1:58:05
Speaker 2: the opposite of that.
1:58:06
Speaker 3: You're not going to seat the person who rightfully won
1:58:09
Speaker 3: if you're in control when you don't have to do it.
1:58:11
Speaker 3: Why would you do that? But I think that what
1:58:13
Speaker 3: it teaches you.
1:58:14
Speaker 2: About the clerk is in the process is that no
1:58:19
Speaker 2: matter what the clerk does, if the clerk does something
1:58:21
Speaker 2: that isn't, you know, in accordance with the regular order
1:58:27
Speaker 2: of things where the person who appears to have won
1:58:30
Speaker 2: the election gets seated, you're going to have an objection,
1:58:33
Speaker 2: you're going to have votes on who can vote, and
1:58:34
Speaker 2: you are going to have some degree of chaos.
1:58:37
Speaker 3: And how that gets resolved is no longer a legal question.
1:58:40
Speaker 3: It's wholly a political question, right? And maybe there'll be
1:58:42
Speaker 3: some deal-making.
1:58:43
Speaker 1: The will of the house, yeah. We've gone down this
1:58:55
Speaker 1: road pretty deeply when it comes to the House, that
1:58:57
Speaker 1: this is the vulnerable. It is close result in the
1:59:00
Speaker 1: House is where suddenly the voters are left out of
1:59:05
Speaker 1: the equation, right? There's a point where it becomes either
1:59:08
Speaker 1: illegal or a test of wills inside that chamber. But
1:59:12
Speaker 1: either way, that's one vulnerable. The certification process is a vulnerability.
1:59:19
Speaker 1: Anything else we're leaving out here? I think.
1:59:22
Speaker 2: As far as the January 3rd vulnerabilities, I think that
1:59:27
Speaker 2: those are the key things.
1:59:28
Speaker 1: I think that- The Senate's not really, the Senate's kind
1:59:30
Speaker 1: of immune to this because it is, as you noted,
1:59:33
Speaker 1: it's a continuous body.
1:59:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Senate is a continuing body.
1:59:36
Speaker 2: And so you don't run into a situation where you
1:59:39
Speaker 2: have this period of organization where there's any one official
1:59:42
Speaker 2: who could go rogue. That doesn't mean that Senate elections
1:59:46
Speaker 2: can't get a little ugly.
1:59:48
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean.
1:59:49
Speaker 2: That there can't be a dispute over whether somebody should
1:59:53
Speaker 2: be seated. But, you know, it's going to depend on
1:59:57
Speaker 2: the people who are seated in the Senate and how
2:00:00
Speaker 2: they decide to resolve that. And so, you know, you'd
2:00:03
Speaker 2: have all the undisputed people sworn in and then they
2:00:06
Speaker 2: would decide what to do. I guess that brings me
2:00:08
Speaker 2: to kind of a second question in the House, which
2:00:10
Speaker 2: was you asked if there.
2:00:11
Speaker 3: Are any remaining vulnerabilities and. I don't really think so.
2:00:16
Speaker 2: But some people would tell you that even at the
2:00:19
Speaker 2: point where the speaker has been elected, so let's say
2:00:23
Speaker 2: Hakeem Jeffries becomes the speaker, that Republicans could say, well,
2:00:29
Speaker 2: you're starting to swear people in.
2:00:31
Speaker 3: We dispute some of these seats.
2:00:33
Speaker 2: And there is this custom. It's mostly been custom in
2:00:37
Speaker 2: the modern age, although it's not clear that it has
2:00:40
Speaker 2: been followed uniformly in very recent years. But there's this custom,
2:00:44
Speaker 2: what's known as the stand aside principle, where if a
2:00:48
Speaker 2: seat is disputed, instead of having the certified people who
2:00:52
Speaker 2: were on the roll who elected the speaker take their oaths,
2:00:55
Speaker 2: they're supposed to stand aside and wait until everybody else
2:00:58
Speaker 2: has taken their oath. And then those people can decide
2:01:00
Speaker 2: whether they feel that they should be seated. And so
2:01:03
Speaker 2: the argument is that while still Republicans could challenge just
2:01:06
Speaker 2: enough seats and tell just enough people to stand aside
2:01:10
Speaker 2: so that then when everybody was sworn in, they'd have
2:01:12
Speaker 2: a majority. But Hakeem Jeffries could also just say, I
2:01:14
Speaker 2: don't want to do things that way. At that point,
2:01:16
Speaker 2: you have a house. They can change the rules. So
2:01:18
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a real vulnerability.
2:01:20
Speaker 1: The other part of this, and it goes back to,
2:01:22
Speaker 1: and it's something you keep coming back to, and I'm
2:01:25
Speaker 1: glad you do, which is Look, in theory, there's a
2:01:28
Speaker 1: lot of things that could happen that would be, quote unquote, undemocratic.
2:01:31
Speaker 1: But for them to happen, you have to have a
2:01:32
Speaker 1: lot of people go along with it. You know, I mean,
2:01:35
Speaker 1: what we're describing here, you have to assume every member
2:01:38
Speaker 1: of the House Republican Conference will go along with some
2:01:40
Speaker 1: of this stuff. And I think it's pretty clear we've
2:01:43
Speaker 1: already seen this is not a very functioning House Republican Conference.
2:01:47
Speaker 1: They have plenty of factional disputes among themselves. So it
2:01:51
Speaker 1: is it is certainly a theoretical argument. vulnerability. And I
2:01:57
Speaker 1: think we have correctly described how, again, I go back
2:02:00
Speaker 1: to every close election creates vulnerability. And I think that's
2:02:04
Speaker 1: probably the ultimate lesson to take away from all of this.
2:02:08
Speaker 1: But you do need a lot of people participating in
2:02:10
Speaker 1: the conspiracy for it to work. Yep.
2:02:13
Speaker 2: You need a lot of people participating in the conspiracy
2:02:16
Speaker 2: in the States to create a certification delay or a
2:02:19
Speaker 2: wrongful certification. And then you need a lot of people
2:02:22
Speaker 2: participating in the House. You need them in lockstep. We
2:02:24
Speaker 2: talked about the difficult math, particularly if it's a delay.
2:02:27
Speaker 2: Say that you've cleverly done your math to leave just
2:02:29
Speaker 2: the right number of seats vacant, but then you have
2:02:31
Speaker 2: one defector, then math.
2:02:33
Speaker 3: Doesn't matter anymore.
2:02:35
Speaker 2: So, yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, another,
2:02:38
Speaker 2: I'll try to be briefer with this episode from history,
2:02:41
Speaker 2: but around the time of the Civil War, there was
2:02:43
Speaker 2: a clerk who actually decided to go rogue and to
2:02:46
Speaker 2: try to do a coup, not to just throw up
2:02:48
Speaker 2: his hands and leave the seats vacant. And this was
2:02:51
Speaker 2: sort of a complicated time already. The Democrats in the
2:02:55
Speaker 2: border states, sorry, the Republicans in the border states had
2:02:58
Speaker 2: made it difficult for Democrats to take control of the House.
2:03:02
Speaker 2: The clerk was this man, Emerson Etheridge. He had been
2:03:06
Speaker 2: pro-union and pro-Republican, and the They actually created the statute
2:03:12
Speaker 2: that defines the clerk duties now in appointing him. They
2:03:15
Speaker 2: thought it gave him some broad powers to exclude people.
2:03:19
Speaker 2: And they figured that he would exclude Democrats if need be.
2:03:23
Speaker 2: But he actually switched allegiances to favor the Democrats between
2:03:27
Speaker 2: when he was appointed, just changed his mind. And he
2:03:29
Speaker 2: did what was expected of him and excluded 16 credentialed
2:03:33
Speaker 2: claimants from the role. But he excluded the Republicans instead.
2:03:37
Speaker 2: So the Republicans panicked. They thought, all right, they're stealing
2:03:40
Speaker 2: the election now. And it turned out a few things. One,
2:03:47
Speaker 2: the Democrats had these 16 people excluded and they were replaced.
2:03:53
Speaker 2: And even then, when they went to vote on the speaker,
2:03:57
Speaker 2: they didn't have enough votes to put the wrong speaker
2:03:59
Speaker 2: in place.
2:03:59
Speaker 3: It all fell out of order. It was disorganized. They
2:04:04
Speaker 3: couldn't do it.
2:04:04
Speaker 2: They thought they'd done the math and it didn't work.
2:04:07
Speaker 2: And it didn't work because Etheridge was willing to hear
2:04:10
Speaker 2: the objection of the Republicans rather than rule it out
2:04:12
Speaker 2: of order.
2:04:13
Speaker 3: And then they lost the vote.
2:04:14
Speaker 2: So then you say, what would have happened if he
2:04:16
Speaker 2: hadn't been willing to hear the objection? And then you
2:04:18
Speaker 2: get to a little more chaos, right? The Republicans were thinking,
2:04:22
Speaker 2: what are we going to do? They thought maybe we'll
2:04:24
Speaker 2: pull a John Quincy Adams. We'll have our most senior
2:04:26
Speaker 2: member take the chair, or maybe we will forcibly remove
2:04:30
Speaker 2: the clerk from the floor. And Abraham Lincoln apparently considered
2:04:33
Speaker 2: that seriously and said, he said, Let him be carried
2:04:37
Speaker 2: out on a chip if he undertakes revolutionary proceedings.
2:04:39
Speaker 3: And he said he'd have troops ready.
2:04:41
Speaker 2: So, I mean, on the one hand, reassuring teaches you
2:04:44
Speaker 2: that you do need people in lockstep. Things tend to
2:04:47
Speaker 2: be disorganized. There also tends to be deals made. So
2:04:50
Speaker 2: someone you might have thought was going to vote with
2:04:52
Speaker 2: you might get promised something.
2:04:53
Speaker 3: It doesn't work out. On the other hand... There's no
2:04:57
Speaker 3: answer to what happens if the deals don't get made.
2:04:59
Speaker 2: What happens if the coup is coming close to success?
2:05:03
Speaker 2: Would anybody try to take more dramatic action? Will you
2:05:07
Speaker 2: end up with dueling legislatures, you know, one across the street?
2:05:10
Speaker 2: That's happened in states in history, but obviously it hasn't happened.
2:05:13
Speaker 3: In Congress yet.
2:05:14
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. All of these little anecdotes, Molly,
2:05:18
Speaker 1: are both reassuring on some level, but also a reminder
2:05:22
Speaker 1: that Most of the things that we take pride in
2:05:25
Speaker 1: as America that makes us quote unquote different are all
2:05:28
Speaker 1: kind of 5248 decisions. You know, there's a lot of
2:05:32
Speaker 1: like a lot of norms and customs that we've embedded in.
2:05:36
Speaker 1: Thanks to 5248 advantages. Not these are never 80 20 advantages.
2:05:43
Speaker 2: No. And I don't know how that makes you feel
2:05:45
Speaker 2: about democracy.
2:05:45
Speaker 3: Does it make you feel good or bad?
2:05:47
Speaker 2: Right.
2:05:47
Speaker 1: I mean, the majority. It's the worst form of government,
2:05:50
Speaker 1: except for all the others.
2:05:52
Speaker 2: Right.
2:05:52
Speaker 1: Like, isn't that why?
2:05:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:05:54
Speaker 1: Isn't that why that cliche is a cliche in the
2:05:56
Speaker 1: first place? Because you do you sit there and go, huh?
2:06:00
Speaker 1: The tyranny of the majority could always rear its head here,
2:06:03
Speaker 1: can it? You know, which is always a scary part
2:06:08
Speaker 1: of democracy. Molly, this was I'm so glad. You wrote
2:06:13
Speaker 1: this piece, and I'm so glad you did the history.
2:06:16
Speaker 1: What do you tell your friends and family when they
2:06:18
Speaker 1: ask you, are the midterms going to be rigged? What
2:06:23
Speaker 1: say you now?
2:06:29
Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh. I'm pausing for so long because it's
2:06:32
Speaker 3: a conversation.
2:06:32
Speaker 2: I argue with my husband like every night over because
2:06:35
Speaker 2: he's an absolute doomer and he thinks that everything is
2:06:38
Speaker 2: going to be terrible.
2:06:39
Speaker 3: I think it is very, very.
2:06:41
Speaker 1: Very darkest before it goes completely black. That was the
2:06:43
Speaker 1: old John McCain mouth that he used to.
2:06:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's terribly reassuring.
2:06:48
Speaker 2: I think it's really, really hard to steal an election.
2:06:51
Speaker 2: And so I'm not going to say that there isn't
2:06:53
Speaker 2: going to be malfeasance attempted in various points, but I
2:06:57
Speaker 2: think that the combination of a federalist system and the.
2:07:04
Speaker 1: Likelihood- Our layers, I mean, this is a reminder why
2:07:08
Speaker 1: you don't ever want to federalize our elections, isn't it?
2:07:11
Speaker 1: That in some ways, the cold comfort I think you
2:07:14
Speaker 1: and I are taking from this, and it's cold comfort,
2:07:16
Speaker 1: is simply- You have to rig too many apparatuses. And
2:07:23
Speaker 1: if you centralized everything, well, then you wouldn't have to
2:07:25
Speaker 1: rig multiple apparatuses. You'd only have to rig one.
2:07:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, too big to rig. Invoke it in another way.
2:07:32
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think I would say too big to rig.
2:07:33
Speaker 3: And I think I would also say that I.
2:07:37
Speaker 2: I don't want to concede the point that there is
2:07:42
Speaker 2: one weird trick to stealing democracy. I think it's better
2:07:45
Speaker 2: to be in the position of that can't happen and
2:07:49
Speaker 2: to take that stance both rhetorically and legally.
2:07:54
Speaker 1: Look, the fact is you can't sort of pervert our
2:07:58
Speaker 1: system unless you get a majority to go along with it.
2:08:00
Speaker 1: And then we would ask the question, is the system
2:08:02
Speaker 1: perverted or did democracy work?
2:08:06
Speaker 3: Again, I don't know whether that makes me feel better.
2:08:08
Speaker 1: I know, exactly. You know, as Mo Udall once said,
2:08:11
Speaker 1: the voters have spoken, the bastards. So, you know, you
2:08:14
Speaker 1: never know. Hey, Molly, this was terrific. I appreciate the time.
2:08:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
2:08:19
Speaker 1: Before I let you go, plug Lawfare. I just, I
2:08:22
Speaker 1: love what you guys do. It is, you know, you
2:08:25
Speaker 1: don't do it for free, but because none of this
2:08:29
Speaker 1: work can be done for free, but let people know
2:08:32
Speaker 1: where to find your work.
2:08:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find my work and my colleagues' great
2:08:36
Speaker 2: work about elections, the litigation going on with the Trump administration,
2:08:42
Speaker 2: good old-fashioned national security issues.
2:08:45
Speaker 1: Like surveillance issues. I'm obsessed with privacy, you guys, and
2:08:48
Speaker 1: we have none of it anymore. And in many ways,
2:08:51
Speaker 1: you guys do a lot of that coverage as well.
2:08:53
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
2:08:54
Speaker 2: And it is all at lawfaremedia.org, and there is no
2:08:57
Speaker 2: paywall on anything.
2:08:59
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, there you go. Molly, thanks a lot.
2:09:02
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
2:09:08
Speaker 2: Ask Chuck.
2:09:13
Speaker 1: Well, Joanne from Minnesota's 6th Congressional District chimes in. Used
2:09:17
Speaker 1: to be a swing district for a long time. And
2:09:20
Speaker 1: she writes, hey, thanks for including interviews that take us
2:09:24
Speaker 1: outside politics once in a while. It's nice hearing about
2:09:27
Speaker 1: your other interests, too. I grew up playing cello and clarinet.
2:09:30
Speaker 1: And your conversation about experiencing classical music live reminded me
2:09:34
Speaker 1: how powerful classical certain venues and performances can be. So
2:09:39
Speaker 1: I guess I do have a question. Where have you
2:09:41
Speaker 1: heard a performance or personally performed that left a lasting
2:09:45
Speaker 1: impression on you?
2:09:46
Speaker 2: Wow.
2:09:47
Speaker 1: That is, that is interesting. So I will give you
2:09:58
Speaker 1: two and it is, it, And I hesitate because it's, look,
2:10:11
Speaker 1: it's one of those velvet rope moments, right? That you're like, okay,
2:10:14
Speaker 1: I've got allowed behind the velvet rope. So, and in fact, one,
2:10:19
Speaker 1: it dovetails with 9-11. After 9-11, the Arab American Institute
2:10:28
Speaker 1: had a bunch of friends that were involved in there.
2:10:29
Speaker 1: And after 9-11, you know, they, they, they were, concerned,
2:10:36
Speaker 1: I think, about how people would perceive Arab Americans. And
2:10:41
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, I thought it was pretty important
2:10:47
Speaker 1: for people from a wide variety of backgrounds, you know,
2:10:52
Speaker 1: show up and be there for a big dinner, the
2:10:56
Speaker 1: Arab American Institute. And my good friends, Jim and Joe Zogby,
2:11:02
Speaker 1: I worked with Joe Zogby at the hotline back in
2:11:04
Speaker 1: the day. Um, and we've always, and, and he invited
2:11:08
Speaker 1: me to their dinner and my wife and I went and, uh,
2:11:12
Speaker 1: we didn't know this. And all of a sudden we
2:11:14
Speaker 1: got a, uh, uh, a impromptu concert by Sting. And
2:11:21
Speaker 1: it was just sort of, all of a sudden it
2:11:24
Speaker 1: was like, and here's a, it thought it was going
2:11:26
Speaker 1: to be a video of Sting. And all of a
2:11:27
Speaker 1: sudden you look over and there's Sting at a keyboard
2:11:29
Speaker 1: and he just starts giving it, uh, you know, played
2:11:33
Speaker 1: a few songs, um, And it was just, it was,
2:11:37
Speaker 1: you were just mesmerized. And, you know, this was, you're
2:11:42
Speaker 1: in a room with a community that feels, that had
2:11:45
Speaker 1: felt marginalized in that moment. And it was just, it
2:11:49
Speaker 1: was a very, just the whole, the whole thing was uplifting.
2:11:53
Speaker 1: The whole thing was, it was just a powerful moment,
2:11:57
Speaker 1: you know, and my wife and I had just started,
2:12:00
Speaker 1: we were, she, I think I've shared this with you.
2:12:02
Speaker 1: We hadn't been dating that long. And then 9-11 happens
2:12:06
Speaker 1: and she lives on Capitol Hill. And I was like,
2:12:08
Speaker 1: you got to just stay with me. I lived in
2:12:10
Speaker 1: the suburbs. I don't want you near Capitol Hill because we, again,
2:12:14
Speaker 1: that was the mindset that, you know, you knew what
2:12:17
Speaker 1: the targets would be for terrorists. So I brought her
2:12:22
Speaker 1: to that. I don't know that that's what cemented us
2:12:27
Speaker 1: getting married. But, you know, the fact that hanging with
2:12:30
Speaker 1: me got her an impromptu concert, we were like literally
2:12:34
Speaker 1: within like 10 feet of sting. And it was, it
2:12:36
Speaker 1: was just, it was just a, it's one of those
2:12:39
Speaker 1: where it's like, that was powerful. Cause it just, you
2:12:42
Speaker 1: didn't expect it. You didn't expect it to happen. And
2:12:46
Speaker 1: then one other one for me was, um, at GW.
2:12:49
Speaker 1: I was, I think I've shared with you, I was
2:12:50
Speaker 1: a double music major for, for a brief period of time.
2:12:53
Speaker 1: And I still kept up my French horn. And I,
2:12:55
Speaker 1: and at the time in my professor, my, my French
2:12:58
Speaker 1: horn teacher in college was one of the French horn
2:13:01
Speaker 1: players in the national symphony. And they were hosting one summer,
2:13:06
Speaker 1: basically the most famous French horn player alive at the time,
2:13:09
Speaker 1: a guy named Barry Tuckwell. And if you're a French
2:13:11
Speaker 1: horn player, you know who it is. But he was basically,
2:13:14
Speaker 1: you know, he had, there's always like one guy that
2:13:18
Speaker 1: owns the instrument and meaning like that sort of all
2:13:22
Speaker 1: the best solos that is associated with said instrument. is
2:13:29
Speaker 1: by that, you know, their recording is that person. And,
2:13:31
Speaker 1: you know, I think I owned every Barry Tuckwell for him.
2:13:34
Speaker 1: There was a gentleman named Dennis brain who died tragically
2:13:37
Speaker 1: in a car accident, but he was at a time
2:13:39
Speaker 1: considered the greatest French horn player in the world. And
2:13:41
Speaker 1: Barry Tuckwell had owned that mantle. And again, this is a,
2:13:44
Speaker 1: you know, if you live in this world, you know
2:13:46
Speaker 1: exactly who it is. And, uh, it was pretty cool
2:13:49
Speaker 1: to meet him and hang out with him backstage. Um,
2:13:53
Speaker 1: it was just, it, you know, again, it's, it's when
2:13:55
Speaker 1: it's your thing. Um, so. Thanks for the question and
2:13:59
Speaker 1: letting me geek out a little bit on Sting and
2:14:01
Speaker 1: Barry Tuckwell. Next question, I love this, comes from Eric
2:14:06
Speaker 1: from Seattle-ish, First Congressional District. I know what you mean
2:14:09
Speaker 1: by that. It's Seattle adjacent. Your recent Time Machine episode
2:14:13
Speaker 1: on Ford's pardon of Nixon got me thinking about the
2:14:15
Speaker 1: opposite scenario. Politicians who made deeply unpopular decisions in the
2:14:19
Speaker 1: short term that ultimately benefited the country. George H.W. Bush
2:14:23
Speaker 1: breaking the no new taxes pledge comes to mind. But
2:14:25
Speaker 1: what other examples would make your top five and why
2:14:28
Speaker 1: is that kind of leadership so rarely rewarded today? P.S.
2:14:31
Speaker 1: If Western Michigan was on offense, I doubt the officials
2:14:35
Speaker 1: would have found that extra fraction of a second. You
2:14:38
Speaker 1: are so right. Yeah. With the replay, officials worked diligently. Hey,
2:14:41
Speaker 1: there's six tenths of one second left here if we
2:14:44
Speaker 1: were showing here. And we've got to put a second
2:14:46
Speaker 1: on the clock. So that's a good one. No new
2:14:52
Speaker 1: taxes on that. I'm just trying to think of. So
2:14:55
Speaker 1: there are you could there's a woman named Marjorie Margolis-Mesvinsky.
2:15:00
Speaker 1: We just at the hotline shortened her to Triple M.
2:15:04
Speaker 1: She was a congresswoman in a swing district in Pennsylvania,
2:15:07
Speaker 1: and she cast famously cast the deciding vote on Clinton's
2:15:11
Speaker 1: economic plan. That turned out like six years later to
2:15:15
Speaker 1: be seen as sort of the cornerstone of what got
2:15:20
Speaker 1: us to a balanced budget for a brief period of time.
2:15:23
Speaker 1: And what was an unpopular– and at the time, the
2:15:26
Speaker 1: Clinton economic plan in 93 was very much seen as
2:15:30
Speaker 1: a mixed bag. And basically, she knew she was going
2:15:35
Speaker 1: to lose reelection because it wasn't coming. And it turned
2:15:40
Speaker 1: out to be a really good piece of legislation, and
2:15:44
Speaker 1: it turned out to be the right piece of legislation.
2:15:47
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I want to almost spend more time on that.
2:15:52
Speaker 1: Because I think that those are– I think there are
2:15:57
Speaker 1: more instances that I'm thinking of. They're more likely to
2:16:02
Speaker 1: be on the– I think at the gubernatorial level than
2:16:07
Speaker 1: they are necessarily on the presidential level. I mean, you
2:16:14
Speaker 1: could argue that going into World War I was unpopular, right?
2:16:18
Speaker 1: And it was probably the right thing to do with Wilson. stuff.
2:16:21
Speaker 1: But then again, some of those presidential level decisions, I
2:16:26
Speaker 1: think we didn't have polling like we do today, essentially
2:16:31
Speaker 1: before World War II. So I think we all assume
2:16:35
Speaker 1: that there were more, it was easier to make a
2:16:39
Speaker 1: decision that you knew would benefit folks 10 years, 10
2:16:42
Speaker 1: to 20 years in advance, rather than in the moment.
2:16:46
Speaker 1: I think now it's harder than ever To go down
2:16:50
Speaker 1: that road. So I want to sit with this. I
2:17:02
Speaker 1: want to come up with some better answers than that.
2:17:04
Speaker 1: The no new taxes, and like I said, the one
2:17:07
Speaker 1: I connected would be the triple M. I guess you
2:17:09
Speaker 1: could say those that lost due to Obamacare might feel
2:17:16
Speaker 1: semi-vindicated a little bit. but you're right. You know, the,
2:17:24
Speaker 1: the thing that, but this is what we do, right? We,
2:17:27
Speaker 1: we remember the negative. We don't always remember some of
2:17:32
Speaker 1: those positives. And in fact, you know, history can be
2:17:34
Speaker 1: kind to certain people even if they weren't kind in
2:17:40
Speaker 1: the moment.
2:17:41
Speaker 2: Right.
2:17:43
Speaker 1: So that's a, I need a better one, and I
2:17:48
Speaker 1: owe you a top. five on that. I like that
2:17:51
Speaker 1: and I'm going to work on that as a top five.
2:17:53
Speaker 1: That's my pledge to you, Eric. I'm writing it down
2:17:55
Speaker 1: so I don't forget. Top five unpopular good decisions, I guess,
2:18:00
Speaker 1: is the way to do it. All right, next question.
2:18:08
Speaker 1: It comes from, first time emailer here, but I couldn't
2:18:10
Speaker 1: resist after hearing Senator John Kennedy tell Kristen Welker, I
2:18:13
Speaker 1: like you better than Chuck Todd on Sunday. Love to
2:18:16
Speaker 1: hear your reaction to that one. Hey, you know, I
2:18:19
Speaker 1: get it. You know, this is just a politician trying
2:18:23
Speaker 1: to butter up Kristen. This happened to me when I
2:18:27
Speaker 1: was at Meet the Press. Oh, I like you better
2:18:29
Speaker 1: than the previous person. I like you better than... Please.
2:18:33
Speaker 1: You know how.
2:18:35
Speaker 1: Kennedy, listen, you know how you know a politician is
2:18:37
Speaker 1: full of shit? They're talking. So I would sort of
2:18:41
Speaker 1: put it, I would put it there. But more importantly,
2:18:44
Speaker 1: you're right. Who needs to sell their MLB team first?
2:18:47
Speaker 1: The Lerner family with the Nationals or the Poland family
2:18:49
Speaker 1: with the Twins? As a Twins fan, I can make
2:18:52
Speaker 1: a strong case for the Polads. But maybe this is
2:18:57
Speaker 1: really part of a larger problem when so many ML
2:18:59
Speaker 1: teams seem stuck in the same cycle. Ethan in Minnesota 5. Well, look,
2:19:04
Speaker 1: I do think right now the biggest disparity with the
2:19:07
Speaker 1: sports ownership is family, sort of the second, third, fourth
2:19:11
Speaker 1: generation owners versus the new money owners, right? You know,
2:19:17
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the super rich guy owners who
2:19:21
Speaker 1: came in with maybe a little private equity help, maybe
2:19:23
Speaker 1: with a whole band of investors, you know, like the
2:19:26
Speaker 1: people behind the Warriors or the Mark Walter and that
2:19:30
Speaker 1: crew behind the Dodgers or even– what we've seen with
2:19:36
Speaker 1: the guy who just bought the Angels. I'm blanking on
2:19:42
Speaker 1: that name. He owns the Avalanche, the Nuggets. I think
2:19:44
Speaker 1: he owns more sports franchises than anybody else. Stan Kroenke,
2:19:51
Speaker 1: as my producer just chimed in in my ear. Thank you, Lauren,
2:19:54
Speaker 1: on that front. But I just think that that's, look,
2:19:59
Speaker 1: I think when you look at When you look at
2:20:01
Speaker 1: the teams and the fan bases that are frustrated, a
2:20:04
Speaker 1: lot of times it's because the ownership group still is
2:20:11
Speaker 1: relying on the team for income. Whether that's fair or not,
2:20:16
Speaker 1: or they're more concerned about the income that's coming in
2:20:21
Speaker 1: for themselves rather than the longer-term investment. So You know,
2:20:28
Speaker 1: I don't know, right? You know, I guess the Twins
2:20:32
Speaker 1: have been languishing here for a long time. And I
2:20:36
Speaker 1: have a friend of mine who worked as a scout
2:20:38
Speaker 1: for the Twins, and I think he could express his
2:20:42
Speaker 1: own level of frustration of how that operation worked. And
2:20:46
Speaker 1: you hear, so you're not wrong. I do think the
2:20:49
Speaker 1: Nationals seem to have at least improved some of their
2:20:54
Speaker 1: spending in the minor league level, some of their spending
2:20:57
Speaker 1: on technology, but I think both the Twins and the
2:20:59
Speaker 1: Nationals were seen as sort of on the lower end
2:21:02
Speaker 1: of the modernization process of whether it's scouting, analytics, et cetera.
2:21:08
Speaker 1: But I think that, like I said, I think the
2:21:09
Speaker 1: larger problem, and it's not just baseball, but look at football, right? Like,
2:21:15
Speaker 1: you know, ask a Bears fan what it's like dealing
2:21:17
Speaker 1: with the third generation of Hallis kids in charge of
2:21:20
Speaker 1: this thing, right? Now, look, it was third generation of
2:21:24
Speaker 1: the Ford family that finally got us, got decent ownership
2:21:27
Speaker 1: for the lion. So, you know, maybe eventually it, it,
2:21:31
Speaker 1: it can trickle down to, to better ownership. But I
2:21:35
Speaker 1: do think the family ownership mindset, like we are, you know,
2:21:42
Speaker 1: where you're running the team, like you're running a country store,
2:21:46
Speaker 1: which is, which is, I think is the distinction. Now,
2:21:50
Speaker 1: do I wish, Everybody did it as the country store.
2:21:54
Speaker 1: Maybe I do, but that ain't the world we live in, right?
2:21:56
Speaker 1: I just got done ranting about we got to stop
2:21:58
Speaker 1: hoping for a return the way things used to be.
2:22:02
Speaker 1: And instead, it's time to keep up with the Joneses.
2:22:05
Speaker 1: And you can't run a competitive franchise if you don't
2:22:08
Speaker 1: have more investors, more access to cash, and spending more
2:22:12
Speaker 1: money on helping your players be better at their profession.
2:22:19
Speaker 2: Anyway.
2:22:21
Speaker 1: Let's see here. Next question comes from Doug S. in
2:22:23
Speaker 1: Ohio's 11th, Shaker Heights. You and others have convinced me
2:22:28
Speaker 1: that one of the biggest concerns with this administration is
2:22:32
Speaker 1: what's happening in the military under Pete Hegseth. I know
2:22:34
Speaker 1: Trump's strategy often floods the zone with news, but is
2:22:37
Speaker 1: there more Democrats could do to keep sustained attention on
2:22:40
Speaker 1: a single issue, coordinating governors, members of Congress and former
2:22:43
Speaker 1: military officials around one consistent message, the lack of concerted
2:22:47
Speaker 1: strategy to counter what's happening in the military? is a
2:22:49
Speaker 1: major source of frustration for voters like me, Doug S.,
2:22:51
Speaker 1: in Ohio. Look, I think, where are my earrings, right?
2:22:56
Speaker 1: I think I called it, there are a slew of
2:22:58
Speaker 1: people that Hegseth is forced into retirement or straight up fired.
2:23:04
Speaker 1: Each one of those folks should be subpoenaed to testify
2:23:08
Speaker 1: in front of Congress, right? That's what it's done. But this, obviously,
2:23:13
Speaker 1: when the legislative branch is run under a philosophy that
2:23:17
Speaker 1: if the party imp, in the White House, is the
2:23:21
Speaker 1: same party in charge of Congress, don't do any oversight, well,
2:23:26
Speaker 1: then you're going to get the situation that we have.
2:23:32
Speaker 1: Do I think that Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate
2:23:40
Speaker 1: Armed Services, is alarmed by all this?
2:23:42
Speaker 2: I do.
2:23:43
Speaker 1: Is he hesitant about issuing joint subpoenas with Jack Reed
2:23:48
Speaker 1: and others who are equally concerned, if not more so.
2:23:51
Speaker 1: He is, right? The politics of oversight of this Pentagon
2:23:55
Speaker 1: is apparently, for many Republicans, too much of a hurdle
2:24:00
Speaker 1: to clear. So you're asking for a concerted, like, look,
2:24:05
Speaker 1: I think this is a five-alarm fire. And the only
2:24:11
Speaker 1: way to sort of galvanize the public on this is, again,
2:24:15
Speaker 1: it goes back to my AI. So like, If Congress
2:24:18
Speaker 1: could just bring these people, we need to know what
2:24:21
Speaker 1: the hell is going on into that five-sided building. And
2:24:27
Speaker 1: we don't have enough insight there, right? He has intentionally
2:24:32
Speaker 1: pushed all media out, including his friendly media, that really
2:24:35
Speaker 1: allowed that much access in there, right? They do not
2:24:39
Speaker 1: want to see what they're doing. And if this is,
2:24:43
Speaker 1: you know, Congress is the one that funds that thing.
2:24:47
Speaker 1: They need to demand more. Look, this is a massive failure.
2:24:51
Speaker 1: This war, the fact that we have a munitions problem
2:24:54
Speaker 1: is a massive failure of the entire military industrial complex.
2:24:59
Speaker 1: That alone should be cause for bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill.
2:25:06
Speaker 1: But you're asking what can they do? Subpoena every single
2:25:12
Speaker 1: one of these generals. Get them under oath. What the
2:25:15
Speaker 1: hell is happening? What the hell is going on? Why
2:25:18
Speaker 1: were you forced into retirement? Most of them are not
2:25:21
Speaker 1: going to talk on their own. They don't want to
2:25:23
Speaker 1: be political figures. And I understand that. Congress's job is
2:25:27
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of this shit. And they
2:25:29
Speaker 1: have the subpoena power to do it. You just have
2:25:34
Speaker 1: to have the political will to do it. Right now,
2:25:36
Speaker 1: the Republican Party doesn't have the political will to hold
2:25:39
Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth accountable. I'm sorry it's going to end up
2:25:42
Speaker 1: looking more partisan because if Democrats get in charge, they're
2:25:45
Speaker 1: going to do this. But it's necessary. And if you
2:25:48
Speaker 1: care about the military, I don't care what your politics are.
2:25:51
Speaker 1: If you care about the military, you should want this oversight.
2:25:55
Speaker 1: We don't know what this guy is doing. And what
2:25:59
Speaker 1: we do know is alarming. Hello from Missouri's 4th or
2:26:08
Speaker 1: maybe the 5th District. The news Tuesday has me confused
2:26:12
Speaker 1: about what comes next for my community. I live in
2:26:14
Speaker 1: a part of Kansas City that has been fairly loyal
2:26:17
Speaker 1: to Emanuel Cleaver. And when the new map was released,
2:26:19
Speaker 1: I felt like my vote was being taken out from
2:26:21
Speaker 1: under me. After the Supreme Court declined to hear the case,
2:26:24
Speaker 1: is there still any path for the question of which
2:26:26
Speaker 1: map will be used to come back before the court?
2:26:29
Speaker 1: Love the show. Thank you for all you do, Andrew. Well,
2:26:32
Speaker 1: I hope you got here's what I think is going
2:26:35
Speaker 1: to happen. And I think the remedy is right there.
2:26:39
Speaker 1: We've used it before, but it's going to take, I
2:26:42
Speaker 1: think the circuit, when this goes to the, is it
2:26:46
Speaker 1: the eighth circuit, I believe? When this goes to the
2:26:48
Speaker 1: eighth circuit, the remedy is, to me, it's obvious, which is,
2:26:52
Speaker 1: and a federal judge can do this. There's precedent for it.
2:26:54
Speaker 1: It was done in Texas. Six congressional districts were completely
2:27:01
Speaker 1: changed by this map. Two were not touched. So two,
2:27:04
Speaker 1: you could still use those nominees and just have a
2:27:08
Speaker 1: regular general election for those two congressional districts. But for
2:27:11
Speaker 1: the other six, you've got to basically have a new party,
2:27:14
Speaker 1: new primary, new filing deadline, open it up. There has
2:27:16
Speaker 1: to be new. And then, because I think it's going
2:27:18
Speaker 1: to be done under the... I mean, there is no
2:27:21
Speaker 1: legal alternative map. That's what the state Supreme Court has said.
2:27:25
Speaker 1: So that it is... You can't use that one map until...
2:27:32
Speaker 1: After you've had this referendum and you see what happens
2:27:35
Speaker 1: going into the next cycle. But in order to have legal.
2:27:40
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a legal set of congressional elections
2:27:43
Speaker 1: and congressional districts, you're going to have to have this
2:27:46
Speaker 1: sort of weird remedy that they did in Texas in
2:27:48
Speaker 1: 96 when they had unconstitutional districts. The districts that were
2:27:51
Speaker 1: affected held all party primaries in November during the regular
2:27:55
Speaker 1: general election. And then the top two met in a
2:27:57
Speaker 1: runoff if nobody got 50%. So it's sort of a
2:28:00
Speaker 1: hybrid of the old top two system that Louisiana kind
2:28:04
Speaker 1: of uses but decided not to use it for one
2:28:06
Speaker 1: instance with Bill Cassidy in order to punish Bill Cassidy
2:28:10
Speaker 1: for voting to convict Donald Trump during that impeachment. But
2:28:13
Speaker 1: the Louisiana system is essentially this, where the November election
2:28:18
Speaker 1: was the primary. At least they used to run it
2:28:20
Speaker 1: this way. And then if you needed a runoff, you
2:28:22
Speaker 1: held it in December. We had a famous Senate runoff–
2:28:26
Speaker 1: with David Vitter and Mary Landrieu back in the day,
2:28:29
Speaker 1: where nobody got 50 in November and they had to
2:28:33
Speaker 1: top two meet. Not quite how Georgia does it, but
2:28:36
Speaker 1: it's a similar exercise, if you will. I think that's
2:28:41
Speaker 1: the only way to abide by the state constitution here
2:28:46
Speaker 1: and abide by the federal statutes as well. So I
2:28:51
Speaker 1: think that's the obvious remedy. But when you have an
2:28:56
Speaker 1: absolute buffoon as Secretary of State, and I'm sorry, when
2:29:00
Speaker 1: you intentionally try to ignore the law, ignore what the
2:29:07
Speaker 1: referendum petitioners were going to do because you thought you
2:29:10
Speaker 1: could just jam the courts. I'm sorry. Get out of
2:29:14
Speaker 1: public service. I am just so personally offended by this.
2:29:16
Speaker 1: This is so anti-democracy and anti-voter. And I just, you know,
2:29:21
Speaker 1: I hope. Some of my Missouri Republican friends are just
2:29:26
Speaker 1: ashamed by the behavior of the secretary of state. It's
2:29:30
Speaker 1: not that he's a partisan. It's that he doesn't believe
2:29:32
Speaker 1: in the democracy. He doesn't want to follow that. If
2:29:34
Speaker 1: you don't want to follow the Constitution, get out of
2:29:36
Speaker 1: public service. Like that is the one thing you swore
2:29:40
Speaker 1: to do when you when you took the oath. And
2:29:42
Speaker 1: in Missouri, you take the oath to abide by both
2:29:45
Speaker 1: the U.S. Constitution and the Missouri Constitution. All right, let's
2:29:58
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about college football this weekend. Obviously,
2:30:01
Speaker 1: my team, they've got a Thursday. We went from a
2:30:04
Speaker 1: Friday game to a Thursday game. Poor Florida A & M.
2:30:07
Speaker 1: They actually played at Hard Rock last weekend. They lost.
2:30:16
Speaker 1: It was more competitive than the experts thought it would be,
2:30:18
Speaker 1: but they lost to Prairie View. And now I have
2:30:21
Speaker 1: to turn around and play Miami on the same field.
2:30:24
Speaker 1: So they're familiar with the field on this one. But look,
2:30:29
Speaker 1: the best part of playing Florida A & M and
2:30:32
Speaker 1: I've learned that Miami's Florida A & M has always
2:30:35
Speaker 1: been one of the early, you know, a regular scheduled
2:30:40
Speaker 1: team that, you know, you'd sort of, you think is
2:30:43
Speaker 1: going to be a quote unquote easy win. But the
2:30:46
Speaker 1: other reason to invite Florida A & M to play,
2:30:49
Speaker 1: to pay them to come to your stadium to play
2:30:51
Speaker 1: them in one of these games, is they bring their
2:30:53
Speaker 1: band and they just steal the halftime show and they
2:30:56
Speaker 1: provide an incredible halftime show. The Miami Florida A &
2:30:59
Speaker 1: M games are the few games that I've attended where
2:31:03
Speaker 1: people don't get up at halftime to go get something
2:31:07
Speaker 1: to eat. They want to stick around. So I shouldn't
2:31:12
Speaker 1: be sweating Miami this weekend. Look, the game of the weekend, Obviously,
2:31:18
Speaker 1: it's Texas-Ohio State. And in some ways, though, because of
2:31:21
Speaker 1: the college football playoff, barring a blowout from either side,
2:31:26
Speaker 1: it's kind of a– other than, I guess, bragging rights, right?
2:31:30
Speaker 1: If Ohio State can win on the road, that says something. Obviously,
2:31:33
Speaker 1: there's more pressure on Arch Manning and Texas to win
2:31:35
Speaker 1: this thing and Sark. It is one of those things that,
2:31:38
Speaker 1: fair or unfair, if somehow Texas loses this game and–
2:31:43
Speaker 1: they go nine and three again, and whether they make
2:31:45
Speaker 1: the playoff or not, you're going to start to hear
2:31:48
Speaker 1: cranky Texas fans about Sark. Like, how come you can't
2:31:51
Speaker 1: win more of these games? You know, somehow Georgia avoids
2:31:54
Speaker 1: nine and three. Why can't you avoid nine and three, right?
2:31:57
Speaker 1: You know, is it fair? No, please. College football and
2:32:01
Speaker 1: politics are the same. And they're never fair. But that's
2:32:05
Speaker 1: the game. The other game that I'm obsessed with is Oklahoma-Michigan.
2:32:11
Speaker 1: And it's not because we want to find out My
2:32:14
Speaker 1: favorite meme from that is that, you know, when you
2:32:16
Speaker 1: enter the state of Michigan, you know, you have to
2:32:19
Speaker 1: set your clutch back one second. I think that was
2:32:21
Speaker 1: my favorite of all the different various memes that were
2:32:24
Speaker 1: out there. But I'm intrigued by the Oklahoma-Michigan game because
2:32:27
Speaker 1: I think Oklahoma is the best team in the SEC.
2:32:31
Speaker 1: I think they're the most complete team. I think if
2:32:34
Speaker 1: Mateer stays healthy. That defense is unbelievable. I will just
2:32:38
Speaker 1: tell you this. I look at who I think is
2:32:43
Speaker 1: standing in the way of Miami winning this national title.
2:32:46
Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous about the defense, a little nervous
2:32:51
Speaker 1: about the run blocking, but I think all of that comes.
2:32:53
Speaker 1: It's a very young offensive line, and I think they
2:32:55
Speaker 1: will get a lot better as the season went on.
2:32:57
Speaker 1: It's one thing I have enormous confidence in with Coach
2:33:00
Speaker 1: Cristobal is always having a very good offensive line. And
2:33:04
Speaker 1: coming up with ways to repair if an offensive line,
2:33:07
Speaker 1: if one thing isn't working right and all this stuff.
2:33:09
Speaker 1: And Mensah is just, my gosh, you know, it's a revelation.
2:33:14
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm trying to think of, I might have
2:33:18
Speaker 1: to go all the way back to Bernie and Vinny,
2:33:21
Speaker 1: where you just, you had such confidence that your quarterback
2:33:24
Speaker 1: was always going to make the right call. And look,
2:33:28
Speaker 1: it's one game and, you know, I'm prepared for anything,
2:33:32
Speaker 1: but This is something special. Look, Ken Dorsey was a
2:33:35
Speaker 1: great quarterback. This guy's special. Mensah's on another level. I
2:33:39
Speaker 1: think Carson Beck was, I believe that Carson Beck wasn't 100%,
2:33:44
Speaker 1: that his arm strength, you could see it. Look, I
2:33:47
Speaker 1: could see it. And any Miami fan will tell you this.
2:33:49
Speaker 1: It was clear that they were still protecting Carson Beck
2:33:53
Speaker 1: throughout the early part of the season last year. Trust me,
2:33:57
Speaker 1: if we'd played Notre Dame again, we'd have beat them again,
2:33:59
Speaker 1: but we'd have beat them in a different way. We'd
2:34:00
Speaker 1: have been able to go down the field. But we
2:34:02
Speaker 1: sort of beat him up physically in that game because
2:34:07
Speaker 1: we were a little nervous about Beck's arm strength. And
2:34:10
Speaker 1: he had that weird, remember, he basically had a Tommy
2:34:12
Speaker 1: John surgery. And you don't hear about Tommy Johns for
2:34:16
Speaker 1: quarterbacks very often. We obviously know about it. But it
2:34:18
Speaker 1: was in his elbow. And I remember seeing an interview
2:34:21
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, you know, he goes, it feels
2:34:24
Speaker 1: different is what he said. He goes, I can make
2:34:26
Speaker 1: all the throws, but it feels different. Well, that was
2:34:29
Speaker 1: like a yellow flag for me. And look, we got
2:34:33
Speaker 1: through the season, but by the time the playoffs started,
2:34:35
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Carson Beck was throwing darts. And
2:34:39
Speaker 1: it was, guess what? Remember, he got hurt in an
2:34:42
Speaker 1: early December game. You know, all of us have this.
2:34:49
Speaker 1: We think that, oh, when somebody tells you it takes, yeah,
2:34:53
Speaker 1: eight months to a year to rehab. Every athlete thinks
2:34:56
Speaker 1: I can do it in six months, right? Or I
2:34:58
Speaker 1: can do it, whatever it is, they think they could
2:35:00
Speaker 1: do it sooner. There's a reason doctors give you this
2:35:03
Speaker 1: range because it's always falls within this range, right? And
2:35:06
Speaker 1: guess what? Tommy John takes a year. And so while
2:35:10
Speaker 1: he could technically do everything, it's not shocking to me
2:35:15
Speaker 1: that literally the SEC championship game takes place in early December.
2:35:19
Speaker 1: By the time we get to the one year mark,
2:35:21
Speaker 1: we're now in the playoff. And suddenly Carson Beck's arm
2:35:24
Speaker 1: strength is 100%. And now you look at him in
2:35:27
Speaker 1: those early preseason games. And so, you know, I now
2:35:31
Speaker 1: look back at Miami's 10-2 season and we were doing
2:35:33
Speaker 1: it with a quarterback that wasn't confident in his arm
2:35:35
Speaker 1: until we got to the playoff. And by the way,
2:35:37
Speaker 1: once we got to the playoff with a confident quarterback,
2:35:41
Speaker 1: we were one of the two best teams in the country.
2:35:44
Speaker 1: We were basically one blocking mistake away from winning that game.
2:35:50
Speaker 1: It's the block punt, for those of you that are
2:35:51
Speaker 1: wondering what I'm referring to. But just the whiff, and
2:35:57
Speaker 1: it happens to anybody, right? Anybody can have a bad moment, right?
2:36:00
Speaker 1: I can have a bad moment right here and forget
2:36:02
Speaker 1: the next word I'm going to say, and suddenly somebody
2:36:05
Speaker 1: can miss a block that you think, how the hell
2:36:06
Speaker 1: did you miss that block? That was the difference in
2:36:10
Speaker 1: the game. Pure and simple. One mistake. That's how good
2:36:13
Speaker 1: Indiana was. You couldn't make that many mistakes and hope
2:36:17
Speaker 1: to beat them on that. That was my long way
2:36:23
Speaker 1: of saying, I see Oklahoma as a hurdle for Miami.
2:36:29
Speaker 1: I think they're the most complete team if Mateer is
2:36:33
Speaker 1: healthy because of just how good that defense is. And
2:36:36
Speaker 1: the more you see the downfall of Clemson, the more
2:36:38
Speaker 1: you realize Brent Venables is clearly the guy that kept
2:36:44
Speaker 1: Clemson afloat. Because you can look at the trajectory of
2:36:48
Speaker 1: Clemson's program when Venables was there and when Venables left.
2:36:54
Speaker 1: And I used to make fun of Herb Street all
2:36:56
Speaker 1: the time because it was every time you watched it,
2:36:58
Speaker 1: Clemson's going, the Brent Venables defense, da-da-da-da. I'm not, you know,
2:37:02
Speaker 1: I used to, we used to joke in our house up,
2:37:03
Speaker 1: drink every time Herb Street says Venables. But the fact
2:37:08
Speaker 1: of the matter is Brent Venables is clearly was important,
2:37:13
Speaker 1: so much more important to that program, I think, than
2:37:16
Speaker 1: anybody realized. And, you know, Dabo hasn't been the same.
2:37:23
Speaker 1: Hasn't been the same since. A few other games. I'm
2:37:26
Speaker 1: intrigued by Tennessee Georgia Tech. It's at Georgia Tech. Georgia
2:37:32
Speaker 1: Tech looked terrible in that game against Colorado. I don't,
2:37:35
Speaker 1: but I have a lot of respect for that coach.
2:37:38
Speaker 1: I'm very curious. I think he's, you know, I want
2:37:43
Speaker 1: to know whether, if he could pull a rabbit out
2:37:45
Speaker 1: of his hat, this would be the game you'd see
2:37:48
Speaker 1: him find the rabbit. So I'm just curious. Because, hey,
2:37:51
Speaker 1: I know we don't play Georgia Tech this year, but
2:37:52
Speaker 1: they're sort of like a– for some reason, Miami screws
2:37:56
Speaker 1: up against Georgia Tech. So I'm always looking out for
2:37:58
Speaker 1: them on that front. And then as a– as somebody
2:38:04
Speaker 1: who I always said– I wasn't born and raised in Iowa.
2:38:06
Speaker 1: I wasn't born in Iowa, but I was raised in Iowa.
2:38:09
Speaker 1: The Cy Hawk game matters to me a lot. I
2:38:13
Speaker 1: have a– both of my grandparents went to Iowa State. Um,
2:38:17
Speaker 1: the other half of my, of the Todd clan are
2:38:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of Hawkeye fans. One of my best friends
2:38:22
Speaker 1: is a Hawkeye fan. Um, and, uh, so I care
2:38:26
Speaker 1: a lot about Iowa, Iowa state. Um, I, I love
2:38:29
Speaker 1: the game. Um, and I assume Iowa blows out Iowa state.
2:38:36
Speaker 1: And yet somehow I have a feeling Iowa state will
2:38:38
Speaker 1: make this close because this game is always, no matter
2:38:41
Speaker 1: how bad the team one side is versus how good
2:38:43
Speaker 1: another one is. Um, I, uh, it's always a game.
2:38:47
Speaker 1: So I, I, it is the other part of the
2:38:50
Speaker 1: early September games. You get a fun little matchup every
2:38:53
Speaker 1: now and then. But the, but the best part are,
2:38:56
Speaker 1: are some of these, some of these inter, these, these
2:39:00
Speaker 1: rivalry games that probably should be at the end of
2:39:03
Speaker 1: the year, but, but aren't. Let me think one other,
2:39:08
Speaker 1: one other thing I wanted to, I'm obsessed over this weekend. Oh,
2:39:11
Speaker 1: the other game that I care about because, um, I
2:39:17
Speaker 1: believe that this is the sleep. I've, I have feared
2:39:21
Speaker 1: that they're a sleeper team, uh, in the ACC is Cal.
2:39:26
Speaker 1: I want to see how they handle going cross country
2:39:28
Speaker 1: to play at Syracuse after losing to UCLA. Um, and UCLA,
2:39:35
Speaker 1: I'm doing my first ever fantasy college football team. My
2:39:39
Speaker 1: son and I co-own a team. Uh, I joined a,
2:39:42
Speaker 1: I joined Thor Nystrom's league. If those of you that
2:39:44
Speaker 1: may follow him on Twitter, he's a big Vikings, uh,
2:39:47
Speaker 1: fan and sports reporter, a whole bunch of sports reporters.
2:39:51
Speaker 1: And I'm like, Nico and Wayne Knight are the anchors
2:39:54
Speaker 1: of my team. So I have a little extra incentive
2:39:58
Speaker 1: to follow UCLA a little bit. But Cal, I'm very
2:40:01
Speaker 1: intrigued by to see just how much of a dark
2:40:04
Speaker 1: horse they could be in the ACC. How well will
2:40:06
Speaker 1: they recover from a loss that stung? I expected that
2:40:10
Speaker 1: game to be closer than it wasn't. Maybe UCLA is
2:40:13
Speaker 1: going to be much better than we think. We shall see.
2:40:16
Speaker 1: All right, with that, Enjoy the weekend. Be thinking about
2:40:20
Speaker 1: 9-11 in a variety of ways. If you don't remember
2:40:27
Speaker 1: it or you weren't old enough to experience it, there's
2:40:32
Speaker 1: a variety of documentaries that are worth watching and understanding
2:40:36
Speaker 1: and looking at. But I think the more important thing
2:40:38
Speaker 1: we need to do is just be thinking about, hey,
2:40:41
Speaker 1: it's 25 years later. Life's a lot different now than
2:40:45
Speaker 1: it was then. What should we be doing differently? And
2:40:49
Speaker 1: let's be thinking about the next thing. Let's not have
2:40:54
Speaker 1: a failure of imagination again about the next thing that
2:40:58
Speaker 1: we are concerned about, which apparently is AI. The public
2:41:01
Speaker 1: is screaming. So come on, Congress, get your act together.
2:41:05
Speaker 1: With that, I'll see you in about 72 hours.